Free Republic

Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus are swiftly ballooning across the United States, and President Trump's former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert says time is running out to control the spread. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is overseeing one of the country's largest clusters, said "if you do the math" there could be 64,000 cases of COVID-19 in the Evergreen State by May, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the positive cases in the city are "coming in so intensely now" that public officials are struggling to keep up with them. He said he wasn't in...

The United Nations' weather and climate agency is out with its annual State of the Climate report, and it says "the tell-tale physical signs of climate change" are everywhere. The report documents unprecedented heat waves, fires and floods over the past year, and warns that there is likely more to come. In the report, the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cited the historic fires in Australia and the Amazon, record-shattering heat waves in Europe, and soaring levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a statement released with the report, the leader of the United Nations calls climate change "the...

The United States has offered to sell Turkey its Patriot missile defence system if Ankara promises not to operate a rival Russian system, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said, in what he called a significant softening in Washington's position. Two Turkish officials told Reuters News Agency that Turkey was evaluating the US offer but added that Ankara had not changed its plans for the Russian S-400 systems, which it has said it would start to activate next month. NATO allies Turkey and the US have been at odds over Ankara's purchase last year of the S-400s, which Washington says...

Two state attorneys general ordered a prominent televangelist to stop peddling an alleged coronavirus elixir on his show. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Jim Bakker for misrepresentations about the effectiveness of "Silver Solution" as a treatment for coronavirus. Schmitt's lawsuit came a week after the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a cease-and-desist order to Bakker, ordering him to stop promoting the supplement as a COVID-19 treatment.

I Voted for Warren, My Husband Voted for Sanders, and I Feel Betrayed Voting for a progressive woman felt like a chance so rare that it caused me to fume at my own husband for making a different decision. ELLEN O'CONNELL WHITTET MARCH 10, 2020 Ever since Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential race, I’ve been mad at my husband. Just a week earlier, two canvassers for Bernie Sanders had shown up at our door with flyers. “We’re Warren people,” my husband told them, something I later joked was the most romantic thing he’d ever said. But in the...

ISTANBUL/ATHENS - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Greek security forces on Wednesday of behaving like Nazis for using force against migrants trying to cross the border from Turkey into the European Union. Tens of thousands of migrants have been attempting to get into EU member Greece since Turkey said on Feb. 28 it would no longer keep them on its territory as part of a 2016 deal with Brussels in return for European aid for the refugees. Greek security forces have used tear gas and water cannon to stop the migrants. Athens has suspended asylum applications for a month and...

There are 10 new coronavirus cases in New York City, bringing the total to 46, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said Wednesday he is considering canceling the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. “Right now 46 cases, that’s important for sure, but it’s still a city of 8.6 million people,” de Blasio said on PIX 11 morning news Wednesday. The city is “nowhere near” implementing containment zones like the one scheduled to go into effect in New Rochelle, de Blasio said.

Sacramento County health officials on Tuesday focused their coronavirus prevention efforts on an senior living facility, one day after families were notified that a resident of an Elk Grove home had tested positive for the potentially deadly illness. Sacramento County health chief Peter Beilenson said his agency is trying to prevent a repeat of what happened two weeks ago at a nursing home near Seattle, where the virus has caused a reported 15 deaths.. Senior Living Elk Grove tested positive for the new coronavirus, according to an email sent to family members of residents Monday afternoon obtained by The Sacramento Bee. It...

For over eight decades sports fans have dreamt of attending the Masters, golf’s best event held on the sport’s most exclusive grounds, Augusta National in Georgia. Amen Corner. Blooming azaleas. Towering loblolly pines. Pimento cheese sandwiches. Witnessing Tiger Woods march up the hill on No. 18, the way Hogan, Arnie and Jack once did. This is golfing heaven. The problem is getting in. You either need to know someone, get lucky in the low-odds ticket lottery or hit the overheated secondary market where a one-day badge routinely soars over $2,000 and sometimes $3,000. Well, welcome to 2020 and what could...

College sports are a gigantic entertainment business that have nothing to do with the missions of the schools. Frequently, the highest-paid employee of a school is the football or basketball coach, and the athletics budget is hugely subsidized by fees paid by financially strapped students. Players who read and write at a middle-school level (if even that) are recruited to help teams win, but the academic work they do is laughable. Schools rack up big debts trying to win glory on the gridiron or court, even if it means scrimping on faculty salaries and building maintenance. How did this lamentable...

PARIS -- As of this writing, there have been 1,412 confirmed cases of the coronavirus here in France, and 30 people have died from it. In a country where it's customary to spend the first several minutes of each workday air-kissing the cheeks of your colleagues, it's a miracle this virus hasn't KO'd even more people. One reason it hasn't could be a long-festering lack of trust in the French government to manage any situation, which has led to increased self-reliance. According to a poll taken here last year by the newspaper La Tribune, 88 percent of the French admitted...

Vitamin C is extremely unlikely to help people fight off the new coronavirus. When afflicted with the common cold, many people chug orange juice and swallow vitamin C supplements in an attempt to "boost" their immune systems. But vitamin C supplements don't ward off the common cold in most people, and there's even less evidence that they grant immunity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, became known as an immune-boosting supernutrient after two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling touted the substance's supposed benefits in a series of books, Live Science previously reported....

Health minister Nadine Dorries' coronavirus diagnosis has caused chaos in Parliament today as her two offices were sealed off, one of her staff fell ill and fearful MPs planned to dodge the budget in the Commons in case they get the virus, MailOnline can reveal. Ms Dorries, 62, who began feeling ill on Friday, has said one of her office workers has 'gone down' with the killer illness and the Tory MP is now in self-isolation for the next fortnight at home in Gloucestershire. This morning she came to the bay window at the front of the sprawling house in...

Trump calls emergency meeting with top US health officials at the White House Wednesday

I can’t really explain why, but the results of yesterday’s Democrat primaries reminded me of this animation from a 1979 Soviet/Russian animated film.Faster! Higher! Stronger! Maybe it’s because they both conjured thoughts of this nursery rhyme:Hey, diddle, diddle,The cat and the fiddle,The cow jumped over the moon;The little dog laughedTo see such sport,And the dish ran away with the spoon.     It’s a nonsense poem designed to please children with highly effective imaginary visuals. But the poem for some reason reminded me of the old joke about a pilot returning from a mission but couldn’t locate his aircraft carrier. He...

Joe Scarborough has once again proved that there is virtually nothing that the liberal media can't spin into a positive for one of its own. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough claimed that Joe Biden having told a construction worker that he was "full of s---" on gun control proved both Biden's humanity, and that he was a "fighter."Scarborough's comment came in response to Mike Barnicle's assertion that in recent times, Biden is resonating with voters as he demonstrates his "humanity, empathy, stability and experience." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

While Quid Pro Joe was wiping the floor with The Commie, Bernie Sanders on Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump pounded what could be the final nail in the coffin of the political career of Jeff Sessions. As the results from the Democrat primaries were rolling in, showing Biden will now assume a commanding position in the race for that party’s nomination, the President stole some of the limelight by issuing a tweet endorsing not his former worthless Attorney General, but former college football coach Tommy Tuberville in the GOP senate runoff election in Alabama. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Tommy...

The problem with Polaris is that no one can agree on how big or distant it is. Astrophysicists have a few ways to calculate the mass, age and distance of a star like Polaris. One method is a stellar evolution model...Researchers can study the brightness, color and rate of pulsation of the star and use that data to figure out how big and bright it is and what stage of life it's in. These models are especially precise for cepheids, because their rate of pulsing is directly related to their luminosity, or brightness. That makes it easy to calculate the...

(I-Vt.) defeated former Vice President Joe Biden in the North Dakota Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, prevailing in a state he had also won in 2016. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders received 53 percent of the vote, while Biden got just under 40 percent. North Dakota awards 14 pledged delegates, tying Wyoming for hosting the smallest nominating race in the continental United States. Because of this, the win isn't much more than a consolation prize for Sanders, who had an otherwise disappointing night at the polls.

Dozens of passengers have been held in quarantine on a Cambodian river cruise boat after a British woman tested positive for coronavirus. The vessel was placed under police guard after it was moored on the Mekong River near Kampong Cham, southeastern Cambodia, on Tuesday. The British woman, 65, was transported to the Kampong Cham Hospital for observation and treatment after it emerged she was infected with COVID-19. Health Minister Mam Bunheng confirmed the remaining 62 passengers and crew aboard the Viking River Cruises vessel would be tested for the virus and quarantined for 14 days.