Free Republic

How about inviting retired Americans and those who can work remotely to live in the surplus Chinese housing. Properly arranged, such a program could benefit both countries as well as the Americans who decided to live in China for the time being.

An American pastor living in South Africa was reportedly kidnapped from his church mid-sermon by a group of masked gunmen who stole from congregants and whisked the cleric away in his own truck. Josh Sullivan, a 45-year-old Tennessee native, was taken away at gunpoint Thursday night when four men broke into the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell while the pastor was preaching to a congregation of roughly 30 people, which included his wife and six children, multiple outlets reported. The alleged kidnappers, who also stole two cell phones from churchgoers, then sped off with the clergyman in his silver Toyota...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) assured attendees at one of his “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies Saturday they are “making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous” as he laid out a string of grievances with the current Washington administration. The 83-year-old senator spoke to his supporters as they gathered in the Gloria Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles alongside guests including politicians, union representatives and musical acts.

Imagine singing all your life only for an AI model to make a better song than you in mere seconds.

Wretchardthecat has given us a sage analysis of the MAGA agenda: The reason the MAGA initiatives looked so disjointed to the media is they were component parts of a vast alternative worldview now coming into sight. Like the five blind men and the elephant the progressives are only now realizing the aspects of a single larger foe. Immigration control is a key feature of the MAGA initiatives: closing the border, removing illegal immigrants, keeping non-citizens from voting, and stopping federal funds from going to so-called non-government organizations that were bringing in millions of immigrants who overwhelmed housing, welfare, and educational...

After two flights from Mexico were diverted to an airport in Alabama without customs, passengers were stuck inside the planes overnight. The two Delta flights — Flight 1828 from Cabo San Lucas and Flight 599 from Mexico City — were redirected from their destination of Atlanta to the Montgomery Regional Airport due to weather risks on Thursday, April 10, local Alabama outlet AL.com reported. However, the Montgomery airport has no customs and thus could not facilitate international travelers — forcing the nearly 300 passengers to remain on board the planes on the tarmac all night. A Delta spokesperson wrote in...

Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House is remembered as a hit even though it lost money at the box office during its initial theatrical run. It's more accurate to say that the 1948 picture (and the book it was based on) was a cultural sensation, hitting a nerve with the American public during that anxious moment when World War II was over but nobody was confidently predicting a postwar economic boom that would last two decades. When journalist Eric Hodgins published his comic novel in 1946, inspired by his disastrous attempt to build a home for his family in New...

A pause to NIH funding has researchers scrambling for contingency plans at the University of Washington’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The center’s brain bank is preserving more than 4,000 brains for research. SEATTLE — Andrea Gilbert thought she knew what would happen to her brain. The 79-year-old retired attorney, who has Alzheimer’s disease and receives care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, agreed to donate it for research in 2023. She hoped to help scientists unlock the keys to a disease that had left her writing notes to remind herself if she’d already brushed her teeth. The fate of that...

In the Middle Ages, like rats in a burned-down barn, wayfarers sought refuge in the oversized ruins of the Roman Empire. In such places as the Forum and the Palatine Hill, shepherds roamed with their flocks. Although preoccupied with simple survival in an anarchic world, they might occasionally have glanced at the derelict, overgrown marble temples and wondered what gods once walked the earth and created such magnificent beauty. In terms of pure sensory experience, of course, they were never worse off than scholars with historical or philosophical knowledge. The classical ideals of architectural beauty, based on organic motifs, symmetry,...

A Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian city killed more than 20 people as civilians gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday, officials said. Two Russian ballistic missiles struck the city of Sumy at around 10:15 a.m., according to Ukrainian officials. Images from the city show a building blasted to rubble, vehicles on fire in a street and several bodies on the ground. "On this bright Palm Sunday, our community has suffered a terrible tragedy," Acting Mayor Artem Kobzar said in a statement on social media. "Unfortunately, we already know of more than 20 deaths." An initial investigation determined at least 21...

A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine. The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front. Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts. This information was revealed in a transcript of...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(4/13/25)[Prayer]Names and Titles of God the Holy Spirit (Unchanging) Acts 2:38-3938 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.King James Version________________________God Bless America.ML/LTOS

As a novelist, I am prone to obsessions. These are what I call “creative outbursts.” And as strange or off-putting as my creative outbursts may be to my family and friends, I’ve learned to follow them. ... So yeah, I’ve learned to follow my creative outbursts, even if that means spending my hard-earned PTO at a UFO conference in Houston, which is what I did last weekend. This wasn’t just any old tin foil hat convention at a Hampton Inn; this was “The Archives of the Impossible!” hosted by Houston’s brainy little jewel, Rice University. The speaker list had more...

The Talk ShowsApril 13th, 2025 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:FACE THE NATION (CBS): Margaret Brennan anchors: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.); Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Fired director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research within the FDA (who tried to keep HHS Sec. JFK Jr. from seeing the vaccine database) Dr. Peter Marks; United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer; CBS News Pollster Anthony Salvanto.FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Anchor Shannon Bream: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins; Illinois demofat Gov. JB Pritzker; Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Ken and Brad McCauley,...

When his camera stopped working on his iPhone recently, New Yorker Richard Medina didn't waste any time. With the threat of tariff-fuelled price hikes on smartphones bearing down, he quickly called his phone company for a new one. "I said, 'We've got to switch this out now,'" the 43-year-old recalled. "Let's take care of it." The move was a sign of the pressure rising across the US, where households are being buffeted by what could be staggering price rises, and even possible shortages triggered by the sweeping tariffs that US President Donald Trump announced this month. Some are trying to...

A suspected member of the radical "Zizian" cult was forcibly removed from a California courtroom after claiming an officer said she should be killed for being transgender. Alexander "Somni" Leatham, a 29-year-old trans woman from Agoura Hills, California, was one of five alleged members of the group of radical vegans, many of whom identified as trans, who were in Solano Superior Court Tuesday.

New York City has a mayoral election later this year, and the two leading candidates right now are former governor Andrew Cuomo and a state assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani. The latter has gained traction in the polls by promising to build city-run grocery stores that “will operate without profit motive” in order to combat “the outrageous price of groceries.” Leave it to the residents of Gotham to pin their hopes on either the guy who turned nursing homes into COVID death traps or a proud communist who is blithely unaware of the Soviet Union’s history with breadlines. In response to...

Of all the one-party blue city disasters, Oakland is probably the biggest, a once-storied city full of beautiful old houses and a really great Chinatown, and is now farthest down the road to becoming Detroit. After all, when you're the only city to lose In-N-Out Burger and your airport hotels based on unenforced crime, the only city whose major league baseball team insists on playing in some other city, and the only big city whose mayor is under indictment for corruption up the wazoo, you know the city's got problems. Gangs, illegals (Oakland is a sanctuary city), drug dealers, and...

President Donald Trump's longtime legal counsel and appointee as U.S. attorney for New Jersey announced Thursday she will launch a probe into Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin over reports that state police were asked to ignore new immigration warrants. Alina Habba said on "Hannity" she decided to launch the probe following a Shore News Network report that an internal memo from New Jersey State Police (NJSP) Col. Patrick Callahan revealed Murphy and Platkin ordered that officers not pursue thousands of immigration warrants recently added to the National Crime Information Center. The move was reportedly meant to be...

Arizona Hot Springs and Goldstrike Trails announced they have closed multiple trails in Arizona’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area following the death of one hiker and the rescue of 33 others over the course of two days. The social media post says the closure occurred due to dangerously high temperatures and multiple heat-related search and rescue incidents. They say the canyons are expected to exceed 100°F, and many hikers are not "adequately prepared for these extreme conditions." "With the season’s heat just beginning, most people are not yet acclimated, increasing the likelihood of heat illness," they said. "Yesterday, a hiker...