Free Republic

We have our theory as to how we got here: The relative incompetence of the NFL refs combined with the league's sudden embracing of gambling has created skepticism about the legitimacy of game results. In other words, some NFL fans are now habitually accusing the league of "rigging" games - especially, of course, when that fan either loses by way of his team's failure, or loses a bet. And now comes the AFC Championship Game, with the selection of the officiating crew for the Kansas City Chiefs at Baltimore Ravens showdown ... and a respected NFL analyst floating the idea...

A number of electric car manufacturers in Vietnam plan to launch mini models, with the world increasingly interested in and strongly committed to reducing emissions. After signing a strategic cooperation agreement with the joint venture of General Motors and SAIC-Wuling on the manufacturing, assembling, and exclusive distribution of electric vehicles (EVs) in Vietnam, Hoang Minh Dong, director of TMT Motor, said the company would officially launch two versions of the Wuling HongGuang Mini EV and announce its sales policy on June 29-30 in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Wuling HongGuang Mini EV includes a standard and fully enhanced...

Human cells showing cell nuclei (cyan), mitochondria (magenta), and the Coxiella burnetii protein MceF (yellow). The figure evidences the co-location of MceF with cellular mitochondria. Credit: Robson Kriiger Loterio Researchers have discovered a previously unidentified protein with antioxidant properties produced by Coxiella burnetii, a Gram-negative intracellular bacterium. This breakthrough suggests potential new treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer. Researchers at the University of São Paulo, in collaboration with Australian colleagues, have discovered a unique bacterial protein capable of keeping human cells healthy even when the cells have a heavy bacterial burden. This breakthrough holds the potential for developing new treatments...

A person’s hearing can be damaged by loud noise, aging and even certain medications, with little recourse beyond a hearing aid or cochlear implant. But now, UCSF scientists have achieved a breakthrough in understanding what is happening in the inner ear during hearing loss, laying the groundwork for preventing deafness. The research, published on Dec. 22, 2023, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, links animal studies on hearing loss with a rare type of inherited deafness in humans. In both cases, mutations to the TMTC4 gene trigger a molecular domino effect known as the unfolded protein response (UPR), leading...

The Pentagon neither confirming or denying a report...US nuclear weapons...stationed northeast of London... Arab American leaders skipping a meeting with Joe Biden's campaign manager in Dearborn, Michigan... US politics a Reuters/Ipsos Poll showing President Donald Trump leading Joe Biden by five percentage points.. "Texas is going to continue to expand the border barriers that we are erecting" Speaking from India...Texas Governor Greg Abbott... The Biden Administration confirming a record number of "encounters" at the US southern border last month... The State Department formally approving the potential sale of F-16's to Turkey and F-35 warplanes to Greece... Colombia recalling its ambassador...

The eighth-ever prediction of an asteroid impact has delivered some bounty! The discoverer with the little meteorite in hand. Image Credit: Cevin Dettlaff Earlier this week, for only the eighth time ever, an asteroid that actually came with a rare 95-minute warning exploded in the sky over Germany and the hunt began for any potential pieces of meteorite that survived burning up in the atmosphere and fell to Earth. Now, researchers think they have found them. Fragments of asteroid 2024 BX1 about the size of a walnut have been recovered by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and colleagues,...

President Biden said Friday that he would use new emergency authorities to “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed” if Congress passes a bipartisan immigration plan that the Senate has been negotiating...

An 11-year-old boy with congenital deafness can now hear sound after he received groundbreaking gene therapy that replaces a mutated gene with the correct version, The New York Times reports. "There’s no sound I don’t like," said the boy Aissam Dam via interpreters to the NYT. "They’re all good." Dam's deafness was due to a mutation to a gene called otoferlin, according to the news outlet. The gene makes a protein that's a key component in relaying sound between the inner ear and brain, but a mutated version of the otoferlin gene impedes this process, impacting around 200,000 people across...

Jennifer Granholm is a lying dog-faced pony soldier!Yes, you heard me! (Actually, she was a beauty queen, so dog-faced is utterly inaccurate, but I couldn’t resist the Joe Biden reference)CNBC had the Energy Secretary on to discuss Biden’s horrendous decision to halt the permitting process for the export of natural gas–a huge blow to the oil and gas industry and to, not coincidentally given the border controversy, the State of Texas.FULL STATEMENT: And it's official. The White House announces a "temporary pause" on pending approvals of American LNG export terminals.The statement is below, and links here to the comuniqué itself:...

Size comparison of Venus and Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL/Magellan Venus is only slightly smaller than the Earth, and so has enjoyed billions of years of a warm heart. But for this planet, sometimes called Earth's sister, that heat has betrayed it. That planet is now wrapped in suffocating layers of a poisonous atmosphere made of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. The pressures on the surface reach almost 100 times the air pressure at Earth's sea level. The average temperatures are more than 700°F, more than hot enough to melt lead, while the deepest valleys see records of more than 900°. If...

The second to worst worst thing that can happen to a civil society is civil war. The only thing worse than that is what Venezuela is living with right now, a dictatorship in which there is no hope of democratic change or equal justice. In Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela his voice is the only one that matters. It has been that way since he took over as the hand-picked successor to communist blowhard Hugo Chavez in 2013. Since then, opposition figures have tried everything to get a fair chance at defeating Maduro at the ballot box and at every turn they...

An angry Donald Trump responded on social media Friday to the stunning $83.3 Million verdict in a New York courtroom ordering him to pay advice columnist E. Jean Carrol – who accused the former president of sexual assault – for defaming her. "Absolutely ridiculous!" he raged on his social media platform Truth Social. "THIS IS NOT AMERICA!" He vowed to appeal the decision:Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our Legal System is out of control, and being...

A new deep-sea mapping project has revealed near-continuous reefs of cold-water corals spanning an area the size of Vermont just off the southeast U.S. coastline. Dense thickets of the reef-building coral Desmophyllum pertusum (previously called Lophelia pertusa) make up most of the deep-sea coral reef habitat found on the Blake Plateau in the Atlantic Ocean. The white coloring is healthy – deep-sea corals don’t rely on symbiotic algae, so they can’t bleach. Images of these corals were taken during a 2019 expedition dive off the coast of Florida. Image courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration, Windows to the Deep 2019. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...

A Houthi missile shot and ignited an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, forcing a crew on the commercial ship into life boats. The attack appears to have caused the most serious damage to any of the ships hit by Houthi missiles since the Israel-Hamas war started.

Young voters are already frustrated that Joe Biden couldn’t deliver on an actual student loan bailout. Biden didn’t have the votes in Congress to pull off something of that scale, and doing so by executive decree was later deemed constitutionally questionable. He did so on a smaller scale because Joe, like crackhead Hunter, thinks the rules don’t apply to him. Still, it hasn’t masked the fact that young voters are souring on Joe; they think he’s too old, and now he’s enabling genocide in Gaza. You know there’s no genocide in Gaza. Still, the kiddos and the Muslim voters here...

A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY?..... The democrats main campaign theme for the upcoming election is that Donald Trump is a “Threat to Democracy”. We will hear that mantra over and over and over ad nauseam from President Biden and the democrats in the next several months. Get used to it. Now let's take a very close look at that charge......... 1. What Party wants to pack the Supreme Court for partisan political purposes? THAT is a Threat to Democracy. 2. What Party wants to eliminate the Electoral College for partisan political purposes? THAT is a Thread to Democracy. 3. What Party...

“Blood Libel” is not a familiar term for many of us Christians today since relationships have undergone warmth and cooperation between Christians and Jews, especially in the last two decades. However, the modern versions of blood libels have spread like the eleventh plague globally.The Middle Ages version of blood libel, a fictitious accusation that Jews murdered non-Jews (such as Christian children) to use their blood in religious rituals, has intensified again since October 7, 2023. While the medieval phrase “blood libel” may not be used explicitly, the term’s insidious meaning has lurked for centuries traveling in and out of history,...

Pope Francis is seeking to clarify that the Catholic Church is not changing its teachings about homosexual practices and same-sex relationships as the Vatican faces criticism for approving a document allowing priests to bless same-sex couples. Delivering remarks at the plenary session of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Friday, the pontiff addressed the “Fiducia Supplicans” declaration handed down by the Vatican office last month. The declaration, published on Dec. 18, allows priests to bless same-sex couples while stressing that “one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation.”As...

Luxury car manufacturer Bugatti has revealed the designs for its first foray into residential real estate – a 42-storey skyscraper in Dubai that will have two garage-to-penthouse car lifts. Developed in partnership with Dubai-developer Binghatti, the Bugatti Residences will be the first residential building branded with the car manufacturer's name. Bugatti is the latest luxury car brand to move into residential property, with Bentley creating a 61-storey skyscraper in Miami Beach and Aston Martin designing an angular black home in New York as part of its Automotive Galleries and Lairs service, which launched in 2019. Set to be built in...

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now facing official articles of impeachment. Rep. Charlice Byrd (R-20th district), an ally of former President Donald Trump and chairwoman of the Georgia Freedom Caucus, introduced H.R. 872 on Friday. AdvertisementThe resolution, which clocks in at ten pages, accuses Willis of committing "acts of malfeasance, tyrannical partiality, and oppression” with the "wrongful" indictment of Trump and his 18 co-defendants. The resolution calls her actions "the severest case of gross abuse of discretion." Willis not only faces allegations of colluding with the Biden White House, but she also faces accusations of having an affair...