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While prescribed burns are a critical tool in wildfire prevention, warming climate conditions are restricting the window of time in which they can be safely deployed, a new study has found. Kindled by highly trained firefighters, these controlled blazes help clear away excess dry plant matter that could otherwise catalyze what the study authors described as “a raging inferno.” Such fires can only occur safely when the weather is not so damp as to prevent combustion, but also not so dry or windy that more vegetation would burn than planned, the authors noted. But climate change is now reducing the...

Vice President Kamala Harris has been prescribed and has taken Paxlovid, an antiviral pill used to treat COVID-19. Harris’s press secretary Kirsten Allen tweeted the announcement about the vice president’s treatment on Tuesday. It came just hours after it was announced that Harris, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive for COVID-19.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cities and towns across America can continue praying at public meetings. Monday's 5-4 decision centers on an action that dates back to the nation's founding in 1774, when the first Continental Congress opened with Christian prayers. Two-hundred and forty years later, however, America is much more religiously diverse. That is part of the reason an atheist and Jew challenged prayers at public meetings in the town of Greece, New York. They claimed the prayers were mostly Christian, made them uncomfortable, and amounted to coercion. But in the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy warned...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

BOSTON - Rush Limbaugh is not alone. Addiction to prescription painkillers has boomed in recent years, and they can be as tough to kick as heroin. The number of Americans who begin misusing painkillers each year has almost quadrupled from 1990 to 2001, according to government figures. And many abusers don't recognize the insidious slide into addiction. "It's just so much more acceptable in society for people to be taking prescription drugs," said Sean Evans, 31, of Everett, Mass., a construction worker who became addicted to the pain reliever OxyContin, then moved on to heroin. "You can always rationalize the...