Free Republic

Every place where we live around the world has its own culture and lifestyle that make it a unique place to live. When we decide to pack up our things and move great distances to foreign lands, we’re bound to run into differences between our new home and where we came from. Many of these differences are the very reasons that some folks decide to stay, and others decide to go. In the case of moving to Costa Rica, very big differences like ‘Wow, it’s always 90°F outside in Guanacaste!’ or ‘It turns out that it’s difficult to learn Spanish”...

Twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea won an Emmy for their documentary about Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor titled “In Her Hands.” Via The Hollywood Reporter: Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator, secretary of state and Democratic party presidential candidate, can now add another feather to her cap: Emmy winner. Clinton, along with her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, were executive producers of the Netflix documentary In Her Hands, a film about the youngest female mayor in the history of Afghanistan, which on Thursday night was awarded the Emmy for politics and government documentary during the second evening of...

Witches are a big deal in Salem's modern culture. The city's association with witchcraft has been capitalized on from films like 1993's "Hocus Pocus" to the annual Halloween festivities that draw in nearly a million visitors throughout the month of October. But something often left out of conversations about the 17th century Salem Witch Trials is that the victims were real people who, along with their families, suffered a great injustice at the hands of their community. A new exhibition at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum is recontextualizing the witch trials from a human perspective: "The Salem Witch Trials: Restoring Justice"....

Former President Trump said he would use "federal law enforcement assets" to prevent shoplifting and theft during a California GOP speech on Friday. Trump addressed the California GOP during a Friday luncheon where he discussed ideas to restore law and order in Golden State cities like Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Trump said that if elected, he would do everything in his power - "including sending as many federal assets as required to restore safety and peace" - for cities that have seen what he called a breakdown of law and order. "We will immediately stop all of the...

Now it’s starting to make sense. Scott Hall, the bail bondsman from Coffee County, Georgia, pleaded guilty today in Fulton County in the Trump Georgia election case. Scott Hall will now testify against the rest of the defendants in the case. It took Hall a little over a month to plead guilty to the charges. He will serve no time in prison in exchange for his testimony against the other 18 co-defendants. Scott Hall is a bail bondman who was standing in a room in Coffee County observing the process when the Dominion voting machine was legally examined. Examining voting...

John 1:47-51 Friends, today we celebrate the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. When the existence of God is widely doubted, it just seems unscientific to believe in spiritual beings. And yet, they are prominently mentioned in the Bible; they are amply discussed by the Church Fathers; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church boldly reaffirms the existence and activity of angels.Do you remember how, a few years ago, there was an enormous interest in the culture in angels? One of my favorite stories had to do with a man who was flying a single-engine plane during a severe...

QUESTION: Is there a way to make sure people do not bring their children to a party I am hosting? This party is really for adults only and there are some friends of mine that take their children with them everywhere. I want to make sure that everyone understands that the children should stay home this time. CALLIE’S ANSWER: There is no reason you can't just let everyone know it is only adults. It is completely understandable. Put it on the invitation "adults only affair." LILLIE-BETH’S ANSWER: It’s weird that your friends assume that children are welcome to a party...

Michelle Obama enjoyed a star-studded day out on sea off the coast Italy alongside a shirtless Tom Hanks and a slew of other famous faces. The former First Lady, 59, who has spent the last few weeks enjoying a European vacation without her husband Barack, was pictured taking a boat ride with a dazzling array of A-listers including Tom and his wife, Rita Wilson, as well as acclaimed director Steven Spielberg, and his spouse, Kate Capshaw. The group was seen exiting Steven's $250 million superyacht together near Portofino, getting onto a smaller vessel, which took them out for a day...

A zookeeper at a Japanese safari park died after a lion apparently attacked him as he tried to bring the animal to its cage, police said on Friday (Sep 29). Kenichi Kato, a 53-year-old worker at Tohoku Safari Park in the Fukushima region, was found bleeding from his neck and unconscious inside the lion's cage on Thursday afternoon, a local police spokesman told AFP. "It is believed that he was feeding a lion," the spokesman, who declined to be named, said.

New research by Singapore’s National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) also revealed that carrying one of two Asian gene variants increases your risk of Parkinson's disease. And up to 10 per cent of the Singapore population carry one of these gene variants.offee and tea drinkers, rejoice – especially those with a genetic predisposition to developing Parkinson’s disease (PD). New research by Singapore’s National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) has found that two cups of kopi (traditional local coffee made from robusta coffee beans) a day can reduce the risk of PD by four to eight times in people with Asian gene variants linked to...

CHICAGO — A rally was held Tuesday for an 11-year-old girl who was severely injured in an alleged hate crime attack in the city’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Trinity Washington and her mother said she was attacked on Sept. 17 outside their home on the 1900 block of South Spaulding Avenue. Trinity said her neighbor’s sister was out, intoxicated, celebrating Mexican Independence Day. “I didn’t know I’d experience this,” Trinity said. Trinity was with her Yorkie puppy when she said the female called her a racial slur and stepped on the dog. The 11-year-old said the female hit her in the...

Chinese travellers thronged transport networks on Friday (Sep 29) as an eight-day national holiday kicked off, the first October break since the end of the strict zero-COVID policies that separated families and hammered the tourism industry. Pre-booked international trips were 20 times higher than in the same period last year, and domestic trips over four times, according to data from Trip.com, China's largest online travel provider. Last year, a slew of measures including mass coronavirus testing, health codes, quarantines between different provinces and restrictions on movement made travelling anywhere a daunting proposition.

…Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden’s performance on the economy, 30%. … It seems that a significant share of voters are buying Trump’s argument that he built a sensational economy before COVID, and then the 2020 election, interrupted his fine work. The Trump “boom,” of course, was arguably just a situation he inherited from Barack Obama. But to Americans who have...

Between September 29 and September 30 in 1941, the Nazis, specifically Einsatzgruppe C, shot some 34,000 Jewish people at Babi Yar, a ravine outside of the Ukrainian city of Kiev. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a suspiciously specific death count of 33,771. This is considered the single largest mass murder of World War II, and for Kiev it was just the beginning. In the days prior to the massacre the Nazis put up posters around the city reading: Kikes of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Monday, September 29, you are to appear by 08:00 a.m. with...

More than 10,000 Singaporeans will go through a study on heart disease that aims to identify early warnings. Called Project RESET, the five-year government-funded research initiative will gather data points like lifestyle and genetic information from participants aged 40 to 70 with the aim of developing preventive measures. SNIP The project’s aim is to identify cardio-liver-metabolic biomarkers present in individuals who have heart disease but are still asymptomatic, said Mr Ong, “Hopefully with these findings, we can unmuzzle this silent killer,” he said at the project’s launch at the Heart Disease Prevention Symposium at Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel.

The United States called on Belgrade to pull its forces back from the border with Kosovo on Friday (Sep 29) after detecting what it called an unprecedented Serbian military build-up. Serbia had deployed sophisticated tanks and artillery on the frontier after deadly clashes erupted at a monastery in northern Kosovo last week, the White House warned. The violence in which a Kosovo policeman and three Serb gunmen were killed marked one of the gravest escalations for years in Kosovo, a former Serbian breakaway province.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s war on parents scored a victory earlier this month when a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Chino Valley Unified School District’s policy requiring parents to be notified if their child starts switching gender at schools

New research shows that an antibiotic effective for bacterial pneumonia also appears to fight treatment-resistant staph infections. The drug is ceftobiprole. It appeared successful in fighting methicillin-resistant staph infections, sometimes called MRSA. It showed similar benefit when tested against the antibiotic daptomycin to treat complicated Staphylococcus aureus infections. This means it could offer another option against this common and often deadly bacterial infection, according to the research led by Duke Health in Durham, N.C. "This is an area of true need," Dr. Thomas Holland, associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine and chair of the study's data review committee,...

A man accused of jihadism and considered by the authorities to be dangerous has disappeared in Spain and his whereabouts are currently unknown. According to anti-terrorist sources of larazon.es, Allal el Mourabit Ahammarb managed to remove the electronic tagging device that he had been fitted with and left in the Salburúa park in Vitoria. The bracelet was subsequently found by police officers after an operation had been initiated to locate it. As explained by the same sources, these tagging devices do not presuppose permanent monitoring of the individual carrying them. What they do presuppose is to control that he/she never...

Hong Kong bishop: Evangelization in China shouldn’t have ‘agenda of turning them into Catholics’Cardinal-elect Stephen Chow said Thursday that evangelization in China today should focus on communicating the love of God “without the agenda of turning them into Catholics.”In an interview in Rome with CNA on Sept. 28, the bishop of Hong Kong, who will be made a cardinal in the consistory this weekend, spoke about his vision for evangelization in mainland China.“I think it is important that we say that Pope Francis made a distinction. Evangelization is really to help people to understand the love of God — and...