Free Republic

Here’s one reason to own gold. The appreciation of Russia’s gold reserves has nearly replaced the value of the assets frozen by the European Union when the country invaded Ukraine. Based on calculations by Bloomberg, the value of Russian gold reserves has surged by $216 billion since February 2022. The EU froze approximately €210 billion in Russian sovereign assets held within the bloc. That equals about $244 billion. As Bloomberg put it, the surge in gold reserves “restores most of Russia’s lost financial capacity,” even if it never gets those assets back. Russia has held its gold reserve steady throughout...

..... The woman, who cannot be named due to British law, made the statement in testimony during the London-based trial of the 22-year-old man who is accused of beating her, Matvei Rumianstev, the U.K. Metro reported Wednesday. Barron, the court heard, contacted police after picking up a FaceTime call and allegedly seeing the woman being beaten by Rumianstev, who was reportedly jealous of the woman’s friendship with the then-president-elect’s son. “He helped save my life. That call was like a sign from God at that moment,” the woman said during cross-examination. The woman was responding to assertions by lawyers for...

The nominations for the 98th Academy Awards were announced Thursday morning. Leading the pack was “Sinners,” with a record-breaking 16 nominations, including best picture, best director for Ryan Coogler and best actor for Michael B. Jordan. “One Battle After Another” received one nomination after another for a total of 13, also including best picture, best director for Paul Thomas Anderson and best actor for Leonardo DiCaprio. Timothée Chalamet is in the running for best actor as well for “Marty Supreme,” which would make him one of the youngest best actor winners after Adrien Brody’s win for “The Pianist” in 2003....

@RepThomasMassie Ouch, I thought Switzerland was neutral territory !

Explanation: The silhouette of an intriguing dark nebula inhabits this cosmic scene. Lynds' Dark Nebula (LDN) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only visible in long telescopic exposures of the region. In contrast, a brighter reflection nebula, vdB 62, is more easily seen just above the dusty dark nebula. LDN 1622 lies near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, close on the sky to Barnard's Loop, a large cloud surrounding the rich complex of emission nebulae found in the Belt and Sword of Orion. With swept-back outlines, the obscuring dust of LDN 1622 is thought...

An anti-deportation protester who dared Attorney General Pam Bondi to arrest him for crashing a Sunday church in Minnesota is now in custody, Bondi said Thursday.William Kelly was seen on video with a crowd invading and loudly disrupting a service at Cities Church in St. Paul over allegations that the pastor worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Bondi described the protest as an attack on congregants’ religious liberty and announced multiple related arrests, including Kelly’s, in Thursday X posts.

Former Labour minister Andrew Gwynne has announced he is standing down as an MP, paving the way for Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to potentially run in a by-election in his Gorton and Denton constituency. In a statement, Gwynne said he had suffered "significant ill health" and had been advised by his GP that it wasn't safe for him to return to work as an MP. Gwynne's resignation possibly opens up a path for Burnham to return to the House of Commons and make a leadership challenge against Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Speaking earlier, Burnham did not rule out...

Meet Chanda Petrey-Czaruk, the Vice President of @HomeFirstChoice in Ohio. She posted a video wishing for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to experience traumatic injuries during childbirth. This woman is in charge of a home health care company and is a registered nurse in Ohio. Terrifying that activists like this are in the medical field. She needs to have her license revoked. You can contact the Ohio Board of Nursing here: (614) 466-3947

Meet Lexie Lawler, a labor and delivery nurse at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital (@BaptistHealthSF ). She says she hopes Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suffers a severe 4th-degree tear during childbirth and has medical complications. "I hope you ******* rip from bow to stern and never **** normally again, you ****." This woman DELIVERS BABIES. Terrifying.

The Trump Justice Department charged Don Lemon and 7 others for storming Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. However, the magistrate judge rejected the charges against Don Lemon. Politico reporter Josh Gerstein corrected his previous post to clarify that the judge rejected charges against Don Lemon. According to CBS News, the Justice Department is currently looking at other avenues to charge Don Lemon. BREAKING: Trump Justice Department charges journalist Don Lemon along with 7 others over church protest aimed at ICE agent — Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) January 22, 2026 It was reported earlier Thursday federal a magistrate judge rejected charges...

The FAFO moment is coming for the demons who disrupted a church service in St. Paul earlier this week. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced this morning that they had arrested one of the key organizers who orchestrated a wicked attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday.with assistance form Don Lemon. From Bondi: Minutes ago at my direction, @HSI_HQ and @FBI agents executed an arrest in Minnesota. So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. We will share more...

BREAKING - A Somalian in Minneapolis, Mubashir Hussen, claims he is suffering from “life altering” PTSD after being detained by ICE and has started a GoFundMe asking for $50,000 to help with the “trauma.” Their daycares have been turned off, so now they are scamming liberals.

Many young Trump voters think women 'should follow' men, poll finds

President Donald Trump declared that The New York Times must “pay a price” on Thursday after the Gray Lady and Siena University released a new poll suggesting that just 40% of registered voters approve of him. In a write-up about the survey, the Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn observed that “The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even...

California Governor Gavin Newsom was reportedly barred from entering and speaking at a scheduled “fireside chat,” hosted by Fortune magazine, at USA House — a U.S.-linked venue in Davos, Switzerland — during the World Economic Forum (WEF) event on Wednesday. USA House is an official U.S. venue in Davos where political and business leaders from throughout the globe gather for the WEF. It is a privately funded sidebar space supported by the U.S. State Department. Newsom (D-Calif.) had initially been invited by Fortune magazine to participate in a fireside chat on Wednesday afternoon. However, shortly before the event was set...

The NFL's Super Bowl LX entertainment lineup has drawn political backlash after the league added Green Day to an event already headlined by Bad Bunny, two artists who have repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump. The league announced that Green Day will open the Feb. 8 game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, performing during the opening ceremony ahead of Bad Bunny's halftime show. The move has sparked conservative criticism of the Super Bowl lineup, as both artists known for their public opposition to Trump and his policies.

Very brief summary: A Somali woman tearfully claims ICE agents beat and racially abused her during a detention, but the video presents bodycam/cell phone footage suggesting she assaulted an agent first, portraying her story as exaggerated or false for media sympathy.

A pet cow named Veronika uses a tool in a surprisingly sophisticated way—possibly because she has been allowed to live her best life. In news that is sure to delight fans of a certain Gary Larson cartoon turned meme about the limitations of bovine cognition, cow tools are real. Larson’s 1982 comic for his series The Far Side showed a cow standing behind a table bearing an array of oddly shaped objects. The text below the image read simply “cow tools.” Now a pet cow named Veronika has been documented not only using a tool but doing so in a...

Animal rights activists have staged an eye-catching protest by hanging a woman from her feet outside a London KFC and pretending to slit her throat in a bid to highlight how some chickens are slaughtered for food. Several protesters from PETA were involved in the demo, which took place outside a branch of the fast-food chain on Brixton Road, Lambeth, at 12pm on Wednesday. Two female activists, nude but for a beige bodysuit, were hung upside down with shackles around their ankles to simulate the way that many chickens are slaughtered before they end up on our supermarket shelves. The...

In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s sensitive State Department emails – as well as some from President Obama – that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers. Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured server she kept in her basement. Comey also took the extraordinary step of bypassing the...