Free Republic

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.The chairperson of the committee that made the award compared the structures called metal-organic frameworks to the seemingly bottomless magical handbag carried by Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series. Another example might be Mary Poppins’ enchanted carpet bag. These containers look small from the outside but are able to hold surprisingly large quantities within.The committee...

As long as your heart is in the right place, who cares, right? As long as your heart is in the right place, who cares if you are a multiple arsonist who throws fire-bombs and endangers lives? And you have a well-placed heart as big as the Ritz if you hate Israel and want to see it disappear, to be replaced by a 23rd Arab state. More on the antisemitic and pro-Hamas supporters who have rallied round the pyromaniacal comically-named Casey Goonan, can be found here: “Anti-Israel serial arsonist receives support from Columbia encampment protest groups,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem...

A federal judge handed down a stiff sentence to a man who turned political rage into arson, and it matters. Casey Robert Goonan was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison after a string of firebombings and arsons in the Bay Area. The court applied a terrorism enhancement, and the result should remind anyone tempted by violent activism that the system takes these attacks seriously. On June 1, Goonan placed a bag of six incendiary devices under a UC Police Department patrol car near the UC Berkeley campus, an act caught on surveillance video. Ten days later he attacked an...

The majority of California Democrats do not want former Vice President Kamala Harris to make another White House run in 2028, according to a UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll released Tuesday. Almost two-thirds of registered voters in California and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not seek the presidency again following her two failed White House bids in 2020 and 2024, according to the survey. Meanwhile, roughly 45% of California’s registered voters said they were “very” or “somewhat” enthusiastic about the prospect of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom running for president, while 36% said the same about Harris. “She [Harris]...

Katie Porter was the biggest beneficiary of Kamala Harris passing on a run for California governor, according to a new poll from POLITICO and its partners, with the former representative now holding a commanding lead in the race. Thirty percent of registered voters who said they’d vote for Harris if she ran for governor now plan to support Porter, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found. Sixteen percent of Harris supporters said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was their second choice, while 11 percent said their new favored candidate was former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Porter’s...

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 - The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet. Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated. Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving...

At least three dozen more international students and recent alumni of pristine California universities have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration as it continues to zero in on anti-Israel protesters. Stanford University and several colleges part of the University of California system all confirmed to NBC News members of their school communities were caught up in the ongoing crackdown that began last month with the high-profile detainment of Columbia University alum and activist Mahmoud Khalil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month he’s pulled back 300 visas from foreign students, claiming they should be kicked out of...

A poll co-sponsored by the left-leaning Los Angeles Times props up failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a front-runner for the 2026 California gubernatorial race. The poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies shows Vice President Kamala Harris may benefit from some name recognition in a potentially crowded field, and has the support of many Democrat voters in the state. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) cannot seek reelection because of term limits.

Independent challenger Nathan Hochman is destroying incumbent, George Soros-backed George Gascón in the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney, leading by 30 points with less than four weeks to before Election Day. A Los Angeles Times/University of California Berkeley poll of likely voters this week showed that 51% would vote for Hochman, while only 21% would choose Gascon. The percentage of undecided voters, 28%, cannot make up the gap. Gascón ousted incumbent Jackie Lacey, the first black woman to hold the job, in 2020 — thanks to the endorsements of Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Black Lives Matter...

Pro-Palestinian activists took credit for a felony arson attack outside of UC Berkeley’s Koshland Hall on Thursday. Details about the fire were scarce on Friday. But it is at least the second case of arson at Cal that pro-Palestinian activists have claimed responsibility for this month. A UC Berkeley police vehicle was set on fire on June 1. On Thursday morning, an anonymous “student intifada” post took credit for the latest incident. “UCLA students were attacked last night so we retaliated with a firebomb on UCB campus,” the post said. “We unloaded a firebomb on the side of a campus...

Pro-Palestinian protesters reportedly firebombed “the side of a building” on the University of California Berkeley (UCB) campus and claimed that students had been “attacked” on another campus. In a post on Instagram on Thursday, Palestine Action in the United States shared a post from an anonymous user who claimed responsibility for firebombing the side of Koshland Hall, a building at UCB that houses “labs from the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.”

UC Berkeley's Saturday morning graduation ceremony was punctuated by the chanting of hundreds of pro-Palestine student protesters whose demonstration caused the event to be paused and delayed several times.

As Columbia University President Dr. Nemat "Minouche" Shafik faces scrutiny from ongoing campus protests over Israel’s war with Hamas, a more than 20-year-old video is getting renewed attention for remarks on the causes of terrorism. The video, filmed just two months after 9/11, shows Shafik – who was then vice president at the World Bank – discussing the economic roots of terrorism with UC Berkeley’s Harry Kreisler on the program, "Conversations with History." Shafik argued that although terrorism has sprung up in "fairly rich and open societies," its most fertile ground is in countries beset by "economic stagnation and political...

Anti-Israel activists at the University of California, Berkeley have been circulating a video they say shows Berkeley Law professor Catherine Fisk “assaulting” a student. Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, has claimed that Fisk assaulted her during a dinner Fisk hosted on April 9 at her private residence, which she shares with her husband, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. In a video apparently filmed by a fellow student during the dinner, which Fisk and Chemerinsky hosted for graduating students, Afaneh is standing on the steps of their home, wearing a “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” T-shirt,...

Concerned parents calling themselves SafeBears have raised $40,000 to pay for security guards or “safety ambassadors” to patrol the UC Berkeley campus area for a few weeks in early March. UC Berkeley may be one of America’s most prestigious schools, but its location in the California Bay Area has parents and students both wary of safety on campus. A group called SafeBears, that touts itself as comprising “1,300+ Cal parents and community allies working to improve safety for UC Berkeley students,” has worked to solve the problem themselves, hoping their prototypical program of patrols around campus will inspire the college...

Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six...

"Skeletonized" human remains were discovered in a years-long unoccupied building at UC Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Campus earlier this week, school officials announced. University police were notified of the remains on Tuesday, Jan. 10, a UCPD statement from the school’s communications department said. The cause of death is still undetermined, and school officials didn’t tell SFGATE which building the remains were found, how they were discovered, and how long the building has been unoccupied for.

Two months ago, as the school year began, nine affinity groups at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, adopted a bylaw banning speakers who support Israel. The bylaw was promulgated by a Berkeley front group for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel, the movement described by the Anti-Defamation League as “an international campaign aimed at delegitimizing and pressuring Israel, through the… isolation of Israel, Israeli individuals, Israeli institutions, and, increasingly, Jews…” that is recognized as “a manifestion of antisemitism” by the U.S. State Department. When the organizations, which include the Women of Berkeley Law, the Asian Pacific...

Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers who support Israel or Zionism. In America, more and more college campuses, heavily influenced by Muslim students, are trying to become “Israel-free zones,” free of the taint of what virulent anti-Semites like Congressmuslim Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), slander as an “apartheid state.” Jewish Journal – Kenneth L. Marcus (h/t Mary C) If it wasn’t so frightening, one might be able to recognize the irony in the sight of...

Mask Up, Berkeley StudentsI was trying to avoid writing more stuff on masks, but this is unbelievable. UC Berkeley, that bastion of California higher education, is now requiring masks -both indoors and outdoors, if one is not vaccinated against… influenza! And, as a virologist and vaccinologist, the use of the slang “flu” makes me cringe. There are no “flu” vaccines. There are a variety of vaccines for reducing Influenza A and Influenza B virus infection and disease. None of them work particularly well. And just as with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the vast majority of deaths from Influenza A and B...