Free Republic

Thousands of Romanian seasonal workers on Friday waited to board chartered planes to Germany after the government decided to allow the flights despite the new coronavirus pandemic. Around 300,000 seasonal workers travel to Germany each year, mainly from Poland and Romania, to help with fruit and vegetable harvests, according (to the) German Farmers’ Association. On Thursday, images of some 1,800 seasonal workers waiting shoulder to shoulder in a packed parking lot at the airport in Cluj-Napoca in central Romania were shared widely on television and on social media. Authorities are investigating whether the crowd breached strict social distancing and other...

Wisconsin’s dairy industry is calling for federal help as farmers have begun dumping milk because of falling demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite empty grocery store shelves in recent weeks, widespread closures of schools and restaurants — coupled with falling exports — have led to a sharp drop in demand. This is without precedent,” said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. “Half the restaurants in the U.S. are closed or operating at a reduced level. That has never happened before.” With more than they can sell, processors are refusing to pick up milk from farmers, who...

If it says "Made in China" I'm not buying...and no, that's not racist. The CCP are an enemy, they don't even care about their own people. The CCP must be crushed, so long as their economy continues to grow it won't happen. We have far too many products related to our national security coming from there. Buy American/British first...then elsewhere - just not China.

People still struggle to find food at grocery stores during this pandemic, but Jameson Altott is not as worried. He grows more than half the food for his family from his large garden at home, outside Pittsburgh. "We are lucky to have preserved a lot of food and we still have canned fruits and vegetables and jams and berries in the freezer and meat in the freezer," Altott says. There has been a surge of people interested in growing their own food. Oregon State University's Master Gardener program noticed this, and made their online vegetable gardening course free through the...

Edible cups made from seaweed. Shopping bags from cassava starch. Food containers from sugarcane fiber. These are some of the bioplastic alternatives being tried out in Indonesia, the world’s No. 2 producer of seaweed.It’s just after sunrise here in Bali, and a group of locals are preparing to sail their wooden boats out to a bay off Nusa Lembongan, a small island southeast of the tourism hotspot. They’re neither fishermen nor tour guides. They’re farmers, cultivating a watery crop that promises to be part of the solution to the increasingly urgent problem of marine plastic waste that’s become woven into...

NASA unsticks its Martian digging probe by whacking it with a shovel. ______________________________________________________________________ The robotic scoop-arm pins “the mole” against the side of its hole in an attempt to get it moving.NASA/JPL-Caltech ___________________________________________________________________ Every day, the InSight lander’s suite of instruments sends back data proving that the Red Planet isn’t really dead. Marsquakes rumble the seismometer. Swirling vortices register on onboard pressure sensor. And temperature sensors help track the weather and changing of the seasons. Despite the lander’s successes, however, one gauge has met with resistance from the Martian environment while trying to carry out its mission. Something has stopped...

Artist's reconstruction of the world's oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, in its original environment. 66.7 million years ago parts of Belgium were covered by a shallow sea, and conditions were similar to modern tropical beaches like The Bahamas. Asteriornis lived at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, a time when mosasaurs (giant marine reptiles) swam in the oceans, and Tyrannosaurus rex lived on land. Asteriornis had fairly long legs and may have prowled the tropical shoreline. Credit: Phillip Krzeminski ==================================================================== The oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by...

Parents with children at two Tennessee schools are taking extra precautions after it was revealed a district employee came in contact with a person who tested positive for the coronavirus. Many parents at Treadwell Middle School and Treadwell Elementary School in Memphis wiped their kids down and some even sprayed them with disinfectant as they took them home Monday. “I wipe my children backpack down when I get them out of school. Sure did,” Tasha Lott told WHBQ. “Got them gloves. Sure did.” Some parents and family members took more extreme measures. Annie Jones wore plastic bags from her head...

From what I’ve read the Imported Red Fire Ant species got to my hometown about the same time I did. And fire ants are not going to be gone from Baton Rouge or Bovina when I am. Ants are just a fact of life and there is no simple surefire ant solution. However, there is such a thing as the Museum of Novel Fire Ant Control Methods and Products. I just can’t find out if it is a true physical facility or merely cyber located. It is not definite as to what entity is its founder and curator, but I’m...

Are we about to see an expansion of the authority or impact of the Endangered Species Act? If so, how will this occur? First let’s take a look at how we got where we are today. In the early history of our country, the states were sovereign over wildlife within their borders. As late as 1896 the Supreme Court held that states have the, “undoubted authority to control the taking and use of that which belonged to no one in particular but was common to all.” (Geer v. Connecticut). Since then we have witnessed the steady passing of this...

Thomas Knight with the enormous lake trout that broke New Hampshire's 62-year-old state record for the largest lake trout. (CNN)When Thomas Knight set out on the ice to go fishing for lake trout, he was determined to haul in a big one. He came prepared with an 11-inch sucker because big bait attracts big fish, he said. But what he reeled in was bigger than anything he could have imagined. Knight, of Meredith, New Hampshire, caught a lake trout last Tuesday that weighed in at 37.65 pounds, easily breaking the state record that was more than 60 years old. The...

I think that we should have one thread where everybody on Free Republic Can list their concerns about the Coronavirus. It’s simply becoming too time consuming to keep up with all the different Coronavirus concern threads that keep popping up every few minutes. This way, we can all be on the record on one thread with our concerns about the Coronavirus.

In a test kitchen in a corner building in downtown Pasadena, Flippy the robot grabbed a fryer basket full of chicken fingers, plunged it into hot oil — its sensors told it exactly how hot — then lifted, drained and dumped maximally tender tenders into a waiting hopper. A few feet away, another Flippy eyed a beef patty sizzling on a griddle. With its camera eyes feeding pixels to a machine vision brain, it waited until the beef hit the right shade of brown, then smoothly slipped its spatula hand under the burger and plopped it onto a tray. The...

A Dallas-based pest exterminator tells WFAA that he treats up to 10 rideshare vehicles per week for bed bugs, a mode of transportation that thousands turn to weekly to get around the metro. For Don Brooks, owner of Doffdon Pest Control, bed bugs are his life. He travels daily around the metro to rid the nuisance insects (that multiply fast) from both homes and vehicles. Brooks told WFAA that he's seeing more and more rideshare drivers. "I probably do five to 10 rideshare cars per week," Brooks said. "Drivers either see bed bugs, someone complained, or they were suspicious of...

African turquoise killifish can put themselves into a state of suspended animation as an embryo, a process known as diapause African turquoise killifish can put themselves into a state of suspended animation as an embryo (Image: MDI Biological Laboratory) ===================================================================== A fish that can halt the process of ageing and survive out of water for years could help humans track down the fountain of youth, researchers have claimed. African turquoise killifish can put themselves into a state of suspended animation as an embryo, a characteristic known as diapause. The trend is thought to have emerged in response to seasonal changes...

The idea that animals can experience love was once anathema to the psychologists who studied them, seen as a case of putting sentimentality before scientific rigor. But a new book argues that, when it comes to dogs, the word is necessary to understanding what has made the relationship between humans and our best friends one of the most significant interspecies partnerships in history. Clive Wynne, founder the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, makes the case in "Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You." The animal psychologist, 59, began studying dogs in the early 2000s, and,...

A historic desert locust infestation in East Africa could cause the next major famine as people in the region are already struggling with hunger after droughts were followed by cyclone flooding, one of the world’s leading evangelical charities has warned. A growing spread of city-sized swarms of locusts has reached seven East African countries in recent months. The invasion has been described as something similar to an account from the book of Exodus as the grasshoppers have torn through crops, grass and other green vegetation. Experts say the crisis might be the result of exceptionally wet weather from rare cyclones...

In the middle of the night past I felt a burning sensation traveling up my esophagus. This was followed by fits of coughing and sweats. I had eaten something that had gone rancid, probably either peanut butter, canned peanuts or cooking oil. Previous nights recently I had the same problem, which I believe came from cookies. My attack last night lasted about two hours instead of a more typical thirty minutes. I tried to deal with it by spitting out whatever I could, which was mainly mucus. In the past, things like spaghetti sauce, tortilla and potato chips have given...

Gee, I wonder why the Robinsons are having a problem hitting their goals on their FReepathons.

Whoopi Goldberg and her business partner Maya Elisabeth are shuttering their cannabis brand, Whoopi & Maya, after four years. And we’re told it all went up in smoke because of a rift between the pair. Board member and High Times veteran Rick Cusick told us, “In the last few months, Whoopi and Maya wanted a divorce, and the board had worked very hard to try and come up with some proposals … but we couldn’t get both principals to agree.” He said the board thought they had found a “win-win” solution to “preserve the company,” but that Goldberg then sent...