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Montana leads the nation in gun ownership, a new study by the personal finance website WalletHub found. Montana's gun ownership rate is 65%, and the state also ranks fifth in the study for its "dependency on the gun industry," which the website measured using three dimensions (firearms industry, gun prevalence and gun politics) and 16 metrics. Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, is not surprised by the state's ranking, he told The Center Square. The group estimates that 90%-95% of the homes in Montana contain firearms, Marbut said, with hunting being one reason for that high percentage....

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NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News Channel is airing the Jan. 6 committee hearings when they occur in daytime hours and a striking number of the network’s viewers have made clear they’d rather be doing something else. During two daytime hearings last week, Fox averaged 727,000 viewers, the Nielsen company said. That compares to the 3.09 million who watched the hearings on MSNBC and the 2.21 million tuned in to CNN. It completely flips the typical viewing pattern for the news networks. During weekdays when the hearings are not taking place, Fox News Channel routinely has more viewers than the...

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(...) Story at a glance: The rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalization among children aged 5 to 11 is just 0.0008%. In real-world terms, that’s so close to zero you basically cannot lower it any further. Despite that, the vaccine advisory panel — the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 15 unanimously approved granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID shots for infants and young children. Pfizer’s EUA is for a three-dose regimen (3-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 5 years old; Moderna’s EUA is...

9 p.m. UPDATE: Police will be holding the scene overnight. The bomb squad is on scene and nearby homes and businesses are still evacuated. Two suspects were killed in a brazen bank robbery Tuesday in Saanich, which also left six Greater Victoria Emergency Response Team (GVERT) officers with gunshot wounds after police and the suspects exchanged fire outside the bank. In an update shortly before 6:30 p.m. police said they did not uncover any further indication of a potential third suspect and lifted a shelter-in-place advisory. The 3600-block of Shelbourne Street remained closed while emergency crews awaited the arrival of...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

I don’t know if this is a disaster for Cassidy Hutchinson’s credibility. But, assuming these reports are accurate, it’s a disaster for the January 6 committee.Maybe a major one.🚨 A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) June 28, 2022A USSS source confirms to me that Engel and driver are willing to give the testimony @PeterAlexander details below.The source has not responded to whether...

One of the few facts of American life in 2022 that is pretty much beyond dispute is the reality that air travel is a disaster these days. It wasn’t very good before the pandemic if we’re being honest, but at least the airlines usually managed to get you where you needed to go, albeit in tiny, cramped seats and with barely edible snacks. But that’s no longer the case today. Flight delays and cancellations are just a fact of life now. I’ve gone back and forth in terms of where the real blame lies for this because there’s just so...

Where transgenderism is concerned, the West is in uncharted territory. The metaphor could apply to a host of implements, including puberty blockers and “top” and “bottom” surgeries.Related to the latter, a UK man is suing the National Health Service.As reported by the Daily Mail, Newcastle resident Ritchie Herron has lived tortuously for four years due to the impact of “gender affirmation” procedures.Battling mental health issues – and after decades of suppressing his homosexuality – Ritchie, 35, had thought the answer was to become a woman.In his 20s, Ritchie “stumbled across the idea of gender dysphoria in an internet chatroom. Older...

Synthetic carbon allotropes are intriguing due to their exceptional properties and potential applications. Scientists have devoted decades to synthesizing new types of carbon materials. However, a two-dimensional fullerene, which possesses a unique structure, has not been successfully synthesized until now. Recently, scientists developed a new interlayer bonding cleavage strategy to prepare a two-dimensional monolayer polymeric fullerene. The research group was led by Prof. ZHENG Jian from the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) The researchers prepared magnesium intercalated C60 bulk crystals as the precursor to the exfoliation reaction. They then utilized a ligand-assisted cation exchange strategy...

Now we already watched the January 6 Committee do themselves in, effectively, with the “witness” that they put on during the hearing on Tuesday, Cassidy Hutchinson.First, they put on someone testifying to something she hadn’t seen, basically relating a conversation she claimed she overheard, so she had no real knowledge herself as to the veracity of the story. Then her story contradicted what the Committee was claiming. But you would have thought, at least, if they were putting her on they would have checked the story with the people who she supposedly heard the story from — the alleged agents...

With a rueful smile and a fond wave Serena Williams left the Centre Court on Tuesday night, possibly for the last time. If this was the last occasion we saw her at Wimbledon then at least she left with the indelible print of a superb contest against a poised and youthful opponent. Harmony Tan, the world No 113 from Paris, said she was scared when she saw her first round draw, but she showed remarkable composure in pulling off a 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 victory that may go down as Williams's final defeat at SW19. Going into a new deciding super...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has removed his objections to the applications for NATO membership submitted by Sweden and Finland, guaranteeing those two previously unaligned nations will join the West’s bulwark alliance against Russian aggression.In May, Sweden and Finland announced they would ask to become members of the NATO military alliance. This was an unprecedented step that even the threat of the USSR had not been able to accomplish (Finland Announces It Will Join NATO, Sweden to Follow, While Moscow Makes Its Usual Threats). Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine did accomplish what Joe Stalin couldn’t in no small...

Illinois Republicans chose conservative state Sen. Darren Bailey as their gubernatorial nominee in Tuesday’s primary to take on Democrat billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker in November. With 45 percent of the votes counted, Bailey leads his four rivals with a strong, 55.5 percent of the vote.Big night and win for @DarrenBaileyIL! Illinoisans are ready for a new direction and leadership that restores integrity and responsibility to the governor’s office. pic.twitter.com/GjoS5mjuvg— GOP (@GOP) June 29, 2022Meanwhile, Pritzker cruised to victory in the Democratic primary, earning a whopping 92.3 percent of the vote, as of this writing. He used a tactic familiar to...

Less than an hour after the polls closed in Colorado, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (3rd District) was miles ahead of her challenger, State Representative Don Coram. Less than two hours later, Boebert has been declared the winner of her primary.🚨 Preliminary results for the Republican primary election for Colorado District 3 @laurenboebert ahead of @coramforco as the first batch of ballots are tallied. pic.twitter.com/3jCKCbGbkF— Carly Moore | CMoore News® (@CMoore_News) June 29, 2022From The Washington Times:Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, one of the most polarizing members of Congress, easily beat back a challenge from a more mainstream Republican to clinch...

Low back pain seriously affects the quality of life and increases the economic burden on families and society[1,2]. Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is the main pathogenic factor of low back pain, but its pathological mechanism has not yet been elucidated[3]. Therefore, exploring the pathological mechanism of IDD and seeking new methods for the prevention and treatment of degenerative disc diseases is of great significance to human health. Nucleus pulposus (NP) cells play an important role by secreting a large amount of extracellular matrix (ECM) such as aggrecan and collagen type II to maintain the normal physiological function of the intervertebral...

Here is another race that wasn’t even close. New York Republicans made their choice, and it wasn’t Andrew Guiliani.ELECTION ALERT: NY GOP GovernorLee Zeldin | 3,497 | 38.02%Harry Wilson | 2,918 | 31.73%Rob Astorino | 1,405 | 15.28%Andrew Giuliani | 1,377 | 14.97%Estimated 2% in— Election Wizard 🇺🇸 (@ElectionWiz) June 29, 2022The Associated Press projects that Rep. Lee Zeldin has won New York State’s Republican gubernatorial nomination.Zeldin, a four-term lawmaker who represents New York’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the eastern half of Long Island, topped a field that also included Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive and 2014...

A creepy video captured by a man in Canada appears to show a pair of eerie figures stalking a deer in a forest and some suspect that the odd interlopers could have been Bigfoot. The strange scene was filmed earlier this year by Terence Leano as he was doing a live demonstration of his throat singing technique for his TikTok channel. As the start of the video, he acknowledges a deer that has emerged from the nearby woods in what he theorized was the creature "looking for where the sound was coming from" as he was talking to the viewers...

The Biden administration is ramping up efforts to slow the spread of monkeypox by distributing tens of thousands of vaccine doses, after facing criticism over its early response to a US outbreak primarily affecting gay men. The plan, announced on Tuesday, involves rapidly expanding access to doses of Bavarian Nordic's Jynneos vaccine - which has so far been limited - to prevent monkeypox in areas with the highest transmission and need. The announcement came just hours after advocates sent a letter to the White House slamming the administration's monkeypox response, saying that 1 million doses of the Jynneos vaccine already...