Free Republic

Glenn Medical Center in Willows closed Oct. 21 after losing “critical access” status for being 3 miles closer to the nearest hospital than rules require. The closure strips emergency care from a poor farming community, eliminates 150 jobs and puts rural residents at risk of preventable deaths. Many other California hospitals also face risks of closing because of federal healthcare cuts affecting cash-strapped rural healthcare systems. These are questions that elected officials and policymakers may soon be confronting in rural communities across California and the nation. Cuts to Medicaid funding and the Affordable Care Act are likely to roll down...

Sen. Cory Booker has married his fiancé Alexis Lewis in Washington, DC, less than three months after announcing their engagement in an Instagram post. Only close family were present as the New Jersey Senator, 56, tied the knot on Saturday in an interfaith ceremony blessed by both a pastor and a rabbi — Lewis is Jewish and Booker Christian, according to the New York Times. The venue’s location wasn’t disclosed for privacy reasons. On Monday, the pair legally wed at the US District Court in Newark, where Booker rose to prominence as mayor — with their parents as witnesses. The...

Seoul police were called to a cafe on November 16, when a cheeky parrot was caught drinking from a patron's coffee cup. The bird, which is believed to be a Yellow-headed Amazon, is an endangered parrot native to Central America. How it made its way to a coffee shop in South Korea remains a mystery, but one thing is for sure: that bird needs its coffee. The police who responded to the call said that the parrot was very friendly, no doubt perked up by its afternoon caffeine. The parrot even allowed customers at the cafe to feed and pet...

In November, the Chinese startup Lonvi Biosciences announced the development of anti-aging pills that it said would allow people to live to 150. The remarks by company head Liu Qinghua came a few weeks after an infamous conversation in which the leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea were overheard talking about precisely that subject. “Forecasts show that there is a chance to live to 150 in this century,” Xi Jinping said at the end of a chat that, it turned out, was being recorded from the Chinese side. Over the past decade, scientists have indeed made significant progress in...

Drinking a maximum of 3–4 cups of coffee a day may slow the "biological" aging of people with severe mental illness, by lengthening their telomeres—indicators of cellular aging—and giving them the equivalent of 5 extra biological years, compared with non-coffee drinkers, finds research. But no such effects were observed beyond this quota. Telomeres sit at the end of chromosomes and perform a role similar to the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces. Telomeres are sensitive to environmental factors, including, possibly, diet. They included 436 adult participants from the Norwegian Thematically Organized Psychosis (TOP) study, recruited between 2007 and 2018:...

Researchers report that lower plasma LDL cholesterol is associated with a higher risk of incident type 2 diabetes in adults followed in primary care, independent of statin use. In the study, investigators asked whether plasma LDL-C predicted incident type 2 diabetes during long follow-up and examined whether statin therapy altered that relationship. A cooperative of 140 general practitioners provided the data collection. Each doctor contributes to a shared electronic medical record that follows patients across visits. More than 200,000 adults appear in the system, with age and geographic distributions that naturally mirror the city of Naples. Slightly more than half...

In yet another shocking example of radical left ideology infiltrating public schools, a “non-binary” Baltimore high school English teacher has come under intense fire for sharing explicit kink-related content on social media, including videos where he role-plays as a pregnant woman with enormous prosthetic breasts. James Roman Stilipec, 50, who goes by “Jay Aress” online and teaches ninth-grade students at Reach! Partnership School, has been blasted by parents and conservative groups for flaunting his fetishes publicly, raising serious questions about his fitness to be around impressionable teens. Stilipec, a former U.S. Navy veteran with 36DDD breast implants he proudly calls...

Hay fever, also known as allergic rhinitis, is the condition responsible for seasonal allergies or allergic reactions to other environmental allergens. A new study describes a large-scale survey of hay fever sufferers, comparing those who use eye washing as a preventative measure. The study reports that those using eyewash experience improved symptoms. While eyewashes containing benzalkonium chloride as a preservative have been shown to exacerbate certain eye diseases, a preservative-free eyewash has a generally good safety profile and is endorsed for reducing symptoms of allergic conjunctival diseases. However, robust research was lacking on the use of eyewash for hay fever....

These Black Friday shoppers are seeing red. Walmart customers were left fuming after finding out Kraft’s new limited-edition “Mac Friday Box” had sold out in seconds. The novelty item, designed to look like a 65-inch flat-screen, featured 65 boxes of classic Kraft Mac & Cheese inside and went on sale via the Walmart website at midnight Friday. It retailed for $19.37, a nod to the year that Kraft was founded, with savvy shoppers enticed by the bargain price. The low cost meant that each box inside equated to less than 30 cents — less than a quarter of the regular...

Most people heading into their retirement years already know the usual advice: eat fruits and vegetables, choose lean proteins, and go easy on sugar and salt. But there’s another layer to nutrition that’s often overlooked — lesser-known foods packed with compounds that support healthy aging in surprisingly powerful ways. These aren’t exotic items you have to special-order from across the globe. Many are now available in standard grocery stores or online, and they can bring variety, flavor, and longevity-boosting benefits to your daily routine.

A supplier of Boar’s Head cheese has issued a recall due to the potential presence of Listeria, according to the Food and Drug Administration. “Boar’s Head took immediate action to halt the purchase of these products from The Ambriola Company, notify retail partners, and ensure that the affected products are being removed from distribution nationally,” Boar’s Head said in a statement. The recall is categorized as a Class I, meaning exposure could result in serious health consequences or death. Which Boar’s Head items are being recalled? The recalled items were sold at Kroger stores in Kentucky and Indiana, and include:...

A new version of Ozempic is in the works for next year and is subject to FDA approval The manufacturers of Ozempic and Mounjaro are planning to launch a new weight loss method in 2026. While Ozempic remains a GLP-1 medicine for adults with Type-2 diabetes, and not a weight loss drug, Mounjaro - the brand name for tirzepatide - can be prescribed for weight-loss via the NHS. These drugs typically come in jab form, but it appears the new era of medicine could be upon us fairly soon. Mounjaro's manufacturer, Eli Lilly, announced in September that it was hoping...

Police shot a 54-year-old knife-wielding man Wednesday afternoon in Escondido, California after he allegedly charged at officers after walking through traffic. The Escondido Police Department (EPD) received a call about Juan Ramos approaching passing drivers on the street while armed with a knife around 12:10 p.m., CBS8 reported, citing the San Diego Police Department (SDPD). Two uniformed Escondido cops and one Escondido detective found the suspect walking in an intersection after he walked across lanes of traffic and ordered him to drop the knife, officials said. The suspect refused and allegedly ran toward the detective while still wielding his weapon....

TAD CARPER HOLLERED at a reporter who was unaware of the rules of order inside a Dallas Cowboys postgame news conference: "Excuse me! Hold on, hold up! I'll call on you," he implored. "Yeah, we go around," quarterback Dak Prescott said, a grin growing across his face as he awaited the next question from the media following a Week 6 road loss to the Carolina Panthers. Minutes later, when Prescott stepped away from his postgame media session, he joked with reporters about the tight ship run by Carper, the Cowboys' senior vice president of communications. For most who witnessed, it...

The Planned Parenthood abortion business has closed three more centers. Pro-life advocates hailed the shutdown of three Planned Parenthood facilities in Wisconsin as a significant blow to the abortion industry. The closures push the national tally of Planned Parenthood closures this year to 48 and underscore the impact of federal funding restrictions aimed at protecting taxpayers from subsidizing elective abortions and the abortion industry. The centers in Portage, West Bend and Wisconsin Rapids — all part of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s network — have ceased operations. None of the locations did abortions on site but all of them arrange for...

Ozempic medicine prescription with shot sitting on top of the box and measuring tape wrapped around the box Novo Nordisk’s headquarters is in Bagsværd, Denmark, which is where the company announced the failed Alzheimer’s trial for semaglutide. Credit: mikeledray / Shutterstock Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker behind weight‑loss and diabetes giants like Ozempic and Rybelsus, announced on November 24 that its much‑anticipated Alzheimer’s trials failed to slow cognitive decline – a major blow to hopes that its GLP‑1 drugs could break into neurodegenerative disease treatment. Two large trials, one disappointing outcome The EVOKE and EVOKE+ Phase III trials, which enrolled...

Excess weight or obesity boosts risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91%—significantly more than previously believed—while the mortality risk of being slightly underweight has likely been overestimated, according to new CU Boulder research. The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Population Studies, counter prevailing wisdom that excess weight boosts mortality risk only in extreme cases. The statistical analysis of nearly 18,000 people also shines a light on the pitfalls of using body mass index (BMI) to study health outcomes, providing evidence that the go-to metric can potentially bias findings. After accounting for those biases, it estimates that...

Bruce is gonna build a “wall.” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is planning to install high-tech surveillance along Long Island’s border with New York City when Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani takes office. Blakeman — a Republican eyeing a run for the gubernatorial nomination in 2026 — told Fox News in a recent interview that he’s directing police and county workers to line Nassau’s border with Queens with cameras, plate readers and facial recognition tech. “We are doing everything necessary to make sure that Nassau County is safe,” Blakeman told the outlet, calling Mamdani’s policies “pro-criminal” and “anti-American.” The county executive’s office...

Lizzo believes we, as a society, must “undo the effects of the Ozempic boom” because plus-sized women are being “erased.” The musician, 37, took to Substack on Sunday to share an essay titled, “Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do? Sincerely, a person who’s lost weight.” Lizzo, who began shedding pounds in the fall of 2023 following a very public harassment and hostile work environment scandal, confessed that the ordeal made her “deeply suicidal.” (snip) “We’re in an era where the bigger girls are getting smaller because they’re tired of being judged. And now those bigger girls...

Once upon a time, cholesterol was simple. This molecule, it was proclaimed, came in two varieties: an artery-clogging “bad” sort and an artery-clearing “good” one. The difference was not in the cholesterol molecules themselves, but rather in the way they are packaged up for transport in the bloodstream as nanoparticles called low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and high-density lipoproteins (HDLs). The public-health message was clear: minimise the bad LDL-cholesterol by cutting down on fatty foods, red meat and dairy products. Increase the good HDL type by doing more exercise and eating more fruits and vegetables. Since a third of heart attacks and...