Free Republic

Struggling in the polls has not kept former Arkansas Gov. from delivering some hot takes about his opponents on cable news. Last night during an interview with CNN’s Abby Phillip, Hutchinson, speaking from Bentonville, ripped former President Donald Trump for not being able to protect our nation’s secrets and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for not being able to answer a high school student’s question about January 6. “American voters deserve more,” Hutchinson said. He also pronounced “bravado” quite strangely. Listen for yourself.

African American soprano Angel Blue has said she will not perform in an opera in Italy this month because another production held at the theater earlier this year featured performers in blackface. The 38-year-old Grammy Award-winner announced she is bowing out of La Traviata at Verona Arena, in Verona, Italy, later this month. She blasted the theater as 'archaic' for mounting another Giuseppe Verdi opera, Aida, that featured performers in blackface. They include Anna Netrebko, a white Russian soprano, has been cast in the titular role of Aida in Verdi’s opera - despite the character being an Ethiopian princess. In...

Breakthrough infections were responsible for three-quarters of COVID-19 cases in an outbreak during large public gatherings on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and nearly all sequenced cases were the Delta variant, researchers found. Of 469 cases linked to multiple summer events and large summer gatherings in a small town, 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated people, and almost 80% of those cases were symptomatic, reported Catherine Brown, DVM, of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and colleagues. There were five hospitalizations, four among fully vaccinated people, and no deaths. Of 133 cases with sequence information available, 89% were from the Delta variant...

Carnival-owned Aida Cruises is suffering from major IT issues and does seem to be a possible cyberattack. This could now be the third major cyberattack against a cruise line this year and shows a worrying trend on keeping systems secure. Aida Cruises IT Issues, What We Know So Far The cruise line has already stated on its Facebook page that it’s currently being affected by IT issues but has not yet detailed anything specific. However, Cruise Law News reports a possible cyberattack after crew members got in touch about the matter. Ransomware is a likely cause and also seems to...

Surprising news from Germany where AIDA Cruises have applied for financial aid in the form of a credit application. The credit is said to be in the region of €400 million. The news comes from the North German radio station NDR, which first reported it. AIDA Cruises is the German subsidiary of the Costa Group, which belongs to Carnival Corporation. The cruise industry is not doing well since the industry had to go to an operations stop in March. Companies are currently struggling to maintain profitability. Ships that have been sold or offloaded, loans have been taken out, and employees...

For the second time, doctors appear to have put HIV into “sustained remission” with a stem cell transplant — effectively curing the recipient. Their work, which was published in Nature and will be presented at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle on Tuesday, may encourage scientists working on new gene therapies based on similar principles and give hope to those living with the infection. The case comes nearly 10 years after Timothy Ray Brown announced he was the so-called “Berlin Patient” — the first person who was functionally cured of HIV and able to stop taking...

It is a story of war between two nations, the conflict of love rivals and the looming fate of death. But the antagonistic themes of Aida seem to have spilled into the wings after a student production of the musical Aida was cancelled amid a row over suggestions of “cultural appropriation”. A theatre at the University of Bristol said yesterday it had cancelled all showings after a revolt by students.

Come 2022, scientists will attempt to save all of humanity from an asteroid. Calm down, it's just a trial run. The joint US-European AIDA—that's Asteroid Deflection and Assessment—mission intends to crash a probe into a 525-foot-wide asteroid known as Didymoon to see if the impact will change its orbital path. The egg-shaped asteroid is actually part of a binary system and orbits its larger partner, Didymos, every 12 hours, per Phys.org. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) probe will crash into Didymoon at a speed of roughly 13,420mph, while ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) will study the effects so researchers...

NAIROBI: Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, yesterday reiterated her claim that the Aids virus was a deliberately created biological agent. "Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that. "Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet," Maathai told a press conference in Nairobi a day after winning the prize for her work in human rights and reversing...

AIDS drugs get new package By Geoffrey Kamali DRUG barons engaged in the illicit ‘export-back’ business of highly subsidised anti-retroviral drugs to Europe from Africa, are in for a shock. Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), German producers of Crixivan, one of the HIV drugs, has introduced new packaging for its low priced products to Africa. The anti-retrovirals are sold by major producers to a number of developing countries under the Accelerated Access Initiative, managed by the UNAIDS programme. It is expected that other major producers of antiretrovirals will take similar action, making it difficult for middlemen to sell back the...