Free Republic

Japanese Emperor Naruhito formally proclaimed his ascendancy to the throne on Tuesday in a centuries-old ceremony attended by dignitaries from more than 180 countries, pledging to fulfil his duty as a symbol of the state. Naruhito became emperor and his wife Masako became empress on May 1 in a brief ceremony, but Tuesday's 'Sokui no Rei' was a more elaborate ritual at the royal palace in which he officially announced his change in status to the world. 'I swear that I will act according to the constitution and fulfil my responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the...

he Church of Scientology has firmly made Clearwater, Florida its home in the blink of an eye - shelling out $103million to sweep up 101 acres of the city's waterfront downtown area over the course of three years. The controversial church first landed in Clearwater in 1975 with one hotel property to its name, but the organization had elaborate plans to spread its reach across the entire downtown area. In just three years, starting with a frantic land grab in January 2017, Scientology doubled its footprint in the city. Following a fallout with the City Council, Scientologists started to buy...

WeWork's board of directors has accepted a takeover bid from investor SoftBank, handing control of the office-sharing startup to the Japanese firm, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. The deal on Tuesday valuing the troubled co-working company at $8billion is a far cry from the $47billion valuation WeWork received from SoftBank in a funding round in January. WeWork chairman Adam Neumann could be paid roughly $1.7 billion to forfeit control of the company he founded should it be purchased by SoftBank, a new report claims. The compensation package would include a $1 billion stock buyout, $500 million...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 3 Psalm 3[a] A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom. 1 Lord, how many are my foes!     How many rise up against me! 2 Many are saying of me,     “God will not deliver him.”[b] 3 But you, Lord, are a shield around me,     my glory, the One who lifts my head high. 4 I call out to the Lord,     and he answers me from his holy mountain. 5 I lie down and sleep;     I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. 6 I will not fear though tens of thousands...

Why should the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee get a pass? – No one is more frustrated with the empty promises of Lindsey Graham than I am. The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who must stand for re-election to his South Carolina Senate seat in 2020, has spent this entire year rushing before the nearest TV camera to make empty promise after empty promise about his plans to force people to testify before his committee. He’s done this so many times, he has become the Senate’s version of the boy who cried wolf. It’s to the point now...

I’m reading one of the best books I’ve ever seen, historian Yuri Slezkine’s The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. It’s a massive — over 1,000 pages — history of the Bolshevik movement, focusing on the people who lived in a vast apartment building constructed across the Moskva River from the Kremlin, for party elites. In the 1930s, during the purges, it was the most dangerous address in the country. The secret police came for people there all the time. The book has given me a breakthrough in understanding why so many people who grew up under...

“He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor” (Proverbs 22:9).

Hillary Clinton made a pretty big slip up this weekend while at a speech in Portland to promote her new book. Clinton, who has been eating up headlines with attacks on candidates and speculation she will enter the race, told the crowd: “We have very admirable candidates vying for the nomination, but at the end of the day there are a lot of forecasters that are saying look, if the economy stays in good shape and he’s not impeached or he’s impeached but not convicted, it’s going to be very very hard because of all of the advantages he will...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals held onto power after a closely fought election on Monday but were reduced to a minority government that will need the support in Parliament of a smaller left-leaning party. The vote showed a deeply divided country with the defeated Conservatives winning the popular vote, while a resurgent separatist Bloc Quebecois made big strides in the mainly French-speaking province of Quebec.

Lucy team members presented the completed mission design, showing that they have met all the technical challenges of the mission and were ready to start building the actual hardware. At Lockheed Martin in Colorado over the course of four days, an independent review board, comprised of reviewers from NASA and several external organizations, heard all about the mission design. The Trojan asteroids orbit the Sun at a distance of Jupiter. The mission is set to launch in October 2021; with boosts from Earth's gravity, the spacecraft is expected to complete a 12-year journey to seven different asteroids.

While speaking to reporters on Monday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) stated that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted that the Trump administration held up funding to Ukraine partially due to a desire to have Ukraine carry out an investigation regarding the 2016 election and holding up funds “to fulfill a political purpose is a real problem.” Romney said, “Obviously, what he said in the press conference was of real concern. Because he said, in effect, that they were holding up funding going to Ukraine, in part based upon a desire to have Ukraine carry out an investigation...

“I’ve often said that Tulsi is sort of the Trojan horse in this. She’s polling at only 1.2 percent, yet she’s still in the race,” Sunny Hostin said at one point. The View’s Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin on Monday applauded former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for seemingly claiming last week that Russians will support a third-party presidential run by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, calling the Hawaii Democrat a “useful idiot” and a “Trojan horse.” During a podcast interview last week, Clinton said Gabbard was a “favorite of the Russians” and was being groomed “to be the third-party candidate,” offering...

Scandal surrounding Democrat Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) threatens serious repercussions for Democrats' effort to impeach President Trump. Last week, Red State exposed that Hill had simultaneous sexual relationships with at least two different staffers. One of them worked in her official congressional office, a clear violation of the House’s rules forbidding sexual relationships between members of Congress and their official office staff. Hill, married to her now-estranged husband Kenny Heslep for years, brought a 22-year-old woman who was on her campaign staff into their marriage to create a three-way “throuple” relationship during her 2018 run for Congress. Red State reported:...

“‘Those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself’” (John 5:25–26). Those who experience spiritual resurrection will receive abundant (10:10), everlasting life. But the only ones who “will live” are “those who hear” in the sense of true faith and obedience to the gospel. “My sheep hear My voice,” Jesus declared, “and I know them, and they follow Me” (10:27). Believers are those who have both the spiritual faculty and duty to respond to divine revelation. In contrast, the lost do not...

The college admissions scandal mom who falsely claimed her son was African-American and Hispanic to increase his chances of getting into a top college was sentenced to three weeks in prison on Wednesday. Marjorie Klapper, 51, copped to paying $15,000 to fudge her son’s ACT exam score in May as part of the nationwide scandal. She also agreed to portray him as a racial minority and a first-generation student on his applications — though both she and her husband graduated from college, prosecutors said. Prosecutors had sought four months behind bars and a fine of $20,000 for Klapper, arguing that...

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is getting incinerated by California politicians for shutting off power to two million residents amid heavy, dry winds. The publicly traded San Francisco-based utility has been found responsible for two dozen or so wildfires since 2016, some caused by power lines sagging from steel towers more than a century old. The purpose of the blackouts was to avoid more damage from an aging grid that has not been adequately maintained. In January PG&E filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure tens of billions of dollars in liabilities, including for wildfire. Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom,...

SAN FRANCISCO—Californians are facing a potential second round of pre-emptive power outages, with the state’s largest utility working to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires as hot, gusty winds are forecast later this week. PG&E Corp. said Monday it might cut electricity to parts of 16 counties in the Sierra Foothills and north of San Francisco. About 200,000 households and businesses were notified that they might lose power starting late Wednesday, the bankrupt utility said. At a press conference, PG&E Chief Executive Bill Johnson said shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of customers again might be necessary, given how...

If you took all the money Democratic Monroe County executive candidate Adam Bello has spent on his campaign, and added all the money Republican incumbent Cheryl DiNolfo has spent, and added in Bello’s money again, you’d have just about as much money as George Soros has spent trying to get Shani Curry Mitchell elected district attorney. By the time the final filing is in, it is likely that one donor supporting one candidate in the district attorney’s race will have ponied up as much money as was contributed by a myriad of donors to both candidates in the race at...

Eyeing stricter controls in the federal government’s minority contracting program, a House oversight panel on Tuesday is expected to address the findings of a Times investigation that showed that companies received more than $300 million in taxpayer-funded contracts based on unverified claims that their owners were Native American. The committee oversees the U.S. Small Business Administration, which certifies federal contractors as minority-owned. Its subcommittee on investigations will conduct the hearing.

NordVPN, a virtual private network provider that promises to “protect your privacy online,” has confirmed it was hacked. The admission comes following rumors that the company had been breached. It first emerged that NordVPN had an expired internal private key exposed, potentially allowing anyone to spin out their own servers imitating NordVPN. VPN providers are increasingly popular as they ostensibly provide privacy from your internet provider and visiting sites about your internet browsing traffic. That’s why journalists and activists often use these services, particularly when they’re working in hostile states. These providers channel all of your internet traffic through one...