Free Republic

New York City has broken a 30-year record for the fewest number of shootings in the first two months of the year, police revealed Monday. The city saw 93 incidents of gun violence between January and February, the fewest for those months since 1993, officials said. Newly released NYPD statistics for February not only showed that dramatic drop in shootings, but also a 14.5% decline in overall serious crimes compared to the same month last year. “In the first two months of 2025, New York City experienced the fewest number of shooting incidents in the past 30 years, and the...

North Carolina’s former Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) said he would terminate his lawsuit against CNN on Friday following its report released during his gubernatorial run last year about inflammatory comments he made on a pornographic website. “The fact of the matter is this: the price we have paid in entering the political arena will never be recognized. There is no dollar amount high enough. While it has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of North Carolina, the continued political persecution of my family and loved ones is a cost I am unwilling to continue to...

Days after announcing on social media that he planned to open a music store in Williamsburg, Virginia, John Hinckley Jr. told News4 that his plan had changed. Hinckley — who shot President Ronald Reagan in a 1981 assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton — spent nearly 30 years in psychiatric care before his release. He has lived in the Williamsburg area since then. Hinckley announced his business plans on social media Monday, writing on X, "I’ll be opening a music store in Williamsburg, Va. The address is 455 Merrimack [sic] Trail. Grand opening is in a week or two!" The...

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday to shelve the planned hosting of the "Friendship Games", a big multi-sports event that the International Olympic Committee had condemned as a purely political project. Russia announced last year that it planned to relaunch the competition first staged in 1984 as a Soviet-led alternative to the Los Angeles Olympics, which the USSR had boycotted in retaliation for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. -snip- Putin's decree, published on an official website, left open the possibility of staging the games at some point in the future pending a "special decision...

Consumer prices rose slightly in September as the Federal Reserve prepared to cut interest rates and ease off the brakes of the U.S. economy. The consumer price index, a closely watched gauge of inflation, rose 0.2 percent in September and 2.4 percent over the previous 12 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Thursday. The annual inflation rate was the lowest since February 2021. Economists expected prices to rise 0.1 percent in September and 2.3 percent annually, according to consensus estimates, down from 2.5 percent in August. The new inflation data comes less than a month before the election, in...

Dividends have begun to pay off for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s migration strategy as figures have shown a near-two-thirds reduction of illegal arrivals over last year. Statistics released this week by the Italian Interior Ministry showed that 41,530 illegal immigrants landed on the country’s coasts since the start of the year. While still historically high, the figure represents a 64 per cent decline over the same period last year, when 114,513 were recorded reaching Italian beaches amid a massive wave of illegals pouring across the Mediterranean from North Africa, particularly Tunisia. The figures also show a drop compared to...

The population of the State of California has fallen again — below 39 million people, according to new data from the U.S. Census. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: California’s population dipped by about 75,000 from 2022 to 2023, estimates released Tuesday by the Census Bureau shows, with about 38,965,000 million people in the state this year. The state’s population has fallen since its 2019 peak of 39.5 million, though the annual loss has also slowed each year. Between 2021 and 2022, California lost a net of about 104,000 people, or 0.3%, higher than the dip of 0.2% between 2022 and...

Special Counsel David Weiss dropped one of the gun charges count against Hunter Biden on Wednesday. The move is apparently a procedural step, according to the Associated Press: The procedural step removes a charge alleging he broke a law against drug users having guns when he bought a gun in 2018, during a period he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. The president’s son is now facing a three-count indictment focused on the same purchase that includes both gun possession and false statement charges. No new tax counts have yet been filed by special counsel David Weiss, who is overseeing the...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal judge late Wednesday it did “not intend to proceed” with a campaign finance charge against disgraced FTX founder and Democrat super donor Sam Bankman-Fried. Consultation with the Bahamas on the campaign finance charges in Bankman-Fried’s original extradition document last year were behind the decision as part of an effort to adhere to the legal obligations therein, Forbes reports. The campaign finance violation charge was among eight counts present in the DOJ’s original indictment—which also includes wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering—in December.

President Joe Biden’s net approval rating dropped a full seven points in one week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Only 38 percent approved of Biden this week, while 58 percent disapproved for a net approval rating of -20. Last week, 41 percent approved of Biden and 54 percent disapproved for a net approval rating of -13.

NEW: Congress drops mask mandate ahead of Biden’s State of The Union speech on Tuesday “Mask wear is now an individual choice option,” the Capitol Attending Physician said. https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1498111248411492355

Quebec stepped up its “deconfinement plan” this week and began lifting coronavirus restrictions, while Premier Francois Legault rejected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s effort to crush the Freedom Convoy protest movement by invoking emergency powers.“I think that I was very clear with the prime minister that the federal Emergencies Act should not, must not apply in Quebec,” Legault said on Monday. “We don’t have any problems in Quebec so far. The Sureté du Québec has everything under control.”There were Freedom Convoy demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec City over the past two weeks, but they were relatively restrained and mostly held...

Walmart said in a memo today it will no longer require fully vaccinated U.S. employees to wear masks at work. However, those who wish to wear a mask while working are permitted to do so.Driving the news: New COVID cases are plunging and the U.S. appears to be on its way out of this wave of the pandemic after less than two months, Axios' reported. And NIAID director Anthony Fauci this week said the country is headed out of the "full-blown pandemic phase of COVID-19."Details: “Effective immediately, fully vaccinated associates will not be required to wear masks while working in...

NEW DELHI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) said on Friday it had withdrawn an application for emergency-use authorisation of its COVID-19 vaccine in India, after failing to meet the drug regulator's demand for a local safety and immunogenicity study.The decision means the vaccine will not be available for sale in the world's two most populous countries, India and China, in the near future. Both countries are running their immunisation campaigns using other products.Unlike other companies conducting small studies in India for foreign-developed vaccines, Pfizer had sought an exception citing approvals it had received elsewhere based on trials done...

President Biden’s standing among Americans keeps sinking, according to new national poll. The president’s approval rating stands at just 38%, with disapproval at 53% in a Quinnipiac University survey released on Wednesday. That’s down from a 42%-50% approval/disapproval rating for Biden in a survey Quinnipiac University conducted last month. The president received negative scores in the double digits on all but one key issue asked in the new poll, which was conducted Oct. 1-4. And a majority of those surveyed said the Biden administration is not competent in running the federal government.

For the first time in months, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Los Angeles County has dropped below 1,000. State data shows that 991 coronavirus patients were hospitalized in the county on Tuesday, which is approximately a 40 percent decrease from the beginning of September. This also marks the first time COVID-19 hospitalizations have dipped below 1,000 in the county in two months. Los Angeles County has also seen a decline in intensive care patients, with 305 patients in the ICU on Tuesday — a 31 percent decrease from the start of September. There were previously about 1,800 hospitalized COVID-19...

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has dropped to 47.5 percent, according to polling conducted by the Trafalgar Group. Biden’s approval rating has shrunk 9.5 percent since April when Gallup marked the president at 57 percent approval:

The seven-day rolling average of new coronavirus infections in the United States, a key metric for gauging the severity of the disease, dropped below 50,000 on Tuesday for the first time since early July, data from the COVID Tracking Project and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed.

U.S. stocks fell sharply once again on Thursday after an address from President Donald Trump failed to quell concerns over the possible economic slowdown from the coronavirus.The S&P 500 dropped 7% shortly after the open, triggering a 15-minute “circuit breaker,” which temporarily halts trading at the New York Stock Exchange. The broad index also joined the  Dow Jones Industrial Average in bear market territory. The 30-stock Dow slid more than 1,600 points, or 7.%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 7%.  Before the open, futures contracts tied to the major indexes fell to their so-called limit down thresholds, sliding 5%. These limit down levels act as a as...

The James Comey supposed "Comey Blockbuster" tell all, book drops from #1 to $7 on the Amazon .com, Best Seller list in less then two weeks after its release. At first it went from #1 to #3...then back to #2 and today dipped downward to #7. Methinks it has seen its best days, as both Robert Mueller & James Comey ain't the "belles of the ball", no more!!! Shucks, Hillary Clinton's book, "What Happened" was #1 in sales for at least 30-35 weeks...but that brisk exposure and sale did absolutely nothing, zero, zilch to boost, help or aide failed, loser,...