Free Republic

UCSF infections disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, on the other hand, said that he thinks that with travelers coming into the Bay Area from other parts of the country and with different levels of circulating virus and vaccination rates, it makes increasing sense to don masks indoors, particularly as cases rise locally. "The point is that we want to protect the unvaccinated as there are increasing reports of vaccinated persons getting infected," Chin-Hong said. "This is still a rare circumstance, and vaccinated persons will rarely get ill after infection, but nonetheless a moving target. It would still be a bummer...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday announced he is launching an advisory team on Cuba to advise House Republicans on the “ongoing freedom protests and government atrocities in Cuba.” According to a press release, the team will help develop policies to guarantee the United States “stands in solidarity with the Cuban freedom movement, and educate the American people on the tyranny of the communist regime in Havana.”

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is currently holding a consultation regarding the new wave of COVID-19 infections in the Kirya in Tel Aviv. "Right now there is a growing opinion that the protection afforded by existing vaccines against the Delta strain is weaker than we hoped. We do not know exactly to what level the vaccine helps, but significantly less than we thought. We all hope to see the virus slowed, but so far, it hasn't happened. Those who hoped that the vaccines alone would solve the problem are mistaken. We need a strategy that brings as many vaccines as possible...

Abstract The SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 lineage was identified in October 2020 in India1–5. It has since then become dominant in some indian regions and UK and further spread to many countries6. The lineage includes three main subtypes (B1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3), harbouring diverse Spike mutations in the N-terminal domain (NTD) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) which may increase their immune evasion potential. B.1.617.2, also termed variant Delta, is believed to spread faster than other variants. Here, we isolated an infectious Delta strain from a traveller returning from India. We examined its sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and to antibodies...

On Monday July 12, French President Emmanuel Macron introduced new COVID-19 regulations as the delta variant continues to spread, including limiting cafes, bars and shopping centers to those who are vaccinated or have recently tested negative for COVID-19. The mandates, which will start in August, compelled more than 900,000 French citizens to book vaccine appointments through the online medical platform Doctolib... Macron announced mandatory vaccination for all health care workers, specifically caregivers and staff in hospitals, clinics, retirement homes, establishments for disabled people and home health workers. “Our country is facing a strong resumption of the epidemic,” he said on...

Black Rifle Coffee called supporters of Kyle Rittenhouse ‘repugnant’ and labeled Proud Boys as ‘racists.’ “It’s like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those people.” From their glossy writeup in the NYT:

Wednesday, retailers said that a widening of COVID health pass requirements announced by President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday was difficult to implement. In a bid to slow down the spread of the virus, Macron said a health pass would be required from July 21 to enter places of leisure and culture and that from early August it would be required in bars and restaurants, shopping malls, hospitals as well as in planes and long-distance trains and buses. A health pass would have to show double vaccination against COVID-19, recovery from the illness or a recent negative test. The government did...

“I’d say there’s hesitancy and I’d use another word — obstinance,” said Dr. Philip Keiser, a University of Texas infectious disease expert who’s been Galveston County’s Local Health Authority since 2016. “There’s this attitude, ‘You can’t make me!’” With local hospitals full and no sign of Delta letting up, he fears Mesa County’s luck has run out. In Galveston County, a lot of vaccine converts would have to step forward — and fast — to keep the Delta variant at bay. Keiser is still hopeful, but he’s not so sure he can persuade enough people in time.

Parkin protein (green signal) is in a different part of the cell than the mitochondria (red signal) at time 0 (left image) but then co-localizes with the mitochondria after 60 minutes (right image). Credit: Salk Institute ================================================================================== Enzyme with central role in cancer and type 2 diabetes also activates “clean-up” protein in Parkinson’s. When cells are stressed, chemical alarms go off, setting in motion a flurry of activity that protects the cell’s most important players. During the rush, a protein called Parkin hurries to protect the mitochondria, the power stations that generate energy for the cell. Now Salk researchers have...

Spectators were also holding “watch-the-bomb parties” in Hawaii, as the countdown was broadcast over shortwave radio. Photographers aimed their lenses toward the horizon and debated the best camera settings for capturing a thermonuclear explosion in outer space. It turned out that the blast—a 1.4 megaton bomb, 500 times as powerful as the one that fell on Hiroshima—was not subtle. “When that nuclear weapon went off, the whole sky lit up in every direction. It looked like noon,” “It looked as though the heavens had belched forth a new sun that flared briefly, but long enough to set the sky on...

Republicans who voted earlier this year to impeach former President Trump are outpacing their primary challengers in the money race. Now the 10 House Republicans who broke party lines in the chamber’s January impeachment vote are heading into the second half of 2021 flush with cash, financial reports filed on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who was ousted from her post as the No. 3 House Republican in May, raked in the most cash of the group in the second quarter of the year, raising nearly $1.9 million and closing out June with...

VIDEONo, not Jeffrey Toobin's job at CNN. Instead Toobin is demanding that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer leave HIS job. Really, Jeffrey? If anybody should leave his job it should be YOU. So why don't you lead by example and quit? Also Toobin displayed blatant ageism by calling Breyer "old." A reminder to Toobin that Konrad Adenauer served as Chancellor of Germany (without once being on a Zoom call) from the age of 73 until he was 87. And then he lived for another 4 years after leaving office.Unfortunately, there is over a minute in this video when Toobin's hands...

New technology developed by Japanese engineers has walloped the heck out of the previous data transmission speed record. Along an optical cable more than 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) long, the team achieved a data transmission speed of 319 terabits per second (Tb/s). This not only smashes the previous record of an already jaw-dropping 178 Tb/s, the technology is compatible with existing infrastructure, which means that it could be upgraded relatively easily. The new record was set by a team of scientists and engineers led by physicist Benjamin Puttnam of Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and builds...

Key Senate Democratic senators say they are undecided on supporting David Chipman, President Biden’s nominee to be the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. With no Republicans saying yet that they will support Chipman — and Democrats skeptical they’ll pick up any GOP votes — Democrats are likely to need all 50 members of their caucus to support his nomination and Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie in order for him to get confirmed. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), two red state Democrats, both said on Tuesday that they haven’t yet made...

WASHINGTON — More than six months after Jan. 6 — and after all of the reporting on that day — Donald Trump’s hold over the Republican Party hasn’t gotten weaker. It’s only grown stronger. In Oklahoma, the state GOP chair is backing a primary challenge to the reliably conservative sitting Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. Lankford’s sin: refusing to reject the Electoral College count on Jan. 6. In Alaska, the state party has endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka over Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Murkowski voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial. In Ohio, the candidates vying to fill the open Senate...

In 2007, Mark Milley, then a mere colonel, was being interviewed about his experiences by Lynne Chandler Garcia. Now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley is defending critical race theory while Garcia, an associate professor at the Air Force Academy, teaches it. The woman described by one student as "the worst professor I've had" back when she was teaching logic for the philosophy department at a community college recently came forward with a Washington Post op-ed announcing her enthusiasm for injecting Marxism into the Air Force. "I teach critical race theories to our nation’s future military leaders because...

July 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Adding to a long list of studies contradicting recent statements by Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, statistics out of Israel indicate that the immune response of those individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 is approximately 6.72 times greater than those who accepted experimental COVID-19 gene-therapy injections. As reported by Israel National News, data submitted to the nation’s Health Ministry shows that COVID-19 “patients who recovered from the virus were far less likely to become infected … than people who were vaccinated against COVID.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday in a preview of an interview that will air in full on Friday’s edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition” that the child tax credit of $250 to $300 per child every month under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan should be made permanent. Yellen said, “We do want to make sure that every child that’s eligible to receive this tax credit — a very important source of support — will know about it and be able to get it.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a statewide drought emergency because of hot, dry conditions that have plagued the region and water supply. Citing recent record temperature that killed at least 91 people in the state, increased wildfire activity and drought, Inslee called it “the summer of climate change.” “This is not political hyperbole,” Inslee said. “It is a scientific consensus that is jarring the life of every Washingtonian in some way.” A drought emergency declaration is issued when water supply is projected to be below 75% of average, and poses a hardship to water users and the environment. The declaration...

This month, the Interagency Strategy for Promoting Naturalization was released. The Obama administration had its own project for turning aliens into citizens as quickly as possible in order to get them on the voting rolls, but the new strategy goes beyond anything Obama tried to do. The new strategy begins with using DHS to assemble all the available data on the "potential naturalization-eligible populations" and breaking it down by age, sex, and zip code, as well as other demographic details, to target "outreach". By "outreach", the working group of agencies headed by Biden appointees means converting aliens into citizens. That...