Free Republic

Qantas says it will stand down 2,500 staff as a lockdown in Sydney impacts air travel across Australia. The furlough - affecting pilots, crew and airport workers - will last for at least two months, the airline said. Qantas said it would pay staff until mid-August, after which they could apply for government support payments. Since June, fresh Covid outbreaks have forced most Australian states to reimpose restrictions. The highly contagious Delta variant has forced lockdowns in several cities and some state border closures. The situation is most severe in Sydney. It is seeing about 200 new infections each day,...

On Sunday, the Senate released the final text of the so-called bipartisan (but really liberal) infrastructure bill — all 2,702 pages. According to Breitbart, the huge bill was written in secret for months outside the normal legislative process. Buried in the measure is a pilot program for a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee (MBUF) which is basically a long-term plan to make it too expensive to drive a car. One of the “fun” parts of the supposed bipartisan bill (fun for believers of the climate change hypothesis) can be found on page 511 of the measure, which you can...

VANCOUVER, Wash. — The push to replace the Interstate 5 bridge is far enough along that officials have released a timeline for the design and construction of the new bridge. It is no small project to replace a bridge that is part of a major interstate freeway connecting Oregon and Washington across the Columbia River. But the effort is on with the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program. The organization representing both states has been working up a new bridge-building plan for more than a year. It recently released a timeline that would have a bridge design in place by next May...

NY archdiocese warns priests not to grant religious vaccine exemptionsThe Archdiocese of New York has instructed priests not to grant religious exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines, saying that do so would contradict the pope.“There is no basis for a priest to issue a religious exemption to the vaccine,” stated a July 30 memo from the archdiocese’s chancellor, John P. Cahill, to all pastors, administrators, and parochial vicars in the archdiocese.“Pope Francis has made it very clear that it is morally acceptable to take any of the vaccines and said we have the moral responsibility to get vaccinated. Cardinal Dolan has said...

Two more Washington, D.C., police officers died by suicide in the months after defending the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, bringing the grim tally of such deaths to four. One of those cops, 43-year-old Gunther Hashida, was found dead at his home last Thursday, according to a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department. Hashida, joined the MPD in May 2003, and most recently was assigned to the emergency response team within the Special Operations Division. Hours later, the MPD confirmed that another officer from the same department, Kyle deFreytag, died by suicide, and was...

The mayor of Broward County, Fla., Steve Geller (D), said Monday that COVID-19 cases in his county are “doubling every 10 or 11 days,” CBS Miami reported. Geller reiterated the notion that the spike in virus cases is largely attributed to the unvaccinated. “The numbers are doubling every 10 or 11 days,” Geller said. “This is horrifying.” Geller also said that most intensive care hospital units are well over their capacity, saying that most medical facilities have to convert some areas that are not designed to be ICUs, CBS Miami reported.

TACOMA, Wash. — State troopers are responding to an increased number of traffic collisions near an Interstate 5 construction zone in Tacoma. “We’re looking at a little more than two collisions that happen on this stretch per day,” Trooper Robert Royer with the Washington State Patrol said. The data provided by the agency, which covers the distance between milepost 132 (near state Route 16 exit) to milepost 136 (near the Port of Tacoma Road exit), shows traffic collisions are up 33% since 2019. With more than 400 collisions already reported this year (so far), troopers are responding to at least...

VIDEO AT LINK................ Fire engulfs Tesla Model S in San Diego This #tesla @Tesla exploded on my block at 1 AM here in #sandiego . Is this something that has been happening? It was parked and there was a gunshot-like noise that woke me up. By the time I decided to get up and go outside the fire department was hosing it down. pic.twitter.com/9q5VDui1at — Kojo Douglas (@amankwahlarose) August 2, 2021

A George Mason University law professor with naturally acquired immunity from COVID is fighting against his employer’s strict COVID vaccine mandate. Antonin Scalia Law School Professor Todd Zywicki, who recovered from a bout with COVID and has blood tests showing antibodies to the virus, said he will not agree to the university’s policy that employees get the vaccine or face numerous sanctions. “George Mason is forcing me to choose between serving my students on one hand and undergoing an unnecessary and potentially risky medical procedure on the other,” Zywicki said in a statement. “Multiple clinical studies have shown that natural...

Three guests visiting the Titanic Museum Attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, were hospitalized after the attraction's iceberg wall collapsed. (excerpt) The Titanic Museum Attraction offers visitors the chance to explore recreations of the famous ship, including the iconic Grand Staircase and artifacts from the shipwreck. "As visitors touch a real iceberg, walk the Grand Staircase and third class hallways, reach their hands into 28-degree water, and try to stand on the sloping decks, they learn what it was like on the RMS Titanic by experiencing it first-hand," the website reads.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang. He is also a 1945 Contributing Editor. The Delta variant is spreading across the country fast, and Beijing has no answer to the new strain other than draconian, totalitarian brute-force measures—and blaming foreigners. Millions of Chinese residents are now in various forms of lockdown. The recent infections constitute the most widespread coronavirus outbreak since the disease first hit China, sometime in late 2019.

Officials in Arizona’s largest county and Dominion Voting Systems on Monday announced their defiance of the state Senate’s latest round of subpoenas, continuing a feud that started last year. Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors decided in a closed session not to deliver any more election-related materials or information to the Arizona Senate, despite a judge earlier this year ruling subpoenas from the body lawful. Jack Sellers wrote this letter: Twitter LinkDominion outright refused to comply with the subpoena, saying in a letter that the request “violates (the company’s) constitutional rights and … exceeds the Legislature’s constitutional and statutory authority. Doing...

[Catholic Caucus] The Corruption of the VaticanThe most corrupt nation state in Western Europe occupies only 120 acres of land and has fewer than 1,000 residents. But its capacity for initiating criminal behaviour, and the global consequences of the financial and sexual scandals in which it’s entangled, are hugely out of proportion to its size. That’s because, around the world, roughly a billion people traditionally regard the state’s geriatric absolute monarch as God’s representative on earth. They may have been aware that, for centuries, a few bad apples in the administration have betrayed the monarch’s trust by embezzling money. But...

I have read and enjoyed many fiskings of articles over the years, but I’ve never done one myself. That changes today. I ran across this article from ABC News and the stats professor in me couldn’t resist (if you’re wondering, teaching stats really makes me ornery!) There is just sooo much wrong with this garbage, it will require a paragraph by paragraph discussion and fisking. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I say that the sole goal of the media, when “reporting” about the WuFlu (or Republicans, or Trump, or those who disagree with Biden, or...

The Pentagon was on lockdown Tuesday morning after multiple gunshots were fired near a platform by the facility´s Metro station. At least one person was down, according to two people familiar with the shooting, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information publicly. The person's condition was not known. The incident occurred on a Metro bus platform that is part of the Pentagon Transit Center, the Pentagon Protection Force Protection Agency tweeted.

An investigation into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has found that he sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees NEW YORK (AP) — An investigation into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo found that he sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees, state Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday. The nearly five-month investigation, conducted by two outside lawyers who spoke to 179 people, found that the Cuomo administration was a “hostile work environment” and that it was “rife with fear and intimidation.”

Pentagon on lockdown per MIL contractor e-mail.

Attention "Useful Idiots"!

Meet the double-charm tetraquark, the longest-lived exotic matter particle yet discovered. Exotic particles like this can be created within accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, but they pop into and out of existence extremely quickly. This new particle is considered to have a long lifespan before it decays, but “long” in this case is still so short it can hardly be measured in human terms. Its lifespan is probably a little longer than one-quintillionth of a second... Like many other quark states, this double-charm tetraquark was found at LHCb using a method called bump hunting. Basically, the researchers fire up...

I love a good, hot bath. I'm 73 and mobility is a problem. Walk ins are expensive- Has anyone invented a drop-on-top-of-your-existing-tub-rail, a door unit that raises an existing tub to around 30", so I can sit on a chair in a "walk in" without paying 6K ?