Free Republic

...There are many like Yoo in South Korea who have chosen either not to have children or not to marry. Other advanced countries have similar trends, but South Korea’s demographic crisis is much worse. South Korea’s statistics agency announced in September that the total fertility rate — the average number of babies born to each woman in their reproductive years — was 0.81 last year. That’s the world’s lowest for the third consecutive year.... ...Lee Sung-jai, a 75-year-old Seoul resident, said...“These days, I see some (unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms. Did...

[H/T combat_boots]Hospitals are filling up all across America, and there are extremely alarming shortages of some of our most important medications. Health authorities are warning that RSV, the flu and COVID are combining to create a “tripledemic”, and there are simply not enough medications to go around. Personally, I am most concerned about RSV. It is spreading like wildfire from coast to coast, and we are being told that very young children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. I wrote an entire article about the RSV outbreak earlier this month, and since that time things have gotten even worse. Our...

[H/T combat_boots]Image of boxes of prescription medicine Tamiflu at link Tamiflu fills are at a 10-time high for this time of year, according to GoodRx.com. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images America is facing a shortage of four key medications used for common illnesses in children as virus season comes back in full force.Officials have declared a shortage of first-line antibiotics amoxicillin and Augmentin, which are used to treat bacterial infections. Tamiflu, the most common flu medication in the US, and albuterol, an inhaler for asthma and to open airways in the lungs, are also in short supply, according to the American Society...

The Walmart gunman who massacred six people inside a Virginia store where he worked had a manifesto on his phone - in which he revealed how he was upset about a change in his employment status. Police revealed that gunman Andre Bing's deadly manifesto, which has not yet been made public, contained claims that his co-workers at the supercenter in Sam's Circuit, Chesapeake, were harassing him. One of Bing's neighbors has also described the moment the gunman left for his rampage in silence - with victims' friends revealing to DailyMail.com that he would regularly have arguments over ‘working weekends’ with...

The Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement expressing its disapproval after Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban wore a scarf featuring a map of "Greater Hungary" during a match between Hungary and Greece. The map included a piece of Transylvania within Hungarian borders. The Foreign Affairs Ministry conveyed its “firm disapproval” of Orban’s gesture to the Hungarian ambassador in Bucharest, noting that the PM’s “attitude is in contrast with the atmosphere of openness that defined the relaunching of bilateral dialogue” between Romania and Hungary. “Any revisionist manifestation, regardless of the form it takes, is unacceptable, contrary to the current realities...

A combined report from two major public health bodies has declared measles an “eminent threat” to the global community. Released on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) feared that a record decline of measles vaccination rates and persistent large outbreaks meant that the respiratory virus was an “imminent threat in every region of the world”. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was “absolutely critical” that immunization programs were bought back on track to avoid what he said is a “preventable disease”.

The California judge who sentenced disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to more than 11 years in prison last week has recommended that she serve her time in a minimum-security women’s facility. Holmes, 38, was sentenced to 135 months in prison on Nov. 18 after she was convicted of defrauding investors who backed her bogus blood-testing company. According to a court filing from last week, Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California recommended she serve her sentence at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas.

For three days after the Colorado gay nightclub massacre Democrats and their media allies smeared conservative opponents of drag queen groomer hour as “stochastic terrorists” who are to blame for the tragedy. Then, to their chagrin on Tuesday, the suspect’s lawyers filed court papers saying he identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns “they, them.” Suddenly their right-wing homophobia narrative collapsed in a heap. Not that it caused them any self-reflection. They will just wait for the next opportunity to weaponize a tragedy. Of course, for all their emoting, they never had any genuine concern for the five Colorado victims,...

Please join us November 23 starting at 4pm as we start our annual tradition of Wolfenoot - A Celebration of Canines and Kindness! “Wolfenoot is about celebrating our pack- human and animal- helping where we can, and making the world a better, kinder place. A lot of you will have family in town for the holidays, so bring your pack for a pre-Thanksgiving celebration! Wolfenoot was originally created by a 7 year old boy. The boy invented a holiday called Wolfenoot. It is when the Spirit of the Wolf brings and hides small gifts around the house for everyone. People...

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden have had a full house over the past few months. Naomi Biden, the recently married daughter of Hunter Biden, has been living in the White House for months along with her now-husband, Peter Neal, and their Australian shepherd, Charlie. Details of the couple’s living arrangement were confirmed in a Vogue digital cover story....

Fifty-eight congregations in Louisiana have officially disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church, as the second-largest mainline Protestant denomination in the United States continues to experience schism due to its ongoing debate over homosexuality. The UMC Louisiana Conference held a special session on Saturday, approving the votes of 58 congregations who decided by at least two-thirds vote to leave the UMC. The Rev. Todd Rossnagel, the director of communication strategies at the Louisiana Conference, told The Christian Post on Monday that the 58 churches came after nine other congregations had disaffiliation votes approved at the annual conference in June. Earlier this...

Over 100 congregations in Florida have sued a regional body of The United Methodist Church, believing they are not being given fair terms for leaving the second-largest denomination in the United States amid its schism over homosexuality. A total of 106 congregations filed suit against the UMC Florida Annual Conference last Thursday in the Circuit Court for the Eighth Judicial Circuit in and for Bradford County, Civil Division. A specific issue in the lawsuit is how the departing congregations are required to pay the conference a "sum of money" to retain control of their church properties. The complaint alleges that...

Nearly one-third of the congregations belonging to a regional body of The United Methodist Church have left the mainline Protestant denomination amid its ongoing debate over homosexuality. At a special called session of the UMC North Carolina Conference Saturday, delegates voted 957-165 to approve the disaffiliation votes of 249 congregations seeking to leave the denomination. According to a statement from the North Carolina Conference, the number of departing congregations represented 32% of the regional body's member churches and about 22% of its membership. "The future is bright, especially because God has something to do with it," said North Carolina Bishop...

A writer who accused former President Donald Trump of rape filed an upgraded lawsuit against him Thursday in New York, minutes after a new state law took effect allowing victims of sexual violence to sue over attacks that occurred decades ago. E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer filed the legal papers electronically as the Adult Survivor’s Act temporarily lifted the state’s usual deadlines for suing over sexual assault. She sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for pain and suffering, psychological harms, dignity loss and reputation damage. […] Previously, Carroll had been barred by state law from suing over the alleged rape because...

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Hollywood would be hard pressed to come up with a villain as terrible as Anthony Fauci, which is why it should be no surprise that he’s being sued yet again. The White Coat Waste Project (a free market, animal welfare group where I am a Fellow) recently filed two new lawsuits against Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for refusing to turn over documents about the agency’s painful and wasteful experiments on dogs and monkeys. WCW first exposed the cruel experiments Fauci’s agency was carrying out on beagles last year. These experiments were taking place in the...

WARNING: Graphic footage: Fox News host Tucker Carlson reacts to NBC's coverage of the Colorado nightclub shooting on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'.

Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed this week that the social media platform's prior operators had used its censorship policies as a vehicle to de-platform only conservative viewpoints. Conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza had addressed recent headlines announcing the return of prominent right-wing accounts to the platform. He asserted that the absence of comparable stories involving left-wing figures being reinstated confirmed that the platform had disfavored conservative positions. "We don't hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter. Why?" he asked. "Because they were never kicked off in the first place. Their lies and misinformation simply escaped all scrutiny....

Thieves have stolen a hoard of Celtic gold coins...from the museum in Manching, Bavaria... Just before the break-in, nearby internet cables were cut causing widespread outages. Employees discovered shattered glass on the museum floor and the coins missing from their display case the next morning. They were unearthed during a 1999 archaeological dig near Manching - considered to be the biggest discovery of Celtic gold in the 20th Century. According to Mr Blume, the find gave people a glimpse into the daily lives of people living in Bavaria over 2000 years ago.

Porn star Aaron Brink said he was relieved to hear his son is 'not gay' after finding out the 22-year-old had been accused of slaughtering five people and injuring 18 others in a mass shooting at a gay club. A defense attorney had called Brink, who lives in Southern California, to tell him that Anderson Lee Aldrich was under arrest for the massacre at Club Q. 'They started telling me about the incident, a shooting involving multiple people,' Brink, who goes by the stage name Dick Delaware, told CBS 8. 'And then I go on to find out it's a...