Free Republic

At first, Ukraine noticed its GPS-guided 155mm Excalibur artillery shells suddenly started veering off target. Then rockets fired with Himars, which Kyiv once boasted had “scalpel-like” accuracy, began missing their targets. In some areas, they almost always missed. The same happened to JDAM guided bombs supplied to Ukraine’s air force by the United States. Frantic investigation eventually discovered they had all fallen victim to a new threat – Russian jamming. Moscow has quietly developed a knack for taking out some of Ukraine’s most prized missiles and rockets. It is a rare but crucial example of Russian technological advantage in a...

The story of Disney (DIS) has been far from a fairytale of late. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called for CEO Bob Iger to be “fired immediately.” And now, South Carolina is pulling its state funds out of the entertainment conglomerate. According to South Carolina State Treasurer Curtis Loftis, the decision to divest has to do with the company’s management abandoning their fiduciary responsibilities. “I think it's clear to anybody paying attention that there's a structural rot inside of Disney. It's deep, it’s pervasive, and I suspect Bob Iger, since his return as the CEO, now realizes it can't be...

The five people gathered around the restaurant table do not fit the profile of colon cancer patients. They’re female, and they’re young. Two were diagnosed in their 20s, one in her 30s, two in their early 40s. Their colon cancer support group gathers about once a month to share stories, such as the one about the doctor who said you just need a laxative, the one about the oncologist who said there’s nothing we can do for you but give you chemotherapy the rest of your life, the one about friends saying, “You don’t look sick,” without realizing that isn’t...

The fascist tide is rising in America and around the world. Many Americans are drowning in it. Donald Trump leads President Biden in the early 2024 polls. The Republican fascists are poised to impeach Biden for non-existent “high crimes” as a way of distracting the American people and delegitimating any future attempts to hold a president accountable for their real crimes against democracy and the rule of law. As shown by public opinion polls and other measures, there is a growing sense and almost palpable feeling of dread and despair, that something is fundamentally broken in American society and culture....

The Supreme Court wiped a series of rulings implicating the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for federal employees and military service members, preventing the decisions from holding the weight of precedent in the future. With the mandates rescinded, the justices sided with the Biden administration Monday in agreeing to set aside the lower rulings after deeming the disputes moot, thus providing a clean legal slate for any future vaccine mandates. Courts had come to conflicting conclusions in the cases, but before the Supreme Court could weigh in on any of the appeals, the vaccine requirements were canceled. At issue before the...

The United States has chosen to ground all V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft until the underlying causes of a recent crash, which took place off the coast of Japan on November 29, are fully understood. This isn't the first time issues have surfaced with the aircraft, an inventive blend of a plane and a helicopter. Despite ongoing development for over 30 years, the design continues to pose serious complications. The Pentagon announced the suspension of all operational activities involving the various Osprey variants following the tragic accident of a CV-22 off the Japanese coast on November 29. That crash resulted in...

The right diet can help stave off dementia, according to new collaborative research. Even better, the report even tells us which foods we should include with breakfast, lunch, and dinner to best support the brain. The new study concludes that diets emphasizing plants, such as the Mediterranean diet or traditional diets seen in China, Japan, and India, appear to reduce Alzheimer’s disease risk, especially when compared to a fattier, more processed Western diet. In this article we’ll share the important findings of this study, and include a table of the suggested foods (and their anti-Alzheimer’s properties) to help ward off...

An Air Force AC-130 gunship destroyed a truck on Tuesday in Western Iraq after the aircraft’s crew watched Iranian-backed militia fighters use the vehicle to launch a ballistic missile attack on U.S. troops, injuring eight Americans, defense officials said. “Immediately following the attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack,” according to U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. “This self-defense strike resulted in several enemy casualties.” The AC-130 was airborne at the time of the attack on Al Asad Air...

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is celebrating last week's ruling on Georgia's voting machines as vindication, countering critics who say he is a conspiracy theorist for promoting claims about election fraud. "Historical ruling by Judge!" Lindell wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. "Anyone questioning elections or election machines are not conspiracy theorist!" Newsweek reached out to Lindell via email for comment. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg issued a 135-page ruling last Friday in the long-running lawsuit seeking to rid Georgia of its electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots. The lawsuit, filed by individual voters and election security...

A team of archaeologists, geophysicists, geologists, and paleontologists affiliated with multiple institutions in Indonesia has found evidence showing that Gunung Padang is the oldest known pyramid in the world. In their paper published in the journal Archaeological Prospection, the group describes their multi-year study of the cultural heritage site. Gunung Padang has for many years been considered a megalithic structure—it sits on top of an extinct volcano in West Java, Indonesia, and is considered by locals to be a sacred site. In 1998, it was declared to be a cultural heritage site. For many years there has been disagreement regarding...

Israel is facing the most serious state of emergency it has known since 1948, and strengthening the personal security of its citizens is obviously of huge importance. In a move purportedly aimed at bolstering that security, Israel’s government recently passed new regulations to expand the number of Israeli citizens eligible to apply for a handgun license. The new regulations will allow hundreds of thousands of citizens to carry handguns on a permanent basis, without the necessary checks or oversight. The changes to the threshold conditions and criteria for eligibility for a handgun license were passed too rapidly during the current...

When the COVID-19 pandemic took off in 2020, so too did questions over the effectiveness of wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the virus. Now, three and a half years later, what does the science say? In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech University professor specializing in aerosol science. "They are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get COVID because it's reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you," Marr said...

It may just be a discovery of biblical proportions. Scientists have placed humans at the site of what is believed to be the “ruins of Noah’s Ark,” in the eastern mountains of Turkey. The findings, released earlier this week, of rock and soil samples determined that “clayey materials, marine materials and seafood” were present in the area between 5500 and 3000 BC, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet. The study is comprised of three Turkish and American universities that have been investigating the theory of the site since 2021. The “Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark Research Team” group was created...

Sometime in the past year, this tiny planet we live on in an obscure corner of our Milky Way galaxy went through some sort of tipping point, a “state change” of sorts, and now things are different from how they’ve been at any other time in the 300,000 year history of the human race. Nobody knows for sure what that change or tipping point is. - snip - But regardless of the why/how, something has definitely happened in the past year or so that has pushed our atmosphere’s state of equilibrium out of an older, stable range and into a...

The 10 gunmen from Gaza knew exactly how to find the Israeli intelligence hub — and how to get inside. - snip - Ten miles later, they veered off the road into a stretch of woodland, dismounting outside an unmanned gate to a military base. They blew open the barrier with a small explosive charge, entered the base and paused to take a group selfie. Then they shot dead an unarmed Israeli soldier dressed in a T-shirt. For a moment, the attackers appeared uncertain about where to go next. Then one of them pulled something from his pocket: a color-coded...

Neuroscientists from the University of Maryland have come a step closer to understanding how disorders such as autism and schizophrenia develop in children, opening the door for potential new treatments. Inflammation in the brain during early childhood has been previously linked to autism and schizophrenia. But the mechanisms behind this link have been unclear. Now Maryland researchers have identified how this inflammation can affect human brain cells and their development, offering a potential mechanism for this association. Their results were published on October 12 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In their research, the team conducted a post-mortem analysis of...

Link only per posting rules.

Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Asked about fraud in the race — in which President Biden defeated former president Donald Trump with 306 electoral college votes — the popular voice assistant said it was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,” citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives. The 2020 races were “notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers,”...

A Chinese nuclear submarine got caught in a trap intended for U.S. or British submarines in the Yellow Sea, killing 55 people on board, multiple reports claimed. However, Beijing has not yet released any information to corroborate or deny the catastrophic accident. The news outlets, citing a British intelligence report, said 22 officers, seven officer cadets, nine petty officers and 17 sailors were killed in an accident involving a Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) nuclear submarine on Aug. 21. International Business Times could not independently verify the information. If true, the incident "reflects poorly on the PLA Navy's capabilities," Niranjan...

President Joe Biden issued blunt new warnings about ongoing existential threats to US democracy in a major address Thursday, sharpening the central argument in his potential rematch with Donald Trump and asking voters to prioritize the health of American institutions. “There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said during his speech in Arizona, where he was also honoring his friend, the late Republican Sen. John McCain. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: The MAGA movement.” “There’s no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists,” he...