Free Republic

Switzerland announced this week that it is lifting nearly all coronavirus restrictions in the country as infection rates in the country steadily decline. The Federal Council, the seven-member Swiss executive branch, said as of Thursday, masks and COVID-19 vaccination passes will no longer be required to enter shops, restaurants, cultural venues and other public settings and events. The requirement to wear masks in workplaces and a work-from-home recommendation will also end, as will capacity limits on large-scale gatherings.

An Uber driver begged for her life and pleaded that she had four children before a Penn Hills man fatally shot her, according to a transcript of dashcam video. Allegheny County police on Wednesday night charged Calvin Crew, 22, with killing of 38-year-old Christi Spicuzza, who was found dead in Monroeville this weekend. Mr. Crew is charged with criminal homicide, robbery and tampering with evidence. In a criminal complaint, police described how Mr. Crew allegedly used his girlfriend's phone to order an Uber and held a gun to Ms. Spicuzza’s head as she begged him to reconsider. On a video...

A dramatic – and potentially lucrative – scenario may now be unfolding in the markets for one of the most overlooked natural resources on the planet. This essential commodity – helium – is used to drive innovation for many of the world’s biggest tech companies...and it is needed to help manufacture everything from medical equipment to computer chips. Yet despite its critical importance – and growing demand – a potentially crippling lack of supply has put us on the brink of a critical shortage. This supply-demand imbalance has triggered a fast-moving growth opportunity for any exploration and development company that...

The problems surrounding the demise of Crystal Cruises are becoming clearer by the day. And through it all, the financial issues could hit those who booked cruises onboard the Crystal ships harder than the company had initially forecasted. According to the former CEO for Crystal Cruises, Jack Anderson, the company owes more than 100 million in outstanding deposits. This should pose no problem for those who paid by credit card for upcoming cruises. Those with FCC’s, which are now worthless, and those that paid cash for a cruise, will likely never see their money. Genting Hong Kong Abandons Crystal Cruises...

Elektra and its three moons. (ESO/Berdeu et al., Yang et al.) ====================================================================================== An asteroid discovered in the 19th century has just been identified as the most crowded we've ever found. It's called 130 Elektra, or just Elektra for short, and astronomers have just discovered that it has not one, nor two, but three smaller satellite companions, or moons. That not only makes it the most numerous asteroid system known to date, but demonstrates how we might find other faint, hard-to-see asteroid moons in the future. "Elektra is the first quadruple system ever detected," wrote a team of astronomers led by...

Excerpt:SNIPNow, Scrase has acknowledged that his repeated, what he called “offhand,” assertions were groundless. Two deaths were not caused by ivermectin, a long-used generic drug that was emerging as a covid treatment. Instead, he said that the pair died because they “actually just delayed their care with covid.” That is a big difference.Scrase backpedaled on December 1 in a little-noticed online press briefing and only after we pressed his agency to provide evidence for its claims of so-called “ivermectin deaths.” Officials had repeatedly said they were awaiting a toxicology report on the cattleman’s death. Yet we learned that the report...

If the truth hurts your narrative, you must censor it. But what if your own information harms your own narrative? Well, then you stop publishing it. For the past few months, Scotland has been publishing age-stratified case rates by vaccination status in a very well broken-down chart every Wednesday afternoon, similar to the way the U.K. published the data every Thursday. The common thread observed from these trends was that the unvaccinated had the lowest case rate, the double-vaccinated had even higher death and hospitalization rates, and the triple-jabbed gradually had increasingly higher case rates, which clearly doesn’t portend good...

The bail fund that freed a Louisville Black Lives Matter activist charged with trying to murder a Jewish mayoral candidate is backed by Democratic fundraising juggernaut ActBlue, a progressive political group affiliated with the "Squad," and a liberal nonprofit funded by George Soros. The Louisville Community Bail Fund, an affiliate of the city's Black Lives Matter chapter, posted $100,000 bail to spring Quintez Brown from jail following his arrest on charges of trying to assassinate Jewish Democratic mayoral hopeful Craig Greenberg. The bail fund has an active page on ActBlue, the political fundraising platform used universally by Democratic candidates across...

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Senior U.S. officials pivoted Thursday from warning of the threat that Russia could soon invade Ukraine to the firm expectation the invasion is about to begin.What they're saying: “If Russia doesn’t invade, we will be relieved that Russia changed course and proved our predictions wrong," Secretary of State Tony Blinken said today. But both he and President Biden made quite clear that they believe Vladimir Putin has chosen war, and Blinken went so far as to present the playbook the U.S. expects Putin to follow.First, Blinken told the UN Security Council, Putin will need a pretext. That could involve a...

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Question: Does adding ivermectin, an inexpensive and widely available antiparasitic drug, to the standard of care reduce the risk of severe disease in patients with COVID-19 and comorbidities?Findings: In this open-label randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients with COVID-19 in Malaysia, a 5-day course of oral ivermectin administered during the first week of illness did not reduce the risk of developing severe disease compared with standard of care alone.Meaning: The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19.

For those keeping abreast of the news, we have seen the ongoing saga of the Canadian truckers take some interesting turns. The Canadian government has stepped up its repressive measures by arresting protestors, freezing the bank accounts of their supporters, and even threatening to kill their pets and take away their kids. Yet - this hasn’t really had the desired effect. Instead of scaring people, it seems to be galvanising many in support of the truckers. Supporters are forming human chains to protect truckers from arrest. People still continue to donate to their GiveSendGo despite dire threats of the theft...

Vice President Kamala Harris again threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday with “severe consequences” if he chose to further invade Ukraine. “We remain of course supportive of diplomacy as it relates to the dialogue and discussions we’ve had with Russia, but we are also committed to taking corrective actions to ensure there will be severe consequences in terms of the sanctions we have discussed,” Harris said. She will meet with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Scholz on Saturday and also deliver a major foreign policy speech to the conference of leaders. Biden and administration officials have warned for...

How many more studies need to show that mRNA vaccines present an unacceptable increase in the risk of cardiac complications for young men under 30? A new study, using data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VARES) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), again shows an elevated risk of myocarditis in boys and men aged 12-29. The JAMA study shows the rate of cardiac side effects reported in the VARES system by age group. It covers the period from December 2020 through August 2021 for Americans older than 12. The researchers used medical claims data...

Could a much-delayed COVID-19 shot finally win over religious vaccine skeptics?That’s the question swirling around a vaccine made by Novavax, a Maryland biotech firm that submitted its request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month for emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 shot, also known as NVX-CoV2373.Although more than a year behind competitors such as Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, which were both cleared for emergency use in late 2020, Novavax’s two-dose vaccine has already been approved for use in other countries such as the U.K., and the company hopes to aid global inoculation efforts.But Novavax may have another unusual...

Illegal migrants traveling through Mexico on their way to the U.S. border sewed their mouths shut in protest. They demand that the National Migration Institute in Mexico provide free transit through the country so that they can reach the southern U.S. border. Migrants wait in Tapachula, a border city with Guatemala, for the National Migration Institute (INM) to do paperwork and, if officials grant permission, they continue on toward the United States. The dramatic gesture of sewing their mouths shut with needles and plastic thread was carried out by about a dozen migrants mostly from Central and South America. It...

Police are massing up against protesters in Ottawa. Protesters remain defiant. Zoke is a YouTube livestreamer and brave Canadian.

When Alberta RCMP released images of the weapons and tactical gear seized from a group that took part in the Coutts, Alta., border blockade, the pictures showed patches displaying a white diagonal line on a black background -- the calling card of the Diagolon far-right extremist group. Four men associated with the Coutts blockade have been charged with allegedly plotting to kill RCMP police officers, but the Mounties have not yet publicly commented on any possible connections with the group. Without naming any specific group, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino alluded to ties between protesters in Ottawa and the Coutts...

The poll found that that 57% of voters in competitive congressional districts agree with the statement, "Democrats in Congress have taken things too far in their pandemic response," and 66% of self-defined "swing" voters in competitive districts agree with that statement. White and Hispanic voters in competitive districts were equally as likely to agree (59%), while Black voters (42%) and Asian voters (46%) disagreed with the statement. The poll also did not define what "taken things too far" means. The DCCC found that critiques of COVID-19 restrictions were slightly less potent than other issues. In swing districts, 64% of voters...