Free Republic

Very interesting video about the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier that sank in 1942 at the Battle of Midway.

When it comes to policing New York’s sprawling Medicaid program, Attorney General Letitia James has some explaining to do. As AG, James runs the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which is charged with prosecuting those who rip off the taxpayer-funded program or neglect and abuse its vulnerable patients. It ought to be a busy place, considering New York spends far more per capita on Medicaid than any other state. Yet on her watch the unit has been posting metrics that range from lackluster to surprisingly low, especially when measured against the scale of a $119 billion social program. **SNIP** As...

In Norway’s highest mountains, experts are scouring perilous terrain for pieces of the past, long stored in mint condition in ice patches. As temperatures rise across the world, glacial archaeologists must find the emerging artifacts before they degrade forever This arrow with a pressure-flaked arrowhead made from gray quartzite dates to the Late Stone Age or Bronze Age and was found on Norway’s ice. The pitch and the animal sinew used to fasten the arrowhead are still preserved, which is exceptionally rare. Espen Finstad, Innlandet County Municipality ============================================================================================ A brown leather loafer came into view on a patch of ice...

The reclusive and disgraced Eric Swalwell has paid a law firm more than $313,000 so far to fend off his sexual misconduct claims, according to a recent campaign finance disclosure. In his most recent disclosure spanning from April 19 to May 16, Swalwell’s campaign paid Sara Azari’s New York law firm in two separate payments of $250,000 and $23,251, totaling $273,251, for “campaign legal compliance.” The payments came after he had already given her $40,000 to defend him publicly. Swalwell, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race and resigned his seat in Congress due to the claims, has been quiet...

I got 9/10 - Newsroom-worthy That’s editor-level mastery. You clearly keep up with what's going on in the world. Or subscribe to all our newsletters. Either way — well done. That's the same as your average from previous quizzes. ============================================================= I didn't know the one about the 'RAP' star for some reason...........🙄

The Trump administration said Friday that people with temporary visas seeking to adjust their immigration status to obtain green cards must return to their home countries to “do so through consular processing,” in a major change from current practice. “From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Zach Kahler said in a statement. “When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into...

The mystery of how Egypt’s pyramids survived thousands of years of earthquakes may partly come down to smart engineering, according to a new study that examined how the Great Pyramid of Giza responds to seismic vibrations. Researchers found that the Pyramid of Khufu has a natural vibration frequency that differs sharply from the surrounding ground, helping reduce the risk of dangerous resonance during earthquakes. The study, led by Mohamed ELGabry and published in Scientific Reports, analyzed ambient seismic noise recorded inside the 4,600-year-old pyramid. Researchers said the findings may explain why the structure has survived centuries of earthquakes with little...

Ancient DNA extracted from human remains in Peru shows that long-distance migration along the Pacific coast began centuries before the Inca Empire expanded into the region. A study published in Nature Communications traces this movement to at least the 13th century, offering new insight into how coastal communities formed and connected long before any imperial force arrived. Jacob L. Bongers, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney and lead author of the study, analyzed genome-wide data from 21 individuals buried in the Chincha Valley of southern Peru. The results show that early inhabitants carried genetic ancestry from populations living about...

(WND)—Democrats in the U.S. House have killed a proposal for a Women’s Museum on the National Mall because it would be about … WOMEN! Applying their anti-science transgender agenda, that men can become women by saying they are women, they rejected the plan because an amendment would provide that the subjects in the museum be biological women. “The measure came up short in a vote of 204-216 after a handful of conservative GOP lawmakers joined Democrats in tanking the legislation that would secure a site for the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum on the grounds of the Mall,” explained...

A former Democratic megadonor blasted his party’s newly released election autopsy, arguing the party doesn't need a lengthy report to understand why voters rejected them. John Morgan, who has previously given over a million dollars to the Democratic Party, revealed he didn’t give "a penny" to the 2024 campaign once Vice President Kamala Harris took the helm. Speaking on "Jesse Watters Primetime," Morgan argued the DNC’s post-mortem report misses the mark, failing to address the party’s decision to embrace certain progressive social issues. "I don't know what they spent on this autopsy, but they could have given me nothing and...

President Donald Trump is championing the prospect of putting the kibosh on twice-annual clock changes by making daylight saving time permanent. A bill to make daylight saving time permanent has been folded into a larger measure that the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced in a 48-1 vote on Thursday. "Big Vote today (48-1!) in the Energy and Commerce Committee on a Bill including The Sunshine Protection Act, which will be making Daylight Saving Time Permanent! This is so important in that Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are spent every year by people, Cities, and States, being forced to change...

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more 50 people Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents. The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that...

"A French court on Wednesday delivered a dramatic verdict against Airbus and Air ‌France over France's worst air disaster, ruling that both companies were guilty of corporate manslaughter in the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash off Brazil....." [snip]

...Now with extra deep thoughts!

An alarming shift is emerging in US hospitals. A new study has revealed a disturbing rise in life-altering amputations nationwide, with one unexpected at-risk population seeing a particularly sharp increase in recent years. Even more concerning, those cases tended to be more severe, often involving loss of an arm or the upper leg above the knee. In the study, researchers from Mass General Brigham and University of California, San Francisco analyzed US hospitalizations between 2016 and 2022 to see how amputation rates have changed over time. Over the six-year period, amputations rose overall, by 35.3% (from 58.9 to 79.7 per...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Federal judges in Maine and Wisconsin on Thursday dismissed lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking to compel the states to hand over detailed voter registration information. U.S. District Judge James Pederson in Wisconsin said the state’s voter registration list is not a record that can be requested under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, as President Donald Trump’s administration argued. In Maine, Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker described the government’s claim as “half-hearted” and granted a state motion to dismiss it. The rulings were the latest in a string of defeats for...

Remember a few years back when a six-year-old boy went to school with a gun in his backpack after weeks of making threats against his teacher, and then shot the teacher in the chest? The teacher somehow survived, even though the student thought he had "shot that b**** dead." The teacher even successfully filed suit against the vice principal of the school for failing to act to stop the student. notthebee.com Jury finds vice principal responsible for ignoring repeated threats from 6-year-old who shot teacher and bragged about it In January 2023, a six-year-old black kid in Virginia went to...

Artificial intelligence is poised to drastically shrink the workforce at the nation’s largest bank, but the transition will happen without the pain of mass layoffs, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Thursday. In an interview in Shanghai, the renowned money man told Bloomberg that AI will make his employees vastly more productive. While the technology will ultimately reduce the need for certain jobs, Dimon said the bank will manage the shift through “natural attrition” — simply not filling the positions of the 25,000 to 30,000 workers who quit or retire each year. “There will be all different types of jobs,...

Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA/J. Pollard Image Processing: D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) =============================================================================== In A Nutshell A 37-member international team produced the most precise direct measurement of the Hubble constant ever recorded, with just 1.1 percent uncertainty. By linking a dozen different cosmic distance measurement methods into a single “Distance Network,” they confirmed the universe is currently expanding at about 73.5 kilometers per second per 3.26 million light-years. That rate conflicts with what the Big Bang’s ancient afterglow predicts by more than seven times the margin of error, a gap that makes a simple measurement mistake increasingly implausible. Resolving...

NASCAR icon Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup Series champion who won more races across the sport's three national series than any other driver in history, has died at the age of 41, the racing series announced Thursday. The Busch Family, Richard Childress Racing and NASCAR issued a joint statement Thursday saying that Busch died after being hospitalized earlier in the day as the result of a severe illness, three days before he was to compete at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. No cause of death was given. "On behalf of the Busch family, everyone at Richard Childress Racing...