Free Republic

Joseph ben Matityahu, better known as Josephus Flavius—the Roman name Titus Flavius Josephus given to him after his surrender—is a deeply controversial historical figure. The man who left his fellow Jews and joined the Romans ultimately became the principal chronicler of Jerusalem at the time of its destruction. Today, his writings remain the most important source on the fall of the Second Temple. Born into a priestly family in Jerusalem, Josephus commanded Jewish forces in the Galilee during the Great Revolt against Roman rule. After his forces were defeated, he hid in a cave with a group of commanders. The...

A 23-year-old man from Aurora has been charged after allegedly driving through a playground and walking paths that were packed with children at a park in Ajax earlier this month. Durham Regional Police said a call came in shortly before 6:30 p.m. on July 18 for a white Toyota sedan that was driving dangerously through Rotary Park on Lake Driveway West. “The suspect vehicle drove through the playground, splash pad, and walking paths, which were filled with pedestrians, including young children,” police allege in a news release on Monday. No injuries were reported. Officers later found the vehicle three kilometres...

Authorities have identified the shooter. Police in Twin Falls, Idaho, identified the suspect as Chad Williams, a 24-year-old male. Williams died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound near the In-N-Out Burger restaurant where the shooting occurred. Investigators believe he acted alone, though a motive for the attack is still under investigation. The shooting left three people dead (including Williams) and seven others injured.

A Tucson man is seeking $176 million in monetary damages from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department after deputies entered his home and shot him, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. Attorneys representing 24-year-old Axeel Melendez and his mother, Carmen Melendez, filed a notice of claim against Sheriff Chris Nanos and his department last week, informing the county they intend to sue. ... “Our justice system recognizes the dignity of a human life and the importance of the completeness of your body. Axeel’s health, his independence, his ability to earn a living, his sense of security, that’s all been stolen...

Disneyland guests in Anaheim, California, were sent into a frenzy Tuesday after restaurants and restrooms were forced to close due to a water pressure issue affecting the city. City officials told KTLA 5, ABC 7, and CBS LA that staff members at the park reported problems drawing from groundwater wells causing a drop in water pressure around 6 p.m. PT. Other establishments in the city stated that they had little to no water pressure available at the time. Parkgoers visiting at the time of the water complication told KTLA that employees were standing outside of bathrooms to inform visitors that...

A major space observatory is just one month away from leaving this planet. NASA scientists got together Wednesday (July 29) to share a status update on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — the agency's next great observatory that will soon join the ranks of absolute legends like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. And that press conference was overflowing with good news. The $4 billion Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX rocket on Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). That's nine months ahead of schedule according to the team....

It’s an ominous scene. A warehouse crammed with books set to be sliced open, scanned and then pulped by an AI lab. Australia is fighting back. If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines. Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale....

Japan is launching a new centralized intelligence body for the first time since World War II – a controversial move that some fear deviates from Tokyo’s pacifist ideals, but one others say is much needed in a country so riddled with security weaknesses it has been called a “paradise for spies.” The National Intelligence Bureau will formally launch on Friday, replacing previous structures criticized as disjointed and ineffective – and laying the foundation, experts say, for broader changes that could include an anti-spy law and a new external foreign intelligence agency similar to the CIA in the US, or MI6...

Sweden’s left-wing parties are running Arabic-language advertisements aimed at immigrant voters ahead of this year’s elections, repeating a strategy used during the 2022 campaign. The advertisements have appeared on Al Kompis, an Arabic-language website aimed at immigrants in Sweden who cannot speak Swedish. Political parties and public authorities have previously used the platform to reach the country’s Arabic-speaking population. Among those advertising during the current campaign are the Social Democrats and the Centre Party. An advertisement featuring Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson promises greater investment in healthcare and schools. It links to a dedicated campaign page claiming that the party’s...

A federal appellate court shot down on Wednesday attempts by a pair of rogue judges to sidestep a recent Supreme Court immigration ruling. In its newly released orders, a three-judge panel on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Massachusetts-based Judges Patti Saris and Brian Murphy’s administrative pauses against the Trump administration. Those directives sought to stop the government from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for foreign nationals from South Sudan and Ethiopia, respectively. The panel was comprised of Judges Julie Rickelman and Seth Aframe, both Biden appointees, and Joshua Dunlap, a Trump appointee. Saris and Murphy’s actions were seen...

Massachusetts Democrats recently sponsored a Senate bill creating a “permanent” government commission “on the status of people who practice Islam,” which would communicate with the government on how legislation affects Muslims and recommend Muslims for government positions. The Senate committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight reported the bill, No. 2134 “favorably” and referred it to the Joint Committee on Rules, which referred it to the committee on Senate Ways and Means. That committee consists of a majority of democrats. The commission proposed by the bill would accomplish eight different tasks, including serving as a liaison between the Muslim American...

Milan — Out in the country on a rutted dirt road lined with corn lives an old woman and her dog. Elizabeth Waffle, 88, was forced to move into a shabby trailer two years ago after her house burned down. She owns an old pickup truck but no computer. Nevertheless, Waffle, who lives on a modest pension, is a true believer in liberal causes and continues to make small political donations by way of ActBlue—the Democrat online fundraising platform. But somehow, those few dozen small donations she has made over the past five years have transmogrified into 14,696 donations totaling...

At a national summit of the Democratic Socialists of America, nervous energy and a sprawling tableau of sometimes-competing interests were on display.The democratic socialists packed into a dive bar on Chicago’s South Side were in a bubbly mood after the first day of their national summit. Hayley Banyai-Becker, a 31-year-old from Portland, Ore., stood on a chair to rally fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America to stay on “the front lines of class struggle.” But there was a problem: None of them could hear her. “Did they just turn the music up?” Ms. Banyai-Becker called out, over the...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday that she will skip next month’s Michigan Democratic Party convention because she fears being harassed, adding another flashpoint to a party increasingly divided over Israel and antisemitism during a bitter U.S. Senate primary. Speaking during a roundtable discussion with Jewish leaders and community members, Nessel said she no longer feels safe attending the party’s August 29 convention in Lansing after what she described as repeated harassment. “I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to...

Investors from Omaha to Chicago last year bought tens of millions of dollars worth of delinquent property tax debts from Ohio county treasurers, setting new records in several counties. This gives those institutional investors the right to collect on liens, plus up to 18% interest, from Ohioans who are buckling under the weight of post-pandemic leaps on their property tax bills. State lawmakers in 1998 legalized the sale of delinquent tax debt, joining roughly half of U.S. states that do so. Several of Ohio’s biggest counties are now selling record levels of certificates, according to data provided by their treasurers’...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division has uncovered roughly $350 million in alleged fraud across the Southeastern U.S., the Daily Caller has learned. The charges span seven states in 17 different cases and involve SNAP benefits, Small Business Administration loans, housing benefits and tax fraud, officials told the Caller. The DOJ is expected to announce the cases Thursday alongside state partners in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina, which helped uncover the fraud. Going forward, the seven states have agreed to data-sharing agreements with the division that will give the DOJ access...

What do New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Alexander Soros—George Soros’s son and heir—have in common? A shared ideological inspiration: Slavoj Žižek, the self-proclaimed “left-fascist” who seeks the West’s bloody destruction. This should chill every American. Zizek has been described as “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.” His agenda is summed up in his publisher’s description of his 2008 book, In Defense of Lost Causes: “Žižek argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The “lost causes” he wants to revive and succeed are those of the Bolsheviks, Mao Tse-tung, and Robespierre. The Iranian...

Declassified FBI documents reveal the Nazis might have had secret UFO-like crafts.The U.S. government, at the direction of President Donald Trump, dropped a gold mine of UFO files early Friday morning.The possible existence of a Nazi UFO in 1944.

Explanation: What's happening to this cloud? Ice crystals in a distant cirrus cloud are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds present below -- in this case cirrus fibratus. The numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are somewhat unusual to see. The featured...

This is the stud who engaged (fired at) In N Out shooter, preventing further carnage. https://xcancel.com/ClownWorld/status/2083942635228811299 ======================================================================== Eyewitness video shows gun battle in parking lot. https://www.instagram.com/p/DbingrUlD1K/?img_index=3 ========================================================================== Second eyewitness video shows employees running away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIvZMgby6pk =============================================================================== Third video shows man executed at Tesla charging station, wife shot but survives. WARNING: GRAPHIC! https://xcancel.com/ScopeReport_/status/2083676087687471444