Free Republic

February 2024 witnessed a distressing surge in layoff announcements, marking the highest for the month since the global financial crisis of 2009, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The total of 84,638 planned job cuts represents a 3% increase from January and a worrisome 9% surge from the same month a year ago. Tech industries, typically seen as pillars of stability, are grappling with a significant wave of layoffs, leading the pack with 28,218 job cuts. Despite this being a 55% decrease from the same period last year, the sheer volume underscores the challenges faced by even...

New Census figures reveal a troubling trend. After tumbling in 2021, poverty spiked sharply in 2022. Despite steady job growth, the Supplemental Poverty Measure jumped 4.6 points, from 7.8 to 12.4 percent. That’s a historic, nearly 60 percent increase just one year after the measure reached a record low. And the rate for children more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022.

Twitter users were shocked by President Joe Biden’s latest gaffe during a public statement on holding Russian oligarchs responsible for their corruption. During a speech given on Thursday, the president announced a new $33 billion spending package to provide more aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia. When Biden began talking about holding corrupt Russian oligarch’s responsible for their actions, he made a major verbal stumble that broke Twitter.

While recent seven-day averages concerning COVID-19-related hospitalizations across the country have remained stable, health officials in Michigan have noted an “alarming” rise among unvaccinated individuals. In the first three weeks of March, officials tallied a 633 percent increase in hospitalizations among adults ages 30-39 and an increase of 800 percent among those ages 40-49.

A new study has revealed that the virus which causes COVID-19 can linger on fabric, such as clothing or upholstery, for up to three days. Between polyester, a poly-cotton blend and 100% cotton fabrics, the polyester posed the greatest risk, even after 72 hours; on full-cotton samples, the virus lasted one day, while the poly-cotton blend remained contaminated by viral droplets — designed to mimic human saliva — for just six hours.

Z-Z-Z-Z-Z....

Europe is again seeing “alarming rates of transmission” of the coronavirus — a “wake-up call” to avoid quarantine “fatigue,” the region’s World Health Organization director warned Thursday. “We have a very serious situation unfolding before us,” warned Hans Kluge, the UN public health group’s regional director for Europe. “Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March,” he revealed, noting last week’s tally “exceeded 300,000 patients,” with seven countries seeing cases doubling in the previous two week

New York is in a State of Decline. Despite the nation’s longest economic expansion, the Empire State is actually losing population, an analysis of US Census data released Monday reveals. The total state population as of mid-2019 was 19,453,561 — a drop of 76,790, or 0.4 percent, from the previous year, according to the study by the Empire Center for Public Policy. New York was one of only 10 states to suffer a total population decline in 2018-19 — its fourth consecutive annual decrease after five years of growth, and the largest population drop of any state. Only West Virginia,...

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said her impression of the State of the Union, gathered by listening on her truck radio and reading on her phone from kids’ ball games, is that the president’s “hubris” and “naivete” is “alarming.” Palin said she avoided watching the annual speech because it’s all been said before in a Facebook post Wednesday. “If you skipped huddling around the TV last night for the State of the Union address because you’ve heard it all before, plus you were just busy with life, well… so did I,” Palin wrote. “Putting the real world on hold

This past summer our family enjoyed eight beautiful days in Norway on the National Review cruise. I found this video clip from the Islamic Peace Conference in Norway quite interesting since we were just in that picturesque country, home of the Vikings. Sometimes it’s just best to listen and let folks define themselves. The question is whether or not those of us in western civilization will continue to excuse away the issue. From this video clip, it seems we’re all quite wrong in using the term “extremist” to define only certain groups of Muslims.

New satellite images have shown the alarming speed at which Pakistan is constructing a weapons-grade nuclear reactor. The aerial images, taken on April 20, show the rapid building progress of the fourth reactor to produce plutonium in Pakistan's Khushab facility. The site was barren in 2009 and the facility 'costing billions' was undetectable by satellite just 17 months ago, but has since grown at an alarming rate. The facility in Khushab is the fastest growing nuclear program in the world, with the speed of the latest reactor's construction prompting concern from U.S. officials

America may soon lose its most trusted ally in the world. Britain is on the verge of surrendering to the European Union. It is an historic moment that should be showing up in blaring headlines --- but it is slipping in so quietly that only a few people have talked about it: Margaret Thatcher, George Will, Mark Steyn, Peter Hitchens. There are books with about it with titles like The Rape of the Constitution, The Abolition of Britain, and America Alone. Those warnings should be taken seriously, but Washington seems to live in blissful ignorance. In a matter of months...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...