Free Republic

Intelligence officials in France warned U.S. State Department officials in 2015 that communist China planned to cease its collaboration agreement at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a former State Department COVID-19 investigator.Former State Department official David Asher indicated to the Daily Caller that the U.S. government was given preliminary information regarding China’s move to stop working with France at the lab. In 2004, France and China launched the project, which continual evidence indicates could be the originating area of COVID-19.Asher said France was formally “kicked out” of the lab in 2017, which resulted in foreign officials contacting the...

Vladimir Putin boasted yesterday that Russia had the power to launch an 'unpreventable strike' against its enemies in a show of strength following the confrontation with Britain in the Black Sea. The Russian president told a navy day parade in St Petersburg: 'We are capable of detecting any underwater, above-water, airborne enemy and, if required, carry out an unpreventable strike.' It comes as military officials announced tests of advanced new weapons – some of which come from an arsenal Mr Putin has described as 'invincible'. He added: 'The Russian navy today has everything it needs to guarantee the protection of...

The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels. Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions. Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years, and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment....

BIDEN: Where's mom? Mom? Is she here? ... Mom, you can't stand up if you're home. [Applause]

Two new large studies of China's CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine showed good efficacy against symptomatic infection and severe disease, albeit with lower efficacy than the two mRNA coronavirus vaccines currently in use. Overall 83.5% efficacy against infection Interim efficacy and safety results from a phase 3 trial in Turkey were published yesterday in The Lancet. A team led by researchers from Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara randomly assigned either the inactivated whole-virion CoronaVac vaccine or a placebo to 10,214 healthcare and community volunteers aged 18 to 59 years at 24 centers from Sep 14, 2020, to Jan 5, 2021....

A new study from Denmark reveals that the connection between people who experience schizophrenia and who smoke a problematic amount of weed is on the rise, CNN reports. The study, which was published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, shows that the link between the mental health disorder and cannabis use disorder in Denmark was two percent in 1995, four percent in 200, and eight percent in 2010. Cannabis use disorder is the clinical name for cannabis addiction. “I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is...

… Manchin also pushed back at suggestion that it's time to pass the $3.5T budget plan if the $1.2 trillion bipartisan deal falls apart. "I would say that if the bipartisan infrastructure bill falls apart, everything falls apart.”

Today, only eight states including New York are “may issue” for gun carry permits — meaning government officials “may issue” permits to applicants but are not required to (and hardly ever) do so. Litigation over what the Second Amendment means and requires is mostly limited to those states who are ruled by mega-cities. A law-abiding citizen who passes a background check in those states is still subject to a discretionary and random government decision about whether that person has “proper cause” to carry a firearm for self-defense. That means New Yorkers must distinguish themselves from their fellow citizens and be...

It’s a very sad day for Cleveland. Today we lay to rest the Cleveland Indians. The owners will now call the team the Cleveland Guardians, (should be the Cleveland Sell Outs.) Even though we saw it coming, and we should have been prepared, it still seems as if we’re losing a member of our family. For me the tribe represented something that I was able to identify with. Being Choctaw, it was a team who represented me, something to be proud of. But someone at the offices in Cleveland took the bait and decided it was now shameful to be...

BRUSSELS, July 26 (Reuters) - France, Spain, Italy and 20 other EU countries may be taken to court for their tardiness in enacting landmark EU copyright rules into national law, the European Commission said on Monday as it asked the group to explain the delays. The copyright rules, adopted two years ago, aim to ensure a level playing field between the European Union's trillion-euro creative industries and online platforms such as Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), and Facebook (FB.O). Some of Europe's artists and broadcasters, however, are still not happy, in particular over the interpretation of a key provision, Article...

On Monday morning, July 19, 2021, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream posted a statement on their website announcing that their ice cream would no longer be sold in the “occupied palestinian territory” or OPT. This was a shock, for many, for a number of reasons, first among them being that people think of Ben and Jerry’s as a Jewish business, since, after all, its founders were Jewish. Only after careful consideration did people put two and two together, realizing that Ben & Jerry’s was bought, sometime ago, by Unilever, a Britain-based conglomerate. BEN & JERRY'S ICE CREAM The first error,...

NY Gov. Cuomo: “We have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, put them in cars & drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission.” Disclose TV Twitter (Video)

Droplets of orange juice can break lateral flow tests and show a positive result .. Viral videos on TikTok have encouraged children across the UK to try the trend.. Schools have warned parents to be 'vigilant' when their children are tested .. Pupils have been using fruit juice to get false positive Covid-19 test results as schools warn parents to be 'vigilant'. When droplets of orange juice or fizzy drinks like coca-cola are placed on a lateral flow test it can produce a positive result because the acidity of the drink destroys the antibody proteins in the test. And although...

Never as in this era have we seen that the destiny of the whole world, and in particular of Europe and Western nations, is irremediably marked by all these elements which are a prelude to its fall and its ruin.July 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The following was Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s opening speech for the Venice Document conference.Dear friends, Praised be Jesus Christ. This conference has the privilege of being based in a city with a glorious past, in which its rulers were able to apply with wisdom the good government of every temporal reign that finds its inspirational and...

The monks have long overseen the site, located in the Valley of the Fallen near Madrid The Valley of the Fallen, located in the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain, is both a memorial and basilica conceived by former dictator General Franco, who is buried within the mountain. (Photo: Wikipedia)A community of Benedictine monks has vowed to continue ministering at a Spanish civil war memorial marked by a 460-foot cross despite a bill pending in parliament that would ban expressions of support for General Francisco Franco's 20th-century dictatorship. The Benedictines have long overseen the site, located in...

The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) has passed the second of three scheduled “shock trials”. The latest Full Ship Shock Trials (FSST) test took place in the Atlantic Ocean on July 16th, on the fourth anniversary of the ship’s commissioning.

A Michigan Catholic school is attempting to get in front of the mask mandate issue by arguing on religious liberty grounds in courtA court of appeals in Michigan will hear a case from a Catholic school arguing mask mandates violate religious liberty because they cover "God's image and likeness." "Unfortunately, a mask shields our humanity and because God created us in His image, we are masking that image," the institution – the Resurrection School, in Lansing – told The Washington Post. The suit additionally argues masks make students less social, less comfortable, and in some cases makes breathing more difficult....

When it comes to demonstrators shoving their way past a makeshift barrier outside the U.S. Capitol, the Biden Administration is determined to bring the maximum legal force possible against its perceived enemies. But at the far more important Mexican border, the Biden Administration has decided that no law exists at all. Under Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ICE agents have been barred from deporting or even detaining illegal immigrants in the U.S. without explicit permission from senior leadership, unless an illegal immigrant has been convicted of certain “aggravated felonies,” is a suspected terrorist, or meets a tiny set...

Former President Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Land Commissioner George P. Bush in the state's Republican attorney general primary on Monday. Trump blasted out a statement calling Paxton a "true Texan who will keep Texas safe" and praised the attorney general for his stances on crime, guns, border security, and "election integrity." "Attorney General Ken Paxton has been bravely on the front line in the fight for Texas, and America, against the vicious and very dangerous Radical Left Democrats, and the foolish and unsuspecting RINOs that are destroying our Country," Trump said. "It is going to take...

A Washington church won its case against a state abortion coverage mandate on Thursday, in a ruling by a federal appeals court. Cedar Park Church in Bothell, Washington had filed a complaint in March 2019 regarding a state law that required employers – including churches – to cover abortions if their health plans also included maternity coverage. While state law allowed religious groups not to pay for abortion coverage, it required it to be available to enrollees; the church argued that it could not find a health plan without abortion coverage included. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday...