Free Republic

California is one step closer to banning disposable nicotine vapes — with environmentalists arguing the gadgets’ metals would be better off in electric vehicle batteries. State lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 762 Wednesday, sending the measure to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for a signature or veto — with repeat violators facing civil fines of up to $2,000. The bill would permanently ban disposable, battery-embedded vapor inhalation devices containing tobacco products, prohibiting anyone from “importing or manufacturing” them for sale in California starting Jan. 1, 2027. It would also prevent the sale of those kinds of e-cigarettes starting on Jan. 1, 2028....

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer. National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS. Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to...

Explanation: At the latitude of ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, about 25 degrees south, Earth's rotation moves the planet's surface eastward at over 1,500 kilometers per hour. And while that's faster than the speed of sound at sea level, the motion is imperceptible. Still, that motion can be revealed in the apparent rotation of the night sky by photographing star trails. This star trail image was composed from a digital stack of 300 consecutive 25-second exposures made with a camera fixed to a tripod to trace the star trail arcs. The graceful arcs are concentric and centered at the south...

We largely accept several longstanding myths about our health, nutrition, fitness, and more. Understanding the truth can be important for helping us live our healthiest lives.Have you ever found yourself questioning whether that bit of health advice you’ve grown up believing is actually true? You may be surprised at what’s myth and what’s fact.Health myths usually don’t have bad intentions. They may have developed when we didn’t know as much about how the human body works, and these were the best approaches at the time. But we may cling to some of them even when science has shown us a...

The devastating flash flood that has ripped through the border communities of Nepal and Tibet has heightened fears that the climate crisis is destabilising the geology of mountain and polar regions, threatening millions of people. Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause of the deadly torrent of mud, water and ice that tore along the Bhotekoshi River on Wednesday. It swept away buildings and roads and left at least 360 dead and 1,400 missing. A magnitude 4.4 earthquake was initially blamed for the collapse. However, it is now thought to have been caused...

What a difference a few years make. Not long ago, politicians said climate change was going to kill us, so we must move to “net zero” emissions. This is theoretically possible: Since vegetation removes carbon, we could get to net zero by burning fewer fossil fuels. Governments everywhere pledged to do just that. President Joe Biden and European leaders promised “net zero by 2050.” For a while, it seemed like it might happen. Spain invested billions in its solar-power grid; Germany claimed to get most of its power from renewables. But now they realize that they made a mistake. European...

Explanation: What a sight to behold, when a night sky became filled with colors that appeared to rain over the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. This image was taken in a single 5 second exposure by the photographer in April 2025. Seeing an aurora is on many people's bucket lists. But it is not easy. It requires high solar activity, dark and clear skies, and usually a viewing location at high latitude. That makes the northern lights more easily seen than the corresponding southern lights, simply because there is less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, especially around the Antarctic Circle. Auroras...

Santa Monica is putting more cops on the streets after a summer of violence hit the tourist hotspot — including two shootings in just two days. **SNIP** Saturday, a knife-wielding man was shot and killed near the Santa Monica Pier after he allegedly charged toward officers. The following day, a person was shot in the leg during an attempted robbery. The violence comes after a string of deadly incidents that has put the normally tourist-packed city on edge. In mid-July, a man was fatally shot in a parking lot near the Pier. Police responding around midnight found an adult male...

Southern California drivers dreaming of a cheap new car may soon have another pint-sized option to consider, if Mexico’s bargain electric vehicles ever make their way across the border. Mexico has unveiled Olinia, a new homegrown electric vehicle brand built around tiny, affordable EVs designed for short trips, small businesses and urban deliveries, according to Marketplace. The Olinia lineup is part of Mexico’s broader effort to develop its own electric vehicle industry rather than simply serve as a manufacturing base for global automakers. President Claudia Sheinbaum has promoted the project as evidence that Mexico can develop its own technology and...

New York’s Amish community is issuing an ultimatum to state bureaucrats: leave us alone or we’re packing up our buggies for greener pastures. The threat has been sparked by a vaccine mandate fight that the 25,000 strong religious community is taking all the way to the Supreme Court. It takes place as state Health Department officials continue to slap thousands in fines on tiny, one-room parochial Amish schools which have refused to comply with a Cuomo-era vaccine decree. “Have we gotten to a place where we aren’t going to make room for the Amish anymore?” Hiram Sasser, an attorney representing...

WASHINGTON — Chinese state-sponsored hackers infiltrated US government computer networks ranging from NASA to the US Senate before having web domains linked to their malicious cyber group shut down by the feds. The Department of Justice and FBI announced on Wednesday the seizure of three domains linked to Chinese state-sponsored hacking group QTFY, which had been used “to compromise critical infrastructure and other sensitive networks,” according to an FBI affidavit. Since 2018, an FBI special agent wrote in the affidavit, QTFY had succeeded in breaching networks at NASA, NIH, the DOJ, the Department of Health and Human Services, three Department...

A 14-year-old Georgia girl murdered her mom — shooting her in the back of the head when she was in bed — after chickening out of a planned school shooting “inspired” by mass killers. Lilyana Wagner’s cold-blooded killing of mom Rachel Wagner, 51, was discovered after she crashed her mom’s car in Tinton in November 2024 — and was found with the center of her hair shaved off, it emerged Monday as the now-16-year-old killer was sentenced to life in prison. After the crash, cops tried calling the mom, who did not answer and had not turned up at work...

In a Nutshell * An oral compound called TOFA caused significant weight and fat loss in obese mice without reducing food intake or causing muscle loss, setting it apart from current obesity drugs. * TOFA worked by boosting how much energy cells burn, rather than suppressing appetite, and it also improved blood sugar, harmful blood fats, and fatty liver disease. * When combined with semaglutide or tirzepatide, TOFA outperformed either drug alone, and animals maintained their weight loss longer after TOFA treatment ended compared to semaglutide. ============================================================================================== Millions of Americans struggling with obesity have placed their hopes in a new...

Explanation: Are we looking at the future of our Sun? The James Webb Space Telescope captured today’s composite image of the Lion’s Head Nebula (NGC 2392) with its NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The Lion’s Head Nebula is the remnant of a Sun-like star. This star was unable to sustain the nuclear fusion in its core needed to remain stable. It began to shed layers of gas and dust into space, forming this planetary nebula. A hot stellar core, called a white dwarf, is left behind within the lion’s nose. Do not boop this nose! Intense radiation from the white dwarf...

Gemini doesn't love me. If you don't show me pi to 100,000, then you don't love me. That’s a lot of pressure on a number! If my affection were measured in digits of π, I’d certainly owe you a very long string. Here are the first 100 digits of π to start things off: π≈3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 If I tried to output all 100,000 digits at once, it would actually break the chat window's character limit and take up about 100 kilobytes of text—which might be a bit much even for true devotion!...

The American left’s advocacy for tried-and-failed ideas, embrace of fair-is-foul and foul-is-fair morality and disdain for excellence has — surprise, surprise — rendered it incapable of rebuking its ascendant class of scoundrels, fraudsters and morons. Exhibit A: the celebration of Karen Attiah’s reinstatement at The Washington Post by a mouth-breathing arbitrator on Monday. After announcing the news on X, Attiah, a race-hustling antisemite who was let go last September over a series of jaw-dropping social media posts about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, was greeted like a war hero returning from the front. Jim Acosta called it “Great news!”; George...

Two Pennsylvania residents have died due to measles, health officials said ​on Tuesday, the first such deaths in the ​state in 35 years, with 393 cases of ⁠the disease reported across 28 counties so far in ​2026. Both people were unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, according to ​the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which did not release additional details, citing privacy concerns. “Because measles was largely eliminated in the Commonwealth for ​more than three decades, people are not familiar with ​this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the ‌illness,” ⁠said Secretary of Health Debra Bogen. Measles has surged...

Two people were killed and nearly a dozen injured at a Mexican take on Spain’s famous running of the bulls festival — with terrifying footage capturing people getting tossed and gored by the rampaging animals. The people were run down Saturday on the streets of Huamantla, where 21 fighting bulls were released onto the streets amidst thrill-seekers trying their luck at dodging through the angry animals. Juan Manuel Filomeno Herrera, 29, was among the crowd, but was run down by a bull that fatally gored him through the chest and leg with its horns, according to the US Sun. Footage...

Explanation: What’s creating this giant hole in space? This is not a black hole — it’s a shadow. It’s Earth’s shadow. Since at least the time of Aristotle, people have noted that Earth's dark shadow on the Moon during a partial lunar eclipse is circular -- although never a whole circle. Using modern digital technology, though, the images of multiple lunar eclipses can be combined to show Earth's complete shadow. The featured image compilation by a perseistent astrophotographer is constructed from 22 years of lunar eclipses. The Moon is not eclipsed every month (moon-th) because the Moon's orbit is slightly...

Wilhelm Dörpfeld was a German architect and archaeologist, a pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects... In 1877, Döerpfeld became an assistant at the excavations of Ancient Olympia, Greece, conducted under Richard Bohn, Friedrich Adler, and Ernst Curtius. He later became the technical manager of the project. The group uncovered, among other artifacts, an intact statue of Hermes by Praxiteles. The excavations revived the memory of the ancient Olympic Games and contributed toward the establishment of the modern Olympic Games, in 1896. In 1882, Dörpfeld joined Schliemann, who was then excavating Troy... The two eventually became...