Free Republic

WASHINGTON – A remedial course designed to prepare potential Army recruits for basic training will become a permanent part of the service’s strategy in overcoming its sagging enlistment numbers, officials said. The Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course was launched at Fort Jackson, S.C., in August 2022 as an experiment to help young Americans qualify physically and academically for military service. With higher obesity rates in America and fewer young people qualified to meet the Army’s entry standards, the service hoped the course would give those who don’t qualify much-needed time and training to get in shape. Service leaders said the...

Health officials in California recently spoke about the possible return of mask mandates in the state amid a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases. On Thursday, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health held a press conference to speak about a rise in new COVID-19 cases, saying that over the past week cases have doubled. During the press conference, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was asked about the potential return to mask mandates and if the county would ever make them mandatory again. "'Ever' is not a word I'm comfortable with. There's...

— It takes more effort than you think"Become the doctor your parents always wanted you to marry," said the T-shirt I purchased from the women-in-medicine interest group during my first year of medical school. I remember feeling like I should buy that T-shirt (and I did), yet it was also something I was never quite comfortable wearing. It was a "women's cut" (how appropriate), which meant it fit snugly across the chest and sat high on the waist -- not something I could exercise in, and also not exactly something I would want to put on for a night on...

California could soon become the first state in the country to officially ban caste discrimination. Moving forward: Sen. Aisha Wahab’s (D-CA) anti-caste discrimination bill, Senate Bill 403, received an overwhelming 50-3 vote during Monday’s state assembly and is now being returned for a re-vote before Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the new bill into law. The latest move came months after Seattle became the first city in the country to ban caste discrimination. Her reaction: In a statement on Monday, Wahab, who is the first Muslim and Afghan American elected to the state legislature, thanked those who supported and voted for...

Ajudge is set to rule soon on the first Georgia 2020 election co-defendant’s attempt to move their charges to federal court, a decision that could prove decisive for the future of Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) criminal case. Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wants U.S. District Judge Steve Jones to allow him to switch courts to attempt to get his charges thrown out on immunity grounds. It would also widen the jury pool to less Democrat-heavy areas and likely prevent a televised trial allowed by state law. If Meadows succeeds, legal experts say...

A violent riot broke out at another Koran burning in the Swedish city of Malmö this Sunday, September 3. The police described the situation as violent and several hundred people gathered at the scene. ‘There is still a special incident going on, but that also includes the investigation work’, commented Richard Lundqvist, a police press spokesperson. Around 100 people had gathered after permission was granted for a Koran burning on Värnhemstorget in Malmö on Sunday afternoon. According to the police, the atmosphere at the scene turned violent at times, and a riot occurred shortly before 2 pm. The holy book...

The general lack of sources about the Picts and their way of life has led to numerous assumptions over the centuries. In the eighth century, during the early medieval period, for example, historians such as the Venerable Bede thought that the Picts emigrated from areas around the Aegean Sea or Eastern Europe and that they traced descent matrilineally, through the mother's side...In the newly published study, an international team of researchers extracted genetic information from eight human skeletons buried in two Pictish cemeteries — seven from Lundin Links and one from Balintore in modern-day Scotland...The team was able to extract...

Social media erupted after Dr. Anthony Fauci was confronted by a CNN host with a study showing face masks made little to no difference in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conservative critics pounced on the former White House chief medical adviser after he acknowledged the masking study during the Saturday segment — while continuing to insist that, at an individual level, other research shows face coverings are effective at curtailing the spread of the virus. “When you’re talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong,” Fauci admitted to CNN’s...

When asked to return a tenant's deposit, this landlady allegedly pulled out a kitchen knife and said: "Why don't you just kill me?" This incident occurred on Aug 9 in an HDB flat at Block 506B Yishun Ave 4, Shin Min Daily News reported. A tenant had rented a room in July through Facebook, moving in to the flat on the 16th. "After moving in, the landlord would bang on my door and scold me at 6am every morning, complaining that I dirtied parts of the house. "After searching on the internet, I found out that this landlord had already...

Is our honeymoon with the electric vehicle finally over? A study found that one in five early adopters of EV cars and trucks are returning to gas-powered vehicles. As a result, used EV prices are freefalling. The Journal Nature published a study revealing that of the folks who were early adopters of EVs in California (between 2012 and 2018), 20% of PHEV drivers have returned to fully gas-powered vehicles and 18% of full EV drivers returned to gas-powered–with their subsequent vehicle purchase.

A migrant woman was arrested after she slapped an NYPD officer who was attempting to confiscate her unregistered motorbike in front of a Manhattan shelter for asylum-seekers earlier this week. The arrest came as several people were caught on camera tussling with cops as they tried to conduct a scooter crackdown Thursday at West 71st Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side, steps from the Stratford Arms Hotel, which is being used as a migrant shelter, according to police. “Get back!, Get back,” an officer is heard warning the crowd in the clip, before ushering a young man away...

We’re on the precipice of a radical experiment with a national electricity grid The AEMO (manager of the Australian grid) has finally released the major report on problems coming in the next ten years on our national grid, and it’s worse than they thought even six months ago. They euphemistically refer to the coming “reliability gaps”. They could have said “blackouts” instead, but a gap in reliability sounds so much nicer. Bizarrely, the lead graph of the 175 page AEMO report goes right off the scale, mysteriously peaking in the unknown and invisible real estate off the top of the...

Algerian officials claim that “multiple” warning shots were fired before its military directly shot at a group of jet skiers who had crossed over from Morocco, killing two of them. The deadly encounter occurred Tuesday after five jet skiers drifted into Algeria territory while exploring the waters around the Moroccan resort town of Saidia. “Given that the maritime border area is witnessing intense activity by drug smuggling gangs and organized crime, Coast Guard members fired warning shots,” Algeria’s defense ministry said in a statement. “After multiple attempts, shots were fired on a jet ski,” officials added. One of the survivors,...

A group of bandits broke into more than a dozen homes in ritzy NYC neighborhoods, swiping nearly 10 luxury cars in a cross-borough operation that spanned three months. The car thieves stole a Porsche, Mercedes, Range Rover and other high-end vehicles from driveways in Queens and Brooklyn from June through August, police said. They were still on the loose Sunday night. The gang typically worked in groups of four and three and targeted homes primarily in the affluent neighborhood of Whitestone but also hit houses in Bayside, Jamaica Estates, Holliswood, Manhattan Beach and Bay Ridge. They would strike in the...

The phone booths of New York City have all but disappeared, but their remains were once found in this "graveyard," sadly now removed as well.

Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector found three migrant children who had been abandoned last week by human smugglers along the Rio Grande. Earlier in the week, agents apprehended a large group of migrants that included 26 additional unaccompanied migrant children. Del Rio Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Juan G. Bernal posted a photo on X, formerly Twitter, showing three unaccompanied migrant children found by his agents. Human smugglers abandoned the three children after crossing them through the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas.

A trailblazing study has made significant strides with a novel technique for treating anorexia nervosa (AN), an eating disorder characterized by low body weight, body image abnormalities, and anxiety. The researchers identified several immediate and sustained effects of floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy) in inpatients with anorexia nervosa. Also known as "float therapy," floatation-REST is a non-pharmacological treatment that involves floating effortlessly in a shallow pool of warm water saturated with Epsom salt, in a lightproof, soundproof, humidity- and temperature-controlled environment, and it is increasingly used by the general public as a stress reduction tool. In the study, the anorexia...

CARNIVAL bosses facing a backlash for picking a teenage boy as this year’s queen have called in the police. They chose the lad — aged over 16 and named only as James — to lead the annual street parade next month. But he was relegated to an ambassador after the announcement on social media was said to have been met with abusive and negative comments including threats of disruption. Organisers in Ringwood, Hants, deleted the post and referred the row to police “for a safety view”. Residents had threatened to boycott the event, which dates back nearly 100 years. One...

Donald Trump is surely watching Ramaswamy’s rise closely. Imagine a 2024 vice presidential debate where the GOP candidate is a brown-skinned man, and he is telling a black woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, that Democrats take minority voters for granted. Ramaswamy is preparing for that fight by taking his racial rhetoric to disturbing heights. “I’m sure the boogeyman ‘white supremacists’ exist somewhere in America – I have just never met him,” Ramaswamy said recently on CNN. “Never seen one…” Say what? Keep in mind, Ramaswamy spoke a year after a white racist went into a Buffalo grocery and killed 10...

The dos and do not dos of flying this Labor Day Weekend (or any day really)Flying suck now. It’s a nightmare, and it’s only gotten worse since the plague times. It seems some of us have forgotten what it means to be or behave like a person — a normal, decent person. Or maybe the monster was always lurking there, just under the surface. Who knew one delayed flight was all it took to make someone snap? Some of us have forgotten basic flying decency. Ahead of yet another chaotic travel event, with 14 million passengers taking to the skies...