Free Republic

Australia's economy minister on Wednesday (Mar 25) called on China to drop punishing trade tariffs if it wants to thaw frozen relations, after Beijing sent a message signalling it is ready to improve ties. China - Australia's biggest trading partner - imposed tariffs and disrupted more than a dozen key industries, including wine, barley and coal, as relations deteriorated sharply in the past two years. Canberra had irked Beijing by calling for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and by banning telecoms giant Huawei from building Australia's 5G network.

A San Francisco Bay Area gas station is charging nearly $8 per gallon ahead of Memorial Day weekend as California’s average price continues to trend upward, ABC’s KABC-TV 7 reported on Tuesday. The Chevron station in Menlo Park, California, was pictured offering regular gasoline to customers at a price of $7.25 per gallon, with its higher-octane gasoline hitting $7.75 per gallon. Gas prices are spiking across the country at shocking rates. In California alone, gasoline has gone up almost $2 per gallon over the last year. That number over the same period nationwide is $1.61, according to The Daily Wire....

The United Kingdom supports a proposal by Lithuania to recruit an international fleet of naval warships to break the Russian blockade of Ukraine which is preventing the export of huge amounts of grain to the rest of the world. Millions of tons of grain are stuck inside Ukraine and without it, levels of world hunger are considered highly likely to rise and may even trigger another migrant crisis. Such is the background to the suggestion by Lithuania that a so-called “coalition of the willing” of warships outside the structures of NATO,/B> could work together on getting food out of Ukraine’s...

Newt Gingrich: ... So the president overall, President Trump overall has a very good track record. Look, I want to say I was for Perdue. And as you know, I'm very deeply for Jake Evans in the sixth District. But the fact is that Governor Kemp, to his credit, put together a very powerful campaign, used all the weapons that a sitting governor has to raise an amazing amount of money spent about two and a half months demolishing Perdue as a candidate, with Perdue not having the money to counter it. And Kemp is going to win a significant...

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is willing to spend over $100 million on his preferred candidate in the 2024 election. What Happened: In a recent podcast interview with Jacob Goldstein, Bankman-Fried said he had a “soft cap” of $1 billion that he would likely spend on supporting his ideal candidate in a presidential campaign. Goldstein asked whether the FTX chief was going to be a big spender on campaigns in the next election cycle, to which Bankman-Fried responded that it would largely depend on who would be running. “Let’s say Donald Trump runs for President....

This summer, power grids worldwide won’t produce enough electricity to meet the soaring demand, threatening more than one billion people with rolling blackouts. Grids are stretched thin by fossil fuel shortages,/B>, drought and heatwaves, commodity disruptions and soaring prices due to the war in Ukraine, and the failed green energy transition where grid operators retired too many fossil fuel generation plants. Combine this all together, and a perfect storm of blackouts threatens much of the Northern Hemisphere. The power crisis, affecting a large swath of the world and top economies, could be less than a month away when summer begins...

Following Tuesday's mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, Arizona GOP congressman Paul Gosar spread a false and transphobic claim that the suspected shooter was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien." Gosar tweeted the claim even though authorities had already identified the suspect as an 18-year-old male resident of Uvalde, where the shooting occurred. As of Tuesday evening, the GOP representative has not commented on his tweet, which was deleted about two hours after being published. This false claim has been proliferating on social media with photos of a transgender person unrelated to the attack. The images appear to have been...

Alabama’s Senate race is serving up as a proxy battle between Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul’s divergent visions of the Republican Party. While Paul has campaigned on behalf of Mo Brooks, the Alabama congressman who on Jan. 6 urged the crowd of Donald Trump’s supporters to start “taking down names and kicking ass” before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, McConnell’s allies favor Katie Britt, a telegenic 40-year-old who ran the state’s Business Council. “The people who I trust that I know really well from my state, Thomas Massie and others, tell me he has a great voting record ......

<p>Ricky Gervais’ Netflix comedy special “SuperNature” has only been released on the streamer for a few hours, but it has already drawn criticism for a string of graphic and hurtful transphobic jokes.</p><p>Four minutes into the special, Gervais dives into material about the trans community, seemingly calculated to draw controversy.</p>

“Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men: For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen” (Proverbs 25:6-7).

Tesla stock reached an all time high of $1,243 in November 2021. Today, it briefly touched $620 before closing at $628.

What's happeningA massive shortage in baby formula is causing outrage and concern as some parents struggle to find infant formula for their children. Why it mattersIn the US, 75% of babies consume formula by the time they're six months old, making the baby formula shortage a critical widespread issue. What's nextThe baby formula shortage has become a national concern, with the White House stepping in to help end the current shortage and prevent future scarcity.As the US continues to grapple with a nationwide infant formula shortage, a military plane carrying over 500,000 baby bottles' worth of specialty formula touched down...

@IAPolls2022 BREAKING: Mike Collins and Vernon Jones advance to primary runoff election in Georgia's 10th Congressional District: @AP_Politics

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the non-historian behind the widely discredited New York Times “1619 Project,” will be receiving coronavirus relief funds from a New Jersey library to cover her speaking fees. Maplewood Library is one of 200 libraries to receive a grant “for libraries affected by the pandemic” from the American Library Association’s American Rescue Plan. The funding came from President Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.” “The Library has always made a conscious effort to provide programming that expand awareness of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility. The grant will allow the Library to host a speaker who exemplifies these core values.” Hannah-Jones'...

BUFORD, Ga. — Incumbent Brad Raffensperger held off a challenge from his Donald Trump-backed opponent, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., in Georgia’s Republican secretary of state primary on Tuesday, NBC News projects. With 98 of precincts reporting, Raffensperger had 51.9 percent of the vote, while Hice had 33.8 percent. Two other lesser-known candidates — former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle and former Judge T.J. Hudson — both received support in the single digits. Because Raffensperger received more than 50 percent of the vote, he was able to avoid a runoff against Hice, which is required under Georgia state law if no...

A Comparison of Obama 2008 with Biden 2020Blue highlighted counties were won by the Democrat. pop column is the county population rank in the state. A negative number in the Obama minus Biden column means that Biden "turnout" was greater than Obama 2008.Light green entries - later investigation. Metropolitan areas [grouped counties] follow the main table.

Earlier Tuesday evening, we reported on several hotly contested GOP primary races in the Peach State, including the governor’s race (which incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp won) — and the Senate seat, which Donald Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker won in a landslide.Now, there’s more news out of Georgia. The 11th House District Republican primary race has been called for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by both the Decision Desk site and Fox News, among other outlets. The NY Post reported that the sitting congresswoman “held 70.4% of the vote when the race was called with 44% of precincts reporting, according to the Associated...

China is crashing back and forth between government lockdowns and the relaxation of COVID mandates as they encounter yet another wave of infections. Why is this happening in what is supposed to be one of the more advanced nations on the planet? One reason may be that large segments of the Chinese population are still either unvaccinated or their immunity bestowed by China’s original, home-grown vaccines is insufficient in the face of the Omicron variant and other mutations. As the Associated Press reports today, the country is dealing with its biggest outbreak to date, and the fault likes entirely with...

Has land for peace ever worked — even lately? We’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s look at a critical moment in the Russian offensive in Donbas. If Putin wants to force a face-saving settlement, he needs to win a decisive battle to secure an area that he, um, largely controlled by proxy before the invasion. Reuters casts the ongoing battle on the Siverskiy Donets river as Putin’s last, best hope to get out with some claim of victory:The decisive battles of the war’s latest phase are still raging further south, where Moscow is attempting to seize...

In an effort to boost downtown businesses, thousands of dollars will be distributed for downtown workers to spend directly. According to the Portland Business Alliance, it has partnered with the city of Portland, Worksystems and Kuto — a local Black, Indigenous, People of color start-up — to issue 500 $50 Kutu app stimulus credits to downtown workers that can be spent at participating small businesses in the downtown area.