Free Republic

Pope Francis appeared to take a shot at Hungary on Wednesday, insisting “no country can exempt itself” from the obligation to take in migrants. On Tuesday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán rejected a ruling by the European Union’s (EU) Court of Justice that his government had “failed to fulfil its obligations” to relax its immigration laws. “We will maintain the existing regime, even if the European court ordered us to change it,” Orbán said Tuesday in his end-of-year news conference. “The reality is that we have to stop the migrants at the borders,” he declared. “This can be solved by...

Gov. Tom Wolf on Wednesday vetoed legislation that would have required public schools to post online educational materials used in their classrooms. The legislation was billed as a way to give parents easier access to the curriculum being taught to their children but the governor and Democrats saw it as an unfunded mandate meant to intimidate educators and hurt students’ learning opportunities. “Under the guise of transparency, this legislation politicizes what is being taught in our public schools,” Wolf said in his veto message. The bill would have required school administrators to post and periodically update course syllabuses, course summaries,...

If so many container ships are stuck in the Pacific Ocean, waiting for weeks for a berth in Los Angeles or Long Beach, why not reschedule calls to another port? Why not make like Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in the circa-1996 film and “Escape from LA”?It’s not that simple, given how much warehousing and transloading capacity is built around the Southern California gateway — and congestion is affecting every port in America. Even so, shippers and carriers are indeed moving to sidestep Los Angeles/Long Beach. In the ongoing battle for Asian imports between the West Coast and East Coast,...

Democratic Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon was the victim of a carjacking in Philadelphia's FDR Park on Wednesday afternoon. She had her car, purse, wallet and phone stolen but was not injured, her office confirmed.

In a Tuesday letter to Baker, Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness Co-chairs Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton and Rep. William Driscoll of Milton expressed support for the National Guard call-up but expressed concerns about numerous issues based on testimony they received last week. (snip) Comerford and Driscoll also referenced COVID-19 spread in congregate care settings. “Given the spike in COVID cases within congregate care settings, it is imperative that the administration open quarantine and isolation shelters across the Commonwealth,” they wrote. “It is our understanding that there are critical, emergent capacity issues which threaten public health.”

A South African expert announced on Tuesday that the country had passed the peak of the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections. Associate Professor Marta Nunes added that although the number of infections remained high, hospitalisations were low. Scientists in South Africa first sounded the alarm about the Omicron variant less than a month ago. "Well I think it indicates that we have passed the peak of the fourth wave, so I think it was a short wave that, we predicted that when we start seeing really the huge amount of cases, so the, was a very steep increase from baseline...

The global pandemic should come to an end next year, according to officials at the World Health Organization. “2022 must be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking Wednesday at the organization’s last planned briefing of the year on the coronavirus. Tedros said he believed the pandemic will end next year because, two years into the situation, “we know the virus very well and we have all the tools [to fight it]."

Monday's CME, which burst from the sun at 6:36 a.m. EST (1136 GMT), is expected to reach Earth on Thursday (Dec. 23). It stemmed from a powerful M1.9-class solar flare that erupted from a sunspot called Active Region 2908, according to Spaceweather.com. "The auroral oval is likely to be slightly enhanced at high latitudes from the 22nd to 24th due to coronal hole geomagnetic activity enhancement, and the chance of a weak coronal mass ejection arriving on the 23rd," the Met Office wrote on its website. According to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Weather Network, the sun has been...

New York Assembly Member Nick Perry (D-Flatbush 58) says he's formally withdraw Assembly Bill A416, which would have allowed New York's Governor to arrest and indefinitely imprison anyone suspected of being a public health risk. (snip) In the beginning of November, the Biden Administration nominated Nick Perry to be the US ambassador to Jamaica. Critics say Perry's bill would have proven to be a liability at Perry's impending Senate confirmation hearing.

Astronomers first learned about free-floating planets in the 1990s, but many unanswered questions remain, such as the conditions under which they form, their size and composition, and their relative abundance in the galaxy. This effectively doubles the total number of known free-floating planets—a sign that the total population of rogue planets in our galaxy is huge. The newly detected rogue planets were detected in nearly 20 years’ worth of astronomical data, including observations gathered by the European Southern Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, and ESA’s Gaia satellite.

Omicron cases have an approximately 15 to 20% reduced risk of hospitalisation compared to the previous Delta variant, researchers from Imperial College London said on Wednesday. There was also a reduced risk of a longer hospitalisation stay, with Omicron cases 40-45% less likely to be hospitalised for one night or more. The report looked at all PCR-confirmed Omicron cases in England in the first two weeks of December. The estimates suggest that reinfection cases have a 50-60% reduced risk of a hospitalisation, the statement from Imperial College London said. Yet the rapid spread of Omicron means that large numbers of...

Dr Anthony Fauci slammed Fox News personalities and leading anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr for making 'inflammatory' statements about him that he says have 'accelerated' death threats against him and his family. 'It’s very unfortunate because I don’t think he is inherently malicious,' Fauci said of Kennedy in a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo News on Tuesday. 'I just think he’s a very disturbed individual.' RFK Jr's book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, makes a series of unsubstantiated claims about the public servant. They include that Fauci and the...

Witches have been free from persecution in Scotland for more than 300 years, but several thousand people who died prisoners could get their official pardon. Advocate group Witches of Scotland ran a two-year campaign aiming for posthumous pardons and could finally see their bill come to pass in the Scottish parliament, the Sunday Times reported. Before the Witchcraft Act was repealed three centuries ago, an estimated 3,873 Scottish people were put on trial for practicing magic, 84% of whom were women, according to the the group. Two-thirds of them, 2,148 women and 410 men, would be found guilty of supernatural...

Thomas Tuchel has urged the public not to start a witch hunt against unvaccinated Premier League players. Chelsea’s squad still contains players yet to have Covid-19 vaccinations but the majority of the Blues are protected against the virus. The European champions will head into Wednesday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final at Brentford without as many as eight top stars ruled out after positive Covid tests.

The landslide occurred in the Hpakant area of northern Kachin state at 04:00 on Wednesday (21:30 GMT Tuesday). Myanmar, also known as Burma, is the world's biggest source of jade, but its mines have seen numerous accidents. The landslide is believed to have been caused by an overflow of rubble discarded from lorries to the open-pit mines. The rubble creates large slopes that can be dangerous in an area denuded of trees, forcing those looking for fragments of the semi-precious stone to labour in hazardous conditions. Rescue teams consisting of about 200 people from Hpakant and the nearby town of...

A leading outside group that's dedicated to electing conservative women is endorsing the female Republican primary challenger to longtime GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Maggie's List on Wednesday backed former Alaska commissioner of administration Kelly Tshibaka. The move was one of three endorsements made by the influential federal political action committee that was shared first with Fox News. The endorsement of Tshibaka was the first time Maggie’s List since its founding in 2010 has backed a challenger to a female Republican member of the Senate or House of Representatives.

Well, it doesn’t pay to abandon your party and help the Dems fulfill their communist dreams… Because in the end, you just get screwed over — and nobody has found that out quicker, than Trump-hater David Valadao, who was just drawn out of his political career. That’s what you get for voting for Trump’s sham impeachment and sitting on the circus January 6th committee. You play with our enemies, and you will pay the price. Breitbart reported that another Republican who voted for the second impeachment of President Donald Trump in January has seen his district redrawn in a way...

We don’t need to wait for the results of next year’s midterm elections to know that a political shock wave is headed toward Washington. The early tremors are already detectable. Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party will soon be complete, and what had previously been a fringe element within the GOP will emerge fully in control. The two big lies — that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was not serious enough to merit an investigation — are no longer considered radical inside the GOP. Republicans can be...

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A coalition of West Virginia advocacy groups has launched a $250,000 ad campaign to encourage Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) to put his support behind the Build Back Better Act after he said this week he would not be voting on the key piece of legislation. The WV New Jobs Coalition — made up of groups such as the West Virginia Working Families Party and the West Virginia Citizens Action Group — released a television ad as well as ads in five newspapers. "Everyone is talking about inflation. Well, you know what would cut inflation and put money in West Virginia...