Free Republic

PHOENIX – Former Arizona legislator Matt Salmon has joined the growing list of candidates taking a run at the governor’s office. The Republican launched his campaign early Wednesday in a video. “We can’t allow liberal politicians to turn Arizona into California. We must protect the values that have made Arizona a beacon of opportunity,” the onetime state senator and U.S. representative said in the video. “I believe in strong borders and an Arizona first agenda.”

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 11 operating system has leaked online today. After screenshots were first published at Chinese site Baidu, the entire Windows 11 OS has appeared online, complete with a new user interface, Start menu, and lots more. The new Windows 11 user interface and Start menu look very similar to what was originally found in Windows 10X. Microsoft had been simplifying Windows for dual-screen devices, before canceling this project in favor of Windows 11. Visually, the biggest changes you’ll notice can be found along the taskbar. Microsoft has centered the app icons here, cleaned up the tray area, and...

New fishing restrictions and windy weather got the salmon season off to a rocky start, but local fishermen say their recent catch has been really good. For the last couple of days, they've been busy off-loading their catch at the Santa Cruz Harbor. Commercial king salmon fishermen coming in with their catch and lining up to unload it all. Getting them in ice ready to be shipped off to market after a pretty good haul these last few days. "Anywhere from 20-to-60 somewhere in that range. It seems to be slowing down now," said Scott Edson, Commercial Fisherman. Catching salmon...

It started with a petrified tree, half-buried in the mud of the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The site intrigued Greg Francek, a ranger for East Bay Municipal Utility District, as he was walking the valley last summer. He inspected further, and what he recently discovered led to one of the most significant fossil discoveries in California history. Advertisement "I looked around the area further and I found a second tree," Francek said in an EBMUD statement released this week, documenting the discovery. "And then a third and so on. After finding dozens of trees I realized...

The King Fisher Flats hatchery, run by The Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project, was almost destroyed during the CZU lightning fire and now it is dealing with a new challenge, the drought. On Friday, endangered Coho Salmon were released early. "I want to keep it low so they can't jump over the screen," said Ben Harris, Executive Director of the Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project. These endangered Coho Salmon are very special and 12,000 of them survive the CZU Lightning fire that burned through the hatchery last August. Now, they're threatened by drought and must all be released...

Summary: Humans cannot live on protein alone - even for the ancient indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest whose diet was once thought to be almost all salmon. Anthropologists argue such a protein-heavy diet would be unsustainable and document the many dietary solutions ancient Pacific Coast people in North America likely employed to avoid 'salmon starvation,' a toxic and potentially fatal condition brought on by eating too much lean protein. Humans cannot live on protein alone -- even for the ancient indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest whose diet was once thought to be almost all salmon. In a new...

The United States on Tuesday joined more than a dozen other nations to express shared concerns about a World Health Organization study into the origins of the CCP virus, pointing to the report’s delay and lack of access to crucial data. “Together, we support a transparent and independent analysis and evaluation, free from interference and undue influence, of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” reads the statement signed by the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. “In this regard, we join in...

A top Taiwanese official issued a plea today for people to stop changing their name to “salmon” after dozens made the unusual move to take advantage of a restaurant promotion. In a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Salmon Chaos” by local media, around 150 mostly young people flocked to government offices in recent days to officially register a change in their name. SNIP Under the two day promotion which ended today, any customer whose ID card contained “Gui Yu” – the Chinese characters for salmon – would be entitled to an all-you-can-eat sushi meal along with five friends. Taiwan allows...

Idaho Congressman, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, has introduced a plan to breach four existing hydroelectric dams in the Northwest to help improve salmon runs. It is part of a $33 billion Project that includes extra economic development funds, compensation for lost revenue for certain industries and billions in incentives for farmers. The dams slated for removal under this plan are the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams. Part of the plan requires environmental groups pledging not to use lawsuits over federal environmental-protection laws violations. Oregon recently banned coal based energy. California has an energy shortage that...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

Smoked salmon, lox, Nova—they’re all the same, right? Nope. These various categories of cured fish have about as much in common as bread and pasta or salad and pickles. Translation? They can be made with the same raw ingredient, but once manipulated, they’re totally different foods. As someone who grew up on lox (I literally ate it by the pound as a small child), or what I called lox, I was kind of baffled to learn during a recent visit to Brooklyn’s Acme Smoked Fish that the product I’ve been referring to as lox my entire life is actually smoked...

“In Southeast Alaska communities, salmon head soup is an important part of our gift economy.”We heat up a couple quarts of water in a large pot, add an onion and a salmon head and boil until the soup turns white. In my family, we drink this for medicine. This is Hoonah elder Mamie Williams’ recipe for salmon head broth, commonly used in Tlingit culture to combat and prevent the flu. Many Hoonah residents use this recipe to prevent flu and to lessen their flu symptoms. Salmon head soup is a good food during the cold and flu season because of...

Not being a great meat-eater, I’ve always been intrigued by the Italian-American tradition of the ‘Feast of the Seven Fishes’ - the Christmas Eve dinner consisting of seven different fish dishes. I like seafood very much, but have had a hard time coming up with my ‘dream meal of seven’. One thing I’ve always wanted to try are Portuguese Codfish Balls (Bolinhos de Bacalhau), which I believe I first saw in an episode of the ‘Two Fat Ladies’. These seem to be usually made from rehydrated salt cod (the dried cod can be found in ethnic stores as well as...

The FBI is going to court to fight the public release of a small number of documents the State Department sent to agents from Christopher Steele, the British intelligence operative and Hillary Clinton-paid political muckraker, during the 2016 election. Normally, such Freedom of Information Act cases don’t merit public attention. This one does. To hear the FBI tell it, the release of former Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Kavalec’s documents is tantamount to giving up the keys to President Trump’s nuclear briefcase, aiding the enemy or assisting terrorists. “We know that terrorist organizations and other hostile or foreign intelligence groups have...

BOISE, Idaho — More than 1,100 sea lions could be killed annually along a stretch of the Columbia River on the Oregon-Washington border to boost faltering populations of salmon and steelhead, federal officials said Friday. The National Marine Fisheries Service said it’s taking public comments through Oct. 29 on the plan requested by Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Native American tribes. The agency says billions of dollars on habitat restoration, fish passage at dams and other efforts have been spent in the three states in the last several decades to save 13 species of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead protected under...

The Environmental Protection Agency told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries just one day after President Trump met with Alaska's governor, CNN has learned. The EPA publicly announced the reversal July 30, but EPA staff sources tell CNN that they were informed of the decision a month earlier, during a hastily arranged video conference after Trump's meeting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor, a supporter of the project, emerged from that meeting saying the president assured him that he's "doing everything...

The main salmon farmer in Scottish waters has reported a sharp fall in the tonnage produced last year, much of that due to the problems with sea lice. Mowi’s annual report reveals the amount of gutted salmon it produced from Scottish waters fell by 36%. In 2017, the total weight of gutted salmon from Scotland was 60,186 tonnes but last year it was 38,444. According to Mowi, the total supply of salmon from all the country’s farms was 138,200 tonnes, down 13.4%. -snip- Mowi’s annual report said the incidents which raised fish mortality during last year included anaemia, fish damaged...

Farmers opposed to the plan because it would divert less water for irrigation protested last summer outside the state Capitol. The U.S. lawsuit said the plan was arbitrary and the state failed to analyze impacts on the environment and would reduce water coming out of the New Melones reservoir for farms, businesses and hydroelectric operations. The environmental analysis “hid the true impacts of their plan and could put substantial operational constraints on the Department of the Interior’s ability to effectively operate the New Melones Dam, which plays a critical role in flood control, irrigation, and power generation in the Sacramento...

[Two hot links in the description about a wolf shooting and about steelhead if you are interested.]

The dam straddles Oregon and Washington, and the sea lions' voracious eating there affects fish populations in both states, as well as in Idaho and elsewhere. Biologists have tried transporting the sea lions to other locations, but they just keep coming back. Other strategies, such as constructing barriers, shooting the animals with rubber buckshot and scaring them with firecrackers, have had little effect. States currently are allowed to lethally remove 93 animals each year, but fisheries managers, tribal officials and others argue that's not enough. Now, a bill that would give states the latitude to kill several hundred more sea...