Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on Thursday a law obliging international tech giants to open offices in Russia. From Jan. 1, 2022, internet companies, whose daily audience exceeds 500,000 Russian users, will have to create branches, open representative offices, or establish legal entities in Russia, which will "fully represent the interests of the head companies." The preliminary list includes 20 platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, messengers WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, email service Gmail, search engines Google and Bing, hosting providers Amazon, Digital Ocean, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, online stores AliExpress, Ikea, Iherb, and the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Separately, the Russian...

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A new law that takes effect on Jan. 1, 2022, will dramatically change what you can and can't recycle in the state of California. According to SB 1383, any person or business that creates garbage will have to recycle all their organic food waste. "It really brings a lot of material under the umbrella of what must be recycled," says Ken Prue, the City of San Diego's Deputy Director of Environmental Services. Prue says people will no longer be allowed to throw away food scraps or other organic material. Instead, they'll have to go into the...

Former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams now owns two homes in Georgia collectively worth $1.4 million despite having been hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before her unsuccessful run against Gov. Brian Kemp. The former candidate was catapulted into the national spotlight during her slugfest 2018 run against Kemp that saw her claim victory for months after the fact. Since her electoral failure, though, Abrams has made a series of property purchases in DeKalb County that have been scrubbed from the county tax assessor’s website, according to records obtained by Fox News. Most county tax assessors in the...

Explanation: On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups of martian rocks and surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and smiling faces. In the end, teamwork and weeks of planning on Mars time was required to program a complex series of exposures and camera motions to include Perseverance and its surroundings. The resulting 62 frames were composed into a detailed mosiac, one of the most complicated Mars rover...

To say that San Francisco is in decline would be an understatement. The city that once captured the hearts and minds of everyone who saw it is a shadow of what it once was thanks to skyrocketing crime, rampant drug addiction, and Democrat policies that continue to worsen every problem it has. Now, San Francisco residents are so tired of drowning in the issues that nearly half of them are planning to pack up and leave.According to CBS San Francisco, the city’s Chamber of Commerce conducted a poll with more than five hundred registered voters and found that over 40...

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg has proposed a "right to housing" as the California homeless crisis continues to grow more severe. The state has around 161,000 people struggling with homelessness, and the state’s leadership is coming up short with answers. As the most populous state, California has the highest number of homeless people, according to government statistics: The state also boasts the fourth-highest rate of homeless per capita in the U.S. Steinberg announced a plan Wednesday, during his State of the City address, that he believes will help his city and the state at large to better tackle the crisis: A...

On Thursday, the U.S. Army announced it had approved upgrades to the medals 60 special operations troops received from 1993’s Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia, also known as the Battle of Mogadishu or “Black Hawk Down.”In total, 58 special operations troops were upgraded to Silver Stars, the third-highest U.S. military decoration for valor in combat. Two more special operations troops were upgraded to Distinguished Flying Crosses, which recognizes acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.The Oct. 3, 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia was part of a U.S. Army mission to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid....

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is consistently saying things that are demonstrably untrue, Ilhan Omar has said so many antisemitic things that we’ve probably forgotten more of them than we remember, and Democrats, in general, have suggested violence so many times that it’s kind of become part and parcel of the whole party.Yet, for some reason, they continue to get away with it, so much so that when they do it now the populace is just willing to shrug it off even when hearing about it. You could say they’re doing this with the help of the media, and you’d be right, but...

The GETTR account creation process requires an email address to which a verification code is sent. I tried both my yahoo and gmail email accounts and never received the code. Had to create a new ProtonMail account, after which the code was received almost immediately. Others evidently are having the same problem: https://www.uncomanor.com/articles/gettr-may-have-been-shadowbanned

Myocarditis and pericarditis, which mysteriously skew young and male, can arise from an array of triggers, including bacteria and fungi as well as medications and autoimmune disease, but many cases go entirely unexplained. There’s no curative, or even standard, treatment for either condition; doctors try to manage symptoms and tamp down inflammation, said John Jarcho, a cardiovascular-medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston. Cases related to vaccines are more puzzling still. Only a few immunizations have previously been linked to heart inflammation, among them the smallpox vaccine, which looks nothing like the jabs we’re doling out now. Researchers...

The 25th Amendment was invoked by VP Harris and the Biden cabinet members. Biden was deemed by the group not to be competent to solely make presidential decisions. In a stunning surprise development, the cabinet members, all former Obama administration employees, petitioned Judge Emmet Sullivan to appoint former President Obama as Conservator for Biden. The former President was uniquely qualified to provide Biden with valuable assistance and guidance in the complex duties in running the country for which he has shown a demonstrated deficiency in the past necessitating the Conservatorship. VP Harris vigorously protested the move stating that the Constitution...

Women whose periods appear to have been affected by the Covid vaccine have demanded clearer health advice about a possible link between the jab and menstrual cycles. Changes to menstruation are not listed as a formal side effect of the vaccine and much of the information is currently anecdotal. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has received reports from more than 4,000 people who suffered period changes after the jab. Madison Miszewski, 21, said she had experienced longer, heavier and more painful periods than she had for several years after having her Moderna vaccine in late May....

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. ( i Corinthians 12:27)The Church, is the ‘body of Messiah’, the earthly vessel through which the LORD reveals and expresses himself in the here and now.Each born again Christian is a member of the Body. What does it mean to be in the body of Christ? To be a part of a local church? The Body is a brotherhood. we are part of a family. Belonging to a local church is taking your place in the family. We are to know one another, (which takes time and forbearance) and...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot reflects on her first two years in office on WTTW's Chicago Tonight. "About 99 percent of it, Lightfoot said. "Look at my predecessors. Did people say that Rich Daley held tea sessions with people that he didn't disagree on? Rahm Emanuel was a polite guy who was a uniter? No. Women and people of color are always held to a different standard."

Experimental setup. As a beam of beryllium comes in from the left, the deuteron Trojan horse intercepts it at the target and delivers its neutron soldier. This allows the decay products of the beryllium and neutron reactions to be captured by a curved array of six detectors on the right. Credit: Hayakawa et al. There is a significant discrepancy between theoretical and observed amounts of lithium in our universe. This is known as the cosmological lithium problem, and it has plagued cosmologists for decades. Now, researchers have reduced this discrepancy by around 10%, thanks to a new experiment on...

SARS-CoV-2. The woo-woo virus. People who can think and follow a line of reasoning should have a shot at considering the questions: Did researchers actually discover the virus? Did their proof fall short? DID RESEARCHERS DO ENOUGH TO PROVE THE CORONAVIRUS EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE? If someone says that, during the full moon three weeks ago, the moon suddenly turned gold, and then a strange squadron of giants passed across it, on their way to the ocean, do you think it might be a good idea to find out whether, three weeks ago, there was a full moon? Might...

VIDEOLike many of you, I thought that the prosecution of the Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was politically motivated as a way to "get" President Donald Trump. However, the calm words of New York Attorney General Letitia James convinced me of the absolute professionalism of the authorities in the Empire State. As you can hear for yourself, James is definitely not obsessed with "getting" Trump.

What the mighty Jesuit Karl Rahner would say, said, about suppressing Summorum PontificumJesuit Fr. Karl Rahner was an immensely influential theological guru of a couple of generations of clerics and theologians. He is the darling, venerated oracle of the catholic left and modernists.Here is a quote from Karl Rahner. Given the rumors about changes to or suppression of Summorum Pontificum, this quote should be picked up and circulated widely. Hat tip to my correspondent.From Karl Rahner’s Studies in Modern Theology (Herder, 1965, pp. 394-395) under the subtitle:A Distinction: Legal and Moral Norms[…]Imagine that the Pope, as supreme pastor of the...

Dr. Mallika is offering her best advice, but as always, consult your personal doctor before making any decisions about your personal health. Cindy asked on Facebook, “Because of the reported side effects of the J&J vaccine, why don’t they just give that one to men only and offer women one of the other choices?” Some countries are limiting the use of the J&J vaccine to people over 60 since the rare blood clots have been seen in younger adults, mostly women. The J&J vaccine now has a warning label but no specific age or gender restriction here in the U.S....

The United States Supreme Court ruled, Thursday, that two “Republican-backed ballot restrictions” in the state of Arizona do not violate the Voter Rights Act of 1965, opening the door for voter restriction measures nationwide, and spelling trouble for the Department of Justice’s lawsuit, announced earlier this week, challenging new measures just passed in Georgia.“The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed two Republican-backed ballot restrictions in Arizona that a lower court found had disproportionately burdened Black, Latino, and Native American voters, handing a defeat to voting rights advocates and Democrats who had challenged the measures,” Reuters reported. “The 6-3 ruling, with...