Free Republic

Bollywood icon and singer Asha Bhosle, known for having performed over 12,000 songs throughout her career, has died from a heart attack aged 92, her family confirms. A star of playback singing, whereby her songs were used in Bollywood films and then lip synced by actors, Bhosle’s career spanned across eight decades, with her voice being present in several iconic Indian films such as Umrao Jaan, Ijaazat and Caravan. Her marriage to composer RD Burman also saw the couple collaborate on many works, with the pair making significant contributions to the sound of Bollywood for a quarter of a century...

A 75-year-old grandmother was brutally beaten outside her New York City home after she asked her neighbor to pick up after their dog. Linda Scott was viciously stomped and punched in her front yard following the confrontation at around 9am on April 6, according to the New York Post. A doorbell camera captured Scott arguing with the dog owner before another woman in a red sweatshirt came in swinging violently at the grandmother. While Scott was on the ground, the attacker continued to land multiple punches on the elderly woman's head and proceeded to stomp at least twice on her...

A North Carolina woman played a prank on her convicted felon boyfriend that made him believe she cheated on him - but it backfired horribly after he took her seriously. Shyhied Ivey, 20, shot at a packed car with five people inside on April 5 in Charlotte after his girlfriend, Nevaeh Covington, decided to pretend that she was romantically involved with another man, according to an affidavit reviewed by the Daily Mail. Officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department responded to Columbus Circle after being dispatched over a report of assault with a deadly weapon just after midnight. Covington told police...

Sir Keir Starmer has some special guests to make you feel OK.

It’s the end of the world as we know it — a lot sooner than we think. A team of researchers have drastically scaled back the going estimate of how long it will be until the universe ceases to exist. Previously, scientists believed it would be 10¹¹⁰⁰ years until the very last objects in the cosmos would disappear forever — that’s a 1 followed by 1,100 zeroes, in layman’s terms. But a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics by a trio of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands posits the real figure as closer...

Video at link. About 50 minutes. A very good source of news that often includes cell phone video from inside Iran. Navy aircraft are being prepared for night time operations over Iran.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speaks during a press conference next to President of the European Council António Costa (C) and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (R) following the European Council meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on December 19, 2024. “What bothers Brussels is not just that Hungary stands out, but that this alternative could become popular among a majority of Europeans over time.” Zoltán Kiszelly is a Hungarian political analyst currently serving as Director of the Center for Political Analysis at the Budapest-based Századvég Foundation. We talked to him about the Hungarian elections...

~ FreeRepublic Memorial Wall 2.0 ~In honor of those FReepers who now rest from the labors of life.Their voices may have been silenced, but their words and deeds will never be forgotten. Jeff Head Jeff Head 1956 - 2021Member since 7/26/1998Tributes Homepage Proud American in Canada Julie Kosmond Murray 1962 - 2021Member since 7/12/2001Tributes Homepage terartTerri 19xx - 2021Member since 11/5/2012Tributes Homepage hsmomx3Diane Berry 1959 - 2022Member since 3/1/2001Tributes Homepage] Daffynition Carolyn Moley Lyman 1943 - 2022Member since 3/1/2007Tributes Homepage dainbramagedRichard 19xx - 2022Member since 10/9/2007Tributes Homepage Cboldt Charles “Clyde” Seyboldt 1955 - 2022Member since 1/28/1999Tributes Homepage JoeFromSidney Dr. Joseph...

Key points: >Consumer confidence plunged to a record low in April as fears mounted over rising energy prices and the broader impact of the Iran war, according to a University of Michigan survey. >The drop in sentiment coincided with a sharp spike in inflation expectations, with respondents seeing prices up 4.8% in a year from now, a full percentage point rise from the March reading. Consumer confidence plunged to a record low in April as fears mounted over rising energy prices and the broader impact of the Iran war, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday. The university’s headline...

President Donald Trump was non-committal on what could happen to the price of oil ahead of November’s midterm elections — even floating the prospect that they could go “a little bit higher.” In an interview on Sunday Morning Futures, Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo quizzed Trump on whether his newly-announced naval blockade on ships going in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. “Is this all going to be enough, the blockade in the strait, the opening up capacity in the United States, is this going to enough to lower the price of oil and gas, sir?” Bartiromo said. The...

A viral TikTok video is sparking widespread mockery after a user declared that maintaining a nice, manicured grass lawn is “racist” and “based in white supremacy.” The clip, posted earlier this week by TikTok user @softchaoschannel (who goes by JustJaim and uses she/they pronouns), opens with the bold claim, “I can’t stop thinking about how grass lawns are racist and like, based in white supremacy.” She continued, “If that doesn’t make sense, that’s okay, I guess. It seems really obvious to me. It’s really upsetting. Bring back weeds, bring back clover yards. Can anything just be okay in its natural...

Two Navy guided-missile destroyers entered the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, the first American warships to transit the strait since the U.S.-Israel offensive in Iran began on Feb. 28. USS Frank E. Petersen (DDG-121) and USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112) operated in the Persian Gulf after transiting the strait as part of the U.S. plan to “ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines,” according to a Saturday U.S. Central Command news release. Frank E. Petersen is part of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, while Michael Murphy is an independently-deployed destroyer, according to USNI News’ Fleet and Marine Tracker....

Richard Schenk heads the Democracy Interference Observatory (DIO) at MCC Brussels, a project dedicated to tracking the ways in which European institutions, Brussels-funded networks and certain political actors intervene in national campaigns across the European Union. In recent months, the observatory has focused much of its work on Hungary. Two days before this weekend’s parliamentary elections, Schenk argues that Budapest has become the main laboratory for a new form of European political pressure: less visible than in previous years, more sophisticated and, above all, built on regulatory, financial, and media instruments. For him, Hungary is no longer simply a conflict...

This is a youtube video. 8 minutes.

nti-liberty/gun cracktivists find themselves stuck on recycling old, failed narratives because there is really nothing new in the distortions and lies they tell in trying to obliterate the Second Amendment. Among those failed narratives is microstamping, a nonsensical measure about which I last wrote in Microstamping And Zombies, 2024 in June of 2024 at my home blog. Microstamping is laser engraving a unique, identifying code on the tips of firing pins which will “stamp” that code—letters, numbers, etc—on the primers of fired cases. Some microstamping schemes also demand a second stamp elsewhere on a fired case. California has always been...

Vanity Fair -- where the TDS level is so high that they actually wrote an overanalytical piece trying to figure out if South Park is sufficiently anti-Trump -- has just sunk what little credibility it had even lower by AGAIN performing over-the-top hype about the former royal couple, Harry & Meghan, that very few normal people have expressed any interest in.The former royal couple lost their "Sussex" title due to an inability to perform one of the easiest jobs on the planet, which consisted primarily of politely greeting people and not acting like complete jerks. The latter part of the...

President Donald Trump announced a U.S. blockade on the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social account, blaming the failure to reach a deal with Iran during talks in Pakistan this weekend. "So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not. Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz," Trump wrote. "At some point,...

Magazine Cover Story Snapshot X MARKS THE PEDWALKBY FRITZ LEIBER[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]This is how it all began—the terrible civil strife that devastates our world!Based in material in Ch. 7--"First Clashes of the Wheeled and Footed Sects"--of Vol. 3 of Burger's monumental History of Traffic, published by the Foundation for Twenty-Second Century Studies.The raggedy little old lady with the big shopping bag was in the exact center of the crosswalk when she became aware of the...

The new film suggests that collectivism works well enough until capitalism gets its hands on it. Viewers reacting to the trailer on social media noticed this immediately, with one post summarizing the film’s apparent message with withering accuracy: “It’s 2025. And Animal Farm is a movie about communism working, and being ruined by capitalism.”

It makes perfect sense that Democrats freaked out when DOGE started following the money. Look at what they’ve been up to all these years. here’s a reason Al Capone spent a few years in Alcatraz for tax evasion: Money is harder to hide than bodies. Any thug can take a few bucks from someone weaker. But when used, money leaves a trail. The key to criminal success is making ill gotten booty look as though it’s not ill gotten. That’s way easier said than done. This brings me to the Democrat party’s current woes. It is a political organization in...