Free Republic

Just this past weekend, ten 100-year-old pennies sold for a whopping $1.1 million at an auction held by an Irvine-based auction house. Now that is a good return on investment. The coins were sold Sunday night during an auction by GreatCollections. “The ten pennies were specially struck proof coins made for collectors by the United States Mint in Philadelphia in the early years of the Lincoln cents. All are still in pristine, mint red condition and sold for a combined total of $1,113,174,” the auction house said. This Lincoln penny, specially made by the United States Mint in Philadelphia in...

A 26-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested Sunday after police say he sexually battered a woman in Irvine last month. Rafael Cortez was at a storage facility at 17 Shield in Irvine on June 25 when the alleged battery took place, the Irvine Police Department said in a news release. Cortez was exiting an elevator when a woman got on, then he re-entered the elevator, police said in a news release.

CHICAGO: The 26-year-old son of Egypt’s Minister of Immigration and Expatriate Affairs, Nabila Makram, is facing charges of premeditated murder over the killing of two men in California in April. Ramy Hani Mounir Fahim, who lives in Irvine, California, has also been charged with two enhancements each of lying in wait and the personal use of a deadly weapon after a co-worker and his roommate were stabbed to death in their Anaheim apartment early last month. The special circumstances of “lying in wait” and multiple murders make Fahim eligible for the death penalty, officials said. Police allege that Fahim attacked...

A 26-year-old Irvine man has been charged with ambushing two Chapman University alumni who were stabbed to death in their apartment near Angel Stadium. Ramy Fahim, the defendant, worked at the office of a wealth management firm in Newport Beach with one of the victims, 23-year-old Griffin Robert Cuomo, Anaheim police said. The other man who was killed, Jonathan Andrew Bahm, also 23, had no prior connection to Fahim, Sgt. Shane Carringer said.

Students of the University of California Irvine campus headed back to school on Monday although classes will take place online for at least two weeks, the school says. On the day classes resumed, the school acknowledged firing an outspoken professor who refused to be vaccinated. On Monday, UCI fired the outspoken School of Medicine and director of the Medical Ethics Program, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, for refusing the vaccine. It is the school's strict adherence to vaccine policies that enabled many families to want to send their students back to school. Though some students would remain at home, many arrived back...

An Asian man was arrested last night by California police, after abducting a woman who he thought was white so he could rape her in revenge for supposed anti-Asian hate crimes. Irvine Police arrested Michael Sangbong Rhee, a 37-year-old Asian male, on Friday night for kidnapping with the intent to commit a sexual assault against an Asian woman. In a press release, Irvine PD said that Rhee forced the woman at gunpoint into the back of her car when she was outside her apartment complex on Thursday afternoon. After committing “sexual battery” on the woman, Rhee fled when she alerted...

Kevin Drum is a liberal blogger but is always worth a read. He was with Mother Jones. He now appears to be on his own with his Jabberwocky blog. When liberals mocked Republicans for making the national security case regarding admitting scores of Syrian refugees, Drum said that stance was “absurdly out of touch.” He also said Senate Democrats forced him to side with the National Rifle Association when the Left wanted to push prohibiting those on terror watch lists from buying guns. There are serious constitutional issues with this policy, the least being the lack of due process and...

A new blaze, the Silverado Fire, prompted evacuations for about 60,000 residents – also affected about 10 schools – Monday in the Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine, Orange County, California. The fire, which began Monday morning at 6:47 a.m. PDT, quickly exploded to 500 acres during some of the season’s most extreme fire conditions. Much of the state is under red flag warnings because of high winds and low humidity. Wind gusts and low humidity are making for dangerous conditions in parts of California. Gusts over 80 mph have been recorded. At least 20 wildfires still have not been fully...

As many as 60,000 people are being forced to flee their homes as a fast-moving brush fire raged through a large swath of Southern California early Monday, according to officials and news reports. The Silverado Fire flared up around 6:45 a.m. local time near the city of Irvine and has burned through 2,000 acres, prompting officials to declare a mandatory evacuation around 9 a.m., the Orange County Fire Authority said on Twitter. “The fire started in Silverado Canyon, and helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are on the way,” Irvine Mayor Christina Shea said on the city website. “The wind is making...

Irvine residents Alan and Alex Stokes, both 23, face one felony count each of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of falsely reporting an emergency... The twin’s YouTube channel has some 4.8 million subscribers. The brothers allegedly made two attempts to film a bogus bank robbery on Oct. 15, 2019. The pair was walking around dressed in all black, wearing ski masks and carrying duffle bags stuffed with cash, pretending they’d robbed a bank, as their videographer filmed, investigators said. When they called an Uber around 2:30 p.m., the driver refused to pick them up because he was unaware of...

California Democrats are building a wall of money to defend the congressional seats they took from Republicans in 2018, new Federal Election Commission financial reports show *** In the Central Valley, Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock (Stanislaus County), took in $789,093 in the quarter that ended March 31, leaving him with $3.5 million in campaign cash. His Republican opponent, veterinarian Ted Howze, raised $71,147 in the first quarter, leaving him with $100,575 in the bank. *** Brian Maryott, a San Juan Capistrano city councilman, is challenging Democratic Rep. Mike Levin in a district that bridges San Diego and Orange counties. But...

A federal court gave final approval Thursday to the redrawn Virginia House of Delegates map that a court-appointed expert created to resolve the state’s long-running racial gerrymandering case. In a 2-1 opinion, judges for the Richmond-based Eastern District of Virginia ordered the state to adopt the map created by University of California-Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman. The map could boost Democrats’ chances of taking control of the House later this year by tilting six GOP-held districts toward Democrats and imperiling the re-election campaigns of two top Republicans. Republicans had called Grofman’s map “legally indefensible,” saying it “attempts to give...

Liberals were in for a surprise when legal Asian immigrant families fought back at their efforts to dump the homeless of Orange County into their ICity of Irvine community, thinking that since they were Asians, they wouldn't complain. Apparently, they complained mightily, as this story in the Los Angeles Times shows: Many of the loudest voices in the movement to block the shelter plan were Chinese Americans who came together through social media apps and various community groups. They were joined by immigrants from South Korea, India, Mexico and the Middle East, along with some whites. They rallied to...

Parkland activist David Hogg is calling for a boycott of Laura Ingraham’s advertisers after the Fox News host made a comment about some of his college rejections, which he openly discussed in an interview with TMZ. “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Ingraham tweeted along with a link to a DailyWire story about the rejections. Hogg was turned down by four University of California schools--Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Irvine. The Parkland activist responded by calling on his supporters...

Facing a public backlash, officials in Southern California's Orange County rescinded their plan Tuesday for emergency homeless shelters in three cities. The homeless shelters in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel were to house up to 400 people, the Orange County Register reported. Laguna Niguel ranks seventh among the nation’s wealthiest cities, according to a 2016 Register report. "They're just dumping these poor people in our neighborhoods and communities where there are like six schools and, you know, little children walking to school," Irvine resident Radhika Athlaye told ABC7. "Just a general area where it's not right for either the...

A U.S.-based Saudi professor and former U.N. fellow says he agrees with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust is a "myth" and says America eventually will collapse like the Soviet Union. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi, who has taught at four American schools, told Iran's Mehr News Agency Dec. 26, "I agree wholeheartedly with President Ahmadinejad." "There was no such a thing as the 'Holocaust,'" Sindi said, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. "The so-called 'Holocaust' is nothing but Jewish-Zionist propaganda. There is no proof whatsoever that any living Jew was ever gassed or burned in Nazi Germany or...

Full title; POLICE PURSUIT ASSAULT ON COP NISSAN TITAN CARJACKING AUDI SQ5 CARJACKER IRVINE CALIFORNIA 2/26/2018

It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia’s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee. Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack — but which has come under fire itself for its work. Some critics say CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin. Members of Congress say they...

IRVINE (CBSLA.com) — Authorities say they’ve uncovered a massive international sex trafficking ring in Southern California. Prosecutors announced the arrest of four people connected to the Orange County-based enterprise that allegedly placed thousands of ads for sexual services in 29 states over the past two years. The ring was based locally in Irvine, officials said. Women and girls from China were forced to sell themselves for sex and sometimes forced to work 14 hours a day in homes purchased specifically for the purposes of prostitution, according to authorities. Investigators tracked the ring through thousands of ads selling sex on Backpage.com....

The night of May 18 was supposed to be an evening of learning and conversation for Eliana Kopley. The University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) sophomore, who had just attended a lecture about the Holocaust and was walking a short distance to another campus building that was hosting a film screening about Israeli soldiers, found herself confronted by an angry mob. “I was terrified. There is no other word to describe how I felt,” Kopley told the Haym Salomon Center.” Kopley had intended to join 10 classmates and guests of the private event hosted by Students Supporting Israel. When she...