Free Republic

It was the moment that marked an extraordinary new partnership between the descendants of a genocidal regime and its victims. At the G7 summit in June, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, was challenged by a reporter about Israel’s ferocious bombardment of Tehran in the Israel-Iran war, as it raged on 6,000 miles away. “Das ist die Drecksarbeit, die Israel macht, für uns alle,” Mr Merz replied, with a stony glare at his interviewer: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.” To German ears, it was an unusually blunt and bellicose remark for a post-war chancellor. But it...

BERLIN (AP) — Poland’s foreign minister said Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artifacts has been canceled in Germany, relaying information from his German counterpart, following complaints from Holocaust survivors. Radoslaw Sikorski made the comments on the X platform, saying he and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented.” The top Polish diplomat thanked Wadephul for the information that the auction was canceled. Earlier, a Holocaust survivors group called on the German auction house Felzmann to cancel Monday’s sale of hundreds of Holocaust artifacts, including letters written by prisoners and other documents that...

Styx musician Dennis DeYoung is dragging the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The singer-keyboardist, 78, shared a scathing Facebook message on Thursday where he blasted the organization for waiting too long to induct iconic musicians as new members. “It’s a shame that Bad Company had to wait so long to get in that it rendered Paul Rodgers unable to perform due to health concerns,” DeYoung wrote. “Bollocks!! I would have liked to have seen him perform years ago to demonstrate how one of rock’s premiere singers ACTUALLY ROCKS.”

Video A humanoid robot’s highly anticipated debut quickly went awry when it stumbled onstage at a technology showcase in Moscow on Tuesday. Backed by the theme song of “Rocky,” the robot, accompanied by two people, waddled onto the stage before a room full of journalists ready to catch a glimpse of what the developers called “Russia’s first anthropomorphic robot with artificial intelligence.” But in a scene resembling the end of a messy night at the bar, as the robot attempted to wave its right hand, it stumbled around before falling flat, face-first. The two men accompanying the robot scrambled to...

U.S. forces carried out a lethal strike Saturday on a narcotics vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization in the Eastern Pacific, killing three suspected narco-terrorists in international waters, according to U.S. Southern Command. The strike brings the total number of suspected narco-terrorists killed to 82, with three survivors, in an ongoing U.S. campaign targeting drug-smuggling vessels tied to designated terrorist groups. In a post on X, U.S. Southern Command said intelligence confirmed the vessel hit in Thursday’s strike was smuggling narcotics along a known trafficking route. The command described the strike as a "lethal kinetic operation" conducted in international...

Embattled UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is channelling his inner Donald Trump as he tries to stop the relentless flow of small boats carrying immigrants across the English Channel from sinking his Labour government. A package of harsh measures to be officially unveiled on Monday would make Starmer the human rights lawyer blanch. But Starmer the prime minister has little choice but to get tough if he is to stop the votes flowing to the insurgent Nigel Farage. The new measures are modelled on those adopted by Denmark’s centre-left government, which has managed to cut the flow of irregular immigrants...

U.S. Marines protecting the American embassy in Haiti exchanged gunfire with suspected gang members last week, a Marine spokesman said. Capt. Steven J. Keenan told Fox News Digital in an emailed statement Sunday that Marines supporting embassy security operations were fired upon by suspected gang members in the capital of Port-au-Prince and returned fire on the evening of Nov. 13. "U.S. Marines are committed to the safety and security of U.S. embassies worldwide and respond to all threats with professionalism and swift, disciplined action," Keenan said. No service members were injured in the incident, which was first reported over the...

Chicago homeowners are asking for answers as property tax bills continue to climb, with several residents saying they’ve seen little improvement in return. In Lawndale, a neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, residents told ABC7 Chicago that despite higher property tax bills, little has changed on their streets, leaving them frustrated over where their money is going. Community leaders and the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation gathered citizens at a local church for what they called a "property tax bonfire," the local station reported. "There's been a divestment in this community for the most part, but it seems like now that people...

The National Weather Service released updated rain totals on Sunday morning after a major atmospheric river storm drenched Southern California this weekend, and the storm is not over just yet. NWS officials’ most recent data was put out just after 8 a.m. Sunday. As of that time, it was still raining in much of SoCal, meaning that rainfall rates will likely rise as the day goes on.

"I am not a conservative. I am a radical—a radical monarchist. I believe there are no rails—and never were any. America has no manifest destiny. Her constitution was not divinely inspired. No special providence was involved in her founding, nor has she discovered any unique principle of human governance. Nor can any theory of historical determinism, whether liberal, Marxist or libertarian, explain, predict or guarantee her future—which, like all future history, is a contingent and unwritten blank page in the hands of men only." Thus begin the self-revelations of Curtis Yarvin, radical monarchist and scorner of the American founding, in...

The roots of cognitive decline later in life may begin in childhood, a major new study suggests.Researchers discovered that the experience of childhood loneliness is strongly linked to accelerated cognitive decline and a significantly higher risk of dementia in people 50 and up. The critical factor was the subjective, emotional feeling of loneliness itself, which sharply increased dementia risk even for those who had friends. Crucially, the link persisted even for those who were no longer lonely as adults, suggesting the damaging effects of early-life isolation can cast a long shadow over the brain's health.While loneliness at any age is...

Time’s up, ChuckChuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has a pair of very sweet imaginary friends. They’re a middle-class couple called Joe and Eileen Bailey and they live on Long Island. At one point the imaginary couple, who feature in Schumer’s 2007 book, Positively American, were called the O’Reillys. According to the Hill, one Schumer aide said the name then was changed because the publisher thought O’Reilly was “too ethnic” for mass consumption. Another aide said that claim was false, and Schumer just wanted a name that “sounded more national”. Naming strategy aside, the key point here is that Schumer...

On Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said President Donald Trump was “losing his MAGA base” over the Jeffrey Epstein files.Host Kristen Welker said, “I want to turn to another big issue, you are pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Your joint bill with Thomas Massie is going to come to a vote on the House floor. It’s expected to this week. Do you think you have enough votes for it to pass?”Khanna said, “We do, and there’s nothing I have been prouder of or more meaningful than this work. The credit goes...

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was unapologetic about putting America first. He promised to secure the nation’s borders, strengthen the domestic workforce and be tough on countries he thought were taking advantage of the United States.Now, 10 months into his second term, the president is facing backlash from some conservatives who say he is too focused on matters abroad, whether it’s seeking regime change in Venezuela, brokering peace deals in Ukraine and Gaza or extending a $20-billion currency swap for Argentina. The criticism has grown in recent days after Trump expressed support for granting more visas to foreign students...

We need a Marshall Plan for housing, a collection of broad initiatives to make homes more affordable and put the American dream back on trackHomeownership has long been part of the American dream, but that dream has been deferred.Households in their 30s have an ownership rate of just 42% — more than 20 points lower than the national average.The median age of all home buyers is a record-breaking 59, and the age of a first-time buyer is 40 — up from 29 in 1981.As a solution, the Trump administration is floating a 50-year mortgage.Though I disagree with that specific idea,...

The OIG found that despite prior audits and corrective actions, some of the same issues persist, such as states continuing to make capitation payments to MCOs for enrollees who have passed away. A new report from the Office of Inspector General within the Department of Health and Human Services shows multiple states made improper Medicaid payments to managed care organizations after enrollees had died, which exposes persistent fiscal and oversight problems in the nation’s Medicaid managed-care system.In addition, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said late last week that SNAP benefit payments have been going to deceased people as well.The audit,...

While many argue that "modern art" began in the 1800s, could it actually have started with Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, nearly a century before?What is "modern art"? It seems like a simple question, but critics and art historians have quarrelled about it for decades without agreement. Nor is there any consensus about which artwork marks the turning point between "traditional" and "modern".Many point to the 1800s – and paintings like Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (1863) by Édouard Manet, Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844) by JMW Turner,...

My yellow lab has been obsessive about chewing the top portion of his back, right paw. The only thing working is a cone with a 3" extension but he keeps plowing into things. We've tried bandaging, salmon oil on his food, probiotics, topical creams, wipes etc. but nothing outside of the cone is working on keeping him from getting at his back foot.

https://babylonbee.com/news/bible-scholars-pauls-third-letter-to-corinthians-was-rejected-for-clearly-being-ai-generated OXFORD — After much deliberation, an international team of Bible scholars has recently determined that an alleged third letter of Paul to the Corinthians was rejected for being obviously AI-generated. According to Lee Stokes, the lead researcher and expert in Koine Greek, the style, composition, and syntax of pseudo-Third Corinthians were patently AI-generated. "We first started to get a bit suspicious when we read the ending to the letter," Stokes told reporters. "The last words of the epistle are: 'Here's a draft for III Corinthians which reflects Paul's pastoral heart and his call for the Corinthians to endure in...

“ Richard Weikart of California State University says that Metaxas “serves up a Bonhoeffer suited to the evangelical taste” and notes with disbelief that in “an interview with Christianity Today Metaxas even made the astonishing statement that Bonhoeffer was as orthodox theologically as the apostle Paul.” As orthodox as Paul? Metaxas does not seem to know that in his Christology lectures in 1933 Bonhoeffer claimed, “The biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth.” Bonhoeffer also rejected the notion of the verbal inspiration of scripture, and in a footnote to Cost of Discipleship he warned against viewing statements...