Free Republic

State Department, CDC update advisory as COVID-19 situation improves but remains widespread south of the border... The U.S. government has lowered its travel warning to Mexico, going from a Level 4 “do not go” to a Level 3 “reconsider travel.” The changes are reflected on updates issued on June 7 and June 8 by the State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The changes reflect an improving but still widespread COVID-19 situation in Mexico. Air travelers returning to the United States must show a COVID-19 negative test taken less than three days prior to their flight, even if...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration said Friday it has dismantled a Trump-era government office to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, a move that symbolizes President Joe Biden’s rejection of former President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to link immigrants to crime. Trump created the Victim Of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, known by its acronym VOICE, by executive order during his first week in office in January 2017. VOICE will be replaced by The Victims Engagement and Services Line, which will combine longstanding existing services, such as methods for people to report abuse and mistreatment in immigration detention...

The Associated Press won two Pulitzer Prizes in photography Friday for its coverage of the racial injustice protests and the coronavirus’s toll on the elderly, while The New York Times won the public service award for its in-depth, but accessible reporting on the pandemic. The honors were among a series awarded for coverage of the pandemic and protests in 2020. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the breaking news prize for its reporting following the killing of George Floyd, while Darnella Frazier — the teenager who filmed Floyd’s killing — received a special citation. Frazier’s award was intended to highlight...

Catholics submit ‘dubium’ to Vatican asking if Church in Germany is in schismThree Catholics have submitted a “dubium” to the Vatican asking if the Church in Germany is in schism.The trio from the Diocese of Essen formally requested a ruling from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.A dubium, from the Latin word meaning “doubt,” is a question addressed to the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation that can be answered with a “yes” or “no.” The congregation replies with a “Responsum ad dubium,” as it did in March when asked whether the Church has...

Researchers in Japan have created a concrete replacement out of food scraps — and the new compound can be both edible and sweet-smelling... His earlier research resulted in a technique for combining recycled concrete powder and wood waste to form an improved material through heat pressing. That sparked interest in using other waste products. “A similar approach can be applied to not only wood, but also to vegetables and fruit, and that is what we did,” he said... “It is said that one-third of food is wasted in the whole world.”

I use the Bing engine to avoid using Google. It's far less offensive than Google but it still is stricken with Wokeness too. The=y have history tidbits and this is what they have for today: "Captain James Cook makes an accidental discovery English explorer Captain James Cook's ship runs aground off the coast of Australia, in the world's largest coral reef system. The Great Barrier Reef was already well-known to the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples." Really? did the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples explored and map the the reef? Did they produce charts or any...

Ivan Nickolas Vetecnik, 15, was found dead on May 26. Days later, his aunt told KUTV that the identity of the suspect in police custody had the victim's family in shock, though the suspect was not named at the time. Thursday court documents reveal that Rowdy Lee Aguilar, 17, will face charges for aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and desecration of a human body for the killing.Police originally responded to a call of the discovery of a body and found the victim dismembered. They also said the residence, where the suspect lived, had a strong smell of cleaning agents... The...

Physicists have achieved a phenomenon known as subradiance, in which atoms linger in an excited state, in a dense cloud of atoms... Atoms gain energy by absorbing photons (light particles) that cause their electrons to jump from the lowest-energy "ground" state to higher-energy excited states. Once they're in an excited state, atoms spontaneously emit a photon and fall back to the ground state. But this isn't always the case. If many atoms are packed together and separated by a shorter distance than the wavelength of the emitted photon, the light they emit will cancel itself out, and the atoms will...

MIDTOWN – A Houston mom said she was disturbed by what she saw outside of her Midtown home around 8:30 p.m. on Sunday. “I looked out the window and noticed the man had pulled his pants down and was clearly having sex with someone,” said Ari, who didn’t want to show her face or use her last name. Ari said she has two small children at home, a 2-year-old and an 11-month-old. “I was scared and worried. And you know, as a mother, and just as really sort of anybody who would be sitting in their home would be disturbed...

Gratitude where gratitude is due: My family’s story with the Society of St. Pius XSo many souls today are not being tended well by their shepherds. So many sheep out there are lost in the wilderness and no one is present to look for them.Father Steven Reuter on Holy Thursday 2020 June 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Sometimes things happen in life that we receive with much gratitude, but we may never make it a point of stressing them. And then comes an occasion which prompts us to do some act of gratitude that was long overdue.This is how it is...

A number of staff members had been affected and the hotel has been closed for deep cleaning following discussions with Public Health England (PHE).A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also confirmed Ms Merkel would still be attending the summit.

The top two Senate Democrats on Friday called for multiple investigations into the Department of Justice's (DOJ) decisions in 2017 and 2018 to issue subpoenas seeking metadata records of House Intelligence Committee members as the Trump administration pursued leak investigations. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (Ill.) also called for two of former President Trump’s attorneys general, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

For weeks, prominent California Democrats have talked openly about accelerating the timeline for the Gov. Gavin Newsom recall election, hoping to schedule the contest before the governor could face more political trouble in the fall. On Thursday, the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature followed through on providing the governor a more favorable election date. In a statement, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced that the state — not the counties — will foot the $215 million costs of the recall, and that the Legislature will bypass the cost analysis California Republicans were not happy....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump seized data from the accounts of at least two members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters, according to a committee official and two people familiar with the investigation. Prosecutors from Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for the data, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the secret seizures first reported by The New York Times. The records of at least twelve people connected to the intelligence panel...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that it filed a District of Columbia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the DC government for police and medical examiner records concerning the U.S. Capitol Police shooting death of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, including the police and medical examiner investigations (Judicial Watch v. The District of Columbia> (No. 2021 CA 001710 B)).The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia after the District of Columbia failed to respond to an April 8, 2021, FOIA request submitted to the Metropolitan Police Department...

It seems that evasive answers are just fine for our current executive branch of government when confronted with very serious questions. "Will keep you posted", "Will circle back", or some other rehearsed rhetoric designed to deflect attention away from their responsibility to act immediately to address an immediate problem.

Etute then returned to the apartment on May 31 for another meet-up, at which point he discovered the person he had matched up with this time was male, according to Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jason Morgan, citing details the now-suspended linebacker told cops. Etute told investigators he punched Smith five times in the face and “stomped” on him, but didn’t call police despite hearing “bubbling and gurgling” from the victim as he left the apartment. Cops found the badly beaten man’s body one day later, the newspaper reported.

The Group of Seven (G7) nations, including the United States and six other wealthy countries, recently announced they had reached an agreement to impose a minimum global corporate tax rate on multinational companies and would be amending long-held international tax principles and rules. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hailed the announcement as a victory that would end the global “race to the bottom” on taxation. But in truth, what the G-7 proposed is a bad deal for America’s sovereignty, American businesses, and taxpayers.The agreement has two main components. The first is to implement a new tax rule. Currently, corporations pay taxes...

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has announced their drivers license and photo centers will be closed on June 18 in observance of the Juneteenth holiday. The closure will include the Riverfront Office Center in Harrisburg, as well as the center in the Summerdale Plaza in Enola. A complete listing of PennDOT driver and photo license center closings is available online. Customers may still access many driver and vehicle services and forms online through PennDOT’s Driver and Vehicle Services website. These services include driver’s license, photo ID and vehicle registration renewals, changes of address and driver exam scheduling, among others. Juneteenth...

YOU STILL NEED A MASK California's workplace safety board late Wednesday walked back a vote it took just last week to relax COVID-19 rules on masks and social distance, instead choosing to leave in place standards from the peak of the pandemic that require employees to wear masks whenever they are less than six feet away from someone else. "Immediate action is also required to protect the public interest to avoid confusion regarding the requirements of the workplace safety standards, which would make both enforcement and compliance unduly difficult," board staff said in a letter calling for Wednesday's meeting. Earlier...