Free Republic

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has made his first public appearance in around 20-days - after speculation, the dictator had died.

If New York City doesn’t recover quickly and robustly from Covid-19, April 30, 2020 will mark the inflection point: when the city and state, afflicted with a historic crisis, decided to give up. That day, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York’s subway system will begin shutting down overnight, from 1 A.M. to 5 A.M. The shutdown is indefinite, so there’s a real chance that New York’s identity as the “the city that never sleeps” is gone. The ostensible reasons for the shutdown are public health and public safety. Earlier this week, Cuomo called conditions...

When CNBC reports the markets are showing signs of fighting back against the coronavirus fallout, you’d think that’d be newsworthy for sister network NBC’s evening news broadcast. Apparently not. CNBC had reported stunning results after the markets closed yesterday. The outlet noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 “posted their best month since the 1980s.” CNBC continued: “Optimism has been driven by hopes that economies will gradually begin to reopen, as well as by positive results from a Gilead Sciences drug trial for a coronavirus treatment.” Thursday’s edition of NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt skipped...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full.pdf

After hysterical theatrics demanding records from Brett Kavanaugh's career, Democrats haven't said a word as Biden conceals Senate records. The hypocrisy of Democrats, and their media allies, is on prominent display in their handling of sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden versus their treatment of Brett Kavanaugh. Another example of the hypocrisy relates to the demand, or lack thereof, for documents related to the official government work of the two men. Until they switched at the last minute to Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation, Democrats’ main message and procedural complaint against Kavanaugh was that they needed to review millions of public...

An Indian-run outsourcing company used Congress’s H-1B visa-worker program to systematically discriminate against American college graduates, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in New Jersey. The company, named Wipro, “operates under a general policy of discrimination in favor of [imported] South Asians and against [American] individuals who are not South Asian and not Indian,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in New Jersey. Wipro has about 22 offices and 15,000 employees in the United States. The lawsuit cited the experience of four American professionals who were sidelined by the Indian managers in the United States: In 2015, it became evident...

Republican insiders are siding with Brad Parscale after reports surfaced that President Trump blames his campaign manager for declining support ahead of the November contest versus Joe Biden, quietly hoping the incumbent makes no sudden moves to overhaul his reelection operation. Trump has denied that any friction exists with Parscale, tweeting an endorsement of his longtime adviser. Parscale also downplayed the report, which stated that the president yelled at him during a meeting about the campaign and held him responsible for Biden's lead in national and battleground state polls. Republican strategists and lawmakers, impressed with the Trump campaign machinery, are...

Ben Shapiro breaks down Joe Biden's DISASTROUS MSNBC appearance where he personally addressed the sexual assault allegations against him for the first time. ...

Tara Reade’s allegations that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her back in 1993 continue to heat up to a slow boil, despite the major media’s best attempts ( to suppress or ignore them.) No doubt the media are trying to “flatten the curve” of news stories to prevent them from becoming a pandemic that fatally infects the Biden campaign. But Biden’s weak pre-existing conditions mean that it might not take much exposure to put his campaign on life support. A few liberal writers are actually trying to maintain some basic consistency and honesty in their coverage, such as Peter Beinart, who...

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, proposed a pay raise for essential workers on Friday who are braving the front lines of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The temporary bonus, known as "Patriot Pay," would amount to an increase of $12 per hour in May, June, and July, according to a Senate press release. One-quarter of the bonus would be paid by employers, while the remaining three-quarters would be paid out by the federal government. The measure would be funded by a refundable payroll tax credit.

As some states took steps to begin phase 1 of their reopening plans this week, others extended their lockdowns again. Fed up with life under tight restriction, Americans demonstrated across the country Friday. Illinois began another month under a statewide stay-at-home order Friday, though hospitals were allowed to resume non-life-threatening surgeries and retail could open for pickup. A group of protesters gathered in Chicago’s loop Friday to call on Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, to come up with a plan to reopen the state’s economy.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that the state is “days, not weeks” away from making significant modifications to its shelter-and-place order and could begin reopening parts of the country’s largest state economy. “I feel some confidence over the course of the next week we’re going to be able to make some announcements that will give people some more confidence in the ability for California to get back on its economic feet,” Newsom said. Newsom said state officials are “very, very close to making some announcements” that will be very meaningful to people in the retail and hospitality industries,...

In addition to a bevy of state orders, Gov. Andrew Cuomo made desperate overtures to the federal government to step in. In response, and in record time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers scrambled to erect at least four field hospitals, and the Navy deployed its USNS Comfort hospital ship to Manhattan. However, those efforts – and the many millions of dollars spent on them – have largely been deemed a waste, even as New York has battled a soaring a death toll and is maintaining stay-at-home orders. So what happened? "[The models] have been extremely inaccurate," Dr. David Samadi,...

Luigi Bazzani (1836-1927) painted these images from 1880 to 1915. They were of such fine craftsmanship that they were noted for their detail and prized by the excavators of the site. The music is from "Five Variants of Dives and-Lazarus" by Vaughan Williams. I've also uploaded an improved version of the Alias music video "Here She Comes" by Bonnie Tyler. The show features a sexy CIA spy and this music was used in the rock score of the colorized version of Metropolis.

President Trump announced Friday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the emergency use of Gilead Science's experimental antiviral drug remdesivir to treat coronavirus patients after early results of a clinical study indicated the drug helps speed recovery. Trump announced the news at the White House alongside Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. "FDA's emergency authorization of remdesivir, two days after the National Institutes of Health's clinical trial showed promising results, is a significant step forward in battling COVID-19 and another example of the Trump Administration moving as quickly as possible to use science to...

While New York has weathered the brunt of coronavirus infections and deaths, the state’s apparent hoarding of medical supplies, and the millions spent on equipment that never arrived, as well as unused hospitals and beds, have some questioning what went wrong. Early to mid-March projections of the spread of COVID-19 had the state scrambling to bolster its hospital bed capacity to more than double its 53,000 maximum status-quo. Subsequently, hospitals statewide were ordered to discharge patients to free up beds, and forced to add new ones as non-emergency procedures were canceled. In addition to a bevy of state orders, Gov....

The latest discovery was announced in The Astronomer's Telegram by Paul Scholz, of the University of Toronto, Canada, on behalf of the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) and FRB Collaboration. In it, the team announced the detection of a bright radio burst coming from the active magneter known as SGR 1935+2154. This is a type of neutron star, the collapsed core of a massive star, that is thought to have an extremely powerful magnetic field. The observation was made Tuesday. The discovery is preliminary and researchers will need to analyze the burst to confirm their findings. However, if correct,...

The World Health Organization lauded Sweden as a “model” for battling the coronavirus as countries lift lockdowns — after the nation controversially refused restrictions. Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, said Wednesday there are “lessons to be learned” from the Scandinavian nation, which has largely relied on citizens to self-regulate. “I think there’s a perception out that Sweden has not put in control measures and just has allowed the disease to spread,” Ryan told reporters. “Nothing can be further from the truth.” Ryan noted that instead of lockdowns, the country has “put in place a very strong public...

One of the things some on the left have feared is that the Trump campaign will have a lot of material to beat their presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, over the head with. There is no doubt of that thereÂ’s all kinds of gaffe footage, incorrect decisions and lies they can pull out. But they also can point to the allegations of sexual assault and improper touching of women and they will not be shying away from doing so. The Trump campaign has already proven they are light years ahead of Biden in understanding video and social media. They just proved...

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