Free Republic

Earlier this month, we warned that Chinese companies were flooding Europe with shoddy medical supplies, including defective personal protective equipment (PPE). Unfortunately given the mad rush for supplies as governments around the world scramble to buy them from any supplier available, no matter how shady, there hasn’t been enough time to discerningly inspect the equipment, and many dangerous lapses have accrued. And while stories about defective equipment on the Continent have been appearing with increasing frequency, this incident from Spain is particularly alarming: Breitbart has reported that more than 1,000 Spanish healthcare workers have gone into isolation after wearing faulty...

When the launch of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory missions failed in 2009 and 2011, the agency said it was because their launch vehicle malfunctioned. The clamshell structure (called fairing) encapsulating the satellites as they traveled aboard Orbital ATK's Taurus XL rocket failed to separate on command. Now, a NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) investigation has revealed that the malfunction was caused by faulty aluminum materials. More importantly, the probe blew a 19-year fraud scheme perpetrated by Oregon aluminum extrusion manufacturer Sapa Profiles, Inc., which Orbital ATK fell victim to, wide open. For almost two decades, employees would doctor...

Temperature measurements that are the basis for claims of global warming are defective and wrong. That’s the finding of a scientific team led by Anthony Watts. Watts is a meteorologist, editor of “Watts Up With That,” founder of the “Surface Station Project,” and my personal hero for his style and bravado. When global warming alarmists claim that the Earth is warming or that this was the hottest (year, month) ever, they are totaling up readings from rather simplistic, low-budget, small, automated weather stations scattered around the nation and the world. But about 90% of those weather stations violate the officially-published...

Insurers say faulty data from ObamaCare marketplaces is straining their ability to handle even the first wave of consumers who were able to sign up for health insurance using federally run exchanges during the glitch-ridden rollout of the new law. Executives at more than a dozen health insurance companies say they have received data from online marketplaces that is riddled with errors, including duplicate enrollments, missing data fields and spouses reported as children, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. "The longer this takes to resolve…the harder it will be to get people to [come back and] sign up," Aetna CEO...

After President Obama tapped Princeton University professor Alan Krueger to chair the Council of Economic Advisors, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wrote that Krueger “is arguably the leading labor economist in the country” and “known for bringing a near-superhuman rigor” to the subject. One wonders how any economist would earn a “near-superhuman” superlative for their research. One can particularly wonder in the case of Professor Krueger, who is known for his 1990s academic research that attempted to prove that employee wages were not subject to the laws of supply and demand. In 1993, Krueger and David Card published a study...

President's speech writers appear to have been informed by erroneous media reports, including an article on Slate.com, about a man who was dropped from his insurance plan and later died. President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn't known about. "They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it," the president said in the nationally televised address. In fact, the man, Otto S....

AG: Adhesive failure target of tunnel probe By Dave Wedge Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - Updated: 06:47 PM EST Attorney General Tom Reilly said today the investigation into the Big Dig tunnel collapse is focused primarily on the possible failure of adhesive anchors, a flaw detected as far back as 1999. The AG’s preliminary findings mirror a Bostonherald.com report yesterday that first identified “adhesive anchor failure” in the section of the tunnel where 38-year-old Milena Del Valle of Jamaica Plain was killed Monday night. Yesterday’s Bostonherald.com report also revealed the Mass Pike spent at least...

Global Warming Needs “New Look” at Mechanisms Involved As Europe struggles with another week of sub-zero temperatures- (Russia and the Ukraine have reported –40 degree temperatures and considerable loss of life)- recent discoveries have been causing “the Greenhouse Gas Gang” some additional loss of composure. Last year, according to the January 14,2006 of “New Scientist” magazine, environmental engineer Frank Keppler, and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute discovered that living plants emit a significant portion – 10% to 30 % ,depending on the season – of the methane –a more serious greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide- that makes its...

INDICTMENT THE HISTORY: ANALYSIS Backstory: The push for war Faulty intelligence in the run-up to invation BY CRAIG GORDON WASHINGTON BUREAU October 29, 2005 WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush's administration did all it could Friday to close the book on I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Don't have any contact with Libby about his indictment, staffers were warned. His security clearance - gone. And no goodbye meeting with the president. Libby "has left the White House, and I do not expect him to return," spokesman Scott McClellan said. If only it were that easy. Far from a clean end to the...

Faulty phone wrecked MI6 bid to kill Chemical Ali By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 08/01/2004) Faulty military satellite links caused the failure of an MI6-led operation to assassinate "Chemical Ali", a senior aide to Saddam Hussein. Secure satellite links to London broke down on the first day of the war in Iraq. The British commander, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, at first thought the Iraqis had mounted a successful "cyber warfare" attack. Military satellite phone links broke down, often for hours at a time, leaving British commanders without any secure line of communication to the Prime Minister, a major problem...

The city filed a lawsuit today against the owners and managers of the apartment building where 13 people died in a weekend porch collapse, arguing that the porch was too big, built with the wrong materials and lacked the proper construction permit. The city asked for hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties. Also today, hundreds of friends and family members attended funerals for several of the victims, remembering them as kind, caring and helpful. According to the city's lawsuit, the porch jutted out 11 feet from the building -- 1 foot more than is allowed under city codes. It...