Free Republic

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, nobody in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is believed to have expected the war to last more than a few months. As the weather turns cold once again, and back to the freezing and muddy conditions that Russia’s invading forces experienced at the start of the conflict, Moscow faces what’s likely to be months more fighting, military losses and potential defeat. That, Russian political analysts say, will be catastrophic for Putin and the Kremlin, who have banked Russia’s global capital on winning the war against Ukraine. They told CNBC that anxiety was rising in...

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has tested positive for Covid, and is unvaccinated, a federal judge told a courtroom Monday just as a civil defamation trial involving the one-time-Alaska governor and the New York Times was set to begin. Palin, who disclosed in March that she had been diagnosed then with the coronavirus, said last month that she will get a Covid-19 vaccine “over my dead body.”

The exchange took place Wednesday at a Russian Energy Week panel in Moscow moderated by CNBC journalist Hadley Gamble. The reporter had pressed Putin on reports of Russia withholding gas supplies to Europe to drive up prices, and after the Russian leader dismissed the claim, she asked how Moscow could convince its European partners that it’s a reliable gas supplier in light of such reports. “A beautiful woman, pretty. I tell her one thing, and she says something completely different. As if she didn’t hear what I said,” Putin said, turning to the male members of the audience. And while...

As the highly transmissible delta Covid variant continues to spread rapidly across the United States and elsewhere around the world, scientists and other health experts are warning that indoor mask mandates and other public health measures will likely make a return in the U.S. this fall. >snipHe said he fears there will be “major outbreaks” in the U.S. this fall, especially in states with low vaccination rates. “We are heading for a very dangerous fall, with large swaths of the country still unvaccinated, a surging delta variant and people taking off their masks,” Gostin added.

Doctors on the industry networking site Doximity are finding their news feed inundated with anti-vaccine comments from fellow physicians.

Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday. The page, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier. It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC. “It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said in email correspondence. He declined to provide additional details about those efforts. “Hoping to have more information...