Free Republic

With the San Antonio news media and local community watching, Hondo City Council on Monday revoked the permit for the Medina Area Friends of the National Rifle Association fundraiser scheduled to be held this Saturday in the city’s Medina County Fair Hall. The 15th annual fundraiser dinner, including a raffle of two guns, a Ruger Max 9 pistol and an AR-15 rifle, was scheduled for Aug. 6, at 5:30 p.m., with proceeds to benefit the NRA Foundation. In 2021, the Friends of NRA event was held Aug. 7 at the same site. According to their social media site, Friends of...

The Medina County Elections Department is urging registered, qualified voters who vote absentee to take great care in filling out the required mail-in ballot carrier envelope. In the March 1 Primary Election, 14 voters committed errors in filling out the carrier envelope, according to Medina County Elections Administrator Lupe Torres. To help voters avoid the same mistakes that could result in their ballots not being counted, Torres provided instructions for correctly filling out the required information (see examples for correct ways to enter information). This information will be contained in the absentee packet mailed by the elections office to qualified,...

The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Australia mining behemoth Lynas $30.4 million on Monday to finance the construction of a rare earth metal processing plant in Hondo. The funding comes as the nation attempts to solidify its domestic supply of rare earth metals-, which are vital for making wind turbines, consumer technology, batteries and missiles. Lynas Rare Earths Ltd, the largest rare earth element mining and processing company outside of China, was awarded a Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III technology investment agreement to establish domestic processing capabilities for light rare earth elements (LREE).

Bars, breweries, day care centers and more can soon reopen across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday. Citing a decreased "positivity rate" of COVID-19 cases across the state over the last two weeks, Abbott also eased restrictions for some already-opened businesses. Effective immediately, gyms, personal care services, child care facilities, businesses located in offices, youth clubs and youth programs are allowed to reopen at 25 percent occupancy or with 25 percent of the workforce there. Beginning Friday, May 22, restaurants are permitted to expand capacity to 50 percent and bars, breweries, bowling alleys, skating rinks, zoos, aquariums and bingo halls...

Thirteen veterans from various wartime eras gathered July 18 at South Texas Regional Training Center for a memorable ceremony conducted by The Rotary Club of Hondo-D’Hanis in conjunction with Quilts of Honor, Texas. Accompanied by family, friends and Rotarians, the men who ranged in age from 31 to in their nineties, were seated together at a head table and served a light supper, catered by Bill & Rosa’s KK Restaurant in D’Hanis. The vets enjoyed visiting with each other prior to the start of the evening. Rotary President Russ Renaud welcomed the audience and especially the honored guests who he...

This is all it says, as is: "Fidel Castro, 80, Cuban dictator. Unspecified illeness."

This has to be right up there among the contenders for the Darwin Awards... Math Story Problem for the not-so-new century...let's see if our engineering section can solve this one. A backhoe weighing eight tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing. Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass,...

This past weekend FEMA and the City of Austin , along with the Texas Workforce Commission set up a job training/hiring/interview/job fair for all the Katrina FEMA evacuees in the Austin area to be held at the ACC campus on Webberville Road in East Austin . Several of the evacuees said they had no transportation to get from the apartment complexes. So the city of Austin/FEMA/TWC set up transportation for each of them to ensure they would be able to partake of the benefit of job searching. The transportation consisted of nine buses and vans, to run from four locations...

In the busy confines of the market square in Agropoli, a clifftop town overlooking the Gulf of Salerno, last week a familiar cry could be heard above the buzz of scooters and chatter. "Tre mille lí," several market traders were shouting, from behind stalls piled high with peppers and oranges. For foreign tourists soaking up the atmosphere, there was something just a little odd about this. "Lí" is southern Italy's abbreviation for lira, a currency that was supposedly taken out of circulation three and a half years ago. Kenneth Clarke last week furthered his ambitions to lead the Conservative Party...

A family that breeds guinea pigs for medical research announced yesterday that it was to close its farm in a final attempt to get back the remains of a relative whose body was dug up by animal rights extremists. David, John and Chris Hall said that Darley Oaks farm in Newchurch, Staffs, would close by the end of the year. Their family, friends and business associates have been subjected to a six-year campaign of terror and intimidation that culminated last October in activists digging up and stealing the remains of Chris Hall's 82-year-old mother-in-law, Gladys Hammond, from St Peter's churchyard...

Iain Duncan Smith has threatened to resign from the Conservative Party and sit as an independent MP, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. Mr Duncan Smith, still bitter about being forced to resign the leadership in October 2003, told colleagues that he will take the extraordinary step if two people he blames particularly for his downfall are allowed to stand as Tories at the next election. Vanessa Gearson and Mark MacGregor played leading roles in the "Betsygate" affair which saw Mr Duncan Smith accused of sanctioning improper payments to his wife. Both fought last May's election unsuccessfully and are understood to...

Thoughtful Democrats -- the rarest birds on the endangered species list -- might want to ponder this: "Another hanging chad has dropped. His name is John G. Roberts Jr., and he undoubtedly will turn out to be opposed to abortion rights, affirmative action, an expansive view of federal powers and a reading of the Constitution that takes a properly suspicious view of the state's embrace of religion. In these and other matters -- the death penalty, for instance -- he is expected to substantially reflect the views of George W. Bush, the man who nominated him to the Supreme Court,...

NORWEGIAN workers are legally entitled to look at porn on the internet during company time after a ruling by the country’s supreme court. Two oil workers sacked for viewing net porn in 2002 were unfairly sacked, a judge decided.