Free Republic

Riot police have moved in to disperse crowds at the Melbourne headquarters of the CFMEU, after a protest against mandatory vaccines turned ugly, with the union blaming “outside extremists” for the violence. Police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to move the crowd, which took over the intersection outside the Queen Victoria Market. Bottles were thrown at the already smashed glass entrance doors to the building in Melbourne’s city centre as those protecting the entry sought refuge indoors just before 4pm. Protesters also seemed to be turning against each other, with a number of small fights breaking out within the...

New Delhi -- The Government on Wednesday asserted that microblogging platform Twitter has lost its legal protection in India because it deliberately chose non-compliance despite multiple opportunities to it. Losing legal protection means Twitter’s top executives, including the nation’s managing director, face police questioning and criminal liability under the Indian Penal Code over “unlawful and inflammatory” content posted by users on Twitter. Accusing Twitter of deliberately refusing to comply with Indian laws, in identical posts on Twitter as well as its Indian rival Koo, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Twitter was given “multiple opportunities to comply” but it...

Iran has recently implemented public amputations as punishment for criminals, in accordance with a court ruling aimed at reducing the country’s theft rate, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed. The semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported on one such public amputation, which took place on January 24 in the city of Shiraz, and displayed images of the apparatus used to carry out the amputation, according to MEMRI. According the report, a 29-year-old man, who was charged with robbery, selling stolen goods, and engaging in illicit sexual relations, had his hand publicly amputated. He was also sentenced to...

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - Byrd and Melanie Billings had a growing brood of adopted children with autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities, and took care to make their nine-bedroom house a safe place for them, wiring it with surveillance cameras in every room. It was those cameras that captured images of the masked men who shot the wealthy couple to death in a break-in executed with chilling precision.

[If I post ONE WORD of this it'll get zotted for sure, but it's too good to miss!]