Free Republic

Clinical trials of an experimental antiviral drug said to “show promise” in treating the deadly coronavirus are still far from fulfilling patient recruitment targets more than two weeks in, raising questions about whether they can be completed within previously projected timelines. Double-blind trials of Gilead Sciences’ drug, remdesivir, are now taking place in 10 hospitals in Wuhan, vice-minister of science and technology Xu Nanping said at a press conference on Friday. Currently, the trials involve more than 200 severe patients and over 30 mild or moderate cases, according to Xu. This is up from the 168 severe and 17 mild...

Scientists around the world are scrambling to develop a vaccine to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, but the best candidate might be an experimental one stored in a Houston freezer. The vaccine, developed by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers, effectively protected mice against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the virus from the same family that spread in the early 2000s. The vaccine never progressed to human testing because manufacturing of it wasn’t completed until 2016, long after SARS had burned out. “It generated zero interest from pharmaceutical...

A cemetery in Australia has removed the offensive grave marker of Peter “Pete” Robert Bridge (April 1, 1986 - April 7, 2019) that featured a photo of Bridge making an obscene gesture. The problem is, Enfield Memorial Park in Adelaide apparently carted off the offensive stone without notifying Bridge’s family. According to Arthur Bridge, the deceased’s father, the cemetery did not contact the family before removing the memorial. When a friend advised the family the stone was removed on January 16, he immediately contacted cemetery staff and was told there had been complaints about the photograph. “We did try and...

JERUSALEM - Concerns of a widening threat from coronavirus spiked just as millions of Israelis are preparing to gather at polling places for national elections next week, following reports that a group of South Koreans who had visited some of the country’s most popular religious and tourist spots tested positive for the infection. Dozens of school students who may have been in proximity to the South Korean tourists were directed to stay in home-based quarantine for two weeks, as were hotel housekeepers and employees of Masada, Tel Ber Sheeva and other national parks. Officials, who had previously expressed cautious optimism...

Mississippi state Rep. John Hines Sr. (D-Greenville) has introduced legislation that would compel parents who home-school their children to use the same state approved lessons that public schools use to teach History and American Government. Hines claims that "home-schoolers have too much freedom to teach their own children. The result is that these children are being denied their appropriate place among the collective body of students. They will have non-conforming opinions and beliefs that will increase the chance they will become social and political misfits. My bill will save these unfortunate children from that fate by either forcing their parents...

Sending shockwaves through the intelligence community, it was reported yesterday that newly appointed Acting DNI Richard “Ric” Grenell asked the intelligence community, specifically including Shelby Pierson, to produce the underlying intelligence within the briefing she gave to the House Intelligence Committee. Well, what do you know…. All of a sudden today, anonymous intelligence officials are reporting to CNN that Ms. Pierson “overstepped” her position, was “misleading” in her briefing, and “mischaracterized” the underlying intelligence. Imagine that. Washington (CNN)-The US intelligence community’s top election security official appears to have overstated the intelligence community’s formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020...

In American Ingrate, Federalist Senior Contributor Benjamin Weingarten exposes Ilhan Omar’s radical and revolutionary Left-Islamist agenda, her seminal role in the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party, and the dire threat she poses to U.S. national security by way of her collusion with subversive anti-American forces. She says that America was “founded by the genocide of indigenous people and on the backs of slaves,” and that “ignorance really is pervasive” among Americans today. She says America must “dismantle” capitalism and “demilitarize” U.S. foreign policy, which she sees “from the perspective of a foreigner,” tweeting “thousands of Somalis [were] killed by…American...

B.C.’s top doctor and health minister are set to provide an update on COVID-19 on Monday morning. Six people have now fallen ill with the virus in B.C., five of whom had travelled to China and returned to the province. The first of those cases has since recovered. The most recent case, announced Thursday, was a woman in her 30s who visited Iran, a country that is now seeing an outbreak of the virus with dozens of cases.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/5cfea02e-549f-11ea-90ad-25e377c0ee1f?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9 Coronavirus has put a spotlight on the economic decoupling of China and some developed countries. With factories shuttered and consumption stalled, multinational companies have been forced to shift production elsewhere. Apple has warned investors that its revenues will take...

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” Karl Marx said. We can be forgiven for assuming he had the outrageous behavior of the Deep State in mind. It was tragic when it became apparent that the FBI, CIA and other government agencies abused their powers to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and try to help Hillary Clinton win. Now it is farce that some of the same agencies are up to their old tricks again in the 2020 election. The evidence of foul play comes via two of the strangest newspaper stories ever published. The first was...

The Justice Department Inspector watchdog referred FBI agent Stephen Somma for disciplinary review after an investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator in the FBI's New York field office, was identified only as "Case Agent 1" in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, released in December. Sources told the New York Times that Somma is that official. The FBI did not comment for the report. Somma was “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions" during the process of obtaining FISA warrants to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017,...

Yesterday’s Campaign Update focused on the efforts by Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Ric Grenell to identify and get rid of the bad actors remaining embeded within the Intelligence Community (IC), and the panic that is creating in the Deep State and its corrupt media hacks at the New York Times. Today, Jonathan Swan – who is actually a pretty solid working journalist – at Axios has a report that will drive the Brennans, Comeys and Clappers of the world even crazier: It turns out that President Trump has assigned people within his body of trusted advisors to spend...

According to exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, the situation may be a lot direr than what the CCP is letting on. Guo has a history of accurately blowing the whistle against his former government. ...... Last week, Guo speculated that coronavirus had infected as many as 5 million people in China, with the death toll crossing 200,000.

President Trump's acquittal in the Senate is driving some of the media's worst Trump haters into a tizzy. The media's bias has been intensely negative -- and yet the problem is apparently it's not intensely negative enough. In The Washington Post, where each morning their front page screeches of how "Democracy dies in darkness," media columnist Margaret Sullivan is bizarrely urging the media to drop its "neutrality at all costs" model and go all out in opposition to Trump .

Democrat presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg claimed on Sunday that “100 Americans” are “killed by guns” every day. Bloomberg made the claim in a tweet, writing, “100 Americans were killed by guns yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.” Bloomberg’s claim swells gun violence deaths by 66 percent by lumping together suicides and homicides, then reporting in a way that leads readers to think it is all gun violence. Although inaccurate, Bloomberg’s claim is in line with what numerous Democrats running for president have said, including Hillary Clinton in 2016. On April 11, 2016, Breitbart News reported...

Morning "I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing." Ezekiel 34:26 Here is sovereign mercy--"I will give them the shower in its season." Is it not sovereign, divine mercy?--for who can say, "I will give them showers," except God? There is only one voice which can speak to the clouds, and bid them beget the rain. Who sendeth down the rain upon the earth? Who scattereth the showers upon the green herb? Do not I, the Lord? So grace is the gift of God, and is not to be created by...

IS THERE A DEMOCRAT WHO CAN STOP BERNIE SANDERS? I think there might be, but he probably will choose not to. Suppose Barack Obama endorsed his former VP for president. The endorsement would probably carry Joe Biden to victory in South Carolina and position him for a solid showing on Super Tuesday. Suppose Obama endorsed Pete Buttigieg, the gay Obama. Biden, who is campaigning on the fact that he was Obama’s number two, would be finished. Buttigieg would suddenly be able to capture more than de minimis support among African Americans. In either scenario, Bernie Sanders might show up at...

In a recent interview with KOKH FOX 25, daytime television personality, “Judge Judy” Sheindlin, vowed to fight Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) leftwing movement “to the death,” while reiterating her support for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (D) bid for the presidency. MCKENNA EUBANK: Millions of people watch you on TV every day as a judge and they trust your judgment. Why is this actually the first time that you’ve endorsed a presidential candidate? JUDGE JUDGE SHEINDLIN: Because it was urgent, because I really believe America is in trouble. Everybody’s angry, polarized, and it will continue to be polarized,...

Posts Posted on February 23, 2020 A Teaching On Desire From St. Augustine Most of the saints have written about the central battle of our life: desire. What we desire is crucial because in the end, we get what we want. Either we die wanting what God offers, or we die not wanting it. Either we love what and whom God loves, or we don’t.We tend to think that everyone wants to go to Heaven, but that isn’t true. Heaven is not one’s personally designed paradise; it is the Kingdom of God with all of its values: forgiveness, chastity,...