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TALLAHASSEE — A legal showdown over a controversial state elections law is set to take place next month, after a federal judge rejected efforts to short-circuit a trial in constitutional challenges by voting-rights groups. The League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida Conference of the NAACP, Disability Rights Florida and a number of other groups filed a series of lawsuits challenging the measure (SB 90), passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature this spring as part of GOP leaders’ nationwide attempts to make it more difficult for people to vote by mail. Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that the changes are...

President Joe Biden greets the Washington Nationals’ Racing Presidents at the Congressional Baseball Game, Wednesday, September 29, 2021, at Nationals Park in Washington.

The last two years of parenting young children in a pandemic have felt like an extended, unyielding version of that moment. Every day we measure the threats and perform intricate cost-benefit analyses. What’s more damaging, for example: unrelenting isolation or the possibility of a child contracting the virus from a return to daycare? The stress of playing Russian roulette with our children’s lives—or refusing to, keeping them home as much as possible—is crushing. I think of that old carnival ride, the Gravitron, which spins so quickly that riders are lifted from the floor, held against padded walls by forces three...

Just yesterday I came across a twitter site called They Say Its Rare. This site collates harrowing stories of vaccine-caused death and injury from across the world. Twitter is normally a bad, bad vehicle for shared grieving and loss - mainly because the world is full of souless wangrods, and many of those wangrods have twitter accounts. But in this case it seems to work. Maybe it's because literally every post is a separate vignette of loss and appalled anger. There's no room for incredulity or doubt. No space for cretinous tweets such as 'how do you know it was...

The article by her hometown paper had seven paragraphs about Harris's choice of artworks and family photographs but nothing about policy positions. Kamala Harris was slammed on Monday, December 13, after her interview was published by the San Francisco Chronicle. Most readers considered it a pointless puff piece in which she explained the meaning behind the decorations in her office. The outlet, which is based in her hometown of San Francisco, shared the article on Twitter on Sunday, December 12, with the caption, "Kamala Harris has redecorated the VP’s office. Here’s the meaning behind her choices." The interview was published...

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