Free Republic

A powerful solar storm will make the northern lights visible to most of America — including the New York City area — Friday night, but you’ll need to get out of the city if you want a chance at seeing the auroras. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has upgraded the looming geomagnetic solar storm to a level 4, which is capable of disrupting America’s electrical grid and making the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama. The key to witnessing the natural phenomena will depend on the amount of cloud coverage and light population, making upstate New...

[Excerpts of excerpt of over 2700 word article] in the first days of the Yom Kippur War, when Golda Meir descended into her darkest hour,...the problem of resupply weighed on her mind, she called her ambassador to the U.S. at three in the morning and told him to wake up Kissinger and Nixon to get things flowing. In her memoirs she explained her behavior. “I knew that President Nixon had promised to help us, and I knew from my past experience with him that he would not let us down,” she writes. “Let me, at this point, repeat something that...

A coalition of Arab nations, led by Egypt and Syria, had surprised the Israeli military with a coordinated, all-out assault on the Jewish nation as it observed the holiest day of its year, Yom Kippur. Armed with the latest in Soviet weaponry, Arab forces quickly destroyed Israeli warplanes and tanks in numbers so shockingly large that a complete conquest of Israel — previously unthinkable — suddenly seemed all too possible. In desperate need of rearmament, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sent multiple appeals to the United States for military aid. Some of President Richard Nixon’s military advisors counseled against such...

Millions of middle-class California households are poised to pay an extra $24 per month for electricity, regardless of how much electricity they use. Regulators are hoping this utility billing policy will rescue their agenda to move everyone to electric cars and appliances by redistributing the massive costs of the state’s electric grid so utilities can lower their usage rates. But critics say the income-based premium will likely further hike utility costs for millions of Californians—nearly one-fifth of whom are already behind in paying their bills after household electricity rates almost doubled in the last decade—and likely won’t do much to...

The US government says Israel may have breached humanitarian law in Gaza using American weapons. In a delayed report, the state department says it is "reasonable to assess" that US-supplied arms have been used in ways "inconsistent" with Israel's obligations. But it says Israel has had to confront an "extraordinary military challenge" fighting Hamas in Gaza. The report, ordered by the White House, was submitted to Congress on Friday. While the report was a clear rebuke of some Israeli operations in Gaza, it stopped short of definitively saying that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign had breached international law. And...

Florida voters could narrowly pass an amendment enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution in November. A survey by the Florida Chamber of Commerce found that 61 percent of likely Florida voters say they support the abortion amendment, above the 60 percent support needed to pass the measure. However, the results are within the survey’s ±4 percent margin of error. The poll found that 29 percent of respondents oppose the amendment, and 10 percent are undecided.

Barron Trump, former President Donald Trump's youngest son and his only scion with former first lady Melania Trump, will not be a Florida delegate at the 2024 Republican National Convention, according to his mother's office. "While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments," a spokeswoman for Melania Trump told the Washington Examiner.

McLean [VA] Police District – Detectives from our Tysons Urban Team (TUT) arrested a retail theft crew who stole merchandise, mostly underwear, from stores in nearby jurisdictions. Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., TUT detectives were alerted to a retail theft crew in the 1900 block of Chain Bridge Road in Tysons. The crew was involved in larcenies that occurred in nearby jurisdictions earlier in the day. Detectives located the crew and took three suspects into custody. A search of the suspect’s vehicle revealed over $24,000 worth of merchandise, mostly underwear from Victoria’s Secret. The merchandise was connected to recent thefts that...

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Democrats that challenged Wisconsin’s witness requirements for absentee voting, a ruling that keeps the law in place with the presidential election six months away. The rules for voting in Wisconsin are of heightened interest given its place as one of a handful of battleground presidential states. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point, including the past two. U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson tossed the lawsuit Thursday, saying the fact that the law has stood unchallenged in one form...

Is anyone surprised that Joe Biden is caving? It’s what he does. In a disgracefully craven move, President Biden has paused weapons shipments to Israel to try to prevent the Jewish state from launching a full-scale offensive against the remaining Hamas military stronghold in Rafah. It’s a policy shift sheathed in high-minded concern about the safety of civilians in Gaza but happens to be a change in direction that is welcome to a political left that has whipped itself into an anti-Israel frenzy in the months since the Oct. 7 attack. Not too long ago, Biden was averring that Hamas...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A former Columbus police vice detective who pleaded guilty to kidnapping sex workers under the guise of an arrest was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Thursday. Andrew Mitchell, 60, of Sunbury, will receive credit for the roughly five years he has been in custody since his arrest in April 2019, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. He had pleaded guilty in December to two counts of depriving individuals of their civil rights while acting under color of law and one count of obstructing justice. Mitchell spent more than 30 years...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that student protesters didn’t “know very much” about the Middle East. When asked about the protests at college campuses across the country, Clinton said, “First of all, I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now. You are right. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country. With respect to the Middle East, they don’t...

CNN — Hunter Biden’s latest attempts to throw out his federal gun case were rejected in back-to-back rulings Thursday, teeing up a high-stakes criminal trial next month in Delaware. The president’s son had asked the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the charges by overturning prior decisions from the trial judge that let the case move forward. But the appellate panel instead rejected Hunter Biden’s appeals, which related to his defunct plea deal and his claims that the case was tainted by political bias. Hours later, the trial judge, Maryellen Noreika, rejected Hunter Biden’s remaining motion to dismiss...

Florida tax returns delayed

There was nothing like Sly and the Family Stone – not then, and not now. At their late-'60s best, this expectation-confounding group boasted the rhythmic ferocity of R&B, but none of its quickly devolving formulaic Motown tics. At the same time, they had a distinctly rock 'n' roll character. That meant no small amount of screw-you attitude, an exhilarating focus on hooks, some seriously weird outfits and a tendency toward hedonism. Fans got a taste of this groundbreaking, genre-jumping amalgam on 1968's Dance to the Music, but it all really came together with Stand, released on May 3, 1969. This...

resident Joe Biden called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un the president of South Korea at a closed-door fundraiser Portola Valley, California Friday. Biden, 81, was going after his 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, for praising the North Korean leader after they met a handful of times during the Republican's administration. The president talked of Trump's pride from 'love letters from South Korean president Kim Jong Un.' The president of South Korea is Yoon Suk Yeol, who Biden has met a number of times - including at a White House state dinner, an official trip to South Korea and...

A man is being held in the Metro Jail on a felony charge after he reportedly destroyed parts of a Catholic charity building. According to an affidavit from the Metro Nashville Police Department, officers responded to a call regarding an irate person “actively destroying items on the property” of a Catholic charity on Monday, April 22 on Lea Avenue. When they arrived, they saw Napoleon Meredith on the roof of the building. Upon accessing the roof of the building, officers said they witnessed Meredith destroying an air condition unit. Officers approached Meredith, telling him to come out from behind the...

A 16-year-old boy spray painted LGBTQ graffiti Wednesday outside of the Central Catholic High School chapel, Lafayette police said. The vandal struck in the early afternoon Wednesday, and school officials covered up the vandalism on the walls with plywood. The vandal returned about 6:10 p.m. Wednesday and spray painted new messages on the plywood covering the earlier graffiti. The graffiti read, "Queer Lives Matter" and "God loves trans kids too," police said. The vandalism included inverted crosses spray painted on the chapel's stained-glass windows, according to police reports.

The Justice Department faced criticism on Friday for pushing back on a federal court's order to expedite the timeline for determining whether recordings of President Biden's interviews with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur should be released. The situation developed after advocacy groups filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the recording last month. The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, as well as Judicial Watch and CNN, all filed requests seeking the release of the tapes, which congressional Republicans have sought and unsuccessfully subpoenaed. The three organizations' FOIA requests were combined into one suit. In April, the DOJ announced it would...

Russian forces have attacked across the Ukrainian border to the north of Kharkiv in a potential effort to open a new front in the war and intensify the pressure on Ukraine’s second city. Ukraine’s defence ministry said there had been “an attempt by the enemy to break through our defence line using armoured vehicles” at about 5am on Friday near the town of Vovchansk, and the initial attacks had been repelled. There were also reports of fighting in the border villages of Strilecha, Pylna and Borysivka farther west, and that Russian forces had advanced by about 1km around Vovchansk, though...