Free Republic

Mayor Eric Adams left a political storm at home over everything from border migrants to rising crime to spend his Sunday helping what he calls New York’s “sixth borough,” hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. “Puerto Rico is our sixth borough of New York. We’re tied at the hip,” Hizzoner said during in a video shot Sunday morning alongside San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero. “We’re going to… identify exactly what’s needed,” the mayor said. “We want to pinpoint what the needs are.”

South Australia's Naracoorte Caves is one of the world's best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago.The reasons for the demise of these megafauna species are intensely debated. But the older the fossils we can find, the better we can understand the species' evolution and extinction.To date, determining the precise age of the caves has been difficult. However our research demonstrates, for the first time, how old Naracoorte's caves...

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., suggested on Tuesday that voting for Democrats in November and winning the midterms would help them with hurricanes and climate change. "We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why we've got to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We've got to win in the midterms. We understand that," Klobuchar said after listing several legislative wins during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Floridians have been preparing for Hurricane Ian for the past two days as residents of the Key West are already experiencing strong winds and...

Though the 50 illegal aliens flown to Martha's Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spent less than two days on the island, residents profess themselves "amazingly enriched by the experience." Resident Richard Mann confessed "while we all have cared about the welfare of these unfortunate people from afar, seeing them up close was simultaneously a frightening and exhilarating experience. These Venezuelans fled from a dictatorship that voters freely elected. I thought, in a way, this is like Americans fleeing to Florida from the rotten governments of New York and Massachusetts. It makes you think." Resident Shirley Hugest observed "they were...

It is human nature to want stability, but what happens when those needs are not met in childhood? Our experiences as children are monumentally important regarding our outcomes in later life. Early-life is an especially formative time due to the brain’s rapid development. Many factors can adversely affect brain development, including poverty, abuse, trauma, malnutrition, neglect, and more. These conditions are risk factors not only for stunted brain development, but also for negative mental health outcomes in adulthood... Another key factor to consider is fragmentation or unpredictability. This has been shown to have adverse outcomes, even when there is no...

New York State Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank ruled that it was unconstitutional to fire police officers for refusing the COVID vaccine. The Police Benevolent Association (PBA) sued the state of New York and won – all police officers who were fired for refusing the vaccine will be rehired.

A September 2018 letter from the Obama Foundation to then-Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has some of us scratching our heads over the FBI’s unprecedented Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s home in South Florida. In the letter, the executive director of the Obama Foundation, Robbin Cohen, discusses the terms under which the foundation would work with the National Archives and Records Administration to safeguard presidential materials while it digitized the records. Meanwhile, the facility housing the material has been described in published reports as a “warehouse” and “former furniture store.” It also sounds none...

In 2020, Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues published a sensational result in Nature, featured on its cover. They claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor: a material in which electric current flows frictionlessly without any need for special cooling systems. Although it was just a speck of carbon, sulfur, and hydrogen forged under extreme pressures, the hope was that someday the material would lead to variants that would enable lossless electricity grids and inexpensive magnets for MRI machines, maglev railways, atom smashers, and fusion reactors. On Monday Nature retracted the study, citing data...

To be clear, this means Cheney, a supposed conservative, would rather actively campaign for a political party that supports abortion through nine months of pregnancy, deliberately works to dismantle the Second Amendment, and promotes economy-destroying socialist policies, so long as it means opposing Trump. Got it.

Hilaree Nelson, 49, was skiing down from the 26,775 feet summit with her partner Jim Morrison when she fell off the mountain... Bad weather hampered rescue efforts Monday. But visibility was good in improved weather conditions Tuesday while a helicopter was hovering over the mountain to see any signs of the missing climber... Nelson, from Telluride, Colorado, and Morrison, from Tahoe, California, are extreme skiers who summited Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak, in 2018. Nepal’s government has issued permits to 504 climbers to attempt to scale high mountain peaks during the autumn season. Most of them are on Mount...

Pharmaceutical Hegemony Vs Scientific Integrity and Public Health“I have slowly and reluctantly concluded that contrary to my own initial dogmatic beliefs, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is far from being as safe and effective as we first thought.”So writes Dr. Aseem Malhotra, in the first of his two important papers out this week. Aiming, in this first paper1, to “gain a better understanding of the true benefits and potential harms of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) coronavirus disease (COVID) vaccines,” he walks the reader through a careful and concise analysis, providing the evidence which contributed to his changing his mind.Changing one’s conclusions...

Whenever "Gina," a fifth grader at a suburban public school on the East Coast, did her math homework, she never had to worry about whether she could get help from her mom. "I help her a lot with homework," Gina's mother, a married, mid-level manager for a health care company, explained to us during an interview for a study we did about how teachers view students who complete their homework versus those who do not. "I try to maybe re-explain things, like, things she might not understand," Gina's mom continued. "Like, if she's struggling, I try to teach her a...

Poland and Norway opened a new gas pipeline via Denmark on Tuesday, hailed as a much-needed alternative to Russian-controlled routes. At a ceremony in Poland, Norway’s Energy Minister Terje Aasland said the opening of Baltic Pipe was “a milestone on the important path towards European independence”... Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said it “marks a crucial geopolitical step for all of us.” “Putin uses Russian energy as a weapon to destabilise Europe, to divide us. He cannot be allowed to succeed,” Ms Frederiksen said, referring to the Russian president. Poland, one of the fiercest advocates in Europe of isolating Moscow,...

The Kremlin has urgently decided to purchase a large batch of potassium iodide, according to the order published on the website of the State Procurement of Russia on Sept. 26. The tender was announced amid threats by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons.

Devoted Donald Trump ally Kash Patel is pushing his children’s book about “King Donald” by featuring an autograph — and a handwritten QAnon salutation. This is the same book, “The Plot Against the King” (a fractured fairy tale about Trump), that the former president has said he wants in “every school in America” — presumably without Patel’s QAnon greeting. “Kash is signing books today, and he’s got a special message in 10 books for some lucky patriots,” Patel’s “Plot” Truth Social account gushed Saturday. (He also “retruthed” the message on his personal account.) The “special message,” enthusiastically underlined several times,...

Nina Simone once said that It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times. I included this quote in my coming out post; my public disclosure; my very conspicuous grabbing onto the third rail of unpopular opinions. It was only my third ever Substack blog? essay? post? “what am I even doing here?” I had sent out. The thing is, I was an artist among artists whose view of the times was so exceedingly out of orthodoxy, so obviously unacceptable to the status quo, it took away a major part of my identity. What was I supposed to do now? So...

Special Counsel John Durham continues to ignore the FBI’s malfeasance in the Crossfire Hurricane targeting of Donald Trump, a Friday court filing by prosecutors in the criminal case against Igor Danchenko confirms. While that approach may have been prudent and in the country’s best interests three and a half years ago, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr tasked Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion hoax, it is no longer judicious. The special counsel’s failure to appreciate this reality threatens the government’s case against Danchenko, but more significantly has spurred the Biden administration, the D.C. deep state, and partisan...

Prices could continue to rise, expert says.. The average price of gas in Oregon is up to $5 per gallon again after prices spiked by nearly 40 cents in the last week. After a summer of declining prices, AAA reports that statewide prices jumped from $4.64 per gallon to $5 per gallon in the last seven days. Prices are also up 20.3 cents per gallon in the Portland-Vancouver area this week, with an average price of $4.98 per gallon, GasBuddy.com petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan noted. ... gas prices shooting up in several regions amidst myriad refinery issues from the...

President Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisers are concerned that a victory by Italian leader Giorgia Meloni could weaken the united European coalition pushing back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meloni represents a populist-nationalist shift in power after Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi sought to align Italy with the European Union and teamed up with the G7 nations to push back against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Archaeologists from UP Diliman (UPD) and the National Museum, and leaders and members of the indigenous Pala’wan community unearthed new discoveries dating back to the last glacial maximum (LGM) or at the height of the last ice age at Pilanduk Cave in Palawan.The research Tropical island adaptations in Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Maximum: evidence from Palawan presented new data from the re-excavation of Pilanduk Cave such as “evidence for specialized deer hunting and freshwater mollusc foraging, LGM fossils for the tiger and remains of other native mammal and reptile fauna of Palawan,” UPD archaeologist Janine Ochoa, PhD, said...