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Some flights out of Russia appeared to be selling out in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Wednesday of a partial military mobilization to buttress the country’s war effort in Ukraine. It was reported that some 300,000 reservists — limited to those with relevant combat and service experience, according to Russia’s defense minister — will be called up to active duty.

If an earthquake strikes in the not too distant future and survivors are trapped under tonnes of rubble, the first responders to locate them could be swarms of cyborg cockroaches. That's a potential application of a recent breakthrough by Japanese researchers who demonstrated the ability to mount "backpacks" of solar cells and electronics on the bugs and control their motion by remote control. Kenjiro Fukuda and his team at the Thin-Film Device Laboratory at Japanese research giant Riken developed a flexible solar cell film that's 4 microns thick, about 1/25 the width of a human hair, and can fit on...

“Multiple whistleblowers have confirmed to Committee Republicans that from 2017 to 2021, the Biden family made promises to business associates that: (1) Joe Biden would run for President in 2020 and, (2) those who worked with the Bidens in 2017 onward would reap the rewards in a future Biden Administration. As America now struggles in an energy crisis, it is critical to understand why the Biden family was selling American energy reserves to the Chinese, if that is affecting President Biden’s decision making today, and why President Biden has never disclosed his relationship with the Chinese to the American public,”...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will consider adopting more stringent greenhouse gas emissions rules for heavy trucks after Congress passed new incentives to speed the adoption of zero-emission vehicles, the agency told Reuters. In March, the EPA proposed new rules to cut smog-forming and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from heavy-duty vehicles. The agency said it will reopen the proposed GHG rules after passage in August of the climate and spending Inflation Reduction Act, a move that could speed the U.S. shift to electric heavy-duty vehicles. The EPA will be issuing a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking to consider more...

Somewhere over the rainbow, indeed! Kenya Barris tells me that LGBTQ representation will be featured in his “Wizard of Oz” remake. “The original was an allegory and a reflection of the way the world was at the time with things like the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl,” says Barris, who will write and direct the reimagining for Warner Bros. “Now we’re going to turn a mirror on where we’re at right now and take disparate characters from the LGBTQ community, from different cultural communities and socioeconomic communities, and tell a story that reflects the world. I think this is...

As Twitchy reported, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went on a Twitter bender earlier Wednesday when news broke that New York State Attorney General Letitia James was filing a lawsuit against Donald Trump for “engaging in years of financial fraud.” Of note: It’s not a criminal lawsuit, but a civil lawsuit. As long as James has been investigating Trump, she doesn’t have the goods on him to file a criminal lawsuit.Lawyer and Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter has laid out in a short thread just how the lawsuit is going to go. In short, Rubin might want to calm down.Kurt Schlichter...

Unvaccinated NBA players will soon be allowed to play in Toronto against the Raptors as Canada moves ahead with dropping its federal vaccine mandateUnvaccinated NBA players will soon be allowed to enter Canada to play the Toronto Raptors next season. If the mandate is dropped on Sept. 30, as reported, unvaccinated players will be allowed to enter in time for Toronto's first preseason game of the year on October 2 in Edmonton. The regular season for the Raptors is scheduled to tip off on October 19 against the Cavaliers. While Canada will be dropping its vaccine requirement, the United States...

Obesity is a known risk factor for at least 13 types of cancer. Dr. Elda Grabocka found that stress granules are much more abundant in obesity-related pancreatic cancer compared to non-obese patients, and importantly, blocking their formation stopped cancer growth in animals. "Stress granule research is exploding right now, but there's still a lot we don't know regarding what they're made of and how they work," says Dr. Grabocka. "This work is the first to show that an overload of stress granules enables the tumor-growth in the pancreas. Our experiments in mice also showed a complete reversal of cancer growth...

MSNBC legal analyst Neal Katyal said Wednesday on “Deadline” New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil lawsuit filing also presents a “good” criminal case. Katyal said, “On page two, the attorney general isolated a list of federal crimes she thought were potentially violated. And the thing this lawsuit did was collect all the reporting from our friends on this show, but then add to it all the evidence from the accountants, the evidence from the CFO and others, and it’s tremendous. It’s a case based on a huge amount of paperwork, which is unlike a lot of the other investigations...

The National Education Association is reportedly equipping teachers in Ohio with QR-code badges that direct students to how-to guides promoting “non-binary” gender identities, “queer sex,” and the idea that “transgender men” can become pregnant, among other things. Conservative writer Christopher Rufo shared the findings on Wednesday. He noted that local news outlet ABC 6 reported that the National Education Association and the Hilliard Education Association in Ohio have been equipping staff in the school district with QR code badges that direct people to the NEA’s LGBTQ+ Caucus website. They are provided with resources from “gender activist” organizations, including The Trevor...

A Newcastle woman says an Australian cruise company should have been better prepared for adverse weather after a holiday scuba dive in Fiji almost ended in disaster when a dive boat disappeared. When Justine Clark and her sons Felix, 18, and Max, 20, surfaced from an offshore dive in Fiji on August 14, their dive boat was nowhere to be seen. A diver with more than 30 years’ experience, Clark had booked an afternoon dive at an offshore site called The Supermarket.

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week. Hospital Administrators Knew Their Star Surgeon Was Dangerous In the first installment of a two-part investigative series, the Boston Globe Spotlight Team reported on the record-setting number of malpractice settlements amassed by New Hampshire cardiac surgeon Yvon Baribeau, MD. For three decades, Canadian-born Baribeau was a star at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, where he earned more than $1 million each year prior to his abrupt retirement at the age of 63 in 2019, the Globe reported. And, after his departure,...

The 2021 San Francisco Giants were the surprise success story of MLB, and that surprise largely came from developing unheralded pitchers. Under director of pitching Brian Bannister, a scrappy staff became one of the best in baseball. Longtime underachiever Kevin Gausman became an All-Star, and Logan Webb became one of the top young starters in the league, which Webb has largely credited to Bannister's coaching. The staff has been without Bannister this year, though. In fact, they haven't worked with him in person since the start of the 2021 playoffs, as The Athletic reported Wednesday. That's because he's refused to...

Past NYC FreeRepublic Chapter Head & Longtime Freeper Firebrand has been in the hospital for the past 5 days. She could use our prayers for a complete recovery. She has no internet access in the hospital at the moment, but God-willing she will eventually get back online soon. I’m sure she will be grateful for prayers, and any get-well messages addressed to her in this thread.

Border Patrol stopped a dozen individuals whose names are on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) in August, bringing the total for the fiscal year to a number that is triple the previous five fiscal years combined – as agents deal with a historic migrant surge at the border. New data released by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week show that there were 12 individuals encountered by Border Patrol between ports of entry at the border whose names matched on the TSDB – which contains information about the identities of those who are known or "reasonably suspected" of being...

We’re likely to be poorer, distrustful, and less free for years to come.President Biden may have admitted "the pandemic is over" with regard to COVID-19, but that doesn't mean we won't be feeling its sting for a long time to come. Security expert Brian Michael Jenkins argues that "the normality we knew before will not return" as we suffer the lingering effects on policy, erosion of liberty, and breakdowns in social cohesion. Data from elsewhere shows that we're already living in a world affected by the pandemic and the policies adopted in response to the virus. Pointing to the after-effects...

Effects of recall reverberate through sleep medicine communityMore than a year after the start of a recall now involving more than 5 million breathing devices, doctors and patients are still feeling the effects as manufacturer Philips continues to remediate machines and weathers scrutiny from federal agencies. The recall by subsidiary Philips Respironics has affected certain continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machines and mechanical ventilators mainly due to potential health risks from polyester-based polyurethane (PE-PUR) sound abatement foam that was used in the machines. Philips said at the time of the recall that the foam...

A photographer used artificial intelligence to bring stars who left us too soon back to life - creating eerie portraits of Princess Diana, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury and others. The haunting and realistic images are the work of Alper Yesiltas, a photographer based in Turkey who created the portraits for a project titled 'As If Nothing Happened.' He used artificial intelligence photo enhancer software and photo editing programs to create the pictures.

Shaun Ray Deaton, 44, of Bloomington, was arrested at 7:30 p.m. on charges of trespassing, tampering and vandalism, according to a statement from the National Park Service. "This is an initial criminal charge and, as the investigation continues, there may be additional charges," the agency said. The area around base of the Washington Monument was temporarily closed following the incident, as the park service conservators looked to restore the statue.

See website for President Putin’s speech, both in Russian and translated into English.