Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — A study on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness has finally been published after being blocked from a government health journal.The vaccine was found to be about 55% effective against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and reduced COVID-19-related trips to emergency departments and urgent care clinics by 50%, according to the study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open. The findings are not particularly surprising: Researchers have repeatedly found that COVID-19 vaccines work. But the paper drew public attention after Trump administration political appointees decided not to run it in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication.They argued that the study’s design...

Stay-at-home mom Bari Sinoyannis thought she was buying a natural, plant-based alternative to pain relievers when she picked up kratom powder at a North Carolina smoke shop in 2022. “The fact that it’s labeled as a natural alternative to pain medication was why I fell for it. I was like, you know what? I’m gonna try it. And pretty much immediately I was addicted,” the 37-year-old told The Post. “I was like, oh, this is a miracle drug. This is curing my pain. This is curing my depression. Everything’s better now. Until it wasn’t.” What Sinoyannis didn’t know is that,...

Detail from a portrait of an elderly Thomas Jefferson as painted by Thomas Sulley, 1821. In a previous post, I examined some of the speculation about George Washington's death, and the curious legend that he had died having confessed himself to a Catholic priest. That has gone on to be the most popular post on this blog, garnering over 15,000 views to date. In the case of death of Thomas Jefferson, there is considerably less cause for speculation. For one thing, Jefferson had been a Unitarian/Deist from his youth, and a consistent critic of Catholic beliefs and practices well into...

A senior Estée Lauder executive who died in his husband’s arms moments after feeling lightheaded inside their $2.8 million New York City apartment suffered a pulmonary embolism triggered by cosmetic fillers. Kendal Ascher, 56, “suffered acute respiratory failure due to a pulmonary embolism connected to a foreign material after getting cosmetic filler injections,” the city’s medical examiner said Tuesday. Ascher’s Feb. 25 death was ruled accidental in the report, which was given to his loved ones over the weekend. Estée Lauder executive Kendal Ascher died suddenly in husband’s arms in their $2.8M NYC apartment Ascher’s grieving husband, William Howe, told...

I was interviewing the third person who told me they had died, when I noticed they were all saying the same thing. Their accounts of the other side differed in nearly every detail. One had been guided through an unearthly realm by a young woman on a butterfly’s wing. Another had communicated with a man who had died years before. The third was met by angels in an operating room. What they had in common was more discreet: while recounting their experiences, there was a shared gentleness in their eyes and a poised confidence about the nature of death and...

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - FOX 9 has learned the Department of Justice will not seek the death penalty against Vance Boelter, the man accused of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses, after prosecutors determined the crimes he faced were not eligible under federal law. Vance Boelter will not face death penalty The backstory: Boelter is accused of shooting House Speaker Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman in their Brooklyn Park home, as well as shooting Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman in their Champlin home on June 14, 2025. Prosecutors also allege that same morning...

From Michael Konrad at American Thinker When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty. The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing...

Anthony Stewart Head, best known for his roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Merlin, has died at the age of 72. He was surrounded by family at the time of his death, with his daughters, Emily Head and Daisy Head, sharing the heartbreaking news with the BBC. They shared he "passed away peacefully after complications from pneumonia." Initially known for his Nescafe commercials, Head gained international fame when he landed the role of Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He took on a fatherly role for Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, as he helped guide her...

LOS ANGELES — The personal live-in assistant for “Friends” star Matthew Perry was sentenced on Wednesday to 41 months in prison for repeatedly injecting the actor with ketamine, including the fatal dose that killed him in October 2023. Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, of Toluca Lake, California, had pleaded guilty in August 2024 to conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death, the Los Angeles Times reported. Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence in U.S. federal court in Los Angeles, CNN reported. She also sentenced him to two years of probation and tacked on a $10,000 fine. “You were privy to his...

Meghan McCain and her family are mourning the sudden death of her stepbrother, Douglas Shepp McCain, the eldest adopted son of late Sen. John McCain. He was 66. Doug McCain died Wednesday, according to his funeral home obituary, which did not disclose the cause of sudden death.

Her death triggered fears for New Yorkers and visitors alike, and now it's been revealed just how the woman who fell into an open manhole in midtown Manhattan died. Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Donike Gocaj parked her SUV on the side of 52nd Street near Fifth Avenue, out front of the Cartier store. The 56-year-old got out of her vehicle, closed the door -- and fell into an uncovered 10-foot-deep manhole. Gocaj died from her injuries in what Con Edison said was a freak accident. The utility company said surveillance footage suggests a large truck dislodged a manhole cover...

STATESBORO, Georgia; ANDERSON, South Carolina––The 2026 record pace of fatal dog attacks, especially pit bull attacks, remains ahead of the 2025 pace, when dogs killed 84 Americans, 64 of whom were killed by pit bulls. Pit bulls in the two weeks of May 2026 killed two babies in reported incidents. Other dogs are unknown to have killed anyone. The deaths of the two infants brought the total number of U.S. fatal dog attacks for the year to 32, 23 by pit bull. " . . .The first May 2026 pit bull victim, Lillian Drue Bradford Harris, of Statesville, Georgia, “was...

More than 1,700 people are trapped aboard a cruise ship docked in France after a 90-year-old passenger died from suspected norovirus — just days after a separate virus killed three and sickened multiple others on a different cruise. Passengers and crew traveling on the Ambassador Cruise Line are being forced to remain on the vessel after arriving in Bordeaux on Tuesday, French authorities said. The quarantine comes after an elderly passenger died after roughly 50 people started showing symptoms of norovirus — a highly contagious stomach virus that causes diarrhea and vomiting. The ship, which is carrying mostly British and...

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner will take up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury this week. Horner will rot away at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state’s death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison Tuesday within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a...

A few days ago, I wrote about hate being the lifeblood of the democrat party. Things have gone downhill quickly since then. Let's get right to it. Almost six years ago, the late and great Scott Adams said Republicans will be hunted. That was prescient. Then the other day I saw a post from Elon Musk on X. In it he said"If they’re willing to die to assassinate, imagine what they will do if they gain political power"Indeed. We are in war. A declared war. A not-so-civil war. On April 22 Hakeem Jeffries declared war on Republicans: “We are in...

In December I listened to an interview with Ben Sasse that stopped me in my tracks. And another in February. And another recently. That last one in particular not only challenged me, but ultimately has shifted something deep in me. It’s not hyperbole to say that I think Ben Sasse is currently the most interesting person in the world. Ben Sasse, the former senator from Nebraska, former president of the University of Florida, a man who by any measure had built the kind of life most people spend their whole careers chasing, sat in the most recent interview across from...

How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? I sat down with the former Republican senator Ben Sasse to hear how he is facing his own mortality after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. For Sasse, cancer brings pain, but also clarity, sharpening his focus on the state of our politics, his wife and three children, and the God he expects to shortly meet.

Google Engineer Jumps to His Death from 14th Floor of Company-s NYC HQ A Google engineer has jumped to his death from the 14th floor of the company headquarters in New York City in what appears to be an apparent suicide. The man, who has not yet been named, was found on the ground on Thursday’s 15th Street side of the building. Police found the man unconscious after receiving multiple phone calls about the incident. The Google engineer was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he later died. The officer discovered handprints on the 14th-floor ledge, according to one source speaking...

Prediction market Kalshi has drawn outrage for refusing to pay out winnings on a $54 million trade related to the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many bettors assumed they had won big on wagers that Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader” by Saturday after he was killed in joint US-Israeli air strikes over the weekend. But Kalshi – an American prediction market that allows users to bet on politics, sports, foreign affairs and pop culture – announced it would not be paying out any winnings on those wagers, since its guidelines prohibit markets “directly tied to...

Several conservative House Republicans are demanding the immediate resignation of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) following the release of damning leaked text messages. The scandal centers on a series of leaked communications between Gonzales and Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old regional district director for his office. She died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire at her home; her death was ruled a suicide by the Bexar County medical examiner’s office. As The Gateway Pundit reported last year, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a married father of six, is accused of carrying on an extramarital affair with his senior aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, who...