Free Republic

This school year has seen the most relaxed COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic began, with optional and self-directed testing, a lift in the mask mandate and an near-full return to in-person instruction. ... “With the university lifting its guidelines and making it up to the individual, they’re making an already not accessible place less accessible,” Karen Wang ’24, who is a Student Accessibility Services peer liaison, said. “I find it really disturbing that people who don’t mask say that they care for their community, but your actions show you’re working within an ableist framework.” ... Colin Loria ’26 told the...

A Florida man stabbed his wife to death and then cut his own neck in a horrific murder-suicide in front of their three young children Monday, officials said. Deputies from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home in Deltona just after 6 p.m. after a neighbor told them that a 10-year-old boy ran to his house for help because his stepfather had stabbed his mother. The neighbor told cops he entered the residence and found a woman and a man on the floor — along with two unharmed children — before calling 911.

Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York found people who have higher levels of certain acids on their skin are 100 times more attractive to the female Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika. The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Cell, could lead to new products that could mask or alter certain human odors, making it harder for mosquitoes to find human blood and potentially curbing the spread of disease. SNIP Experts have found people seem to become more attractive to mosquitoes when they're pregnant or after they've...

Video description: I just drove through downtown L.A. What is saw shocked me to the core. 3rd world conditions on *every* block. Tent cities. Filth. Drugs. People digging through, living in and eating trash. Broken lives everywhere. This is not America. See for yourself...

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is tied with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in Georgia’s Senate race, a Tuesday Landmark poll found. Warnock held 46.1 percent of the vote, compared to Walker’s 46 percent. Libertarian Chase Oliver held 3.4 percent support. Only 1.6 percent remained undecided.

The leadership of a Texas megachurch has decided to leave The United Methodist Church without a congregational vote, which defies denominational rules on dismissal. St. Andrew United Methodist Church of Plano, which has approximately 6,500 members, recently announced that the church is going to disaffiliate with the UMC, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the country. "St. Andrew will disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church (UMC), but not affiliate with any other existing Methodist denomination. St. Andrew will remain Methodist with the same Wesleyan theology that we have always believed," the announcement reads. "St. Andrew will be named St. Andrew Methodist...

For months, the Left in the United States told us to get the vaccine to prevent transmission of COVID. The vaccine was touted as efficient, effective, and a key to saving lives because it stopped the virus from spreading. But last week, while giving testimony to the European Parliament, Pfizer executive Janine Small admitted that Pfizer did not test to determine whether the vaccine would prevent the spread of COVID. This admission debunked essentially everything the Left told people about vaccination and showed the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative was nothing but another Democratic lie. “So, there are no misunderstandings:...

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan complained that Trump didn't act on a top conservative priority. "He and I fought about Medicare and entitlement reform all the time," Ryan said Wednesday. Trump largely ditched the GOP goal of safety-net cuts, but some conservatives still float the move. Paul Ryan has one big complaint about former President Donald Trump: He wasn't willing to pursue cuts to the safety-net programs Ryan had championed for years. "He and I fought about Medicare and entitlement reform all the time," the former GOP House speaker said Wednesday at a book event at the American Enterprise Institute,...

The NBA will have new COVID protocols in place for the 2022-23 season. The policy had been developed over several weeks during the 2022 offseason and was agreed to by the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). “It looks like we’ll be on our normal track in terms of when the season starts, in terms of our protocols around the game, particularly around the health and safety of our players,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in July. “I have learned over the last 2 1/2 years not to make any predictions when it comes...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly half of California domestic violence offenders failed to complete a required program designed to prevent future assaults and judges failed to impose new sanctions almost every time, the state auditor said Tuesday. California requires domestic violence offenders who are placed on probation to take year-long batterer intervention classes. But auditors found that nearly half did not complete them. County probation departments did not report more than half the violations to the courts. And the courts did not impose any additional punishment to enforce the requirement in 90% of the cases where judges were told of...

Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are expecting our second child. When I delivered our son, before the pandemic, there were no restrictions on visitors at our hospital, and any required and routine vaccinations were not an issue, despite known political differences among our family members. Now, things have changed. My husband’s father, sister and her entire family refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, despite several cases in the family — including our son, who was too young to be vaccinated and ended up at the hospital via ambulance. My husband and I are both very confrontation-averse, but...

This is arguably the world's biggest rotten-tail project, a place called Xiong'an that was considered a partial replacement for Beijing. It’s located in Hebei province, a neighboring province to Beijing, and was a personal dream of the Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping. Unfortunately, the project, which was billed as a "millennium project and a major national event," fell apart after only five years, demonstrating a complete crash of Xi's dream.The world's biggest rotten-tail project:Xiongan's failure is destined under the CCP red systemChina Insights | Premiered October 15, 2022

WEST HOMESTEAD, Pa. — The Allegheny County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 91 announced its support for Dr. Mehmet Oz on Tuesday in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race. Oz made an appearance at the lodge in West Homestead, and spoke on crime, including the recent shooting on Pittsburgh's North Side that left three people dead. The candidate said he spoke to Steelers fans on Sunday, who were tailgating. Advertisement "Two of them we now know were innocent bystanders," he said of the shooting victims. "People weren't shocked. They were sad. They weren't shocked because it's happening too much." Oz also received...

Californians might be voting with their feet, but there's nowhere they can run and hide if the federal government embraces the same policies.During my recent trip to Phoenix, locals rolled their eyes at all the Californians who are moving there—mostly middle-class residents who are so tired of our state's chronic mismanagement that they're willing to abandon the temperate coast for a parched desert. Note to Californians: It's best to re-register your cars in other states as quickly as possible, to avoid glares from the locals. But while the exodus continues—and California's falling population and outmigration figures reinforce the anecdotal stories—progressives...

Today is the feast of Saint Luke, a father of the ancient Church renowned as Evangelist, Historian, and Physician. We should be aware of one additional title that is traditionally attributed to this early disciple of Christ: Artist. For the name of Saint Luke is attached to one of the most venerable works of art of the ancient Church—the Hodegetria icon which resided in Constantinople until its destruction in 1453. While the origins of the Hodegetria icon are shrouded in mystery, its connection to St. Luke is based upon traditions stretching back to the early centuries of Constantinople as a...

BERLIN (AP) — Insurance companies that have long said they’ll cover anything, at the right price, are increasingly ruling out fossil fuel projects because of climate change — to cheers from environmental campaigners. More than a dozen groups that track what policies insurers have on high-emissions activities say the industry is turning its back on oil, gas and coal. The alliance, Insure Our Future, said Wednesday that 62% of reinsurance companies — which help other insurers spread their risks — have plans to stop covering coal projects, while 38% are now excluding some oil and natural gas projects. In part,...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The federal government announced Tuesday a program that will provide $1.3 billion in debt relief for about 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on loan payments or face foreclosure. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the farm loan relief program funded from $3.1 billion set aside in the Inflation Reduction Act allocated toward assisting distressed borrowers of direct or guaranteed loans administered by USDA. The law was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in August. The USDA provides loans to about 115,000 farmers and livestock producers who cannot obtain commercial credit. Those...

This would be funny if it weren't so outrageous. On his MSNBC show on Sunday, Mehdi Hasan, formerly of Al Jazeera, teed up notorious antisemite Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar to falsely accuse Donald Trump of making an antisemitic post, and to wring her hands of the rise of antisemitism in America. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Republicans in the House are planning to use a potential showdown next year over raising the federal debt limit to make changes in Social Security and Medicare, Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick reports.

Iranian schoolgirl ‘beaten to death for refusing to sing’ pro-regime anthem Fresh protests ignited around Iran by 16-year-old Asra Panahi’s death after schoolgirls assaulted in raid on high school in Ardabil Another schoolgirl has reportedly been killed by the Iranian security services after she was beaten in her classroom for refusing to sing a pro-regime song when her school was raided last week, sparking further protests across the country this weekend. According to the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, 16-year-old Asra Panahi died after security forces raided the Shahed girls high school in Ardabil on 13 October and...