Free Republic

Philadelphia businesses are being forced to set up booby traps like hidden sprinkler systems to fend off drug users. Local activist Frank Rodriguez has revealed that business owners in the Kensington area of the city are having to devise tricks to keep addicts off their stoops. The neighborhood has become ground zero for the city's drug epidemic, and is frequently seen strewn with trash and addicts injecting drugs in the open. Speaking to Fox News, Rodriguez said: 'Businesses end up throwing soapy water on the ground just so it is wet and it is not a comfortable place to sit...

Republican Pennsylvania Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz says his "diagnosis" to the rising crime plaguing his state places blame squarely on his "radical" Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, for creating the conditions for criminal activity to prosper. In an interview this week with Fox News Digital, Oz asserted that instances of violent crime, as well as events like the ransacking of a Wawa gas station by a mob of people over the weekend, were now "normalized," and described such occurrences as a "cancer" to society. "We've normalized thoughtless, destructive criminal acts. The question you ask in the morning is...

Ian O’Reilly was walking with his wife and three kids on a trail near Judes Pond in Kensington around 11 a.m. when the wild animal jumped out of the woods and grabbed the 2-year-old child by the jacket, cops said. That’s when “the dad went into protection mode,” kicking the coyote before choking it, said Kensington Police Chief Scott Cain. The dad was bitten in the arm and chest and is being treated for rabies as a precaution. The animal didn’t break the toddler’s skin thanks to his heavy-duty snowsuit.

This is the extraordinary moment an ashen-faced Hugh Grant learned that the Tories were on course for a landslide general election win despite his personal campaign to stop Boris Johnson and scupper Brexit. The outspoken actor, 59, looked crestfallen when the exit poll landed at 10pm last night as he enjoyed wine and food at the Tendido Cero tapas restaurant in Kensington last night. As he saw the woeful performance by Labour and the Lib Dems on polling day, the Love Actually star looked down-trodden with his wife Anna Eberstein. A witness told MailOnline: 'He was constantly staring at his...

US Attorney John Durham is running an investigation into the Russia hoax that has been almost airtight. A fragment of information on his activities, however, comes our way via Australian media.Alexander Downer’s meeting with George Papadopoulos at the Kensington Wine Rooms in 2016 played a key role in providing a rationale for an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, including FISA warrants allowing wiretapping.  At the time, Downer was the Australian High Commissioner (ambassador) to the UK, and had been Australia’s foreign minister earlier, a very senior diplomat to be entertaining a young Trump campaign volunteer. The meeting, also...

It appears that Meghan Markle had a tiff with her grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth before her wedding. According to reports in The Sun, the Queen and Meghan had a row over her choice of headgear at the wedding. Meghan had reportedly picked a tiara with emeralds but she was told she couldn't wear it given its history couldn't be established and that it might have originated Russia. When Harry got worked up when his sweet princess didn't get what she desired, the Queen had to step in and is quoted saying: "Meghan cannot have whatever she wants.... She gets the tiara she's...

Shiva me timbers! A pirate radio station offering Talmudic wisdom and spouting Jewish fables has for weeks been interfering with 105.9 WQXR’s public broadcast in Kensington, Windsor Terrace, and parts of Park Slope, and local fans of New York’s only classical radio station say they’re fed up. “It’s public radio, I contribute to it, and I can’t listen to it because this guy’s there,” said Courtelyou Road resident Patrick Russell. “It’s the only classical station in the city, and it’s a crime!”

The video shows the victim, a 30-year-old woman, walk into the elevator at the Huntingdon stop, on Kensington Avenue near Huntingdon Street, just after 1:30 a.m. Saturday. She holds the door for a man behind her and he joins her in the elevator. Surveillance Video Shows West Philly Triple Shooting The two stand in the elevator for several seconds and exchange words, and the man approaches the woman, cornering her in the elevator and pulling out a knife. He begins to attack the woman, at one point holding the knife pointed down toward her face and chest, as she struggles...

A controversial Minnesota artifact is making a name for itself across the country in its next biggest publicity move. The Kensington Runestone, which was unearthed in Minnesota but has been long disputed as a hoax, will now be featured on 2,300 20-foot moving trucks across the country. U-Haul unveiled the image Saturday morning at the Alexandria museum that houses the stone during the city's "Awake the Lakes" celebration. About 1,000 people celebrated the announcement at the Runestone Museum with T-shirts and a truck depicting the stone behind a large Vikings ship -- the fourth image representing Minnesota on the company's...

When Minneapolis artist Janey Westin first came across the runes near the town of Kensington, she assumed they were left behind by the same Norse explorers who created the so-called Kensington Runestone, found nearby in 1898. The infamous 200-pound rock is covered with runes that describe the travails of a party of Scandinavians beset by Indians in 1362. Though most scholars doubt the stone's authenticity, it continues to fuel debate about a Norse presence in the Midwest. Excited by the new find, the Kensington Runestone Museum paid for archaeological testing at the site, which yielded only a few Native American...

Geologist Scott Wolter wants you to forget 1492. While you're at it, forget the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Forget all of it. Forget Christopher Columbus because he wasn't the first European to visit North America and Wolter is out to prove it in his new book, "The Hooked X: The Key to the Secret History of North America." Minnesota and the Great Lakes states play a key part in that history, Wolter said, as Vikings and Cistercian monks traveled here leaving behind inscriptions and evidence that they were here long before Queen Isabella hocked her jewels to...

Kensington Rune Stone This subject used to fascinate me when I was 9 or 11. I read everything the late Hjalmar Holand ever wrote. It has fascinated many others, unfortunately mainly “professional Scandinavians” who have made their lives out of their ethnicity, especially as professors of that language or culture. Most have used it only as a way to get a cheap Ph.D. thesis by demolishing it once again, or by using its possible validity to back up some ulterior theory or hobby-horse they may have. Few if any mainstream observers of American antiquities have been willing to touch it. ...

The Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad's famous identification, in 1961, of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, from just after A.D. 1000 is, of course, a notable exception, no longer in dispute. But that discovery has so far gone nowhere. The Norse settlers, who may have numbered as many as 160 and stayed for three years or longer, seem to have made no lasting impression on the aboriginal skraellings that, according to Norse sagas, they encountered, and to have avoided being influenced in turn. The traditions of the Micmac people, modern-day inhabitants of the area, have...

A popular place to buy Easter candy was shut down by the city of Philadelphia on Wednesday. The shelves of Blasius Chocolate Factory on the 1800 block of East Venango Street in Kensington are stocked. However on Wednesday, no one was able to buy anything after the City of Philadelphia moved in with police to shut down the well-known business. “These last four days make or break me. I don’t think I will be able to survive this year,” said Philip Kerwick, owner. Kerwick admits he’s racked up a $12,000 delinquent tax bill. […] Kerwick says he’s tried to negotiate...

In Britain, defending your property can get you life. Celebrity news from the United Kingdom: In April, Germaine Greer, the Australian feminist and author of The Female Eunuch, was leaving her house in East Anglia, when a young woman accosted her, forced her back inside, tied her up, smashed her glasses, and then set about demolishing her ornaments with a poker. A couple of weeks before that, the 85-year-old mother of Phil Collins, the well-known rock star, was punched in the ribs, the back, and the head on a West London street, before her companion was robbed. “That’s what you...

An Islamist preacher has been banned from addressing a major British fundraising event amid claims he backs attacks on UK troops and supports terrorist organisations linked to Al Qaeda. The revelation that Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based preacher accused of advocating violent jihad, was due to speak via video link at Kensington town hall later this month, has raised fears public buildings are being used for extremism. A spokesman for Kensington and Chelsea council said: "Some of the views expressed by Mr al-Awlaki in the past are not appropriate for broadcast in [council] premises." The council banned al-Awlaki from speaking only...

he United States coffee chain has recently been the subject of an internet boycott campaign amid claims it donates profits to Israel ? an accusation it strongly denies Photo: PA Riot police surrounded up to 240 demonstrators in central London, many wearing scarves covering their faces, who broke away from a rally in Trafalgar Square at about 5pm. Up to 200 were tracked by a police helicopter as they ransacked the coffee shops in Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue while 40 more were contained in Hyde Park, thought to be on their way to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. The United...

It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory. The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax? New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved...

The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence. That is the title of a new book published by Scott Wolter and Richard Nielsen. Wolter is a geologist and petrographer from St. Paul who has been working on the mysterious stone for the past several years. Nielsen is linguistic expert who has also been studying the Kensington Runestone (KRS). Nielsen said the 574-page book is quite comprehensive and provides information about the Ohman family in detail. Olof Ohman is the Swedish farmer who reportedly found the stone wrapped in the roots of an aspen tree on his farm near Kensington in the...

The Kensington Runestone, one of Minnesota’s most debated artifacts is not a hoax — according to geologist Scott Wolter. Wolter spoke to a Minnesota History class at Anoka Ramsey Community College - Cambridge Campus Monday, Sept. 12. He has been researching the Runestone for five years along with Richard Nielsen, an engineer from Houston. Wolter, a geologist by education and profession works for Twin Cities Testing, performing detailed examinations on concrete and rock to determine if there are flaws in concrete projects. Wolter explained the Runestone was found by Olof Ohman in 1898 while clearing trees off his land in...