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Chicago police Superintendent David Brown late Wednesday issued an angry statement against a federal judge’s decision to release the man accused of making a straw purchase of the gun used to kill Chicago police Officer Ella French. Jamel Danzy, who faces federal charges of conspiring to violate firearms laws, was granted a $4,500 appearance bond pending trial, meaning he will not need to pay bail to get out of custody. At a brief hearing conducted by telephone, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert on Wednesday noted Danzy’s steady employment history and lack of criminal background. ADVERTISEMENT

London (AFP) - Climate change could magnify the atmospheric cooling effects of once-in-a-century volcanic eruptions, but also lessen the impact of smaller eruptions, according to new research released Thursday.Scientists at the University of Cambridge and the UK Met Office examined how rising temperatures are likely to affect the ash and gases shot into the atmosphere by volcanoes.The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, used climate and volcanic plume models to project future changes.It also looked back at the worldwide impact of Mount Pinatubo's eruption in the Philippines in 1991, the second largest of the 20th century.The study found that...

Anti-migrant protesters have attacked houses, shops and cars owned by Syrians in Turkey's capital after tensions flared over the alleged killing of a local teenager. The violence erupted on Wednesday night following reports that a Syrian refugee had stabbed two Turkish men in a fight. Hundreds of locals descended on an area of Ankara where a community of Syria migrants and refugees live. Videos online showed groups of men overturning cars and vandalising shops. Anti-migrant sentiment in Turkey has been rising in recent years, with a number of politicians campaigning for harsher restrictions. Tensions have flared recently with the arrival...

As the “Biden Budget” was moving through the Senate and the Covid Delta Variant seems to be picking up steam, we are seeing “flight to safety” assets other than Treasuries rising. Gold and Silver experienced some serious corrections last week, perhaps because things were looking up. Then we saw 1) Anthony Fauci scaring everyone about Covid … again and 2) the US Senate passing two uber-expensive spending bills: infrastructure and the Biden Budget. The scary thing about the Senate’s Biden Budget is that there are no limitations on taxes that can be assessed. So, there is enormous uncertaintly about how...

False and misleading claims that Covid-19 vaccines harm fertility and cause miscarriages are still circulating online, against all the evidence. Doctors are extremely cautious about what they recommend during pregnancy, so the original advice was to avoid the jab. But now, so much safety data has become available that this advice has changed and the vaccine is now actively encouraged (as getting Covid itself can put a pregnancy at risk). We have looked at some of the more persistent claims - and why they are wrong.

I don't even know what to say. That deer has seen some things, man. There's certainly some trauma in its past. Just a cold-blooded remorseless killer. Either that or the bunny was the deer's lifelong homie and she just wasn't letting fluffy go out like that. Or maybe the deer and hawk had a beef and the deer was just waiting for a moment like this to catch the hawk slippin? Either way, that hawk was not getting away with its life. The deer made sure of that. If you've seen anything crazier than this today, I don't even wanna...

According to a report issued by the attorney general of the state of New York last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was busy issuing sweeping new protections against the sexual harassment of women around the time that Harvey Weinstein ceased to be a Hollywood mega-figure and became a widely known sexual predator. Today, Harvey is serving a 23-year sentence for various felonies, and he faces still more felonies in California. Now Cuomo is undergoing a similar transformation. A year ago, he was spoken of as a rising presidential contender. Now he is spoken of as a sexual predator. What happened? Well,...

You're a schmuck for not wearing a mask because you're supposed to protect the fellow members around you," the former governor said. The Terminator has a harsh message for those Americans who oppose wearing masks during the latest COVID-19 outbreak: "Screw your freedom." Former California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the comments during a videotaped interview released Wednesday. "Because with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities," the 74-year-old actor-turned-politician said in a YouTube interview with CNN's Bianna Golodryga and former NSC staffer Alexander Vindman, according to The Hill newspaper. "Yeah, you have the freedom to wear no mask. But you know...

This is my fourth in a series on why we need to hear more from economists and less from non-economists – especially on economic topics. What does the average economist know about environmental science? Probably no more than any other reasonably educated person. Yet economists have three talents that are sorely missing from most discussions of environmental policy – particularly policies related to climate change. They understand (1) the scientific method, (2) cost-benefit analysis and (3) how costs and benefits affecting different generations can be evaluated over time. Here is how these skills matter. The Scientific Method. During the Trump...

The Taliban captured a strategic provincial capital near Kabul on Thursday, the 10th the insurgents have taken in a weeklong sweep across Afghanistan just weeks before the end of the American military mission there. Seizing Ghazni cuts off a crucial highway linking the Afghan capital with the country’s southern provinces, which similarly find themselves under assault as part of an insurgent push some 20 years after the foreign troops arrived to oust the Taliban government. While Kabul itself isn’t directly under threat, the loss of Ghazni tightens the grip of a resurgent Taliban estimated to now hold some two-thirds of...

Hunter Biden is an incredibly disgusting human being. We know about the drugs and the prostitutes but there have long been rumors that he’s done worse than that. Here’s the bad thing for America about Hunter’s debauchery: While we merely suspect those terrible things, Hunter’s confession in 2019 to a prostitute suggests that, if he really did unspeakable things, America’s geopolitical enemies – whether Russians or Chinese – may have proof. *snip* It’s also easy to believe that Hunter would film those encounters for his later viewing pleasure. That’s what he does. That’s why it matters greatly that Hunter, during...

Americans are growing angrier by the day, but in a way different from prior sagebrush revolts such as the 1960s Silent Majority or the Tea Party movement over a decade ago. The rage this time is not just fueled by conservatives. For the first time in their lives, Americans of all classes and races are starting to fear a self-created apocalypse that threatens their family's safety and the American way of life. The border is not just porous as in the pre-Trump past. It is arguably nonexistent. Some 2 million people may cross illegally in the current fiscal year, according...

The removal of a portrait of Winston Churchill from the New Zealand parliament building has sparked fury with opposition leader Judith Collins saying she was “disgusted” by the move – but prime minister Jacinda Ardern insisted she “didn’t care”. Collins, who leads the National Party in New Zealand tweeted an image of Britain’s wartime leader being pulled from its position, reportedly called for by the parliament’s Art Committee, chaired by Green MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere. “Sir Winston Churchill, the greatest anti-fascist leader of the 20th century is removed from the walls of Parliament because the Greens don’t like him,” tweeted...

Former President George W. Bush perfectly summed up how the political left viewed minorities, particularly black Americans, with his great phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” I used the word “viewed” and put it in past tense on purpose, because Democrats have moved beyond the soft part and have reverted back to their blatant, unambiguous bigotry of days gone by. This is what Democrats do, and how they think of minorities, particularly black voters. They’ve felt entitled to the black vote since the 1960s, and in many ways they’ve owned that vote, making that feeling somewhat justified. When you...

New York’s electric chair handled record traffic on this date in 1912: seven successive electrocutions. The first two men committed unrelated and isolated crimes. John Collins got drunk and started firing a pistol in his Manhattan apartment. Police responded, and Collins shot a patrolman through the chest when they entered his domicile and tried to arrest him. Joseph Ferrone, a violent wife-murderer who reacted to his guilty verdict by smashing a glass and slashing a juror with the jagged edge before he was restrained. The last five were the culmination of another record: six people (these were nos. two through...

The left has a fraught relationship with freedom, in that they are against it except when it comes to bizarre perversions and transgressive nonsense designed to blow your bourgeois mind. Free speech, a free press, the right to worship as you see fit – these are frustrating obstacles to their power. They insist on pretending they support these things, and they are willing to infringe upon any of your freedoms to do it. I recently mocked them with a Schiff-disturbing Twitter thread demonstrating what it might look like if the right imposed a cracked mirror-image set of left’s dream policies...

Parents are beginning to fight against power-mad schools intent on imposing transgenderism, masks, and Critical Race Theory on their children. Usually, revolutions start at the bottom, with ordinary people pushing back against the tyranny of the powerful, either to create liberty (as happened in America) or to establish their own tyranny (as happens with all socialist revolutions). In America, though, we’re seeing a revolution of the powerful against the little people. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way powerful people are seeking to impose three revolutions on children: Transgenderism, masks, and Critical Race Theory. Parents are beginning to...

How long would it have taken rabid, radical leftists to respond if the Trump Department of Justice had held Antifa defendants in jail for seven months without trial? Half a millisecond? Hundreds, yes hundreds of Trump-supporters at the Capitol have been held for seven months without trial. Other than a timid protest by a few conservative House Republicans, this writer is unaware of demands that these political detainees — how otherwise explain their detention by Biden's attorney general Garland (and thank the Almighty he was not put on the Supreme Court) — be given a fair and speedy trial? Following...

The pandemic COVID-19 has affected our lives in many different ways. Social distancing, lockdowns, and physical isolation have highlighted the human need for intimate connection and good friends and the desire to be part of a shared community. Loneliness occurs when the connections we need are larger than the connections we have. The impact of COVID has drawn attention to the problem of loneliness, a phenomenon usually understated because it was associated with shame. Understandably, it was not often the subject of conversation. Loneliness is a subjective factor, indicating a feeling of lack of connection but it is different from...

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