Free Republic

Harvard University, which has the largest endowment of any school in the country, is cutting its subcontracted dining hall workers without pay as it shuts down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The move is drawing criticism from employment rights advocates on and off campus who point to the university's $40.9 billion endowment as evidence that the school is hardly in financial straits. They also claim the decision violates Harvard's wage equality policy, which requires the university to compensate dining hall contract workers in a fashion comparable to the school's directly hired employees. Harvard closed campus dining halls and other...

A Chinese government-backed property giant has secretly raided in bulk Australia’s supplies of masks, hand sanitiser, antibacterial wipes and essential medical supplies and shipped them back to China. The Greenland Group, which manages high-end real estate projects in Sydney and Melbourne, proactively drained Australian supplies of anti-coronavirus equipment, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Three million surgical masks, 500,000 pairs of gloves and bulk supplies of sanitiser and wipes were bought up in Australia and other countries where Greenland operates. While the bulk purchases and shipping were perfectly legitimate, the goods shipped in bulk to China include the very items that...

When polls showed that President Donald Trump was receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, the first stage of grief the media went through was denial: The political media have been working extremely hard to craft a narrative that the spread of the coronavirus was essentially the fault of the man they had blamed for all other ills in recent years. How could the people not accept that narrative, particularly considering that most everyone in the media was pushing it? Things got worse when additional polls showed Trump receiving high ratings at the same time that...

You can save money, cut down on food waste, and extract more flavor from your produce by keeping and using these precious scraps. For many cooks, onions and garlic are essential -- but most people don't know there's a lot of flavor in their papery outer layers. Though unpleasant to eat, the skins on both vegetables are great for infusing flavor into soups, sauces and stocks. If you're making a pot of short ribs, you can cut an onion in half and throw it in, skin and all. You'll just to remove it when the meat is finished cooking, but...

SummaryWhat is already known about this topic? Early data from China suggest that a majority of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths have occurred among adults aged ≥60 years and among persons with serious underlying health conditions. What is added by this report? This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged ≥85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged...

"""New York tells nursing homes they'll need to take coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals, report says""" New York told nursing-home operators that they will be required to accept patients infected with the new coronavirus who are discharged from hospitals but may be still convalescing, amid more cases in the state that are straining the health-care system. The decision will draw pushback from some nursing-home officials, who have warned that such moves endanger residents who aren’t infected by the virus, because discharged patients may still be contagious. A group representing doctors who work in nursing homes, known as AMDA, the Society...

Approval of Trump’s overall job performance is up one point since February to 48 percent, while 51 percent disapprove. That puts him underwater by 3 points. Last month, his rating was 47 approve-52 disapprove (-5). His best marks were in February 2017, when he had a net positive rating by one point (48-47). The uptick comes from a record 16 percent of Democrats approving of Trump, up from a previous high of 14 percent. And approval among women matches an earlier record 43 percent. When asked specifically about responses to the coronavirus outbreak, 51 percent of voters approve of Trump...

NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is scheduled to launch on July 22, 2021. It's a demonstration mission to study the use of kinetic impact to deflect an asteroid. It'll head for the tiny binary asteroid system called Didymos, (or 65803 Didymos.) This double asteroid system poses no threat to Earth. The larger of the pair, named Didymos A, is about 780 meters (2560 ft.) in diameter, while the smaller one, Didymos B, is only about 160 meters (535 ft.) DART will crash itself into the Didymos B. It's close to the typical size of an asteroid that threatens...

Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding ‘mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the chains of ‘group-think’), but,...

As NASA reports in a new post, researchers recently discovered that Voyager 2 cruised through a blob of charged gas called a plasmoid as it passed the planet. The spacecraft’s journey through the plasmoid lasted only about a minute, but that was still long enough for scientists to spot the anomaly in the decades-old data. The scientists believe that gas loss may have already drained as much 55% of the planet’s atmosphere. Loss of atmosphere resulting in plasmoids has been observed around other planets in our solar system, including Saturn and Jupiter, though it’s thought that Uranus has leaked far...

The push in the U.S. pandemic epicenter follows the president’s declaration that he ‘feels good’ about compounds with unproven efficacy, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. New York is moving at unprecedented speed and scale in a human experiment to distribute tens of thousands of doses of anti-malarial drugs to seriously ill patients, spurred by political leaders including President Trump to try a treatment that is not proved to be effective against the coronavirus. With no proven treatment for the coronavirus, and infections in New York topping 30,000, health experts say the Food and Drug Administration has moved with uncommon speed to authorize...

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There are several religious freedom issues in our responses to the Coronavirus pandemic. One is restricting access for chaplains, among others, to health care facilities and homes for the elderly, but the most contentious issue has been some governments outright bans on most religious gatherings, as in the U.K., or restrictions to groups of less than ten people. In South Korea, over half the cases are connected to the semi-cultic Shincheonji Church of Jesus, and hundreds of Protestant churches held services last Sunday despite government orders against large public gatherings. Some have argued that such restrictions are a violation of...

Drama queen and D list ‘comedian’ Kathy Griffin was hospitalized Wednesday with what she described as “unbearably painful” symptoms, and she blamed President Trump. Griffin posted a photo of herself in the hospital wearing a face mask and accused President Trump of lying about the Coronavirus pandemic. Kathy Griffin✔ @kathygriffin He’s lying. I was sent to the #COVID19 isolation ward room in a major hospital ER from a separate urgent care facility after showing UNBEARABLY PAINFUL symptoms. The hospital couldn’t test me for #coronavirus because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions. #TESTTESTTEST https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1242824631230308353 … She was furious that the hospital...

(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin) On 18 March, U.S. crude oil prices fell to their lowest level in 18 years. The following day, momentarily distracted from their hype of the coronavirus pandemic, pundits and analysts reminded us again that low oil prices are the result of Saudi Arabia instigating a price war with Russia. And again, the culprit named was Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Among his motives, they claimed, is hobbling the fracking industry that has ended American dependence on Middle East oil. Now, let’s examine the real backstory.

Former Vice President Joe Biden hosted a “Happy Hour with Young Americans” livestream Wednesday night and only 2,800 people tuned in, according to a CBS news reporter. Once Biden’s pathetic hour-long Happy Hour was over, the total viewers tallied 141,000, but that number counts the number of people who watched anywhere from 30 seconds and up. In other words, if someone tunes in for 31 seconds, gets bored and shuts it off, they count in that 141,000 number. What we do know for a fact is that only 2,800 on average watched the full hour, which is simply pathetic. This...

Nearly 1.5 million N95 respirator masks, a medical product that is crucial in hospitals fight against the coronavirus, haven't been shipped because they are past their expiration date, according to The Washington Post. The masks are reportedly part of Customs and Border Protection’s emergency stock. In a meeting Wednesday about what to do with the masks, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials decided to turn the masks over to the Transportation Security Administration, which has demanded masks of its own, according to the Post's sources. The sources told the paper that CBP has no plans of giving the masks to...

While families' cats and dogs are enjoying the upside of spending days with their owners working from home during the coronavirus shutdown, wild coyotes in San Francisco are reportedly also taking advantage of the benefits of a suddenly empty city. There have been several recent fake stories circulating about unusual wildlife showing up in cities during the global pandemic, including news from Italy of dolphins swimming in the historic canals of Venice and a gang of happy drunk elephants in the Yunnan province of China that was also debunked. A surge in coyotes wandering the streets of San Francisco is...

Here's another adorable British Shorthair female kitten named "Cream", who responds every time her name is called. Video 4 minutes, 54 seconds

CNA Staff, Mar 25, 2020 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The funeral of the former head of the United States bishops’ conference and archbishop emeritus of Cincinnati will take place behind closed doors. A Mass of Christian burial will be said for Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk in Cincinnati's Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains on Friday. The funeral arrangements were announced by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati on Wednesday, and the Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Dennis Schnurr on March 27 at 11 am. “Due to the current pandemic, the Mass will be private,” a statement from the archdiocese said. “However...