Free Republic

Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos' A-list guests like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were forced to take cover on Thursday as the couple's pre-wedding party was hit by a huge freak thunderstorm. The lavish event held at the Madonna dell Orto cloisters marked the start of the billionaire couple's lavish three-day wedding in Venice, Italy, which will come to a close on Saturday. However, Thursday night's star-studded soiree was brought to an early end due to the intense downpour. Guests dived for cover under the vaulted cloisters as lightening bolts flashed across the sky and thunder rumbled overhead at the...

Greek police say they have arrested a 65-year-old Lebanese man on the island of Mykonos over the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985 in which a US Navy officer was killed. The suspect, named by Lebanon's foreign ministry as Mohammad Saleh, was stopped on Thursday during a routine security check when his description matched those on a German warrant for his arrest, Greek police told CNN. He was also wanted by German authorities for a kidnapping in 1987... Hijackers seized control of the Boeing 727 aircraft shortly after it took off from Athens, en route to Rome, on June...

Islam conquering the North. Imam giving a lesson in school. “This is how they colonize Italy.” The Muslims want to take over Italy, and they say it themselves without any fear, knowing that with the support of a certain left, they won’t have many problems. But the citizens are afraid, and it is the Mediaset— Fuori dal Coro transmission, hosted by Mario Giordano, that reported on a service at a clandestine mosque on Via Padova in Milan: “I live above the mosque, they have already threatened me with death two times because when you look out from the balcony and...

During recent exercises by the French navy aimed at monitoring the country's underwater resources, a crew detected an abnormally large feature on the seafloor near Saint-Tropez. "The sonar detected something quite big, so we went back with the device's camera, then again with an underwater robot to snap high-quality images," said Arnaud Schaumasse, head of the French Ministry of Culture's underwater archaeology department. The AFP reports that an investigative marine team subsequently located the site of a well-preserved shipwreck, dubbed "Camarat 4," lying 1.5 miles beneath the surface -- the deepest wreck ever recorded in French waters. Researchers believe the...

---SNIP--- The government, a major recipient of U.S. military aid that maintains ties with Israel, has arrested and charged 186 activists with threatening state security since the war began, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Many of them said they were protesting peacefully and collecting donations for Gaza. Still, the severity of the crackdown surprised European activists. Antonietta Chiodo, who traveled to Cairo from Italy, said those awaiting further instruction had been detained, interrogated, treated harshly by Egyptian authorities or deported.

A foolish tourist in Italy sat on a chair adorned with thousands of Swarovski crystals for a photo op, crushing the precious work of art beneath his weight. Instead of lowering himself and pretending to sit for the photo — like the woman accompanying him had done — security video shows a man deciding to go for it and sit down. The chair crumbled under his weight, as he lost his balance, trying to hold on to the wall with both hands so he didn’t fall. The woman came to his rescue, and the pair scurried out of the room....

A referendum in Italy on easing citizenship rules and enhancing workers' rights has been declared invalid. Around 30% of voters participated - well short of the 50% threshold required to make the vote binding - in the poll, which began on Sunday and ran until 15:00 (14:00 BST) on Monday. The ballot featured five questions covering different issues, including a proposal to halve the length of time an individual has to live in Italy before they can apply for citizenship from 10 to five years. The referendum was initiated by a citizens' initiative and supported by civil society groups and...

Riding high off a surprisingly strong result in Germany’s federal elections on Sunday, members of the far-left Die Linke party chanted Antifa slogans as they entered the Bundestag parliament in Berlin on Tuesday. After facing the prospect of near-complete political irrelevance just several weeks ago, Die Linke (The Left) saw a late surge in the federal election campaign that netted the party around 8.8 per cent of the vote, over double where the radical party was polling just a couple months ago. Apparently emboldened by their strong showing, MPs gathered with Left leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner and...

SICILY, Italy – Italy’s Mount Etna volcano violently erupted on Monday, sending plumes of toxic ash and smoke billowing into the sky as people on the mountain ran for safety to escape the danger. According to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), activity at Mount Etna on Sicily began during the pre-dawn hours on Monday and culminated with "intense and almost continuous" strombolian explosions hours later. The INGV said that strombolian activity is a relatively low-level volcanic eruption, during which a modest amount of energy is released. Dramatic photos and video showed dangerous pyroclastic flows racing down the...

Evidence of human violence towards other humans during the Paleolithic period is rarely seen in the archaeological record. According to a Live Science report, however, one such case occurred around 17,000 years ago in what is today northern Italy. In 1973, archaeologists uncovered in the Riparo Tagliente rock shelter the partial skeletal remains of a man, known as Tagliente 1, who they determined had died in his 20s.Although the reasons were not readily apparent at the time, recent reanalysis of his bones suggests he may have been the victim of a bloody ambush. Electron microscope scanning and 3D imaging revealed...

We are potentially just one eruption away from a horrifying global famine that could kill millions. It takes an absolutely massive amount of dust and ash to create the conditions that are necessary for a “volcanic winter”, and most volcanoes are simply not capable of releasing that much material. But when a “supervolcano” erupts, that is a completely different story. Scientists tell us that there are 20 supervolcanoes on Earth, but there hasn’t been a major eruption of any of them in any of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, seismic activity is on the rise all over the globe, and we are...

In the olden days, the world was run on a feudal system. There were a handful of mostly inter-related nobles who lived in palaces, wore fancy clothes, and ate sumptuous food. They were served by a large class of serfs who did the unpleasant things like digging latrines, plowing fields, slaughtering animals, tanning leather, and all of the other work needed for the nobles to live in luxury. In return, the nobles kept the serfs from starving but generally oppressed them and sometimes did so gratuitously for their own amusement. Serfs had no rights and very little money and were...

Italy’s right-wing government has joined with Germany, France, Canada and the United Kingdom in calling on Israel to end its military campaign in Gaza. “The legitimate reaction of the Israeli government to a terrible and senseless act of terrorism is unfortunately taking absolutely dramatic and unacceptable forms, which we call on Israel to stop immediately,” Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister, said in an address to parliament on Tuesday. “The bombing must end, humanitarian assistance must resume as soon as possible, respect for international humanitarian law must be restored,” he added. Later, alluding to calls by U.S. President Donald Trump...

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him."After my own father, he...

The bodies of five skiers have been found by rescuers near Switzerland's luxury Zermatt resort. They were recovered a day after emergency services were alerted by a group of climbers ascending the Rimpfischhorn - a 4,199-metre peak in the Valais Alps - to several pairs of skis left unattended near the summit. Aerial and ground searches led to the discovery of the bodies below the summit on the Adler Glacier, Valais local police said in a statement on Sunday. The victims were found at varying altitudes on avalanche debris in high altitude areas near the Swiss-Italian border. Three bodies were...

Nine EU states are targeting the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights in a wider bid to deport unwanted migrants. A letter spearheaded by Denmark, which is set to take over the rotating EU presidency from July, is demanding more leeway on deporting people who have committed crimes. Published on Thursday (22 May), the letter was signed by leaders of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, and Poland. It faults the court for placing rights restrictions on deportations of "criminal foreign nationals". They are also unhappy on how the court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights,...

A gang of wealthy 'crypto bros' have been arrested for luring their former business partner to a stunning New York City mansion before torturing him for weeks. The group are accused of kidnapping the 28-year-old Italian man before committing sickening acts on him in the $75,000-per-month rented brownstone in Soho. They alleged to have Tazed him, pistol-whipped him and threatened to carve him up with a chainsaw if he did not give up the millions of dollars in his crypto account. But their plot was foiled when the victim - who has not been named - escaped and flagged down...

Rome police detained a German tourist as he cruised down a street on a rented electric scooter with the marble base of a Roman column between his feet.Carabinieri officers spotted the 24-year-old tourist transporting the "souvenir" along Via Vittorio Veneto, an upmarket street near the Villa Borghese park, on Wednesday afternoon.The man was cited for possessing a "cultural asset of historical and artistic interest", according to a statement from the Carabinieri.Officers seized the marble base which will be subject to further checks to trace its site of origin.It was not clear how the tourist came into possession of the ancient...

The US military believes that this collaboration will inform future strategy decisions and operational planning. ============================================================== Artistic representation of fighter jets entering Radia Windrunner plane for transport. Radia =============================================================== Windrunner, the world’s largest plane that is currently being built in Colorado, is being eyed by the United States military for playing a very different role than what it is primarily meant for. Radia, a Colorado-based startup, is working on the Windrunner, which will be the world’s largest plane with 12 times the cargo volume of the huge Boeing 747. The company believes that it will cater to the wind energy...