Free Republic

The Australian Federal Police is using specially-trained ‘technology detection dogs’ to sniff out USB drives, SIMs and devices when executing search warrants or examining crime scenes. The agency said in social media posts that the capability was “a first for Australian law enforcement”. “Given their size, you can imagine how easily [USBs and SIMs] can be hidden from police to conceal evidence,” the AFP said. “Since 2019, our three AFP technology detection dogs have located more than 120 devices during search warrants. “Over the next three years, at least 12 more dogs will be trained and deployed across the country.”...

European leaders have backed Australia against Beijing’s ongoing economic coercion campaign and its increased belligerence in the Indo-Pacific region. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in Paris on Tuesday where he met with French President Emmanuel Macron at Elysees Palace. They discussed issues ranging from tensions in the Indo-Pacific, counter-terrorism efforts, and the Future Submarine Program. Macron publicly backed the prime minister and rebuked the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s aggression in the South China Sea. “You are at the forefront of the tensions that exist in the region, of the threats, and sometimes intimidation, and I want to reiterate here...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on June 9 launched a nationwide campaign to prevent cross-border money laundering using virtual currencies (cryptocurrencies). This is the fifth time for such action and part of the CCP’s recent efforts to prevent capital flight and guard against financial risks. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), China’s central bank, said on June 1 that revisions to the Anti-Money Laundering Act were included in the legislative work plan of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and that it is soliciting public opinion before June 30. The statement stressed that revisions to the act are...

"Today is Day 472. Today is Tuesday." And effective immediately, state-mandated COVID restrictions are eliminated, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said as he announced New York had achieved his 70% vaccine milestone early

A new study revealed that Americans are continuing to flee New York and California for places like Texas and Florida in recent months.“Despite the 2020 pandemic, this year Americans are following similar moving trends as prior years. Millions of Americans are moving either to start a new job or to move home,” said a report (pdf) from North American Van Lines, a trucking and moving company.Specifically, it noted that Americans “are fleeing” California to Texas and Idaho, although New York, New Jersey, and Illinois “are the three states with the most outbound moves.” Other states that have seen a mass...

AstraZeneca said on Tuesday a late-stage trial failed to provide evidence that its COVID-19 antibody therapy protected people who had contact with an infected person from the disease, a small setback in its efforts to find alternatives to vaccines. The study assessed whether the therapy, a cocktail of two types of antibodies, could prevent adults who had been exposed to the virus in the past eight days from developing COVID-19 symptoms. The therapy, AZD7442, was 33 percent effective in reducing the risk of people developing symptoms compared with a placebo, but that result was not statistically significant—meaning it might have...

These days it’s not your typical latte-sipping millennials who are going woke. Taking a stroll around America’s largest metro areas will have one believe social justice is the latest fad that’s sweeping across corporate boardrooms. Much has been written about woke capital—businesses’ recent pivot to signal their affinity for leftist movements—and what it means for society at large. Suffice it to say that since last year, this trend has accelerated at breakneck speeds. Scratching one’s head in utter confusion should be a natural response to corporate America’s virtue signaling. One has to wonder why big business, which has traditionally been...

MSNBC host Joy Reid held an effusive interview with Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, during which she asked the Democrat about the impact of "dark money" and the impact of the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers have had in that arena. However, Reid failed to ask about the multiple organizations supportive of Democrats that have private donor lists or other "dark money" attributes. Reid began by pointing to an Al Jazeera report that global warming has reached an "irreversible" tipping point, before transitioning to a critique of "big oil" and the Kochs, whom she said have supported...

President Joe Biden might be facing a major amount of resistance from law enforcement if he begins cracking down on gun rights with far-left policies. 29 sheriffs in Utah have signed a statement in which they promise to protect their residents’ Second Amendment rights. The statement also warns Utah to be somewhat skeptical of any legislation that could infringe on their constitutional rights, as reported. The 29 Utah sheriffs say they will do everything in their power to protect the constitutional rights of their residents both as a collective and as individuals.

Vladimir Putin sat down with NBC News for his first on-camera interview with a western news agency in more than three years.Putin avoided public commentary during much of the Trump Administration, but less than six months into the Biden Administration he came out swinging at Biden and the US on a host of issues.Putin spoke for nearly an hour and a half as Biden met with the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, from which Russia was suspended in 2014 after it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.This interview was carefully orchestrated by Putin to follow along after...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge may have a viable solution to the single-use plastic dilemma: spider silk. Or, more accurately, a plant-based synthetic polymer that mimics the composition of spider silk, but doesn't actually come from the eight-legged arthropods. The researchers modeled their polymer after spider silk due to its durability and strength—if you could scale up a spiderweb to human size, it would be capable of trapping an airplane. In fact, spider silk is five times stronger than steel, and half as strong as Kevlar; it's considered one of the strongest naturally occurring materials on Earth. Incredibly, the...

Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar grilled beleaguered FBI director Christopher Wray Tuesday in a hearing, pressing Wray on why the name of the law enforcement officer who executed unarmed Capitol protester Ashli Babbitt has not been released to the public. Wray dodged Gosar’s pointed questions. “Do you approve of lethal force against unarmed citizens, particularly a 110-pound woman with no warning, no use of non-lethal force prior, while lying in wait?” Gosar asked Wray. When Wray smugly replied “Not gonna try to answer a hypothetical, especially one based on a case that I just said I-” Gosar snapped back “That...

In a victory for oil-producing states and the American consumer, a federal judge issued an injunction barring the president and Department of the Interior officials from implementing a “pause” that stopped new federal lease sales and the issuance of new leases previously won in competitive bidding.Twelve states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia) joined Louisiana, led by Attorney General Jeff Landry, in bringing suit in the Western District of Louisiana.In a press release, AG Landry comments:“This is a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of...

Since March, dozens of brown pelicans appear to have been seriously injured by a person or people in Orange County, conservationists said. The lifeguards in Orange County, Calif., brought the injured brown pelicans to the veterinarian one at a time, the birds’ large wings mutilated, their bones twisted and fractured... ...Of the 32 brown pelicans that Mrs. Wayns and her team have treated since March, only 10 have survived, she said. The low survival rate is tied to the “extensive injuries that have been brought to them,” Mrs. Wayns said in an interview on Tuesday. Debbie McGuire, executive director of...

Putting the hard in hardware, the top-notch customer service was a home run. A Seattle man claims he was attacked by a baseball bat-wielding clerk at an Ace Hardware location in an altercation that stemmed from his friend’s refusal to wear a coronavirus mask in the store. Bobby Dixon, the young man seen in viral video of the altercation, told Jason Rantz of KTTH Radio Seattle Tuesday that he went into the store masked, but his friend declined to put one on. "They pretty much told him, ‘put a mask on or get out,’" he said. "When he was walking...

“I’m going to get in trouble with mom and dad if I don’t do this the right way … ” This could be a normal comment by a 10-year-old who is being allowed to handle the microwave for the first time. But now replace the words “mom and dad” with “the staff” and what you have is a verbatim statement from President Joe Biden speaking to a gaggle of international media at the G7 summit. Mr. Biden’s overseas trip joining the G7 summit has been nothing less than a catastrophe, peppered throughout with reminders to the world that the American...

Lumber prices are falling back to Earth. Futures for July delivery ended Tuesday at $1,009.90 per thousand board feet, down 41% from the record of $1,711.20 reached in early May. Futures have declined 14 of the past 16 trading days. Cash lumber prices are also crashing. Pricing service Random Lengths said Friday that its framing composite index, which tracks on-the-spot sales, dropped $122 to $1,324, its biggest ever weekly decline. The pullback came just six weeks after the index rose $124 during the first week of May, its most on record. Random Lengths described a chaotic rout in which sawmill...

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that both right-wing and left-wing extremism had risen in Germany over the past year, as he presented the domestic intelligence agency’s (BfV) annual report in Berlin. Most alarmingly, Seehofer said that 40% of the 33,300 far-right extremists in the country were categorized as “violence-oriented,” the highest proportion ever. There had also been a 10% rise in the number of far-right violent crimes over the past year to 1,023, of which 842 were cases of physical assault. The BfV also registered a rise in left-wing extremists: 34,300 in 2020, compared to 33,500 in 2019, of...

In new interview, Abp. Viganò discusses ‘failure’ of Vatican II, Novus Ordo MassJune 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Viganò has given a new interview, this time to Abbé Claude Barthe, a French expert of the liturgy and a great supporter of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum allowing the traditional Latin Mass to flourish in the Church. The interview dwells on liturgical questions, the Second Vatican Council, as well as the Society of St. Pius X.Abbé Barthe, who authored numerous books on the traditional liturgy of the Church, had a year ago entered into a supportive, public discussion with Archbishop Viganò...

A previously symptomless 86-year-old man received the first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. He died 4 weeks later from acute renal and respiratory failure. Although he did not present with any COVID-19-specific symptoms, he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 before he died. Spike protein (S1) antigen-binding showed significant levels for immunoglobulin (Ig) G, while nucleocapsid IgG/IgM was not elicited. Acute bronchopneumonia and tubular failure were assigned as the cause of death at autopsy; however, we did not observe any characteristic morphological features of COVID-19. Postmortem molecular mapping by real-time polymerase chain reaction revealed relevant SARS-CoV-2 cycle threshold values in...