Free Republic

A teenage Minnesota McDonald's employee is being hailed a hero after she leapt from a drive-thru window to save a woman choking on a chicken McNugget. Sydney Raley, 15, from Edina, Minnesota, said she was working a 'mostly normal' shift at the Eden Prairie McDonalds Saturday when she popped her head out a window to inform a customer that the rest of her food would be ready shortly. That's when she realized the unidentified woman was in trouble.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced new COVID mitigations Tuesday, including a vaccine requirement for indoor dining at restaurants for patrons and workers. People going out to eat will have to bring in more than just their masks and wallets starting January 3. The city of Chicago will start requiring customers and restaurant workers to also provide proof of vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test. This new mitigation effort is aimed at stemming the spread of the omicron variant, which the CDC now says is responsible for 73% of all new COVID cases. "I think it'll make...

There has been a lot of activity in the world of cultured meat since we reported on a US$330,000 lab-grown burger back in 2013, as scientists and startups work to bring the price down to something resembling the real deal. Making inroads in this space is Israeli startup Future Meats, which has just received the largest investment ever in the cultured meat industry and is rapidly reducing the production costs of its lab-grown chicken. Future Meats is one of a number of cultured meat companies working to reach cost parity with traditional meat products, with Impossible Foods, Eat Just and...

Of the eight approved or authorized antibodies, all but sotrovimab completely or almost completely lost their neutralizing activity against the Omicron pseudovirus. A cocktail of cilgavimab and tixagevimab had a reduced potency of 200-fold. Sotrovimab, conversely, shows a drop of 3-fold drop in neutralization potency.

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which represents West Virginia coal miners as well, said that the bill contained important measures that would benefit coal miners — like an extension of funding to aid victims of black lung disease, tax incentives to urge manufacturers to build new factories and employ ex-miners and protect union workers. Cecil Roberts, the union’s president said in a statement: “We are disappointed that the bill will not pass. We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working,...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is calling on the federal government for help in combating crime and violence in the Windy City. In a news conference Monday, the Democrat mayor asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to send in agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for six months to ramp up the number of gun investigations and gun seizures, according to Fox32 Chicago. She also asked for more federal prosecutors to handle the criminal cases those agents will investigate, as well as federal marshals to assist local law enforcement with tracking down thousands of suspects wanted on...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS) — A Satanic holiday display has made a reappearance under the Illinois State Capitol dome. Members of the Satanic Temple of Illinois came to Springfield, Ill. Monday to install a Satanic display in the rotunda. The installation depicts the deity Baphomet as a baby. Satanic Temple members said that the display is meant to represent plurality, unity, compassion, and empathy, and described it as "a display of positive values."

CNN medical analyst Leana Wen said Monday on “Newsroom” that cloth masks are “little more than facial decorations” in preventing the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. Anchor Victor Blackwell said, “Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city has not yet made a decision on if it will cancel the Time Square event for crowds to show up. Right now, you have to be vaccinated, and if they hold it. But for people considering going there or to the Peach Drop in Atlanta or any of the similar events across the country, what would your advice to them be?...

Stockholders banking on the Covid injections to line their pockets have very merry news this holiday season as they rake in the returns from a raging bull market on Moderna and Pfizer shares.Big pharma executives and shareholders saw their wealth skyrocket in the week after Omicron was “discovered,” with eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders making a combined $10.3bn, City A.M. reported on 6 December, less than two weeks after Omicron was announced.The two drug companies manufacture mRNA Covid injections and with Omicron sweeping the world, investors are sweeping the returns into their bank accounts. The eight top Pfizer and...

Omicron is now credited for 73% of new COVID-19 infections in the last week. In areas around New York, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, the Omicron estimate is even higher, responsible for around 90% of new infections. In the week prior, it accounted for only 12.6% of positive cases, making it the most rapidly spreading variant the country has seen yet... Early data suggested infection caused by Omicron may result in less severe COVID-19 illness... According to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “All of us have a...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) office backtracked on Monday after the governor announced the state would provide millions of dollars in support to counties complying with her mask rules, as well as state inspectors to conduct “spot checks” for coronavirus mandate compliance in businesses across the state. “I want to focus on the counties doing the right thing, and that have been our allies in making sure that we ensure that people are compliant with our protocols related to masks,” Hochul said on Monday.

Europe's energy crisis got even worse on Tuesday as a shortage of natural gas, nuclear outages, declining wind power output, and cold weather boosted prices....Russia's Gazprom PJSC has steadily reduced gas flows to Europe as the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline had its certification delayed until possibly July. No new flows into Europe are forcing utilities to drain their gas storages (already at seasonal lows). Some utilities have had to restart fossil fuel generators to avoid grid disruption.The energy crisis worsened in the last several days as France; usually, an exporter of power, has been desperately seeking imports and even...

Rush Limbaugh (12/21/15): "Imagine where we've gotten to now: My showing up on my own show would screw things up here at the EIB..."

MOSCOW, December 21. / TASS /. The US is building up a forward military presence near Russia’s borders, deploying about 8,000 troops in Eastern Europe, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board on Tuesday. "The US is scaling up its forward military presence near the Russian borders. In Eastern Europe, some 8,000 US troops have been deployed. As for the grouping of US troops in Germany, the Command Theater Engagement has been recreated there. Until 1991, it was responsible for using medium-range missiles," the defense minister noted. According to Shoigu, it is...

Oooooh spooky Omuhcron

On December 14th, 2021, Nature Medicine released a study based on a broad population data set analyzed by researchers at Oxford University. The researchers examined the risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination and infection. The Oxford researchers reveal that 1 in 100 or 1% of all vaccinated individuals were admitted to the hospital or died with arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat. On December 14th, 2021, Nature Medicine released a study based on a broad population data set analyzed by researchers at Oxford University. The researchers examined the risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with...

In this toxic era of bitter cultural division, few things divide people as bitterly as Critical Race Theory (CRT), which isn’t a surprise, given that CRT divides. It divides people into groups pitted against one another, into categories of oppressed vs. oppressor. Your group defines you. It’s an ideology that stereotypes and separates based on race—ironically, in the name of opposing racism. In that regard, it smacks of so many bad ideas on the political Left, such as the “tolerance” movement and its rigid intolerance toward those who dare disagree, or the “diversity” movement and its lack of diversity toward...

It is no secret that the radical left wants to take over healthcare as we know it. For years, they have been pushing universal healthcare, Medicare for all, and any other catchphrase they can come up with. Now, it seems they are willing to use the Omicron wave as a means to implement some of these measures. The White House announced that it will start implementing testing sites around the country for COVID amid the Omicron variant’s spread across the US. The first testing site is set to open in New York City before Christmas according to NBC News. This...

The National Aquarium, in Baltimore, Maryland, rescued 30 cold-stunned sea turtles from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November. The turtles were stabilized at the New England Aquarium’s Animal Care Center and were then transferred to Baltimore, according to a news release. Twenty-six Kemp’s ridely and four green sea turtles were examined in Baltimore after suffering symptoms from cold stunning: pneumonia, dehydration, emaciation, shell and skin lesions, eye lesions and blood infections, the news release said. The aquarium’s Animal Health and Rescue teams said they will monitor the turtles, with the end goal being to return the animals to the wild. Every...

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager acquitted for two fatal 2020 shootings in Wisconsin, is warning media outlets that he might be filing lawsuits. At a gathering of conservatives Monday hosted by Turning Point USA, Rittenhouse, 18, said "accountability is coming, I'd be on the lookout" — prompting cheers from the audience, the Arizona Republic reported. In a separate interview with Fox News at the conference site, Rittenhouse was asked if he thought a trend was developing in which the media was starting to face consequences for its coverage of people like him and Nick Sandmann — who recently settled with a...