Free Republic

"Annus horribilis" is how the Queen described 1992 - her children's complicated love lives and a fire at Windsor Castle bringing an unexpected public display of exasperation. For 2021 no one has, so far, coined such a memorable description, but it does feel like it's needed one after one of the most dramatic years for the Windsors in recent history. The death of the Duke of Edinburgh in April at the age of 99, while not a complete shock after a spell in hospital, was certainly devastating for his wife and the rest of the family; the warmth and openness...

Following the results of the ENSEMBLE 2 study, which demonstrated improved vaccine efficacy of a two-dose regimen of Ad26.COV.2 vaccine given 2 months apart, we expanded the Sisonke study which had provided single dose Ad26.COV.2 vaccine to almost 500 000 health care workers (HCW) in South Africa to include a booster dose of the Ad26.COV.2. Sisonke 2 enrolled 227 310 HCW from the 8 November to the 17 December 2021. Enrolment commenced before the onset of the Omicron driven fourth wave in South Africa affording us an opportunity to evaluate early VE in preventing hospital admissions of a homologous boost...

Kuachua Brillion Xiong, 25, said he would "do whatever it takes" to kill his targets, including Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci, court documents say. A heavily armed California man was arrested in Iowa after he told law enforcement officers that he would "do whatever it takes" to kill government leaders on his "hit list," including President Joe Biden and his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, authorities said in court papers Wednesday. The man, Kuachua Brillion Xiong, 25, has been held in the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs since Thursday, according to sheriff's records. Xiong was pulled over Dec....

Rapid aging afflicts all six colonists on Gamma Hydra IV and five members of Kirk's six-man landing party - all but Chekov. With the Neutral Zone so close, suspicion falls on the Romulans testing a new weapon, but is it? With time running out, answers are elusive. As Kirk's memory progressively deteriorates, regulations necessitate a competency hearing no one wants - the outcome of which may eventually lead the Enterprise to its destruction with all aboard

A 2009 settlement agreement between deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, who alleges she was abused by Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was under 18 years old, will be made public next week, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judges Lewis Kaplan and Loretta Preska on Wednesday ordered that the agreement be released on or around Jan. 3, saying they found no reason to keep it sealed, per the wire service. Giuffre has brought a lawsuit against Andrew, saying that she was forced to have sexual contact with the Duke of York when she...

An ULTA Beauty on Magic Mountain Parkway was the victim of three thefts in a single day, resulting in Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies being called to the scene each time. The first theft occurred Tuesday evening and deputies were called to the business, located on the 24200 block of Magic Mountain Parkway, at approximately 7:40 p.m. regarding a theft. “The suspects loaded approximately over $400 worth of merchandise in a shopping cart and walked out ... ...The second theft occurred Wednesday afternoon at approximately 4 p.m., with the alleged suspect(s) taking a few hundred dollars’ worth of perfume....

@mtracey San Francisco today announced they are mandating "boosters" for large events beginning February 1 -- supposedly long past the time "Omicron" will have peaked. Nonetheless, a 16-year-old will be required to "boost" in order to go to a basketball game. Complete insanity Order...

“Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:5-6).

Two airstrikes on the key port of Latakia, Syria, in the same month have raised eyebrows. A report in The Wall Street Journal noted not only that Syria has accused Israel of the strike on the port this week, but also that a US official indicated that the Iranian presence at the facility “put a big target on civilian infrastructure that would not be targeted otherwise.” The fires at the port burned throughout the day on December 28, showing that whatever was destroyed at the port was flammable and likely composed of munitions or other dangerous cargo transported from Iran...

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police on Thursday formally charged two people from an online pro-democracy news outlet with sedition, a day after the outlet said it would cease operations following a police raid on its office and seven arrests. National security police said in a statement they had charged two men, aged 34 and 52, with one count each of conspiracy to publish a seditious publication but did not identify the men. According to local media reports, the two charged are Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, who were editors at Stand News. The police also said they would...

A major victory has been achieved. Alex Jones to Ghislane Maxwell conviction on five of the six counted of Child sex trafficking and conspiracy. Clip...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 12/28/2021 – Cranford, New Jersey, Viona Pharmaceuticals Inc., is voluntarily recalling thirty three (33) lots of Metformin Hydrochloride Extended-Release Tablets, USP 750 mg to the retail level. Reason for the recall is an Out of specification result observed for the said product, Lot number M008132, “N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) (By GC-MS/MS)” test at 17 Month(s), 25°C/60%RH Long-term stability samples. As a precautionary measure firm voluntarily recall all the marketed 33 batches having valid shelf life. This product was manufactured by Cadila Healthcare Limited, Ahmedabad, India for U.S. distribution by Viona Pharmaceuticals Inc. Risk Statement: NDMA is classified as...

ASHINGTON—The U.S. criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is entering a more contentious phase as it nears the one-year mark, with initial trials set to test the government’s strategy of using provisions first laid out in a 2002 financial-industry law to prosecute some accused... ...prosecutors searched for tools to elevate some of the cases beyond the misdemeanor charges often applied for unruly but far less momentous Capitol protests. They turned to a provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted after the accounting-fraud scandal and collapse of Enron, which imposes a potential 20-year sentence on those convicted of obstructing...

"This low life will be changing his story all the way up to putting people in camps in Blue states and cities, for merely the suspicion of having Covid due to a contact… like they are now doing in parts of the Australian dictatorship."

Michigan’s House delegation was left scrambling Wednesday after the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission finalized new congressional maps that eliminated one district while putting eight incumbents in four shared districts and creating three new open seats. In the hours after the map was released Tuesday evening several incumbents – including Democrats Elissa Slotkin and Debbie Dingell and Republican John Moolenaar – announced they would move to run in districts where they faced better odds or to avoid running against one of their colleagues. Democrat Haley Stevens, who has been on Republican target lists for the last two cycles, announced she would...

Ghislaine Maxwell has been found guilty of recruiting and trafficking young girls to be sexually abused by the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein. The 60-year-old was found guilty on five of the six counts she faced - including the most serious charge, that of sex trafficking a minor. The verdict was reached after five full days of deliberation by a 12-person jury in New York. It means the British socialite could spend the rest of her life behind bars. The verdict followed a month-long trial that featured testimony from four women who described being abused by Epstein between 1994 and...

"... About 1,450 children were evacuated without their parents, according to numbers from the Office of Refugee Resettlement obtained by CNN. Some of the children got separated from the their families as they were attempting to flee Afghanistan together, and some lost communication with their parents when the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul was bombed. The bombing also killed some of the children’s parents as well as 13 members of the American military. Out of the 1,450 children who came to the U.S. without their parents, most have been released to sponsors, who are sometimes the other family members...

Winner of Kerala State Film Award for Best Debut Director in the year 1988, filmmaker Ali Akbar who has directed more than 20 films, has announced that he is quitting Islam and converting to Hinduism. The director took this step after discussing with his wife, who too is converting to Hinduism. As he said, "They have lost faith in religion." he said, "Today, I am throwing away an attire I received by birth. From today onwards I am not a Muslim. I am an Indian. That is my reply to those people who posted thousands of smiling emoticons against India."

"... I’m not going to sugarcoat this and say that a doubling of the number of children hospitalized with COVID isn’t disturbing (and the “with” is important, as we’ll discuss in a moment). But we’re talking about 1,933 children here. That’s not 1,933 children in one city or one county or even one state. That’s in the entire country of 330 million people. And more than 73 million of those Americans are under the age of 18. That works out to a hospitalization rate of .00000026. ..."