Free Republic

Famed Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein blasted Jeff Bezos’ decision to keep the Washington Post neutral in the 2024 presidential race by declining to endorse Kamala Harris for president. “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy,” the pair said in a statement published by CNN Friday. “Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second...

A sixteenth-century altar in one of Germany's most historically important cathedrals has been saved from woodworm not by the application of chemicals, but by a swarm of wasps. The Cranach altar in the Erfurt Cathedral was being destroyed by the wood-eating insects, but officials delayed taking action because they feared that chemical treatments might damage its 11 painted panels. Instead they adopted a pioneering technique which may now be emulated in historic buildings across Europe: releasing 3,000 parasitic wasps, which feed on woodworm larvae. The towering wooden altar, riddled with holes, and the large painting above it which also showed...