Free Republic

The Kansas City Star reports that Peruvian authorities made a stunning new discovery at the site of Era de Pando in the Supe Valley. The region was home to the Caral culture, which is often considered the oldest city-building civilization in the Americas. Previous excavations at Era de Pando have unearthed four large and four small pyramid complexes, and at least 40 other buildings, including houses and temples, that date back at least 4,000 years. While working near one of the largest pyramids, archaeologists recently uncovered the ruins of a structure known as a "fire altar." The circular feature, which...

The world's oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth's tusk with an astonishing level of skill.Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual....new, more reliable radiocarbon...

Take heed, New Yorkers, and learn from San Francisco’s mistakes: The City by the Bay has discovered to its sorrow that charismatic leaders like Zohran Mamdani can dazzle — but their decisions can be disastrous. Just a few years ago San Franciscans, too, supported magnetic populists, then watched as their neighborhoods fell off a livability cliff. Regrets, we have more than a few — and many we want to mention. In 2017 London Breed, a brash and captivating city supervisor from the projects, became acting mayor when the mild-mannered Mayor Ed Lee died. With big promises of housing creation, downtown...

According to a statement released by The College of William & Mary, recent archaeological work revealed the foundations of the eighteenth-century Williamsburg Bray School, one of the most historic buildings on the college's early campus. In operation from 1760 to 1765, the school was one of the oldest known institutions in North America dedicated to the education of free and enslaved Black children. The discovery was originally made by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation but is currently being investigated by the W&M Center for Archaeological Research. Archaeologists uncovered a previously undocumented cellar filled with centuries of artifacts dating from the eighteenth...

Anadolu Agency reports that excavations at the site of Olympos in the current-day region of Antalya revealed new evidence that attests to the site's early Christian history. Inside a building known as Church No. 1, the team uncovered mosaic floors featuring geometric patterns, floral motifs, and Greek inscriptions, some of which bear the names of individuals who are believed to be among the church's early benefactors. "These finds confirm Olympos as one of the richest ancient cities in the Lycia region in terms of mosaic flooring," said excavation director Gökçen Kurtuluş Öztaşkın. Another inscription near the structure's entrance reads, "Only...

President Donald Trump celebrated after the Supreme Court moved to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, something that had impacted his executive orders. The president held a news conference just over an hour after the ruling was issued and said the Supreme Court had stopped a "colossal abuse of power." "I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers," Trump said on Friday....

The Manda-Hararo rift in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Credit: DavidMPyle / CC BY-SA 4.0 =================================================================== A steady underground pulse has been discovered beneath East Africa, where researchers believe a new ocean is gradually forming. The rhythmic movement was detected in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a geological hotspot where three giant sections of the Earth’s crust—the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates—are slowly pulling apart. The site, known as the Afar Triple Junction, is one of few places on Earth where the process of continental breakup can be observed on land. As the plates drift in different directions, the ground...

The small shark named Clavusodens mcginnisi, or “McGinnis’ nail tooth,” only measured 3-4 inches in length. A 4 inch long male and female Clavusodens hunting for early crustaceans on the sea floor that once covered much of central Kentucky during the Middle Mississippian period, 340 million years ago. NPS Illustration / Benji Paysnoe ================================================================ MAMMOTH CAVE, KY. – A new-to-science species of ancient shark has been discovered through an ongoing Paleontological Resource Inventory (PRI) at Mammoth Cave National Park. The new species of obruchevodid petalodont, called Clavusodens mcginnisi, was identified by researchers through fossil teeth collected from deep inside the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court issued a ruling this morning that it is legal for President Donald Trump to be the president. In a 6-3 decision, the court held that since Trump was, in fact, elected to be president, his ability to "do president things" was protected under the law. "The court hereby rules that a president can be president," wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who penned the decision for the majority. "By virtue of being president, that person is the president. I can't freaking believe I'm having to explain this." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a scathing dissent...

The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel. An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis,...

By stripping batteries and hacking Android phones with open-source Linux, researchers built submersible data hubs for AI-powered image recognition. Researchers hacked 15-year-old smartphones into tiny servers that outperform Raspberry Pi at a fraction of the cost. Kadri-Ann Kivastik/ Via Eurekalert ======================================================================== A team at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Computer Science has shown that obsolete mobile phones can be wired together to do the sort of heavy data processing normally reserved for expensive server farms while keeping thousands of handsets out of landfills. Led by associate professor of pervasive computing Huber Flores, the engineers stripped the batteries from four...

British Airways Concorde G-BOAC Eduard Marmet/Wikimedia Commons The legendary Concorde, a supersonic airliner, is slated to make its commercial comeback by 2026. The U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed legislation that lifted the previous ban on supersonic flight over land on June 6, 2025. “This order begins a historic national effort to reestablish the United States as the undisputed leader in high-speed aviation,” the official White House statement stated. Since 1973, this ban has ensured that American skies remained free of sonic booms. The new rule change paves the way for a new age of air travel, which will be...

A sleazy bid by a federal judge to defy the Supreme Court’s decision on Team Trump deportations shows exactly why the ruling was necessary in the first place. On Monday, the justices stayed a preliminary injunction by District Judge Brian Murphy (a Biden appointee) that had blocked the Trump folks from deporting migrants to countries they didn’t come from without sufficient time to appeal. That should’ve been an immediate green light for the feds to deport eight criminal migrants to South Sudan, even though seven of the men originate from other countries. Yet Murphy flipped the high court a bird,...

In this video, we reveal the truth about the left in the Spanish Republic during the Civil War. Discover the shocking history of religious persecution in Spain and the impact of the Law of Historical Memory on Spanish history. Throughout Spanish history, and more specifically during the Second Republic, Spanish politics and left-wing parties created an unbearable climate for certain segments of the Spanish population. In this video, we explore the burning of convents and churches that took place between May 11 and 13, 1931, when more than 100 religious buildings were set on fire in several Spanish cities, including...

Democrats in New York’s battleground suburbs are distancing themselves from New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani and his lefty socialist policies. Long Island members of Congress appeared particularly concerned about Republicans attempting to link them to Mamdani — the Democratic candidate for mayor — in the 2026 midterm elections. “We are not socialists,” Rep. Laura Gillen, who represents Nassau County’s 4th District, said in an interview Wednesday night on News Nation. “[Mamdani] ran a campaign based on a bunch of promises — free everything — without any real economic plan to pay for it, other than raising taxes,” she...

According to a Colombia One report, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that British archaeologists from the University of Manchester made a slew of new discoveries in the Nile's eastern Delta. The team is working at the lost ancient city of Imet, which lies beneath the site of Tell al-Faraun, also known as Tell Nebesha, northeast of Cairo. Imet was an important residential center and a hub of trade and agriculture at the crossroads of key commercial routes. Excavations revealed tower-shaped, multilevel houses dating to the fourth century b.c. that were designed to accommodate large families or groups of...

Politician Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, state senator, and Brooklyn borough president—and, yes, a former Republican—can add New York City mayor to his résumé… According to Politico, Adams was a registered Republican from 1995 to 2002. And according to City Limits, Adams said in 1995 that Republican values aligned with those of some Black voters, and by 1999, he was labeling himself a conservative Republican. Years later, in 2013, Adams said he switched parties only out of concerns that New York City Democrats were “too soft on crime.” And his friend Norman Siegel, former head of the New York...

If you've been hankering to thumb-type on a physical keyboard on your phone again, Unihertz wants to sort you out. Its upcoming Titan 2 phone looks like it's modeled on beloved BlackBerry handsets, while packing Android 15 and up-to-date hardware to make it easy to live with. More specifically, the Titan 2 looks a lot like the boxy BlackBerry Passport from 2014, with a 4.5-inch 1440x1440-px square display gracing its flat-edge body. The Shanghai-based brand, which is known for making tiny phones and rugged ones, is squarely aiming at nostalgic gadgetheads – and despite the brazen design imitation, it works...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ramifications were predicted to be felt for generations after today, as in a historic 6-3 Supreme Court decision, 3 justices were ruled to be morons. The ruling came near the end of the U.S. Supreme Court's current term, leaving legal analysts around the country saying that the decision was sure to have a long-lasting impact on all future cases. "This was a ruling that shifts the balance in the country," one expert said. "According to this 6-3 decision, three of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court as morons, with the three morons themselves providing the dissenting...

A common bacterium can be adapted to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, a study published this week in Nature Chemistry1 reports. Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, is widely used to treat pain and fever. It is produced from molecules derived from fossil fuels, but researchers are working to develop processes that use more sustainable source molecules, such as plastic waste. “We’re able to transform a prolific environmental and societal waste into such a globally important medication in a way that’s completely impossible using chemistry alone or using biology alone,” says co-author Stephen Wallace, a chemical biotechnologist at the University of...