Free Republic

A long-established Alzheimer's drug can help people with a disorder that causes them to compulsively pull at their hair or pick at their skin, a new clinical trial has concluded. Memantine considerably improved symptoms in 3 out of 5 patients with either trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder) or excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, researchers reported. Hair-pulling and skin-picking disorders affect an estimated 3% to 4% of Americans, Grant said. Patients obsessively pull out strands of hair or pick at their skin, often doing themselves real physical harm. Overly high levels of glutamate in the brain can cause nerve cells to become overexcited, and this...

He believes that experimental treatments like ayahuasca, psilocybin and mushrooms aided him in coming to terms with his mother’s death. "They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that…I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her," he told Cooper at the time. "When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy." He had also mentioned psychedelic use in Spare, writing that they allowed him to “redefine reality.” “Under the influence of these substances I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world...

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the incident, which forced the Bombardier Challenger 300 business jet to divert to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. The plane was carrying five people who were flying from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, according to the NTSB. The safety board said it was interviewing the two crew members and two surviving passengers and that it had removed the jet’s cockpit voice and data recorders. A Federal Aviation Administration database showed the jet belonged to Conexon, which is based in Kansas City, Mo., and brings fiber internet to rural...

“Born Again, Born from Above, Born of Water and the Spirit” (John 3:1-17) As most of you know, I’ve got a big birthday coming up this week, a milestone birthday, on March 7. But I have an even more important birthday coming up later this year, on September 10. Because it was on that date that I was “Born Again, Born from Above, Born of Water and the Spirit.” Let me explain. I was born physically on March 7, 1953. That was my birthday according to the flesh. But I was born spiritually on September 10 of that same year....

Mr Museveni, who was in a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, said a friendly environment in Uganda makes it unnecessary for one to work harderPretoria. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has told the South African business community, while pitching trade opportunities in Uganda, that the citizens he has led for nearly three decades are lazy. Mr Museveni, who was in a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, said a friendly environment in Uganda makes it unnecessary for one to work harder. "... we at the equator ... we have two rainy seasons - that...

A clip of a histrionic Russell Brand on Real Time with Bill Maher went viral on Saturday—in which the comedian, who owns multiple multi-million-dollar homes, accused political analyst and fellow guest John Heilemann of hypocrisy for criticizing Fox News from “within the castle of MSNBC.” In the two-minute clip, a shouting Brand maintained that MSNBC was fundamentally no different from Fox News. All this, he loudly insisted, contrasts with the “real journalism” of National Security Agency consultant-turned-Russian defector Edward Snowden and former RT host Julian Assange. Talking over Heilemann’s attempts to answer his criticism, Brand asserted that both channels are...

The relationship between the United States and its hemispheric neighbors has long been a critical driver of both foreign and domestic policy. Since the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has, to varying degrees, sought to instruct the nations of South and Central America on how to manage their affairs. Today, Americans must reverse that paradigm and look to a small Central American nation as a blueprint for restoring law and order to its rightful place in governance: El Salvador. When Salvadorans elected President Nayib Bukele in 2019, they gave him a clear enough mandate: Fix things. Since the conclusion of...

More than 50 years passed since the Jewish communities of Bilke and Vicinity Kulbasavo, Ulitkes, Mistichev, Rakovetz, Osy, Yilnitze, Likiveh, were eradicated. Two thousand of our dear ones, our parents, brothers, sisters and other family members died in the Holocaust by the hands of the evil forces in Europe, with great suffering and torture. All the Jewish Institutions, the synagogues, the houses of learning, the “Chadarim” Hebrew schools, the Yeshivah, the mikvah, hundreds of Jewish homes, businesses, the Jewish youth clubs, and many others, have either been destroyed or taken by the non-Jewish population. Bilke and vicinity is no more...

War Room founder and host Steve Bannon spoke on Friday at CPAC. Steve was a huge draw at the annual conservative event. And the Honey Badger brought the FIRE to CPAC! Steve Bannon: “[President Trump] is the leader of the most powerful political movement in American history!” VIDEO Steve Bannon bashes the elites: “Our elites led us here step, by step, by step.” VIDEO Here is the transcript from Steve’s excellent speech today. Steve Bannon: Thank you. I’d like to be able to report that we’re just in a crisis or there’s a crisis coming, but that’s not the case....

Walmart announced its plan to close its final two locations in Portland, Ore., at the end of March following underwhelming financial results. “We have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S. and unfortunately some do not meet our financial expectations,” the corporation said in a statement according to KPTV. “While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped.” The closures, which will result in nearly 600 employees being laid off, come after a statement by Walmart CEO Doug McMillion in December 2022 noting that record-breaking retail theft had undercut the company’s economic performance of...

A report obtained by The Tennessee Star, published by an organization of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers, reveals the pervasive infiltration of woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies in Tennessee medical school curricula and programs. The report from Do No Harm, titled “The DEI Bureaucracy in Tennessee’s Medical Schools: Woke Ideologies Are Reshaping Medical Education in the Volunteer State,” warns of vast implications for medical students and all who receive medical care in the state of Tennessee. ... Laura Morgan, MSN, RN, who authored the report for Do No Harm, told The Tennessee Star during an...

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The FBI has assessed that a leak from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan likely caused the COVID pandemic, director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday, a claim China said had "no credibility whatsoever". "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Wray told Fox News. His comments follow a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that the U.S. Energy Department had assessed with low confidence the pandemic resulted from an unintended lab leak in China.

Two men who discussed blowing up the Democratic headquarters in Sacramento in the wake of the 2020 election were sentenced to prison Wednesday, the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California told CNN. Ian Rogers of Napa, California, was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty in 2022 to a conspiracy charge and additional weapons violations, according to the US attorney’s office. Jarrod Copeland of Vallejo, California, meanwhile, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge and an additional count of destruction of records. Rogers is a...

In addition to being illegal, President Biden's attempt to grant loan forgiveness to college students transfers wealth from the working class to scions of the upper class. Fifty-six percent of the student debt is owed by people who went to grad school. None of this debt is owed by people who never went to college. Persons earning as much as $125,000 a year qualify for Biden's debt forgiveness program. Likewise, subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) assist wealthier Americans to purchase vehicles that are out of the price range of what the working class can afford. The majority of those receiving...

Through both his private-sector career and his time in politics, Donald Trump has earned a reputation for thinking big (or “big league”). While not all of The Donald’s visionary ideas have come to pass, the 45th president doesn’t let that deter him from continuing to push the envelope, taking things with an “aim for the moon so you land among the stars” attitude. With the 2024 election amping up and a likely primary challenge from popular Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on the horizon, Trump finds himself faced with the need to draft a platform that will not only distinguish him...

KHROMOVE, Ukraine (AP) — Pressure mounted Saturday on Ukrainian troops and civilians hunkering down in Bakhmut, as Kyiv’s forces tried to help residents flee amid what Western analysts say may be preparations for a Ukrainian withdrawal from the eastern city that Russian forces have spent months trying to capture. A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them. A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it...

The FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) affirmed that there may have been “undercover officers” and “confidential human sources” inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to whistleblower testimony obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.The FBI’s Washington Field Office requested the Boston Field Office open investigations into 140 individuals who took buses from Massachusetts to D.C. on Jan. 6., but denied the office’s request to see video proving those individuals were inside the Capitol, FBI whistleblower George Hill said during a Feb. 10 interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The office claimed...

Legislation being proposed in Montana, USA, would ban people who had been injected with a covid “vaccine” from donating blood or organs. The bill would also ban people who have high-count spike proteins from “long covid.” Proponents said the bill was about medical autonomy and the right to receive blood from donors that had not been vaccinated against covid. Other supporters of the bill said that blood recipients should not have to worry about adverse effects in an emergency. Representative Greg Kmetz, the sponsor of the bill, said he’s spoken with constituents who said they didn’t want “vaccinated blood making...

American families changed suddenly and dramatically in the 1960s. Marriage rates fell while divorces and nonmarital births increased (Lundberg and Pollak 2007). The share of mothers who were not married quadrupled between 1960 and 2010 (Figure 1). At the same time, married women’s employment and unmarried women’s welfare participation skyrocketed (Moffitt 1987, Goldin 2006). By 1980, mothers brought in one-third of family income, double their share in 1960. In 1991, Gary Becker reflected that “the family in the Western world has been radically altered— some claim almost destroyed—by the events of the last three decades” (Becker 1991, p. 1) Understanding...