Free Republic

Victoria Coates, a former top official on the National Security Council, on Sunday denied new allegations she was the author of an inside-the-White House tell-all book by “Anonymous.” “The allegations published in Real Clear Investigations are utterly false. I am not Anonymous, and I do not know who Anonymous is,” Coates said in a new statement. Cleta Mitchell, Coates’ lawyer, wrote that Real Clear Investigations “peddled false statements citing only anonymous sources, despite on-the-record denials from Javelin LLC (the literary agent for Anonymous), the White House, and three well-respected members of the Trump Administration—and now Dr. Coates as well.”

A newly uncovered claim, from a Chinese-produced program broadcast to the Arab world last month, suggested the U.S. may be responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a transcript released Friday from a media research group. The debunked charges were made by a “Ms. V,” a Chinese vlogger, during an episode of “China View,” broadcast on CGTN Arabic TV, a subsidiary of a state-owned media organization in China. The channel has had at least 14 million viewers. On the March 17 episode, Ms. V told Arab audiences that COVID-19, which has infected more than 2.4 million and killed at least...

For more than five years, wildlife conservationists in the US have been clamoring for the government to provide Endangered Species Act protections to pangolins, a group of imperiled ant-eating mammals that are widely, and often illicitly, trafficked for their scales and meat. The Trump administration, however, has refused to act and that refusal has suddenly taken on grave new implications. Earlier this year, scientists in China identified pangolins, along with bats, as one of the possible animal hosts involved in the transmission of the deadly coronavirus from wildlife to humans. How did coronavirus start and where did it come from?...

The “Donald Trump/Mike Pence Prayer Vigil” and “Pray for our American Heroes" Prayer Thread have Combined to Form the AMERICA PRAYER VIGIL Prayer Thread! Join with Fellow FREEPERS to Pray for our PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. 'And this is the Confidence that we have in Him, that, if we Ask Anything According to His Will, He Heareth us.' 1 John 5:14 Religion Forum Threads Labeled [Prayer] are Closed to Debate of Any Kind. Isaiah 46:4 I Am He, I Am He Who will Sustain you. I have...

Kissinger's folly: The threat to world order is China BY BRADLEY A. THAYER AND LIANCHAO HAN, 04/19/20 04:00 PM EDT Kissinger's folly: The threat to world order is China The old joke that doctors bury their mistakes should be amended, because former statesmen sometimes try to do so as well. Claims advanced by Henry Kissinger, the doyen of the U.S. foreign policy community, that the coronavirus is a danger to the liberal international order are correct, especially since the virus has killed tens of thousands around the world. But the specter that is haunting the world order is not the...

Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, shares ways to create your own face covering in a few easy steps.

I was surprised and shaken when I read the news recently that a Pakistani court had overturned the conviction of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man convicted of masterminding the abduction of my friend Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Saeed did not murder Danny himself, but he did lure him from his home and, one way or another, delivered him to his death. At his trial, Saeed — a militant jihadi who had been previously convicted of a separate kidnapping of Western tourists in India — was found guilty of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to...

Germany's health minister says the month-long lockdown has brought his country's coronavirus outbreak under control. Jens Spahn said that since 12 April the number of recovered patients had been consistently higher than the number of new infections. The infection rate has dropped to 0.7 - that is, each infected person passed the virus to fewer than one other. In Germany 3,868 have died of Covid-19 - fewer than in Italy, Spain or France. However, the number of fatalities is still rising in Germany, as is the number of infected health care workers. So far almost 134,000 people have been infected...

Foreign powers test US defenses amid coronavirus pandemic BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 04/19/20 08:00 AM EDT U.S. adversaries are probing America's defenses as the world is preoccupied with the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. In the past two weeks, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have all moved to test Washington in the sea, in the air and on land as U.S. forces have become more restricted in movement amid concerns over the spread of COVID-19. “Exactly how distracted is the U.S. military? They want to know,” said Susanna Blume, the director of the defense program at the Center for...

April 20 2020 Monday of the Second Week of Easter Reading 1 Acts 4:23-31 After their release Peter and John went back to their own people and reported what the chief priests and elders had told them. And when they heard it, they raised their voices to God with one accord and said, “Sovereign Lord, maker of heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, you said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David, your servant:Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples entertain folly? The kings of the earth took...

MELBOURNE—Australia on Sunday added to growing pressure on China over its handling of the CCP virus, questioning its transparency and demanding an international investigation into the origins of the virus and how it spread. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, which emerged from mainland China last year, causes the disease COVID-19. Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, said her concern about the Chinese regime’s transparency was at a “a very high point.” “The issues around coronavirus are issues for independent review, and I think that it is important that we do that,” Payne told ABC television....

When the Rwandan genocide erupted following the April 6, 1994 assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, the southern province of Butare went initially unscathed. Its large and powerful Tutsi population had limited the foothold of violent Hutu paramilitaries. That calm lasted a mere fortnight, however, and was shattered this date in 1994 when the aged widow of Rwanda’s last monarch was hauled to Butare city’s national museum and shot along with several of her caregivers...

At least 16 people are dead in Canada's Nova Scotia province after a mass murder rampage by a man who was dressed as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable.... The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps issuing a tough statement today about last week's incident when the US said Navy and Coast Guard vessels were harrassed by Iranian speed boats in the northern Persian Gulf...... "Get back to work" was the message sent by a protest in Salt Lake City, Utah Saturday evening demanding an end to Republican Governor Gary Herbert's shut down of the state because of the coronavirus..... The Republican...

Superficially, one would say: of course it did. New York is by far the worst center of Wuhan virus infection in the U.S. The extent to which the New York metropolitan area drives U.S. COVID-19 statistics was documented by Matt Margolis at PJ Media. Currently the U.S. ranks eighth among countries in COVID fatalities per capita. But if we treat New York and its environs as a country, it is easily the world’s hottest COVID hot spot, with per capita fatalities double those in Spain and more than double those in Italy, while the rest of the U.S.–everything except New...

Gilead Sciences Inc on Friday increased enrollment target by 3,600 for a trial testing its experimental drug, remdesivir, in severe COVID-19 patients, a day after a media report said the drug was showing promise. Shares of the company rose 8% after medical news website STAT detailed rapid recovery in fever and respiratory symptoms in COVID-19 patients at the University of Chicago Medicine hospital. The enrollment estimate in the trial run by Gilead was increased to 6,000 patients from 2,400 previously, according a register of clinical trials. Medical news website STAT had reported that a University of Chicago hospital participating in...

Illinois, in its desperate search for masks to protect its medical workers and first responders, laid out $17 million for KN95 masks from China. The state did so after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month these types of masks were an acceptable alternative to the United States approved N95 masks. They were wrong. On Thursday, similar masks were recalled by multiple states — including Missouri, whose Department of Health and Senior Services director Sandy Kartsen said the masks did not meet their standards.

I recently learned that a friend of mine was hospitalized for COVID-19. I’ve known Dave Turner for about a decade. He lives in Brooklyn and works on film sets. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and surfs. He’s 34. So I found it shocking to learn that he was recently released from the ICU in Virginia. I reached out to him and we set up a phone call, which we recorded. “Hey bud, how ya doin’?” “How’s it going man?” Before displaying symptoms of the coronavirus in March, Dave was isolating with his girlfriend. He thinks he might have gotten it at the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVYwPTE8B8g

Used in the world for decades in the treatment of malaria, a month ago, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) decided to apply hydroxychloroquine to patients infected with the new coronavirus until a vaccine is available. This immunosuppressant drug is produced in Costa Rica. The medical director of the Caja, Mario Ruiz, as the director of Pharmacoepidemiology, Marjorie Obando Elizondo, the director of the ChildrenÂ’s Hospital, Olga Arguedas and the minister of Health, Daniel Salas, confirmed the use of the drug and the success in mitigating and containing the progression of the virus and also in reducing the number...

On Monday, 80 million Economic Impact Payment checks go out by mail. While stimulus checks have already gone out through direct deposit, this is the first round of stimulus checks going out by mail. Postal service inspectors and Virginia Coronavirus Task Force will be out in full force. “This is a top priority all the way at the top of our agency down," said Postal Service Inspector Michael Romano.