Free Republic

Legal and illegal immigrants wired almost $140 billion from the United States back to their home countries and foreign relatives in 2016.The huge loss of domestic spending by of immigrants’ remittances is spotlighted in a new report by the Pew Research Center, which also noted that $6.5 billion was sent back to the United States by foreign-based U.S. workers. That is a 21-fold difference and is enough money to support 2.6 million additional $50,000 jobs in the United States. The remittance number is based on calculations by the World Bank. The leading recipients of the exported remittances are people in Mexico, China, and...

2016 was hottest year on record, international report confirms By Timothy Cama - 08/10/17 01:25 PM EDT A report compiled by scientists around the world confirmed Thursday that 2016 was the hottest year since tracking began. The State of the Climate in 2016 report, led by the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with the help of scientists from 60 nations, found that “the major indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet.” The comprehensive report came days after the New York Times publicized a draft of a separate major climate change report...

I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it.

New data released Wednesday by the Census Bureau shows an estimated 61.4 percent of Americans over the age of 18 cast ballots, down from the 61.8 percent who voted in 2012 and well below the 63.8 percent who voted in 2004, the recent high-point of voter participation. White voters were most likely to turn out; 65.3 percent of whites told Census Bureau surveyors they voted in 2016, more than a full percentage point higher than their participation rate in 2012.  But voter turnout among black voters fell almost seven percentage points, to 59.4 percent, the Census figures show — after...

The Social Security Administration has released its annual list and jumping 2,368 spots to 901 is Kylo, the character played by Adam Driver. It ended at 3,269 in 2015. This comes as no surprise to BabynameWizard.com founder Laura Wattenberg who, the Associated Press reports, states that the names of villains are these days more likely to inspire parents than on-screen heroes. The category’s popular culture-inspired runners up include Creed, Adonis (from Rocky sequel Creed) and Zayn, presumably after former One Direction singer Zayn Malik who is now enjoying a solo career in his own right.

A Jordanian researcher has posted a list of 10 “achievements” in the Arab world during 2016, and they include such notables as “the car bomb tactic” and “transforming any device or tool into a tank or lethal bomb.” Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/10-biggest-arab-world-breakthroughs/#UrsFzJxszqXeMBzd.99

ROME, January 3, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – 2016 marked a dramatic turning point in the pontificate of Pope Francis. It may be called the year of the great awakening, as more and more faithful Catholics and prelates, Cardinals included, came to a frightening understanding that there is a major problem with the current Pope. For the beginning years of his papacy, most, including LifeSite, gave Francis the benefit of the doubt. They repeatedly told themselves and others not to believe the media; that his words were being taken out of context or mistranslated; that he was just plain poor at doing...

Who can forget the "doom and gloom" warnings about the fate of the UK should Brexit win? Well, according to the latest confirmation received on Thursday, they were not only wrong but with an ironic twist because according to the Office for National Statistics, the UK economy grew by 0.6% in the Q4 of 2016, more than the 0.5% consensus estimate, and - more importantly - grew by 2% for all of 2016, making the UK the fastest growing economy among the G7 in the past year. On an annualized basis, the U.K. economy grew 2.4 percent in the fourth...

Submitted by Johnny Kampis via The Foundation for Economic Education,Migration patterns for 2016 show that Americans tended to move away from high-tax states and into states where residents keep more of what they earn.United Van Lines, the nation’s largest moving company, recently released its annual movers study report showing that South Dakota overtook Oregon as the top inbound destination. Generally, more people moved toward the West, and states in the Northeast saw the largest exodus of residents. The top four outbound states in 2016, in order, were New Jersey, Illinois, New York, and Connecticut.(Photo: Tax Foundation)The Tax Foundation pointed...

A large share of fans responded to the NFL’s tacit endorsement of Colin Kaepernick’s anti-American message by refusing to tune-in to games, prompting a huge decline in TV ratings. Aside from his disrespect for the national anthem, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback also sparked outrage by donning socks embroidered with pigs wearing police uniforms. Early in the season, ESPN and network broadcasts never missed an opportunity to spotlight Kaepernick and his followers taking a knee during the pre-game ritual. Fans, though, saw Kaepernick’s protest as thumbing his nose at America. As a result, regular season ratings for 2016 dropped 8%...

on Monday afternoon promised that 2017 will be an even bigger year for leaks than 2016, which saw the whistleblowing site publish thousands of documents exposing the dirty laundry of the Clinton campaign, US political secrets, covert trade deals and private communications from global leaders.

Driven by terror threats and a potential Hillary Clinton administration, sales of guns in America soared to record levels in 2016, according to the FBI. Just released FBI background check numbers, which roughly equate gun sales, totaled some 27,538,673, 4 million more than in 2015 and nearly double the number in President Obama's first year.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago police have released crime statistics from 2016, with a police spokesman calling it an "unacceptable rise in violence." In the worst violence in nearly 20 years, Chicago saw 762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents and 4,331 shooting victims.

In the future, Americans — assuming there are any left — will look back at 2016 and remark: “What the HELL?” They will have a point. Over the past few decades, we here at the Year in Review have reviewed some pretty disturbing years. For example, there was 2000, when the outcome of a presidential election was decided by a tiny group of deeply confused Florida residents who had apparently attempted to vote by chewing on their ballots.

Christians continue to be the most persecuted believers in the world with over 90,000 followers of Christ being killed in the last year, according to prominent Italian sociologist and author Massimo Introvigne. Introvigne, the founder of the independent Center for Studies on New Religions based in Turin, Italy, cited statistics compiled by the Center for Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary for a annual report that is expected to be released next month. Introvigne said that there are between 500 to 600 Christians throughout the world that can’t profess their faith in Christ freely without fear of persecution....

Reviewing the year in 2016 politics, there are many epic campaign moments. Here’s a few of the more memorable – in no particular order: Donald Trump’s airplane had it’s own soundtrack:

In a year when there were hundreds seismic shifts amid the tectonic plates within the body politic, one of the most important was the revelation that Media Polling is just as brutally biased as the media entities who present the polling results. With election 2016 behind us, and before 2017 arrives, the truth behind the intentionally constructed deception must not simply fade back into the shadows. Never again should the American voter trust the polling presented by corporate media. Everything about it is a financed and manufactured fraud.

When the 49ers announced their team awards Friday afternoon, Kaepernick was the recipient of the Len Eshmont Award, given to the 49er who "best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont, an original member of the 1946 49ers team." The award, which was established after Eshmont died in 1957, is considered the most prestigious honor the players vote on.

A tribute to an unsung hero TIME magazine named Donald Trump “Person of the Year” for 2016, and we could have done the same. But this would have been to over-simplify a victory that millions of Americans believe has brought this nation back from the brink of destruction, and has done so against what seemed impossible odds. In the just completed election campaign, a vicious partisan press substituted character assassination for reporting and joined malicious Democrats in demonizing Trump and his supporters as racists, sexists, Islamophobes, xenophobes and religious bigots, while dismissing the candidate as “unfit to sit in the...

CHRISTIANS are the most persecuted religious group in the world with more than 90,000 killed in 2016 because of their faith, a leading religious study group director has claimed. Speaking on Vatican Radio, Massimo Introvigne, Director of the Centre for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), said more than 60,000 of the Christians killed this year were murdered in tribal conflicts in Africa. He claimed these deaths often came after Christians refused to take up arms for reasons of conscience. The religious chief said: "The other 30 per cent, or 27,000, were killed in terror attacks, the destruction of Christian villages,...