Free Republic

Government is urged to implement action plan to address this issue before the 2024 Olympics ... With the Paris Olympics less than a year away, French authorities want to make sure the bedbugs don't bite during the games and have started a drive to exterminate the pests. Social media users have been publishing footage of the insects crawling around in high-speed trains and the Paris metro, alongside a rash of online articles about bedbugs in cinemas and even Charles de Gaulle airport. The reports have reached the highest levels of government. "The state urgently needs to put an action plan...

Authorities in Germany have indicated that unvaccinated people could be banned from cinemas and restaurants and that those who have taken the jab will have “more freedom.”Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Helge Braun told Bild that if cases keep rising, new rules will be brought in that will ensure the unvaccinated are deprived of basic lifestyle activities.“The number of new infections is increasing even faster than in the previous waves. That worries me very much,” said Braun.“If we have a high rate of infection despite our testing procedures then the unvaccinated will have to reduce their contacts,” she added.Braun went...

Memorial Day revenue at the domestic box office falls to its lowest level in nearly two decades; overseas, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ makes up ground with a $208.4 million launch. Memorial Day weekend was no picnic this year for Hollywood at the domestic box office. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales may have won the holiday frame with a four-day haul of $77 million from 4,276 theaters, but it is the lowest start for any Pirates movie outside of the first film. It did make up ground overseas, where it found plenty...

The largest movie theater chain in the country has cut the workweek of thousands of its employees, blaming Obama's health care law in a company memo. Regal Entertainment Group scaled back shifts for non-salaried workers to part time, putting them under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance, Fox News reports.

mother-of-six who today admitted hiding an explosives manual in her burka wrote a note suggesting she was willing to blow up herself and her children, a police source said. Houria Chahed Chentouf, 41, from Manchester, was sentenced to two years in prison for the terror-related offence but walked free from court after serving her time on remand. Officers found the chilling note written by Moroccan-born Chentouf at her home in Holland.

ROME - Anti-terrorism police arrested the Algerian cleric of a mosque and four Tunisians Sunday in a crackdown authorities said was aimed at preventing an al-Qaida-linked cell from sending suicide attackers to Iraq (news - web sites). The suspects were seized in pre-dawn raids in three cities in the northern Tuscany region, Genoa's Police Chief Oscar Fiorolli said. Genoa, a northern port city, began the investigations that led to the arrests. The suspects allegedly belonged to a cell of Ansar al-Islam, an organization based in northern Iraq with links to al-Qaida, Fiorolli told the Associated Press in Rome in a...

French cinemas refuse to screen The Passion By Kim Willsher in Paris (Filed: 29/02/2004) French cinema chains are refusing to distribute or screen Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ because of fears that it will spark a new outbreak of anti-Semitism. France is the only European country where there is still no distribution deal for the film, which depicts the last days of Jesus Christ in graphic detail and is accused by critics of stoking anti-Jewish sentiment. The film was released in America last week but French distributors are wary of its impact on audiences and want...