Free Republic

Russian companies that do business with China have encountered more headwinds in recent days as Chinese banks raised the yuan-ruble exchange rate to capitalize on their neighbor's weakened currency. While the yuan currently buys 12.07 rubles at the Russian central bank's exchange rate, Chinese banks are selling the currency at 13 rubles per yuan, charging a premium over the Russian central bank rate of 12.07 rubles, the Moscow Times reported on Thursday. -snip- Chinese banks are not the first to profit from the ruble's plight. Mongolia and Turkey have for some time converted rubles into yuan several percentage points above...

[Catholic/Devotional] Novena for Our Nation - August 15 - October 7Make America Holy Again as we Unite at the Foot of the Cross!August 15th to October 7th, 2024 The way to GREATNESS is the way of HOLINESS! This Novena for Our Nation will begin on August 15th, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and will end on October 7th, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The intention for which we are praying together is: “Heavenly Father, Make America Holy Again as we Unite at the Foot of the Cross! Mary, Queen of Peace, pray...

Two teenage boys were stabbed early Thursday in an argument aboard a train in the Times Square subway station, police said. A 15-year-old male was stabbed in the hand and a 16-year-old male was stabbed in the abdomen during the altercation, which unfolded just before 7 a.m. on the NQR train line, police said. The victims knew the suspect before the incident, police sources told The Post. The two teens were taken to Bellevue Hospital and are in stable condition, police said.

[Catholic Caucus] Catholics Who Profess Communism are ApostatesOn July 13, 1949, Pope Pius XII issued a decree stating that Catholics who advocate Communism are excommunicated from the Catholic Church. This decree applies today. 1 The decree doesn’t explicitly condemn those who vote for Communists or who support the Communist Party, but excommunicates those who hold to the atheistic doctrines of Communism. The Church judges such persons to be apostates. The 1949 decree 2 was preceded by a previous Vatican decree published by L'Osservatore Romano on July 15, 1948, which excommunicated those who propagate "the materialistic and anti-Christian teachings of Communism."Moreover,...

I originally wrote this back in November of 2017. Little did I realize then that it would become true, just not for 2020. Thought many would find it interesting. Seems like a day doesn't go by without another woman accusing some guy of sexually harassing her. Most of the accusations are from incidents that took place so long ago that there is no way to prove or disprove the accusation. The stories are about men from all walks of life, and both sides of the political spectrum. From Hollywood to Congress, women are telling stories about how men they...

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described the late-night hammer attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, as "worse" than the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump last month.

Speculation that President Joe Biden experienced a medical emergency in Nevada before he stepped down from his 2024 re-election campaign has since been confirmed, after newly released call logs from a Freedom of Information Act request indicate it was all true. According to the call logs, police cleared the roads from near the MGM Grand to Lindo Michoacan, to bring Biden to the airport following reports that he was code “421” — which means sick or injured. “Right now POTUS is 421,” a Las Vegas Metro Police officer radioed in. “We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on, and...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said Ukraine has captured the key town of Sudzha in the Russian Kursk region, providing his forces with an important foothold as troops continue to surge across Russia. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, reported the capture of Sudzha during a Thursday briefing, Zelensky said in a video address. Ukraine is setting up a commandant’s office in the town, Zelensky said, while more than 80 settlements in Kursk have now fallen to advancing Ukrainian troops. “I thank every warrior of ours who ensures all this,” Zelensky said. Moscow has not yet commented on Ukraine’s...

An analysis of the IDF's reports shows that Hamas used at least 60 schools and other civilian institutions to conduct its terrorist activities and harm the Israeli forces. The Gaza terrorist organization's use of civilians • The maps and data. Tomer Almagor, data N12 | Published 15.08.24 At the end of last week, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said that since the beginning of the war, Hamas has been "systematically exploiting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza for terrorist activity." The analysis of the IDF's publications throughout the ten months of the war, many of which are backed up by documentation, indeed...

San Francisco’s last Denny’s diner has closed, with the franchise owner blaming vandalism and alleged dining and dashing for the store’s shuttering. The restaurant location closed on Aug. 1 with a sign saying such displayed in a storefront window and a yellow Denny’s sign outside painted over as of Monday. The owner of the restaurant, who previously closed another San Francisco location he owned in 2019, said people kept skipping out without paying their bills. “We’re the only store left, and we operated until the last day that we could,” Denny’s franchisee Chris Haque told local news site SFGATE Monday....

The Taliban celebrated the three-year anniversary of returning to power in Afghanistan on Wednesday. The regime paraded US and Soviet-era military weaponry, vehicles and equipment through a former US airbase, Bagram. The Bagram Air Base served a vital role in American operations against the Taliban for 20 years. Videos of the celebration were posted to X, with social media users slamming the Biden Administration’s failures. “This is humiliating,” wrote one user. The botched evacuation by US President Joe Biden’s administration led to the deaths of 13 United States service members.

Q: What are your thoughts about the guilty verdicts? A: It’s an interesting verdict. As we were going through the trial, we saw that the prosecution would not let us in with any of our affirmative defenses. Much excluded evidence was kept from the jury. For instance, the codemonkeyz video that they kept talking about — that was so “damning” — they never would let the jury see it. If they would have seen it, they would have seen there were no passwords in there. Speaking to the passwords, when I took that video, it was because Conan (Hayes) was...

Nearly every American's Social Security number may have been leaked, with a hacking group claiming they stole nearly 3 billion records of personal information. A massive database containing over 2.7 billion records has reportedly ended up on a criminal forum. These records belong to individuals in the U.S. and were allegedly stolen from National Public Data (NPD). While the accuracy of the leaked data could not be verified, the hackers reportedly obtained sensitive information such as names, mailing addresses and Social Security numbers. The scale of this breach is so vast that if you live in the U.S., it's likely...

Gay men get HIV at higher rates than any other group in the United States, and there are many reasons for this. Biological factors dramatically increase a gay man's vulnerability to infection. Social, cultural, and economic factors—such as stigma, racism, homophobia, and high rates of poverty—further compound the risk. Regardless of the causes, securing access to testing, prevention, and PrEP to lower HIV transmission in this high-risk group remains a pressing issue. There are numerous free or low-cost confidential testing and treatment sites offered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via their online testing locator.

Fourteen pro-Palestinian protesters were taken into NYPD custody as they clashed with police in Harlem across the street from a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, cops said Thursday. Roughly 300 demonstrators were barricaded on W. 135th St. and Broadway on Wednesday evening, with some of their placards declaring “Kamala=Genocide” and “Silent on Genocide” while chanting “Genocide is not a single issue, genocide is every issue.” The surging presumptive Democratic presidential candidate did not attend the fundraiser. “We’re protesting Kamala Harris,” Manhattan lawyer J.J. Abbas, 34 said. “The U.S. gave another 20 billion dollars out of our taxpayer’s...

Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian Kursk region has not left the latter’s rail untouched. The attack led to rail congestion in the area, and now Kursk and surrounding areas are no longer accepting freight trains coming in from Belarus. The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region has prompted Russia to move soldiers from all over the country to contain the Ukrainian advance, says the Belarusian Railway Workers Association (BelZhD). The inflow of soldiers to the new front by train has overcrowded stations in the region. For that reason, Russian Railways (RZD) says it can no longer accept freight trains...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the head Ukraine’s armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, reported to him the “successful liberation of the city of Sudzha from Russian forces.” The town had a prewar population of around 5,000 people, the Associated Press reported. It holds a measuring station for Russian natural gas that flows through Ukrainian pipelines. “A Ukrainian military commandant’s office is being established there,” Zelenskiy said, adding that “several other settlements have also been liberated. In total, more than eighty.” Ukrainian state TV aired footage on Wednesday of its troops pulling down a Russian flag from an official building in Sudzha.

Chicago’s top migrant official is walking back a prediction from city leaders last month that tens of thousands of migrants would arrive by bus ahead of next week’s Democratic National Convention, saying that there is no “credible intel” that the feared surge will occur. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy mayor for immigration, Beatriz Ponce de León, told reporters in July the city was preparing for as many as 25,000 migrant arrivals tied to the DNC. But President Joe Biden’s June executive order limiting asylum-seekers’ arrivals at the U.S. border has sharply changed the city’s expectations, she said. No migrant buses have...

Terrifying doorbell video has captured the moment a Florida couple was ambushed, shot and robbed just outside their home after hitting a slot machine jackpot at a casino. Kim Chambliss and her boyfriend Val Delacruz were targeted by two masked assailants soon after they cashed their $3,300 winnings at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa on Aug. 2, Fox 13 reported. The two alleged perps — later identified as Marcus Jenkins, 34, and Tristin Wright, 36 — had watched the couple gamble and play the slots for roughly two hours before tailing them home just before 5 a.m.,...

The biggest issues to the voters this year are the economy, inflation, and immigration. Therefore, the Democrat campaign workers posing as journalists are working as hard as they can to divert blame for the multiple disasters from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Democrats.They are pretending that Kamala had nothing to do with the open border, even though she was clearly put in charge, and they are pretending that inflation and the decimation of the people’s purchasing power essentially occurred in a vacuum, instead of clearly being caused by Biden’s and Kamala’s policies. This article by the NYT and via...