Free Republic

The Phoenicians had almost no land, no vast armies and no great empire. Yet they shaped the ancient world in ways that still affect us today. So what did they understand that everyone else missed? The Phoenicians Knew Something They Shouldn't Have | 18:07 Michael Button | Patterns of History / Michael Button | 36,207 views | August 20, 2026

US Senate Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed has lost support ahead of his election against Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan. On Thursday, Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett slammed El-Sayed's policies and declared her support for Rogers. Whitsett's remarks came during a 'Democrats for Mike Rogers' campaign event, where Rogers claimed his door for new voters "is open". "To Democrat voters who feel their nominee doesn't represent them and their values, all hope is not lost," Rogers said. "I'm not asking you to be a Republican. I'm asking you for the opportunity to earn your trust… our door is open."

Venezuela's new petroleum minister sees her South American home not as a dilapidated former oil giant, but as an emerging energy economy ripe for U.S. and foreign investments in new oil and gas exploration, both onshore and offshore. Paula Henao, who took over as the hydrocarbons minister in March after the forced U.S. removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro, told an overflowing Houston energy audience on Wednesday that Venezuela is much more than just its famed heavy-grade crude oil. There are more than 916 exploration opportunities awaiting foreign investment, she said, including natural gas and other untapped oil basins. She...

Nolan’s Odyssey is a massive boon to those who care about literature and the written word. Book versions of Homer’s epic poem have been selling like hotcakes in the wake of the film’s release. Just days after the film premiered, translations of the story had reached Nos. 4, 8, and 49 on Amazon’s bestsellers list, with a translation of the Iliad at No. 61. Nolan’s film “boosted sales” of the book enough to net a sales increase of 76% “across all editions,” including both text and audio versions of the tale, as Spotify revealed that listens to the audiobook on...

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has officially done what seemed almost impossible. The epic has overtaken Deadpool & Wolverine to become the highest-grossing R-rated Hollywood film of all time, with its worldwide box-office collection reaching a staggering $1.35 billion. The Odyssey opened in theatres on July 17 and collected around $123.5 million domestically during its opening weekend. Since then, the film has continued to add to its worldwide total, eventually crossing the $1.35 billion mark. Its current haul includes roughly $516 million from North America and more than $835 million internationally. The nearly three-hour adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek poem has...

Spent nuclear fuel could become easier to recycle with a high-speed chemical separation system being developed by Argonne National Laboratory, SHINE and Case Western Reserve University. The partners are working to adapt Argonne’s Packed Centrifugal Equipment for Radiochemical Separation, or PaCERS, for SHINE’s planned nuclear fuel recycling process. The technology uses rapid rotation to create centrifugal forces far stronger than normal gravity, helping separate radioactive materials more efficiently. Unlike conventional approaches that can require large amounts of solvent and multiple processing stages, PaCERS is designed as a high-throughput, lower-solvent system. The goal is to make the chemical separation steps involved...

A missing US Attorney found dead in an office at a federal building in San Diego killed himself, the California Post has learned. Local police discovered Acting US Attorney Andrew Haden, 48, dead inside an office at the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building Wednesday. Sources familiar with the case told The Post that Haden hanged himself.

We have met the enemy — and it is watching us. There’s a growing backlash against Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers that have become ubiquitous across the country. The cameras take images of license plates and store them in a searchable database that police departments can query in the course of their investigations. Opponents of the cameras consider them an instrument of Big Brother, who’s not only watching, but constantly recording and tracking. Vandals have disabled and stolen the Flock cameras, and even shot them. There’s a movement to get jurisdictions to cancel their contracts with Flock (the...

Eric Swalwell’s accusers were left totally in the dark before the disgraced congressman was confronted by federal agents at the airport, according to one of his alleged victim’s attorneys. Arick Fudali, an attorney for Swalwell accuser Lonna Drewes, said he was surprised to learn of the federal investigation, adding that authorities had not contacted his client during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Jesse Weber Live” Thursday. “You know, certainly an interesting development,” Fudali told host Jesse Weber. “I was a bit caught off guard because Ms. Drewes has not been contacted by the FBI or anyone from federal law enforcement.” The...

oodrow Wilson holds a distinction no other American president has: he earned a Ph.D., completing his doctorate in political science and history at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. That same year, he wrote an essay called “The Study of Administration,” later published in the inaugural volume of Political Science Quarterly. Historians widely credit this essay as the founding document of public administration as a formal academic field, and Wilson himself as the father of that discipline.Wilson’s central argument was that government should be split into two separate domains: politics, where elected officials set broad goals and policy direction, and administration,...

Is Erdogan siding with the jihadis? Probably. Who let Turkey into NATO? Broadcast coming in 10 minutes. Will be available for playback after the program is over.

Russia marks Cheburashka's 60th birthday on August 20 amid indications officials in the country may be set to disown the beloved character over claims he represents a dark force corrupting Russia's children, along with debate over the creature's "ethnicity." Amid the record-breaking success of an eponymous 2023 film about Cheburashka and its 2026 sequel, Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent pro-Kremlin political theorist, has repeatedly railed against the character, whom he has variously described as a "lunar demon" and "rootless cosmopolitan" (a pejorative Stalin-era term for a Jewish person) responsible in part for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In December a...

A former University of Kentucky student-athlete pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree manslaughter in the death of her infant son, whose body was found inside a trash bag in a closet. Laken Snelling had initially pleaded not guilty after a grand jury indicted her on several charges, including first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant. Snelling, 22, changed her plea to guilty on Friday, NBC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky, WLEX reported. Appearing before Fayette County Circuit Court Judge Diane Minnifield, Snelling began crying as she entered her guilty plea. “I was...

A notice promoting an HIV/AIDS medicine product from Nigeria traditional healer Sarkin Lakanin Jihar Kano. When US funding cuts disrupted access to free antiretroviral therapy, some Nigerians turned to traditional healers marketing herbal ‘cures’ framed as Islamic medicine. Copyright: Photo Courtesy of Sarkin Lakanin Jihar Kano Speed read[KANO, SciDev.Net] Aisha* once relied on free antiretroviral therapy (ART) from a clinic in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, funded through the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme. The treatment kept her HIV suppressed. That changed when US President Donald Trump ordered a halt to PEPFAR funding in January 2025. “When I...

Explanation: What does it feel like to zoom around a spinning supermassive black hole? The featured video is an animation showing a time-lapse of 4 years of observations of the star S301 orbiting Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole in the center of our Galaxy. S301 was discovered in 2023 with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Astronomers recently found that S301 takes approximately 8.7 years to go around the black hole and reaches speeds of 25,000 km/s. It comes closer to the black hole than any other stars...

We should be concerned about young men's physical and mental healthA new documentary, "Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere," hit number one on Netflix this spring, spotlighting the influencers who exploit young men and monetize their insecurity. One way they do this is through looksmaxxing apps. Imagine a 15-year-old taking a selfie. Seconds later, an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm returns its verdict: 6.3 out of 10. Underneath, a list of repairs: improve your canthal tilt, sharpen your jawline, raise your facial harmony, increase your masculinity. He has just been told, by something that sounds like science, how far his face sits...

Navigating a world with peanut allergies can be… well, nuts. Even if you’re not the one who’s allergic. More than six million Americans have a food allergy, and peanuts are the third-most common allergen. And it doesn’t just impact those who can’t eat it: Because reactions can be deadly, peanut-free policies and other restrictions are common in places like schools and restaurants. But a Minnesota-based startup is developing a new “hypoallergenic” peanut that could bring the salty snack back to hospitals, planes, cafeterias and restaurants without causing allergic reactions. Nurtured Nuts CEO Bryant Williams sought to remove three of the...

Whilst several reports of a confirmed Geely Hypercar programme for the 2027 FIA World Endurance Championship have somewhat jumped the gun, it is entirely correct to say that every day that passes sees the prospect of the Chinese OEM joining top class WEC action next year move closer. Geely have been in negotiations for some time to acquire the assets of the current Alpine Endurance Team with a firm view to contesting the WEC from the start of the 2027 season. This after Alpine announced in February that their A424 programme would cease after the end of the current season....

Alyssa Milano is revisiting her 'debilitating' postpartum anxiety attacks, which led to a psychiatric ward stay amid the high-profile Lindsay Clancy trial. Clancy is accused of murdering her three children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan at her home in Massachusetts in 2023.

Microsoft employees donated over $2 Million to Democrats so far in 2026, 80% of all political donations. This from the company which studies "Pronouns in Software".