Free Republic

Former Mr. Olympia Shawn Rhoden has died of a heart attack at age 46, according to reports. Rhoden, known among bodybuilders as “Flexatron,” passed away after winning Mr. Olympia in 2018 at 43 – the oldest strongman to ever win the title, Generation Iron reported Saturday.

The speed of the Taliban’s advance across Afghanistan in the past few weeks left US veterans who served in America’s longest war “stunned and dismayed.” The withdrawal was “a betrayal of American and international forces, said Army Staff Sgt. Seamus Fennessy

A busy Stop & Shop on Long Island erupted in bloodshed Tuesday when a gunman shot three people, including one fatally, inside the managers’ office — before possibly hopping on a bus to flee.The suspected killer — identified by cops as Gabriel deWitt Wilson, a 31-year-old current or former worker at the West Hempstead grocery store — used a handgun and is still on the loose, police said.Perp ...

The LA County Sheriff’s Office is expected to announce Wednesday — that he will not face any charges or citations, according to a report.

San Francisco has made a stunning about-face, walking back a controversial decision to scrub 44 “racist” names from its schools — including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — after the move drew nationwide ire and was criticized for being based on flawed information without insight from historians. “I acknowledge and take responsibility that mistakes were made in the renaming process,” the president of San Francisco’s School Board Gabriela López wrote on Twitter Sunday. “Reopening will be our only focus until our children and young people are back in schools. We’re cancelling renaming committee meetings for the time being.

Three National Guard members were killed when a military helicopter crashed in upstate New York Wednesday evening, officials said. The aircraft, a UH-60 medical evacuation helicopter, was on a routine mission when it crashed in Mendon, a rural town near Rochester, around 6:30 p.m., according to the New York National Guard.

Dorothy Schmidt Cole, who enlisted in the Marine Corps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and went on to become the oldest living Marine veteran, has died. She was 107. She had hoped to join the Navy, but at 4-foot-11 she was deemed too short, according to The Charlotte Observer. But the strong-willed woman found another route, learning to fly planes and becoming an early member of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.

A 1952 Mantle baseball card became the highest-priced sports card ever, selling for $5.2 million, PWCC Marketplace announced Thursday. The Topps card, rated PSA 9 based on the grading system for cards, blew by the previous record of $3.94 million, set in August for a signed Mike Trout 2009 rookie card – of which just one was created. As for the Mantle card, there may be as few as three left in good condition.

Sir Sean Connery has died aged 90. The multi-award-winning Scots actor was best known for defining James Bond, and was the first to bring the role to the big screen. He appeared in seven of the spy movies, and was knighted by the Queen at Holyrood Palace in 2000.

Whitey Ford, who pitched the Yankees to 11 American League pennants and six World Series championships in the 1950s and 60s and who still holds the highest winning percentage (.690) among all modern-day major league pitchers with at least 150 wins, died Thursday night at his Long Island home. He was 91. Nicknamed “the Chairman of the Board” by teammate Elston Howard for his calm demeanor in pressure situations, Ford spent his entire 16-year career with the Yankees for whom he went 236-106. The Yankees signed the left-hander out of high school in 1947 for $7,000, outbidding the crosstown Giants...

Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, known for his inspiring competitiveness and forceful determination, died Friday at the age of 84, St. Louis Cardinals confirmed to CNN. Gibson announced last year he had pancreatic cancer. The legendary pitcher, who played all 17 seasons of his career with the Cardinals, was a nine-time All-Star, Gold Glove winner and two-time World Series champion. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, his first year of eligibility. Gibson retired after the 1975 season as the Cardinals all-time leader in wins (251), strikeouts (3,117), shutouts (56), Games started (482) and...

Hamill fell at his Brooklyn home Saturday after returning from dialysis, his brother, writer Denis Hamill, told The Post. He was in intensive care at Methodist Hospital — the same place he was born — when “his kidneys and heart failed him,” the brother said. In 1960, the high school dropout began working as a reporter for the Post where he “began to learn his craft,” according to his online biography. He penned columns for the Post for 12 years and worked as a columnist for Newsday, Village Voice and the New York Daily News. He also wrote for Esquire,...

At the beginning of this week, the Eastman Kodak Company handed its chief executive 1.75 million stock options. It was the type of compensation decision that generally wouldn’t attract much notice, except for one thing: The day after the stock options were granted, the White House announced that the company would receive a $765 million federal loan to produce ingredients to make pharmaceuticals in the United States. The news of the deal caused Kodak’s shares to soar more than 1,000 percent. Within 48 hours of the options grants, their value had ballooned, at least on paper, to about $50 million.

Is the U.S. stock market building a V-shaped recovery? History suggests investors shouldn’t count on it just yet, analysts said. Stocks were putting in an impressive rally this week, with gains tied to signs the COVID-19 pandemic may be peaking in Europe and, perhaps, in New York City, the new center of the outbreak. While investors have little comparable experience in dealing with the effects of a deadly disease outbreak, the stock market’s moves remain in keeping with past bear market rallies, meaning a retest of the March 23 lows remains an easily imaginable possibility, analysts said.

The third and last teen suspect in the fatal stabbing of Barnard College student Tessa Majors has been arrested, law enforcement sources told The Post on Wednesday. Luciano Lewis, 14, surrendered to police with his lawyer Wednesday morning and is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court later Wednesday in connection with the Dec. 11 killing of the 18-year-old, the sources said.

Astros owner Jim Crane spoke Thursday morning as the franchise trotted out several players and execs to try to apologize for the sign-stealing scandal that has rocked the baseball world for the last few months. But when directly asked if his team’s cheating cost the Yankees a shot at winning a World Series title in 2017, Crane said "Our opinion is this didn’t impact the game. We had a good team. We won the World Series and we’ll leave it at that.”

MLB’s plan would add two new wild card teams to the American and National League, boosting the total amount of playoff teams from 10 to 14, per ESPN. Mirroring the NFL, the AL and NL top seed would get a first-round bye, while remaining division winners and wild cards face each other in a best-of-three. More radical is a proposed system that would allow for division winners to pick their opponents, a selection that would be televised live on the final night of regular-season games.

A Virginia man who went missing while kayaking in the Florida Everglades was found alive Monday afternoon, according to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. Mark Miele, 67, embarked on a solo kayaking trip in the Everglades National Park on Jan. 22. He was due back on Jan. 29 but did not return. His belongings, including his cellphone and wallet, were discovered Sunday night after they washed ashore.

Eli Manning bid farewell to the Giants and the NFL on Friday, officially announcing his retirement after bringing two Super Bowl titles to Big Blue over 16 seasons as their quarterback. Giants co-owner John Mara also announced that the Giants will induct Manning into their Ring of Honor next season and “no one ever will wear No. 10 again.”

“He was some narcotics detective. He made that case. He made the French Connection case," said retired Det. Randy Jurgensen, who also worked on the case and on the award-winning movie as the NYPD adviser. “Sonny Grosso was a legendary cop who made the transition to filmmaking with gritty cinema verite stories about cops," Denis Hamill said Wednesday night, praising him for being the inspiration for the Scheider character in “the best cop movie ever made.”