Free Republic

Los Angeles pimps used “horrific” acts of cruelty to keep a vicelike grip on a sleazy stretch of south LA road where perverts can buy sex with children, and women turn tricks for as little as $40, cops and prosecutors said. Vile flesh peddlers maintain a thriving sex business on LA’s Figueroa Corridor by branding prostitutes, recruiting girls from foster homes, forcing them to get abortions, and even biting and punching them with Rolex watches, authorities said. The sickening sex trade secrets of the infamous Hoover Criminals gang’s brutal prostitution ring were revealed in a massive takedown of the Hoovers...

In 1825, a rich Welsh industrialist bought an entire American town to prove that socialism could work. He had the money, the buildings, the theory, and hundreds of eager followers waiting to move in. Two years later, it was over. 🧵

...To read it, we never unrolled it physically. Instead, we scanned it with high-resolution X-rays, reconstructed the wound sheet inside the volume, flattened it into a readable surface, and used machine learning to bring out the faint traces of ancient ink...PHerc. 1667 is what survives of a larger roll: earlier attempts to open it by hand -- in the nineteenth century, and again in 1969 and the 1980s -- destroyed its outer layers and left only the compact inner core, about 8 cm of an original height of 19–24 cm. From that surviving portion we have now recovered and read...

A new study compares the carved symbolism of Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone with ritual imagery from the Trypillia culture, suggesting that early farming societies in Anatolia and Eastern Europe may have shared cosmological ideas about time, death, sacred space and the movement of the heavens.At Göbekli Tepe, the famous Vulture Stone has never been easy to read. Its carved birds, snakes, scorpion, abstract signs and headless human figure have inspired competing interpretations for decades. Was it a scene of death ritual, an astronomical code, a mythic narrative, or something more complex? A new study argues that the answer may not...

Tuesday's birthright citizenship ruling by the Supreme Court has provided Americans with the answer to an ever-pertinent question -- who is an American citizen? Debates likely won't cease as the highest court in the land issued a 6-3 ruling on President Donald Trump's executive order -- issued his first day back in office on Jan. 20, 2025 -- saying the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution only grants birthright citizenship to persons who have at least one parent that is a permanent resident or citizen. The court struck down this order, effectively saying that anyone born here under any...

Danny Glover has spent decades portraying men of courage, conviction, humor, and moral clarity. Now, at 79, the beloved actor and activist is facing one of the most personal challenges of his life: Alzheimer’s disease. The “Lethal Weapon” star revealed publicly that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, opening up in an emotional interview about the changes already unfolding and the difficult road ahead. Glover said the diagnosis came after he received an honorary Oscar in 2022, a milestone moment in a career defined not only by memorable performances but also by decades of humanitarian work. For many fans, the...

Kamala Harris is quietly strengthening ties with one of the Democratic Party’s fastest-rising progressive stars, holding an extended private phone call with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The conversation, which took place last week, focused on the future of the party and served as the beginning of what is expected to be a longer series of discussions between the two, Axios reports. “This is about positioning for the 2028 primary where no candidate knows where the lane for support for Palestinian rights is going to be but they know there’s going to be one,” Republican consultant Mike Madrid told...

A waterspout formed over a lake in Germany in a rare weather event that caused a stir in the area. The phenomenon was seen forming over Lake Constance near Lindau on Wednesday, German news agency DPA reported. 1:00 VIDEO AT LINK...............

In the last few decades especially, archaeologists have been forced to admit a humbling truth: our timelines and tidy narratives are incomplete, and in some places, wildly so. Below are fifteen ruins and archaeological cultures that either emerged from total obscurity or still sit at the edge of what we can confidently say. Some are contenders for full-blown “lost civilizations,” others are enigmatic cities that do not fit neatly into our old stories. Together, they show just how much of human history is still hidden – literally – under our feet. Imagine a flash flood tearing through a quiet valley...

The Department of Transportation announced today a return to a technology of the past that feels like it's from the future. Supersonic flight is returning to commercial airlines once again. For too long, outdated rules based on old technology held back American aerospace innovation. Now, we are updating those rules for the first time since the 1970s.Today @USDOT announced a new proposal to enable civil supersonic flight by replacing speed limits with noise… pic.twitter.com/vwR4J88W1F— Director Michael Kratsios (@mkratsios47) June 30, 2026 Ever since the famous Concorde retired in 2003, supersonic flights - with speeds reaching well beyond the speed of...

A prankster at East Brook Middle School in Paramus, New Jersey, just pulled off what might be the most insane yearbook prank you'll ever see. Well, look who's burning books now! Yes, a child was supposed to send in a baby photo and sent in a photo of baby Adolf Hitler instead. And somehow, no one on the yearbook committee or in the middle school offices noticed the baby photo was over 100 years old. Here's more from the Post: 'Earlier today, after students had already received their yearbooks, we learned that the baby pictures section of the yearbook contained...

Sergey Brin spent a career building one of the most valuable companies on earth. It took Zohran Mamdani less than a year in office to convince him New York City real estate wasn’t worth the trouble. Amphitheatre LLC, the family office vehicle tied to the Google co-founder, quietly sold off its stake in a New York apartment fund late last year, according to filings first reported by Bloomberg. The fund, managed by A&E Real Estate, controls nearly 5,900 rent-stabilized units scattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Brin’s exit price was not generous. He accepted roughly six cents on...

Iran’s most senior clerics have called for the assassinations of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring the leaders mahdour al-dam — or deserving of death. The 88-member Assembly of Experts issued a 10-point statement in which they said killing “the wicked prime minister of the Zionist regime” and “the criminal American president” was a religious duty that must be carried out “under any circumstances.” The clerics — who are constitutionally tasked with choosing and supervising the supreme leader — wrote that the call for their assassinations that avenging the death of supreme leader Ali Khamenei was of...

Zo’s busting the budget. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural, record-breaking nearly $126 billion budget passed late Tuesday — growing city spending by more than $10 billion from last year despite his past dire warnings about the Big Apple’s financial situation. The under-the-wire vote by the City Council came just hours before a Wednesday deadline and after frantic last-minute attempts to drum up votes for a spending deal that disappointed lefties and moderates alike. The budget, which includes no significant cuts, ballooned from last year’s roughly $116 billion spending plan, for an approximate 8.5% increase. It passed 45-6, largely on party lines....

Insurgent socialist candidate Melat Kiros defeated longtime Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) Tuesday in Colorado’s 1st District House primary, marking the latest blow to the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Kiros came out on top of the incumbent, 49.3% to 43.5%, by the time the Associated Press called the race late Tuesday. Kiros’s win in the solidly blue district follows a string of victories by socialist and far-left candidates over incumbent and establishment-backed Democrats in New York in June, and it’s expected to tilt the political makeup of the House Democratic caucus even further to the left after the midterm...

Excavators of Tel Hadid recently released the discovery of a unique seal stamp from the seventh century b.c.e., the time of Assyrian domination of the Levant. It is not the first find from this remarkable site that gives us a better understanding of the people who were moved into Israel during the Assyrian period...The first thing to stand out about the small oval seal (less than 2 centimeters at its widest) is its unique material. Made out of the inner shell of a nacreous mollusk, also known as mother-of-pearl because of its role in the creation of pearls, it is...

The Socialists aren't just taking over New York. This happened in Colorado. A 29-year-old Democratic Socialist ousted a longtime Democrat incumbent in Colorado's 1st District in Tuesday night's House primary. Far-left candidate Melat Kiros defeated 15-time incumbent Democrat Rep. Diana DeGette on Tuesday night. Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 🚨 It's crunch time in Colorado 🚨 We have just ONE more day to send @MelatKirosCO to Congress! We made 110k calls on Friday, but we're not done yet... Join us tonight @ 6 PM MT/8 PM ET to break Friday's...

The yen hit a fresh 40-year low against the dollar in Asia on Wednesday morning, keeping traders on high alert for possible currency intervention by the Japanese government. Ongoing expectations for a gradual pace of interest-rate increases by the Bank of Japan, combined with growing prospects for the Federal Reserve to raise the Fed funds rate this year, are pressuring the yen lower and the dollar higher. The dollar's fresh 40-year high against the yen is "leaving markets on watch for stronger verbal warnings or outright intervention from Japanese authorities," said Taylor Nugent, senior economist at National Australia Bank, in...

June 30 (Reuters) - Gold edged higher from ‌a near seven-month low on Tuesday but remained on track for its worst quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2013, as the dollar remained firm amid expectations of U.S. interest rate hikes. Spot gold inched up 0.4% at $4,031.29 per ​ounce, as of 1150 GMT, after touching its lowest level since November 2025 earlier in the ​session. U.S. gold futures for August delivery lost 0.2% to $4,045.30/oz. "The failure to sustain ⁠gains (for gold) highlights the current fragile sentiment, where traders continue to sell into strength rather than buy ​into weakness,...

When Americans think of the beverage that fueled the American Revolution, they usually picture black tea — but it turns out that green tea was just as popular. The Founding Fathers and their contemporaries drank both types of tea, Bruce Richardson, the Kentucky-based founder of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, told Fox News Digital. British subjects “were as likely to be drinking green tea as black tea, whether you were in Jane Austen [era] England … or you were in colonial Boston,” he added. “There were five teas, all from China, because that was the only country that was exporting tea,”...