Free Republic

Men will be barred from using parts of an on-campus gym at the University of Southern California under a new initiative to make women and non-binary gym-goers feel more comfortable while working out. The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment (SAGE) pushed for the new rules in partnership with the Lyon Center, a recreational facility controlled by the university. SAGE describes itself as a “programming assembly and intersectional feminist organization under the student government, committed to uplifting all voices oppressed by the patriarchy.” The plan excludes men from working out in portions of the Robinson Room at the Lyon Center on...

In New York State, the annual budget is due by April 1. Here we are on April 7, and no budget has yet emerged. Word is that the Governor and legislative leaders are hidden away behind closed doors hammering out the details. Word also is that somewhere in this “budget” process, the seemingly unrelated matter of the deadlines of the Climate Act (for starters, 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030) are about to get extended. When the Climate Act (officially “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” or CLCPA) was enacted back in 2019, the deadlines, beginning in 2030, seemed...

Science in Poland reports that several shipwrecks have been found off the coast of Libya, near a shallow rock formation at the ancient Greek port of Ptolemais. The city was founded by Egypt's Ptolemaic Dynasty between the late fourth and third centuries B.C., and remained an active port until the seventh century A.D. "This is a place where disasters must have occurred periodically," said Piotr Jaworski of the University of Warsaw. He and Bartosz Kontny were conducting an underwater survey when they saw the 300-foot-long stretch of shipwrecks. "Over the centuries, the level of the Mediterranean Sea has risen slightly,...

FIRST ON FOX: One of the largest school districts in the country is facing allegations that it lets teachers decide if parents are sufficiently "supportive" enough to tell them about their child's desire to switch genders. Trump-aligned America First Legal (AFL) filed a formal complaint against Montgomery County Public Schools, which is in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with the Departments of Justice and Education, alleging it has been violating the constitution and other federal law through its "Gender Identity in Montgomery County Public Schools" handbook. AFL goes on to allege the school district repeatedly instructs staff to condition parental...

SummaryEver since the early years of the twentieth century, with the largely accidental discovery and subsequent raising (mostly from the Aegean sea bed) of a significant number of wrecks whose main cargo was works of art, researchers in the field of Greco-Roman archaeology have concentrated their most enthusiastic efforts on stylistic studies of these artefacts, while at the same time attempting to establish exactly when the ships transporting them sank. That these shipments of beautifully crafted masterpieces (mainly bronzes), coming from the Eastern Aegean, were destined for Rome, a city rapidly emerging into the historical spotlight, has always been and...

Let the Stones Speak The earliest evidence of a grouping of iron blooms has been discovered in a shipwreck off the Carmel coast. A recent study announcing the discovery was published in NPJ Heritage. According to the researchers, the analysis of the ancient cargo "provides unique and unprecedented insight into early bloom production, handling and maritime transport during the Iron Age" -- around 2,600 years ago, the time of the biblical King Josiah. On today's program, host Brent Nagtegaal interviews lead author Prof. Tsilla Eshel of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa, about the discovery. Israeli...

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling actor Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him in 2023. "You're going to have to show some epic resilience," Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said to Jasveen Sangha, echoing the defendant's words earlier in the hearing about her self-improvement. Citing the unique role Sangha admitted to playing in Perry’s death and her broader drug-dealing business, the judge gave the 42-year-old a sentence that will almost certainly be more than all four of her co-defendants combined. The...

A genetic study of Neanderthal remains recovered from Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains revealed that two individuals who lived 10,000 years apart belonged to closely related lineages linked to each other by a common ancestor, according to a Live Science report. The first individual, known as D17, was male and lived about 110,000 years ago. The second genome belonged to a female, known as D5, who lived about 120,000 years ago. "It is likely that Denisova Cave was part of a broader landscape used repeatedly by these Neanderthal populations over time, rather than a site occupied by a single...

It may seem surprising that researchers could study a phenomenon for which we don’t yet have any data—after all, there are no verified accounts of conversations with aliens. But there are good reasons to consider what alien languages might look like. For one... human languages have far more in common than we might think. A universal grammar underlies what turn out to be mostly surface differences. [A]ll languages use a finite number of sounds (or gestures in the case of signed languages) and phrase types (like noun phrases and verb phrases) to build a theoretically limitless number of unique communications,...

The Minneapolis City Council is preparing to consider legalizing and regulating venues, such as bathhouses, where consenting adults can engage in sexual activity, possibly reversing the city’s 38-year ban. The ordinances in question would remove “stigmatizing language” and add “new definitions to be inclusive of establishments where sexual activity between consenting adults may be facilitated,” according to The Minnesota Star Tribune. The outlet noted that bathhouses and sex clubs operated in the city until a 1988 ordinance banned businesses that facilitate “high-risk sexual conduct,” which was defined as fellatio, anal intercourse and vaginal intercourse for pay. The language of the...

Explanation: And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you, from the Moon. We will see you on the other side, said Artemis II pilot Victor Glover on April 6th at 6:44pm ET as 8.3 billion minus four people and one Earth set below the Moon's horizon. The Orion spacecraft, Integrity, then traveled behind the Moon as part of its seven-hour lunar flyby. The crew characterized never-before-seen regions of the far side of the Moon, which is puzzlingly less volcanically active than the near side. New observations of crater peaks, floors, terraces, and rings...

President Trump expressed optimism Wednesday that the Iran war cease-fire agreement will usher in a “Golden Age” in the Middle East. “A big day for World Peace!” Trump wrote on Truth Social following the two-week cease-fire announcement. “Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!” The commander in chief said the US “will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz” and “loading up with supplies of all kinds, just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well.” Trump indicated he felt “confident” the reopening of the key waterway,...

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Biden administration was driving energy systems "into a ditch" through massive subsidies to unreliable sources like solar power and draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Wright appeared with his wife, Liz, on "The Katie Miller Podcast" Tuesday, where he criticized former President Joe Biden's energy policies for having a profound effect on the rest of the country. "If you get energy wrong, you destroy your society," Wright said. "Another reason I think President Trump won, you know, the Biden administration literally wanted to drive our energy system into the ditch," he added. "Just outrageous. We,...

One popular theory about the location of the Battle of Badon is that it took place at Liddington Castle. Does the evidence really support this theory? Caleb Howells examines the geographical and archaeological evidence surrounding Liddington Castle as a potential location for this historic clash. By analyzing place-name etymology and existing scholarly arguments, the investigation weighs the strategic suitability of the site against the lack of physical habitation remains from the period and conflicting traditional accounts. Was the Battle of Mount Badon at Liddington Castle? | 7:43 Caleb Howells | 12.8K subscribers | 1,382 views | April 7, 2026

Explanation: Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of...

Abortion medication access barriers prevent me from providing evidence-based careGrowing up, I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. But when the FDA needlessly placed an age restriction on over-the-counter levonorgestrel (Plan B) for emergency contraception, I decided I needed to become a lawyer too. I reasoned that political interference in healthcare meant my future patients might not receive the care they needed, and that as a physician-attorney, I could help advance evidence-based policy. In the 20 years since, levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception and daily oral contraceptives have become available over the counter with no age restrictions. Recent conversations, however,...

Lunar Starship (the Starship Human Landing System, or HLS, for NASA's Artemis program) is in active development but remains several years from its first crewed lunar landing. As of early April 2026, the program has made substantial progress on hardware testing and subsystem qualification, yet key challenges like in-orbit propellant transfer, long-duration flights, and an uncrewed lunar demonstration are still ahead—contributing to schedule delays. Current Status and Major Achievements SpaceX has completed 49 contractual milestones for the HLS contract with NASA (out of many total), with most achieved on or ahead of schedule. These cover: Life support and thermal control...

The human population has already grown too large and demanding for Earth to sustainably support at current consumption levels, a new study warns. Based on more than two centuries of population data, a team led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia found humanity is living well beyond the bounds of what our planet can support long-term. Ecologists describe the ability of an environment to sustain a species' population as its "carrying capacity". It's an estimate of the number of individuals from any given species that can survive long-term, based on the resources at hand and the rate at...

Artemis II began its historic flyby of the moon Monday in what is the mission’s showstopper event — giving its crew and Earthlings back home their first glimpses ever of parts of the lunar dark side. The capsule began the flyby around 2:45 p.m. ET, and will spend just over six hours arcing around the moon with its windows pointed toward the far side of the lunar surface. All four crew members will become the first people in history to see certain swaths of the far side — since most it remained in shadow when the Apollo missions orbited the...

It’s keeping scientists up at night. Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm over an ambitious plan to install thousands of mirrors and myriad satellites in space, claiming that it will impact sleep and various ecosystems on a global level. “The proposed scale of orbital deployment would represent a significant alteration of the natural night-time light environment at a planetary scale,” leaders of the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the Japanese Society for Chronobiology and the Canadian Society for Chronobiology declared in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission The Guardian reported....