Free Republic

Recent predictions have turned out wrong. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said 2022 would be a whopper, "predicting above-average hurricane activity [this] year – which would make it the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season." It wasn’t. In fact, in terms of combined frequency, intensity, and duration, 2022 represented a noteworthy "low mark" in the past 42 years of all hurricane occurrences on the planet. Talk of seven "above-average" seasons was the real whopper. The eleven years from 2006-2017 show an unprecedented period in which no major hurricane made continental landfall, and yet the "average" data set was selected to comprise these...

Researchers have identified the role that two key genes associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) play in the disease. The team have for the first time found that the genes TMEM97 and POLDIP2 play a role in regulating oxidative stress—a part of aging in the macula. The findings provide a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of AMD and help prioritize new gene targets for treatments. AMD affects the macula—the central part of the retina at the back of the eye—causing cells to gradually break down, often leading to blurred central vision. Previous studies have identified many genes that are...

A self-driving electric car caught fire at a warehouse in Phoenix earlier this week and firefighters suspect it might not be fully extinguished for weeks. KSAZ-TV reported a Waymo self-driving electric car burst into flames on Tuesday morning inside a building located near the interaction of Third Street and Buckey Road. The building’s sprinkler system has been credited with preventing the fire from spreading to other cars in the fleet. Electric vehicle fires are notoriously challenging to put out and the one that caught fire Tuesday was no exception. According to KSAZ-TV, more than 50 firefighters descended upon the warehouse...

Gov. Brian Kemp will sign a measure Friday to create a state commission with powers to investigate, sanction or oust local prosecutors, part of an intensifying campaign by state Republicans to punish district attorneys they see as soft on crime. The second-term governor was one of the chief advocates for the GOP-backed measure, which was approved mostly along party lines by supporters who cited embarrassing examples of “rogue prosecutors” they say neglected their duties. It will be signed by Kemp despite objections from Democrats and prominent prosecutors who view it as a power grab by empowering a new panel to...

Steve Bannon has described Ron DeSantis' recent world tour, which saw the Florida governor visit stanch U.S. allies Israel, Japan, South Korea and Britain, as "humiliating."Trump's former White House chief strategist made the comment during a monologue on his War Room podcast, which was broadcast on right-wing network Real America's Voice.DeSantis is widely believed to be weighing up a possible 2024 presidential bid, with polling indicating he is the second most popular choice with Republican voters, after Donald Trump. It is common for perspective presidential candidates to embark on trips abroad, in a bid to garnish their foreign policy credentials.Addressing...

Police videos “It was me! I need a tourniquet!” We’re now learning more about a situation when a Hobart-Lawrence officer’s gun went off, shooting him in the leg during a police chase. Police released footage from Officer Samuel Schroeder’s body and dash cameras from early December. Officers were asked to check on a person’s welfare. Officer Schroeder pulled that person over after a short pursuit, then was hurt when his gun fired. The video shows him falling to the ground shortly after a gun goes off. A closer inspection of the video shows Officer Schroeder’s finger was inside the trigger...

A former West Virginia teacher convicted of molesting a 14-year-old girl also kept a list of the “Top 10” most attractive middle school students and was caught masturbating on school property multiple times, a new lawsuit claims. The civil action contends that school administrators “turned a blind eye” to Ronald Paul Harris’ perverted behavior during his time as a history teacher and basketball coach at Oak Glen Middle School in New Cumberland in the decade before his sexual abuse conviction. The 63-year-old is serving a 10-to-20-year sentence after admitting in September to abusing a high school freshman in 2010 who...

Attacks on churches and Christian institutions on American soil are at an all-time high. The March 27, 2023 killings in Nashville — where a woman claiming to be a man (aka “transgender”) stormed a private Christian school and murdered three children and three adults — is just the spectacular tip of a growing but concealed iceberg. According to recent reports by the Family Research Council, “criminal acts against churches have been steadily on the rise for the past several years. ... there were more church attacks in the first quarter of this year than there were in the first quarters...

FOX News continued to lose viewers on Monday, a week after they announced they were removing Tucker Carlson from their lineup. FOX News has absolutely FLATLINED after firing their top-rated host Tucker Carlson! By Wednesday of last week, FOX News had lost NEARLY HALF of their audience at Tucker’s 8 PM time slot. Tucker was averaging 3.2 million viewers a night. On Tuesday FOX News had only 1.7 million viewers at 8 PM. And by Friday of last week FOX News audience sunk to 1.33 million viewers at 8 PM down from 3 million just one week ago. That is...

Next week, DeSantis will resume his political travel in the next week with visits to Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. [cut] Speculation about an official kickoff date has been rampant, covering much of the calendar between now and July-4 with potential locations ranging from his childhood hometown of Dunedin, Florida, to somewhere along the Rust Belt where his parents are from. [cut] The circle has expanded out of necessity as DeSantis builds out a nationwide campaign. Never Back Down, a super PAC expected to play an outsized role boosting DeSantis, has beefed up its staff and is already raising money and...

The Navajo Nation Council voted Thursday to oppose plans by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the country’s first-ever Native American Cabinet member, to ban oil and gas drilling on 351,000 acres of public land around New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park and establish a buffer zone surrounding the site. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management formally proposed withdrawing the 351,000 acres of public land surrounding Chaco Canyon in January 2021, with Haaland and other New Mexico congressional Democrats having co-sponsored legislation in 2019 to establish a 10-mile buffer zone around the historical park. The Navajo Nation Council passed a...

According to the American Heritage dictionary, this is the definition of Stupid: Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless. That applies to a lot of Americans… Democrat voters in general and in particular a majority of blacks, college students and white college educated women. Notice I said Democrat voters, not Democrat politicians. Democrat politicians may be many things, hypocrites, liars, traitors, and more, but they’re not stupid as defined above. Why? Because they do exactly what they need to do in order to win...

The US government has announced it’s sending 1,500 troops to the southern border with Mexico to “supplement” Border Patrol forces, but the troops aren’t there to protect the border and have instead been tasked with “data entry”, logging information about illegal aliens before they’re turned loose and let into the United States. With Title 42 border protections, which allow for the rapid deportation of illegal aliens, expiring in the coming days, the Biden Administration has claimed it’s moving to secure the southern border, but new information confirms that Joe Biden and company are preparing to do the exact opposite and...

I don’t sleep much after chairing a Braver Angels college debate. There’s a surge of excitement that reverberates for hours after I guide the collision of highly charged, diverse viewpoints that students carry into the classroom or auditorium. It defies gravity and buoys me up—which explains why I began writing this essay late at night in my hotel room after leading a debate on the campus of UNC Greensboro this past semester. Launched in 2018, the national College Debates and Discourse program is an alliance between Braver Angels, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), and BridgeUSA—organizations that believe...

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday announced it was ending its declaration of COVID-19 as a public health emergency of international concern, more than three years after it was first declared. “For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend, with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing and the pressure on health systems easing. This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” WHO DIrector-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press briefing Friday.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives intentionally overstated the duties of dozens of employees, labeling them as law enforcement agents so it could pay them more money and costing the government tens of millions of dollars.Investigators said ATF has been making overpayments since at least 2003. They identified more than 100 jobs in human resources and other administrative areas that were misclassified as criminal investigators.They said the government wasted roughly $20 million on overpayments in just one five-year period.ATF officials disputed the exact numbers but admitted to the overall nature of the scam. Officials said they are still...

LIKE MANY GREAT SPY STORIES, this one begins with a brief, mundane scene whose significance only becomes apparent later on. Around lunchtime on February 1, 2000, a man dropped a piece of paper near a table in a Middle Eastern restaurant outside Los Angeles and paused long enough to strike up a conversation with two Arabic-speaking men dining nearby. It would take FBI agents nearly 20 years to understand the full meaning of that small event. The man who dropped the piece of paper was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset, recently declassified FBI documents show. And the two Arabic-speaking...

U.S. federal and state officials are assessing whether "market manipulation" caused the recent volatility in banking shares, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, as the White House vowed to monitor "short-selling pressures on healthy banks." Shares of regional banks resumed their slide this week after the collapse of First Republic Bank , the third U.S. mid-sized lender to fail in two months. Short sellers raked in $378.9 million in paper profits on Thursday alone from betting against certain regional banks, according to analytics firm Ortex. Increased short-selling activity and volatility in shares have drawn increasing scrutiny by...

'In the absence of ammunition they're doomed to perish senselessly,' Yevgeny Prigozhin saysYevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would pull out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying in vain to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would withdraw on May 10 — ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war — because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place. "I declare on behalf...

A pair of state representatives are calling for an investigation into the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) for misuse of power against a local farm opposed to the Gotion battery plant. MDARD is investigating Majestic Friesians Horse Farm in Green Charter Township in Mecosta County. The investigation comes nearly two weeks after the owner of the farm, Lori Brock, hosted a rally against the proposed battery plant. “I feel like we’re being harassed,” Brock exclaims. “They are trying to shut me up. They’re trying to scare me and I’m not going to put up with it.” The rally...