Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world is on track to add nearly two months of dangerous superhot days each year by the end of the century, with poorer small nations hit far more often than the biggest carbon-polluting countries, a study released Thursday found. But efforts to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases that started 10 years ago with the Paris climate agreement have had a significant effect. Without them Earth would be heading to an additional 114 days a year of those deadly extra hot days, the same study found. The international collection of climate scientists World Weather Attribution and the...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Nearly 2,300 Kansas City children are the latest at risk in the government shutdown. Head Start, a federally funded program, is on the chopping block in Jackson, Clay, and Platte counties. Head Start promotes school readiness via complementary early learning, health, nutrition, and family support services to low-income children from birth to age five. Eligibility is primarily based on income, but children in foster care, who are homeless, or whose families receive public assistance, qualify. Among Kansas City’s Head Start parents, 1,351 are employed, 169 are in training programs, and 168 are enrolled in school....

TYLER, Texas (AP) — Celia Monreal worries every day about the cartilage loss in her husband’s knees. Not just because it’s hard for her to see him in pain but also because she knows soon their health care costs could skyrocket. Monreal, 47, and her husband, Jorge, 57, rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplace for health coverage. If Congress doesn’t extend certain ACA tax credits set to expire at the end of the year, their fully subsidized plan will increase in cost, putting it out of reach. Without insurance, they won’t be able to afford his expected knee replacement...

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations’ food aid agency said Wednesday that severe funding cuts from its top donors are hurting its operations in six countries and warned that nearly 14 million people could be forced into emergency levels of hunger. The World Food Program, traditionally the U.N.'s most-funded agency, said in a new report that its funding this year “has never been more challenged” — largely due to slashed outlays from the U.S. under the Trump administration and other leading Western donors. It warned that that 13.7 million of its food aid recipients could be forced into emergency levels...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — We’re into day two of National Guardsmen in the city of Memphis, and already, they have boots on the ground in communities across the city. They join the hundreds of federal agents and Tennessee State Troopers who have already made their presence known in the city. “I feel like all the criminals are hiding right now, and when all of this goes away, all of those rats are coming out,” said Rosa Avina, Memphis resident. “I feel like the Hispanic community really doesn’t have a voice right now. Why? Because everybody is really scared,” said Avina. “A...

As the federal government shutdown drags on into a second week, a critical animal recovery program based in Colorado has ground to a halt, delaying a reintroduction plan that could be crucial to the survival of an endangered species. Fewer than 1,000 black-footed ferrets remain on the planet, including around 280 captive-bred ones currently being housed at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in Carr, Colorado. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had planned to reintroduce them at 15 sites across federal, tribal and private lands this fall, according to the conservation organization Defenders of Wildlife. Instead, the creatures are...

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) — Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family’s food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food. On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher’s little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: “No one has died” because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: “No children are dying on my watch.” That, Taher...

What on earth???? Here is an excerpt from an MSN story on the Georgia Senate race, referring to "former President Donald Trump". Is this the result of AI? Adding to the race’s complexity, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting a series of attack ads by a pro-Ossoff super PAC, citing misleading claims about Collins’ voting record, further escalating tensions in this high-stakes contest. Ossoff has leveraged robust fundraising to bolster his campaign, while Collins has emphasized his alignment with former President Donald Trump to galvanize GOP voters. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) lags behind Ossoff in the poll, with...

Legacy media have spent years perpetuating some of the biggest hoaxes in modern history — and it appears the American public is continuing to notice.On Thursday, Gallup released the results of its annual survey of Americans’ confidence in media. The poll’s baseline finding is that trust in the country’s “Democracy dies in darkness!” crowd is at the lowest point ever recorded.According to the survey, just 28 percent of Americans expressed having a “‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” That figure, Gallup noted, “is down from 31%...

In 2007, eight years after becoming Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez revoked the license of the country’s oldest private television station. Eight months into his second term, President Donald Trump suggested revoking the licenses of U.S. television stations he believes are overly critical of him. Since he returned to office in January, Trump’s remaking of the federal government into an instrument of his personal will has drawn comparisons to elected strongmen in other countries who used the levers of government to consolidate power, punish their enemies and stifle dissent. But those familiar with other countries where that has happened, including Hungary...

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders that he has often praised. On Wednesday, Trump cheered ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after the comedian made remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that criticized the president’s MAGA movement: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. It was the latest in a string of attacks...

PROVO, Utah (Reuters) -The trade school student suspected of assassinating right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah university was due in court on Tuesday to face formal charges, appearing by video feed from jail for his first public appearance since the shooting. The killing, captured in graphic video clips that went viral on the internet, sparked denunciations of political violence across the ideological spectrum but also unleashed a wave of partisan blame-casting and concerns that Kirk's murder might beget more bloodshed. Authorities have offered no possible motive for the killing, though Kirk's wife and other supporters were quick to...

When Shahnaz went into labour, her husband Abdul called a taxi to take them to the only medical facility accessible to them. "She was in a lot pain," he says. A 20-minute drive away, the clinic was in Shesh Pol village in Afghanistan's north-eastern Badakhshan province. It was where their two older children were born. Abdul sat next to Shahnaz comforting her as they drove over gravel tracks to reach help. "But when we reached the clinic, we saw that it was closed. I didn't know it had shut down," he said, his face crumpling with agony. The clinic in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

KABUL, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The shrinking of funding for Afghanistan, led by U.S. aid cuts, was hampering the response on Monday to a powerful earthquake in the east, with dozens of clinics closed and a helicopter out of use, humanitarian officials said. The magnitude 6 tremor hit overnight, levelling villages, killing at least 800 people and injuring more than 2,800 in remote mountainside areas. "The actual delivery of response has been badly hit by the funding cuts this year, but also the number of people we have on the ground is much less than we would have had six...

...The cartoon was created by Adam Zyglis, and is titled 'Swept Away.' In the image, a man in a MAGA hat holds a 'HELP' sign, and is illustrated drowning in the flood waters. ...The cartoon is accompanied by a speech bubble, which reads, 'Gov't is the problem, not the solution.' ...

…“Newspaper culture lost its conviction as it became aware of its own dimunition (sic),” Jack Shafer writes, “Yesterday’s journalists thought the world revolved around what their newspaper wrote. Today’s journalists resign themselves to the fact that their copy simply doesn’t matter as much.” Ouch. … Just for fun, I decided to ask GPT directly and simply: “Why did newspapers die?” “Newspapers declined primarily due to the rise of digital media, which fundamentally altered how people consume news. With internet accessibility, readers shifted to instant, free, and personalized content available online. Advertisers followed this migration, diverting revenue streams to platforms like...

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — After driving through a downpour to take her son to day camp, Darleen Reyes told camp administrators the rain would have kept her away but her son insisted on going. As she marked her son’s name present on a clipboard at the Boys & Girls Club camp, she laughed about braving a flash flood warning to get there. Before kissing his mother goodbye, Aiden Cazares, 8, explained to a reporter, “I wanted to see my friends and not just sit at home.” Then he ran off to play. Aiden’s one of 1.4 million children and...

More than 1,300 employees were forced out of the State Department on Friday, leaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old coffee mugs and taking with them decades of specialized skills and on-the-job training as part of the United States diplomatic corps. “It’s so hard to work somewhere your entire life and then get treated this way,” one veteran civil servant with more than 30 years working at the department told NBC News. “I don’t know how you treat people this way. I really don’t.” Michael Duffin, a civil service employee with the department since 2013, spent nine...

Foreign media are now required to obtain prior military censorship approval before filming missile impact and crash sites. Foreign photographers will no longer be allowed to film at the scenes of missile strikes in Israel without prior written approval from military censors, under new directives issued by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi. ...