Free Republic

The rule of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa since 1994 has been marked by a widening chasm between poor black people, the majority and a tiny black elite, who get richer and richer. A quarter of our children are so badly malnourished that their brains are stunted for life. Amid this terrible hunger, President Cyril Ramaphosa lives in fabulous splendor. He is said to be worth 6 billion rand (around $350 million). He has mansions in the rich parts of South Africa. He has a fleet of luxury cars. He owns a game farm of 11,120 acres....

Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Sunday declined to retract her claim that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin received money from deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Crockett made the false suggestion on the House floor Nov. 18, but the contributions in question were from a different Jeffrey Epstein. On MS NOW’s (formerly MSNBC) “The Weekend,” host Jacqueline Alemany offered Crockett a chance to correct herself, but the congresswoman declined to retract her accusation. WATCH: VIDEO AT LINK................... Cartelville Text “You made a little bit of news last week when you mistakenly accused Lee Zeldin and other Republicans— ” Alemany...

Repaired cracks cover the walls of every large New York Thruway rest stop near Rochester, according to a recent News10NBC investigation. The damage is visible at sites like Clarence, Pembroke, and Clifton Springs — all finished in 2023. The walls were built by Nexii, a Canadian company promoting eco-friendly materials. Applegreen, the Irish firm that rebuilt 27 rest stops with private funding, says the cracks aren’t a safety concern and repairs are ongoing. No toll or tax money funded the construction, officials confirmed.

An elderly New Yorker was tragically killed when Monday’s nor’easter blew a solar panel from a roof and sent it careening into the streets below. A forceful wind gust ripped the massive solar panel – more than 7-by-3 feet across — from an outdoor parking lot structure on Ocean Parkway near Brighton Beach Avenue, according to the NYPD and the city’s Department of Buildings. The panel was swept up by the wind and flew about 20 feet, then struck 76-year-old Lyudmila Braun, cops and buildings officials said.

A new “grass to gas” agricultural biomethane plant is set to provide enough energy to heat two pharmaceutical manufacturing sites by the end of next year. The state-of-the-art plant is being launched by Carbon AMS in Duleek in County Meath today. The plant is a partnership between the anaerobic digestion company, local farmers and biopharmaceutical company Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease. Carbon AMS is focused on the production of biomethane in Ireland by converting “grass to gas” through anaerobic digestion. When operational, the plant will cover 100% of the heating needs of Alexion’s two manufacturing sites in Dublin and Athlone by...

A major highlight of Thanksgiving is the menu, but the big meal can come with a lot of wasted food. Experts say a pinch of extra planning can ensure more gets eaten. Roughly 320 million pounds (145 million kilograms) of food will be wasted at Thanksgiving this year, according to ReFED, a nonprofit that tracks food waste. ReFED says that’s largely because people prepare more food than is needed for the meal and then don’t finish the leftovers. “That is essentially like five meals each for all of the food insecure people in the U.S.,” said Yvette Cabrera, food waste...

Jane Fonda is leaving quite a trail of over-the-top remarks in interviews these days. She’s on a tear about climate change and she won’t rest until the streets are clogged with protesters. The latest delusional dribble coming from Hanoi Jane is found at Viceland. The show, hosted by Michael Moynihan, is promising to include humor, besides standard interviews and panel discussions. Yeah. The impeachment process is hilarious. The network’s official description of the program says the country is “in the grip of a constitutional death match so grave, so outrageous, and so fast-moving that it’s almost impossible to process...

Water, and its absence, has become Iran’s national obsession. In the mosques of northern Tehran the imams have been praying for rain, while the meteorologists count down the hours until the weather is forecast to break and rain is finally due to fall from the sky. Forecasts of “rain-producing clouds” are front-page news. More than 50 days have passed since the start of Iran’s rainy season and more than 20 provinces have not yet had a drop. The number of dams that have less than 5% of their reservoir capacity had increased from eight to 32, and the crisis has...

Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said. The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday. Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to the country’s southern coast. But experts say the proposal does not change the reality for the nearly 10 million people who live in Tehran and...

The progressive and Islamist movements, both global in scope, have far more in common than meets the eye. As New York City celebrates a socialist-Islamist mayor and we approach the tenth anniversary of the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, it is worth reflecting on the many commonalities that unite the Blue-Green (Democrat-Islamist) alliance. Many have remarked on the absurdities of these misfit ideologies as bedfellows. LGBTQ often professes love for Hamas irrespective of the latter’s nonnegotiable religious injunction to sentence gays to death. Feminists who rage against the so-called white western patriarchy offer unconditional support for an unyielding theocratic...

Today has been officially declared World Toilet Day by the United Nations (but you knew that already, didn’t you) with “climate change” blamed for making sanitation less available across the planet. The globalist organization has marked the scatological tribute event by throwing its full resources into an effort to promote toilets for all, “with the poorest, especially women and girls, worst affected.” It has also published a list of demands for the world to heed to make toilets more accessible while “climate change is reshaping our world – with glaciers melting, weather worsening, and sea levels rising.”

Lentil plant grown at Fuerteventura. Credit: Fayna Brenes =============================================================== Ancient lentils preserved in volcanic silos link modern Canarian crops to 2,000-year-old North African origins. Lentils cultivated in the Canary Islands today have roots that extend nearly 2,000 years into the past. This finding comes from the first-ever genetic study of archaeological lentils, conducted by researchers at Linköping University and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain. Because these lentils have been adapted for centuries to thrive in hot and arid environments, they may offer valuable genetic traits for future crop breeding in response to ongoing climate change....

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.” In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.” “One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” Leo said. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to...

No one uses “Malthusian” as a compliment. Since 1798, when the economist and cleric Thomas Malthus first published “An Essay on the Principles of Population,” the “Malthusian” position – the idea that humans are subject to natural limits – has been vilified and scorned. Today, the term is lobbed at anyone who dares question the optimism of infinite progress. Unfortunately, almost everything most people think they know about Malthus is wrong. The story goes like this: Once upon a time, an English country parson came up with the idea that population increases at a “geometrical” rate, while food production increases...

The president of the United States landed in Paris on Monday, his mouth full of grave and ominous reproaches for the heedless. Climate change, the central topic of the world summit he expects to lead, must be dealt with. Do we hear that? Must be dealt with! Or else. "I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late," affirms the president. "And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us." But to be believed you have to be believable, a point that hardly ever...

COPENHAGEN, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scenarios, the country's climate minister told Reuters. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, current brings warm water from the tropics northward toward the Arctic, and the flow of warm water helps keep Europe’s winters mild. But as warming temperatures speed the thaw of Arctic ice and cause meltwater from Greenland’s ice sheet to pour into the ocean, scientists warn the cold freshwater could disrupt the current’s...

"Don't kill it, don't squish it, don't cut it up," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warned residents via NBC as a toxic flatworm spreads across North Texas. While this invasive species has been in the US for years, the state's fatally heavy rains, fueled by climate change, are enabling the hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium kewense) to thrive and spread. This brown and black-striped, flattened land planarian with a distinctive half-moon-shaped head can reach lengths of up to 40 cm (15.7 inches). Like many flatworm species, it can regenerate a whole new worm from slices of itself. Decapitating the worm will only...

Tens of thousands of trees in the heart of the Amazon rainforest have been wiped out to prepare for a global summit on saving the environment. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump slammed the creation of a multi-lane highway that tore straight through the ancient rainforest for this month’s COP30 climate summit. Approximately 100,000 trees across eight miles have been removed to ferry 50,000 world leaders, climate change activists, journalists, and other high-profile guests to the conference in Belém, Brazil. “They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel. It’s...

Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle. It is elliptical, or slightly oval-shaped. This means there is one point in the orbit where Earth is closest to the Sun, and another where Earth is farthest from the Sun. The closest point occurs in early January, and the far point happens in early July (July 7, 2007). If this is the mechanism that causes seasons, it makes some sense for the Southern Hemisphere. But, as an explanation for the Northern Hemisphere, it fails miserably.In fact, Earth's elliptical orbit has nothing to do with seasons. The reason for seasons was explained in...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Officials from countries most vulnerable to global warming offered searing dispatches of life on the front line of a warming planet Friday, as world leaders gathered on the edge of the Amazon rainforest for the annual United Nations climate talks. Haitian diplomat Smith Augustin, whose country was pummeled by Hurricane Melissa, appealed to wealthier countries that produce the greatest share of the world’s emissions to support Haiti in preparing for bigger storms. Developed countries pledged $300 billion to help poor nations cope with climate shocks at last year’s summit, but the money has yet to be...