Free Republic

Move over mosquitos. There's another blood-sucking biter Americans need to guard against because it can spread disease: the sand fly.Sand flies are tiny tan flies — about a quarter of the size of a mosquito — that live in warm, wet, rural and forested areas. In other parts of the world, they are known to transmit a parasite — a single-celled organism — that causes an infectious disease called leishmaniasis. They're most active at night, and they're so tiny they can slip through ordinary mosquito nets on tents or window screens. "Sometimes you don't even notice that you've been bitten,"...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- There was a very large turnout on Saturday. Chicago police estimated the crowd to be around 2,000 people or more. At times, the gathering certainly felt larger than that. A sea of people took their message to the streets. Those protesters urged the public to take a broader look at Israel-Palestine relations and the decades of conflict preceding this past week. They say Israel must be held to account for killing civilians as it retaliates against Hamas' attacks. "Entire families have been wiped out. Dozens of bodies under the rubble, turning Gaza from an open-air prison to...

Neuroscientists from the University of Maryland have come a step closer to understanding how disorders such as autism and schizophrenia develop in children, opening the door for potential new treatments. Inflammation in the brain during early childhood has been previously linked to autism and schizophrenia. But the mechanisms behind this link have been unclear. Now Maryland researchers have identified how this inflammation can affect human brain cells and their development, offering a potential mechanism for this association. Their results were published on October 12 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In their research, the team conducted a post-mortem analysis of...

Headlines about brain worms can be alarming, but there are more common parasites that can infect your body, says a Western Sydney University professor.News reports on Tuesday morning (Aug 29) describe how shocked doctors removed a live worm from a woman’s brain in a Canberra hospital last year. The woman had previously been admitted to hospital with stomach symptoms, dry cough and night sweats and months later experienced depression and forgetfulness that led to a brain scan. In the case study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, doctors describe removing the live 8cm-long nematode (roundworm) from the brain of the...

A magnetic resonance image of the patient's brain led doctors at Canberra Hospital and Australian National University to conduct a biopsy during which they found and removed a live third-stage larval roundworm from her right frontal lobe. Photo by EPA-EFE/Australia National University. Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Surgeons in Australia pulled a live 3-inch-long parasitic worm from the front of a woman's brain in what is believed to be the first time this type of infection has been found in humans. Doctors in Canberra found the light red worm during a biopsy they were carrying out on the patient in a...

The red worm was alive and wriggling as doctors pulled it out of the woman's brain.Figure from paper showing an MRI scan of a lesion in the woman's brain on the left and two images of the extracted worm on the right A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan revealed the woman had a lesion in her brain (left), which doctors later found to contain a 3.15 inch-long worm (right). (Image credit: Hossain, M. E., et al. (2023). https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2909.230351. (CC BY 4.0)) A woman in Australia has become the first known person in the world to be infected with a...

In life, when you find out your friend is not there for you, will not defend you, ignores you, betrays you, fails you, and doesn’t even like you – you move on. It’s better to be alone than to face the pain of betrayal over and over again. Last night was the last straw.

Some student loan borrowers encouraged others to default on their loans "en masse" following the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel President Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan, but one expert told Newsweek why that may not be a good idea. "Okay, thing I can actually talk about: Mass default on student loan debt would be a really effective message and f*** you to this country from the folks most impacted by our constant slide backwards. Just don't pay it. Hit the bricks. En masse," Twitter user Derek Van Dyke wrote. On Friday, the Supreme Court reached...

Despite rhetoric intended to paint Republicans as the Party of the rich, demographic data and campaign donations indicate that higher income voters and big company corporate executives favor Democrats. In both the 2016 and 2020 elections the top 40% in terms of income supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for president. In a recent CNBC survey, most millionaires supported Biden over Trump by double-digit margins. In the 2020 election, $200 million of Biden's campaign cash came in donations of over $100,000 apiece. In 2022, Republicans were elected in 64% of the districts where median incomes were below the national average....

CHEVY CHASE, Md. — As the group of about a dozen protesters rounded the corner and approached Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house on a leafy suburban street, the two deputy U.S. marshals on guard watched unmoved from their perch in the driveway. One whispered into his radio. The other took a sip from a coffee cup. The protesters, who had gathered on the evening of May 4, walked past the house singing “I went down to the rich man’s house and took back what he stole from me.” The deputy U.S. marshals watched but said nothing as the group passed. The...

One of the steps recommended for financial success is to achieve a good credit rating. Showing that you can borrow money and pay it back opens doors for more opportunities. Organizations that have money to lend like this behavior and become more willing to advance the sums needed to finance a home or business. The Biden Administration does not. This week, President Biden signed a decree that will add a $40 per month charge to loans made to credit-worthy borrowers. The funds obtained will be used to subsidize loans to unworthy borrowers. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called the cross-subsidy scheme...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Niara Thompson couldn’t shake her frustration as the Supreme Court debated President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation. As she listened from the audience Tuesday, it all felt academic. There was a long discussion on the nuances of certain words. Justices asked lawyers to explore hypothetical scenarios. For Thompson, none of it is hypothetical. A student at the University of Georgia, she grew up watching her parents struggle with student loans and will graduate with about $50,000 of her own student debt. Thompson and her father are each eligible for $10,000 in relief, she said. It would move...

Scientists have discovered that a high-fat diet allows the immune system to eliminate a parasitic worm which is a major cause of death and illness. Parasitic worms affect up to a billion people, particularly in developing nations with poor sanitation. One of these parasites known as "whipworm" can cause long lasting infections in the large intestine. Researchers have discovered that a high-fat diet allows the immune system to eliminate the parasite. Dr. Evelyn Funjika said, "The cheapest diets are often high in fat and at-risk communities to whipworm are increasingly utilizing these cheap diets. It has been previously shown that...

Two common drugs that veterinarians use to kill parasites on pets could be the solution to getting rid of bedbugs. Both fluralaner and ivermectin, which are used to kill fleas and ticks on household pets, could also kill bedbugs. The newer, longer-lasting fluralaner showed especially strong potential. This new research comes from a North Carolina State University (NCSU) study that examined the drugs and their effectiveness in controlling bedbug populations on poultry farms. Entomologists and veterinary scientists from NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine tested bedbug death rates in different experiments. ... Fluralaner was also highly effective at killing bedbugs...

Climate change activists in eight countries claim they deflated tires on more than 900 SUVs in what they call their "largest-ever night of action against SUVs." Vehicles in 19 cities across the globe were apparently targeted late Monday night and early Tuesday morning by members of The Tyre Extinguishers, an international group of protesters known for deflating tires on SUVs in an effort to keep the vehicles off the streets. The group says 52 cars were hit in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York City, as were hundreds of others across the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland...

A proud mom with 12 kids has revealed she constantly faces scrutiny from people telling her she should be “sterilized” and seek “psychiatric help” — but she still wants another kid. TikTok user @clutteredmother — who has 36,400 followers and 545,800 likes — regularly shares videos of her large family, and is often hit with backlash over her baby daddy’s “pregnancy fetish.” She recently responded to the hate in a video of her pretending to crack her bones, writing “When people tell me I need to be sterilized,” before adding while holding five of her kids: “Actually, can I have...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The chair of an influential negotiating bloc in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Egypt has called for compensation for poorer countries suffering from climate change to be high up on the agenda. Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who chairs the Least Developed Countries group, told The Associated Press that the November conference — known as COP27 — should “capture the voice and needs of the most climate-vulnerable nations and deliver climate justice.” Sarr said the group would like to see “an agreement to establish a dedicated financial facility” that pays nations that are already facing the...

Firefighters are battling a brush fire they believe started at a homeless encampment in southern California. Footage of the blaze shows large clouds of smoke billowing alongside a busy Los Angeles County freeway Thursday evening. Although dramatic looking, the fire, which spanned approximately four acres, wasn't a threat to any structures. However, it did shutdown Interstates 605 and 105, causing major traffic jams. The fire comes as temperatures are on the rise in LA, with some areas forecast to reach triple-digit heat this weekend. California is also in the peak of its wildfire season, which meteorologists say has grown longer...

From cattle to uncontrolled wildlife, pesky but pervasive large parasites like tapeworms have a far greater impact on the total body health of their mammal hosts than previously known, new University of Alberta research suggests. "Parasites don't have to kill the animal to control a population," says Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science's Department of Biological Sciences who led the study. Shanebeck explained that all wildlife have at least one and often multiple parasites. The less fatal a parasite, the more prevalent it is within a population, with potentially stronger negative effects. "They can affect the...

This is the text from a screenshot posted to a popular forum today. Parasites feed on hormones. Their growth is hyper-accelerated by testosterone and estrogen treatments (see transgender people), which is why the infected demon doctors/media are pushing for LGBTQ sex changes. Those kills will be assimilated into the parasite hive mind without exception. The rest of us can't avoid exposure because T. Cruzi and Toxoplasma are just so prevalent in our eco system, which most mammal bird and shellfish populations showing 30-60% population prevalence. All species are basically the same thing, cross reactive with any other animal. Each of...