Free Republic

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho it's off to the job centre they go — for the seven dwarves have been replaced by 'magical creatures' for Disney's live-action remake of Snow White. Rachel Zegler, who plays the fictional princess, has been pictured for the first time with her new companions who appear to be a mix of genders, ethnicities and heights. The actress, wearing Snow White's famous yellow and blue dress and a red cape, is trailed by the group who are dressed in brightly coloured clothes and carrying work tools. They were spotted shooting scenes in Bedfordshire on Thursday in pictures obtained exclusively...

Moscow's high society has been rocked by a scandal after a pair of prominent Vladimir Putin cronies were allegedly heard insulting the Russian despot. Oligarch and former Russian senator Farkhad Akhmedov and high-profile Moscow music producer Iosif Prigozhin, both supposedly supporters of Putin, have been accused of calling him a 'Satan' and a 'dwarf'. An audio recording of what is reportedly a 35-minute phone call between the wealthy pair was shared by Ukraine's Channel Five and quickly jumped on by other outlets - as well as Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). In the audio clip, the pair are heard eviscerating...

Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursion into Ukraine is the latest instance of destabilizing or oppressive behavior at home and abroad by the authoritarian strongman...the aggressive behavior is in line with the Russian leader’s previous misdeeds...in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia on a similar pretext to this week’s incursion...Then in 2014, Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine after the country’s pro-Russian government was toppled by mass protests and replaced by a more pro-E.U. administration....Outside of Europe, Putin’s Russia would later go on to put boots on the ground in Syria to preserve its access and interests there as well... Putin’s regime...

Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad tells his Russian ally Putin the assault on Ukraine is justified and aimed at ‘restoring’ post-Cold-War balance.

An amateur astronomer just spotted a strange new object in the sky. And it’s bright enough for you to see with binoculars from your backyard. The discovery image (left) of a new nova that recently appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia. The right image shows how the same region of the sky appeared just four days prior. Yuji Nakamura At around 7 P.M. JST on the evening of March 18, Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Nakamura spotted something strange: A new point of light in the familiar constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. Researchers at Kyoto University quickly followed up using the 3.8-meter Seimei...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser on COVID-19, said two face masks are likely more effective than one against the novel coronavirus, despite significant uncertainty on the subject. "If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective," Fauci told NBC News on Monday. Infectious disease experts from Stanford Health Care, Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins University recently told Fox News there is little to no evidence on the issue.

Two individuals spotted in the wild seem to have classic long necks but unusually short, stubby legs A photo of two giraffes standing in an open space surrounded by shrubs. The giraffe on the right has dwarfism, and it is significantly shorter than the taller giraffe on the left.This is the first time that dwarfism has been documented in captive or wild giraffes. (Emma Wells / Giraffe Conservation Foundation)In 2015, a team of conservation biologists were conducting regular surveys in Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park when they came across an adult Nubian giraffe that didn't quite fit a typical giraffe's...

Internet-famous cat Lil Bub has died, as BrooklynVegan notes. “On the morning of Sunday, December 1 2019 we lost the purest, kindest, and most magical living force on our planet,” Bub’s “dude” Mike Bridavsky announced. “Bub was cheerful and full of love laying in our bed with us Saturday night, but unexpectedly passed away peacefully in her sleep.” Lil Bub was 8 years old.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich warned Sunday that Americans are getting so used to President Donald Trump’s troubling behavior that they fail to see how truly “dangerously unstable” he is. In a column published Sunday in The Guardian, Reich pointed to Trump’s days-long advocacy of his inaccurate weather forecast that said Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian. He even went so far as to promote a map with a circle awkwardly drawn around Alabama to make it look like the state was in the hurricane’s path. “We’ve had presidents trying to cover up a sexual liaison with an...

Using a telescope at the top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, scientists have discovered a new dwarf planet in our solar system, a body about 435 miles across that lacks a name and that researchers still know little about. The new dwarf planet, dubbed 2015 RR245, has such a huge, highly elliptical orbit that it takes an astonishing 700 Earth years to complete one trip around the sun, and it ventures over 120 times further away from the sun than our planet does. "The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun....

Pluto isn't quite as lonely as scientists had thought. Astronomers have discovered another dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. But this newfound world, dubbed 2015 RR245, is much more distant than Pluto, orbiting the sun once every 700 Earth years, scientists said. (Pluto completes one lap around the sun every 248 Earth years.) "The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun," discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. "They let us piece together...

Robert Reich wants Americans to be vigilant this July 4 against “exclusive patriotism” that “asserts a unique and superior ‘Americanism.’” (Daily Caller) – Former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and current University of California Berkeley professor Robert Reich wants Americans to be vigilant this July 4 against “exclusive patriotism” that “asserts a unique and superior ‘Americanism.’” “We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016, we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together. The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others...

The dwarf is understood to have joined the fighting in the Middle East with a group affiliated to Al QaedaA jihadi who appears to stand no more than three-foot tall has been pictured posing with machine guns in Syria. The dwarf, nicknamed by a journalist as 'Al-Chihuahua' is understood to have joined terror group Jabhat Al-Nusra which has links to Al Qaeda. The organisation are fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS in the war-torn region.

As extreme weather marked by tornadoes and flooding continues to sweep across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has requested – and President Obama has granted – federal help. I don’t begrudge Texas billions of dollars in disaster relief. After all, we’re all part of America. When some of us are in need, we all have a duty to respond. But the flow of federal money poses a bit of awkwardness for the Lone Star State. After all, just over a month ago hundreds of Texans decided that a pending Navy Seal/Green Beret joint training exercise was really an excuse to take...

A dwarf took his fiancee to a restaurant for a romantic meal and was handed a children's colouring book and crayons by a waitress. James Lusted, 26, who is 3ft 7ins, was on a date at a Harvester Inn in Cardiff with his fiancee, Chloe Roberts, who is 5ft 7ins, when the waitress picked up two menus, the crayons and a colouring book. It was only when the waitress heard James's deep voice that she realised her mistake, and didn't serve the couple for the rest of evening. But Mr Lusted and his bride-to-be, 20, who are from Colwyn Bay,...

A dwarf who hired himself out for stag parties and hen nights has escaped jail after admitting pestering schoolgirls for sex. Marc Corrier, who accompanied revellers on wild party nights dressed as an Oompa Loompa, harassed the four young girls over the internet. The 4ft 2in performer from Motherwell, who can make £750 per night by being handcuffed to the groom, first messaged a pair of twins on Facebook when they were 15 and asked one to feel “his third leg'”. He also sent explicit messages to a 13-year-old girl whom he met at an under 16s disco, initially offering...

Norwegian police said a 10-year-old boy who got his family's car stuck in a snowy ditch attempted to pass himself off as a dwarf. Vestoppland Police Officer Kai Lyshaugen said the boy and his 18 month old sister awoke in the night and he decided to bring the toddler along for a joyride in the family car to their grandmother's house, about 18 miles away, TheLocal.no reported Thursday. Police said the car ended up in a ditch and the boy told a passing snowplow driver he was dwarf of legal driving age and ended up stuck when he tried to...

A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun, according to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The duo is the closest star system discovered since 1916. The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds. Both stars in the new binary system are "brown dwarfs," which are stars that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are...

A string of 13 dwarf galaxies are in orbit around the galaxy Andromeda. The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and 30,000 light years thick, moving in synchonicity with each other. The phenomenon is unlike behaviour of other observed galaxies and suggests a hole in our knowledge of galaxy formation. A string of 13 dwarf galaxies in orbit around the massive galaxy Andromeda are not behaving as they should. The galaxies are spread across a flat plane more than one million light years wide and only 30,000 light years thick, moving...

Police hunt for men dressed as Oompa-Loompas after attack on 28-year-old as he left kebab house • Man was left with cuts to his face, nose and lip, as well as two black eyes • Police are now hunting the two men dressed as the fictional factory workers Two men dressed as Oompa-Loompas from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are being hunted by police after they allegedly attacked a man on a night out. The pair - who had painted orange faces and dyed green hair and were wearing hooped tops like the characters in the 1971...