Free Republic

With the U.S. in the grips of a frightening surge of coronavirus cases, many parents are understandably eager to know when the COVID-19 vaccine will finally be available for children under 12. This age group accounts for about 50 million Americans and currently none of them qualify for a shot. But scientists are racing to figure out how one of the COVID-19 vaccines currently available for adults could be given to this age group. Pfizer and Moderna are both running large pediatric trials to study the effectiveness and safety of using their COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for children under 12...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Three officers were shot and another was injured by shrapnel or glass in Northeast Albuquerque on Thursday morning, setting off a manhunt. One was shot in the upper chest and is in critical condition. That officer is in surgery. A second officer was shot in the arm and a third in the vest. The families of all officers involved have been notified. A manhunt is underway for one suspect as tactical officers in full gear sweep nearby neighborhoods. Another suspect is in custody. Rebecca Atkins, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson, said the agency would not be responding...

Sean Penn is standing on the sidewalk at an outdoor mall in Malibu's Cross Creek. He's just had lunch - steak frites, rare - and he's smoking a cigarette and explaining why he's never written a memoir. "I've been offered a lot of money to do one of those," says Penn, who has written two novels and multiple screenplays. "And I could see doing one someday, if I felt really old." And then he stops. He sees something I haven't noticed.

Overnight, 12 US Air Force C-17 cargo jets removed 2,000 people from the region - an average of just 160 people per flight, despite the planes being able to carry 600 people - six fewer aircraft than in the previous 24 hours. Since August 14, the US has only removed 7,000 people in total from the region. Only 300 of those who flew out were American and officials can't give a breakdown of who else was on the planes or whether or not they had the right paperwork to be there.

The Taliban is killing people in Afghanistan they find with copies of the Bible on their mobile phones, a Christian non-profit announced on Tuesday. The Taliban, a radical Islamist terrorist organization, seized leadership of the country on Sunday after surrounding the nation’s capital, Kabul, prompting former President Ashraf Ghani to flee. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan until 2001, when the United States invaded the country, and established a brutal regime that regularly persecuted political dissidents, religious minorities, women, and anyone considered to be violating Islamic law, or sharia. According to SAT-7, an organization that broadcasts Christian programs to churches and Christians...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh say unemployment benefits increased in response to the coronavirus pandemic will expire next month as planned, even as cases of coronavirus are surging with the Delta variant. However, they said President Joe Biden believes the pandemic exposed "serious problems" with the current unemployment system that require immediate reform, and the president is calling on Congress to address the issue when it returns from recess as part of the budget reconciliation process. The pandemic-related $300 increase in weekly benefits as well as programs implemented for those who do not qualify for traditional...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Sunday called out President Biden and former President Trump over the fall of Afghanistan, saying the actions and policies of each leader contributed to the government's collapse. In a statement on Sunday, Kinzinger criticized the “shortsighted, weak, and utter failure" on both administrations for letting the Taliban take full control of the country. “The naïve Trump Administration legitimized the Taliban by having ‘talks’ with them about peace and openly negotiating with terrorists, while the Biden Administration tried to fulfill a campaign promise without any semblance of a plan or forethought into how this would play...

Sonny Chiba was so much more than just his Street Fighter character. Over the course of a career that spanned over 60 years, he played superheroes, scientists, assassins, samurai, emperors, detectives, soldiers, and more. Born Sadaho Maeda in 1938 in Fukuoka, Japan, Sonny Chiba was a star even when he wasn’t on TV or film screens. He holds six black belts in six martial arts, including kendo, judo, and ninjutsu(!). In 1970, he started his own martial arts school for actors and stunt people named the Japan Action Club. He was the martial arts choreographer for dozens of film and...

President Joe Biden said the Taliban is “going through sort of an existential crisis” and credited the group for giving Americans “safe passage” to get out of Afghanistan, during an interview that aired Thursday. Biden sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in what marked his first time answering questions from the press since the Taliban overtook Afghanistan. Stephanopoulos asked the president whether he believes the Taliban has changed, prompting Biden to declare “no” before clarifying his answer. “Let me put it this way,” the president said. “I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about do they...

Demands for President Biden and members of his administration to resign are strengthening during the ongoing chaos in Afghanistan. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) stated on Wednesday “Biden’s entire defense and foreign policy team must resign” for “the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.” Hawley also called for a “full congressional inquiry” upon the matter. “In the immediate term, we must focus on getting Americans trapped in Afghanistan out safely. That should be our top priority,” he said.

Vaccines not mandated for White House staff but Psaki wouldn't provide specifics The Biden administration is not mandating COVID-19 vaccines for White House staff, press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday. During the White House press briefing Thursday, Psaki suggested that every White House official had been offered a COVID-19 vaccine, but clarified Friday that the White House was not requiring officials to be vaccinated. PSAKI CONFIRMS MORE BREAKTHROUGH COVID-19 CASES IN WHITE HOUSE THAT WERE NOT PREVIOUSLY DISCLOSED "No, we have not mandated it," Psaki responded, after being asked whether the administration was mandating White House staff receive a coronavirus...

It is peak irony when New York Times economist Paul Krugman accuses fossil fuel defenders of “bad economics.” The same Krugman who wrongly claimed in 2016 that former President Donald Trump’s election would lead to “'a global recession, with no end in sight,'” wrote a new op-ed headlined: “The Bad Economics of Fossil Fuel Defenders.” He peddled nonsense: “[C]laims that taking on climate change would be an economic disaster are as much at odds with the evidence as claims that the climate isn’t changing.” Too bad for Krugman that Transversal Consulting President Ellen Wald Ph.D. reportedly told Axios that President...

US Capitol was put on lockdown as a man in truck told police he had a bomb The man parked his truck outside of the Library of Congress' Jefferson Building A Facebook live stream appeared to show the man making an anti-government rant and telling Joe Biden 'The South is coming for you' and 'The Revolution is on' He told the camera: 'This is Tannerite. I'm sure they know what it is' In the live stream put on Facebook, the man says: 'I told my wife I’d be home by Sunday, and I’m looking for all my other patriots to...

On August 6, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich began an investigation into Maricopa County’s noncompliance with legislative subpoenas. The Arizona Senate has subpoenaed the County multiple times with ongoing noncompliance. The materials requested are necessary to finish the full forensic audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election. Arizona State Senator Sonny Borrelli requested AG Brnovich to investigate the County’s noncompliance with the legal and enforceable subpoenas. In a notice to Maricopa County, the Attorney General’s office requested a written response by Friday, August 20. Maricopa County responded yesterday, claiming innocence and asking the Attorney General to take no further action.

The Taliban are carrying out a highly-organised door-to-door hunt for people on their wanted list, says the head of the group providing intelligence to the UN. "What we have seen is that the Taliban, in advance of moving into all major cities in Afghanistan, not just Kabul, is that they have a more advanced intelligence system," Christian Nellemann, of the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, told the BBC. "They have lists of individuals and even within the very first hours of moving into Kabul they began a search of former government employees - especially in intelligence services and the special...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. President, thank you for doing this. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Thank you for doin' it. ... STEPHANOPOULOS: So when you look at what's happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment? BIDEN: Look, I don't think it was a fa-- look, it was a simple choice, George. When the-- when the Taliban -- let me back -- put it another way. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government get in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse...

U.S. antitrust officials on Thursday refiled their monopoly lawsuit against Facebook Inc., seeking to salvage the landmark case that a judge threw out in June.The Federal Trade Commission filed the new complaint in federal court in Washington, alleging that Facebook violated antitrust laws by buying Instagram and WhatsApp in order to eliminate them as competitors....The agency is trying to revive the case after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in June dismissed it, saying the agency failed to provide enough detail to support its claim that Facebook has a monopoly in the social-media market. Boasberg had given the FTC 30 days...

Uh … yes, in fact we do. Why wouldn’t Joe Biden know this, especially in the context of strategizing for over-the-horizon security in Afghanistan? The transcript of the interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos provides the full exchange: 👀 Biden incorrectly says the U.S. has no troops in Syria. We have 900 in Syria, more than a third of what we had in #Afghanistan. The Commander-in-Chief should know this. pic.twitter.com/lDwhjWPsfU — John Cooper (@thejcoop) August 19, 2021 STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the threat to the United States? Most intelligence analysis has predicted that Al Qaeda would come back 18 to 24 months...

The Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, is Germany’s key foreign intelligence agency. It is tasked with collecting, collating and evaluating information and with providing the government with an early warning system on critical developments in the fields of foreign and security policy. The BND’s image has been seriously tarnished, both at home and abroad, by its failure to alert the German government of the impending disaster in Afghanistan. This has in turn put the government itself under massive pressure to explain how such a fiasco was possible. After all, as recently as June, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the German...

Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell of Base Gagetown faces maximum of 5 years in prison New Brunswick soldier accused of giving cannabis-laced cupcakes to troops on a live-fire training exercise has been found guilty of nine charges. Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell was convicted Wednesday of eight counts of administering a noxious substance to soldiers without their consent and one count of behaving in a disgraceful manner, a charge under the National Defence Act, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to the prosecution. A 10th charge of committing an act to the prejudice of good order and discipline, which...