Free Republic

A 20-year-old Canadian man has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder after driving his pickup truck into a Muslim family in what police described as “a premeditated attack”. Two women, aged 74 and 44, a 46-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl – a grandmother, mother, father and their teenage daughter – were killed on Sunday night when Nathaniel Veltman ploughed his black pickup truck into a group of pedestrians in the city of London, Ontario, police said. The lone survivor, a nine-year-old boy, remains in hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The victims’...

Last week the United States donated nearly one million vaccines to Taiwan, the country that first warned the World Health Organization in December 2019 that Wuhan coronavirus was contagious from human-to-human. For the sake of protecting the Chinese Communist Party, the WHO ignored the warning and lied to the world for nearly two months about how the disease spreads. Thank you to the #US for supporting #Taiwan in our time of need. Your vaccine donation will go a long way toward the health of the Taiwanese people, & serves as yet another symbol of our strong bilateral ties. pic.twitter.com/1JQDXHN0R4— ???...

Vice President Kamala Harris claims the current crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is largely the result of climate change and the economy. The president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, disagrees.In April, U.S.-Mexico border detentions reached a 21-year monthly high when over 178,000 migrants illegally crossed the border. A number of these unaccompanied minors and families who cross the U.S.-Mexico border come from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.Giammattei argues that the region’s climate and economy aren’t the prime culprits for the unprecedented rise in illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings, but that the Biden administration’s immigration policies are to blame.Despite the fact that Harris...

Texas Governor Pledges To Sign Law Prohibiting Businesses From Requiring Vaccine PassportsCarnival Cruise Line recently announced that it will resume cruising in Galveston, Texas beginning in July and will require passengers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is disputing Carnival’s vaccine mandate.Abbott announced Monday he would be signing a law that prevents “businesses operating in Texas from requiring vaccine passports any vaccine information.”“Texas is open 100% without any restrictions or limitations or requirements,” Abbott tweeted.I’m signing a law today that prohibits any business operating in Texas from requiring vaccine passports or any vaccine information.Texas is open...

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center will lead implementation of responsible AI across the Defense Department, according to a new directive. In a departmentwide memo signed last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks enumerated foundational tenets for responsible AI, reaffirmed the ethical AI principles the department adopted last year, and mandated the JAIC director start work on four activities for developing a responsible AI ecosystem. “As the DoD embraces artificial intelligence (AI), it is imperative that we adopt responsible behavior, processes, and outcomes in a manner that reflects the Department's commitment to its ethical principles, including the protection of privacy and...

Picture: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Fishing Boats caught in a Storm.Today, COVID-19 cases in Canada are declining, from coast to coast, even if some lockdown restrictions remain in force. The summer is approaching and we are all eager to live a return to normality.After all, we got a break last summer from this virus, and we expect some seasonality. OK the virus may return, but in the fall and winter. Not in the summer, please. We need a break. We need a life. That’s the conventional thinking currently prevailing among many in the country.But, is the current situation, with declining...

IvermectinI've been watching Bret Weinstein's interview with Dr. Pierre Kory (M.D.) on the alleged suppression of Ivermectin as a therapeutic for COVID-19. The claim is that a meta-analysis of Ivermectin studies -- none of which are the highest quality study -- show an obvious and huge benefit to using the drug. Put another way, the "signal" that the drug works is so strong that it is obvious in any kind of study no matter the quality. And when you consider all the studies together (meta-analysis), the effectiveness of the drug is nearly beyond doubt. So why aren't we using it...

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Sunday warned in stark terms that the US power grid is vulnerable to attacks.Asked By CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” whether the nation’s adversaries have the capability of shutting it down, Granholm said: “Yeah, they do.”“There are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally,” she said, adding, “It’s happening all the time. This is why the private sector and the public sector have to work together.”- https://youtu.be/spjaM1YVIuc

In Russia, it is illegal to show children content that promotes and propagandizes non-traditional sexual orientations. With this law, one Russian federal service recently sent a warning to Disney about some of its content. Russia’s Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) sent a preventative letter to the Disney Channel, with an explanation of the norms of Russian legislation, Roskomnadzor reports. “Earlier it became known that Disney has released a short animated film called Out, in which the main character has a non-traditional sexual orientation,” the Service reports. “The letter notes that Russian legislation...

MUNDELEIN, Ill. (CNS) — After hearing the story of a Salvadoran immigrant and her plight to leave her home country, bishops from the U.S., Central America and Mexico meeting in Mundelein June 2 turned to a camera facing a woman identified as Maria Antonia. Even though she was who thousands of miles away, in Irving, Texas, they gave her a blessing via Zoom. “Our wish is that your family find stability and you’ll find peace and continue to experiment God’s consolation,” said Bishop Oswaldo Escobar Aguilar of her home country. The bishop of the Diocese of Chalatenango, El Salvador, led...

The Justice Department argued in a brief filed Monday that it should be permitted to substitute itself for former President Donald Trump as defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by a longtime magazine columnist, E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape, continuing the argument it had initiated under the previous administration even as the White House has changed hands. "Then-President Trump's response to Ms. Carroll's serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful," Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals. "But...

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is refusing to turn over its records to a state investigation into clergy sex abuse. On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that the archdiocese refused to turn over its sealed records to the state Department of Justice as part of its investigation into clerical sex abuse. The archdiocese claimed the records were sealed as part of a 2012 bankruptcy case. In April, Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul had announced the launch of an investigation into sexual abuse in the state’s Catholic dioceses and at least three religious orders. He asked representatives of the dioceses to an...

Eighteen million virus tests were administered in three days and supermarket shelves stood empty, as a new virus spike in a southern Chinese city makes officials nervous. Lawmakers in the United States, the European Union, and nine other countries are urging their governments to boycott Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics.

Monday’s largest quake hit at about 2:08 p.m. at the south tip of the sea, about 8 miles northwest of Calipatria and 25 miles north of El Centro, USGS said. People reported feeling strong shaking at the epicenter and weak movement as far away as San Diego, Cathedral City and El Centro. Swarms are common in the Imperial Valley, and past swarms in the area have stayed active for about a week on average. Those include a 1981 swarm around Westmorland that included a 5.8 magnitude quake, and a 2012 swarm near Brawley that included a magnitude 5.4 temblor. The...

We all knew this was coming. In order to justify the forced vaccination of children, the powers that be would somehow have to overturn 15 months of observations that COVID is less a threat to children than the flu and that unvaccinated children are less at risk than vaccinated adults (100 times less at risk than seniors), even if we are to believe Pfizer's efficacy data. CDC director reports spike in teen hospitalizations, urges parents to vaccinate kids over 12," was the headline at the Hill on Friday, reporting on the CDC's new study of hospitalizations. Naturally, it caught my...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a sweeping China bill this week to counter Beijing’s rising economic might and global influence. While it’s unclear how quickly the legislation could move through the House of Representatives, several Republicans in the chamber are opposing a companion bill that attempts to water down some of the provisions in the Senate bill pertaining to human rights and Taiwan.

A lion has died from Covid-19 at an Indian zoo where eight others also tested positive for the virus. The state-run zoo on the outskirts of the south Indian city of Chennai announced the nine-year-old Asiatic lion's death on Friday. 'A 9-year old lioness Neela succumbed to the disease on the evening of 3rd June,' the Arignar Anna Zoological Park, also known as Vandalur Zoo, said. The outbreak was first observed on Thursday when the lioness 'showed some nasal discharge'. The others appear to have been asymptomatic. The affected animals have been quarantined and given antibiotics. They are under observation...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two pieces of legislation on June 7 designed to combat the influence of communist China in the United States.“If you look right now, there is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist Party of China,” the Republican said during a press conference in Miami.“All we are doing today is saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We’ve got to start fighting back, and so the state of Florida is doing that,” he said.One of the bills aims to cut the Chinese Communist Party’s...

A top official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is hosting talks on a global corporate tax being pushed by the Biden administration, said a 15 percent minimum rate would be a “very significant step forward” that still leaves countries with enough scope to compete to attract multinationals to their jurisdictions.OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann made the remarks in an interview with Bloomberg on June 7, which followed a landmark agreement on the tax on June 5 among senior officials from the Group of Seven (G-7) countries, which includes the United States. The G-7 countries agreed to...

Government health official on Monday approved Biogen’s aducanumab as the first treatment to attack a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease, sending its shares soaring, despite controversy over whether the clinical evidence proves the drug works.Biogen said it has priced the drug, to be sold as Aduhelm, at $56,000 per year. Its shares jumped nearly 52 percent to $434.52 when trading resumed following the approval. U.S. traded shares of partner Eisai Co were already up $33.50, or 45 percent, to $107.75Aducanumab aims to remove sticky deposits of a protein called amyloid beta from the brains of patients in earlier stages of...