Free Republic

Moldova officially applied for fast-track EU membership on Thursday (3 March), joining Ukraine and Georgia, its partners from the so-called Associated Trio, a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Prompted by war in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the prime minister and the parliamentary speaker signed a formal application for her country to join the EU on Thursday. “It took 30 years for Moldova to reach maturity, but today the country is ready to take responsibility for its own future,” said Sandu, before holding up the signed document to the television cameras. “We want to live in peace,...

More than half of people with asthma are obese. These individuals do not respond well to standard therapies, but new research holds promise for improving asthma treatments for this population. "Our results provide innovative first steps toward a safe, efficacious and cost-effective strategy that may uniquely target obese asthma," the researchers wrote. In addition to responding poorly to standard therapies, people with obesity and asthma are hospitalized at higher rates. Weight loss is a typical recommendation to ameliorate the effects of obesity on asthma. However, short of surgical intervention, only about 15% of people can sustain 10% weight loss for...

(Reuters) - Ratings agency S&P Global on Thursday cut Russia's credit rating deeper into junk territory as fresh international sanctions triggered by its invasion of Ukraine, and the nation's own protective measures, ramped up default risk. S&P downgraded the sovereign rating to "CCC-minus" from "BB-plus" less than a week after dropping it from investment grade. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two, has thrown its financial markets into turmoil after several countries imposed sanctions and global brands exited the nation in droves. "The downgrade follows the imposition of measures that we believe...

Russian authorities will keep the Moscow stock market largely closed for a fifth straight day, as they continue to shield local shares from potentially severe selling pressure.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia will temporarily stop foreign investors from selling Russian assets to ensure they take a considered decision, not one driven by political pressure, the prime minister said on Tuesday, as Moscow responds to intensifying Western sanctions. Russia's huge sovereign wealth fund will also be pressed into action, spending up to 1 trillion roubles ($10.3 billion) to buy shares in Russian companies, a government decree showed, confirming an earlier report by Reuters. "In the current sanction situation foreign entrepreneurs are forced to be guided, not by economic factors, but to make decisions under political pressure," Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin...

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - The Russian rouble slumped to new record lows against the dollar on Thursday though it closed the Moscow session little changed, after Fitch and Moody's downgraded Russia's sovereign debt to "junk" status, with steps by the central bank and finance ministry failing to halt its slide. Russia's financial markets have been thrown into turmoil by sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two. The stock market remains closed and trading volume on its sovereign debt has vanished. The rouble ended at 106.01 per dollar in...

Many people have to take statins to lower their cholesterol levels. But statins may be able to do more: Researchers report that these drugs inhibit a gene that promotes cancer metastasis. Cancer patients rarely die from the primary tumor but rather from the metastases. Professor Ulrike Stein and her lab were able to discover an important driver of this process in human colorectal cancer: the metastasis-associated in colon cancer 1 (MACC1) gene. When cancer cells express MACC1, their ability to proliferate, move around the body, and invade other tissues is enhanced. "Many types of cancers spread only in patients with...

None of the mercenaries the West is sending to Ukraine to fight for the nationalist regime will enjoy the right of combatants under international humanitarian law, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. "I wish to make an official statement that none of the mercenaries the West is sending to Ukraine to fight for the nationalist regime in Kiev can be considered as combatants in accordance with international humanitarian law or enjoy the status of prisoners of war," Konashenkov stressed. He stated that all acts of sabotage by mercenaries in Ukraine were being carried out with the use of weapons...

Russia’s last few remaining independent-minded media outlets were taken off the air this week in a public feud over reporting on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine after the country’s prosecutor general said the stations were misleading the Russian public and spreading lies. Both Ekho Moskvy, a long staple of independent journalism, and TV Rain, which gained prominence during mass antigovernment protests that shook Russia a decade ago, said access to their sites had been blocked by the country’s communications censor, known as Roskomnadzor. “Roskomnadzor has decided to take Ekho Moskvy off the air,” the station said on its Twitter feed. “We...

As President Vladimir V. Putin wages war against Ukraine, he is fighting a parallel battle on the home front, dismantling the last vestiges of a Russian free press. On Thursday, the pillars of Russia’s independent broadcast media collapsed under pressure from the state. Echo of Moscow, the freewheeling radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990 and that symbolized Russia’s new freedoms, was “liquidated” by its board. TV Rain, the youthful independent television station that calls itself “the optimistic channel” said it would suspend operations indefinitely. And Dmitri A. Muratov, the journalist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year,...

TV Rain, a youth-focused Russian TV station often critical of the Kremlin, was shut down by state authorities on Thursday, but its staff got in one last full newscast that ended in a symbolic protest. At the end of the night’s report, the staff gathered around the news desk. The anchors were overhead saying “no war” as everyone walked off together. The broadcast image of the empty studio was replaced by the TV station’s logo and a message asking for donations before the telecast cut to old footage from a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. The Swan Lake bit...

Former President George W. Bush offered some unique insight into the psyche of Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, relaying an exchange the world leaders once had years ago involving their pets. Bush, headlining a benefit fundraiser for the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center on Tuesday, recounted the story of how he once hosted Putin and introduced him to his Scottish Terrier, Barney. "I introduced Vladimir Putin to Barney, our Scottish terrier, and [he] dissed him," Bush told the audience during a Q&A, Politico reports. Bush continued: "A year later, Laura and I go visit Vladimir and his wife...

A ketogenic diet may be safe for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). The preliminary study also found people with MS may experience less fatigue and depression and report an improved quality of life while on the diet. Study participants consumed a ketogenic diet for six months. A total of 83% of participants adhered to the diet for the full study period. Participants completed tests and surveys prior to the start of the diet and again at three and six months while on the diet to measure level of disability and quality of life. Researchers found that not only did participants...

As Russia is trying to cut off the flow of information in Ukraine by attacking its communications infrastructure, the British news outlet BBC is revisiting a broadcasting tactic popularized during World War II: shortwave radio. The BBC said this week that it would use radio frequencies that can travel for long distances and be accessible on portable radios to broadcast its World Service news in English for four hours a day in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and in parts of Russia. “It’s often said truth is the first casualty of war,” Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC, said in a...

Russia may fire missiles at its own villages in a move to justify furthering its invasion into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Ministry of Security and foreign minister claimed Wednesday. "Worrying reports: Russians might have pointed multiple rocket-launching systems in the Russian border village of Popovka towards their own territory," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on Twitter. "Knowing the barbaric nature of Russian actions we fear a false flag operation might be prepared in order to accuse Ukraine." The Ministry of Security likewise issued a similar statement regarding Russian military units that had crossed the border into the Ukrainian village of Krasnopil...

MSNBC guest Sarah Kendzior, a regular contributor to the network, pushed a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was “installed” as President as a means to benefit Vladimir Putin. Kendzior pushed the conspiracy theory during a weekend appearance on “The Cross Connection,” after being prompted to comment on Trump’s recent comments which the media have falsely pushed as genuinely ‘heaping praise’ upon Putin. Kendzior piggybacked off the claims and launched a new conspiracy theory of her own. “Trump was installed as the President of the United States in order to weaken the alliances that were preventing Putin from achieving his goals,”...

Q: You said that Eucharistic adoration is the first thing you would do to renew a parish. Why is the Eucharist so central?Because life is a Eucharist.Too bad it has such a technical- and “churchy”-sounding name. It is love; it is life; it is the whole meaning of our lives. It is not just one very good thing in life, or in the world; life and the world are in it. It’s not just that there is an analogy, a likeness; it’s not just that our life is like the Eucharist or that the Eucharist is like our life. Rather,...

“Attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law” (Proverbs 4:1-2 KJV).

October 28, 2020In 2011, Thomas G. Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C. and independent higher education policy analyst, put together and published the 100+ item list “For Every 100 Girls….” on Education Week. In an email, Tom explained to me that “At the time I wrote it initially I was hearing and reading that boys were no different than girls, and the data I was looking at said something very different. Our differences are important, to both genders, and should be respected. Education has a long way to...