Free Republic

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with some of the world’s largest technology companies, intensifying scrutiny of the social media giant’s business practices as it seeks to rebound from a year of scandal and setbacks. A grand jury in New York has subpoenaed records from at least two prominent makers of smartphones and other devices, according to two people who were familiar with the requests and who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential legal matters. Both companies had entered into partnerships with Facebook, gaining broad access to the personal information of hundreds of millions...

PLEASE SCROLL OVER TO THE 41:10 MINUTE MARK AND WATCH THE NEXT 10 MINUTES. OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST COMEUPPANCE I HAVE EVER SEEN DELIVERED ON LIVE TV. Carlson was ON FIRE. Nuclear Response. I'm not kidding. Funny as hell, too!

A US warship has essentially been quarantined at sea for over two months and has been unable to make a port call due to an outbreak of a viral infection similar to mumps. Twenty-five sailors and Marines aboard the USS Fort McHenry amphibious warship have been diagnosed with parotitis, which causes symptoms similar to mumps, according to US military officials. Until CNN asked about the incident, the US military had not disclosed it. The illness first broke out in December, with the most recent case being reported on March 9.

In 2016, a group of national health experts asked the Obama administration to declare a national public health emergency in response to spiking fentanyl deaths, but were ignored, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Overdose deaths caused by synthetic opioids, most prominently fentanyl and its analogues, have skyrocketed since 2013. In May of 2016, 11 public health experts wrote a private letter to six Obama administration officials—including the heads of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Centers for Disease Control—asking for a public health emergency to be declared so that the federal government could better respond to the surge...

Recently, I noticed my friend Leila Miller repeating online that she does not insist that people remain living with an abusive spouse. My inclination was to say, “Stop! You don’t need to say it again!” Around the same time, I noticed that I was about to repeat myself on a seemingly unrelated topic. I started thinking, “What exactly is going on here?” My answer: We are dealing with weaponized self-pity, not a good-faith question. Miller is the author of Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak. She gives voice to the adult children whose lives were disrupted by their...

Ethiopia’s aviation authority is unable to read the black box recorders from the Boeing 737 Max plane that crashed Sunday, but a row is brewing over just where the flight recorders will be sent for analysis. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is pushing to have its experts analyze the data and voice recorders, which were partly damaged, the Wall Street Journal reports, but Ethiopian authorities would prefer to work with the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch to ensure that U.S. experts won’t have undue influence in the probe of the American-made plane. Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told WSJ...

President Donald Trump’s campaign was never given a defensive briefing by the FBI, despite mounting concerns that Russians were allegedly trying to penetrate the campaign during the 2016 presidential election. In testimony provided by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, along with others, it is the key finding that won’t bode well for the FBI and DOJ. It also raises significant questions regarding the treatment of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and whether she ever received ‘defensive briefings’ in detail from the bureau. Lynch’s testimony is still not public but has been reviewed by SaraACarter.com. I WAS CERTAINLY AWARE THAT IT WAS AN...

Install. Uninstall. Boot. Repeat Microsoft has quietly updated a support document to let us know that Windows 10 will have a crack at uninstalling borked updates – just in time for patch Tuesday.Windows 10 endures enjoys a near constant stream of updates and patches to, as Microsoft put it, "keep your device secure and running at peak efficiency". This is all well and good, but as a significant section of customers would agree, things sometimes go wrong and a hasty uninstall is required.Microsoft has therefore tweaked Windows 10 to spot a recovery from a failed startup (after all, a reboot...

<p>Maybe this is why Gregory and Marcia Abbott allegedly bought their daughter’s way into college.</p> <p>Their “rapper” son, Malcolm, popped out of the family’s Park Avenue building to smoke a giant blunt — while defending his parents and bragging about his latest CD.</p>

Hail of notifications incoming... just be thankful 8 passed you by Updated Windows 7 holdouts have been warned to expect a notification suggesting that perhaps an upgrade might be in order.Matt Barlow, corporate veep for Windows, has promised Windows 7 users are to receive a "courtesy reminder" that support is running out for the venerable OS as 14 January 2020 looms large.Barlow also noted that Office 2010 ends its support run shortly thereafter, but for now the focus is on Windows 7.The helpful notifications will doubtless send a shiver of déjà vu down the spines of users who found themselves...

<p>Lori Louhglin’s daughter was celebrating spring break on a yacht owned by a USC board of trustees member the same day her mother was ensnared in a widespread college bribery case, according to a new report.</p> <p>Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade was on Rick Caruso’s yacht in the Bahamas when federal prosecutors announced her mother would be charged with paying bribes to get her daughter accepted to USC, TMZ reported.</p>

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be a featured speaker at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention next month, joining a large number of Democratic presidential contenders. Sharpton said Wednesday he was impressed with the first-year congresswoman, who shocked the political world last year by defeating veteran Rep. Joe Crowley. “I met her in Washington. She seems to be very smart and committed to the progressive agenda,” Sharpton said. The convention will be held at the Sheraton Times Square from April 3-6. Ocasio-Cortez is scheduled to speak April 5 — right before Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Other speakers include Democratic star Stacey...

Anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on a sign featuring Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a subway station in Brooklyn earlier this week. The words “Die Jew Bitch” and a swastika were first spotted scribbled in black marker over the face of RBG on Tuesday on an ad pushing a new book about the Supreme Court justice at the Nassau Avenue subway stop on the G line. The vandalism was reported to the NYPD on Wednesday morning via social media. Responding on Twitter, NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea called the incident “abhorrent.” “As always, NYC has no place for hate,” Shea said.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted Wednesday that President Donald Trump's "record of accomplishment is why he'll win re-election," a significant difference from comments the Wisconsin Republican made earlier this week where he described how he thought some Democrats could beat Trump in the 2020 election. "To be clear, GOP wins elections when they're about ideas not when they're personality contests like Dems & media want. We're clearly better off because of @RealDonaldTrump," stated Ryan's tweet Wednesday from his @SpeakerRyan official account. "His record of accomplishment is why he'll win re-election especially when compared to Dems' leftward lurch." Ryan, who...

So far this year, if there is one move you should see it's a space movie. No, not "Captain Marvel." It's "Apollo 11," and believe it or not, it's by (gulp) CNN. That's right. Well done, CNN. Using often the highest quality documentary footage from NASA's moon mission, this film follows the spacecraft from its slow slothlike transit to the launch pad to the three Apollo astronauts climbing aboard to the army of engineers, scientists, and technicians in both Florida and in Houston as Apollo 11 makes its epic voyage. With the exception of a very few well-placed simple animations...

I believe that I've found the first thing that President Trump is reportedly doing, with which I disagree. When the Europeans came to what they decided to call 'America', the Chesapeake Bay was an incredibly fertile food source. After the Industrial Revolution, the bay gradually declined, until in the 1970s, farmers there told me that the bay grasses - essential to the lives of all the fish and shellfish life - were mostly gone. The Chesapeake Bay Program has done a great deal of good and has achieved progress in helping to bring the Bay back. Mr. Trump, please don't...

Samuel L Jackson called out the president and Kentucky's senior United States senator in an interview with Esquire published Tuesday. When asked if he was angry while growing up in segregation, the Tennessee native said he is angrier now because leaders like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are the same guys he remembers from his youth. "I don’t think I was ever angry about it," Jackson said. "I’m angrier now about it than I was then just because I see these guys and I know these are the same guys: Trump and all those a--holes, Mitch McConnell. But they’re the...

Do you know how many people in the United States are American citizens? No one does. And the Democrats don’t want you to find out. For nearly 150 years, the United States asked people whether they were citizens when filling out various census forms. Thomas Jefferson first proposed the idea in 1800. A citizenship question was added to the official census in 1820. The question was consistently asked until 1960. In December of 2017, the Trump administration added the question back to the survey. Democrats were furious when news broke that the citizenship question would be added to the 2020...

Several alleged reveal dates for the eighth-generation "C8" Chevrolet Corvette have come and gone, and a new report claims that this has been due to design problems delaying the new model's launch. These complications have apparently been so major, in fact, they're causing damage to the car's frame and glass engine cover due to too much power for the chassis. Rumors claimed that the C8 was scheduled for launch at Detroit's North American International Auto Show in January, then the Geneva Motor Show in March, both of which have come to pass without a new Corvette. Citing "well-placed sources," Hagerty...

According to the BBC, this is worst outage in Facebook’s history. The last time the social media network had an disruption this big was in 2008. At that time, the site had 150 million users; it has around 2.3 billion monthly users today. Facebook did not say what was causing the outages.