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To avoid It Kiev must resume oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline, Robert Fico saidPRAGUE, February 21. /TASS/. Slovakia will suspend electricity supplies to Ukraine from February 23 if Kiev does not resume oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline, Prime Minister Robert Fico said. "Slovakia is a proud and sovereign country, and I am a proud and sovereign Slovak. If oil supplies to Slovakia are not resumed on Monday, I will ask SEPS to stop supplying electricity to Ukraine," Fico wrote on Facebook (banned in Russia, owned by Meta Corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia). According to the prime minister,...

Researchers from the Romanian Academy have discovered a bacterial strain that has been frozen in Romania's Scarisoara Ice Cave for 5,000 years. Carefully extracting a sample, the researchers tested it against 10 common antibiotics, including those used to treat tuberculosis, colitis, and UTIs. 'The Psychrobacter SC65A.3 bacterial strain isolated from Scarisoara Ice Cave, despite its ancient origin, shows resistance to multiple modern antibiotics and carries over 100 resistance–related genes,' said study author Dr Cristina Purcarea. Previous research has shown that other strains from this genus are known to cause infections in humans, as well as animals. In their new study,...

...Extreme temperature variations have occurred on Earth during the last few million years because of its extended Ice Ages which included brief warm periods that continue until now. Researchers conduct their studies on climatic patterns to forecast upcoming climate variations that will occur during the next several hundred years. Earth maintains a constant temperature throughout time. The planet follows natural cycles which repeat approximately every 100000 years throughout its history of millions of years. The planet spends most of its time in a Glacial Period which lasts through Ice Ages except for brief warming periods that last 10000 to 15000...

Up to 1,000 people have gone missing at sea and are feared dead after a huge storm ripped through the Mediterranean last month. The migrant-rescue non-governmental organisation (NGO) Mediterranea Saving Humans estimated the number based on testimonies from refugees in Libya and Tunisia. Huge waves and gale-force winds caused by Storm Harry battered the coast of southern Italy, parts of Spain and the island of Malta, two weeks ago. Now the NGO's president Laura Marmorale has described it as 'one of the biggest tragedies in recent years on the central Mediterranean route'. She accused the governments of Italy and Malta...

The Government has urged online watchdog Ofcom to use its powers to block access to X, formerly Twitter, in a dramatic escalation in tensions with the tech billionaire Elon Musk. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall issued a statement telling the regulator that it had the “full support” of ministers to use its powers to block UK users from gaining access to the social media site.

Iran warned President Donald Trump on Sunday that any U.S. attack would lead to Tehran striking back against Israel and regional U.S. military bases as "legitimate targets", Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told parliament. Israel is on high alert for the possibility of a U.S. intervention to support a nationwide protest movement in Iran, sources said.

ORLANDO, Fla. — In the past week, 12 swans were found dead at Lake Eola Park, according to Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan. The first two swans were found dead Dec. 23, and over the past five days, that number has risen to 12. Sheehan explained that the deaths happened during the holidays, and specialized veterinary experts were not available at the time. However, she said the deaths are suspected to have been caused by an avian flu outbreak. "We can't be certain until tests are completed," Sheehan said. The swans are currently stored in a secure location, awaiting necropsies...

Recently freerepublic stopped loading correctly on my Samsung phone. The spacing between lines are off and the font is too small and can't be adjusted to fit the page correctly. I've tried all the options on the phone, and returned to my carrier to fix it. They claim it has to be a website problem. Is anyone else having this problem, or know how to correct it?

The number of flu cases across the country is on the rise, following a global trend that is now reaching the U.S., say health care professionals. Britain, Australia and Japan have already reported spikes, in what has turned out to be an early flu season, according to The New York Times. Some of the areas seeing the biggest spikes so far include New York City, Denver and New Orleans, according to The Times and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker. The dominant strain of the flu virus circulating this season is H3N2 subclade K – a variant of...

The Supreme Court on Monday declined an opportunity to overturn its landmark precedent recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, tossing aside an appeal that had roiled LGBTQ advocates who feared the conservative court might be ready to revisit the decade-old decision. Instead, the court denied an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who now faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges allowed same-sex couples to marry. The court did not explain its reasoning to deny the appeal, which...

Russia flooding weapons into Venezuela and threatening to give Nicolas Maduro weapons like the Oreshnik and Kalibr. The Oreshnik can carry nuclear warheads. https://youtu.be/i3hA64JUflM?si=zhMWFWoX2RalrwiN

I'm not recommending any remedies for hacked phones - not even the one at the link, because I am not technical and I'm skeptical of commercial software said to work on state level cyber spying.While Pegasus spyware was designed by an Israeli cyber-intelligence company to combat criminal and terrorist activities, it has also been used to spy on voices challenging power, like activists, journalists, and whistleblowers.Data suggests that more than 50,000 people are being, or have been, monitored by Pegasus spyware — with serious implications for their privacy and personal safety. Learn more about this unsettling spyware and get tips...

Top Kremlin official Dmitry Medvedev issued a fiery nuclear warning to the U.S. after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said officials in Moscow should learn where their nearest bomb shelter is if they don't end Russia's war. Zelensky, in an interview with Axios, said U.S. President Donald Trump had given his explicit backing to Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets such as energy infrastructure and arms factories, and that if Kyiv receives more long-range American weaponry, then "we will use it". "The Kiev drug addict said the Kremlin should know where a bomb shelter is so its occupants can hide when he...

Maureen Napleton, legal counsel at Napleton Auto Group in Hinsdale, is facing backlash over social media posts in which she celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk and called for violence against President Donald Trump.

The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but he’s signaling in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues likely headed to the court that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch. The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers...

In a game of Russian roulette with a standard Colt revolver, the chances of instant death are one-in-six. Terrifyingly, that’s the same as the odds of humanity being wiped out within 75 years – everyone dead in a cataclysmic and total breakdown of civilisation, according to Oxford University futurologist Toby Ord, an expert on the threat of artificial intelligence. Does it sound impossibly bleak? His colleague Nick Bostrom is more pessimistic still. He rates the possibility of human extinction by the next century as one in four. Pulitzer prize-winning writer Jared Diamond is even less hopeful, predicting our species’ chances...

A new global study reveals that ancient carbon, once thought securely stored in soils and rocks, is leaking into the atmosphere via rivers. For the first time, researchers have confirmed that carbon trapped in landscapes for thousands of years or longer can return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide escaping from river surfaces. The study, led by scientists from the University of Bristol and featured as the cover story in Nature, suggests that plants and upper soil layers may be absorbing about one additional gigaton of CO2 annually to balance this release. This highlights an even more critical role for...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wore a CCCP sweatshirt as he arrived in Alaska for the summit with President Trump. That is the Russian acronym for the USSR. Serhii Plokhy, a professor of history at Harvard University, explains how the shirt fits into Russia's position on Ukraine and in the world.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed the Kremlin could launch "preemptive strikes" on Western nations if they escalate the war in Ukraine just days after United States President Donald Trump demanded a ceasefire. On Tuesday, President Trump threatened to impose "very severe" tariffs on Russia unless the Kremlin negotiated an end to its invasion. The US leader also declared he was "very unhappy" with Russian President Vladimir Putin's reticence to engage in peace talks, in a notable shift away from previous comments praising Russia's leader. The Kremlin subsequently dismissed the threat, with Mr Medvedev, who now acts as the...

Prominent Russian propagandists have warned Donald Trump of severe consequences following his approval of weapons to Ukraine and threat of sanctions. -snip- The move was met with fury in Moscow state TV propagandist and war pundit Aleksandr Sladkov accusing the United States of attempting to intimidate Russia into agreeing to peace. He said: “Trump is trying to scare us with missiles, but this is difficult to do, Trump should be scared. “Everyone is trying to push us to turn Kyiv and Lviv into Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Sladkov continued his threat of nuclear war, telling the audience that Russia’s strategic nuclear...