Free Republic

Dr. Anthony Fauci accused Republican Senator Rand Paul of personally attacking him for 'political gain, distorting 'everything' he says' and inspiring 'crazies' to want to kill him during another tense battle in a hearing on Tuesday. The White House chief medical adviser erupted at his nemesis for suggesting he was using his $420,000 salary, the highest in the federal government, to 'take down' scientist he disagrees with and for calling him 'lead architect' in the pandemic response that's led to 800,000 Americans dying under President Biden. Paul, who has called for Fauci to be fired and prosecuted, referenced emails published...

Doctors in Baltimore have transplanted a genetically-modified pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life, in a medical first. Three days later, David Bennett, 57, is said to be recovering and doing well after the nine-hour procedure. Experts say it is too soon to know if the operation really will work, but it marks a step forward in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Bennett is breathing on his own without a ventilator, but is still using a Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine that helps pump blood throughout his...

Crows are even more surprisingly smart than we thought. But do they have true consciousness? Research shows that crows and other corvids “know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds,” according to STAT. This is considered a cornerstone of self-awareness and shared by just a handful of animal species besides humans. In new research published in Science, German scientists put crows through a series of puzzling tasks. During those tasks, the scientists measured neural activity in different kinds of neurons with the goal of tracking how crows were sensing and reasoning through their work. They...

A powerful cold front is expected to rip through the Northeast and Midwest this week, with extreme temperatures reaching as low as -45 degrees as the US braces for the coldest air chill in three years. More than 15 million people are under wind chill advisories after temperatures plummeted to -25 to -45 degrees on Monday. The National Weather Service also warns that parts of northern New York and Massachusetts could see wind chills of between 35 and 40 below zero between 7pm Monday to 3pm on Tuesday that could cause 'frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10...

Lenders are again welcoming borrowers with less-than-pristine credit, a vote of confidence in the health of the U.S. economy and Americans’ finances. An estimated 29.2 million general-purpose credit cards were issued to people with credit scores of 660 and below last year, according to projections from credit-reporting firm TransUnion, up from 20.4 million in 2020 and 26.3 million in 2019. That is generally the threshold where lenders view consumers as having fair, rather than good, credit. Even subprime borrowers, a group shunned during the pandemic, are finding it easier to get credit. Lenders issued roughly 11.6 million general-purpose credit cards...

Mobile Attacker’s Mindset Series – Part II Evaluating how attackers operate when there are no rules leads to discoveries of advanced detection and response mechanisms. ZecOps is proudly researching scenarios of attacks and sharing the information publicly for the benefit of all the mobile defenders out there. iOs persistence is presumed to be the hardest bug to find. The attack surface is somewhat limited and constantly analyzed by Apple’s security teams. Creativity is a key element of the hacker’s mindset. Persistence can be hard if the attackers play by the rules. As you may have guessed it already – attackers...

Unsuspecting skiers taking the chair-lift at a North Carolina mountain resort received the coldest of showers after another skier bowled over a buried water hydrant, shooting a geyser of freezing water more than 50 feet into the air. A harrowing video captured one skier at Beech Mountain ski resort getting battered by the powerful blast of frigid water for nearly a minute on Friday. The nonstop spray buffeted the suspended skier and the person was seen dangling from the chair-lift before finally getting to safety. The incident started after a skier knocked over a hydrant used for snow-making near the...

The so-called Gender Unicorn - a cartoon illustrating different sexual and gender identities - has emerged in Western educational initiatives over recent years. In Alberta, Canada, for example, it received criticism in 2017, and the Alberta Teachers Association removed it from handbooks when aspiring to create LGBT-friendly classrooms. Resident Assistants (RAs) at Western Carolina University have been mandated to attend "woke" training in gender and racial sensitivity on how to avoid the usage of certain potentially offensive phrases and were offered the "Gender Unicorn" illustration to help with the said studies, Fox News has reported. According to one of the...

The Ty-Nant cat sanctuary near Port Talbot in South Wales is 'a not-for-profit organisation that helps cats find loving homes'. It also raised more money in 2020 than one of the most high-profile, A-list charities in the world. So too did the Surrey And Hampshire Canal Society, the French Porcelain Society and the Hindley Amateur Rugby League Football Club — to name only a few with similar financial profiles that can be found in the Charity Commission's records. But that is not to say that these worthy — if somewhat niche — causes drew in millions of pounds of donations;...

it’s apparently difficult to find a therapist in Seattle. That’s the claim by Seattle’s wokest columnist, Naomi Ishisaka from the Seattle Times, where she serves as the assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development. Borrowing from her own experiences and those of readers, Ishisaka says finding a therapist (especially one covered by one’s insurance) is a “soul crushing exercise.” But it’s not difficult for the reasons you might think. The complaint is that people can’t find therapists who identify in ways that meet their woke requirements. To be “culturally competent” in this context, a therapist must share identical...

A slew of young women have taken to TikTok to reveal how they benefit from being really, really, really good-looking. The content creators have shared videos discussing their “pretty privilege,” saying they’re showered with free gifts and attention simply for being conventionally attractive. Chicago-based beauty Anjola Fagbemi, who uses the handle @bejewelledbud, created a viral TikTok video listing all the freebies she received last summer courtesy of her “pretty privilege.”

Jeremy Clarkson has been left with a painful injury after trying to herd his cows into a barn. The former Top Gear host, 61, bizarrely claims that one of the animals on his Diddly Squat Farm in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, has a vendetta against him after kicking him in his nether regions. As a result of the cow nestling its head between Jeremy's legs, the TV personality - who showcases his farming antics on Amazon Prime show Clarkson's Farm - is nursing "smashed testicles." Comparing the cow to famous martial arts icon Bruce Lee, Jeremy has named the strong four-legged...

The anti-fogging sprays and cloths that have become popular to help stop glasses from steaming up when wearing a face mask may be exposing users to carcinogens. That is the warning from Duke University-led experts, who found these treatments may contain cancer-causing per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS). The team subjected four anti-fogging sprays and five anti-fogging cloths — all of which have received top ratings on Amazon — to high-resolution mass spectrometry. Specifically, the chemical analysis found that all nine products contained so-called fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs) and fluorotelomer ethoxylates (FTEOs). These are two types of PFAS that have, until...

Cats are known to sit on objects to mark their territory with pheromones, but a recent image of five felines huddled on Starlink dish is a more bizarre seating choice. Twitter user Aaron Taylor shared the snap online, noting the cats are using the dish to stay warm. ‘Starlink works great until the cats find out that the dish gives off a little heat on cold days,’ reads the tweet. The image shows a blanket of thick snow surrounding a SpaceX Starlink satellite dish with the cats huddled together on the device, which was using its Snow Melt Mode to...

A woman in Argentina stripped down to her underwear and attempted to use her dress as a face covering to get around an ice cream parlor’s mask mandate, video shows. “Don’t ask for my face mask, I’m putting it on,” she boldly tells the staff at the store in Godoy Cruz, a city in the western province of Mendoza, before she strips down. The surveillance footage also shows a man approach the counter with his three daughters as the comical scene unfolds.

Generations of women last night demanded an urgent inquiry into a drug they call the 'silent Thalidomide'. A synthetic oestrogen known as Diethylstilbestrol (DES) was given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriage – and to dry up breast milk. But it has since been linked to a raft of health conditions including cancer, infertility and early menopause. A Daily Mail investigation today lays bare the devastating impact of this little-known drug which has ravaged the bodies of three generations of British women since 1940. Marion McMillan, 73, was given DES 50 years ago to dry up her breast milk after...

SNIP Emerging science shows that a human’s microbiome – their constellation of gut microbes – has a far greater effect on health than anyone previously imagined. This enormous ecosystem we host in our bodies includes bacteria, fungi, viruses and more. The collective genetic material in the microbiome performs myriad functions that affect our mood, our immunity, and our physical and mental health. Crappy western diets and antibiotics are depleting our microbiota. And in some cases, a person’s microbiome is disordered enough that it needs a little boost from someone else’s. “We’re showing that you can actually reimagine a food system...

A member of the European Parliament suggested to the European Central Bank (ECB) on Sunday that BioNTech founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci be depicted on one of the notes. German Free Democrat (FDP) politician Moritz Körner was the first one to make the suggestion. “Important European figures like the BioNTech founding couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci should be printed on the new euro notes,” said Körner, as quoted by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “Their work has saved the lives of millions of Europeans. The trajectory of their life is an impressive story about integration, progress, entrepreneurship, scientific...

Millions of Americans watched the events in Washington last Jan. 6 unfold on live television. Police officers testified to the violence and mayhem. Criminal proceedings in open court detailed what happened. Yet the hoaxes, conspiracy theories and attempts to rewrite history persist, muddying the public’s understanding of what actually occurred during the most sustained attack on the seat of American democracy since the War of 1812. […] Unfounded claims that the rioters were members of antifa went viral first, only to be overtaken by a baseless claim blaming FBI operatives. Other theories say the rioters were peaceful and were framed...

White people infected with COVID in New York State - the hardest hit state in the country - are in jeopardy of being turned away from potential lifesaving treatments in favor of other more at-risk races because of a national shortage of two promising types of medical treatments. In a shocking memo sent out by the state's Health Department, white residents were told not to bother trying to get Pfizer's Paxlovid pill or monoclonal antibody treatments. 'Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk...