Free Republic

Theme Players take the part of land owners, attempting to buy and then develop their land. Income is gained by other players visiting their properties and money is spent when they visit properties belonging to other players. When times get tough, players may have to mortgage their properties to raise cash for fines, taxes and other misfortunes

Yemen's Houthis said on Wednesday they targeted four vessels, including what they described as a U.S. warship, with drones and naval missiles in the Gulf of Aden, part of their stated campaign of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The Iran-aligned group attacked "MSC Darwin ship, MSC GINA, MV Yorktown" along with the U.S. destroyer, the group's military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech. The U.S. military said on Tuesday that it had destroyed an inbound anti-ship ballistic missile over the Gulf of Aden that was launched by Houthis and likely targeting the MV Yorktown. There were no injuries...

Social media users trashed Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, after she turned her gaffe about the moon being "made of gases" into a slam of Republicans on social media Tuesday. Reacting to the backlash she received for telling school children that the moon is made of gases ahead of Monday’s eclipse, the lawmaker said that her Republican critics are hounding her because they have a "lust for stupidity." She gave a speech at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston on the day of the eclipse, telling an assembly of students, "Sometimes, you need to take the opportunity just to...

At least two people were shot in the Parkside area of Philadelphia around 2:40 p.m. Wednesday as people were gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan, 6ABC reported. FOX 29’s Steve Keeley posted to X: “[Philadelphia Police] have made ‘numerous arrests and at least four guns recovered.” “Police believe two groups exchanged gunfire on the street,” and a Philadelphia police officer shot at a gunman as well, CNN noted. Breaking, ANOTHER Philadelphia playground is a crime scene now after the shooting during Ramadan event at this park in West Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/udbAMYRtev — Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) April 10, 2024 The New...

Starting with Tucker Carlson’s adulatory interview with Vladimir Putin, people asked a question: “Was Fox News, rather than acting as an ugly censor when it came to Tucker, actually preventing the world from seeing his worst ideas?” That question takes on new power when it comes to Tucker’s latest interview with Munther Isaac, a Christian pastor living in Bethlehem. The gist of the interview is that Hamas is good and Israel (because Christians have been killed as a byproduct of war) is evil. Tucker, by promoting this view, has fallen into a terrible moral fallacy…or revealed himself to be a...

The North Bay is the final destination for this rare sight in the San Francisco Bay -- it's a two-story houseboat out to sea! SKY7 captured video of the houseboat getting moved to its new home in San Rafael. The boat was forced to leave Docktown Marina in Redwood City. That's because of a long legal battle, which determined vessels that people live on were not allowed to block access to a state waterway in San Mateo County. Between 60 and 80 houseboats had to relocate. This one's journey from Redwood City to San Rafael reportedly took two days.

Mattel is to launch a new version of Scrabble which is designed to be more collaborative and accessible for those who find word games intimidating. The new double-sided Scrabble board will still feature the original game for those who want to play the traditional version. But the new game on the flip side will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system and be quicker to play. The new board, Scrabble Together, will also allow people to compete in teams. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, broadcaster Gyles Brandreth described the launch as "exciting news". "We play the original...

A young woman was arrested in the eastern French city of Besançon and taken into custody for holding up a sign calling for the deportation of foreign rapists. She faces up to a year in prison. Her lawyer has stated that she intends to lodge a complaint for “infringement of personal freedom.” During Besançon’s carnival on Saturday, April 6th, two young women, one of them a 19-year-old, held up signs in the street reading: “Violeurs étrangers dehors” and “Libérez-nous de l’immigration” (“Foreign Rapists Away”, and “Free us from immigration”). On one of the facades of the Grande Rue, one of...

The past week of Swedish politics has been a mysterious case of a dog that should have barked, but then simply didn’t. In a barely covered press release, the Riksbanken — Sweden’s central bank — announced that it had lost some 44 billion kr (£3.2 billion), and needed that much money from the state in order to return to the minimal level of capitalisation stipulated by the law. For a small country such as Sweden, this is a very large sum: it represents fully half of what the state spent on defence during the 2023 fiscal year. The reasons for...

More than a dozen House GOP privacy hawks have blocked the House of Representatives from advancing a Speaker Mike Johnson-backed bill to renew a controversial federal government surveillance tool known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It comes hours after former President Trump posted on Truth Social, "KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME AND MANY OTHERS." Nineteen Republicans voted against their party leadership

John 3:16-21 Friends, our Gospel passage today includes one of Scripture’s best-known and best-loved lines. The Lord is speaking to Nicodemus, and we read, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”Why does the Son come? Because God is angry? Because God wants to lord it over us? Because God needs something? No, he comes purely out of love, out of God’s desire that we flourish: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that...

Released between the Godfathers, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film was a passion project – and its tale of a surveillance expert disturbed by what he hears hits even harder in 2024. Ever get the feeling you are being watched? How many cameras caught you on your way to work today? How many companies tracked your buying habits on your lunch break? Where is all this information about you going? These may be obviously pertinent questions in the digital age, when 21st-Century technology gives corporations and institutions unprecedented access to our personal information, but they've been the subject of feverish concern...

President Joe Biden, 81, made the case on Wednesday for his reelection, arguing he is ready for four more years because “I’m in the 20th century.” While speaking with reporters next to the president of Japan at the White House, Biden said, “Elect me. I’m in the 20th Century,” before correcting himself, saying, “the 21st century.” BIDEN: "Elect me. I'm in the 20th Century." 😳 pic.twitter.com/I0vr7KiYUB — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 10, 2024 It is not the first gaffe or inaccurate statement delivered by Biden, whom special counsel Robert Hur described as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” Numerous...

MINOT — When state Sen. Merrill Piepkorn, gubernatorial candidate for the Democratic-NPL, joined this episode of Plain Talk with my co-host Chad Oban and me, the first question I wanted to ask him was how he plans to unite North Dakota voters at a time when even Republicans here seem deeply divided against themselves. After a joke about getting to the point right away, Piepkorn said he thinks the right approach is "making the effort" to get to know people and understand their issues. The candidate says one of the challenges Democrats running in North Dakota have is that they...

Our ancestors may have kept foxes as pets long before domestic dogs came on the scene. Archaeological evidence suggests ancient human societies in South America revered foxes to such an extent that they were buried next to them. Scientists were surprised to find a fox buried in a human grave dating back 1,500 years in Patagonia, Argentina. They think the most likely explanation is that the fox was a highly valued companion or pet. DNA analysis shows the animal dined with prehistoric hunter gatherers and was part of the inner circle of the camp. A fox of the same species...

Who Are the Guardians of Tradition?The third and final episode in the “Mass of the Ages” documentary trilogy traces the renewed interest in—and renewed attacks against—the traditional Latin Mass.March saw the YouTube release of Guardians of Tradition, the third and final episode in the Mass of the Ages trilogywhich chronicles the liturgical changes since Vatican II and shows the appeal of the traditional Latin Mass (TLM). I have two slight criticisms of this episode, but it concludes a valuable mission and should be seen by anyone interested in the state of the Church. The first episode in the series, Discover...

A remembrance mural has become the target of "mindless vandalism" for a second time. Spray paint was used between Monday and Tuesday last week to deface the artwork situated on Witham's river walk. The initial incident was reported to Essex Police, but silver spray paint was then used at the weekend to create further damage. A spokesperson from Witham Town Council said it was "just mindless vandalism". Police have been contacted for comment.

It was Al-Quds Day last Friday. To celebrate the occasion, protesters in Dearborn, Mich., chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” while a speaker named Tarek Bazzi declared the United States — a place that’s afforded him the liberty to openly support rapists, murderers and terrorists — one of the “rottenest countries” on the planet. “It’s the entire system that has to go,” he explained to cheers of, what I assume, were American citizens. As commentator Seth Mandel noted on X, there’s Charlottesville every other day in America, and barely anyone on the left cares. Most progressives, let’s face...

The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.

April 10 (Reuters) - Allowing Ukrainian convicts to serve in the military came a step closer on Wednesday as lawmakers approved a first reading of a bill designed to help replenish and rotate troops exhausted after two years of war with Russia. The bill envisages prisoners who join the army becoming eligible for parole. Those convicted of crimes against humanity, sexual violence, murder or crimes against national security would not be allowed to serve, lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko said on Telegram.