Free Republic

A convicted people smuggler, once described as "the godfather" of the French migrant camps, is living in Leicestershire and believed to be seeking asylum while working illegally, a BBC investigation can reveal. Twana Jamal was given a five-year jail sentence in France in 2016, where authorities described him as one of the most successful people smugglers ever caught. Prosecutors said the Iraqi Kurd, aged 36 at the time, had earned up to £100,000 a week for moving illegal immigrants across the Channel. Following a tip-off this year, we traced Jamal to the village of Blaby and witnessed him working, driving...

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...To read it, we never unrolled it physically. Instead, we scanned it with high-resolution X-rays, reconstructed the wound sheet inside the volume, flattened it into a readable surface, and used machine learning to bring out the faint traces of ancient ink...PHerc. 1667 is what survives of a larger roll: earlier attempts to open it by hand -- in the nineteenth century, and again in 1969 and the 1980s -- destroyed its outer layers and left only the compact inner core, about 8 cm of an original height of 19–24 cm. From that surviving portion we have now recovered and read...

A new study compares the carved symbolism of Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone with ritual imagery from the Trypillia culture, suggesting that early farming societies in Anatolia and Eastern Europe may have shared cosmological ideas about time, death, sacred space and the movement of the heavens.At Göbekli Tepe, the famous Vulture Stone has never been easy to read. Its carved birds, snakes, scorpion, abstract signs and headless human figure have inspired competing interpretations for decades. Was it a scene of death ritual, an astronomical code, a mythic narrative, or something more complex? A new study argues that the answer may not...

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter was designed to fly five times on Mars, instead it flew 72. For nearly three years, the four-pound drone defied expectations, becoming the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on another planet. It scouted terrain, mapped hazards, and proved aviation works in Mars' thin atmosphere. On January 18, 2024, during what should have been a routine test, its rotor blades shattered on landing, ending its flying but not its mission. In a valley sculpted by ancient rivers, the small helicopter now rests partially buried in red dust, one blade severed and lying 49 feet away in...

Twenty-five inflatable boats capable of carrying 1,700 illegal migrants, which were being shipped to people smuggling gangs operating in the English Channel have been intercepted in Bulgaria. Customs officers in the Eastern European country, who work closely with the National Crime Agency to track and stop consignments of small boat equipment shipped through the country, made two separate seizures. Five boats were found in an HGV attempting to enter Bulgaria at the Lesovo border crossing after the NCA and Home Office International Operations shared intelligence with Bulgarian partners through the NCA’s international network. Then, two days later on Friday 26...

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that racism and intolerance had worsened in Britain over the past decade, warning it was ​damaging social cohesion and deterring people from public life. He spoke ‌a day after a Reuters report found some Britons of colour fear a resurgence of racism linked to anti-migrant rhetoric and a political focus on crime, following recent unrest ​including protests in Southampton after the murder of Henry Nowak and rioting ​in Belfast after a stabbing attack. Facing questions in parliament, Starmer said "racism ⁠and intolerance is permeating everywhere." The British leader was responding to a lawmaker...

The band Van Der Dijs were in their rehearsal space at the time of the natural disaster. All four members of Venezuelan nu-metal band Van Der Dijs have died following the devastating earthquakes that struck the country on 24 June. According to Venezuelan outlet Últimas Noticias, vocalist Manuel van Der Dijs, guitarist Gabriel Gómez, bassist Xander Hernández and drummer Abraham Foucault were killed after the Costamar II building where they were rehearsing in the coastal state of La Guaira collapsed. La Guaira has been among the areas worst affected by the disaster. Their bodies were later recovered from the rubble...

Daily Readings from the USCCBAfter entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town. And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” Matthew 9:1–2After making a quick trip across the Sea of Galilee to deliver two men from demonic possession, Jesus and the disciples return to Jesus’ “own town,” likely Capernaum, the fishing village and hometown of Peter, Andrew, James and John, and probably Matthew, whom Jesus had not yet called to be an Apostle. Though...

Elliot Page showed off his ripped body in a Monday Instagram post dedicated to his New York-based boxing coach, Nolan Hanson. The shirtless “Odyssey” actor wore red shorts and white sneakers, giving a thumbs up to the camera while posing with Hanson after a gym session. Page also posted two videos of him throwing jabs and uppercuts at Hanson in the boxing ring.

Costa Rica’s illegal gold mining problem is no longer confined to the long-running Crucitas debate, the Colegio de Geólogos de Costa Rica warned, calling for a national strategy to track gold, strengthen state controls and respond differently to each mining region. The professional association said the country needs a technical plan for gold mining that goes beyond emergency police operations and political arguments over whether to reopen large-scale extraction. Its proposal centers on traceability, tighter regulation of processing plants, stronger oversight by the Dirección de Geología y Minas, and formalization in communities where mining is already a source of family...

[snip] “Well, look, do I think she made a mistake in the ruling? I do. I don’t know how anybody can say that if a person who is an illegal alien, or a person, for example, who’s pregnant and comes to the United States on a vacation, they have a baby, and all of a sudden their entire family gets the benefits of American citizenship,” Vance said.

MIDLAND, Texas — A sweeping new Texas law intended to simplify permits for mobile food vendors took full effect Wednesday, but mom-and-pop operators in the Permian Basin say skyrocketing administrative fees are instead threatening their livelihoods, keeping investments trapped in backyards, and forcing immediate business closures.

A Wisconsin transgender activist has released a run of videos telling people to “kill your local Republican” and vowing a “trans jihad” against MAGA. Conservative commentator Dustin Grage posted the footage to X on July 1. In one clip, Teha Delaruelle speaks against a background displaying the words “Kill Your Local Republican,” then points to the message. “We’re going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin,” Delaruelle says, giving followers a one-month window to act. Another video shows Delaruelle describing a plan to make conservatives live in fear. “We are doing trans jihad,” Delaruelle says, directing...

While it looks a lot like the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is running the show in Iran right now, it's also very likely that the mullahs are still wielding a lot of influence, even from whatever rocks they are hiding under. Iran's supposed civil government, or what's left of it, is still talking about a possible peace deal, but the IRGC is still trying to hit shipping in the Strait of Hormuz as well as tossing whatever they have left at neighboring nations. Now, at least one group of the 7th-century barbarians who have been in power in...

Amy Coney Barrett was supposed to be the payoff for conservatives. She was our gal, right? The “ghost” of Justice Scalia, haunting the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court as a brilliant originalist, a serious Catholic jurist, a mother of seven, and a Trump appointee who’d help lock down a 6-3 conservative Court and finally stop the left from using judges as a weapon. That was the sales pitch. But that’s not what happened. Now, years later, a whole slew of America First voters are wondering what the hell happened. What exactly did we get with ABC, besides a “yes...

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he plans to help build a third political party, claiming the country’s leaders have stopped focusing on the needs of ordinary Americans. Speaking with the Columbia Journalism Review, Carlson said he believes there should be a “good-faith effort” to create a political movement centered on improving life for Americans rather than fighting over foreign conflicts. “I’m going to help build a third party. There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country,” Carlson said. “I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, you’re degraded. Your life expectancy has gone...

Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson intends to start a new political party after disavowing President Trump and the Republican Party over the Iran war. “I’m going to help build a third party,” Carlson said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published Wednesday. “There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.”

This hybrid design offsets the energy required to initiate and sustain the plasma. - Realta Fusion ============================================================ An experimental fusion reactor in Madison, Wisconsin, has achieved a technical milestone by converting plasma energy directly into usable electricity for the first time in the private sector. The successful trial used the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror, a research device operated alongside the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The newly developed hardware drew multiple amperes of electrical current at an electrical potential of roughly 100 volts. It produced enough output to illuminate several incandescent light bulbs. Realta Fusion, the company developing this magnetic mirror fusion...

Three MS-13 gang members have been convicted of nine murders, kidnapping and racketeering in a Nevada courtroom. Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo of El Salvador, David Arturo Perez-Manchame of Honduras, and Joel Vargas-Escobar of El Salvador were all found guilty by a federal jury on Monday. The DOJ says all three had also been charged with gun offenses, and that all three were in the country illegally. The DOJ says all three men were part of the Parkview clique of MS-13, operating in Las Vegas. Evidence presented at trial showed that Vargas-Escobar was the leader of the clique until his arrest...