Free Republic

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are two investors in Bridge International Academies. But in Uganda, the group's 63 schools have been "ordered to shut down in a matter of weeks, leaving the lives of thousands of pupils in limbo." An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Uganda's High Court has described the Bridge International Academies...as unsanitary and unqualified, and has ordered it to close its doors in December because it ignored Uganda's national standards and put the "life and safety" of its 12,000 young students on the line. The Director of Education Standards for the Ministry, Huzaifa Mutazindwa, told CNN that the...

Toll gates at the Big Apple’s bridges and tunnels will disappear next year as a cashless system is rolled out, Gov. Cuomo announced Wednesday. The new system will be set up beginning in January at the Queens-Midtown and Hugh Carey tunnels, and then throughout the year at the Rockaway, RFK, Verrazano-Narrows, Throgs Neck and Bronx-Whitestone bridges. The system will collect money from drivers using E-ZPass. Those without E-ZPass will get their license plates recorded and receive a bill within 30 days. They will have 30 days to pay. All license plates will be scanned and scofflaws will be ticketed immediately....

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin “being friendly doesn’t make you friends.” Gates said, “He is familiar with countries from Indonesia to Latin America to the Middle East and Russia. It seems to me having somebody who is secretary of state who has dealt with a lot of these leaders, who knows them, knows how they negotiate, knows how they think is a huge assess for the United States. As I have said, I think...

Mr. Tillerson emerged as a contender on the strong recommendations of James A. Baker III, the secretary of state under President George Bush, and Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, according to a person briefed on the process. Mr. Kushner and Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, advocated strongly for Mr. Tillerson, and the president-elect became intrigued.

Full Title: Bill Gates teams up with Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to lead a $1 BILLION venture to tackle climate change In a bid to tackle climate change, Bill Gates has joined forces with some of the richest people in the world, including Sir Richard Branson and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to create a £800 million ($1 billion) fund. The initiative, named Breakthrough Energy Ventures, plans to invest in green energy over 20 years. Its funders hope that this long-term approach will help to deliver the next generation of reliable and affordable energy to the world.

From:john.podesta@gmail.com To: r_m_gates@att.net Date: 2008-11-16 18:51 Subject: Re: Contact Information Thx. ------Original Message------ From: Bob Gates To: John.Podesta@gmail.com Sent: Nov 16, 2008 3:42 PM Subject: Contact Information John, If you or anyone needs to contact me or talk with me privately during business hours, you can reach me through my personal e-mail at r_m_gates@att.net (there is an underscore -- r_m_ -- after the r and m in place of a period. I offer that because you indicated you had tried unsuccessfully to reach me by e-mail: the underscores in the address may not have come through in my initial e-mail...

When it comes to assessing the presidential race, I prefer to listen to the spies. They tend to be brutally unsentimental, see through the nonsense and cut to the cold, hard bottom line. And right now, two of the world’s foremost former spymasters are sending uncoded messages about what it will mean for America and the Western alliance if Donald Trump is elected president. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce former C.I.A. Director Robert Gates and his longtime nemesis and former K.G.B. agent, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Putin is voting Trump. Gates is not. In an essay in The Wall...

For years the Obama administration has been accused of micromanaging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from inside the White House. Now in an astonishing report from Fox News anchor Bret Baier, three former Obama Defense Secretaries are openly slamming him for his distrust of the military, his failure to lead and they're exposing his inexperienced and closest advisors for second guessing senior field commanders with phone calls to the battlefield. "President Obama, he's one of the youngest presidents we've ever had. One of the most inexperienced presidents we've ever had. He has a staff around him that is very...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that a record $12.9 billion has been raised for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria over the next three years. Trudeau made the announcement on the second and final day of an international donors’ meeting as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, U2 frontman Bono, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others gathered in Montréal to determine how to replenish the major global health fund that combats AIDS and two of the world’s other leading killers in low-income countries. …

Neither candidate has seriously addressed how he or she thinks about the military or the use of force.

The immense popularity enjoyed by Pope Francis ever since his election in 2013 has precipitated sharply during the past year, and he no longer ranks among the top ten most admired men in the world, according to a massive new study involving 31,000 interviews.

Bill Gates said investment gains should be taxed at the same level as ordinary income — a bold call for one of the world's largest investors. Speaking Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Gates said that he's "pleased" that there is more discussion around changing the tax code. When asked what he would alter, Gates sided with his pal Warren Buffett and said he supports raising the earned income tax credit. But Gates also said he would raise the tax rate for capital gains — the largest source of income for the richest Americans. The current top tax rate on capital...

Video link only

Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates chided the United States for failing to take in what he characterized as enough refugees, saying America has an obligation to set a "better example" to the world. During an interview with BBC, Gates said America has "the capacity" to do the same as Germany and Sweden, two countries he said ought "to be congratulated" for opening the doors wide to migrants. Gates made the comments while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. "The total number of refugees is not a world record," he said, saying the issue had become more focused...

Political analysis of the Las Vegas debate immigration dust-up between Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is missing a key ingredient: the money factor. You can read the lips of the candidates till the cows come home. But you'll get to the truth much faster when you learn where pro-amnesty power brokers have placed their bets and hitched their wagons. Rubio's brazenly fraudulent campaign to paint Cruz as soft on illegal immigration is a flabbergasting attempt to distract from the Florida junior senator's faithful allegiance to the open-borders donor class. Here's what you need to know: Facebook, Microsoft and Silicon...

Gates wants giant carbon tax, says government 'somewhat inept' The world’s richest man thinks only socialism – and skyrocketing gas prices – can save the world from climate change. Bill Gates, whose net worth is roughly $80 billion, told the Atlantic for its November issue that only massive intervention by world governments can head off environmental disaster. “There’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all...

"On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough: ...Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch."

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said President Obama distrusted the military, and “this was particularly true in Afghanistan” in an interview that was taped earlier in the week and broadcast on Thursday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. Gates after discussing his doubts that President Obama believed in the mission in Afghanistan, and micromanaging of the military by the Obama administration was asked about the president’s suspicion of the military. He stated, “I think this was particularly true in Afghanistan, and I think there were people in the White House, and I don’t want to name any names, who...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in Chicago and attended the private, prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. The pre-K-12 Lab Schools are progressive institutions ... resident Obama’s two daughters attended the school before moving to Washington in 2009, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children are enrolled there now. And in the fall, Duncan’s children will be attending Lab, too, while his wife works there. .... his children will attend a progressive private school in Chicago, a school that does not follow key school reform policies that his Education Department has set for public schools. It does not, for example,...

Revelations from emails purloined by a Romanian hacker show that Hillary Clinton was being secretly advised about Libya -- before and after the Benghazi terrorist attack -- by an off-the-shelf private spook group associated with controversial former Clinton confidante Sydney Blumenthal that claimed to be helping the Libyan opposition and considered placing ground operatives near the border. What's this all about? It's not completely clear, but apparently the goal of the rogue group, which included a former high level CIA covert operative and a former U.S. General, was, at the very least, to gather and provide sensitive reports to the...