Free Republic

President Joe Biden’s recent claim that gay people "can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant" in the afternoon was rated by the fact-checking site PolitiFact as "mostly true" on Friday. During the White House "Pride Month 2023" event on June 10, Biden gave a speech in support of the LGBTQ community. One particular point that drew backlash was his claim that restaurants kick gay people out on the basis of their sexual orientation. "When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something...

The perils of climate change are well known, but rising sea levels could also alter human evolution, scientists have claimed. Rising sea levels could force communities to live in underwater or semi-aquatic towns which could change out physiology. Dr Matthew Skinner a paleoanthropologist from the University of Kent, claims that humans could evolve to have webbed hands and feet and less body hair so they could move quickly through the water. Our eyes would even become more like cats, so we could see in the murky gloom of seas and rivers and our lungs would shrink as we became used...

Humans may evolve bizarre features such as webbed feet and eyes like cats in response to changing environments, a scientist claims today. Experts calculated how our physical appearance could change under a number of scenarios, including a 'water world' if melting ice caps cause rising sea levels. They also considered what would happen in a second ice age which could be triggered by an asteroid strike, and if humans colonised other planets. Dr Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, examined the three scenarios and worked with artist Quentin Devine to help visualise how humans could look in...

Public opinion polls just conducted in Israel indicate a steep drop in the popularity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It may be a temporary process, it may be a transient phase, but as of this very moment the numbers do not lie and reflect a clear trend. Support for Netanyahu is in steep decline. The results of two surveys publicized in Israel, one for the “HaMate” program on Israeli TV Channel 10 and the other for the Knesset TV Channel (“Panels”), point to an amazing fact: more than 60% of the Israeli public does not want Netanyahu to serve another...

Iran has tentatively agreed to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia if it reaches a broader nuclear deal with the West, according to officials and diplomats involved in the negotiations, potentially a major breakthrough in talks that have until now been deadlocked. Under the proposed agreement, the Russians would convert the uranium into specialized fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s only commercial reactor. Once the uranium is converted into fuel rods, it is extremely difficult to use them to make a nuclear weapon. That could go a long way toward alleviating Western concerns...

Meanwhile, the media has spread new proofs of the U.S. intelligence involvement to chemical attack near Damascus. Hacker got access to U.S. intelligence correspondence and published U.S. Army Col. ANTHONY J. MACDONALD’s mail. Macdonald is General Staff Director, Operations and Plans Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence the Army Staff. It’s about chemical attack in Syria. In the message August 22 Eugene Furst congratulates Col. on successful operation and refers him to Wasington Post publication about chemical attack in Syria. From the Anthony’s wife dialog with her friend it’s clear the video with the children killed in...

Media Bias: Need a little anti-war, anti-Semitic buck-up? Try some Reuters coverage. The British news outlet will be only too happy to oblige. Over the weekend, a Reuters photographer was caught trying to make one of Israel's defensive attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon look much more devastating than it was. The photo was eventually withdrawn and the photographer ostensibly fired. The photo, an image of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had apparently been altered to give the effect that the smoke was thicker and the damage worse than it was. The doctored version, credited to Adnan Hajj,...

The Passion of the Toys In Platoon, Oliver Stone said the first casualty of war is innocence. He was wrong. As the photos here show, the first casualties of war are...the symbols of innocence. And photographers from Reuters and the AP just happened upon many of these perfectly placed symbols of war's horrors. Ben Curtis, AP Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Sharif Karim, Reuters Issam Kobeisi, Reuters Mohamed Azakir, Reuters This last one is the only one that seems...untouched. Feel the pathos. Mourn for these oh-so-photogenic and suspiciously dust-free trinkets of childhood. Just don't ask any questions about their...

Summary: If an influenza pandemic struck today, borders would close, the global economy would shut down, international vaccine supplies and health-care systems would be overwhelmed, and panic would reign. To limit the fallout, the industrialized world must create a detailed response strategy involving the public and private sectors. Michael T. Osterholm is Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, Associate Director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Center for Food Protection and Defense, and Professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health.