Free Republic

Several other people were injured in other mishaps involving fireworks in the German cities of Leipzig and Hamburg, German news agency dpa reported. The sale of fireworks for personal use was banned in Germany this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some Germans bought illegal fireworks or built their own, increasing the risk of accidents.

Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood building was engulfed in flames early Friday morning and is a total loss. Fire crews were called about 6:40 a.m. as heavy smoke was coming out of the back of the structure, Assistant Chief Brent Seymour said. There were no injuries to report. The building was being renovated and the clinic had not been used in some time. Seymour said it’s too early in the investigation, with parts of the building unsafe to enter, to be able to say what caused the fire. Representatives from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI have...

DENVER (KDVR) — Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said Saturday he has tested positive for COVID-19. “I’ve tested positive for Covid and I am now quarantining with mild symptoms. Please, if you haven’t been vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, make sure you get the booster. It’s making a big difference in my case,” he said in a tweet.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the disgraced former sostituto of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has written to Cardinal George Pell, the former prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, declining to explain why he sent millions of euros of Vatican funds to Australia during the run up to Pell’s 2017 criminal trial. In an open letter dated December 22, Cardinal Becciu wrote that he felt forced to respond to recent media statements by Pell which, he said, “were offensive to my personal dignity” and which impugned his decades of curial service. “Believe me,” Becciu said, “I am [writing this letter] against...

We know what the problems are with the Covid vaccines, namely that they’re neither safe nor effective. Some have good theories about why they’re being pushed so hard for The Great Reset. But there have been a scant few studies that dive into how the jabs kill people. Now, we have a new study (PDF) that is shedding light on the issue. In layman’s terms, the study claims the jabs confuse the immune system into attacking not just the coronavirus (which it doesn’t handle very well) but also the organs and cells of the host body itself. This is why...

Are our beliefs shaped by our environment? Why do we believe what we believe? We followed a liberal and a conservative for a day to see if their every day realities overlap. Liberal vs Conservative: 24 Hours Side By Side

To celebrate the new year, China National Space Administration (CNSA) published astonishing pictures of the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter above the north pole of the red planet, according to Shanghai Morning Post. CNSA said the images were taken by a detachable sensor equipped with two high-definition cameras. The first picture shows the orbiter above the north pole ice cap of Mars. The second picture is a close-up of the orbiter’s golden exterior skin where high-speed data communication antennas and a solar wing are seen. Beyond the orbiter are ice caps though not the ice we consider on Earth. Mar’s ice caps...

After repeatedly accusing Google of ignoring Russian laws on obscenity, Russia has dramatically escalated its long-running battle with major US-based internet platforms. On Friday a Moscow court imposed an unprecedented fine of almost $100 million on Google for corrupting minors with porn, propaganda and transgenderism. . .Crucially, Kremlin officials and the regulator have long charged Google with promoting politically subversive messaging with the intent to stir up protests in support of jailed dissident Alexei Navalny. Furthermore, Silicon Valley-based internet companies have been accused by Russia of allowing themselves to be used as a hidden hand of US foreign policy inside...

I’ve been a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) for years, and a fellow for the past six or seven years. I sat on their Council of Representatives, which theoretically sets policy for the APA, for three years. I am just ending my term as president of the APA’s Society for Media and Technology, where I have met many wonderful colleagues. Yet, at the end of 2021, I decided to resign my membership in the APA. My concern is that the APA no longer functions as an organization dedicated to science and good clinical practice. As a professional guild,...

With aquamation, or “alkaline hydrolysis”, the body of the deceased is immersed for three to four hours in a mixture of water and a strong alkali, such as potassium hydroxide, in a pressurised metal cylinder and heated to around 150C. The process liquifies everything except for the bones, which are then dried in an oven and reduced to white dust, placed in an urn and handed to relatives. First developed in the early 1990s as a way to discard the bodies of animals used in experiments, the method was then used to dispose of cattle during the mad cow disease...

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday endorsed freshman Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois against another sitting House Republican, bucking the advice of GOP leadership. Shortly after Trump's endorsement, Miller, who was left without a seat after the state's redistricting process, announced she would run in the state's newly drawn 15th District, where GOP Rep. Rodney Davis is seeking reelection. "President Donald Trump inspired me to run in 2020 because our country needs principled conservatives in Congress who always put America First," Miller said in a statement on Saturday. "Today, President Trump is endorsing me because I am a conservative fighter...

Hillary Clinton may end up in prison sometime after November 2022 as majority of the analysts in the world of politics believe, Republicans are going to win back control of the House of Representatives and the Republican lawmakers will use the opportunity to get revenge on Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton. It is also anticipated that with the US Congress going into the control of Republicans would initiate investigations in Hunter Biden’s artwork scandal, which is seen by most of the political analysts as an indirect bribery channel of Joe Biden’s scandalous son. Florida Rep. Kat Cammack said, in an exclusive...

ASPIRE TO A VISION A scene in the movie Karate Kid was quite striking. Daniel went to see Mr. Miyagi and found him trimming a delicate bonsai tree. Daniel was fascinated and wanted to try it, but he had no idea how it was done. Miyagi told him to close his eyes and picture in his mind the way he wanted the tree to look. After Daniel found that vision in his mind, Miyagi told him to open his eyes and start trimming the tree. Daniel's every move was deliberate and focused. Then he stopped. He asked, "How do...

New York City will take a patient’s race into account when distributing potentially life-saving COVID treatments, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed on their website.The city will “consider race and ethnicity when assessing individual risk,” reads the agency’s official guidance from Dec. 20, which adds that “longstanding systemic health and social inequities” can contribute to an increased risk of dying from COVID-19.

It's rare for a single election result to spell the likely end of the careers of two politicians, but Virginia Democrats appear to have accomplished just that in 2021. With Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin's two–percentage point upset victory, angry parents likely put an end to the careers of current Gov. Ralph Northam and 2014–2018 Gov. Terry McAuliffe. As we bid adieu to 2021, let's take a ride down memory lane as we also bid good riddance to Northam and McAuliffe. McAuliffe's four years in office were plagued by corporate cronyism, which was not surprising given that an electric car company McAuliffe...

A man who federal authorities believe was driving from Northern California to Washington, D.C. to kill several notable figures was instead arrested in Iowa. According to the criminal complaint from the United States District Court’s Southern District of Iowa, Kuachua Xiong was arrested along Interstate 80 in Cass County on Dec. 21. The complaint states a Cass County deputy saw Xiong driving erratically heading east on I-80 before pulling him over. Xiong told authorities his journey through Iowa started near Sacramento, California and was supposed to end in the nation’s capital. When he was pulled over, Xiong allegedly told the...

Explanation: Every Full Moon of 2021 shines in this year-spanning astrophoto project, a composite portrait of the familiar lunar nearside at each brightest lunar phase. Arranged by moonth, the year progresses in stripes beginning at the top. Taken with the same camera and lens the stripes are from Full Moon images all combined at the same pixel scale. The stripes still looked mismatched, but they show that the Full Moon's angular size changes throughout the year depending on its distance from Kolkata, India, planet Earth. The calendar month, a full moon name, distance in kilometers, and angular size is indicated...

The box office news from earlier this December was mixed. The stupendous success of the latest Spider-Man sequel, No Way Home, indicated that fears of the Omicron variant have not deterred audiences from coming out in the millions: it grossed $260 million at the US box office and $600 million globally. But it also trampled other less franchise-friendly films. Guillermo del Toro’s new picture Nightmare Alley debuted to a dismal $3 million, and Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story will be one of the director’s greatest flops, having grossed a mere $18 million in the US so far. The...

New religious community holds Sunday Latin Mass in Pala (Indian Reservation)PALA – A new religious community has moved from its previous North County parishes and now attends Sunday morning mass at the San Juan Diego Center, Pala.A group of lay Roman Catholics, the Traditional Latin Mass Community of North County, are prior members of Saint Mary’s Escondido and Saint Margaret’s Oceanside, and now call Pala home.San Diego Bishop Robert J McElroy approved the moving of the community to Pala because of diocesan restrictions placed on the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in Latin from the 1962 Missal...

They have shown up whenever women rallied against sexual violence and gender biases in South Korea. Dozens of young men, mostly dressed in black, taunted the protesters, squealing and chanting, “Thud! Thud!” to imitate the noise they said the “ugly feminist pigs” made when they walked.“Out with man haters!” they shouted. “Feminism is a mental illness!”On the streets, such rallies would be easy to dismiss as the extreme rhetoric of a fringe group. But the anti-feminist sentiments are being amplified online, finding a vast audience that is increasingly imposing its agenda on South Korean society and politics.These male activists have...