Free Republic

A bright fireball was seen over the southwestern United Kingdom at 20:46 UTC on May 16, 2022. The event comes just five days after a very bright fireball was seen over the same region. Interestingly, both events had very similar trajectories. The American Meteor Society (AMS) and International Meteor Organization (IMO) together with UKMON (UK), Werkgroep Meteoren (NL), and Vigie-Ciel (FR) received more than 800 reports, mainly from England and Wales.2 The ground trajectory computed from the witness reports shows that the meteor was traveling from SW to NE and ended its visible flight over southern England.

This is the extraordinary moment a lone woman waving a purple, white and green Suffragette flag was 'manhandled ' by a gang of masked trans activists. The unnamed woman supporting the campaign group Standing For Women (SFW) was assaulted during a counter-protest by the Manchester Trans Rise Up (MTRU) movement next to the city's statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in St Peter's Square.

The UK government will start informing some illegal immigrants this week of its intention to relocate them to Rwanda, the Home Office confirmed on Tuesday. British Home Secretary Priti Patel and Rwandan minister for foreign affairs and international co-operation, Vincent Biruta, signed a “world-first” migration and economic development partnership in the East African nation’s capital city Kigali, on April 14, 2022. (Flora Thompson/PA) The recipients will be warned that they may not be admitted to the UK’s asylum system because they had “travelled through safe countries where they could and should have claimed asylum,” the Home Office said. It also...

I previously wrote about Hillary Clinton’s call on European countries to pass censorship laws to force social media companies like Twitter to regulate speech even after Elon Musk’s pledge to restore free speech to Twitter. Now the British Parliament has called on Musk to testify and to explain his alarming pledge to restore free speech. The Biden Administration’s Disinformation Governance Board head, Nina Jankowisz, previously called upon Great Britain to impose state censorship rules. That call has grown since Musk’s purchase. Until now, a unified front of corporate censors was able to maintain an extensive system of censorship with the...

If you get bored this weekend, you can watch UK election results roll in. Only highlights I know of: Conservative party not doing well in England, probably due to poor optics of having parties during lockdowns. Sinn Fein may take majority in NI over Brexit. This may eventually put Irish unity on the table. https://election.news.sky.com/

Russia has lost a quarter of the combat power it sent to Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion, British intelligence has found. The UK’s Ministry of Defence said it could take years before many of the groups are fit for action again. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are estimated to have been killed during the first nine weeks of war but Moscow has not given a figure. The Ukrainian military has also kept its death toll secret. “At the start of the conflict, Russia committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, approximately 65 per cent of its entire...

The Kremlin has threatened to strike British military targets in retaliation for the UK's support of Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin's invasion stretches into its 63rd day. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Moscow could target territory of Nato countries which have been supplying arms to Kyiv, to defend itself from Vladimir Putin's forces. Britain has been an outspoken ally of Ukraine, and has supplied weapons including anti-tank weapons and Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. On Tuesday a defence minister said the UK supports Ukraine's right to strike Russian territory using Western supplied weapons - a line which the Kremlin said...

The Russian government has accused the UK of "provoking" Ukraine into attacking Russian territory. Russia's defence ministry said it was ready to hit "decision-making centres" in Kyiv should such attacks occur. The presence of Western advisers at such centres might not affect its decision to retaliate, it added. It comes after a UK defence minister said it was "not necessarily a problem" for Ukraine to use UK-supplied arms against military targets in Russia. James Heappey said Ukrainian military strikes to disrupt supply lines were a "legitimate" part of war, and described Russian claims of Nato being in conflict with Russia...

Back To The Future, Eyes Wide Shut and True Lies are fine examples of cinematic oxymorons - film titles which contradict themselves. And joining them last night was Downton Abbey: A New Era, which predictably plunges us straight back into Downton Abbey, the old era. Downton’s creator Julian Fellowes did not get where he is today (the House of Lords, for starters) by denying his fans what they expect. So the new film, the second big-screen spin-off after 2019’s Downton Abbey, positively bursts with all our favourite ingredients, not least the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Dame Maggie Smith) firing acid...

The UK government’s restrictions on international travel during the CCP virus pandemic were “disproportionate to the risks to public health,” a select committee of MPs said. The Transport Committee on Monday published the report of its inquiry into airlines’ and airports’ recovery from the pandemic, urging the government to devise “a transparent and predictable system” that can be used in potential future pandemics. It also urged the government to regulate the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus testing market, introduce a mechanism to grant automatic refunds to airline customers, and draft a new airline insolvency bill to “handle future airline insolvencies...

Snell told the BBC that “at 505 days, it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection.” However, he conceded that “there’s no way to know for sure” because “not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case.”

With a lawbreaking Prime Minister, soaring living costs and news of the Rwanda asylum plan, MPs have struggled to keep their cool in the House of Commons. On Tuesday, 19 April, 2022, amid the cost of living crisis devastating the lives of her constituents, Zarah Sultana addressed Ministers about tax loopholes and tax havens. She said: ‘They’re laughing in our faces while robbing the public purse.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is one step closer to facing espionage charges in the US after a British judge formally approved his extradition. The case will go to Britain’s interior minister for a decision, and Assange, 50, still has legal avenues of appeal. A judge at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday issued the extradition order in a brief hearing, as Assange watched by video link from Belmarsh Prison. He stated his full name and date of birth. It is up to Home Secretary Priti Patel to decide whether to grant the extradition. The order comes after the UK Supreme...

Five associates of Hillary Clinton and her campaign are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel John H. Durham, according a filing in federal court revealed later Friday in Washington, DC. The revelation emerged in a motion filed by Durham to oppose the efforts of defendant Michael Sussmann and the Clinton campaign to withhold some documents from evidence by asserting attorney-client privilege. Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016 when he informed the FBI about a fraudulent link between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government via Alfa Bank. Sussmann allegedly presented...

SAS troops have trained local forces in Kyiv for the first time since the war with Russia began, Ukrainian commanders have told The Times. Officers from two battalions stationed in and around the capital said they had undergone military training from serving British special forces, one last week and the other the week before. Captain Yuriy Myronenko, whose battalion is stationed in Obolon on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, said that military trainers had come to instruct new and returning military recruits to use NLAWs, British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in February as the invasion was beginning.

Living standards in Britain continue a death spiral as wages fail to outpace inflation amid soaring energy costs, according to new data. Bloomberg, citing data from the Office for National Statistics, said average earnings excluding bonuses for February dropped 1.3%, the most since 2013. Negative real wage growth indicates millions of Britons are falling behind despite a strong labor market. Unemployment fell to 3.8% in the three months through February, the lowest since late 2019 and on par with levels from the 1970s. However, the hot labor market will force the Bank of England to raise interest rates in May,...

Engineers have long dreamed of creating a wonderful material that can revolutionize construction. In 2004, their dream came true. British scientists first created Graphene—one of the forms of nanocarbon that is only 0.3 nanometers thick—a million times thinner than a human hair, but it can withstand colossal loads! Many immediately predicted a great future for it, and a little later, scientists were given the Nobel Prize. However, mass adoption did not happen. And only now, after 15 years, the first real opportunities have appeared to use the material of the future in commercial projects. Super-substance is made from ordinary graphite,...

A new coronavirus variant that could be the most transmissible yet has been identified in the United Kingdom. The variant, known as XE, is a combination of the omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2. It was first detected in the U.K. on Jan. 19, according to the World Health Organization, though it has since been reported in India as well. As of late March, roughly 600 cases of it were identified.

Britain is to supply heavier weapons and armoured combat vehicles to support Ukraine. UK aid is being ramped up as the war enters what Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called ‘a new and difficult phase’. She predicted ‘a more concentrated Russian offensive’ in the days and weeks ahead as she met Nato foreign ministers in Brussels. The offensive is expected to involve tens of thousands of Russian troops taking on Ukraine forces in the east of the country. To ensure the protection of Ukrainian troops, Britain will provide armoured vehicles which can withstand explosive devices, rockets and rifle fire. According to...

The British government will seek to construct eight nuclear power plants and expand domestic oil production in order to ensure energy security amid the global crisis. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s long-awaited energy strategy will include a major shift towards nuclear power and open up oil exploration in the North Sea in a tacit admission that so-called green energy sources will not be enough in order to secure energy security. The government said that it wants to see a “significant acceleration of nuclear” with the aim of producing 24GW of energy from nuclear by the year 2050, or about a...