Free Republic

Blackouts could hit as many as 3 million California homes and business Sunday evening as an epic heat wave smothers the West, the manager of the state’s electricity grid said. It would be one of the largest blackouts in California history, if not the largest. After narrowly avoiding blackouts Saturday night, the Independent System Operator, which runs the grid, said it was facing a shortfall of 4,000 megawatts unless Californians comply with urgent pleas for conservation. Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article245533025.html#storylink=cpy

Breaking — Mysterious explosions rock Tehran… A series of explosions have rocked the outskirts of the Iranian capital Tehran, as well as the cities of Garmdareh and Quds, Iranian media reported amid speculation that missile depots were the intended target. Citing social media, the official news agency IRIB reported an explosion in western Tehran in the early hours of Friday local time. More explosions were reported in Garmdareh and Quds, the Mehr News Agency added. The Saudi-based Al-Arabiya television reported that the explosion took place in missile depots of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), southwest of Tehran. Iranian officials...

Another deadly explosion was heard in western Tehran on Friday, according to local reports of a blast at a missile warehouse. However, sources claim there have been more than one in multiple regions. An intelligence official told The New York Times said that Israel was possibly behind the attack.Initial reports say the confirmed blast hit a missile warehouse belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Authorities have not yet provided any information on the cause of the blasts. Journalist Hasan Sari claims there was more than one explosion, with others hitting the regions of Garmdareh and Quds. Social media...

As the mass hysteria that allowed so many governors to frighten citizens into mindless obedience to inane and oppressive edicts has waned, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee (D) is irate. "I am the ruler of this state," he declared. "It is everyone's obligation—citizen and non-citizen, alike—to do what I tell them to do." A major irritant has been the increasingly widespread refusal of sheriffs and local police to cite, arrest, shutdown, or otherwise harass individuals attempting to enjoy the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness our representative democracy is meant to secure. "I consequently have ordered the Department of Labor...

This Could Be a Clue… …as to why Minnesota’s COVID-19 model was wrong by at least one, and perhaps two, orders of magnitude: Before Friday, March 20, Marina Kirkeide, who graduated from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering in 2019, was a School of Public Health part-time research assistant working on HPV transmission for Kulasingam. On a gap year before starting Medical School at the University in fall 2020, Kirkeide also had a second job as a lab tech at St. Paul’s Regions Hospital. That Friday, Kulasingam called her and two other research assistants and asked if...

Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s Executive Director of Health Emergencies, did not mince words when the organization was asked on Monday about the concept of herd immunity. "This idea that, 'well, maybe countries who had lax measures and haven't done anything will all of a sudden magically reach some herd immunity, and so what if we lose a few old people along the way?' This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation," Ryan said..

Patients in New York hospitals must now test negative for the coronavirus before they can be discharged to nursing homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday — partially reversing a policy that forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable. “We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “Period.” The ruling partially overrides a controversial March 25 order that nursing homes cannot deny admission or readmission on the basis of a positive or suspected COVID-19 case.

Cuomo has come under increasing criticism for a March 25 directive requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients. The directive read, in part (original emphasis): “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.” The policy is being scrutinized more closely as some 25% of the state’s fatalities from coronavirus have occurred in nursing homes. Critics argue that the state should not have...

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday that he has put First Lady Chirlane McCray in charge of a special coronavirus task force — insisting her work with her embattled ThriveNYC initiativemade her perfect for the new job. McCray will work with Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson in leading a task force on racial inclusion and equity to make sure the Big Apple rebounds as a “better and more just society than the one we left behind,” Hizzoner said. The mayor insisted that the First Lady deserved her place at the head of the new initiative because of the ideas she generated  —...

A “glaring scientific breakdown” at the CDC’s main laboratory was behind the federal agency’s failure to quickly make a coronavirus test kit... One of the three test components became contaminated because the way the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory put the kits together violated sound manufacturing practices... cross contamination because the chemical mixtures were put together into testing kits in a lab space that was also dealing with synthetic coronavirus material. The Food and Drug Administration also concluded the CDC violated its own laboratory standards,

Millions of masks purchased by the State of Illinois from China may not be useable by those on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, after multiple states recalled similar equipment Thursday. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has been scouring the world for gowns, gloves and masks to protect medical workers and first responders across the state from COVID-19. An alert from the Illinois Department of Public Health followed, saying the KN95 masks may not meet performance standards and counterfeit masks are “flooding the marketplace.” “You know things come in shipments of a million – you can’t go through one mask...

A delay by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in quickly making coronavirus test kits available was the result of “a glaring scientific breakdown” at the CDA central lab, The Washington Post reported. The Post reported that CDC facilities that assembled the testing kits “violated sound manufacturing practices, resulting in contamination of one of the three test components used in the highly sensitive detection process.” James Le Duc, a virologist and former CDC officer who now heads the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, told The Post that the situation was “really a terrible black mark on the CDC,...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted President Trump’s decision to freeze funding for the World Health Organization, vowing Wednesday to “swiftly” challenge the action amid the coronavirus crisis. In a statement, Pelosi, D-Calif., said the halt in funding amid the global pandemic “is senseless.”

Two U.S. states — Alabama and Massachusetts — have begun providing the addresses of those known to have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to police in a bid to contain the spread and protect first responders who might answer a call where a coronavirus sufferer is involved. Alabama began providing the addresses — but not names — to police and other emergency responders starting more than a week ago. The information is being distributed to 85 emergency communications districts in the state, and is then relayed to police officers and other first responders when they go out on calls. “It’s only...

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Bill and Hillary Clinton donated more than 400 pizzas to all of the hospitals in their home county of Westchester, NY. The donation was heralded by a tweet from Hillary “thanking medical workers and everyone else who is working to save lives and keep us all going right now.” Angela Cirilli, an emergency medicine ultrasound director at St John’s Riverside Hospital, tweeted her gratitude saying “Amazing !!! Thank you !!!! We NEED LEADERS LIKE YOU in this tough time.” A spokesperson for the Clintons contrasted “this unprecedented act of generosity with Trump’s failure...

Chiu’s bill comes as the state and local governments are ramping up their spending on homelessness, but the number of people on the street continues to rise. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed spending more than $1 billion on homelessness in his 2020-21 budget, including $750 million to build housing for the homeless and help prevent struggling families from ending up on the streets. His last budget also included about $1 billion to fight homelessness — including $650 million for cities and counties. Meanwhile, the crisis keeps getting worse. The homeless population grew by 42% between 2017 and 2019 in San...

Five Turkish soldiers and one civilian personnel were killed in Syria on Sunday, Turkey's first fatalities as a result of direct confrontation between the countries since the start of Syria's civil war in 2011. Nine other troops were also wounded in northwest Syria's Idlib province after they came under heavy artillery fire from the Syrian government Sunday, according to a Turkey defense department statement which added that the troops were reinforcements. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said up to 35 Syrian government soldiers had been killed Monday in response, and pledged further retaliation. Erdogan said up to 40 Syrian targets...

Crony Bidding And Gross Incompetence Reign.. At a time when Coloradans are desperately pleading for improved and new roadways the agency in charge of the same, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), is mired in the greatest crisis of its long-storied existence . ... In December 2018, Governor Jared Polis appointed 35-year-old Shoshana Lew as his new Executive Director, a history major .. She replaced Governor Hickenlooper's appointment of 56-year-old Michael Lewis, an engineer with extensive public construction management experience. ... Lew's primary qualification .. was her close relationship to Michelle Obama who called the newly elected governor for a...

The 20-something couple with a history of small-time scams had inadvertently hacked the world’s most powerful nation for a five-figure ransom at a time of high anxiety over national security on Inauguration Day. The Romanians had launched hundreds of thousands of emails embedded with ransomware in an attachment disguised as an invoice, authorities said. The list of email addresses they bought included, by chance, the Washington, D.C., police department. A recipient there apparently took the bait, opening the attachment that locked up the street-camera system. Only a payment could produce the key. Ms. Cismaru sent a message to the Journal...

Lindsey Graham is supposedly a new convert to the MAGA movement. Almost immediately after traitor John McCain died, Lindsey Graham appeared to have a change of heart. He began backing Trump on policy matters, and when Justice Kavanaugh was under attack, Lindsey was the point-man for his defense; delivering one of the most impassioned political speeches ever. Lindsey’s speech last year was a “game-changer” and MAGA rallied around the South Carolina senator and embraced him as a new and important figurehead in the movement. Graham even took over Chuck Grassley’s place as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – a...