Free Republic

"It's not over," John Lucio said of his fight to free his mother.Melissa Lucio was first sentenced to death in 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez. After nearly 15 years on death row in Texas, Lucio was granted a stay of her scheduled April 27 execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday. Calls for a court to review her case and save Lucio's life grew this week, garnering bipartisan support and inspiring rallies across the country. Rep. Jeff Leach, chair of the Texas House Criminal Justice Reform, Interim Study Committee, was one of...

Grain production in Ukraine is likely to fall by around 20 per cent this year, prompting inflation and global food security warnings from the UK Ministry of Defence. Britain’s Ministry of Defence has warned that Ukraine’s grain harvest looks set to see around a 20 per cent decrease in yield as a result of the ongoing Russian invasion of the country. With Ukraine being responsible for a significant share of the world’s supply of wheat and other essential crops, this fall is reportedly likely to have devastating effects on the global supply of food, causing price hikes which will put...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — LGBTQ rights advocates called Tuesday for a Kansas state lawmaker to be formally censured after she publicly said she didn’t want to share the women’s restrooms at the Statehouse with a transgender colleague. The Kansas House’s top Republican called GOP state Rep. Cheryl Helmer’s comments “unfortunate” and Democrats condemned them. The state’s leading LGBTQ rights lobbyist saw “a new level of toxic bigotry” in Helmer’s emailed remarks to a University of Kansas student and subsequent interviews about Democratic state Rep. Stephanie Byers. Helmer stood firmly by her comments while defending a bill she co-sponsored that would...

VIDEO AT LINK ................ Ram has released a new video teaser of its upcoming all-electric Ram 1500 pickup truck, which is scheduled to enter the market in 2024. The new video is entitled "Ram Revolution | First Look" and shows the front of the vehicle, with a futuristic shape and an interesting LED headlight. It's very similar to the two images that we saw in March. The tweet version includes info that suggests the presentation of the vehicle in Fall 2022: "Time to steal some thunder. Unleashing Fall 2022. https://RamRevolution.com" At this point, we don't know whether it's a concept...

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) signed a bill into law that mandates the creation of a new election police force, with the intention of patrolling voting locations to more effectively crack down on fraudulent practices. As reported by Politico, the bill implements an idea that was first suggested by DeSantis himself, in the aftermath of widespread voter fraud in numerous key swing states during the 2020 election, which may have been enough to swing the results away from President Donald Trump and in favor of Joe Biden. “I don’t think there’s any other place in the country that...

U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News. That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv. It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that...

Lauren Bernett, a former standout at South Fayette High School and a current star for the James Madison softball team, has passed away the school said Tuesday. She was 20. No cause of death has been given. The sophomore was the starting catch for James Madison each of the past two seasons, and was a key player for the Dukes in their run to the 2021 College World Series. The news comes just one day after Bernett was named Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Week. “Our hearts are aching, hearing the news of the loss of one of our...

“The essence of leadership is being able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic.”Markets are being whipsawed by rate hike threats from Central Banks, China lockdowns, the Ukraine war, while being stalked by inflation and stagflation. The big risk remains policy mistakes – trying to solve these with the wrong monetary and fiscal policies. Taking a look at the stock markets its well windy out there. The Federal Reserve is threatening to raise interest rates at a clip – even the ECB might get its act together later this summer, while the Chinese are double padlocking doors across...

CDC has partnered with the American Public Health Association (APHA) to create the Climate Change and Health Playbook: Adaptation Planning for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. This comprehensive, step-by-step resource is designed to supplement the Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework and support public health departments and adaptation planners as they blend JEDI into their climate and health efforts. People throughout the United States face climate change-related health risks, but some of us will feel the effects earlier and more severely. This is because of differences in our exposures to climate hazards, our sensitivity to these hazards, and our...

Shaun King logged back on to Twitter to clap back at Donald Trump Jr. — a day after the controversial Black Lives Matter activist had apparently left the site following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant. King on Monday appeared to delete his account for good after Twitter’s board announced that it had accepted Musk’s offer to buy the firm and take it private, with some users tweeting out screenshots of King’s blank home page. When King’s Twitter status became a trending topic, Don Jr. tweeted that the possibility of his deleting his account would “alone”...

"Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study" was published last month in Physical Review Physics Education Research. "Whiteboards can be racist like how housing, employment, and the judicial systems were found to contain racist practices," the co-author told Campus Reform. Article image Stevie Gibbs '23 | Arkansas Campus Correspondent Monday, April 25, 2022 1:44 PM Did a recent physics study argue that whiteboards are racist? "Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study" was published last month in Physical Review Physics Education Research. The study observed three students as they worked to solve a physics problem and analyzed how...

During a Tuesday interview with state media, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that if the U.S. and other Western allies of Ukraine continue to provide the country with weapons, the risk of the war escalating into a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated.” CBS News reported that Lavrov said that by providing weapons to Ukraine, NATO countries were “pouring oil on the fire” and risking “World War III.” Lavrov said that by providing weapons to Ukraine, NATO nations were already “in essence engaged in war with Russia.” The Russian diplomat’s warning came as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin...

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has evaporated in his home state of Delaware, a Tuesday Morning Consult poll revealed. Biden’s approval rating is only 50 percent in Delaware, dropping from 62 percent at a similar time last year. Forty-five percent disapprove of Biden, up from 32 percent last year.

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...