Free Republic

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska have sparked a strong reaction online, after posing for a Vogue photoshoot in the midst of their nation's ongoing fight against invading Russian troops. With more than 150 days having passed since Russian President Vladimir Putin's fighters entered neighboring Ukraine, the couple posed for the U.S. edition of the fashion bible in a series of shots taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. While glamorous shots show the two hugging one another while seated at a table, another shows the first lady sitting on the grand staircase of a building filled with...

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended an injunction from a lower court allowing mask mandates in Texas schools. This came after families challenged an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) prohibiting mask mandates in schools. Last year, Abbott issued an executive order prohibiting government entities from mandating masks — including counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities and government officials. For public schools, he said, "no student, teacher, parent, or other staff member or visitor can be required to wear a mask while on campus." Despite Abbott's executive order, many counties, cities and school districts...

Bots supported Sierra Leone’s unprecedented lockdowns in 2014 and 2015 with millions of posts specifically using the word “lockdown.”

I am curious about the legislative veto process. As it is now, if a bill passes the House it goes to the Senate. If it passes the Senate, it then goes to the President for his signature. What I would like to know is what is the veto override threshold, and if it is over ridden, will it become law? If after the mid term elections the Republicans take the House and the Senate, what margins will be required for a Biden veto to be over ridden and become law. Hope springs eternal!

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell answers questions after the FOMC decided to raise the federal funds rate by 75 basis points. Video at link

A half-century-old diabetes drug appears to help treat bipolar disorder by reversing patients' insulin resistance. Bipolar patients who responded to the drug metformin experienced improvement in their mood disorder as their insulin resistance decreased, said Dr. Cynthia Calkin. "We saw this improvement as early as week six in the study," she said. "Week 14 was the study endpoint, and patients remained significantly improved or in remission." Calkin noted that some patients who started off in the trial are still in remission, six or seven years later. Metformin helps treat type 2 diabetes by reducing production of glucose by the liver...

Poland's intelligence services say they have identified camps where thousands of Ukrainian children have been held and adults brutally beaten by invading Russian forces. Special Services minster Stanislaw Zaryn said on Wednesday that over 1.5 million Ukrainians including 'thousands of children' were being held in various locations inside occupied territory where 'Ukrainians are sent en masse' and 'subjected to torture'. Zaryn continued: 'The aggressors carry out a verification of the detained, looking for people with combat experience and officials of the Ukrainian administration. 'They also study the attitudes of specific people towards Russia. 'Those who do not raise any objections...

The New York Times OAN, a Dependable Trump Promoter, Faces a 'Death Blow' Jeremy W. Peters and Benjamin Mullin Wed, July 27, 2022, 2:55 PM The headquarters of One America News in San Diego on Monday, April 5, 2021. (The New York Times) The headquarters of One America News in San Diego on Monday, April 5, 2021. (The New York Times) The future of One America News, which established itself as a powerful voice in conservative media by promoting some of the most outlandish falsehoods about the 2020 election, is in serious doubt as major carriers drop it from their...

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine in the U.S. has issued a new guide, advising hospitals and health carers to change their language to be more “gender-inclusive”. The guide lists “traditional terms” such as ‘breast milk’ and then suggests woke alternatives including “human milk”, “parent’s milk”, and most ridiculously “father’s milk.” Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright tweeted a screenshot, which shows that the guide also suggests using the terms “gestational parent” instead of ‘mother’, “lactating person” instead of ‘nursing mother’, and “chestfeeding” instead of ‘breastfeeding’: *** Even the word ‘breast’ doesn’t escape the newspeak diktat, being replaced with ‘mammary gland’. Wright told...

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Former President Donald Trump dedicated most of his keynote address at AFPI’s America First Agenda Summit on Tuesday to crime, one of the main issues facing Americans across the country.During his speech, Trump said public safety is one of the “core issues” facing the country. “There is no higher priority than cleaning up our streets, controlling our borders, stopping the drugs from pouring in, and quickly restoring law and order,” he said. “In the Democrat rule, in Democrat-run cities, Democrat-run states, and a Democrat-run federal government, the criminals have been given free rein more than...

Former President Donald J. Trump laid out 42 policy proposals at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) summit Tuesday, where he gave his first speech in Washington, DC, since leaving office. Prepared remarks circulated by the Trump team show the 45th president’s proposals on an array of topics, including the Second Amendment, border security, education, energy, and election integrity, but a central focus of his policy proposal addresses law and order. The prepared remarks first emphasized the importance of supporting police departments throughout the country and fostering a culture that respects law enforcement. “We have to give our police back...

Why do so many Palestinian boys join the cycle of violence? The attitude of Palestinian society to Ahmed Shawiki, who went to prison for the murder of a Jewish woman and was recently released, tells the story of the institutional brainwashing of Palestinian youth and children "How does it happen that a 14-year-old boy (his name is Muhammad Shahada) was killed by our soldiers in El Khader today? Why?" asked the left-wing activist, Hagit Ofran, without an answer. This is an incident in which he fired at three Molotov cocktails throwers at Israeli vehicles. One of them, Shahada, was shot...

The damaging effects of daily, lifelong exposure to the blue light emanating from phones, computers and household fixtures worsen as a person ages, new research suggests. Jaga Giebultowicz examined the survival rate of flies kept in darkness and then moved at progressively older ages to an environment of constant blue light from light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. The darkness-to-light transitions study involved blue light's effect on mitochondria. Mitochondria act as a cell's power plant. In earlier research, Giebultowicz showed that prolonged exposure to blue light affected flies' longevity, regardless of whether it shined in their eyes. "The novel aspect of this...

The researchers discovered that a new theoretical framework to unify Hermitian and non-Hermitian physics is established by the duality between non-Hermiticity and curved spaces. A physics puzzle is resolved through a new duality. According to traditional thinking, distorting a flat space by bending it or stretching it is necessary to create a curved space. A group of scientists at Purdue University has developed a new technique for making curved spaces that also provides the answer to a physics mystery. The team has developed a method using non-Hermiticity, which occurs in all systems coupled to environments, to build a hyperbolic surface...

It is understood that this type of rocket adopts a special technical design and most components will be destroyed during reentry, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular media briefing, when asked if China knew when and where the rocket debris could land. The probability of causing harm to aviation and the ground was very low, Zhao said. Scientists say the odds of a populated area on land being hit by such debris are low, with most of the Earth's surface covered by water. But, in 2020, pieces of the first Long March 5B fell over the Ivory...

LOS ANGELES — The office of embattled Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has asked a judge to lift the sentence of a man condemned to die for killing two college students during a 1994 carjacking, according to court documents obtained by NBC News. The 264-page resentencing recommendation, filed July 11 in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Deputy District Attorney Shelan Joseph, seeks to change Raymond Oscar Butler’s death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. The filing argues that Butler, now 47, committed the murders of the two college students when he was 18 years old...

It's chonky and we dig it. Mini The Mini Aceman -- not to be confused with the Mini Paceman -- is more than just a concept. Making its debut Tuesday, the small crossover not only previews a new model for the Mini lineup, but shows the brand's future design direction, as well. Mini's current lineup is somewhat crowded, with the 4-Door Hardtop, Clubman and Countryman all kind of overlapping with the same basic form factor. Yet Mini still seems room for expansion here, and the Aceman previews a crossover that will squeeze in between the Hardtop and Countryman. The...

For the first time, political polling website FiveThirtyEight shows the Democrats with an edge in the race for the U.S. Senate in November. The website late on Tuesday showed the Democrats had a 52 percent chance of keeping the Senate majority, while the Republicans had a 48 chance. There had been consensus for a long time that the Republicans will win back the Senate this fall, buoyed by high inflation and economic downturn under Democrat Joe Biden's presidency. FiveThirtyEight believes that the Republicans have selected some "weak candidates" in some key races, meaning that they are less likely to take...

WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia on drug charges since February, could return to the U.S. after Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed Wednesday that the Biden administration has offered a "substantial proposal" for her return that includes American Paul Whelan.

The UK Government has quietly confirmed that the Covid-19 vaccines are killing children at an unprecedented rate.Shocking figures contained in an official report, published just hours before Boris Johnson announced his resignation as Prime Minister of the UK, reveal Covid-19 vaccinated children are 4423%/45x more likely to die of any cause than unvaccinated children and 13,6333/137x more likely to die of Covid-19 than unvaccinated children.A UK Government agency, known as the Office for National Statistics (ONS), recently published new data on deaths by vaccination status in England.The latest dataset from the ONS is titled ‘Deaths by Vaccination Status, England, 1...