Free Republic

A Planet Fitness member in North Carolina allegedly entered a ladies’ locker room at the gym and stripped down “completely naked,” claiming that he identified as a woman, according to police and 911 callers. Christopher Miller, 38, was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure and booked into the Gaston County jail last Thursday, with his online inmate entry identifying him as a male. His mugshot showed the suspect sporting a light-colored beard and mustache. M iller’s arrest on a felony charge came after an alarmed woman at the Gastonia Planet Fitness called 911 to report there was a naked...

Dozens of plastic bags containing “repulsive” antisemitic flyers and possible “rat poison” were found scattered around a Chicago neighborhood Monday — in the third disturbing incident this year. A resident came across the hateful leaflets in the Lincoln Park area Monday morning and reached out to their local official. “This is not the first time our ward has seen incidents like this. To the people who are spreading these flyers, I have a clear message: you are committing acts of hate,” Timmy Knudsen, alderman for Chicago’s 43rd Ward, said in a statement.

Members of Russian military intelligence unit 29155, who allegedly have access to microwave or ultrasound weapons, had been placed at the scene of reported attacks that resulted in US personnel suffering health problems, according to a year-long investigation by the Latvia-based Insider in collaboration with CBS’s “60 Minutes” and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Christo Grozev, the head of investigations with The Insider, told “60 Minutes” that he uncovered accounting records that show a 29155 officer received a bonus for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons.” Unit 29155 has reportedly operated around the world since 2008, and is suspected...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ousted the country’s navy chief after a series of humiliating Ukrainian attacks decimated Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet, according to multiple reports. Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, 61, Russia’s navy commander-in-chief since May 2019, has been replaced by Northern Fleet Cmdr. Alexander Moiseyev, reported several Russian outlets, including the St. Petersburg news service Fontanka and the pro-Putin Izvestia newspaper. Moiseyev, 61 — who holds the country’s highest honorary title, “Hero of Russia” — was said to have been tapped as acting navy commander-in-chief and will soon be appointed on a permanent basis. The Russian navy’s rank-and-file have reportedly...

Senior Russian officials were due to fly on the doomed military plane that crashed Wednesday, killing around 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war – but were stopped “at the last moment” by their security services, according to Ukraine. The claim came as gruesome new video showed apparent charred human remains at the scene of the crashed plane, which Russia has blamed Ukraine for downing as it flew to a prisoner exchange. “It is known that there were indeed several VIPs from the military and political representation of the state aggressor due to fly on the Il-76,” Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukrainian...

Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs hacked into Russian television channels in Crimea overnight to air President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech vowing to liberate the occupied peninsula. In a further humiliation to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, the pranksters renamed all 20 channels in Crimea’s IPTV network “Putin is a d—head,” as seen in videos shared online. In his brief address to the people of Crimea, who have lived under Moscow’s control since the region was illegally annexed in 2014, Zelensky promised that the occupiers’ presence there “will not last forever.”

A Russian cannibal in a Satanic cult that slaughtered four teenagers — beheading and partially eating two of them — has been pardoned by President Vladimir Putin after fighting against Ukraine in a notorious unit of convicts. Nikolai Ogolobyak, 33, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2010 for murder and desecrating corpses over a series of horrifying ritualistic murders that rocked the Yaroslavl region — where the then-teenager was known as “Count.” Ogolobyak and other Satan worshippers, including one nicknamed “Hitler,” beheaded two of their four victims — then cut out their hearts and tongues which they then...

Russia has been condemned for rolling out the red carpet in Moscow for senior leaders of Hamas and Iran — which one alarmed expert called proof President Vladimir Putin is forming a new “axis of terror against the West.” Russian Foreign Ministry officials met with Hamas leaders Bassem Naeem and Mousa Abu Marzouk in Moscow on Thursday, just weeks after their terror group stormed Israel and slaughtered at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians. The terrorist leaders posed with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special envoy in the Middle East — who also met Thursday with Iran’s Deputy Foreign...

The Kremlin was forced to issue an astonishing denial Friday after a widely shared report claimed President Vladimir Putin had died at home — and that a body double was being used as part of an attempted coup. -snip- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the rumors an “absurd information fake.” Peskov was echoing a previous comment he made earlier this week after the same Telegram channel reported that Putin had suffered a cardiac arrest but was resuscitated by his medics.

A Minnesota native who had protested Israeli military action in Gaza and her husband — the son of Holocaust survivors- — were murdered by Hamas terrorists in a kibbutz near the Gaza border that has become synonymous with the militants’ atrocities. Cindy Flash, 67, and Igal Flash, 66, were killed inside a safe room at their home in Kfar Aza — a pastoral farming community that was turned into a sprawling slaughterhouse Saturday. Keren Flash, the couple’s adult daughter, told CNN Thursday that she received a text message from her mother Saturday, saying: “they managed to break into the safe...

A senior Ukrainian official suggested that the Kremlin faked a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has been rumored to be gravely ill. Russian state news agencies and a pro-Putin reporter released videos from the meeting — and the Kremlin published still photos and a transcript of the conversation between the two leaders on its official website, claiming that it took place Thursday. But Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, raised doubts about the encounter between Putin and Kadyrov, writing in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “It is unclear...

Mutinous Wagner mercenary group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is likely either dead or jailed, and his much-publicized meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin after his botched rebellion was probably faked, according to a former senior US military leader. Retired Gen. Robert Abrams, an ABC News contributor who previously served as the commander of US Forces Korea, shared his thoughts on Prigozhin’s uncertain fate in the aftermath of the Wagner Group’s short-lived armed insurrection last month

Ukraine claimed that Russian troops occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had planted bombs on the facility’s roof in preparation for an imminent sabotage – even as Moscow accused Kyiv of plotting a “false-flag” attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Tuesday that he told France’s Emmanuel Macron in a phone conversation about Russian “dangerous provocations” at the plant in southeastern Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s forces seized control of Zaporizhzhia — Europe’s largest nuclear facility — in the first days of the invasion in February 2022, and it has remained in Russian hands for the past 16 months....

Ukraine claimed Friday that it intercepted a telephone call between Russian soldiers that “confirms” that Moscow’s saboteurs destroyed the Nova Kakhovka dam — as Norwegian seismologists revealed they had detected a possible blast around the time of the dam’s breach. Ukraine’s domestic security agency, SBU, posted a one-and-a-half-minute audio recording on its Telegram channel in which two men are heard discussing in Russian the aftermath of the dam collapse. “[The Ukrainians] didn’t strike it. That was our sabotage group,” says one of the men on the call, described by the SBU as a Russian serviceman. “They wanted to, like, scare...

The head of the Wagner mercenary group admitted that he is “afraid” Vladimir Putin may deploy nuclear weapons in a Russian border region that has been repeatedly raided by pro-Ukrainian rebels. In an interview with the pro-Moscow Telegram news channel “Donbas Now,” the notoriously outspoken paramilitary leader aired his concerns about the chilling prospect of the Kremlin using tactical nuclear weapons on Russian soil. “I’m afraid they might get the vile idea of throwing a small nuclear bomb on their own territory,” Prigozhin said, referring to the troubled Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine. … “Isn’t it why we...

A 17-year-old boy slipped and plummeted to his death from the popular new 6th Street Viaduct in Los Angeles, after climbing the bridge as part of an apparent social media stunt, according to police. The youth’s body was found at about 2 a.m. Saturday on the eastern side of the span, which has become a troubling magnet for gunplay, dangerous stunts and careless online clout-chasing since it opened about a year ago. The teen, whose name has not been released, was taken to LA County USC Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said...

Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his claims that the Bidens are a “crime family” and likened their suspected wrongdoings to “Watergate times 10.” Trump’s withering criticism of President Biden and his clan came just days after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, claimed in a Fox News interview that at least 12 members of the first family were involved in an “influence-peddling scheme.” “What Congressmen James Comer and Jim Jordan have revealed about the ‘Biden Crime Family’ would be Watergate times 10, if this news was revealed just 10 years ago,” Trump said in the video posted to...

The outspoken founder of the Wagner mercenary group complained that Vladimir Putin has cut off all contact with him following his constant demands for more ammunition for his fighters in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a catering mogul and Putin’s long-time ally, said in a message on his Telegram channel Thursday that he has been unable to get through to anyone at the Kremlin. The apparent silent treatment came after Prigozhin publicly called on the Russian Ministry of Defense to supply ammunition to his mercenaries fighting to capture the key city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has seen some of the...

A Russian officer fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine released a defiant video saying that he and whatever was left of his decimated platoon were refusing to follow orders after being forced to attack settlements without any training. The recording, which spread on Telegram channels this week, shed light on the purported chaos within the ranks of Vladimir Putin’s draftees mobilized in Ukraine. In the brief video, a man in a baseball cap who introduces himself as a senior lieutenant stands in front of a group of about 10 soldiers assembled in a bare room with a single light...

Kidnapped Ukrainian children are being sent to Russian “re-education” camps — where they are kept in prison-like conditions, forced to watch Russian propaganda, beaten and subjected to sexual violence, according to parents and activists. Inessa Vertash, 43, hasn’t seen her 15-year-old son, Vitaliy, in five months — ever since he left on what was supposed to be a two-week trip to a camp at the urging of his school teacher. It was billed as a retreat to escape the fighting. “I told her I wanted to think about it but she said there’s nothing to think about, they were leaving...