Free Republic

The South Pole recorded its coldest season since climate scientists began tracking temperatures on the continent in 1957, The Washington Post reported. Antarctica’s average temperature over the last six months was minus 78 degrees, or 4.5 degrees below the average recorded over the previous 30 years, The Washington Post reported. The temperatures were recorded between April and September — Antarctica’s winter months — at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Temperatures even touched minus 100, at times, University of Wisconsin Scientists Matthew Lazzara told the Post. Scientists pointed to a major polar vortex that swept through the southern continent as the...

Hindsight is always 20/20, but even used car dealers know there is almost no appreciation on a car once you drive it off the lot — a lesson Papua New Guinea is learning the hard way. Papua New Guinea — which is one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia, with an average GDP per capita of $2,613 — dropped a mind-boggling $5.6 million on a fleet of luxury cars to impress regional leaders during a 2018 conference. Nearly three years later, the country admits the shallow purchase was a “terrible mistake” and is trying to recoup its losses by...

The classical composer who died almost 300 years ago, has been at the centre of a race debate for over a century; but does this mean we should disturb his grave? German singer, Roberto Blanco, has called on the Mayor of Vienna to exhume Beethoven’s body for a racial DNA test. The request is the latest in an over century old debate about the ethnicity of the German-born classical music giant. Beethoven died in Vienna in 1827, and Blanco addresses the city’s Mayor in a public YouTube video. He states his reasoning for the ask is ‘so that we can...

This is just the latest in a series of revelations about social media platforms that made clear that self-regulation is not working. That's long been the president's view.

BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday against hearing an appeal of a decision that found Gov. Charlie Baker did not overstep his authority with sweeping orders to close businesses and limit gatherings to control the coronavirus early in the pandemic. The nation’s highest court announced without comment Monday that it would not consider the appeal. The lawsuit argued that Baker had no authority to issue public health-related orders under the state’s Civil Defense Act, which it said was designed to protect the state from foreign invasions, insurrections, and catastrophic events like hurricanes and fires. The Massachusetts Supreme...

While taking questions at the White House on Monday, President Biden was asked for his thoughts on the recent harassment of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). Sinema was harassed by activists while teaching a class at Arizona State University and subsequently chased her into a bathroom and filmed her while inside. Protesters followed Sen. Sinema into the bathroom at Arizona State University to confront her on Build Back Better and immigration pic.twitter.com/NDSmeu0h2M — Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 3, 2021 Manchin, whose D.C. residence is a houseboat docked in Washington Channel, was accosted by activists on kayaks....

Sanity, intellectual honesty, critical thinking and rationality are dead. The COVID response killed those qualities and purposefully discouraged and disparagingly labeled anyone who still engages with them. For anyone who has paid even the slightest amount of attention to the world over the past eighteen and a half months, this is not news. But it’s still infuriating. COVID response has eliminated the ability of countries to function as coherent, livable societies. It’s led to purposeful misinformation from media outlets, and immediately disproven expert claims mindlessly repeated by the press. As we’ve seen throughout the United States (and the rest of...

China has been violating Taiwan airspace flying military jets around the island unannounced Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu — ‘We will fight to the end’ VIDEOS AT LINK..........................

Six months after receiving the second dose of the two-shot vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, many recipients no longer have vaccine-induced antibodies that can immediately neutralize worrisome variants of the coronavirus, a small new study suggests. Researchers analyzed blood samples from 46 healthy, mostly young or middle-aged adults after receipt of the two doses and again six months after the second dose. "Our study shows vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine induces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the original vaccine strain, but these levels drop by nearly 10-fold by seven months" after the initial dose, Bali Pulendran of...

The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights issued guidance today explaining that COVID-19 vaccine status would not be covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules. Within its new guidance, HHS reminded that HIPAA does not apply to employer or employment records on the grounds that the rules only apply to HIPAA-covered entities like health care providers conducting electronic transactions.

Some Black Democrats are not here for the nearly $30 billion cut to HBCU funding in the latest version of President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. One of them has even threatened to vote against it if the issue is not resolved. U.S. Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina is the co-chair of the HBCU Caucus. She along with fellow Democrat and HBCU graduate Sen. Dr. Raphael Warnock, the first Black man elected to represent the state of Georgia in the senate, have publicly objected to how drastically the proposed funding to historically Black colleges and universities was...

Top U.S. trade negotiator Katherine Tai on Oct. 4 vowed to unwind some Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods, and press the Chinese regime for “frank” talks in a bid to end Beijing’s unfair trade practices. Over the past decades, Beijing has poured billions in state subsidies into targeted industries such as steel, solar, and agriculture, causing the shuttering of American factories and a “zero-sum dynamic in the world economy,” Tai told an Oct. 4 panel hosted by Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Above all else, we must defend—to the hilt—our economic interests,” she said at the...

I use Google Translate to communicate to my extended family in the Philippines ..

Hackers operating under the banner of Anonymous have released more data from Epik, the controversial web hosting company known for offering refuge to the far-right. In a press release titled “You Lost The Game,” the hacktivist group announced on Monday part three of what it has dubbed “Operation EPIK FAIL.” The latest leak is alleged to contain more bootable disk images of Epik’s servers as well as a data backup linked to the Republican Party of Texas, which is said to include “private documents” and “draft articles that didn’t make the narrative cut.” The Texas GOP website had been defaced...

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Maybe you make an incredible cheese sandwich. Maybe you make a sandwich so good, with melty, gooey cheese and ham, that no other sandwich can compare. Perhaps you add relish, or a little smear of mustard for a nose-tingling kick. Perhaps you hold strong opinions about whether ketchup belongs in a cheese sandwich (it doesn’t). Maybe you’re all cheese-sandwiched out: From the pimento sandwich and the steamed cheeseburger to the artisanal sandwich with chèvre, guanciale, and fig jam, you’ve had them all. Until you haven’t. By the grace of the sandwich gods and some venturous hot dog joints in Fall...

Little Rock, Arkansas news station KATV suspended anchor Chris May and meteorologist Barry Brandt for wearing Afro-style wigs in mid-September The station also fired longtime news director Nick Genty The wigs were part of a 'return to the 70s' segment in which on-air talent was supposed to sport looks popular in the 1970s as temperatures dropped It was heavily criticized by a local activist who said that a white person wearing an Afro wig is a perpetuation of 'systemic racism In a statement, officials for KATV said they condemned the stunt Sinclair Broadcast Group Vice President John Seabers also met...

The UK Ministry of Defence has unveiled their intentions to spy on social media platforms in order to uncover ‘thought crimes’ perpetrated by British people. The military will begin “automated scanning of social media platforms” to detect “changes in population sentiment,” according to a MoD Data Strategy for Defence paper. There’s nothing frightening about that… nothing at all. “Nowhere does the document explain why a strategy paper has gone so far off the beaten track that it promotes collecting data the MoD doesn’t have and using it for decidedly non-military purposes,” notes the Register. Since the beginning of the COVID...

President Biden responded to the confrontations Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have faced in recent days amid their lack of support for critical items in his agenda, saying he doesn’t think the tactics used against them are "appropriate," but said it is "part of the process." Activists confronted Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sinema, D-Ariz., over the weekend amid a fight to increase the debt ceiling and support Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill. When asked Monday for a response to the incidents, Biden said: "I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody." "The only people it doesn’t...

Users reported having issues accessing Facebook apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook itself on the website Downdetector, which tracks outages and issues across various websites and services. The issues began around 11:45 a.m. ET on Monday, according to user reports on Downdetector. They appeared to affect users in many countries around the world. In a tweet addressing the outage, Facebook said, "We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience." Instagram also addressed the outage on Twitter,...