Free Republic

A new study released Monday said Merck ’s widely used antiviral Covid pill can cause mutations in the virus that occasionally spread to other people, raising questions about whether the drug has the potential to accelerate Covid’s evolution. The findings may increase scrutiny about the usefulness of the treatment, molnupiravir, which was one of the first Covid drugs available to doctors worldwide during the pandemic. Molnupiravir works by causing mutations in Covid’s genetic information, which weakens or destroys the virus and reduces the amount of Covid in the body. However, the study published Monday in the scientific journal Nature found...

Two years later, people are still paying the price for the catastrophe of Old Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. And people will be paying the price for decades to come. The Associated Press reported on August 22 that “more than 200 extrajudicial killings of former Afghan government officials and security forces have taken place since the Taliban took over the country two years ago, according to a U.N. report.” These were people the Taliban had promised not to kill, but as Muhammad said, “War is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268). Nine days before that, the Daily Mail reported that “militants who left...

U.S. officials told media outlets on Thursday that they believe the plane presumed to be carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was deliberately taken down, though there was some disagreement as to how exactly the plane was destroyed. Russian air authorities have said Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, and eight other people were on the private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that it was likely a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia shot down the plane. The officials stressed that the information was...

"Never seen a tank jump off a cliff before. Guess the driver didn't understand the gravity of the situation."

Vegan influencer Zhanna Samsonova has reportedly “died of starvation” after subsisting exclusively off a diet of exotic fruit in Malaysia, according to her friends and family. She was 39. The Russian national — who frequently promoted raw foods on social media where she was known to her millions of viewers on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram as Zhanna D’Art — reportedly died July 21 after finally seeking medical treatment during a tour in Southeast Asia, according to local media outlet reports. “A few months ago, in Sri Lanka, she already looked exhausted, with swollen legs oozing lymph,” one unidentified friend told...

A French man who is known for extreme sports is dead after falling off the 68th-story of Hong Kong residential. Remi Lucidi, 30, was climbing the Tregunter Tower complex when the man fell according to the South China Morning Post. Lucidi, known online as Remi Enigma, was pronounced dead at the scene. According to Hong Kong officials, Lucidi arrived at the building around 6 p.m. and told the security guard that he was visiting a friend on the 40th floor. A security officer attempted to apprehend Lucidi after the alleged friend confirmed he was not acquainted with Lucidi — but...

A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth.... Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth; the next reset will occur on Oct. 15, which should enable communication to resume.

VIDEOWhat could go wrong? Well, plenty as you can see. So anything that you think will certainly happen can be rudely submerged by reality. Don't be shocked by that. Life can sometime crash your dreams. Meanwhile for this Fourth of July weekend enjoy the fireworks!

A multimillionaire thrill-seeker who was supposed to be on the missing Titanic sub said he pulled out over fears it was “cutting too many corners” — and was run with a $40 videogame controller. Digital marketing tycoon Chris Brown, 61, told the Sun that he paid a $10,000 deposit for the trip along with his friend Hamish Harding, the 58-year-old British billionaire who is among the five still missing.

The saga of the Titan submersible, missing since Monday shortly after it launched to take tourists to see the wreck of the Titanic, is a story that may prove to be as tragic — and maddening — as the tale of the doomed ocean liner itself.In 2018, experts inside and outside the company sounded alarms about the Titan submersible — most notably, that the craft wasn’t properly certified to dive to the depths necessary to reach the Titanic. OceanGate’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, wrote a report saying the craft needed more testing, stressing “the potential dangers to passengers...

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who went missing aboard his Titan submersible vessel along with four other passengers on Sunday, told an interviewer he didn't want to hire a bunch of "50-year-old white guys" like other submarine companies because he wanted his team to be "inspirational." WATCH: SHOCKING VIDEO AT LINK............. [Embed starts at 5:01] "When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub-operators out there but they typically have gentleman who are ex-military submariners and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys," Rush told a representative with Teledyne Marine. "I wanted our...

The hull of the Titan vessel "showed signs of cyclic fatigue," according to a January 2020 interview with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who is aboard the missing vessel. Rush told Geekwire that due to that stress, the hull rating was downgraded to a depth of 3,000 meters, 800 meters short of the Titanic's depth. In a December 2019 slideshow that appears to have been presented to the Deep Submergence Science Committee of the University — National Oceanographic Laboratory System, OceanGate listed the depth capability of the Titan as 3,000 meters. But in 2021, OceanGate announced that Titan, not another vessel,...

“Two-hundred and eighty-nine absentee ballots were found in a storage unit in downtown Clio,” Stanke told Mid-Michigan Now. Stanke learned of the possible existence of the missing ballots in 2021 and alerted the state’s attorney general and secretary of state. She eventually reported the issue to the Michigan State Police once tips came in about the ballots and some “old township documents” that had been uncovered. A former township worker rented the unit and kept the boxes inside, the FOIA records reportedly stated. “She was not aware when she put it in there,” Stanke explained. “She was asked to store...

A Delta flight from JFK to Los Angeles on Saturday made an unscheduled landing in Utah due to technical difficulties — only to have an air slide accidentally deploy inside the plane once it was on the ground. A crew member was hit unexpectedly by the “exploding” air slide and taken to the hospital.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has remained tight-lipped after Special Counsel John Durham’s report showed glaring missteps by the Department of Justice and FBI when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation. Pelosi’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Fox News Digital this past week with regard to her response to Durham’s report that found "the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" during the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Pelosi’s office also declined to respond to the question of whether she would walk back any of her past...

A video deposition of former President Donald Trump shows him mixing up former wife Marla Maples with rape accuser E. Jean Carroll — clutching a photo of her and asserting “That’s my wife.” The mistaken identity slip came during the 48-minute video made public Friday in Carroll’s ongoing civil rape trial and were made up of clips of the 45th president’s deposition testimony from Oct. 19, 2022, and shown to a Manhattan federal jury Wednesday and Thursday.

Bud Light is expected to "spend heavily" on marketing in the wake of backlash from its brief partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, RadarOnline.com has learned. The popular beer company was heavily ridiculed by conservatives after Mulvaney, 26, a TikTok creator and transgender woman, posted an Instagram with the adult beverage in a sponsored post. After celebs like Kid Rock and Travis Tritt rallied fans on social media to boycott Bud Light over the partnership, the beer's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has prepared to dramatically increase its marketing budget to recoup losses. After beer sales plummeted, Anheuser-Busch distributors feared for their...

Classified war documents detailing secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military...were posted this week on social media channels, senior Biden administration officials said...the documents appear to have been modified...overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed...But the disclosures in the original documents, which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans,...

Participants in a Department of Defense training exercise at a Boston hotel entered the wrong room Tuesday and mistakenly detained a guest instead of the person assigned the role of the person to be detained, according to the FBI. The mistake happened about 10 p.m. ET with the Boston Division of the FBI helping the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting the Defense Department exercise. The exercise was meant to simulate a situation that personnel might encounter during an actual incident.

It’s not just silicon valley folks, a very large pension plan in Sweden was invested heavily in the Silicon Valley Bank. The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank has spread to Sweden’s largest pension group after the fund more than doubled its holdings in the Californian bank during the past year. Stockholm-based Alecta, which oversees more than $104 billion in assets, was SVB’s fourth-biggest shareholder at the end of last year with a holding worth $605 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Following a 60% plunge in SVB’s stock on Thursday, the value of the stake was worth only $279...