Free Republic

(Reuters) - There is now an imminent threat of measles spreading in various regions globally, as COVID-19 led to a steady decline in vaccination coverage and weakened surveillance of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. public health agency said on Wednesday. Measles is one of the most contagious human viruses and is almost entirely preventable through vaccination. However, it requires 95% vaccine coverage to prevent outbreaks among populations. A record high of nearly 40 million children missed a measles vaccine dose in 2021 due to hurdles created by the COVID pandemic, the WHO and the U.S....

Twitter has decided to label the #DiedSuddenly movie stream "misleading" and has made it so it cant be shared, liked, or replied to.

We’re going down! November’s consumer sentiment survey from University of Michigan is one for the books. It printed at 33.0, the lowest in the history of the survery that goes back to 1977. This chart shows how The Fed and Federal government threw trillions at the Covid economic shutdowns and the aftermath. BTW, the great blues tune “Going Down” was written by Don Nix of Alabama State Troupers fame.

A woman plummeted 1,000 feet to her death after slipping off the edge of a cliff while hiking on a mountain in Italy. “The news that arrived this evening of the tragic death of the young Maria Cristina Masocco, which took place in the afternoon in the mountains, strikes us in a truly profound way,” lamented Viviana Fusaro, the mayor of Feltre, Belluno, located in the region of Veneto, where the accident took place. The disaster occurred around 4 p.m. on Sunday while Masocco, who lived in Feltre, was hiking with three friends in the Dolomites, the highest peak in...

On this date in 1955, the East German Prime Minister’s own chief secretary was beheaded as a spy, along with her lover. You’ll find this affair blurbed in the Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage, so you’d figure it’s got to be good — but it wasn’t quite James Bond. (They never really are.) Their careers went in opposite directions thereafter. Barczatis scored a plum appointment as Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl‘s administrative aide while Laurenz got booted out of the Communist party altogether for political unreliability: he’d been a mere social democrat before the communist takeover. Laurenz started scratching out a living...

A fierce online debate has erupted after a New Zealand McDonald’s employee filmed himself quitting his job in the middle of his shift after he was asked to clean cooking equipment. Tiktok user Fionn_McCallum posted his abrupt walk-out with the caption “They really thought I was going to clean that”. “Hell no, I am not cleaning that, I ain’t cleaning that,” he said in the 26-second clip. The fast food worker tells his manager that he quits. Angered by the announcement, the manager can be heard yelling at the crew member while his teammates beg him to stay.

A Michigan man has been charged with threatening to kill a California congressman and the head of the FBI — because he was convinced they were in a “child slave rape ring” with Tom Cruise and Elon Musk. Neil Matthew Walter, 32, was initially investigated for making a death threat in a Nov. 3 voice message for Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat, according to an affidavit. “John. Hey John. You’re gonna die, John. You’re gonna die,” he said, according to the court document.

Katherine Ryan has claimed that a very prominent British TV personality is a “perpetrator of sexual assault.” The Canadian comedian, 39, said she previously confronted the unnamed man in front of others but said his alleged unacceptable behavior remains an “open secret” in the industry. Speaking to Louis Theroux on a recent episode of his “Interviews…” series Tuesday, “The Duchess” star elaborated further on this particular high-profile figure, without divulging his name.

"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg slammed critics of Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday after having COVID-19, saying it "will kill you." Fauci addressed White House reporters on Tuesday as he prepares to step down from his government post, where he reiterated people should get vaccinated and boosted, in addition to considering testing for the virus before gathering for Thanksgiving. Goldberg grew heated after playing the clip. "Now that suggestion set – people’s heads exploded from outrage," Goldberg said. "A lot of conservatives who posted about how much they hate Dr. Fauci that they would rather get Covid than ever test...

Arizona Cardinals offensive line coach and running game coordinator Sean Kugler was fired after he allegedly groped a woman in Mexico City over the weekend, sources told ESPN. Mexican authorities were notified of the incident, which happened Sunday night, and then informed the Cardinals, who terminated Kugler and sent him back to Arizona on a flight Monday morning. The Cardinals had arrived in Mexico City on Saturday. Kugler is the second Cardinals assistant coach to be accused of assaulting a woman this year.

Kanye West says he asked Donald Trump to be his 2024 presidential running mate during a meeting at the former president’s Florida estate this week. The 45-year-old rapper — who has returned to Twitter after he was banned over his an anti-Semitic rant — said he traveled to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach to make the pitch, and a Trump source confirmed the visit to The Post Wednesday. “First time at Mar-a-Lago. Rain and traffic. Can’t believe I kept President Trump waiting. And I had on jeans. Yikes,” West tweeted Tuesday night. “What you guys think his response was when I...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the highest-ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, pressed new Twitter CEO Elon Musk over data security concerns raised by a Twitter whistleblower who came forward before Musk completed his acquisition of the company. Grassley’s Wednesday letter to Musk focuses on issues Musk inherited when taking over Twitter, differing from pushback from the senator’s Democratic colleagues that centers on changes Musk has made since taking the reins at the end of October. Grassley told Musk Twitter’s former CEO cited “the ongoing litigation with you as an excuse” to sidestep questions about the whistleblower allegations. Now that Musk...

Iran considered carrying out a terror attack at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in an attempt to disrupt the event, military intelligence chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, according to The Jerusalem Post. Speaking at an Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv, Major General Aharon Haliva said that the "only thing" stopping Iran from an act of terror was concern over how host country Qatar might respond, the report said. The FIFA World Cup 2022 kicked off on Sunday and is set to last through December 18. Iran's national team is one of...

New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman has a knack for propping up President Joe Biden's atrocious economy at the expense of making himself look foolish. Krugman belched up another word salad worth 846 words with a blaring headline: “How Democrats Can Fight This G.O.P.” After haranguing Republicans for supposedly not having “policy ideas,” Krugman bleated that a GOP-controlled House of Representatives with a narrow majority will be more “destructive” in part because the “economic environment, which was a headwind for Democrats this year, will probably (although obviously not certainly) begin to look better heading into 2024.” Inflation, praised Krugman,...

As workforces shrink and opting out becomes increasingly attractive, Global Growth implodes on both the production and consumption sides.A funny thing happened on the way to permanent global growth. Actually, three funny things happened. One is the cheap, easy-to-access materials that enabled a vast expansion of consumption have been pulled out of the ground and what's left will cost more going forward, meaning there will be less to squander on consumption.True Believers are confident that some Savior Technology will emerge and scale up globally to save us from any nasty reduction in consumption, but they overlook the inconvenient fact that...

@laurenboebert you have played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws. You don’t get to “thoughts and prayers” your way out of this. Look inward and change.

BEIJING — Surging Covid infections across mainland China make it harder for the government to achieve zero-Covid without reverting to a harsh lockdown, Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said. In the last few days, the daily case count has climbed to around or more than 28,000 — near levels seen in April during a stringent lockdown in Shanghai, according to CNBC calculations of Wind Information data. The figures showed the last time mainland China saw only a handful of daily infections was in June, shortly after Shanghai eased its restrictions. The latest Covid wave has hit the southern city...

Employees at the world's biggest Apple iPhone factory were beaten and detained in protests over pay amid anti-virus controls, according to witnesses and videos on social media Wednesday, as tensions mount over Chinese efforts to combat a renewed rise in infections. Videos that said they were filmed at the factory in the central city of Zhengzhou showed thousands of people in masks facing rows of police in white protective suits with plastic riot shields. Police kicked and hit a protester with clubs after he grabbed a metal pole that had been used to strike him. Frustration with restrictions in areas...

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns on babies’ language and social skills are still “ongoing,” according to a report published on Wednesday. The report (pdf), published by the Institute of Health Visiting and charity alliance First 1001 Days Movement, includes a review of relevant reports, research, and national data, and the results of a new UK-wide survey taken between July and early September of 555 professionals and volunteers who work with babies and their families. According to the report, most of the professionals said the most significant ongoing impact of the pandemic on children is on their...

It's been nearly one month since Elon Musk entered Twitter's San Francisco headquarters carrying a sink, and he's apparently still discovering new areas of the seven-story, 480,000 square foot office space. On Tuesday night, Musk stumbled upon quite the find in a closet at Twitter HQ and, while it's not literal skeletons, the find does help explain part of what was wrong with the ideological homogeneity of Twitter's corporate culture that favored leftists and castigated conservatives for years. In a video posted to Twiter, Musk can be heard explaining "Here we are at the merch, and there's an entire closet...