Free Republic

Darlington Raceway will be a busy place next month. The South Carolina racetrack will host two NASCAR races in May, according to a report Tuesday by AutoWeek, The publication obtained a revised race schedule that was sent to teams. S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, asked about the topic during a news conference Tuesday, would not confirm the races are happening, only saying NASCAR would make that decision. “That would be wonderful,” McMaster said. “Those kind of decisions are being made all around the country.” An official announcement is expected from NASCAR this week, according to the Autoweek report.

On April 28, 2020, Quest Diagnostic announced that individuals can order a Wuhan virus antibody test online instead of having to go to a doctor for a prescription. Americans who feel they may have been infected with COVID can finally get some answers with a quick blood test at a local lab. Quest says results come back within 48 hours.

Head of German bishops: Coronavirus not divine punishment since ‘God does not punish’ 'My God has not known such thoughts since Jesus died for us,' Bishop Georg Bätzing declared. LIMBURG, Germany, April 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, has stated that the coronavirus pandemic is not God’s punishment, contradicting numerous Catholic leaders who have called COVID-19 a “chastisement.” According to the website of the Diocese of Limburg, Germany, Bätzing said on April 23 that he cannot understand people who consider COVID-19 God’s punishment. “My God has not known such thoughts since Jesus...

Nashville Mayor Cooper today filed the city’s recommended operating budget for fiscal year 2021 with the Metro Council. Metro Finance estimates that the city will experience a $470 million revenue decline over a 16-month time frame due to the impact of COVID-19 and the March tornado. The decline in revenue during Q4 of fiscal year 2020 required Metro to cut expenditures and spend down remaining fund balances, leaving Metro with only $12 million of fund balances at the end of FY20.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) says he will not be casting his vote for President Donald Trump in 2020, citing concerns he had with the president before the 2016 campaign. “I just couldn’t support [Trump] long before he started to run. The birtherism thing was just too much for me. And then it piled on,” Flake, a vocal critic of Trump, told the Washington Post. Flake also warned that a second Trump term could deter younger voters from the GOP, especially on issues concerning the environment and immigration. “So for young people who’ve grown up around minorities or had a...

Bp. Giovanni D'Ercole: 'Give us the right to worship, or we'll take it'VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pope Francis is calling on Catholics to obey government orders easing the Wuhan virus lockdown after Italian bishops protested that they "cannot accept" the state trampling on "the exercise of freedom of religion." "During this time, when we desire to get out of quarantine, we pray to the Lord to give His people, to all of us, the grace of prudence and obedience to the provisions [of the law], so that the pandemic does not return," the pontiff said, as he began celebrating Mass...

In this designer jeans commercial spoof, Rhonda Weiss (Gilda Radner) is an "American princess and a disco queen" who models designer jeans that you don't have to be Jewish to wear, "but it wouldn't hurt." Aired 02/16/80 Gilda Radner: Jewess Jeans - (Saturday Night Live tv commercial spoof, 1980)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday defended former Vice President Joe Biden after a reporter asked if she believed allegations from Tara Reade, a former aide who says the then-senator sexually assaulted her in a secluded part of Capitol Hill in 1993. Gillibrand, who ran for president last year, said she stood by the presumptive Democratic nominee and supported him, noting he had denied the allegations. “So when we say believe women, it’s for this explicit intention of making sure there’s space for all women to come forward to speak their truth, to be heard,” Gillibrand said during a conference...

GREENVILLE, Mississippi, April 27, 2020 (Alliance Defending Freedom) — The Greenville City Council has issued a new order that lifts the city’s unconstitutional ban on drive-in church services during the coronavirus crisis in the wake of a lawsuit that Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed on behalf of a local church. The church voluntarily withdrew its request for a temporary restraining order against the city Wednesday in light of the city’s changed position. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case, Temple Baptist Church v. City of Greenville, agreeing with the church that the ban cannot...

We know how the COVID-19 pandemic began: Bats near Wuhan, China, hold a mix of coronavirus strains, and sometime last fall one of the strains, opportunistic enough to cross species lines, left its host or hosts and ended up in a person. Then it was on the loose. What no one knows yet is how the pandemic will end. This coronavirus is unprecedented in the combination of its easy transmissibility, a range of symptoms going from none at all to deadly, and the extent that it has disrupted the world. A highly susceptible population led to near exponential growth in...

Having endured Holy Week, Pascha, and Bright Week with closed churches, the hierarchs of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece and of the Eparchial Holy Synod of Crete are calling on the Greek state to reopen the holy sites and allow the faithful to return to the Divine services. Although Crete is a Greek island, the Church there falls under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has about 50 dioceses throughout Greece. Following a vote from the metropolitans of the Greek Holy Synod, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens addressed a letter to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis...

We report five cases of large-vessel stroke in patients younger than 50 years of age who presented to our health system in New York City. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection was diagnosed in all five patients. Clinical Characteristics of Five Young Patients Presenting with Large-Vessel Stroke. Cough, headache, and chills lasting 1 week developed in a previously healthy 33-year-old woman (Patient 1) (Table 1). She then had progressive dysarthria with both numbness and weakness in the left arm and left leg over a period of 28 hours....

CNA Staff, Apr 23, 2020 / 08:45 pm MT (CNA).- Three Catholic dioceses have announced this week they will resume public celebration of Mass, subject to the requirements of public health orders and social distancing. The Montana dioceses of Great Falls-Billings and Helena both announced the re-openings on Thursday, April 23, one day after the bishop of Lubbock, Texas told his priests to prepare to restore access to Communion for Catholics in the diocese. The public celebration of Mass has been prohibited in dioceses across the United States for over a month as part of efforts to halt the spread...

In an announcement today, California Gov. Gavin Newsom deemed movie theaters to be part of a stage 3 opening in the ultimate four-prong easing of COVID-19 at-home restrictions, meaning they’d be able to open “months, not weeks” in the future. Movie theaters would be part of phase of higher risk workplaces which require a close proximity to other people, including hair salons, nail salons, gyms, sporting events with live audiences and in-person religious services like churches and weddings. Movie theaters were allowed to reopen in Georgia on Monday and Texas is permitting cinemas to reopen on May 1, but the...

A 13-year-old boy suspected in a deadly Burien shooting last week told detectives he did it just because he "felt like doing it," according to police documents. The 35-year-old victim was shot in the head Tuesday night in the 400 block of South 152nd Street in Burien, according to the King County Sheriff's Office. The man was rushed to Harborview Medical Center and died of his injuries a few days later. Detectives say the suspect saw the victim, Hassan Ali Hassan, walking along S. 152nd Street and followed him for about a block before pulling out a gun and firing...

The Trump-Russia collusion allegations were always a myth. The more we learn about this coordinated effort between Fusion GPS, the Democrats who hired them, and a former MI6 spook, Christopher Steele, hired to compile the now-infamous Trump dossier—the more shambolic it looks. Steele’s work was the basis for the conspiracy theories that engulfed the American news media for two years. There were memos about some dirt the Russians had on Trump which could be weaponized for blackmail. It was all a fantastic lie. There was no collusion. Not a single shred of evidence came to light and every time there...

Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Tuesday afternoon was not entirely well received. As Fox News reported, Tara Reade had harsh words for the two-time presidential hopeful and self-proclaimed feminist champion. Reade accuses Biden of sexually assaulting her while she worked as a staffer in his Senate office, and her case continues to build with evidentiary support and corroboration from others. "I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I'm a lifelong Democrat. But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator and it was my former boss,...

PLA scrambles air and sea patrols near Paracel Islands in response to what it says is violation of Chinese sovereignty Tensions rise in region, with both countries at odds over handling of the coronavirus pandemic Minnie Chan Minnie Chan The USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday. Photo: Getty ImagesThe USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday. The USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday. Photo: Getty Images The Chinese military has accused an American guided-missile destroyer of “intruding...

"I am a doctor and, positive for Covid19 , I immediately took hydroxychloroquine : in 3-4 days the fever and the other symptoms disappeared ". This is how Paola Varese , head of cancer medicine at the Ovada hospital in Piedmont , begins . "I applied the same protocol on myself that I planned for 276 patients at home," continues Varese , stressing that "timely intervention by family doctors in patients' homes is essential, with hydroxychloroquine associated with heparin (and if necessary the ' antibiotic ). It is presumable - he says - that the collapse of thehospitalization is due...

**SNIP** The lawsuit challenges Whitmer's executive powers and seeks an immediate injunction. "For the first time in our state's history - indeed, in our nation's history - the state government is mass quarantining healthy people instead of the sick," the lawsuit reads. "As a free people, we have the unalienable right to pursue happiness, which includes the freedom to make our own choices about our safety and welfare without unconstitutional interference. In the face of the coronavirus, it means the freedom to choose whether to stay at home, or to keep calm and carry on with the things that make...