Free Republic

Portions of the San Fernando Valley will get an extra set of eyes to help fight crime, as 100 automated license plate readers are going up in the northwest area. Earlier this year, L.A. Councilmember John Lee allocated $500,000 to purchase, install and maintain the cameras to help combat crime in the Valley. The ALPR cameras assist law enforcement in tracking and recording license plates as they pass through, to narrow the search for vehicles tied to crimes. The system then uses optical character recognition to compare the plates with hot vehicles of interest. Data stored can also help connect...

UNITED KINGDOM, July 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A doctor who has worked for 26 years with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been “sacked” for refusing to use transgendered patients’ incorrect, “preferred” pronouns. The treatment of the 55-year-old father of four who believes that sex is biological and not a matter of personal preference raises questions about the chilling effect that pro-LGBT policies of government agencies have on freedom of speech, especially when it comes to Christians. Multiple reports from UK media indicate that Dr. David Mackereth was “deemed to be ‘unfit to work’ after he said he would...

The Fighting Irish have a bone to pick with Christopher Columbus. Notre Dame students are calling for the removal of 12 iconic murals, which honor the famous explorer and have been on campus since 1884. The students have reportedly teamed up with alumni, faculty and staff in an effort to get rid of the 19th Century paintings. “In this era of political divisiveness and a renewed rise of dangerous nationalism, it is time for Notre Dame to remove its own version of a Confederate monument,” the group wrote in an open letter last week that was published in the school...

"When you think about threats to democracy, threats to personal liberty, '1984' is one of those key texts that you refer to," said UCLA Film and Television Archive programmer Paul Malcolm. On April 4, independent theaters across the country will screen 1984, the dystopian drama based on the best-selling 1949 novel by British author George Orwell.

A mainly desert territory in north-west Africa, Western Sahara is the subject of a decades-long dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front. The territory is phosphate-rich and believed to have offshore oil deposits. Most of it has been under Moroccan control since 1976. Western Sahara fell under Spanish rule in 1884, becoming a Spanish province in 1934. Nationalism emerged in the 1960s, as nomadic Saharans, or Saharawis, settled in the region. Polisario was set up on 10 May 1973 and established itself as the sole representative of the Saharan people. Some 100,000 refugees still live in Polisario's camps in...

The secret file that MI5 kept on the author from 1929 until his death in 1950 is being declassified Tuesday by the National Archives. It reveals that in contrast to the fictional "Big Brother," the cruel and all-seeing secret police of Orwell's classic "1984," MI5 took a surprisingly benign view of the writer. Orwell savaged the totalitarianism of Stalin's Russia in "Animal Farm" and "1984." But he was also a socialist who railed against inequality in earlier works such as "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "The Road to Wigan Pier." The documents show Orwell _ whose real...