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The mythical Fountain of Youth isn’t made of water, after all, but vodka — at least, according to Betty White. The famously spry comic actress, who turns 96 today, gave good news to those struggling to make it through January by offering some sage insight into her longevity. She told Parade magazine that she loves vodka and hot dogs, “probably in that order.” She may be on to something — a recent study found that adults who were moderate drinkers were more than 20 percent less likely to die early of any cause. White added that she’s also made it...

A 40-year-old mother in San Jose, Calif., died two days after catching the flu, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing local media. Katie Denise Oxley Thomas, who was considered healthy and liked to run marathons, died on Jan. 4, the report said. She is the 42nd Californian under the age of 65 to die from the flu, the paper reported. “I can tell you that she seemed absolutely fine on New Year’s Eve and called a friend Tuesday morning saying that she had a sore throat, and by Wednesday she was in the ICU,” her sister told the Mercury News....

When Juan Granda ventured into Peru’s Amazon rainforest to score another illicit load of gold, he boasted that he felt like legendary Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. “I’m like Pablo coming ... to get the coke,” he told two co-workers in a text message in 2014. A 36-year-old Florida State University graduate who once sold subprime loans, Granda was no cartel kingpin. But his offhand comparison was apt: Gold has become the secret ingredient in the criminal alchemy of Latin American narco-traffickers who make billions turning cocaine into clean cash by exporting the metal to Miami. The previous year, Granda’s...

More than 1 of every 10 students receiving a diploma from a D.C. public high school last year missed most of the academic year, according to an investigation released Tuesday that casts a shadow on a district that has trumpeted improvements in graduation rates. The report, commissioned by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, portrays a school system riddled by student absenteeism and teachers who feel pressured to push chronically absent high school seniors across the graduation stage regardless of whether they earned their diplomas. The review saved some of its sharpest criticism for Ballou High School, which...

SANFORD, Maine (AP) — A Maine school district has fired a substitute teacher who was recorded arguing with a student about immigration. Sanford School Department officials tell the Portland Press Herald the argument happened in an 11th grade classroom at the Sanford Regional Technical Center last week. The district fired the teacher following an investigation into the exchange. In the video clip posted on Twitter , the student and teacher discuss a proposed wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The substitute tells the student, “Oh, you’re getting kicked out of my country.” She later says the country has belonged...

The Swiss government's recent ban on boiling lobsters alive may have had some Maritimers chuckling, but one researcher said there's merit to the move, and that it's "very likely" lobsters feel pain. Robert Elwood, professor emeritus of animal behaviour at Queen's University in Northern Ireland, has spent more than a decade researching the issue. He said there's no easy answer, but he believes it's "very likely" lobsters and other crustaceans can feel pain. "When I started work on the subject, I thought that answer would be highly unlikely," he said.

Michelle Malkin has started a #CoryBookerCaptionContest thread on Twitter. Since Twitter shadow bans people and FreeRepublic does not I figured a photoshop contest here would work out better. It's been too long since we've had a photoshop thread anyways! (For those of you who don't know the story behind this, click here)

Cyber criminals make mistakes and are arrested occasionally, but attacks can originate from states that do not cooperate with international institutions or foreign governments. And outside of the developed world there is often even less of a distinction between private individuals and state actors... The second thing to recognize about cyber security is that attack is much easier than defense. Attackers can probe from multiple points, such as previously-hacked computers or servers rented with stolen credit card information. They can patiently try different strategies until they succeed. Talented attackers may first invent a new method of attack, then write software...

Descartes’s Blunder Michael Egnor January 17, 2018, 6:51 AM What is it that we are most sure of? It’s a fundamental question, the object of philosophical analysis for millennia. Our modern answer to this question was provided by René Descartes in the 17th century. Descartes’s answer is the answer most modern men would give. But Descartes got it wrong.Descartes set out to rethink metaphysics from the ground up. In Meditations on First Philosophy, he asked this question: How do I know what is real? Of what can I be certain? He suggested this scenario: Imagine that his mind is controlled...

DOCTORS have warned a suspected outbreak of “eye-bleeding fever” must be declared an epidemic and emergency measures imposed to tackle the disease. Dr Mukuzi Muhereza, from the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), has warned action must be taken over reports of growing numbers of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) cases. He warned the disease is “highly contagious” and said the people “must be protected” to prevent it spreading. The infection causes victims to suffer from a burning fever before beginning to bleed from orifices including their eyes, anuses and mouths. It comes amid a growing war of words between the UMA and...

Suddenly it ran down his back ice cold: As a walker Torsten Koj (54) relaxed strolled along the banks of the Elbe, sighted the Dresdner a strange "creature" in the water! A head seemed to lift out of the water at the front, also back and tail were visible ... Is it the legendary monster of Loch Ness, which got lost after Elbflorenz? The "essence" appeared at the height of the Carolabrücke! "It was several meters long, slowly swam down the Elbe, that's Nessie, I thought!" Said Observer Koj. "I pulled out my camera, caught it several times." It would...

(Meredith) – The owner of a Chick-Fil-A in North Dakota has apologized after a mother claims the restaurant kicked her out for breastfeeding without a cover. Macy Hornung said she was nursing her child at a Fargo Chick-Fil-A when the franchise owner approached her Saturday evening. She said the owner asked her to cover up or leave the restaurant. “I was showing no more than the upper portion of my breast, barely more than what was visible in my shirt, and (she) asked me to cover,” Hornung wrote on Facebook. “I tried to explain that I couldn’t because my baby...

Bender's NFL Live Thread: Conference Championships Sunday, Jan 21, 2018 (All times Eastern) AFC: #3 Jacksonville at #1 New England 3:05 pm CBS, Gillette Stadium NFC: #2 Minnesota at #1 Philadelphia 6:40 pm FOX, Lincoln Financial Field

Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “The 15:17 to Paris,” is based on true events, where three American heroes stopped a terrorist on a Paris train in 2015, and it is causing the Hollywood crowd to go nuts. They just tried to put the kibosh on certain scenes that didn’t fit their liberal agenda, and boy, that made Eastwood mad. So, the famous actor and director who voted for President Donald Trump just slapped the leftists hard with a brutal surprise. You’re going to love it.

Some lawmakers would like to see the Justice Department prosecute former spy chief James Clapper for inaccurate testimony to Congress about domestic surveillance before it's too late. Privacy-conscious critics say looming five-year statutes of limitation for perjury and making false statements — establishing a March 12 deadline for charges — make an urgent case for action, and that nonprosecution would set a dangerous precedent that impedes oversight and executive-branch accountability. Clapper, director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, testified during a March 2013 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that the NSA was "not wittingly” collecting “any type of data at...

Escaping the East Coast chill, Michelle Obama spent part of her holiday weekend in Miami with her eldest daughter Malia. And while in sunny Florida, Obama swapped her prim post-White House wardrobe — (snip) Obama took a similar approach to her beachwear, which felt like a modern version of Jackie Kennedy's effortless beach style: distressed denim cutoffs, a mannish button-down, and a coordinating white bikini. Completing the look were a printed headscarf, oversize hoop earrings, and square lens shades.

Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump took the opportunity Tuesday to slam Hillary Clinton during a surprise visit at gathering dubbed a "conversation with Women of America." Trump used to the event to take aim at Clinton, the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination. Trump joked about how he beat Clinton in Arkansas, a state where she served as first lady. "Arkansas, great state," Trump said, after noting a woman attending from the state. "How did I win Arkansas by so much when she came from Arkansas?" The gathering featured more than a dozen top White House...

Anti-science activists can be very destructive when they get their way. Groups like Greenpeace attack innovations, sometimes literally, in biotechnology and energy production and millions of people suffer as a result, especially in the developing world. This is evident in Uganda, where the government continues to debate a GMO safety bill this week as beatable agricultural diseases ravage crops. Science literacy is the obvious antidote to policies that disregard evidence, but there’s an important precursor to implementing it: economic freedom. A free society creates an environment where science can flourish. So if we want to spread science literacy around the...

Swiss Follies Wesley J. Smith January 16, 2018, 12:30 PM Switzerland has followed New Zealand and a few other localities to outlaw boiling live lobsters. It also requires them to be shipped in salt water. Supporters claim that lobsters can feel pain, a dubious notion, given that they don’t have brains adequate to process such stimuli.But never mind. The Swiss epitomize the world we are creating once we reject human exceptionalism and elevate eliminating — as opposed to mitigating — suffering to top societal priority. That can drive policy into surreal regions of misplaced priorities. Consider: Switzerland has amended its Constitution to recognize the...