Free Republic

The latest country to announce it is eliminating most of its COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, including mask mandates, is Denmark. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Wednesday that beginning Feb. 1, mask restrictions on public transportation, in restaurants, in shops and other indoor facilities will be lifted, the Associated Press reported. "We say goodbye to the restrictions and welcome the life we knew before," Frederiksen said. "As of Feb. 1, Denmark will be open." Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said that while the European nation recently has had 46,000 new cases daily on average, only 40 people are in hospital intensive care units....

We keep hearing about NBC's ratings problems, as we see in this report: At the halfway point of the XXIII Winter Olympics, things are certainly feeling a little chilly for both Team USA and NBC. As last night's primetime coverage displayed, even with the surprise silver in the short-track speedskating that John-Henry Krueger scored, both the medal count for America's athletes and the ratings for the broadcaster are struggling to gain traction in the PyeongChang games. Currently, Team USA is in sixth place with 10 overall medals, just behind the Russian competitors, and tied for third in gold medals with...

Pope Francis said today that he would set up a commission to study whether or not he can find more ways to confuse and frustrate the living crap out of people, revealing an openness to re-examining the church’s long-held insistence on not speaking off-the-cuff. His move was hailed as a breakthrough by those in the media who have clamored for years to be given more stuff to speculate on, and who cite research showing that a pope whose speeches were scripted and thought out produced nothing for the media to report on, and therefore, pointless. But the idea will face...

LONDON (AFP) – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday accused a handful of countries of holding the UN climate summit to ransom as bitter recriminations swirled over the outcome of the negotiations. While China's Premier Wen Jiabao insisted his government had played an "important and constructive" role, Britain said the meeting had lurched into farce and pointed the finger of blame at Beijing. And the summit host, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, rapped the lower-level negotiators for failing to make headway in nearly two weeks of talks and then leaving their masters with too much to do at...