Free Republic

A Soviet-era plane that crashed in Russia’s Far East was nearly 50 years old and had recently had its lifespan extended by another decade, highlighting the country’s continued use of ageing passenger jets. The smoldering wreckage of the Angara Airlines An-24 airplane was found on Thursday in the remote Amur region, which borders China. Estimates of the number of people on board vary, but around 49 people, including crew members, are believed to have died. Officials, who have begun a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the disaster, said there were no survivors. The incident has laid bare Russia’s dependency...

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says he will seek progressive revenue solutions to address a budget deficit without raising property taxes.

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Joy Behar revealed that "The View" will be going on hiatus a day after the White House suggested the show be "pulled off air" because its ratings "hit an all-time low," according to the Independent. "This seems like a major win for humanity and common sense," Donald Trump Jr., wrote on X in response to the news. Behar accidentally let slip that "The View" was approaching its summer break during Thursday's broadcast of the daytime talk show. "Before we go on hiatus, we only have one more show after this," the 82-year-old comedian said before looking off-camera and asking executive...

Shahar Segal, former spokesperson for US aid group GHF, says UN refusal to cooperate and Hamas control are fueling Gaza’s food insecurity and prolonging the war.

SpaceX's Starlink suffered one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline, a rare disruption for Elon Musk's powerful satellite internet system. Users in the U.S. and Europe began experiencing the outage at around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), according to Downdetector, a crowdsourced outage tracker that said as many as 61,000 user reports to the site were made. Starlink, which has more than 6 million users across roughly 140 countries and territories, later acknowledged the outage on its X account and said "we are actively implementing a solution."...

Disperse order is given in Donald Trump voice. Feds and Portland cops confront rioters, who mock them. One woman in ninja black pulls up her shirt and dances around showing her boobs to a Disney song. Boobs are blurred. Police and Feds make arrests, spray tear gas, and roll up the riot. Transcript linked below video.

“Then a scribe came and said to Him, ‘Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.’ Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head’” (Matthew 8:19–20). Superficially, Jesus’ expression “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” has nothing to do with the scribe’s confident words. In proverbial style He simply wanted to caution the man that even though He was God’s Son, His ministry did...

The Deep State house of cards is collapsing — and DNI Tulsi Gabbard just lit the match. During an interview on OANN with former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused the Obama Administration and its loyal media mouthpieces of orchestrating and perpetuating a “historic lie” to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency before it even began. .... Snip.... During a surprise appearance at Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s briefing, Gabbard called out the media to their faces: TULSI: “I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I’m asking you in the media to conduct honest journalism —...

The software optimized hundreds of stealth and aerodynamic parameters in one go. The X‑47B drone served as a benchmark model to validate the capabilities of the new Chinese design platform. - U.S. Navy/Getty Chinese engineers say they have cracked a fundamental bottleneck in stealth aircraft design with a new software platform that lets designers juggle hundreds of variables without piling on computing costs. The team, led by Huang Jiangtao at the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre, demonstrated the method on the US Navy’s X‑47B stealth drone, long cited as a case study in design trade-offs, and reported “dramatic improvements”...

Angelo Codevilla was a giant of the conservative movement ... Codevilla’s posthumous book (he died in an auto accident September 20, 2021) .. The man did not have good things to say about the pretentious Henry Kissinger ... Angelo Codevilla .. served in the Navy as an intelligence officer, then did stints as a Foreign Service officer and later as an aide to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence .... a prominent role at the Claremont Review of Books .. author of more than a dozen books on international relations and politics that were leavened with is deep knowledge of...

President @EmmanuelMacron,Here is the appropriate response to your recognition of a Palestinian state as as a reward for Hamas terrorism. pic.twitter.com/Ve6c5Op0hN— עמיחי שיקלי - Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) July 24, 2025

The publisher of former President Biden’s forthcoming memoir reportedly paid around a $10 million advance for the book. Hachette Book Group paid the roughly $10 million figure to Biden for the book to be published by its Little, Brown & Co., The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Creative Artists Agency, which represents Biden, declined ITK’s requests for comment, while the publisher did not immediately respond. In 2017, a bidding war for the global rights to two books from former President Obama and Michelle Obama reportedly topped $60 million. Former President Clinton received a $15 million advance for his 2004 autobiography...

Protesters are set to march from The Bell Hotel in Epping to the council's offices as councillors are set to discuss the controversial hotel. There has been a series of demonstrations outside the Bell Hotel in Epping since an asylum seeker was charged with sexual assault this month. Epping Forest District Council will meet for a pre-planned meeting in which they are set to discuss a motion calling for the immediate and permanent closure of the Bell Hotel and Phoenix Hotel, which was subjected to an alleged arson incident. Both hotels have housed asylum seekers and been involved in incidents...

A rare archaeological discovery in Germany has captivated historians: Silver coins dating back to the early 17th century have been found inside a copper cauldron during excavations at Gotthardtkirchplatz in Brandenburg an der Havel, a historic city in northeastern Germany. The treasure is believed to have been hidden around 1634, during the chaos of the Thirty Years' War.The discovery was made possible by a construction project for a new extension of the Youth Art Gallery Sonnensegel e.V., allowing archaeologists to investigate the site of a former half-timbered house. The building was abandoned and leveled in the 17th century -- and...

... Extreme summer heat during baseball season is not only making games uncomfortably hot and sweaty for fans in the stands — it’s also posing a danger to the health of players and changing the physics of the sport. Since 1970, human-made climate change has driven up average summer temperatures in Chicago by 2 degrees, according to the climate science nonprofit Climate Central. That lines up with an average increase of 2.8 degrees across 26 Major League Baseball home cities in the United States — except Los Angeles. The home of the Angels and Dodgers has had no measurable change...

While the study is intriguing, additional observations will be essential to verify or challenge its findings. Astudy analyzing JWST observations of the early universe has uncovered an intriguing mystery: most galaxies appear to be rotating in the same direction. This unexpected pattern, which defies current cosmological models, has led the study's authors to propose a bold possibility: that our universe might exist inside a black hole. The JWST has allowed astronomers to peer back further into the past than any other infrared or optical telescope, seeing infrared light that was emitted by distant galaxies just 300 million years after the...

The re-districting issue could be resolved by changing the criteria of what a district should be. For example, voters could be divided into districts by age. More easily counted and divided into fair numbers. If groups of people wanted to form their own district based on other criteria, they could/would get people to join these districts based on whatever they felt was important to them, including ethnicity, income, occupation, etc. As people left the age grouping, the districts would shift who was voluntarily in them, but the numbers could be more easily and reasonably adjusted.

The Russian navy plays a crucial role in Moscow's conflict, but it has suffered significant losses since the war began in February 2022, with approximately half of the Black Sea Fleet damaged or destroyed by Ukrainian maritime drones and long-range anti-ship missiles. Russian President Vladimir Putin's prized Black Sea Fleet was nowhere to be seen to thwart heavy bombing by Ukrainian drones Wednesday night amid Moscow's largest naval games this year, which comes as a warning to the West. Putin ordered the 'July Storm' drills, which involve more than 150 combat ships, 120 aircraft, and 15,000-plus military personnel. Footage shows...

Researchers at Hiroshima University have found that stevia, when fermented with specific bacteria from banana leaves, gains a remarkable ability to kill pancreatic cancer cells while leaving healthy kidney cells unharmed. This transformation enhances the plant’s natural properties through microbial biotransformation, creating a potent compound called chlorogenic acid methyl ester (CAME). The fermented stevia extract showed significant cancer-fighting potential in lab tests and may represent a new direction in probiotic-based cancer therapies. Stevia’s Surprising Anti-Cancer Potential Stevia might offer more than just a no-calorie alternative to sugar. Scientists at Hiroshima University found that when stevia extract is fermented using bacteria...