Free Republic

DUBAI (Reuters) -World Bank President Ajay Banga said on Friday the development lender will devote 45% of its annual financing to climate-related projects by 2025, up from a target of 35%, and extend debt repayment pauses following climate disasters. Banga made the announcements at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai as the next steps in a broad overhaul of the World Bank to better respond to climate change and other global crises. "We're putting our ambition in overdrive and putting to work more than $40 billion per year -- around $9 billion more than the original target," Banga said. Under...

Christmas - Christ's First Coming Proves He's Coming Again! Do You Believe This? Dear friends, the Lord Jesus' first coming overwhelmingly confirms the Rapture and His GLORIOUS Second Coming (Gen. 22:18; Isa. 7:14; 9:6-7; 11:1; Jer. 23:5-6; Matt. 3:1-3; Mark 1:14; Luke 3:1-6; John 1:14; Gal. 4:4; Heb. 10:4-9; Rev. 12:1-5)! If ALL of the prophecies of old, ALL came to pass at Christ's birth and first coming; then it should be a great comfort and overwhelming witness to all, that ALL of the prophecies of the Rapture and Second Coming will indeed also come to pass as well! Yet...

A teenager claiming to be the girlfriend of the Uvalde mass shooter was arrested Wednesday for threatening victims of the massacre and the grieving community for half a year. Victoria Gabriela Rodríguez-Morales, 19, of Puerto Rico was slapped with 13 counts of making interstate threats through social media sites and emails with names like “SchoolShooter” and “Killer22,” the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico said. “Me and Salvador wanted to do this together but he don’t wait for me to come,” she allegedly wrote in Instagram messages in June.

1 December 2023 Friday of week 34 in Ordinary Time The Church of Sant' Eligio degli Orefici, Rome Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: A(I).First readingDaniel 7:2-14 ©'I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man'I, Daniel, have been seeing visions in the night. I saw that the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea; four great beasts emerged from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion with eagle’s wings; and as I looked its wings were torn off, and it was lifted from the ground...

Hyundai achieved its best-ever November sales as demand for its fully electric vehicles continues rising. Sales were led by the Hyundai IONIQ 5, up 99% over last year. For the 16th straight month, Hyundai’s total sales grew in November. Despite claims the EV market is cooling, the South Korean brand continues to see rising demand. Hyundai sold 2,372 IONIQ 5 models last month, representing 99% growth over last year. The brand has sold over 30,000 IONIQ 5 electric SUVs this year, up 44% compared to ~21K last year at this time. The company also sold 1,386 IONIQ 6 models, up...

Rep. George Santos expelled from Congress after 311-114 vote

Final total 311-114.

TRENTON, N.J. (CITC) — Aspiring teachers in New Jersey are no longer required to prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math. Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law Monday the elimination of the state's basic skills test requirement. Passing the exam was previously required for teachers to become certified if they did not score in the top one-third percentile of the SAT, ACT or GRE. Under the new law, teachers can now skip the exam and instead receive an alternate teaching certificate. After four years of employment at a state-approved school, which includes public and charter schools, the educators...

Wait! Aren't Republicans the ones who inappropriately drag religion into politics? And surely no Democrat would ever perform a religious ritual as protection against the mention of a Republican's name? And yet . . . On Thursday, Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC show, with Alicia Menendez as substitute host, rolled tape of Biden crossing himself after he mentioned the name of Lauren Boebert. Menendez blithely said, without comment, that Biden "made the sign of the Cross at Boebert's name." Think MSNBC would be so nonchalant if a prominent Republican made the sign of the Cross at the mention of a Democrat's name?Get...

Bidenomics is America’s Highway To Hell! Unrealized losses on securities held by US banks exploded by 22% in the third quarter. Of course, unrealized losses don’t really matter — until they do. This is yet more evidence that the financial crisis that kicked off last March continues to bubble under the surface. Unrealized losses, primarily on US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities rose by $126 billion in Q3 and now total $684 billion, according to the FDIC’s quarterly bank data release. Current unrealized losses are only slightly below the record set in the third quarter of 2022. This reflects the fact...

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is pushing a ban on AR-15s by focusing on their gas operation system approximately 64 years after the gun’s design included such a system. Breitbart News reported that Sen. Angus King (I-ME) and a group of Senate Democrats, including Kelly, introduced an AR-15 ban early Thursday. In so doing, they used new catchphrases such as “lethal capacity weapons” and “gas-operated semiautomatic. Later Thursday, Kelly posted a video on X in which he continued to emphasize the new catchphrases by explaining that this latest attempt to ban AR-15s and similar rifles “focuses on the lethality of their...

Just days after Hamas’s brutal terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, students around the country shocked observers with their condemnation of the state of Israel and full-throated support for Palestinians and Hamas. At Harvard, students wrote that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and called for “a firm stand against colonial retaliation.” Student protesters around the country chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a call for the elimination of Israel. The organization responsible for many such statements and protests is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which describes itself as a...

Israeli officials had an intimate understanding of Hamas' brutal October 7 terrorist attack over a year before it happened, but brushed off the battle plan as too aspirational for the group to pull off, a bombshell report has claimed. In a 40-page document obtained by The New York Times, Hamas laid out a detailed plan to carry out its assault on Israel that ultimately led to the deaths of approximately 1,200 people in a day. The blueprint reportedly did not set a date for the attack, but offered an exhaustive look at the terrorist group's strategy, including a targeting fortifications...

Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) were strolling the halls of Congress on Thursday when they spied a familiar face. So familiar in fact that comedian Dave Chappelle happily stopped and obliged his lawmaker admirers with a selfie. “Just three people who understand that there’s only two genders,” Boebert wrote on X, including a photo of her and Luna with the Chappelle’s Show star framed in the Capitol Rotunda.

Senator Dick Durbin’s push to shut down Senator Marsha Blackburn’s investigation into Epstein’s flight logs comes after a long series of actions covering for the billionaire pedophile. Which makes many wonder why Durbin is working so hard to protect Jeffrey Epstein. “Democrat senator Dick Durbin of Illinois adjourned a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing before holding a vote on whether or not to approve Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee’s subpoena for the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs,” ... Dick Durbin personally tried to shut down the Jeffrey Epstein disclosure movement by disparaging those who believe in a ‘grand conspiracy’ surrounding accused child...

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance must focus on climate change even as it contends with fortifying its defenses against aggression from the Kremlin. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai, Mr. Stoltenberg said a clear link exists between a nation’s security and climate change, which he called a “crisis multiplier.” “It forces people to move. Migratory flows are increasing because of climate change. But it also increases competition for scarce resources,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “In that way, climate change is actually fueling conflict, and conflict matters for NATO and for our security.”

… Eating more plants and fewer animals is among the simplest, cheapest and most readily available ways for people to reduce their impact on the environment, climate scientists have long said. According to one University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road. An explosion of new types of plant-based “meat” — the burgers, nuggets and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting...

Former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson knows who he’ll be supporting in the 2024 presidential election. “I became an active Trump supporter when they raided Mar-A-Lago last summer,” Carlson said on an episode of Roseanne Barr’s podcast this week. “That can’t stand. And I agree with Trump on a lot, but even if I disagreed with Trump on a lot, I’d still be a Trump supporter because you cannot allow that.” Carlson was pulled off the air by Fox earlier this year, shortly after the company agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims...

Brothers Yagil Yaakov, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, were branded, drugged and beaten, their uncle says.. A family member of two Israeli boys released from Hamas captivity this week said they were branded like cattle, among other abuses, in the weeks they were held in Gaza since Oct. 7, ... Brothers Yagil Yaakov, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, were freed Wednesday during a temporary cease-fire ... Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett confirmed the details of the branding ... Moran Aloni, the relative of five released hostages — two of his sisters and three nieces — said the terrorists often...

French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the COP28 summit on Friday as world leaders gathered in Dubai for the second day of UN climate talks. Macron urged G7 nations at UN climate talks on Friday to set an example to other countries and "commit to putting an end to coal" by 2030. Speaking at COP28 in Dubai, Macron said investing in coal was "truly an absurdity".