Free Republic

As quarantine and isolation measures are adopted by states and Churches throughout the world to combat the highly-contagious coronavirus, several clergymen find themselves in trouble with the law for continuing to serve in their churches. Yesterday, a priest in the Central Greece village of Dirfys-Messapia was arrested for having opened his church and having offered Holy Communion to several faithful in violation of the stateÂ’s order to suspend liturgical services, reports ekklisiaonline.gr. On March 16, the Greek state banned all Church services until March 30, and although the Church petitioned to be allowed to at least serve the Liturgy behind...

If you think issuing drastic stay-at-home orders is more of a Democrat than a Republican thing, you’re right — all but two of all Democrat governors have moved forward with the drastic edicts, yet only a handful of Republicans have dropped the hammer. CNN has a running list of those states, although they missed Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor issuing the order. A total of 31 states have told residents to stay at home and not go to work unless it’s of vital importance to the state — doctor, policeman, liquor store clerk. And of the country’s 24 Democrat governors, 22 are...

WIN FALLS — A small earthquake rattled southern Idaho Tuesday afternoon. People reported feeling the quake around the Magic Valley, in the Wood River Valley, the Treasure Valley, Pocatello, and in Missoula, Montana. The U.S. Geological Survey says the 6.5 magnitude quake was centered about 45 miles west of Challis at 5:52 p.m.

Wine.com reports that orders are up 400 percent during stay-at-home orders, as bottoms up is the top activity in these shut in times. You’d be forgiven for blacking out around sundown and not having even noticed yet that liquor stores across San Francisco are being forced to close at 8 p.m. every night now, according to KRON 4. Mayor Breed issued that order Friday, another of the expanded shelter in place orders now in effect until at least May 1. Any cursory scrolling of social media you’ve done in the last two weeks — and yes, it has only been...

PUTRAJAYA: The anti-malarial drug chloroquine has shown its efficacy in the treatment of Covid-19 patients since the first wave of the outbreak in Malaysia, the director-general of health, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, said. He said the drugs’ anti-inflammatory properties were effective in treating Covid-19 which causes inflammation of the lower respiratory tract. Noor Hisham said a similar anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and a combination of antiviral drugs lopinavir and ritonavir had also been used in the treatment of patients in Malaysia. There had been promising results but further research was still required. Noor Hisham said the number of deaths from Covid-19...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – There is a time in the future when Ohio will lift its stay-at-home order to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Residents will emerge from isolation, once again able to see family and friends. Many of the businesses that closed their doors will reopen....Experts say the fallout from the prolonged period of isolation could have a profound and lasting impact on everything from mental health to the way businesses operate. It could cause at least a temporary change in societal norms because many people might be wary of seeing a movie in a crowded theater or even...

President Trump's top health advisers said Tuesday that models show between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans could die from the novel coronavirus even if the country keeps stringent social distancing guidelines in place. Without any measures to mitigate the disease's spread, those projections jump to between 1.5 and 2.2 million deaths from COVID-19. Dr. Deborah Birx explained the data, which underpinned Trump’s decision to extend social distancing guidelines to the end of April, at a White House briefing on Tuesday, urging the public to steel for difficult weeks ahead while expressing hope that the efforts would reduce the spread of the...

New findings by the Justice Department inspector general that the FBI has repeatedly violated surveillance rules stood in stark contrast to the years of assurances from top Democrats and media commentators that bureau scrupulously handled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants -- and prompted Republican lawmakers to caution that the FBI seemingly believes it has "carte blanche to routinely erode the liberties of Americans without proper justification."

Social distancing and stay-at-home orders are working to slow and blunt the ongoing coronavirus pandemic according to fever trend data aggregated by remote health monitoring company Kinsa Health. Kinsa has sold more than one million of its bluetooth-linked digital thermometers and their users upload their body temperature data to the company's centralized database. The company's stated mission is to "stop the spread of contagious illness through earlier detection and earlier response." Data from its users' thermometers have enabled the company to track the spread of flu in real time and forecast where it is headed in three to four weeks....

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)The primary understanding of this commandment, is a prohibition of perjury, testifying against a neighbor falsely before a Judge. However, as in the rest of the commandments, the stated prohibition is only chief of a whole category of Sins. Our God is a God of Truth, and commands us to Love truth, and to speak the Truth in Love. God doesn’t lie, neither should his holy people. Exodus 23 expands on this commandment , Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be...

On Tuesday morning, Barack Obama criticized Trump's rollback of fuel standards in a tweet that made what appears to be a backhanded critique of Trump's response to the coronavirus. "We've seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic," Obama said. Who exactly was Obama talking about there? Now, it's quite possible he was actually talking about himself, seeing as how even after the H1N1 pandemic that claimed as many as 18,000 American lives, according to CDC estimates, Obama's response to the Ebola pandemic later in his presidency was similarly wrought with problems--so much so...

The French government has called on employees who are on temporary lay-offs to make themselves available to help farmers with seasonal harvests. But such ‘agricultural patriotism’ does not go well with the tightening of containment measures. EURACTIV France reports. “Our farmers are running out of ‘helping hands’, help them”. This was the appeal launched by Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume to news channels BFM and RMC. It took many French people by surprise because the containment measures that had been in place for over a week in France were tightened further on Monday (23 March). I want to launch a great...

Cut a sheet into one by two feet pieces. Place a two-foot long piece of string in the middle of a piece. Fold the piece over the string. Loop the string over your ears. Flop the outer half of the piece over your head. Tie(or knot) the string around the lower half of the piece and your throat. Fold the top half of the piece back down. Put on eyeglasses to close off bridge of nose openings. To remove, cut string if exposed to hazard and discard, or if not, slip string over ears for reuse.

Just wondering if anyone else is thinking of the TV show "The Last Ship" - at least the first season - and what's going on with the world today?

I have been working on a knowledge base of topics related to prepping and SHTF situations. It is geared towards making people more self sufficient with topics ranging from unarmed self defense to small space gardening to how to sew your own clothes. I'm one of those types of people who believe that we are going to go out with a whimper, not a bang, so there is a lot of content on how to do your own repairs, build your own stuff and live a more frugal lifestyle. In order to get access you need to send me a...

The Justice Department's chief watchdog issued an extraordinary warning Tuesday that the FBI is failing to follow its own rules when pursuing surveillance warrants in sensitive intelligence and terrorism cases, confirming that problems first exposed in the Russia collusion probe extend to other cases. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote FBI Director Chris Wray in a management alert memo that a review of more than two dozen Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant cases found agents were not complying with the so-called Woods Procedures designed to protect American civil liberties during such probes. Among the problems cited was a failure by...

Coalville wants to ditch fossil fuels. The Utah city has pledged to draw its electricity from 100 percent renewable sources by 2030. From California to New Hampshire, dozens of cities have set similar goals. But these cities can't produce and store enough wind and solar power to run solely on renewables. As a result, their ambitious environmental policies could soon leave them powerless. Fortunately, these cities can rely on natural gas to supplement renewables while still reducing emissions. Renewable energy sources are frequently unreliable. Solar and wind-powered grids can't generate electricity on still, cloudy days. A city, state, or country...

Amazon fired a worker who organized a walkout at a New York warehouse to demand greater protection against the new coronavirus, saying the employee himself flouted distancing rules and put others at risk. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the city’s Commission of Human Right to investigate whether the dismissal was retaliatory. New York Attorney General Letitia James called on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate and said her office is also considering legal options. […] Amazon said the worker, Christian Smalls, received several warnings for violating social distancing guidelines. Amazon said Smalls showed up at the...

...There are almost 140,000 active cases of COVID-19 in the United States. Nearly 20,000 new cases were reported on Sunday alone. The death toll in the U.S. is now close to 3,000 — with more than 2,000 of them occurring in just the past week...On its own, 3,000 fatalities might seem like a tremendously large number. But that’s before you learn that an average of 7,700 people die in the U.S. every single day. Which means that over the past week, when the coronavirus took 2,000 lives, nearly 54,000 people died from other causes. As a service to readers, here...

At a former open pit copper mine filled with billions of gallons of toxic water, sirens and loud pops from propane cannons echo off the granite walls to scare away birds so they don’t land. After several thousand migrating snow geese perished in the Berkeley Pit’s acidic, metal-laden waters in 2016, its owners deployed a sophisticated arsenal to frighten away flocks, including lasers, drones, fireworks and remote-controlled boats. Montana Resources already had been hazing incoming birds with spotlights and rifle shots into the water — and a spokesman says those existing deterrents likely helped the company avoid a penalty or...