Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is scrapping old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, speeding an ongoing trend toward more efficient lighting that officials say will save households, schools and businesses billions of dollars a year. Rules finalized by the Energy Department will require manufacturers to sell energy-efficient light bulbs, accelerating a longtime industry practice to use compact fluorescent and LED bulbs that last 25 to 50 times longer than incandescent bulbs. The Trump administration had slowed an earlier phaseout of incandescents, saying it was targeting rules that burden businesses. Once the new rules are fully in place next year, consumers should...

An orchestra of young musicians have published a masterful take-down of a car company, in response to its “tired” stereotyping of youth music-making. Last week, the musicians released a video titled ‘An INFINITY Of Young Talent’, which references ‘Infiniti’, the luxury division of the car company, Nissan. Infiniti released an advert earlier this month titled ‘Beautiful Mess’, which promoted their new car, the QX60. “Quiet the chaos in style,” reads the ad’s description; the ‘chaos’ refers to the young musicians depicted in the video... The advert portrays a youth orchestra playing Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. However, the...

CHISINAU, Moldova — Explosions reported in the Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria in the last 24 hours appear to be part of an effort by Russian intelligence to build the case for foreign intervention, Moldova's former defense minister told Insider. Transnistria — a long sliver of land along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine that's home to roughly 300,000 people, most of whom are Russian speakers — broke from the central government in 1992 with the assistance of the Russian military. Around 1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed there today, ostensibly as part of a peacekeeping operation but also to guard a...

Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, the White House announced, underscoring the persistence of the highly contagious virus even as the U.S. eases restrictions in a bid to return to pre-pandemic normalcy. Harris press secretary Kirsten Allen said neither President Joe Biden nor first lady Jill Biden was considered a “close contact” of Harris in recent days. Harris had been scheduled to attend Biden’s Tuesday morning Presidential Daily Brief but was not present, the White House said. Because of their travel schedules, the last time Harris saw Biden was Monday, April 18. The vice president returned...

Monitoring Variant Proportions SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is constantly changing and accumulating mutations in its genetic code over time. New variants of SARS-CoV-2 are expected to continue to emerge. Some variants will emerge and disappear, while others will emerge and continue to spread and may replace previous variants. To identify and track SARS-CoV-2 variants, CDC uses genomic surveillance. CDC's national genomic surveillance system collects SARS-CoV-2 specimens for sequencing through the National SARS-CoV-2 Strain Surveillance (NS3) program, as well as SARS-CoV-2 sequences generated by commercial or academic laboratories contracted by CDC and state or local public health laboratories. Virus...

Video released by the Albuquerque Police Department this week shows the terrifying moments when a car crashed into a school bus, rolling it over onto its side, in late February. An APD spokesman said at the time that 23 middle school students were on the bus and seven were taken to the hospital. Two of the children had serious injuries in their legs — one of which required surgery — and another child had a pelvic fracture which also required surgery. The driver who police say crashed his white Ford Mustang into the side of the bus, 49-year-old Mario Perez,...

BOSTON (AP) — Harvard University is vowing to spend $100 million to research and atone for its extensive ties with slavery, the school’s president announced Tuesday, with plans to identify and support the descendants of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus. President Lawrence Bacow announced the funding as Harvard released a new report detailing many ways the college benefited from slavery and perpetuated racial inequality. The report, commissioned by Bacow, found that Harvard’s faculty, staff and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Native American people from the school’s founding in 1636 to 1783. It cautions that...

WARSAW, April 26 (Reuters) - Russian energy giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) told Poland's PGNiG (PGN.WA) it will halt gas supplies along the Yamal pipeline from Wednesday morning, PGNiG said in a statement, although the Polish government said it had sufficient reserves........Poland's contract with Gazprom is for 10.2 billion cubic meters per year, and covers about 50% of national consumption.......Poland can replace the 10 BCM of gas by early next year, see below

As a service to those who have outrage-induced amnesia or to those who are just ignorant of facts, I will remind everyone that the very richest owning media companies is the rule. Elon Musk, the World’s wealthiest owning media company Twitter will not be an exception.We can go down a partial list.Charles Ergen is worth about $10 billion and is the co-founder and Chairman of the satellite communications and TV Companies, Echostar and Direct TV. Robin Li is the CEO and co-founder of Chinese search company Baidu. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of a media empire that includes Fox News,...

Open borders activists are holding a “#SafeNotStranded Rally” outside the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday to demand an end to America’s “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy. The Supreme Court is slated to hear a case Tuesday that will determine whether President Joe Biden illegally ended the Migration Protection Protocols, known as former President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program — a program that helped effectively eliminate the policy of Catch and Release at the U.S.-Mexico border, reports Breitbart News’ John Binder. “Rather than apprehending and releasing border crossers into the U.S. interior, the program required officials to return border crossers to Mexico...

A disaster-weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued Monday says. The number of extreme heat waves in 2030 will be three times what it was in 2001 and there will be 30% more droughts, the report predicted. It’s not just natural disasters amplified by climate change, it’s COVID-19, economic meltdowns and food shortages. Climate change has a huge footprint in the number of disasters, report authors said. People have not grasped how much disasters already cost today, said Mami Mizutori, chief of the...

Alec Baldwin’s gruff attitude during his first interaction with police after he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust” can be seen in body cam footage released by cops. The video, released by the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office Monday afternoon along with a slew of other investigative files, shows cops responding to the shooting and their initial interview with the actor. “My understanding is, you were in the room when the lady,” a responding deputy with the sheriff’s office says to Baldwin in the clip before trailing off. “I was the one holding the gun, yea,”...

Earth Day, which was created by a man who killed his girlfriend and composted her body in a closet, is over. Joe Biden had a special announcement to commemorate the occasion. Our military is going green. I’m not kidding. We’re going to spend an absurd amount of money retrofitting everything to have planet-friendly armed forces. You know that means a less efficient military. Take out the word ‘rapid’ when referring to our armed forces’ capabilities should this overhaul be successful. All I can say to this initiative is ‘Jesus, take the wheel’ (via Fox News): President Biden on Friday said...

Antibiotics that are helping to treat patients with COVID-19 may actually be fueling a concerning rise in the number of superbugs infecting people worldwide. Researchers in the United States have found that cases of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are going up in comparison to the last year before the coronavirus pandemic. Concerningly, drug resistant infections which develop while a patient is in the hospital are soaring during COVID, and these infections are affecting those with and without the virus. According to Dr. Karri Bauer and Dr. Vikas Gupta, approximately 1.2 million people died worldwide of an antibiotic-resistant infection in 2019. Estimates...

As early as June, new stimulus payments will be available in Maine and over 800,000 Americans stand to benefit. The $1.2 billion supplemental budget proposed by Governor Janet Mills was passed into law on April 20. "What this budget shows once again through hard work and good faith negotiation Democrats, Republicans and independents can come together to do what is right for Maine people," Mills explained after the bill was passed. "And that we can do so without rancor or bitter partisanship that has sometimes divided Augusta in the past." Who will be eligible for June stimulus checks in Maine?...

U.S.—Democratic leadership is reportedly spooked by new polling data which indicates even the dead may vote Republican in November. Voter turnout is expected to be the highest ever recorded. Experts warn a "Red Wave" may cover the nation as both the living and dead push back against key Democratic policies such as child grooming and seeing how high inflation can get. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has sounded the alarm in Congress, advising senators to double down on their unpopular policies in an attempt to improve poll numbers among the dead. "The dead need their student loans paid!" he said...

Patients diagnosed with a type of brain tumor survived for longer when they were treated aggressively with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But far from suggesting that more treatment always leads to better survival, the study by UC San Francisco underscores the critical role of genomic profiling in diagnosing and grading brain tumors. In the study, UCSF researchers followed 38 patients with a tumor type that was reclassified by the World Health Organization in November 2021, from a grade 2 or 3 glioma, to a "glioblastoma, IDH-wildtype, CNS WHO grade 4," based on its molecular features. The previous diagnosis was determined...

Measure would open up domestic shelters and girls locker rooms to disturbed bio malesFrom Sophia Lorey/CFCSan Diego -- Instead of protecting the rights of women and girls, the San Diego Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will vote on a radical ordinance that will take opportunities away from women and girls, while also putting them at risk. This ordinance will redefine "women and girls" to include men and boys. The measure would create in the County of San Diego a local implementation of the United Nations Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Here you can...

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suspected female suicide bomber killed three Chinese teachers in Karachi on Tuesday, police and officials said, in the first major attack this year against nationals of long-time ally China working in Pakistan.

Although Hong Kong prides itself on being Asia’s World City, a lot of common terms and phrases reflect an anti-foreign sentimentI am not easily offended. Offence-taking in the modern age, it seems, is often used to leverage power and impose one’s moral sensibilities on others. I don’t care. That said, one aspect of Hong Kong culture that has always unsettled me is the way other races are referred to in Cantonese. The roots of these terms come from anti-foreign attitudes. The commonly used phrase for “white person” is (gweilo), which literally means “ghost man”, or “devil man”. The term for...