Free Republic

Washington (AFP) – Former US first lady Melania Trump on Thursday launched her own NFT platform, the latest public figure to join the crypto boom. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital object that can be a drawing, animation, piece of music, photo, or video with a certificate of authenticity created by blockchain technology. This authentication by a network of computers is considered inviolable. A portion of the proceeds from Melania Trump's NFT collection will be used to help children in foster care. "I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and...

Owning a home had never been something Kristopher Esqueda even thought about. He was a successful restaurateur in San Francisco, helping to open many popular restaurants such as Saison and Sons and Daughters, and every month he turned in a $3,500 rent check for a two-bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin. One day after visiting a friend in Nashville who had moved there from the Bay Area, Esqueda left his apartment, stepping over hypodermic needles and feces on his way to work and started to wonder whether his time in the city was up.

'At stake here is the integrity of women's sports,' they wrote in the letter obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. 'The precedent being set – one in which women do not have a protected and equitable space to compete – is a direct threat to female athletes in every sport. What are the boundaries? How is this in line with the NCAA's commitment to providing a fair environment for student-athletes? The parents of about 10 swimmers banded together in October as Thomas' advantage became clear. Earlier this month, Thomas broke two national records when she competed in the female races at the...

There are currently 488 media professionals imprisoned around the world, the highest number since Reporters Without Borders began counting more than 25 years ago, the organisation announced Thursday. By contrast, the number killed this year – 46 – was the lowest since it began issuing annual tallies, due to the relative stabilisation of conflicts in the Middle East. "The number of journalists detained in connection with their work has never been this high since Reporters Without Borders began publishing its annual round-up in 1995," the group, which battles for freedom of the press, said in a statement. The number has...

Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds. Early descriptions of the platform make it seem fun and wholesome, drawing comparisons to Minecraft. In Horizon Worlds, up to 20 avatars can get together at a time to explore, hang out, and build within the virtual space. But not everything has been warm and fuzzy. According to Meta, on November 26, a beta tester reported something deeply troubling: she had been groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds. On December 1, Meta revealed that she’d posted her experience...

Fox News contributor Dr. Marty Makary warned against a new "wave of fear" taking hold over the omicron variant, warning it could fuel a "pandemic of lunacy" in the post COVID-19 era. The professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins University joined the "Brian Kilmeade Show" on Thursday to discuss the new variant, explaining it appears to be statistically milder than others.

Just when the world thought it might have COVID-19 under control, the new variant Omicron began spreading through the population faster than any variant seen before. The variant has been reported in 77 countries, though is likely in more, many European countries have re-entered lockdown, and early data suggests that Omicron is magnitudes more infectious than both the original COVID-19 strain and Delta. Now, new preliminary research, currently under peer-review, is illuminating just how much more transmissible Omicron is, and the mechanisms that allow it to outcompete delta. The study, led by researchers from the LKS Faculty of Medicine at...

Maryland’s socialist Bread and Roses Party is disbanding, and its founder, Jerome Segal, is launching a run for governor as a Democrat.Segal said the Bread and Roses Party’s central committee voted to disband and submitted the necessary paperwork to state elections officials this week, ending the group’s brief run as a recognized political party in Maryland. . . .“The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left that many things we argued for at the beginning that were viewed as pie-eyed utopianism … now are mainstream Democratic Party positions,” Segal said. “So much more can be done inside the...

The Canadian Senate on Tuesday passed a sweeping ban on conversion therapy after senators agreed to fast-track the bill through the legislative process without extensive debate, committee study or votes. Bill C-4, which received royal assent Wednesday, amends the Canadian Criminal Code to criminalize causing someone to undergo conversion therapy, taking a child out of Canada for the purpose of conversion therapy, profiting from the provision of conversion therapy, and advertising or promoting the practice. Penalties for the new offenses range from two to five years in prison. Previous versions of the bill failed in Parliament, but the current bill...

A driverless car startup based out of Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China has had its driverless testing permit suspended after one of its vehicles crashed in Fremont. According to a DMV report, the Pony.ai vehicle was in autonomous mode when it turned right onto Fremont Boulevard from Cushing Parkway and hit a center divider and traffic sign. The vehicle suffered "moderate damage" to the front of the vehicle, but there were no injuries and no other vehicles involved, the report says. Fremont police arrived at the scene of the crash, and the startup reportedly reached out to authorities to resolve...

Baystate Health is 20% over capacity for hospitalized patients and 14% of its staff positions are vacant during a COVID-19 wave that isn’t expected to peak until the second week of January. Dr. Mark A. Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health, isn’t shying away using from the word “crisis” and urged today the state reinstitute a mask mandate. “It feels like (a crisis) right now to me,” he said. “We don’t have the people. We don’t have the space. We always find a way to take just one more.” He cautioned Baystate’s ability to admit that next patient —...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has formally returned a lawsuit over Texas’ six-week abortion ban to a federal appeals court that has twice allowed the law to stay in effect, rather than to a district judge who sought to block it. Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday signed the court’s order that granted the request of abortion clinics for the court to act speedily. But the clinics wanted the case sent directly to U.S. Judge Robert Pitman, who had previously though briefly blocked enforcement of the Texas abortion ban known as S.B. 8. When Pitman ordered the law blocked in...

Los Angeles Police Department says it is believed both women were given drugs and overdosed. On Nov. 13, masked men in a black Toyota Prius with no plates dropped off Giles’ body outside a hospital in Culver City. Two hours later, Cabrales was left unconscious and in critical condition at a different hospital in West Los Angeles. She died later that month after being declared brain dead. The women were taken to the hospitals more than 12 hours after anyone had heard from them. The pair had been at a warehouse party when they met a man and planned to...

The Biden administration has warned COVID-19 test makers and labs that demand for tests could soon double or even triple, five people familiar with the situation told Politico. The Health and Human Services Department’s Testing and Diagnostic Working Group shared an internal model with the diagnostic industry that projects the country needing more COVID-19 tests on top of the more than 1.6 million currently used daily. The model shows 3 million to 5 million daily tests needed by January or February, an estimate that makes the assumption the omicron variant is three to five times more transmissible than delta and...

The National Pulse is today announcing its second annual Patriot of the Year Award, handing the honor to former White House Chief Strategist and host of the War Room: Pandemic podcast, Stephen K. Bannon. Bannon, 68, rose to major national attention in 2016, helping lead the Trump campaign to a stunning victory over Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party machine. Since then, Bannon has served as Chief Strategist in the White House, and founded the wildly successful War Room: Pandemic podcast alongside former Trump comms chief Jason Miller and National Pulse editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Bannon is...

The Healthcare at Mayo Clinic is some of the best in the world. We have been here for the last week and everyone has been amazing. On our way out, stopped for a coffee. Sitting next to 8 nurses complaining about all of the anti-vax patients and how they hate helping them. They are talking like anyone without the Vax is less than human and deserves a lower tier of care. They talked about how they ignore patients. Ugh disgusting.

Does anyone know of a good, spray type insecticide I can use in my Grapefruit tree? The tree is about a year old and I tried Cisco's Neem oil and it just don't work!

A Canadian molecular biologist on Wednesday told cross-party members of Parliament (MPs) on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan region of China is now the “more likely” origin of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Dr Alina Chan, specialising in gene therapy and cell engineering and co-author of ‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19', told the Parliament panel's evidence session on scientific research that the pandemic was being caused by the unique feature of the coronavirus called “furin cleavage site”, which has been linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology....

With the price of gas hitting $7 a gallon and a package of Oscar Meyer bacon hitting $9.59 out in California, you can bet inflation is on consumers' minds, and 80% of them know who did it.Big government spending, the kind that requires the Fed to print more money than the economy can handle, is behind it. The U.S. has passed a helluva lot of gargantuan trillion-plus-dollar spending bills for things such as COVID relief, "infrastructure," bailouts of favored industries, stimulus payouts, and more in the last few years and the economy is still struggling to digest it.Inflation, according to...

Non-citizens' voting rights in municipal elections raise questions about how the city will stop them from voting for federal and state officials. The New York City Council debated and then passed a law last week granting non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections. New York’s constitution states that the right of citizens to vote is guaranteed, “provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age” and has been in residence in the Empire State for 30 days. It is to be hoped that the courts will rule the New York City law unconstitutional, but that can’t be taken for...