Free Republic

What will happen in the U.S. once cruising resumes? There is no denying that the pandemic is hitting the United States hard. With the largest number of cases and deaths worldwide, the country struggles to keep the virus under control. Once cruising does finally resume, the cruise lines will need to implement and enforce rules and regulations that go much further than the protocols that are implemented ashore. Those people that would typically refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing will be forced to do so on board. As is the case in Europe, cruise lines sailing to...

15 Best Places to Visit in Sudan There’s no question about it: Sudan is no safe place for travelers these days...Today the country ranks second on the fragile states index, and most all foreign offices recommend against all travel there. Perhaps one day that will all be over though. Perhaps one day we can once again look forward to donning the desert gear and delving into the shifting sands of ancient Kush and Nubia. Perhaps one day the burgeoning Red Sea dive scene in the west can reveal the sparkling corals and ocean treasures, and the Twirling Dervishes of Khartoum...

Did @realDonaldTrump just say 545 kids they can't find their parents for came over through "cartels and coyotes"?! How the hell does a coyote bring a whole human across the border?! Lord-----stop talking. #FinalDebate

Cruise ship news today has cruise lines looking at the possibility of having to cancel all of their sailings out of North America for 2020 and 2021 because they could be sailing at only 30% to 40% occupancy with about 5% of their fleets to start according to a Wall Street analyst. The cruise lines would then re-schedule their itineraries for cruises they could actually deliver on and notify all of their customers when they can take their delayed cruises. There are millions of customers who have booked their cruises from as far back as 2018 for 2020 and 2021...

Joe Buck’s necessities for the next two weeks: one giant suitcase, two garment bags, plenty of room service and at least nine novel coronavirus tests. That’s the price of entry for the unusual stretch he is in, calling what could be 13 baseball games and four football games in 18 days. As the sports schedule has been scrambled this fall by the pandemic, Buck, the lead play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports’s baseball and football coverage, has seen his itinerary warped, too. Image without a caption “The silver lining in all of this, at least in my life, is baseball is...

U.S.—With people leaving Democrat cities in droves, mayors and city councils are hoping to fill them back up again -- with tourists! Maybe it's time to give these cities a second chance. Check out these beautiful tourism posters from Democrat-controlled cities around the country! Portland Admire where the pedestals where the statues used to be.

Faced with a crippled cruise industry as a one-time cash cow, PortMiami wants to slash required rent payments for ships and hope business picks up in time to cover debt payments for an ongoing expansion. Once federal regulators lift the existing “no sail” order on cruises, cruise lines would resume rental fees for ships, but not have to meet minimum payments. Kuryla said the agreements were tailored to keep Miami poised to remain the top cruise port once ships begin filling up again, and reduce berthing costs enough for companies to consider leaving the port with vessels at a fraction...

Imagine parallel parking a 15-passenger van into just two to three parking spaces surrounded by two-story boulders. On October 20, a University of Arizona-led NASA mission 16 years in the making will attempt the astronomical equivalent more than 200 million miles (320 million kilometres) away. A NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx will soon attempt to touch the surface of an asteroid and collect loose rubble. OSIRIS-REx is the United States' first asteroid sample return mission, aiming to collect and carry a pristine, unaltered sample from an asteroid back to Earth for scientific study. The spacecraft will attempt to touch the surface...

Fusion power is the technology that is 30 years away, and always will be, according to skeptics, at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields. The concept fusion drive, called a direct fusion drive (or DFD), is in development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Though still under development, the engine itself exploits many of the advantages of aneutronic fusion, most notably an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. The fuel for a DFD drive can vary slightly in mass and contains...

A box truck got stuck near the top of a treacherous mountain road in Colorado over the weekend, all because he was following his GPS. The rugged mountain road is known as Engineer Pass, and is notorious for being one of the most tricky, treacherous, and steep backcountry roads in the area. The road has a peak elevation of 12,800 feet and requires four-wheel-drive and a high-clearance vehicle. “How they got that far is beyond me,” said Silverton-based Animas Towing & Recovery owner Wayne Barger. “They’re going to need a lot of help,” he said. “It’s in a predicament that’s...

Man has long tried to imitate birds in building all types of aircraft, to varying degrees of success. A new concept aircraft from Airbus, now in its second stage of testing, is taking biomimicry to a whole new level. ... AlbatrossONE, the scale model concept from Airbus, which comes with longer wings that can bend at the tip, thus allowing for more efficient flight. More efficient flight means less fuel consumption, which, in turn, means less emissions and, of course, optimized costs. The aircraft has semi-aeroelastic hinged wing-tips, so they flap freely, alleviating wing loads and avoiding tip stalling. The...

Neandertal babies had chests shaped like short, deep barrels and spines that curved inward more than those of humans, a build that until now was known only for Neandertal adults, researchers say. Neandertals must have inherited those skeletal features rather than developing them as their bodies grew, says a team led by paleobiologist Daniel Garcia Martinez of the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. Stocky, big-brained hominids such as Neandertals needed chest cavities arranged in this way from birth to accommodate lungs large enough to meet their energy needs, the scientists contend October 7 in Science Advances....

An elegant summer palace once belonging to the Minoan aristocracy at Zominthos on Crete, first discovered in 1982, has yielded many more of its priceless secrets in a recent dig. It was found in this summer's dig that the original structure may have been up to three stories high and to date back to 2,000 BC. This year's excavations of the building, measuring 1,600 square meters, or 17,222 square feet, have also shown that the edifice contained ramps, a series of apartments and even religious altars. ...the aim of the new dig was to clarify what served as the access...

An actual ancient gold earring which can be seen depicted in some of the so called Fayum Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt has been discovered in Southeast Bulgaria by archaeologists excavating the Ancient Roman colony Deultum near the town of Debelt, Burgas District, close to the Black Sea coast. Deultum was a Roman colony, which according to Roman law signified a status equal to that of the city of Rome itself. In today's Bulgaria, there are only three Roman cities which enjoyed this status - Deultum (Colonia Flavia Pacis Deultensium) near Burgas, Ratiaria (Colonia Ulpia Traiana Ratiaria) near Archar, Ulpia...

They used clay tablets to keep records of state treaties and decrees, prayers, myths, and summoning rituals, using a language that researchers were only able to decipher around 100 years ago. Now, the Hittites' texts, which were written in cuneiform, are being made fully accessible online. The collection will be based on around 30,000 documents, most of which are written in the Hittite language, but other languages such as Luwian and Palaic will also be represented to a lesser extent. Participating in the joint project are researchers from the universities of Mainz, Marburg, and Würzburg, as well as of the...

Archaeologists working in the ancient Greek city of Soli Pompeipolis in the southern Mersin province in Turkey have unveiled the memorial tomb of the Greek poet and astronomer Aratus, who was born in 315 BC. The city, located in the ancient region of Paphlagonia, was still prominent during Roman times but was only rediscovered in the 1800s with the unearthing of the ruins of Zimbilli Tepe in the Black Sea region of the country. Soli Pompeipolis, lying just across the river from Tasköprü, in the Gökirmak (Greek: Amnias) Valley, in ancient times stretched as far as the Küre and ilgaz...

An ancient limestone weight, dating to the First Temple period, was discovered in an archaeological excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Western Wall Heritage Foundation under Wilson's Arch, adjacent to the Western Wall (the Kotel) in Jerusalem... Mordechai (Suli) Eliav, director of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, said: "How exciting, in the month of Tishrei, whose symbol is the scales of justice, to find a souvenir from the First Temple period. Now, when coming to the Western Wall is so restricted due to the coronavirus pandemic, this finding strengthens the eternal connection between the Jewish nation, Jerusalem,...

Elon Musk spoke at The Mars Society on making Starlink for Mars and Moonship on October 17, 2020 and highlights (recap) are here. Within this online conference Elon announced many interesting things. Self sustaining city on Mars is the core aim for Elon Musk's SpaceX and Starship spacecraft prototype. Elon Musk speaks that humanity have to made self sustaining city on Mars before the World War III start. The goal is to put enough people to Mars and enough tonnage. Metane is the general propellant. When the Starship will make stratosphere flight is currently secret. Elon said that Starship will...

The St. Ivan ("St. John") Island is located about 900 meters away from the closest point on the Bulgarian mainland, the Stolets Peninsula (Cape Stolets, or Scamnia) in the town of Sozopol. The St. Peter Island, which is really small, is roughly the same distance from the coast, and only 50 meters away from the St. Ivan Island. The town of Sozopol itself is the modern-day successor of ancient Apollonia Pontica (Sozopolis), an Ancient Greek colony dating back to the 6th century BC, on the western Black Sea coast which was inhabited by Ancient Thracians. The St. Ivan Island is...

...an ancient set of leather balls inside tombs of the prehistoric Yanghai cemetery near the modern city of Turfan... contained a central core crafted from leather or hair products and are encased in a leather pouch tied up together with a band. Two of the three are clearly marked with a red cross on the outer leather cover and were located in the burials sites of possible horse riders, indicating that they might have been employed in an early form of polo. These baseball-sized Turfan balls were carefully examined by researchers and radiocarbon dated back to the period between 1189...