Free Republic

Ukraine is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on Sunday amid lingering fears that Russia's 4-year-old war could spark a repeat of the world's worst nuclear disaster. "The Chernobyl disaster was the result of a reactor experiment ordered ⁠by Moscow, in violation of safety protocols, and followed by lies and cover-ups," Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a ⁠statement. "To this day, the world has to face consequences brought by a totalitarian system that subordinated truth and science to ideology and political power." Millions were exposed to radiation, hundreds ⁠of thousands forced to flee, and wide swaths of...

In the ancient Mitanni Kingdom, an Indo-Aryan language very closely related to Sanskrit was used by the ruling class -- but only for very special occasions... Jack of All Languages explores the surprising linguistic links between ancient Indo-Aryan terms found in Syrian horse training manuals and early Sanskrit. By analyzing archaeological tablets and royal treaties, this investigation sheds light on how a prestige language influenced elite cultures in the Middle East centuries before the oldest known Vedic texts were composed. The Indo-Aryans of the Middle East | 13:16 Jack of All Languages | 7.33K subscribers | 2,142 views | April...

The Baby Boom were mostly still in their cradles or unborn when The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer came out in 1947, which makes the film a historical document – one of our first glimpses of a generation gap forming in postwar America. The whole idea of the teenager is really less than a century old, and by the late '40s it was edging out the "bobby-soxer" – a largely female phenomenon that was launched into public consciousness with the shrieking fans who descended on Frank Sinatra's performances at the Paramount Theater in New York during the war. In his book...

April 30, 2011 turned out to be one of Washington’s weirder nights. The president of the United States had just secretly ordered the raid that would take out Sept. 11 attack mastermind Osama bin Laden and he was about to deliver jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. But it was the barbs that President Barack Obama and headliner Seth Meyers hurled at real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star Donald Trump that created a political narrative that lives on: jokes = presidential revenge campaign. (For the record, Trump has said he had a good time. He told The Post’s Karen...

California drivers could be seeing lower gas prices once a new mega-pipeline project reaches completion, flooding the state with the much needed black gold. In a recent joint announcement, Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan, Inc. said its Western Gateway Pipeline project was moving forward following the closure in the state of multiple refineries. “Customer response during the open season underscores the importance of Western Gateway in addressing long‑term refined products logistics needs in the region,” Phillips 66 Chairman and CEO Mark Lashier said. Once fully operational, the massive pipeline will stretch from St. Louis, MO. to California, and be able...

In the summer of 1905, two men held a private conversation in Tokyo that the world wouldn't find out about for nearly two decades. No treaty was signed. No announcement was made. But in that room, the United States quietly handed an entire nation over to colonial rule — and set in motion a chain of events that would end at Pearl Harbor forty years later. This is the story of the Taft-Katsura Agreement, the secret deal that validated Japanese imperial ambition at the exact moment it needed validation most. We cover the Meiji Restoration and Japan's transformation from feudal...

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is still registered to run for re-election despite having resigned from office amid congressional and federal probes for allegedly mishandling disaster relief funding for personal gain. On April 17, Cherfilus-McCormick submitted a notice of her candidacy to the Florida Department of State as a Democrat just a week before officially stepping down from office. She resigned on Tuesday. The filing raises questions about whether Cherfilus-McCormick believes she can still pursue political office despite facing intense scrutiny at the moment. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cherfilus-McCormick’s decision to resign from office came right...

A ratbag group of cop-hating Black Lives Matters activists were handed the floor at City Hall as they launched a campaign to block extra funding to hire more police in Los Angeles. Everyday Angelenos were left frustrated as they were locked out of the first public budget hearing — while lefty activists led by Black Lives Matter–Los Angeles and People’s Budget LA were given 20 minutes to air their radical views. At stake is the city’s $14.9 billion budget, the single most consequential decision City Hall makes each year. The group, led Friday by Melina Abdullah, demanded the council shift...

Riddle of the day: When is deed theft not actually deed theft? Answer: When state Attorney General Tish James tries to have it both ways. That’s what happened Friday when the AG was asked about fellow lefty Brooklyn Councilman Chi Ossé’s arrest. Ossé was cuffed Wednesday as he tried to prevent an eviction he claimed stemmed from “deed theft.” At the time, James’ office issued a statement denying the case involved any such thing. It said the matter involved a property dispute between heirs and relatives of the home’s former co-owners. Yet on Friday, James sang a different tune. “Technically...

A California winery co-owned by Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, has shut its doors for good amid scrutiny of the congresswoman’s family wealth. The winery ceased business operations on April 4, two months after Republicans sent a letter demanding answers into the discrepancies between Omar’s congressional financial disclosures for 2024 and the one she filed just one year earlier, according to California business records. In a February letter to Mynett, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said financial disclosures filed by his wife Omar “show eStCru LLC and Rose Lake Capital LLC, which you hold ownership stakes...

We Might Be Wrong About Humanity's Near Extinction | 34:00 New Scientist | 484K subscribers | 330,045 views | April 8, 2026

The redistricting vote in Virginia was not only dishonest, it was unconscionable and shameless. I don't know how any democrat can look themselves in the mirror or sleep at night after the way that vote was worded.The vote should have been worded this way :DO YOU AGREE THAT THE REDISTRICTING PLAN PUT FORTH BY THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE APPROVED--GIVEN THE FACT THAT IT IS LIKELY THAT HALF THE POPULATION OF VIRGINIA WILL GET ONLY 9% REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS? THE OTHER HALF SPONSORING THIS VOTE WILL GET 91% REPRESENTATION.YES OR NO.I just cannot believe the wording that was actually used. It...

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has strongly condemned U.S. President Donald Trump for once again failing to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide in the White House’s annual April 24 statement, marking the 111th anniversary of the crime. The organization stated that the administration’s position reflects ongoing deference to Turkish pressure, despite longstanding recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. Congress, all 50 states, and previous administrations. It further stated that current U.S. policy is enabling broader regional dynamics that continue to endanger Armenians... ANCA also pointed to a February 2026 incident involving U.S. Vice President JD Vance,...

Sitting on bench seats in a retrofitted old hearse, stuck in quintessentially choked Los Angeles highway traffic, I listened to a woman narrate the macabre details of an 80-year-old murder. The guide, Blaze Lovejoy—whose business card identified her as a “dark storyteller” and “Manson specialist”—had already driven us through Hollywood. Now she was bringing us to downtown Los Angeles, the heart of this particular darkness. Lovejoy wore combat boots with flames across the toes and had a microphone headset on, her British accent giving the narration a Vincent Price vibe: “A Hollywood dream turned to a real-life nightmare, with a...

A curious GenZ BRIT talks about why GenX is missing from all of the talk...

FIRST ON FOX: A Minnesota Republican lawmaker is demanding answers from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after the Democrat failed to appear at a state hearing examining her potential connections to the sprawling pandemic-era fraud scandal. State Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, sent a formal letter to Omar on April 22 criticizing her absence from a scheduled committee hearing she was invited to and requesting extensive documentation related to the "Feeding Our Future" investigation that has gained national attention in recent months. "Minnesotans and the Members of the House Fraud Prevention &...

Tod Cutler investigates a medieval hack for increasing arrow distance during archery. Using a calibrated crossbow to ensure repeatable test conditions, the experiment examines how removing bindings and altering fletchings impacts the flight performance of arrows compared to standard configurations. Archers Hack Could Have Revealed Archery's BIGGEST LIE!!! | 13:35 Tod's Workshop | 571K subscribers | 504,113 views | April 17, 2026

Ibiza became part of the Islamic world in the year 902, when it was conquered by the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba. Settlement followed rapidly, taking place within little more than a generation, and by the twelfth century the island had developed into a modest but active urban centre within al-Andalus.Positioned along key maritime routes, Ibiza was not an isolated outpost but part of a dynamic network linking Iberia, North Africa, and the wider Mediterranean. This broader context helps explain the striking diversity uncovered in the new study, published in Nature Communications.The research team analysed 13 individuals buried between the tenth...

New examination of artifacts recovered from a tomb discovered in 1927 near the Etruscan site of Bisenzio suggests that luxury materials from the western Mediterranean were traded in the interior of the Italian peninsula, according to a report in La Brújula Verde. Located in central Italy's necropolis of Olmo Bello, the rectangular stone cist contained cremated remains, weapons, and ceramics dated to between 750 and 725 B.C. Andrea Babbi of Italy's Institute of Heritage Science said that one of these artifacts, a bronze brooch, had been wrapped with a thin, ornamental silver wire shaped by a series of grooved rollers....

It was more than it was Kraken-ed up to be. An octopus the size of the Hollywood Sign might seem like a monster from Greek mythology. However, new fossil evidence reveals that massive “kraken”-like cephalopods ruled the seas during the Cretaceous period, possibly preying on massive sea reptiles and other so-called apex predators, per a study published Thursday in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This massive mollusk “had among the largest body sizes of all organisms in the Cretaceous oceans,” wrote the researchers, who hailed from Hokkaido University. Indeed, at 62-feet-long, this colossal octopus could grow up...