Free Republic

Boris Johnson’s announcement of new deals with India worth some £1 billion, with more than £500 million of new investment from India in the UK expected to create some 6,000 jobs, is good news. However, it is also decidedly underwhelming when measured against the promises made about a golden future for the UK outside the EU once we had the ability to “make our own trade deals”, as if somehow British negotiators would be able to extract better terms than their counterparts from Brussels. ..UK-India trade is currently worth a total of about £23 billion a year and the government...

The UK government has agreed to give the European Union ambassador in London full diplomatic status. The Foreign Office had resisted the idea, arguing the EU should not be treated like an independent nation. But in a joint statement, the UK and EU announced ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida, would get "a status consistent with heads of missions of states". He will now be immune from detention, prosecution or taxation during his time in London. These are among the privileges given to diplomats in the states where they are stationed, as sanctioned by the Vienna Convention. In more than 100...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, has an ally of a new stripe in the furor over her use of anti-Semitic tropes regarding Israel and its American supporters — David Duke. In a Thursday podcast at his site, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard spoke out strongly in favor of the Muslim Congresswoman who has accused Jewish lawmakers of dual loyalty, attributed support for Israel to foreign money, and said Israel has “hypnotized” the world. “By defiance to Z.O.G. Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!” Mr. Duke wrote on his site, using the acronym...

WASHINGTON — The battle at the top of the Republican Party entered a new front Wednesday as former President Donald Trump and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise publicly backed Rep. Elise Stefanik to replace Rep. Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference.In a Wednesday morning statement, Trump said Cheney "has no business" in GOP leadership, adding Stefanik "is a far superior choice, and she has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for GOP Conference Chair."A Scalise spokeswoman, Lauren Fine, told NBC News: "House Republicans need to be solely focused on taking back the House in 2022 and fighting against...

Interesting how this can happen during a period of ‘global warming,’ isn’t it? You don’t suppose we’re being played do you? Northern Hemisphere snow mass is an historic 700 gigatons above average. (A gigaton is one billion tons, so that means it’s an historic 700 billion tons above average.)

Police have arrested a 54-year-old man on suspicion of stabbing two Asian women at a bus stop. .... Police identified the man as San Francisco resident Patrick Thompson, .. ABC7 reporter Kate Larsen tweeted that police located the suspect after a photo of him was disseminated to officers in the field. He was taken into custody hours after allegedly stabbing the women, aged 65 and 85, while they waited for a bus on Market Street. ... The 85-year-old woman was identified as Chui Fong Eng. Her grandson told KPIX-TV that she had finished her grocery shopping in Chinatown and was...

The Army plans to put a civilian in charge of the command that conducts criminal investigations, a response to widespread criticism the unit is understaffed, overwhelmed and filled with inexperienced investigators, officials familiar with the decision told The Associated Press. The decision, expected to be announced Thursday, reflects recommendations made by an independent commission in the wake of violent crimes and murders at Fort Hood, Texas, including the death of Vanessa Guillén, whose remains were found about two months after she was killed. According to officials, the Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, will be separated from the Provost Marshall...

In February, McConnell offered a public defense of Cheney after she faced similar calls for her removal -------------------- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dodged questions Wednesday regarding calls from top Congressional Republicans to replace Rep. Liz Cheney as House GOP conference chair amid her public feud with former President Donald Trump. McConnell was asked to comment on whether he planned to support Cheney in a bid to keep her leadership position. Rather than responding to the question, McConnell noted that "100% of [his] focus is on stopping" the Biden administration’s policy agenda. "I think the best way to look at...

The Atlanta police officer who was fired after fatally shooting Rayshard Brooks during an attempted DUI arrest last year has been reinstated after an independent review by the city's Civil Service Board. Rolfe and his former partner, Devin Brosnan, responded to a call on June 12, 2020, about an allegedly intoxicated person asleep at the wheel in a Wendy's drive-through. Upon arrival, they found Brooks, who was seen on video footage battling with the officers when they attempted to arrest him, stealing Brosnan's Taser, and attempting to fire the device at Rolfe. Rolfe then fired his service weapon at Brooks,...

U.S.—A Trump spokesman has recently announced that Trump will soon be returning to social media with his own platform. This new "trumped-up" social media site is expected to completely change the game and will feature an all-new look and experience for users. “We are removing the lame verification badges and replacing them with ‘People Who Aren’t Losers And Total Disasters’ badges,” Trump announced during a recent press release. “Before, anybody could get one, total losers got verified on Twitter, but not anymore. Now only the very best people will receive badges on my platform.” “Frankly, this site is tremendous, maybe...

The “Atlas of Civil Society” report is full of examples of restricted freedoms: overcrowded prisons in the Philippines, arrested journalists in Zimbabwe, threatened human rights defenders in Mexico. For the fourth time, the organizations Bread for the World and Civicus published a comprehensive report on the situation of civil society organizations and their members in almost 200 countries. “2019 was a year of protests,” said Dagmar Pruin, chairperson of Bread for the World. “Worldwide, people took to the streets. And this mobilization continued in 2020, for example in the US, or in Belarus.” There were also protests in connection with...

“After a lengthy lawsuit that saw the Democrats achieve few victories in their goal of stopping the audit of the 2020 ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, they have reached a settlement with the firm involved in the audit and the Senate Republicans that will see the firm, Cyber Ninjas, cease verifying the signatures on early voting envelopes with the signatures on file from the voter,” the National File reported. “With only 9 days left to go before the audit is set to be completed, signature verification will cease immediately,” the report continued. Per the settlement, Cyber Ninjas “and their agents...

Conspiracy theories circulated online via social media contribute to a shift in public discourse away from facts and analysis and can contribute to direct public harm. Social media platforms face a difficult technical and policy challenge in trying to mitigate harm from online conspiracy theory language. As part of Google's Jigsaw unit's effort to confront emerging threats and incubate new technology to help create a safer world, RAND researchers conducted a modeling effort to improve machine-learning (ML) technology for detecting conspiracy theory language. They developed a hybrid model using linguistic and rhetorical theory to boost performance. They also aimed to...

The majority of Android and iOS apps created for US public and private schools send student data to assorted third parties, researchers have found, calling into question privacy commitments from Apple and Google as app store stewards. The Me2B Alliance, a non-profit technology policy group, examined a random sample of 73 mobile applications used in 38 different schools across 14 US states and found 60 per cent were transmitting student data. Analytics SDKs, which collect behavioral data about app usage, are considered high risk because of the potential for fingerprinting, data abuse, and data transit to partners. Advertising SDKs are...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. 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

Hawley is A brilliant and brave young Senator … Bannon (Harvard) and Hawley (Stanford, Yale) are two higher-order, learned thinkers … loved the dialogue and the substance … check it out.

Another opponent then pushes Evan from behind and Evan falls to the ground. Evan is seen getting up in the video, walking away as words are exchanged then turning around before the opponent punches him in the head.But South Bay Sniper parents, including Evan’s father, said the physical altercation wasn’t all that happened.“Two-thirds of the team are Asian so they were being called the ‘chink’ name,” said Eduardo who didn’t want to release his last name. “The most infuriating thing is no one apologized.”Eduardo and one other parent said no one stepped in after the physical altercation, including the coach...

Left-wing actress Rosanna Arquette imagined what it would be like if Jesus were walking around in modern-day America and concluded he would be “murdered by police officers because of the color of his skin.” “If Jesus were alive today he’d be murdered by police officers because of the color of his skin,” the Pulp Fiction star said in a tweet to her 188k Twitter followers on Wednesday.

The next Superman movie will look wildly different from anything that’s come before. We learned in February that Warner Bros. had hired acclaimed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates to write the screenplay for a new Superman movie with J.J. Abrams producing. Rumors also swirled at the time that this planned film would introduce a new Superman – a Black Superman. That is indeed what Warner Bros. is planning, as a new report over at THR takes a look inside what’s on deck for this DC reboot. The plan is to introduce the world to a Black Superman, and Warner Bros....

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas would allow people to carry a handgun without a license, and the background check and training that go with it, under a measure approved by the state Senate on Wednesday. Texas already has some of the loosest gun laws in the country and has more than 1.6 million handgun license holders. Lawmakers have reduced classroom and shooting range training requirements over the last decade, but had been reluctant to eliminate the license requirement altogether.