Free Republic

Moderna said on Wednesday it had withdrawn an application seeking approval for its flu and Covid combination vaccine candidate after discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration. The company said it would resubmit the application later this year with vaccine efficacy data from a late-stage trial of its experimental seasonal influenza vaccine, which it expects to report this summer. The decision comes a day after the US FDA said it would require new clinical trials for approval of annual Covid-19 boosters for healthy people under 65 years old. Shares of the company have been battered by declining Covid revenue...

POLK COUNTY, N.C. – Three wildfires in western North Carolina are proving challenging for firefighters to beat because of rough terrain and debris left behind by Hurricane Helene. The Black Cove, Deep Woods and Fish Hook fires continue burning in Polk County, an area devastated by Helene almost six months ago. The Black Cove Fire, which began last Wednesday, has burned 2,076 acres and had no containment as of Sunday afternoon. Fire officials said it was started by a downed power line. Meanwhile, the Deep Woods Fire is the largest at 1,802 acres and also remains 0% contained. Officials said...

Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was ruining people’s lives. Maddow said, “I have to ask you if you if you have any response tonight to what the president’s top campaign donor, Mr. Musk, said about you bluntly calling you a traitor in response to you writing about your your trip to Ukraine?” Kelly said, “I was 22 years old, before getting sworn into the Navy, or as I was getting sworn in to the United States Navy. I swore an oath to our Constitution to...

The main fires in the Los Angeles area that broke out in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood Tuesday are zero percent contained at the time of this writing, according to the latest update from CalFire. The 2:30 p.m. ET update from CalFire showed five main blazes raging in the area — the Eaton Fire, expanding 10,600 acres; the Palisades fire, affecting 2,925 acres; the Hurst fire, affecting 700 acres; the Woodley Fire, affecting 30 acres; and now the Olivas fire, affecting 11 acres. The Tyler fire, which was on the list earlier, has been updated showing 100 percent containment. See the...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox News @ Night,” former Kamala Harris Campaign Surrogate Lindy Li said she believes that President Joe Biden is burning things down at the urging of First Lady Jill Biden and cited him coming out against stock trading by members of Congress. Host Kevin Corke asked, “This is from the Daily Mail, this is a piece from Emily [Goodin], very interesting, the headline reads, in part, ‘How Vengeful Jill Biden Is Urging ‘Depressed’ Joe to ‘Burn the Whole Thing Down’ in Their Final Days’, it reads in part, ‘Jill views Democrats on...

In the Texas Panhandle, the Smokehouse Creek Fire that broke out earlier this week has since extended to nearly 1.1 million acres, firefighters said Thursday, quickly becoming the "largest and most destructive" in state history. The historic blaze has now merged with another wildfire to stretch across a huge swath of the Panhandle.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has extended its residential No-Burn alert, the agency announced Wednesday. The alert is now set to expire on Dec. 28 at 11:59 p.m. **SNIP** The alert also prohibits using manufactured fire logs, such as those made from wax or paper, from burning on No-Burn days. The notice doesn’t apply to communities above 3,000 feet in elevation, the Coachella Valley, High Desert, homes that rely on wood as the main source of heat, or low-income households without natural gas services. “Smoke from wood burning can cause health problems. Particles in wood smoke — also...

Chris Christie is stepping up his rhetoric attacking GOP presidential frontrunner and rival former President Trump, releasing a new ad declaring Trump will “burn America to the ground.” Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is angling for a strong showing in New Hampshire to propel his long-shot campaign, stares directly into the camera during the 30-second ad. “Some people say I should drop out of this race. Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar. He pits Americans against each other,” he says in the ad running in the Granite State.

A teacher at a Brooklyn school serving students from a large Palestinian community is under fire for posting social media comments such as “Let Gaza Burn’’ and “There are no innocents.’’ Pro-Palestinian activists are demanding the city Department of Education investigate The Fort Hamilton School instructor Robert Rossicone over his comments. The PS 104 elementary-middle school serves students from the largest Palestinian-American and Arabic communities in the state. “Look at these ANIMALS. And the people who support this, or call for a ceasefire, are dogs as well,” Rossicone said in one exchange in response to a Hamas video that the...

Saleh al-Arouri bragged of Hamas’ ability to capture Israeli military personnel in a Saturday interview with Al-Jazeera. “We managed to kill and capture many Israeli soldiers. The fighting is still on.” 4 dead IDF Soldiers https://twitter.com/Zagonel85/status/1710739882262319614 Woman and children carted into Gaza https://twitter.com/i/status/1710733300988313866 More horrid deeds at link...

A supercar convoy broke traffic regulations by 'jumping red lights' and 'failing to give way' during the luxury rally that led to a horror crash and killed two in Italy on Monday, according to local media. Graphic footage captured the horrific moment billionaire Vikas Oberoi's blue Lamborghini appeared to turn into the path of a red Ferrari that was about to overtake him. The impact sent both cars flying into a camper van that flipped over, while the Ferrari Portofino belonging to two Swiss tourists crashed off the road and burst into flames. Swiss tourists Markus Krautli, 67, and his...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) issued what he described as a “formal travel advisory for socialists visiting Florida,” on Tuesday, warning that the state was “openly hostile” to socialists and their enablers. “The state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by Socialists and others who work in the Biden Administration,” Scott, who is also the state’s former governor, said in a press release. SENATE Rick Scott issues travel advisory for ‘socialists,’ warning Florida is ‘openly hostile’ to them BY SARAH FORTINSKY - 05/23/23 1:43 PM ET SHARE TWEET Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., walks outside a...

Sen. Tim Scott is about to launch a 2024 presidential bid, according to a new report from political insider Cockburn over at The Spectator. The South Carolina Republican has been flirting with the move for months, and an official announcement is now expected sometime in the next week.Scott will be joining a quickly growing field of lower-tier candidates, all having very little justification for running in the face of the two-man race going on at the top between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Presidential campaigns aren’t just about winning, though, and Scott may have other reasons for what he’s doing.🚨...

Cultural Marxism is dystopia peddling utopia through grievance narratives and rank emotionalism, the hallmarks of transgenderism. ... In a surreal moment at the Country Music Awards last week, co-host Kelsea Ballerini joined with several drag performers to belt out a campy version of her single, “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too),” an anthem taking aim at Tennessee laws denying wrongly named “gender-affirming care” for children. The performance was steeped in queerness, both in the pretend “oppression” of performers literally center stage at a nationally-broadcast awards show and in the academic sense, where drag serves as a kind of...

Mary Trump predicted Sunday on MSNBC’s “Velshi” that if her uncle, former President Donald Trump, were not the leader of the Republican Party, he would “burn everything down.” Anchor Ali Velshi said, “What do you think happens here?” Donald Trump wants to be relevant in the face of an election that has done something for him he never wanted: it has proved that he is potentially less relevant, and he thinks he is. How do you square those things? You maintain that he maintains the dangerousness in the Republican Party, by extension, the most dangerous person in America.”

While European nations are struggling to prepare for a cold winter with natural gas supplies choked off by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, reports have begun to trickle in that Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas company, is burning off massive amounts of natural gas daily. The BBC has reported the natural gas plant of Portovaya, near the Finnish border with Russia, is burning off an estimated $10 million worth of gas each day. According to the report, experts say that gas previously would have been exported to Europe. Miguel Berger, Germany’s ambassador to the UK, told BBC News that the European Union’s efforts...

Riots have broken out in Shanghai as starving residents begin to revolt against the Chinese Communist Party’s draconian “Zero Covid” lockdown more than three weeks in. Disturbing videos emerging on social media show desperate scenes inside China’s largest city, which has been placed under increasingly harsh restrictions as Omicron cases continue to break daily records. Crowds of residents were seen looting food parcels in one video posted to Weibo, while other clips showed furious mobs clashing with PPE-clad Covid prevention workers as they tried to break through barriers erected across the city. One video captured the sounds of screaming from...

An Indiana man has been sentenced to ten years in prison for participating in a riot in Portland, Oregon in 2020 during which he threw Molotov cocktails at police officers. Malik Muhammed pleaded guilty this week to 14 felony charges related to the Portland rioting and will have to pay $200,000 in restitution along with serving 10 years in prison, according to a statement from Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. “On September 5, 2020, Muhammed constructed multiple Molotov cocktails. He then brought those explosive devices, along with baseball bats, to a planned protest event that evening at the East...

According to court documents, on May 28, 2020, Montez Terriel Lee, 26, along with others, broke into the Max It Pawn Shop on East Lake Street in Minneapolis. Surveillance video footage showed Lee pouring a fire accelerant around the pawn shop and lighting the accelerant on fire. The fire destroyed the building. A second video showed Lee standing in front of the burning pawn shop and Lee could be heard saying, “[expletive] this place. We’re gonna burn this [expletive] down.”

DEVELOPING STORY: More than 500 homes and businesses have already burned as a massive wildfire sweeps through Boulder County, Colorado. Thousands of people have been ordered to immediately evacuate. Winds are blowing at more than 100 mph.