Free Republic

Llama antibodies could be a potent force in preventing infections from contagious COVID-19 variants, a biomedical company has claimed.Researchers from the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology in Ghent, Belgium, have found that antibodies extracted from a llama named Winter have neutralized the virus, including its variants, in laboratory testing.The treatment would supplement vaccines by giving enhanced protection to people with weakened immune systems or help people who have been hospitalized with the virus, the company said.

Thirteen brave U.S. service members were recently killed by an explosion outside of Afghanistan's Kabul Airport. These magnificent men and women sacrificed their lives in a futile attempt to accomplish a mission contrived by a befuddled president and his crack gang of moronic, muddled, nincompoop advisers. Alfred Lord Tennyson, 167 years ago, accurately described the plight of our Marines as they observed the cluster f—k their "commander in chief" had conjured up. "Forward the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs...

The Taliban completed its military conquest of Afghanistan and took control of the mountainous province of Panjshir after seven days of heavy fighting. The fall of Panjshir puts the Taliban in full control of the country and eliminates the final vestige of organized resistance to its rule. The Taliban began its assault on Panjshir on Aug. 30, the day the U.S. military withdrew its last forces from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital of Kabul and 32 of the country’s 34 provinces on Aug. 16 after a three and a half month...

An organizer for chartered flights to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from the Mazar-i-Sharif airport​ accused the State Department of holding up the planes — saying “blood will be on the White House’s hands” if any of the people waiting are injured or killed by the Taliban. ​ Another organizer told Reuters that about 1,000 people, including Americans, are being held in Afghanistan awaiting the State Department to provide clearance for their flights. An individual involved in chartering private planes to ferry people out of Afghanistan put the onus solely on the State Department for holding up the flights.​ “This...

The Afghan resistance leadership have fled to Turkey and the Taliban have taken total control of the country with the capture of the Panjshir Valley, the jihadists claimed today. The Islamists released footage of their white banner flying over the provincial capital of Bazarak on Monday after a swift battle which saw them overwhelm the resistance with high-tech weaponry abandoned by the Americans. Resistance leader Ahmad Massoud appeared to admit defeat in an audio message sent to the media in which he called on Afghans for a 'a national uprising for the dignity, freedom and prosperity of our country.' Taliban...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Middle East on Monday got its first completely automated cashier-less store, as retail giant Carrefour rolled out its vision for the future of the industry in a cavernous Dubai mall. Like Amazon’s breakthrough unmanned grocery stores that opened in 2018, the Carrefour mini-market looks like any ordinary convenience store, brimming with sodas and snacks, tucked between sprawling storefronts of this city-state. But hidden among the familiar fare lies a sophisticated system that tracks shoppers’ movements, eliminating the checkout line and allowing people to grab the products they’ll walk out with. Only those with...

Another possibility is being investigated in a case that one sheriff has called the most mysterious of his career. Responding agencies treated the scene as a hazmat situation because of uncertainty about the cause of the fatalities, and everything from toxic algae to dangerous mine gasses to murder has been probed. According to a New York Times feature on the family, now lightning strikes have been added into the mix. A handful of causes of death have been ruled out. Previous autopsy data provided by the Mariposa County Sheriff's Office excluded acute trauma, such as stabbing, gunshot wounds or blunt-force...

Rolling Stone had to retract a false story it published claiming an Oklahoma hospital had been overrun by people who poisoned themselves with the Covid-19 treatment ivermectin, and that that had resulted in gunshot victims and others being turned away or were left waiting for emergency care. The story was published amid propagandists working overtime to try to controversialize the Covid-19 therapy ivermectin, which public health officials disparage and recommend against, but many physicians and scientists insist is proving highly effective in some cases. Much of the misleading propaganda implied ivermectin is a horse medicine dangerous to people. It omitted...

Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia. That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus... This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status. On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society....

Faith Is A Simple Test: To Find Out If You Are Teachable? "Have faith in God" If it turns out that you are not teachable, then obviously you know more than God knows and there will be no place for you in God's Heaven. Heaven can have only one Supreme Being. A Supreme Being that will never consent to become a student to be taught wisdom and truths by one of His creatures. Jesus said, "Have faith in God." {Mark 11:22} And you say? : (1) I will. or {2) I will not. __________ Agree? Disagree? Thoughts? _________ Scot me...

DONALD Trump would narrowly beat Joe Biden if there was a re-run of last year’s presidential election, a poll shows. It comes as Biden’s approval ratings tank following the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. An Emerson College survey of 1,200 registered voters revealed that 47 percent would vote for Trump in a hypothetical election. The Republican appears to have a one-point advantage as 46 percent of registered voters would cast their ballot for Biden. But, the data revealed that Biden would perform far better against other GOP candidates. Almost half of registered voters would vote for the gaffe-prone...

President Biden never visited the Tree of Life synagogue after the 2018 massacre that killed 11 Jewish Americans, according to the White House. On Thursday, during a virtual address ahead of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Biden claimed he visited the Tree of Life synagogue following the shooting in 2018, when a lone gunman committed what is now considered the worst attack against American Jews in United States history. “I remember spending time at the, you know, going to the, you know, the Tree of Life synagogue, speaking with them,” Biden said. The president’s claims of visiting the synagogue were...

Health authorities in Portugal today are described as “on the alert” following the so far unexplained death of a 41-year-old pediatric operational assistant two days after she received her first dose of the Covid vaccine.The woman, so far unidentified beyond her age and professional situation (see update below), died in bed on New Year’s Day.According to tabloid reports her body was discovered by her partner when he returned home from a trip to the shops.The partner “called for help and a VMER (medical reanimation team) was dispatched. Efforts ensued to resuscitate the victim “without success”.The woman was one of 538...

While the unemployment rate for Americans dropped in August, there is a political time bomb buried in the statistics for President Joe Biden and a Democratic Party increasingly focused on equity: black joblessness shot up significantly. In other words, the president who fondly boasts of a domestic policy promising to leave nobody behind has an economic recovery that is leaving a key Democratic constituency in worse shape. "The rise in black unemployment in August is certainly troubling, considering their unemployment rates were already much higher than any other group," Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said...

The St. Paul City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved the wording of a rent control ballot measure residents will consider at the polls in November. Now, groups for and against the initiative are gearing up to lobby for votes on the proposal to cap rent increases at 3% annually. A coalition of housing advocates gathered about 5,600 signatures in the spring and early summer, more than enough to place the policy decision in the hands of the electorate. St. Paul voters will be asked: "Should the city adopt the proposed ordinance limiting rent increases? The ordinance limits residential rent increases...

Prayers up for continuing progress and success. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to speak plainly...

In summary, based on the totality of the trials and epidemiologic evidence presented in this review along with the preliminary findings of the Unitaid/WHO meta-analysis of treatment RCTs and the guideline recommendation from the international BIRD conference, ivermectin should be globally and systematically deployed in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

A teacher is under fire after a video surfaces on social media of him involved in a fight with a student. And he has his mask on. Students describe him getting angry, kicking a trash can, and telling them they were acting like “a bunch of monkeys.” Twenty years later, students are marching outside of Moore High School, protesting that Bennett was not immediately fired.

Publicly declaring one’s chosen gender pronouns has become a trend in some business correspondence and social media profiles. Volunteering one’s pronouns is seen as a sign of sensitivity and solidarity with people of various gender identities, and also a way to avoid mistaken identity. But should public school teachers ask children to reveal their identity? Parents say that’s happening in some Nebraska schools. Parents of children attending the Papillion La Vista, Lincoln, Omaha, Hastings and Cozad districts told The World-Herald that teachers asked their children in middle and high school to indicate their choice of pronouns. Several parents said this...

Viktor Litovkin noted that as a rule this sort of call-up lasts no more than one-and-a-half to two months and assumes that reservists receive cash payments The mobilization of reservists is a common practice at such large exercises as Zapad-2021, military expert Viktor Murakhovsky said on Monday. Earlier on Monday, the website of the Russian Defense Ministry reported that reservists were transferred to the Kaliningrad Region to participate in drills. "This is due to the preparation of the Zapad-2021 exercises. According to mobilization instructions, engaging reservists is a typical procedure for conducting operational and strategic exercises or for retraining," he...