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Without question, most of them face a long road to recovery before life can be fully normal again. And sometimes internal wounds heal much more slowly than external wounds. Yet even now, their stories are inspiring courage and strength among others, as their very release has invigorated a nation that has lived in collective trauma since October 7, 2023. Eli Sharabi endured 491 days in captivity before his release, determined to survive his ordeal for his wife and two teenage daughters, from whom he was separated on October 7 when Hamas took over Kibbutz Be’eri. He assured them he would...

I was sitting in a Starbucks the other day, typing away on the laptop open in front of me, pausing to look out the window and watch the cars roll by every few minutes, when a young guy walked over and just started talking to me. Him: “Do you mind if I talk to you a bit? Would you like to have a conversation?” Me: “Um, sure. Have a seat. Are you working on a project or something? Writing something?” Him: “No. I’m just trying to talk to more people. I used to be really socially awkward, so a few...

Florida is permitting a bear hunt from December 6 to December 28, 2025. The hunt administrators will issue a meager 187 permits for bears, based on a lottery system. A chance to obtain a bear permit will cost $5. There is no limit to the number of chances that can be submitted per person. If someone with $5 million wanted to submit a million lottery chances, they could do so. However, only one win can be used to obtain a permit per person. If a person submits 100 chances and wins five, only one permit will be allowed to that...

What makes a leftist? A revulsion to the truth, mixed with disregard for accountability. Actor Alex Baldwin has just demonstrated he has the “right stuff” to be a leftist, exhibiting little concern about accountability. Providing details of a single vehicle accident he suffered, crashing into a tree, Baldwin—as is often his wont to do—seeks to place the blame on a non-responsible party. Fortunately, a video camera captured something Baldwin despises—the truth. Baldwin was smart enough not to blame the tree. So, he sought out an innocent person to blame. But, he was obviously unaware the accident had been recorded on...

Chicago taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars for the costly Obama Presidential Center after new tax filings show the Obama Foundation has only deposited $1 million into its promised $470 million reserve fund. That’s the conclusion of an in-depth report by Fox News as it looked at what it described as a “sweetheart deal” to create the reserve fund “to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up.” **SNIP** He said that “the city never should have signed over the large section” of the park. “They put a million dollars into a $400...

"Friday is a perfect day to indict Schifty!" —Svetlana Lokhova. Tomorrow [today], Saturday, October 18, you might have heard, is this year’s culminating “No Kings” protest demo all over the land. We’ve been to a couple of these curious spectacles since springtime here in the Hudson River Valley, in the next town over. The crowd there was just about entirely made up of aging Boomers, joyfully re-living the halcyon days of the Vietnam protests. It was kind of like a street production of the old Broadway hit Hair, only with a cast of 75-year-olds. Let the sun shine in! But...

Steve Yee, the principal of Earl Haig Secondary School in Toronto, has apologized for that school playing “O Canada,” the Canadian national anthem, in Arabic. It was played on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel. He claimed, “this was not done with any ill intent.” Well hear Yee, hear Yee, that sounds like so much b*******. The playing of the Canadian National Anthem in Arabic is hard enough to believe. That the first time this ever happened in the entirety of Canadian history just happened to be on Oct. 7 cannot possibly be a coincidence....

Mamdani’s economic proposals do not match the real challenges of today. He has proposed building a network of city-run, subsidized grocery stores... Mamdani, blames grocery stores for running up food costs when in reality, grocery stores are some of the lowest-margin businesses around, with 1-2% profit margins in good times. Mamdani has made “freeze the rent” a rallying cry, even though that would backfire, as rent caps would disincentivize developers to build new housing supply... The Democratic nominee estimates his agenda will cost taxpayers $10 billion annually. His solution for financing the hefty price tag is to increase taxes on...

NEW YORK — Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has catapulted into second place in this year’s New York City mayoral race by promising free buses, no-cost childcare and city-run grocery stores. He’ll have a tough time paying the tab... Standing in his way: Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who ...has expressed steadfast opposition to hiking taxes on high-income earners. She will be facing reelection next year too, just as Mamdani would need her blessing to begin accomplishing his goals... A POLITICO review of his proposals found Mamdani has likely underestimated the cost of his housing construction and school rehab plans by tens...

A group of 30 House Republicans is raising alarms about how the government shutdown is impacting gun owners across the U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., led his colleagues in a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Thursday urging its acting director to reclassify certain employees as essential workers, warning that current parameters are leaving many gun owners’ applications for certain items in limbo. “As a result of this Democrat-led shutdown, ATF, like most federal agencies, is operating at a reduced workforce. And while Democrats continue to fight for benefits for illegal aliens, the constitutional rights...

American automakers have long prided themselves on building vehicles that meet the real needs of hardworking families and businesses across the country. Yet, recent revelations from Ford’s leadership paint a different picture when it comes to the rush into electric vehicles. Former Ford CEO Mark Fields openly acknowledged that the industry charged ahead with massive EV investments, overlooking what consumers actually wanted. Fields, who led Ford from 2014 to 2017, pointed out the misstep during a discussion on the rapid buildup of EV production. “Over the last couple of years, the automakers really went full bore in putting in capacity...

Latest generation trying to understand not only the music of prior generations, but placing history within it.

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FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — Over the summer, many in Fairfax County’s Centreville High School community saw social media reports of a teacher’s claims that school staff arranged and bankrolled an abortion for a minor student and pressured another to get an abortion with the parents’ knowledge and consent. When 7News saw the viral claims on social media in August, 7News Reporter Nick Minock reached out to Fairfax County Public Schools. The school system spokesperson replied and told Minock at the time, ”We learned yesterday of these concerning allegations from 2021. We are launching an immediate and comprehensive investigation as...

Dear Military Veterans,I would like to create a table of military service for those who served in the Marines and want to be included. I have already created a separate table for Free Republic's Navy Veterans and I want to create separate tables for each. It will help me organize my work if I tackle one branch at a time.Please look at part of a table below which I have provided as an example, and see what I have in mind. I'm open to suggestions, but this table is a quick way to get started. However, I am busy these...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A downtown Louisville development committee approved a permit application to demolish the former EMW Women's Surgical Center as a 27-story hotel project begins to take shape. The Downtown Development Review Overlay Committee signed off on the demolition at 136, 138 and 140 West Market Street. EMW closed in 2022 after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The $175 million project planned for 2nd and Market streets in downtown Louisville is set to come complete with a grand ballroom, rooftop pool and street-level restaurant. NuLu-based Zyyo confirmed in July its plans to build...

...Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.That ratio is the nickel to iron (Ni/FE) abundance ratio. It has been measured for two decades, including on twenty in-system comets as well as 2I/Borisov, the last known interstellar visitor our solar system had. However,...

Why is India obsessing over commentary on US policies?? From tarriffs to H1-B to access to GPUs and so on. US is its own country and they have their own POV on what making America great again means. And let’s be honest America has been great for nearly a century now - winning WWII, winning Cold War, inventing internet, inventing AI and countless other things. We can either scrutinise American policies to death to tease out impact on India and hope/wish/negotiate for small advantages here or there or focus on what’s really lacking in India. We need to obsess about...

greatest single game ever?...i'd have to say yes.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs will cost global businesses upward of $1.2 trillion in 2025, with most of the cost being passed onto consumers, according to a new analysis from S&P Global. In a white paper released Thursday, the firm said its estimate of additional expenses for companies is probably conservative. The price tag comes from information provided by some 15,000 sell-side analysts across 9,000 companies who contribute to S&P and its proprietary research indexes. “The sources of this trillion-dollar squeeze are broad. Tariffs and trade barriers act as taxes on supply chains and divert cash to governments; logistics delays and...