Free Republic

At least one person was killed in a storm-related car crash on Hawaii’s Big Island as Hurricane Lala struck late Saturday night. Gov. Josh Green confirmed the death, along with 19 roofs ripped off buildings after what he described as an “enormous storm.” Powerful waves pounded the Big Island’s coast as Lala slowly passed by. Howling winds whipped palm trees and waterways swelled with fast-moving runoff from relentless rain that blew nearly sideways. Lala was downgraded to a tropical storm as of Sunday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center. More than 130,000 households were without power Sunday morning across...

DUBAI — Iran’s parliament approved on Sunday the general principles of a bill that ​would criminalize interviews and other communications with media deemed hostile to the ‌Islamic Republic, including US or Israeli media and outlets financed by either country, Iran’s Shargh newspaper reported. Osman Salari, a member of parliament’s judicial and legal commission, said the individual provisions of the bill, ​which is aimed at countering foreign intelligence influence, have yet to be ​debated and approved. Reports about the bill’s details should not yet be ⁠considered final, Salari told the Mizan news agency. Under the proposed bill, interviews or participation ​in...

WASHINGTON — Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema opened up about the sordid details of her dalliance with her then-married ex-bodyguard during a deposition in the $75,000 “homewrecker” suit brought by his angry ex-wife. Sinema (I-Ariz.), the first openly bisexual person elected to Congress, fessed up to having repeated sex with Matthew Ammel in cities across America in an affair that upended his 14-year marriage. She confessed that she first had sex with Ammel, her then-bodyguard, around Memorial Day of 2024, two years after he began working on her security team. “We were staying at an Airbnb in Napa, California. We were...

Where sex is concerned, human reproductive biology is pretty standard: Humans are sexually bipolar, with two sexes, male and female. This is determined genetically at conception; barring a few rare and usually debilitating genetic disorders, an XX chromosome pair results in a female, and an XY pair, a male. That's just how it is. These are facts. And another fact is that the XY pairing gives the resulting child and, in time, adult, a significant advantage in sports. Now, the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) doesn't seem to understand that, especially with regards to "trans-women" - men - playing in...

Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Russia since the start of the war, firing hundreds of drones and killing at least six people. A separate attack sparked a fire at a warehouse owned by the Russian online retail giant Wildberries in the town of Podolsk.

A career criminal with a lengthy record of burglaries and thefts who broke into a Portland countertop fabrication business and was shot three times by the owner while attempting to flee is now seeking $10 million in a civil lawsuit, arguing the property owner used excessive force against him.

Democrat Rep. Eugene Vindman walked into a meeting with local party activists expecting to talk about the midterms. He walked out after members of his own side confronted him, tempers exploded and the exchange turned profane. The August 11 meeting in King George County, Virginia, was supposed to help rally Democrats behind Vindman’s reelection campaign. Instead, transgender constituents pressed him over a vote he cast with House Republicans earlier this year. The first report on the confrontation is below: The Advocate reported that at least two transgender women and one transgender man challenged Vindman during the meeting. Several said they...

Explanation: The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The colorful pool of water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Illuminated artificially, the colors are caused by layers of bacteria that grow in the hot spring. Steam rises off the spring, heated by underground magma associated with the Yellowstone Hotspot. Unrelated and far in the distance, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy arches high overhead, a band lit by billions of stars. The picture features a 16-image panorama taken in 2014. If the...

A clever swap has extended the historic Voyager 2’s mission in interstellar space. Engineers are hoping to do the same for Voyager 1. An ambitious effort to boost an aging probe on its journey through the uncharted territory of interstellar space seems to have found success. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have spent the last few months implementing what they nicknamed the “Big Bang” fix to buy the historic Voyager 2 spacecraft more time to continue its science mission. Voyager 2 is roughly 21.35 billion kilometers (13 billion miles) away from Earth, while its twin, Voyager...

This artist’s concept shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse and a companion star orbiting within the supergiant’s tenuous outer atmosphere. Artwork: NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI); Science: Andrea Dupree (CfA) Betelgeuse has always been something of a mystery. And by “mystery,” I mean a source of endless fun, fascination and frustration for astronomers. Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky, marking the right shoulder of the constellation Orion. It’s a red supergiant, a massive star with more than a dozen times the sun’s heft, that’s blasting out many tens of thousands as much light as our own...

When a local pastor condemned officials for naming a busy intersection after Hezbollah-supporter Osama Siblani in September 2025, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (above in 2024) called the pastor “an Islamophobe,” declaring: “I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence.” When a local pastor condemned officials for naming a busy intersection after Hezbollah-supporter Osama Siblani in September 2025, Dearborn Mayor...

MLB legend Tommy John has died at the age of 83 surrounded by his family. The news comes just days after the baseball icon penned an emotional goodbye letter as he went into hospice care in Florida.

Florida deputies are on the hunt for modern-day tomb raiders who have been visiting cemeteries across parts of the U.S. to steal from the dead, investigators say. "What a horrible person you are if you decide to steal from the dead," Orange County Sheriff's Office Corporal Cole Brazee said Wednesday. According to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, the trio of criminals, who are from the Indianapolis area, have been heading to cemeteries and breaking into niches containing cremated remains and taking family heirlooms that people leave behind for the departed loved ones. "Typically, in these mausoleums, inside of a niche,...

Fire crews beg: stop the snitching as emergency system faces “crying wolf” backlash Millions of phones across England and Wales blared a sudden siren on Friday evening as the government unleashed its emergency alert system over ‘wildfire risk’. What followed was a wave of neighbour-on-neighbour reporting that left fire services and police inundated with non-emergency calls about barbecues in gardens and parks. The same compliant instincts that flourished during COVID appear alive and well. The alert, described by First Secretary of State Louise Haigh as “the most extensive use of the UK’s emergency alert system in response to an active...

Nine PBS is afraid that it will lose over 70 years of archival materials and programming after its contracted cloud storage vendor has apparently gone out of business. According to Current, the channel used Open Source Storage, or OSS, for storing over 50TB of data — but it suddenly lost access to its data earlier this year. Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days...

P!nk's official live video for 'Try'

SpaceX launched eight satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Louisiana-based telecom company Globalstar from Florida, as well as the USSF-366 mission for the U.S. Space Force from California, on Aug. 15, 2026. [Full Story on Space.com] The two rockets launched just 38 minutes apart, breaking SpaceX’s previous record -- set on Aug. 31, 2024, with two Starlink missions -- by 27 minutes. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: SpaceX | edited by Steve Spaleta ( / spaleta_space_odyssey ) SpaceX Launches 2 Rockets 38 Minutes Apart -- New Record! Sticks Landings | 9:19 VideoFromSpace | 2.14M subscribers | 7,146 views |...

Four people were wounded and one killed after gunfire erupted at a concert in Lexington, Kentucky, on Saturday night. The Lexington Herald Leader reported that the incident occurred around 6:45 p.m. at Charles Young Park, about a mile and a half from where Gov. Andy Beshear (D) was speaking at a dinner. The identity of the deceased individual has not been released nor has any information on the number of people who were shooting. The four wounded people are not believed to have life-threatening injuries. “Weathers said a 4-year-old, a 14-year-old and two adults were shot and taken to a...

President Donald Trump's war against Iran is stretching the limits of U.S. aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships as China shows more signs of aggression. The USS George Washington is departing the Pacific and expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East amid growing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed carrier. *** .*** The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program***. Instead, the U.S. is "doing the...

Recall charges have been filed against Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, beginning a legal review that must be completed before supporters can begin gathering signatures to try to force a recall election. King County Elections received the charges Tuesday, Aug. 11, according to a stamp on the filing. The charges accuse Wilson of failing to adequately address public safety concerns in several Seattle neighborhoods and criticize her handling of police leadership and the city's surveillance camera system. Recall charges filed against Mayor Katie Wilson amid Bite of Seattle shooting controversy | 3:18 KOMO News | 415K subscribers | 435,698 views |...