Free Republic

Amber is a remarkable substance that can give scientists a unique window into our planet's prehistory. From a dinosaur’s fluffy tail to a 20 million-year-old flea preserved with plague bacteria, let's take a look at 5 Prehistoric Creatures Found Trapped in Amber.5 Strange Prehistoric Creatures Found Trapped In Amber | 20:03Ben G Thomas | 689K subscribers | 769,762 views | December 22, 2024

We’re taught in grade school to use “a” before words beginning with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels. But this simple grammar rule is more complex than it seems.Some grammar rules are as straightforward as can be — at first glance, at least. We’re taught in grade school to use “a” before words beginning with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels. That means you could plant “a herb garden,” right? Then why does “an herb garden” sound slightly better to our American ears? It’s because this simple grade-school grammar rule is more complex than...

Ah, fact-checking. Where would we be without it? Take, for instance, a recent story that made the rounds on social media. According to these reports, Oxfam — the British NGO — found that a huge chunk of the World Bank’s spending on climate change-related issues was “missing.” Thank heavens for fact-checkers like the Australian Associated Press — a Poynter Institute-accredited fact-checker from down under — which set us all straight: “An Oxfam report did not find that $US41 billion has gone ‘missing’ from the World Bank’s climate change fund, contrary to claims online.” What a relief. Instead, the AAP noted,...

Welcome to the PRAYER REQUESTS thread. This daily thread is a listing of prayer requests that have been posted by Freepers to the main forum who wish to have continued prayer. Hopefully this thread will remind us to continually pray for our fellow Freepers’ cares and needs. GOD hears and answers our prayers.

Financial experts predicted Jeff Bezos’s move to Florida would pay off handsomely—and they were right. So far, the Amazon founder’s tax savings have been astronomical, worth an estimated $1 billion this year alone. Since his move in early 2024, Bezos has sold an estimated $13.6 billion worth of Amazon stock, according to Forbes. With its lack of not only a state income tax but also a capital gains tax, Florida is much more friendly to billionaires like Bezos who are selling off their assets than his former home state of Washington, which recently enacted a 7% levy on long-term capital...

Jimmy Carter will become the sixth American president to be given an official state funeral at the United States Capitol as the nation prepares to honor its late commander-in-chief. Carter has died at the age of 100, almost two years after announcing he would spend his final days in hospice care. His son Chip Carter, 74, confirmed the former president had died in his Georgia home on Sunday around 3.40 pm ET. President Biden was expected to declare an official 'day of mourning' for the deceased during a speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night. Is there a state...

Somalis in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA gun down a lone White kid on his front porch. As he's trying to escape, they continue to say the exact same thing to the boy "what now, what now" and empty their guns into his back.

The Golden City is losing its shine. Housing prices in San Francisco have plunged to pre-pandemic levels amid widespread layoffs in the tech sector, SFGATE reports. Despite still being one of the more expensive metropolitan areas in the US, prices for condominiums and co-ops in the city were down 14.7% from May 2022 and now average $986,000. Those prices have not been seen since 2015, according to Zillow data analyzed by Wolf Street. According to the outlet, condo prices doubled between 2012 and 2022, but have now declined by 30% in the past two years. The Millennium Tower, notorious for...

President Biden addressed the nation on Sunday in the wake of former President Jimmy Carter's death, commending the late statesman while also taking a swipe at the current president-elect during his speech Biden, who sounded hoarse during the speech, said he "lost a dear friend" on Sunday, noting that he had known Carter for more than 50 years. Carter passed away in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100, after nearly two years of being in hospice care. During his remarks, Biden said Carter is a model "of what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose, a...

Retiring Democratic Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips flayed his political party for lacking leadership and having a lopsided focus on political longevity and identity politics in a Saturday exit interview with Politico.Phillips — who until Saturday represented his state’s 3rd District — bared his frustrations in the interview. “Right now, we are totally devoid of leadership. We are rudderless. I don’t know which Democratic Party member my colleagues would point to as the leader, de facto leader, and absent that, I don’t see much, frankly, happening,” he told Politico.“I think it’s ironic that the Republican Party is now representing America’s working...

Few people worked harder over the past few years to put Donald Trump behind bars than Liz Cheney, the former (alleged) Republican congresswoman from Wyoming. Seeking revenge for Trump’s longtime criticism of her father’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie, Cheney sought to settle a family score by imprisoning Trump over the events of January 6. “No one is above the law!,” Cheney, in her grating sanctimonious style, frequently insists. Well, except for her. It now appears Cheney is preparing to fight any federal and/or congressional probe into her demonstrably corrupt role as vice chairman of the January 6 Select Committee....

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — A former Huntsville pill mill doctor was one of nearly 1,500 people who had their sentence commuted by President Joe Biden last week. In October 2016, Shelinder Aggarwal pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing controlled substances and conducting health care fraud involving $9.5 million in unnecessary and unused urine tests. Following his guilty plea, Aggarwal was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February 2017. He was ordered to report to prison in April 2017. Biden granted Aggarwal clemency on Thursday, Dec. 12, as part of what the Associated Press reported was “the largest single-day act of...

The Taliban has decreed that Afghan women are forbidden to: Go to high school or university. Work in the civil service. Attend a protest. Go abroad. Drive a car. Travel alone. Ride in a taxi. Speak in public. Speak loudly inside your house. Sing. Read the Quran aloud in public. Speak to a male doctor. Play sport. Go to the gym. Go to the park. Wear bright clothes. Wear high heels. Look at men they don’t know. Show their faces in public. Own a smartphone. ... Some pictures of the golden age in Afghanistan. ... Ivy League campuses and the...

Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey have been hit with trigger warnings by a university for “distressing” content.The University of Exeter has come under fire after telling undergraduates they may “encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable” in their Greek mythology studies.In what has been branded as a “parody” and “bonkers”, students enroled on the Women in Homer module are told material could be “challenging”.With references to sexual violence, rape and infant mortality, undergraduates are also advised they should “feel free to deal with it in ways that help (eg to leave the classroom, contact Wellbeing,...

Our Troops Rock! Thank you for all you do! For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces. Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today! ~ Hall of Heroes ~ The Christmas Truce Info from here. You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over the watch. Having exchanged pleasantries, your bleary-eyed and...

The transport ministry ordered Japan Airlines Co. to clean up its act after a drinking episode involving a pilot and his co-pilot that was uncovered after an international flight. The ministry issued a business improvement recommendation, a form of administrative guidance, to the company on Dec. 27. According to the ministry and the company, the captain and his co-pilot began drinking at a restaurant on the day before an international flight from Australia to Japan and ended up consuming three times the company’s legal limit. It emerged they then later conspired to pretend that their alcohol intake was within the...

Jimmy Carter’s melancholy fate was to be a largely derivative figure: He was a reaction against his elected predecessor and the precursor of his successor. Richard Nixon made Carter tempting; Carter made Ronald Reagan necessary.The deceits and crimes of Nixon’s imperial presidency bred Carter’s pompous crusade against pomp. Carter proclaimed “I’ll never lie to you” while claiming that he was a “nuclear physicist.” He denied saying what a tape proved he said about Lyndon Johnson’s “lying, cheating and distorting the truth.”Carter’s signature achievement, peace between Israel and Egypt, diminished the threat of another conventional Middle East war. In his post-presidency...

<p>The story of one of the most effective and brutal spymasters in U.S. history & beginning of an infamous love affair with napalm.</p><p>It was long past time for Donald Nichols to go home. He had been spying in Korea for five years, rarely taking a day off, never returning stateside to see his family. His bosses in the U.S. Air Force had not seen an agent work so hard for so long. They called him a “one man war” & the “best intelligence operator” in the Far East. He “performed the impossible,” his commanding general said. Still, air force rules were clear: He must rotate back to United States.</p>

Keanu Reeves’ stolen Rolex has been found — in Chile.The $9,000 Rolex Submariner, engraved with Reeves’ name, turned up in a police raid on four houses in Santiago. The timepiece is believed to have been stolen from Reeves’ Hollywood Hills home in December 2023. Two other watches belonging to Reeves, described by police as valuable, were also found in a sweep linked to a series of local robberies, according to CNN.A 21-year-old man was arrested.Reeves, perhaps most famous for his starring role in the “John Wick” movie series, had engraved the Rolex watch with his first name and the words...

On this week’s Fox News Sunday broadcast, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said that the H-1B program has left U.S. workers “behind.”Schmitt said, “First of all, I think it is important to acknowledge this is an important debate to have, and it’s happening on X right now.”He continued, “I think this is an important, thoughtful debate that’s happening, but the context that we need to, I think, keep in mind here is that the American workers have been left behind by this economy. Many factory jobs have been sent overseas. I think the abuses of the H-1B program have been evident,...