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President Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials. Officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) relayed Trump’s order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A 6.0-magnitude earthquake and several aftershocks rocked Puerto Rico overnight as Tropical Storm Karen churned toward the island, officials said. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake, centered about 38 miles north-northwest of San Antonio, Puerto Rico, struck at 11:23 p.m. Monday. Several aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from 2.5 to 5.1, followed, the agency said. The National Weather Service said the temblor did not pose a tsunami risk to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. So far, emergency management officials have not received any reports of injuries or significant damage associated with the earthquake, The...

Company let me go for no real reason early this summer. Prior to finding another job, had requested ONE unemployment check and the company doesn't want to pay it. This is in Texas. Have hearing this morning on the phone at 7:30 a.m. - any advice from knowledgeable Freepers? My brother, who is a manager, said to stay calm and just stick to the facts. So, will do at least that.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told NBC News' Geoff Bennett on Monday that the Trump administration should make the whistleblower complaint that reportedly involves the president and Ukraine available to Congress, adding that it would be "very helpful to get [to] the bottom of the facts." The big picture: Romney continues to be the only Republican senator to condemn allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine's president to investigate Joe Biden, tweeting on Sunday that the reports are "troubling in the extreme."...........

“Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, “You must be born again”’” (John 3:5–7). Jesus answered Nicodemus’s objection by elaborating on the truth He introduced in verse 3: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” “Water” and “Spirit”...

A slew of swig state democrats Monday threw their support behind impeachment.

Telecommunications company Ericsson announced on Thursday that Lewsville, TX will be the location for its first fully automated smart factory in the US. The 300,000 square-foot factory, announced in June, will use 5G to create Advanced Antenna System radios to boost network coverage as 5G deployments gain ground in the US and will employ 100 people. ***** In June, Schneider Electric opened the first industrial smart factory in Lexington, KY. This brownfield factory modernized legacy systems, using IoT to deliver safer, efficient, and sustainable results. While Schneider Electric was the first site that digitally transformed into an automated factory, Ericsson...

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Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Ok, so, you’re saying nothing’s changed, then? – The Washington Post breathlessly reports today that 1 in 7 adults in New Orleans has a warrant out for their arrest. This is “news” in Washington, D.C., but in New Orleans it’s called laissez les bon temps rouler. Whatever happened to Matt Drudge? – The Drudge Report once was a great place to get a balanced cross-section of actual news. For many years it was the best news accumulator site on the web. But about two years ago, Drudge went completely off into the...

Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, the Supreme Court has ruled. Delivering its conclusions, the Supreme Court's president, Lady Hale, said: "The effect on the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme." She added: "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification." Lady Hale said the unanimous decision of the 11 justices was that Parliament had not been prorogued - the decision was null and of no effect - and it was for the...

Yesterday, software development tool maker Chef found itself in the middle of a firestorm after a Tweet called them out for doing business with DHS/ICE. Eventually it led to an influential open-source developer removing a couple of key pieces of software from the project, bringing down some parts of Chef’s commercial business.Chef intends to fulfill its contract with ICE, in spite of calls to cancel it. In a blog post published this morning, Chef CEO Barry Crist defended the decision. “I do not believe that it is appropriate, practical, or within our mission to examine specific government projects with...

Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, the Supreme Court has ruled. Mr Johnson suspended - or prorogued - Parliament for five weeks earlier this month, saying it was to allow a Queen's Speech to outline his new policies. But the court said it was wrong to stop Parliament carrying out its duties in the run-up to the Brexit deadline on 31 October. Downing Street said it was "currently processing the verdict".

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Kentucky, and the third is from New Orleans. All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The New Orleans contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $9,000. That's $4,000 for materials, $4,000 for my crew and $1,000 profit for me." The Kentucky contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job...

The Frederick County Sheriff's Office has charged two teens for the random, unprovoked physical attack of a man at the Great Frederick Fair. The victim was found near the midway area of the fairgrounds around 5:36 p.m. Friday, lying unconscious. Police interviewed multiple witnesses who told them the victim had been minding his own business. On Monday, the Frederick County Sheriff's identified the victim as 59-year-old John Marvin Weed of Mt. Airy, Maryland. Maryland State Police airlifted the victim to R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore where he died from his injuries Saturday. An autopsy is now scheduled...

Average scores dropped on the SAT this past test-taking cycle, with a greater percentage of high-school students not ready for college-level work, according to results released on Tuesday by the College Board. A record 2.2 million 2019 graduates took the college entrance exam, up from 2018’s record of 2.1 million. The increase is partly attributed to more districts offering students the option to take the test during the school day, often at no cost. The College Board said the lower scores were partly due to the rise in students taking the exam during the school day. These students are more...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Thus saith the LORD of hosts: Let your hands be strong, you that hear in these days these words from the mouth of the prophets . . . And in these last days He has spoken to us...

TEXAS: PAKISTANI MUSLIM illegal alien admits to murdering his own daughter and grandson in possible Islamic “honor” killing SEPTEMBER 23, 2019 BY BARENAKEDISLAM 72-year-old Mohammad Sahi is facing charges of capital murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Officers were unable to find a murder weapon at the scene. They reportedly asked Sahi “where the gun was,” to which Sahi responded that he used a stick to kill his family. KiiiTV According to local media, a probable cause statement from Corpus Christi police states that Mohammad Sahi, 72, approached neighbors covered in blood last Thursday and told them to call...

Iceland was once home to a unique subspecies of walrus, but the animals had vanished by the mid-14th century, just 500 years after the arrival of Norse settlers... Researchers have known for years that walruses once lived on Iceland, but opinion has been divided on whether they vanished before or after humans arrived. To settle the debate, Morten Tange Olsen and Xénia Keighley at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark carbon dated the remains of 34 walruses found in western Iceland. Three of the walruses died after the year 874 – the date permanent settlers are thought to have reached...

Now referred to as the "Burnt Church," this structure was likely burned to the ground during a Sasanian conquest of Hippos in the beginning of the seventh century. (The Sasanian empire was the last Persian empire before the emergence of Islam). Its mosaic floors, however, were well preserved in the ash. The mosaic was very colorful and had two Greek inscriptions that describe the ancient church fathers, who built the church for a martyr named "Theodoros." The mosaic was also covered in geometric patterns, birds, fish, fruit and baskets. Some of the baskets were filled with loaves of bread and...

Carbon dating suggests that the cultural deposits may be 300 years older than believed... The results from the fourth excavations suggest that the “second urbanisation [the first being Indus] of Vaigai plains happened in Tamil Nadu around 6th century BCE as it happened in Gangetic plains.” ... The recent scientific dates obtained for Keeladi findings push back the date of Tamil-Brahmi script to another century, i.e., 6th century BCE... Six carbon samples collected from the fourth season (2018) of excavations at Keeladi were sent to Beta Analytic Lab, Miami, Florida, U.S., for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating... “This finding suggests...