Free Republic

"...since the start of this outbreak there has been basically one set of facts and two competing interpretations: are our globalist overlords acting in good faith with this virus, or has this all been piloted from the beginning? ..."

"In an interview with CNN's "New Day" on Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to comment's from Fox News personality Jesse Watters, in which he called for students to ambush Fauci with questions regarding the National Institute of Health's funding of gain-of-function research. "New Day" host John Berman talked about a comment given by Watters at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest. ..."

The Omicron variant is now the dominant strain of coronavirus in New York, and Mayor Bill de Blasio says city residents need to move just as fast as the virus. “It will be a tough few weeks, and we need to understand that, and we need to do everything possible to address that,” de Blasio said Tuesday. “But look, this is going to be a temporary reality.” Back on Dec. 4, reported COVID cases hovered under 1,900 for a seven-day average. On Tuesday, it was nearly 9,300, a surge fueled by the more contagious new variant. The mayor said another...

About 20% of the world’s bitcoin miners are estimated to still operate from Chinese soil.According to a report by CNBC, bitcoin miners have found ways to keep operating in China despite the country’s comprehensive efforts to crack down on the industry.China used to be the country with the most significant share of hashrate. But that began to change in May when Chinese authorities began cracking down on Bitcoin and bitcoin mining. The increased regulatory scrutiny led to tangible impacts on BTC miners and exchanges, which started limiting or putting an end to their activities. In under a month, the Chinese...

TOKYO, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant intends to build an underwater tunnel to release water from the plant into the sea, it said on Tuesday, as part of a project to treat and dispose of contaminated water.... ...Pumps would move the treated water from the tanks to the seashore and through a seabed tunnel to release it at a depth of 12 metres (40 ft), and about 1 km out at sea....

<p>California will require health care workers to receive COVID-19 booster shots in order to retain their fully vaccinated status, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday.</p><p>The Democratic governor said more details of the requirement would be released on Wednesday. Newsom has scheduled a news conference in the San Francisco Bay Area.</p>

President Joe Biden’s administration is planning to mail out some 500 million COVID-19 tests, starting in January, according to the White House.The White House on Tuesday said it will send the test kits to homes as part of an effort to deal with the Omicron COVID-19 variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday said accounts for about 73 percent of cases in the United States. It’s not clear yet whether the variant causes more severe disease than previous variants, although fewer than a dozen deaths have been reported worldwide.“Today, the President is announcing his Administration...

Discourteous remarks about Afghanistan made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the recent Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting were an insult to the Afghan nation reeling from the Taliban takeover. In his remarks, Khan described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents.... But perceptions matter.... ...To be sure, it is difficult to determine whether the Taliban will ever be able to run a non-ideological Afghan state. But by casting it as a Pashtun movement, Pakistan risks sparking Pashtun nationalism in more than 40 million Pashtuns who...

[Catholic Caucus] Assertions without reasons: A Statement in Protest of the CDW Responses from Pro Missa Tridentina Veni, veni, Emmanuel! Statement of the Lay Association "Pro Missa Tridentina" on the implementation of the regulations of the Motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (of 7/16/21) published on 12/18/21: The form and content of these restrictions cannot be accepted by traditional Catholics. With stunned horror, the faithful attached worldwide to the Roman tradition take note of the document that Archbishop Roche, with the consent of Pope Francis, addressed to the Presidents of the Episcopal Conferences, which was made public on Saturday, December 18,...

RED ALERT: this is not a joke. Elon Musk sat down with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, EIC Kyle Mann, and Creative Director Ethan Nicolle for an in-depth interview on wokeness, Elizabeth Warren, taxing the rich, the Metaverse, which superhero Elon would be, and how the left is killing comedy.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told his Russian counterpart Monday that Washington is ready to engage in diplomacy through multiple channels, including bilateral engagement, the White House said in a statement. Sullivan told Yuriy Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that "any dialogue must be based on reciprocity and address our concerns about Russia's actions," the White House said.

President Joe Biden coughed throughout his speech on coronavirus, even after White House staff claimed he was asymptomatic after coming into contact with a person who later tested positive for the coronavirus. The president spoke in a hoarse voice and coughed repeatedly as he spoke about the omicron variant of the coronavirus, urging Americans to get vaccinated. Biden did not wear a mask while speaking, and walked away from the podium without putting his mask back on, even after asking all Americans to wear masks indoors. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president did not have coronavirus...

Imaginary numbers are necessary to accurately describe reality, two new studies have suggested. Imaginary numbers are what you get when you take the square root of a negative number, and they have long been used in the most important equations of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that describes the world of the very small. When you add imaginary numbers and real numbers, the two form complex numbers, which enable physicists to write out quantum equations in simple terms. But whether quantum theory needs these mathematical chimeras or just uses them as convenient shortcuts has long been controversial. In fact,...

The rhetoric on Kremlin-funded state television is amping up the sense of urgency around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s NATO “ultimatum.” Olga Skabeeva, the host of state TV show 60 Minutes, said Tuesday: “The level of anxiety has reached its maximum. We’re 20 days away from the expiration of the ultimatum and the stakes are rising, even though it seems they couldn’t be any higher.” One day after Moscow submitted a draft of its Russia-U.S. security treaty, containing demands that NATO roll back its military deployments in Europe and deny membership to Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei...

Black Lives Matter co-founder Bree Newsome Bass is calling for more draconian COVID-19 restrictions to be enacted as the White House takes on new pandemic-response actions almost two years into the crisis. "Shut sh** the f*** down and stop spreading the virus from person to person like we should've done in March 2020 so we wouldn't still be dealing with this 2 years later. Folks are not understanding that we're just creating conditions for a vaccine-resistant super variant," Newsome Bass tweeted Monday morning. Newsome Bass expressed she is "so blown how we went from knowing exactly what needed to happen...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu), the moral lodestar of today’s Democrat party, is unhappy with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for rejecting Biden’s handlers’ breathtakingly expensive and wasteful socialism and climate change fantasy bill. Given the Democrat leadership’s abject fear of appearing to be “Islamophobic” by crossing Omar, this could be the most serious challenge yet to Manchin’s role as a sane man in the party of liars, looters, and lunatics.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) has announced he will not cooperate with the “illegitimate” House January 6 committee after he was asked to answer questions about the “Stop the Steal” rally that took place at the Capitol. Perry is the first member of Congress to be pursued by the Jan. 6 committee, but the committee has sent out dozens of subpoenas to President Donald Trump’s former White House staff. Over the course of its months-long investigation, the committee has yet to turn up any significant evidence to back up allegations that the Jan. 6 rally was the result of a premeditated...

We will be in San Diego tomorrow. Can some of the locals tell us about Covid dining policy or restrictions in the city? Thanks in advance for your help.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said on Tuesday she is open to discussing proposals to overhaul an expanded child tax credit included in President Biden's American Rescue Plan that is set to expire in the next few days. “I am open to proposals that would support working families and reduce childhood poverty and look forward to working with colleagues of both parties on bipartisan solutions,” Collins said in a statement to the Bangor Daily News. If the expanded child tax credit is allowed to expire, monthly payments will end for the families of about 60 million children. The Daily News noted...