Free Republic

Family incomes dropped by about $2,000 last year on average, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated on Tuesday. Median family income has dropped every year since 2019, adjusted for inflation. The figure stood at $74,580 as of 2022, according to Census data, a 2.3 percent drop from 2021 levels. The change may reflect rising inflation, which has cooled in recent months but nonetheless hurt families’ bottom lines. Last summer saw inflation hit a forty-year high. Inflation slowed to 3.2 percent in July, down from over 9 percent a year before.

Over the past seven months, 14 convicted killers have met their maker as four states look to ramp up their execution programs - despite allegations America's death row systems are rife with problems. On Thursday morning, Oklahoma executed Jemaine Cannon, 51, by lethal injection for stabbing a woman to death with a butcher's knife in 1995. And before Friday at 6am, Alabama is set to execute James Barber for the 2001 murder of an elderly woman who he beat to death with his bare fists and a claw hammer. In January, transgender murderer Amber McLaughlin, 49, was the first to...

The Supreme Court Monday morning ruled in favor of a death row inmate in a case concerning race discrimination in jury selection.

Evicted four months ago from their Highland Park apartment, Louis Morales and his 18-year-old stepson, Arthur Valenzuela, live half-hidden by brush along the nearby Arroyo Seco riverbed. Morales, 49, keeps a framed bible verse and a stuffed monkey in his tent. Water hauled by bike from a park heats up on the camp stove. Next door, their friend Johnny Salazar fixes bikes and shattered computer screens on the cheap for people who live in the neighborhood. A brother and sister Morales has known for years live up the river, and three couples stay down by the bridge. "Everybody here is...

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's handling of an expenses scandal engulfing one of his ministers has put him under pressure before European elections, threatening his Conservative party's already clouded electoral outlook. Cameron, whose party risks being beaten into third place in next month's European Parliament elections behind the anti-EU UK Independence party (UKIP), has stood by Maria Miller, Britain's minister for culture, since a parliamentary report ordered her to pay back wrongly claimed expenses last week. But the media and public backlash against Miller shows no sign of abating despite Cameron's efforts to end it. Many of his own...

VALLEJO, Calif. (AP) — A California man once sentenced to death for killing two people in the 1960s was under arrest Thursday after police said he led officers to the body of his 89-year-old mother. -- SNIP -- The California Supreme Court reversed his death sentence in 1969 after finding 12 prospective jurors were dismissed because they said they opposed the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a year earlier that such jurors shouldn't be automatically excluded from a death penalty case unless they make clear they can't impose capital punishment under any circumstance. Stanworth was sentenced to death...

A string of 13 dwarf galaxies are in orbit around the galaxy Andromeda. The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and 30,000 light years thick, moving in synchonicity with each other. The phenomenon is unlike behaviour of other observed galaxies and suggests a hole in our knowledge of galaxy formation. A string of 13 dwarf galaxies in orbit around the massive galaxy Andromeda are not behaving as they should. The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and only 30,000 light years thick, moving...

Juno, an abandoned Belgian Malinois, was three days away from being euthanized at an animal shelter in East Tennessee when Chester Hembree saw her picture on the shelter website. “I had the feeling in my gut that I had to go see this dog,” Hembree recalls. Unlike Juno’s original owners, Hembree, a former law enforcement officer, understood the Malinois breed, reports Global Animal. “I used to help with the training of police K-9s, and our dogs were Belgian Malinoises,” he says. “I loved their desire to work and their ‘never quit’ attitude.” Hembree needed Juno’s work ethic and dedication. He’d...

* Ahmadinejad calls on Medvedev to change sanctions stance * Iran tells Kremlin chief to "think more" and be "cautious" * Russia raps Iranian president for political demagoguery * Worst row between Russia and Iran since Cold War (Recasts to add Russian criticism) By Robin Pomeroy and Guy Faulconbridge TEHRAN/MOSCOW, May 26 (Reuters) - Iran and Russia clashed on Wednesday over Kremlin support for draft U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, in one of the worst rows between the two powers since the Cold War.

WASHINGTON: An American doctors organisation has quietly decided to revoke the certification of any member who participates in executing a prisoner by lethal injection.

"Survival" of Belgium as a unified country was called into question last night after a row between French and Dutch speakers brought the government to the verge of collapse. The wrangle has already brought down the government four times in the past three years but the latest spat is the gravest yet and threatens to split the country into Flemish areas and French-speaking areas. King Albert II warned politicians that the political crisis "seriously threatens" the country's role in Europe, after the Prime Minister, Yves Leterme tendered his resignation. Mr Leterme stepped down after talks broke down over plants to...

World Cup Stadium 'Cow Sacrifice' Plan Sparks Row Animal sacrifice is a vital part of life for many South Africans. A proposal to bless South Africa's World Cup stadiums by slaughtering a cow in each one has caused concern among animal rights activists. The Makhonya Royal Trust, which put forward the idea, described the cattle killing ritual as a "true African" way of blessing the 2010 tournament. Government minister Sicelo Shiceka has promised to lobby football's governing body, Fifa, in support of the plan. But animal rights groups have demanded to be consulted over the plans. The row comes as...

Hillary Clinton in Barack Obama race row By Philip Sherwell in Las Vegas, Nevada Last Updated: 9:11pm GMT 12/01/2008 Bill Clinton is scrambling to head off a potential backlash among black voters against his wife Hillary's White House campaign, after the couple were both accused of making racially demeaning comments. Mr Clinton telephoned the nationally syndicated radio talk show of the Rev Al Sharpton, the outspoken black preacher, to deny that he had dismissed Senator Barack Obama's bid to become the first black president as "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen". Donna Brazile, a leading black Democrat strategist and...

I received a phone call with a message from Steve King, and while at first I thought he would be asking me to support Fred Thompson, it turned out he was trying to get support for the Life Begins at Conception Act. Here is information from the Pro-Life alliance about the act, which was submitted in January of 2007 by Duncan Hunter: A Frontal Assault on Roe v. Wade For more than thirty years, nine unelected men and women on the Supreme Court have played God with innocent human life. The result has been a brutal holocaust that has claimed...

Row over 'tree man' virus samples By Felix Lowe and agencies Last Updated: 5:00pm GMT 26/11/2007 An Indonesian fisherman who developed tree-like growths on his hands and feet is at the centre of an international medical spat after his country's health minister criticised doctors trying to treat him. Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, lambasted the US doctor currently treating the 35-year-old man, who has the rare affliction caused by the Human Papilloma Virus. Indonesia's health minister Siti Fadilah Supari (second right) inspects Dede's tree-like growths Mrs Supari is angry that Dr Anthony Gaspari has taken blood and tissue samples...

Row over Iraq's arms deal with China By Ben Martin Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007 The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday said America should speed up its re-armament of Iraq, after revelations that Baghdad had ordered £50 million of weaponry from China. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates fears the Chinese weapons may fall into the wrong hands Responding to claims by the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, that the US was unable to provide the weaponry and was too slow to deliver arms shipments, Mr Gates admitted he shared the fears of military analysts who warned that Chinese weapons could...

If you're Michelle Kosinki's agent, you surely have a verboten vocabulary list. Words you don't want your ward ever to say on air. Above all, of course, "canoe." But others too. Ones like "puddle," "slosh," and certainly . . . "row." But there was Michelle on this morning's "Today," reporting from London on Potter-mania. And you guessed it . . . NBC REPORTER MICHELLE KOSINSKI: There's been controversy and all kinds of news stories here in London about this book coming out. It even caused a bit of a row, as they say in Britain. Because the publisher's recommended price...

Gangsta rap on death row as the US tunes out By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:48pm BST 30/06/2007 To judge by their lyrics, gangsta rappers are adept at seeing off rivals with a bullet and their women with a slap. Rappers Spliff Starr, Eminem, Papoose and Busta Rhymes on stage But America's rappers are now trapped in a corner they don't seem able to shoot their way out of, with either weapons or words. Confronted with haemorrhaging sales, the most assertive popular music movement since the Sex Pistols has lost its swagger and is suffering a...

Row with Pakistan stalls extradition By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad Last Updated: 12:34am BST 30/04/2007 British attempts to secure the extradition of a key terrorist suspect from Pakistan have become mired in a behind-the-scenes diplomatic row. The request for the extradition of Rashid Rauf, a suspected ringleader of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, has been stalled by Pakistani demands for greater "reciprocity" from Britain. Pakistan has presented London with a list of demands, including the extradition of at least eight suspected members of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an armed group fighting a low-intensity insurgency in the...

Row over Dutch Muslim ministers By Geraldine Coughlan BBC News, The Hague Ahmed Aboutaleb is the new state secretary for social affairs The appointment of two Muslim politicians to the new Dutch cabinet has reawakened a row in the country over dual nationality. Nebahat Albayrak and Ahmed Aboutaleb are both Dutch passport holders, but also have Turkish and Moroccan passports respectively. Right-wing opposition parties want to see an end to dual nationality. The row has led to a call for Princess Maxima, the wife of the Crown Prince, to give up her Argentine nationality. Ahmed Aboutaleb, from Morocco, is the...