Free Republic

Student-led protests over France’s struggling education system descended into chaos in Paris as fires broke out and chemical irritants were deployed. Student groups claimed 100,000 people protested in the capital, while the Interior Ministry put the nationwide turnout at around 266,000.

Republican attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy dropped a withering 52-count “public indictment” against Democratic incumbent Letitia James — accusing her of “dereliction” of duty ahead of their debate Thursday. The sweeping accusations were part of a cheeky campaign stunt that Komatireddy, a former federal prosecutor, wielded to argue her opponent has been too busy taking aim at President Trump to address the needs to New Yorkers during her two-terms. “The People do not allege that the defendant has been idle. They allege that she has been busy with the wrong things,” said Komatireddy, who also listed the “Exasperated People of...

Our star and primary energy source that makes life on this planet possible may also be a cosmic cannibal. That's according to new research that suggests the sun may have swallowed a super-Earth planet billions of years ago in its early history. And our star may still be hiding the evidence. The scientists behind this research think that the fingerprints of this violent consumption of a planet may still exist within the solar interior. Super-Earths are common occupants of other planetary systems, and these findings can explain why the solar system lacks such a world... Yildiz and colleagues theorize that...

WASHINGTON — Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly refused to answer whether he considers Iran or Israel to be the “greater threat to the United States.” When presented with that question during his debate Thursday against Republican Senate hopeful Mike Rogers, El-Sayed ripped it as a “ridiculous hypothetical.” “Here’s what’s happening right now: our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” El-Sayed, a Democrat, replied. “We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world’s energy supply.” “This is a situation...

A grove of rare American chestnut trees that supplies restoration seedlings in West Virginia has become the focus of a dispute over massive data center development, with an Alaska political connection through major donors to gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins. The American Chestnut Foundation’s West Virginia chapter has warned that development around the former state tree nursery in Mason County could jeopardize trees that provide most of the nuts it collects for seedling production for the once nearly extinct tree. The chapter identified 200 American chestnuts at the site and said their loss would significantly affect its ability to supply seedlings...

A Wisconsin congressional candidate has been arrested on hate crime charges after he went on a vulgar caught-on-camera rant against an Israeli dad with his young son in the car — after he was triggered by an anti-Hamas bumper sticker. Matthew Arndt, 54, allegedly cut off the 41-year-old father on a road in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon Thursday morning, flipping him the bird and cursing at him before pulling into a gas station, where the dad followed him and began filming the explosive encounter. “Do you want to tell me something?” the father asked. “Yeah, you’re a f------ piece...

Theresa M Long, MD, MPH, FS@LTCTheresaLong·5hAmazing man- SSG Alonzo Lundsford shot 7 times- one of which was to the head (that is now public knowledge) Read that again shot point blank 7 times by that man. I was a new doctor rotating on the surgery service on that day. At the purple heart ceremony he talked about struggling with not being about to stop it...I was like, " you are like a wall of power...you stopped 7 bullets, who else could have done that?" I often wondered how many were saved because it took so many bullets to take down...

Video shows Douglas County K-9s performing rappel training by: Adam RosenPosted: Oct 8, 2026DENVER (KDVR) — Whether or not you’re a dog lover, this may be one of the most absurd images you’ll ever see. Yes — that is a dog rappelling down a building. Fear not, though, as it’s a training exercise recently performed by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and their K-9 deputies. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office shared a video of training, as deputies worked to teach their K-9s how to rappel in a situation such as a robbery or even a shooter, catching a suspect by...

Echoes of War@EchoesofWarYT108 years ago today, a red-headed farmer from Pall Mall, Tennessee did something in the Argonne Forest that still doesn't seem real.Alvin York grew up dirt poor, a hard drinker and brawler, until a religious conversion in his twenties changed his whole life. When the draft notice came in 1917, he asked to be exempted as a conscientious objector. His church opposed war and so did he. The Army said no.His battalion commander spent hours going through the Bible with him, trying to convince him that a man could fight and still be right with God. York went...

Roughly seven thousand years ago, something erased the majority of men from the human gene pool. Not a plague. Not a famine. Something else entirely, and the evidence is still sitting in your own DNA. We dig into the genetic study that first uncovered this bottleneck, the mass graves across Neolithic Europe that back it up, and the invention sitting at the center of it all, one so ordinary you would never suspect it. When Our Simplest Invention Killed 95% Of All Men Alive | 22:04 The First Dawn | 17.8K subscribers | 240,685 views | August 3, 2026

The experimental pendulum saw that inspired this project is described in: Nicholas G. Blackwell, "Experimental stone-cutting with the Mycenaean pendulum saw," Antiquity 92, no. 361 (2018): 217 -- 232. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.226 Could This Ancient Saw Explain Egypt’s Curved Stone Cuts? | 5:51 IntoTheMap | 24.6K subscribers | 70,980 views | October 2, 2026

In a stunning move, a federal judge on Tuesday referred Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for federal criminal investigation to determine whether he should be charged with conspiracy or obstruction of justice in his efforts to overturn a murder conviction. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, said testimony from the DA's staffers described conduct by Larry Krasner and his top deputy, Matthew Stiegler, as "troubling." Larry Krasner and his attorneys are now being accused of committing crimes, such as suborning perjury, after they received a court petition to overturn a 2009 second-degree murder conviction. Dennis...

Family members of those killed in a January 2025 crash in which an Army Black Hawk helicopter hit a civilian airliner are irked over a new report that lets leaders off the hook. Sixty-seven people died in the incident in which the helicopter and an American Airlines jet collided, with pieces of the wreckage falling into the frigid Potomac River. An Army report listed multiple long-standing issues that contributed to the disaster, but did not say whether anyone was punished, according to The Washington Post. When families of those killed on American Airlines Flight 5342 were able to preview the...

Patience and Jarod Blocker are rare for their age. The Gillette couple has a passion for classic pre-64 Winchester Model 70 rifles. Planning for next year's Winchester Arms Collectors Association show in Cody, Patience says, "It's going to be bad-ass."

Looking for recomendations for sites to follow news & political topics in addition to FR. I read Conservative Tree House & scroll on X but I am dropping Gateway Pundit after more than a decade. I just can't face another picture of colons, colon tumors, feces, constipation remedies. There is more to life than the back passage. I should also note GP's dreadful fascination with worms & parasites but that focus has toned down recently.

AT&T CEO: Starlink Mobile won’t be able to penetrate walls. SpaceX: We’ve acquired 800 MHz spectrum, which will allow Starlink Mobile to provide better indoor coverage, including signals that can penetrate walls and other obstacles. People are underestimating Starlink Mobile.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that roughly 70 million American children under the age of 18 are now automatically enrolled in “Trump Accounts,” expanding access to the federal government’s investment initiative aimed at building long-term wealth for the next generation. The completion of the larger auto-enrollment rollout is a significant shift from the program’s original setup, which relied on parents actively filing paperwork to register their children. The transition to automatic enrollment follows new Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service guidance designed to streamline access and maximize participation nationwide. Under previous rules, parents or legal guardians were required to...

Screwball Democrat James Talarico left Texas and has not been seen in the Lone Star State since he went missing… And, now his campaign is caught in even more lies about his disappearance! Wackadoodle Democrat James Talarico has not been seen in Texas for 11 days! Talarico went to New York to raise money from angry Robert DeNiro and Zohran Mamdani supporters and has not been seen in the Lone Star State since then. Read the rest of the story, link in the comments

[Note: This is the Abstract of an ACM study, which I broke up into paragraphs for readability.] AI assistants are increasingly framed as digital coworkers rather than tools. In immersive settings such as VR, AI embodiment design choices can become salient social signals that shape human–AI interaction. We investigate how such choices influence users’ perceptions of and behavior toward AI coworkers by employing three functionally identical AI assistants varying in human-likeness and gender presentation. In a controlled study, 189 knowledge workers completed work tasks with them, provided ratings, and allocated monetary rewards; we additionally interviewed 34 participants. Our results show...

Employees at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago are unionizing over their working conditions, claiming their benefits have been cut and workloads are increasing just four months after the center opened in June. Workers circulated a letter to staff Wednesday announcing their intent to unionize, complaining about “increasing” workloads “vague responses” from administrators to a list of complaints they’d raised, the Chicago Sun Times reported. Some of the complaints suggested that the $900 million presidential center could already be facing financial trouble. Such complaints have led to a “high turnover rate,” with exiting employees “taking with them their institutional knowledge...