Free Republic

China's Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, in a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country’s aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon. The Chang’e-6 probe landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin to collect samples from the lunar surface, the China National Space Administration announced. China’s most complex robotic lunar endeavor to date, the uncrewed mission aims to return samples to Earth from the moon’s far side for the first time. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully...

A “plus-size” travel influencer claimed a Washington airport worker refused to push her in a wheelchair up the jet bridge because of her size, which left her gasping for air when she was forced to walk off the plane. Jae’lynn Chaney, 27, revealed on TikTok that she requested “wheelchair assistance” during her trip to Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington. “I’m a plus-size wheelchair user and on a recent flight to the Sea-Tac airport, I requested wheelchair assistance, as I always do,” a narrator said on Chaney’s post. “When it came time for me to deplane, I saw the employee who...

1 Mr Chairman, creating a Clean, Green and Resilient Shared Future for Singapore is a collective effort. 2 During our Forward SG engagements, Singaporeans acknowledged that the whole society needs to work together to ensure that Singapore remains a clean, green and safe home. Keeping Singapore clean and safe Shared Collective Responsibility 3 Our education efforts and campaigns over the years have paid off, and Singaporeans are generally civic-minded. However, we continue to observe some persistent issues, that require us to go beyond just public education. 4 Public hygiene remains a top priority for MSE. Ms Rahayu, Mr Liang Eng...

Luxury car manufacturer Bugatti has revealed the designs for its first foray into residential real estate – a 42-storey skyscraper in Dubai that will have two garage-to-penthouse car lifts. Developed in partnership with Dubai-developer Binghatti, the Bugatti Residences will be the first residential building branded with the car manufacturer's name. Bugatti is the latest luxury car brand to move into residential property, with Bentley creating a 61-storey skyscraper in Miami Beach and Aston Martin designing an angular black home in New York as part of its Automotive Galleries and Lairs service, which launched in 2019. Set to be built in...

Mercedes-Benz debuted a $1 billion residential luxury tower in Dubai, where apartments are expected to cost as much as $10 million each. Dubbed “Mercedes-Benz Places,” the upscale auto company announced its venture into the real-estate world on Instagram on Thursday, which it’s doing with the help of Emirati developer Binghatti. The 65-story building is expected to rise approximately 1,118 feet above downtown Dubai’s bustling metro when it’s complete in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to United Arab Emirates-based business news site ZAWYA. For reference, New York City’s Chrysler Building stands 1,048 tall. It’s home to 150 apartments, starting at...

The district said it wanted to solve the problem that non-white students were suspended too often, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Black, Native American, and other students of color are referred out of class significantly more often,” the district’s Collective Bargaining Team said in a letter to families last month. “Students receiving special education services also bear the burden of disproportionate discipline. This ‘discipline’ is far from the root of the term ‘discipline’: to instruct, train, and educate,” the letter said. The new collective bargaining agreement requires that when a student exhibits “continuous disruptive behavior,” a “support plan” must be...

This video shows the manipulation of the audience to gain public consensus for a regional transportation plan the metropolitan transportation commission was assembled by a number of radical environmentalist groups, social justice, social equity groups, in response to California's AB 32 and SB375. AB32 is currently held up in court, and was based on doctored data generated by a California Air Resources Board member, that falsely claimed to have a PhD. He was exposed, but the radically liberal and union owned democratic legislature decided to proceed with the legislation anyway that mis-informed california population voted for. Wake up viewers! This...

The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” The sudden and pervasive rise of this movement provokes two questions: where did it come from, and how has it proved so successful? The story goes deeper than most Americans know. In the late 1980s, a group of academics, including Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Sandy Stone, and Susan Stryker, established the disciplines of “queer theory” and “transgender studies.” These academics believed gender to...

Maybe now she’ll see how her citizens feel. Pamela Price, the progressive prosecutor in Alameda County, California, got a look at crime, up close and personal, when her office laptop was stolen from an SUV after her bodyguard parked the vehicle Friday afternoon, according to KGO-TV in Oakland. And police never showed up to take a report. The incident took place during working hours when Price was at the Alameda County Family Justice Center about 3:30 p.m., KGO reporter Dan Noyes wrote in a social media post. When she returned to the vehicle, she found a window broken and several...

Amid her calls for governments to act on climate change, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has spoken openly about her Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is not the only environmental campaigner to speak about being neurodivergent (having a neurological condition or disability)—something Thunberg describes as her "superpower." In the UK, naturalists Chris Packham and Dara McAnulty have both discussed their autism. Packham has said that it has been "enormously beneficial" to his career. In my doctoral research, I interviewed 23 youth activists, conservation workers and environmentalists to examine the link between nature experiences and mental health in an era of...

The Florida teacher who was beaten unconscious by a 270-pound student in a viral video has refused to help the teen’s defense lighten his sentence, according to a report. Brendan Depa, then 17, violently hurled Matanzas High School paraprofessional Joan Naydich to the ground, then could be seen in the video kicking and punching her in the back and head more than a dozen times before he was pulled off her by other staff. The troubled teen told investigators he attacked Naydich because teachers ordered him to stop playing a video game on a Nintendo Switch. Depa, who was charged...

Just a day after Hamas launched a wave of terror against Israeli civilians, Iranian officials brought out the Palestinian flag during a football match at the country's national stadium. Hundreds of Iranian football fans have objected to the Palestinian flag appearing at a match in Tehran on Sunday with chants to “shove the flag up you’re a**!” During a game between football clubs Persepolis and Gol Gohar at the country’s national football stadium, operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) attempted to rally support for the Palestinian cause by waving Palestinian flags on the pitch. Instead of sympathy, the...

When Ibram X. Kendi’s preposterous thesis that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” becomes mainstream practice, you know things are upside down. Kendi is the author of the poorly reasoned 2019 leftist propaganda book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” which became not only a bestseller, but a clarion call for progressives. In a speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Kendi put his anti-reasoning skills on display, according to the New York Post. “When I see racial disparities, I see racism,” Kendi said. If that isn’t a blanket generalization, the logical fallacy of that name has no meaning....

The issue of food scarcity and food deserts have led to protests and shined a spotlight on deep-rooted inequities in Chicago. "It is an abomination to think that 10 miles from Englewood people are living twenty years longer because they have access to things they need," said Ameya Pawar, Economic Security Project. The non-profit Economic Security Project and the city are partnering to explore the creation of a municipally owned grocery store. "Really it's filling the gaps for the market and making sure that people have access to all the goods and resources that they need to survive and thrive,"...

R&B singer Akon may have been born in the United States, but he wants to go back to his roots — which, to him, means constructing a city in his family’s ancestral home of Senegal, which he describes as a “real-life Wakanda.” Ordinarily, I’d just think this was some idle talk by someone not in compos mentis. After all, one of Akon’s best-known songs was a collaboration with enthusiastic marijuana endorser Snoop Dogg (“I Wanna Love You”), so maybe Akon’s been hitting the wacky tobaccky a bit too often. However, nothing short of megadoses of LSD could possibly have produced...

Renee Marant is a college student living in Japan, something she dreamed of from a young age. She says living in Japan feels safer and is more convenient than living in America, where she's from. But Marant has decided to move back to the US, citing low job prospects and experiences with racism as factors. This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Renee Marant, a 21-year-old college student attending Temple University at the school's Japan campus. The essay has been edited for length and clarity. Me and Japan go way back. Since I was about 9, I...

Settling in a relationship is a concept often misconstrued and widely debated. It refers to the scenario where an individual remains in a romantic partnership not out of deep love or satisfaction but rather due to various factors such as fear of loneliness, societal pressure, or simply the comfort of familiarity. This action, over time, has significant implications on a person’s emotional health, personal growth, relationship dynamics, and even other aspects of life. The following sections will delve into these aspects in detail, offering a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of settling and providing strategies to avoid this circumstance. Contents...

John Allen Chau had tried to make contact with the hostile and isolated Sentinelese people, who were known to be aggressive toward outsiders and are a protected tribe with restrictions on visiting their island An ambitious Christian missionary met an untimely end when he was slaughtered by a uncontacted tribe after trying to convert them to his religion. John Allen Chau, 27, visited an island in the Indian Ocean inhabited by people who are part of an endangered tribe. People are banned from even approaching North Sentinel Island to protect the people who live there and their way of life....

The government of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is driving through a drastic cut in unemployment benefits as it argues there are plenty of jobs available across the country. The unemployment rate in Italy has been declining for months and is now at its lowest - 7.4% - since 2009, according to ISTAT, the national statistics agency. Ms Meloni, the leader of the hard-Right Brothers of Italy party, is planning to phase out the so-called “citizens wage”, which amounts to 550 euros a month for some of the nation’s poorest citizens. The benefit, which was introduced by the previous populist...

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) received backlash from several lawmakers Thursday after saying “colored people” during an explanation of an amendment he pitched for the National Defense Authorization Act, provoking a call from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to have his offensive words stricken from the record. Crane said his amendment to the NDAA would have prevented “race, gender, religion, or political affiliations,” from being used in the recruitment of military members, adding the amendment had “nothing to do” with “whether colored people, or Black people, or anybody can serve.” Crane’s use of the outdated term received a stern response from Beatty,...