Free Republic

In a move that’s left self-employed workers scratching their heads, the Spanish tax office, Hacienda, has dropped a bombshell: banks will have to report every single payment made to self-employed clients, even those under the previous €3,000 threshold. The unexpected measure slipped quietly into a royal decree that also tweaks corporate tax rates for multinationals, which means the taxman will have eyes on transactions of any amount, whether through traditional methods or modern mobile systems like the popular Bizum. The €3,000 rule is no more For years, banks only raised the alarm for transactions over €3,000. As José María Peláez,...

New York police have announced a person of interest in last week’s brazen shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Luigi Mangione, 26, is a Gilman School graduate who was born and raised in Maryland and has had a Towson address. According to the Associated Press, police apprehended Mangione after a tip that he had been spotted at a McDonald’s near Altoona, Pennsylvania, west of New York City. Police found a gun, a silencer and fake IDs, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press. At a news conference, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said police found a three-page document with writings...

But it turns out the name atop that resumé sadly can still, in the 21st century, be a liability for Jews. That’s the finding of a new landmark study from the Anti-Defamation League on discrimination in the job market against Jewish and Israeli Americans. For this study, ADL asked a leading labor economist to conduct a field experiment submitting applications in response to administrative-assistant job postings using resumés that were identical except for specific characteristics, such as the applicant’s name. The researcher sent out 3,000 applications this year for jobs in 23 cities. By using names that suggested applicants were...

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 23-hour exposure, taken from Fagagna, Italy covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven...

Monday's Morning Joe devoted a segment to an Axios article, 'Shards of glass: Inside media's 12 splintering realities.' The notion was that, depending on demographics, people get their information from very different media sources and are often unaware of the information that others were receiving. One of Axios' 12 categories is "Right-wing grandpas," a reference to people who get their news largely from Fox News. What was not revealed was that the average age of Fox News viewers is 68, whereas the average age of MSNBC viewers is 71! Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

DRAMATIC new footage shows Ukraine’s “Sea Baby” marine drones using on-board machine guns to pound and damage Russian military helicopters in a ferocious battle. Watch as the armed drones also shoot at Russia's Su-30SM warplanes during the battle in Kerch Bay, close to Vladimir Putin's £3 billion Crimean Bridge. Footage from the view of the unmanned Ukrainian attack boats - first deployed in 2022 - shows the scopes being trained on airborne Russian helicopters and planes. The video shakes violently as Ukrainian soldiers remotely spray rounds of bullets at the aircraft swooping in the skies above. The Ukrainian SBU security...

SNIP Casually dressed — but costing more than the sirloin — he said, “Our new push will be outer space. We’ll put all the Mexicans on the rockets.” A very short set. Barely minutes when he saw something the audience did not. We faced the stage. He faced us. Behind us the back walls and exit doors. Whatever he saw — or thought he saw — upset him. Like he went momentarily ape and shouted something like he wasn’t supposed to be taped, videoed, reported or whatever else wasn’t supposed to happen. Didn’t complain. Didn’t explain. Didn’t do one more...

Sunday evening I received this post on my newsfeed. FROM HER DAUGHTER ON TRACY'S PROFILE PAGE: "This is to let everyone know Tracy past away 9:30pm cst last night {Saturday, December 7th}. She had a long battle with sickness and is now at peace. If you have any questions feel free to message on Facebook on her page. ["Tracy Russell" in search.]Very sad news, and I hope Trussell rests in eternal peace. She was in very ill health. Thank you"

Guyana is revisiting a dark history nearly half a century after U.S. Rev. Jim Jones and more than 900 of his followers died in the rural interior of the South American country. It was the largest suicide-murder in recent history, and a government-backed tour operator wants to open the former commune now shrouded by lush vegetation to visitors, a proposal that is reopening old wounds, with critics saying it would disrespect victims and dig up a sordid past. Jordan Vilchez, who grew up in California and was moved into the Peoples Temple commune at age 14, told The Associated Press...

The New York Daily News held a vigil for Neely ... CNN remembered Neely as “an entertainer” and “a kind and sweet soul.” He was a “talented dancer” who had a “fan club,” The Guardian recounted. Those who defended Neely and the subway riders who assisted him were guilty of “spinning an act of vigilantism to blame the person killed by it,” The Independent’s Alex Woodward declared. Elected officials in New York went further in the effort to cast Penny as the true threat to civic order. “To say anything else is an equivocation that will only further a narrative...

One year ago, Venezuela held a referendum to reaffirm its territorial claims on Guyana's Essequibo region. That ballot ended up being a preview of the country's stolen presidential election in July of this year. The turnout was so low that the electoral authorities lied about the results and never released the full vote tallies. While authorities claimed that 10 million votes were cast, independent analysts believe the number was fewer than 2 million, given the empty polling sites. Immediately following the referendum in December 2023, President Nicolas Maduro began what many portrayed at the time as a march to war...

The suspect in the death of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been named as Luigi Mangione. Mangione, 26, is being held after the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot dead on the streets of Manhattan after his arrest Monday morning. He was detained at McDonald’s in Pennsylvania around 9am ET on firearm charges and is said to have been found with a 'ghost gun' that may have been made using a 3D printer. Mangione is originally from Towson, Maryland, and is an anti-capitalist former Ivy League student who attended a $40,000-a-year Baltimore private school. The musclebound suspect has ties to San Francisco,...

[Catholic Caucus] EXCLUSIVE: Cardinal Radcliffe defends controversial 2013 text on homosexual actsSpeaking to LifeSite's Vatican correspondent at the sidelines of the consistory, Cardinal Radcliffe defended his controversial 2013 text in which he likened same-sex activity to Christ's gift of self in the Holy Eucharist.Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe OP sought to clarify and defend one of his most controversial writings on homosexuality, in which he likened same-sex activity to Christ’s self-gift, and added that the Church needs to have a more general principle of “welcome” for LGBT people.Speaking in an interview with LifeSiteNews on the day before he was created cardinal December...

Joe and Jill Biden not only refused to acknowledge Kamala Harris as they entered the Kennedy Center to a standing ovation, they refused to even look at her or her husband, Doug “The Nanny Buster” Emhoff. This video is really something: Kamala and her husband stand, turn, heartily applaud, and then look directly at Joe and Jill waiting for a smile, a wave, maybe even a pat on the shoulder. Instead, President and Mrs. Lame Duck make an obvious point to avoid eye contact and look the other way. Jill hilariously does a 90-degree turn so quickly you’d think Kamala...

When now President-Elect Donald Trump was convicted, the thrill-kill atmosphere around the courthouse and the country was explosive, but no one was more ecstatic than liberal columnist and former prosecutor Harry Litman. The then L.A. Times columnist told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was a “majestic day” and “a day to celebrate.” A lawfare advocate, Litman excitedly laid out how Trump could be barred from office, declaring that the raid in Mar-a-Lago was the “whole enchilada” in ending Trump’s political career. Now, Litman has resigned from the L.A. Times because the owner wants more diversity of opinion in the newspaper....

The man detained by police in Pennsylvania in connection with the shock slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been identified as Luigi Mangione. Mangione, 26, is an 'anti-capitalist' Ivy League graduate. He was taken into custody after a McDonald's employee in Altoona, around 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, believed they recognized him as the gunman. He reportedly had a 3D-printed ghost gun similar to the one used in the Wednesday morning murder, along with a gun silencer, a manifesto, and four fake IDs when he was arrested by cops. Mangione has been arrested on firearms charges. As of Monday...

Selena Gomez respectfully clapped back after Eugenio Derbez criticized her Spanish in her latest film, “Emilia Pérez.” Her reaction came after the “How to Be a Latin Lover” actor appeared in a since-deleted episode of the “Hablando de Cine” podcast and described Gomez’s Spanish-speaking abilities as “indefensible.” “I understand where you are coming from..I’m sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given,” the actress wrote in the comments section of a podcast clip that had been reposted on TikTok. “Doesn’t take away from how much work and heart I put into this movie.” The Mexico-born...

Last week a public Whistleblower Complaint was successfully filed with the California State Auditor to investigate the Franchise Tax Board and whether Hunter Biden filed tax returns and paid taxes due California on time in the same period of 2014-2019 for which he pled guilty to Federal tax evasion.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is temporarily pausing flights again of its fleet of V-22 Ospreys after weakened metal components possibly played a role in another near crash, the latest setback for an embattled aircraft whose safety problems have grown. The pause was recommended last week “out of an abundance of caution” by Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, the head of Naval Air Systems Command, which runs the Osprey program for the military, said command spokeswoman Marcia Hart. The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force are adhering to the recommended pause, each said in a statement to The Associated Press. The Marines...

A new study led by a University of Arizona researcher is one step closer to an answer on how Indigenous people in the Americas interacted with early dogs and wolves.The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances and based on archaeological remains in Alaska, shows that people and the ancestors of today's dogs began forming close relationships as early as 12,000 years ago – about 2,000 years earlier than previously recorded in the Americas..."People like me who are interested in the peopling of the Americas are very interested in knowing if those first Americans came with dogs," Lanoë added....