Free Republic

The Taliban have not reached beyond their own ranks to fill government positions and are reportedly staffing ministries with military and/or religious figures with little relevant experience, exacerbating the group’s administrative challenges and some internal tensions.The Taliban’s victory may provide a morale and perhaps material boost to Pakistan- based Islamist terrorist groups, including the so-called Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-i Taliban-i Pakistan, or TTP, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization). TTP attacks against Pakistani security forces increased after August 2021, reportedly prompting the Pakistani government to seek the Afghan Taliban’s mediation of several ceasefires, which appear to have broken down in late 2022.26...

Meanwhile, Sens. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) are negotiating on a narrower bill based on a House-passed measure that provided a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented farmworkers. The senators have not yet reached a deal but are hoping to get to one before the end of the lame-duck session this month, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation candidly.

Imagine if your power mad politicians liked Covid Lockdowns so much, they wanted to continue them indefinitely. This is going to be trialled in Oxfordshire in Britain. Oxfordshire County Council Pass Climate Lockdown ‘trial’ to Begin in 2024 Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods. Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_DdSMn55cA

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. Neuralink Corp is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. The federal probe, which has not been previously reported, was opened in recent months by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General at the request of a federal prosecutor, according to two sources with...

WATCH: KJP says Twitter censoring Hunter Biden laptop story is a "distraction" and "old news if you think about it"

Lynne Ingersoll and her cat, Jesse, spent a quiet Thanksgiving Day together in her small bungalow in Blue Island, Ill. A retired librarian, Ms. Ingersoll never married or had children. At 77, she has outlived her parents, three partners, her two closest friends, five dogs and eight cats. When her sister died three years ago, Ms. Ingersoll joined the ranks of older Americans considered “kinless”: without partners or spouses, children or siblings. Covid-19 has largely suspended her occasional get-togethers with friends, too. Now, she said, “my social life consists of doctors and store clerks — that’s a joke, but it’s...

The former employee posted a video on social media sharing how the tech giant allegedly 'scams' its customers.. CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA: A former Apple employee claims the company is allowing an iOS bug to fill customers' iPhone memory so they can update their software. The former employee posted a video on TikTok sharing how the tech giant allegedly "scams" its customers. In the video, he says that it's "not your fault" when iPhone storage runs low. ... The person, who goes by @nabeel_co, says there is a "long-standing" bug in iOS that prevents cache files and temporary files from being deleted...

Conservatives on the Supreme Court appeared ready Monday to side with a website designer who refuses to build sites for same-sex weddings because of her religious beliefs, in a case that could broaden free speech exemptions to anti-discrimination laws nationwide. Lorie Smith has asked the court to overturn lower-court decisions that found a Colorado anti-discrimination law would require her company, 303 Creative, to offer websites for same-sex weddings if she offered websites for weddings between a man and a woman. During oral arguments Monday, conservatives on the court appeared sympathetic to Smith’s arguments, in the latest of several cases about...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — At Gov. Gavin Newsom’s prompting, California lawmakers kicked off a special legislative session on Monday to consider punishing big oil companies for their supersized profits during a time of record-high gas prices — the start of a likely lengthy process that will test the liberal Legislature’s resolve in the face of fierce industry opposition. California lawmakers briefly returned to the state Capitol on Monday to swear in new members and elect leaders for the 2023 legislative session. But this year, Newsom also has called lawmakers into a special session for the purpose of approving a penalty...

After years of development, prototyping and test flights, the Army today announced that Bell Textron’s Valor tiltrotor has won its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition to be the successor to the aging UH-60 Black Hawk and a key component of the Army’s future force. The announcement gives Bell a massive victory not just in America but with the global community of 28 Black Hawk operators, many of whom are likely to follow the US Army’s lead when looking for a replacement in the future. The exact requirements the service laid out for the aircraft remain closely held, but allowed...

Proposal by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Thom Tillis seeks rare bipartisan agreement on immigration legislationRoughly 2 million "Dreamers" would get a path to citizenship in exchange for stronger border security measures under a loose blueprint for an immigration deal circulating among Senate offices. The proposal by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is still very much in flux, according to a Senate aide and immigrant advocates familiar with the talks. But it reflects movement toward agreement on a topic where bipartisan consensus is rare at best. And it comes during the lame-duck session that advocates and lawmakers say...

SNIP Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin got into a massive spat Monday over the topic after Whoopi Goldberg introduced the topic of “toxic femininity.” “We’ve come a long way in critiquing some of the male practices that are not helpful and need to be called out. Women have made a ton of progress, but we can also be each other’s worst enemies,” said Griffin, who was once an associate of former president Trump. “It’s still the case, and I have to say, some of the worst bosses I’ve had have been women and sometimes colleagues in the workplace who...

The motive was the value of the French bulldogs, a breed that can run into the thousands of dollars, and detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the musician. Jackson and others drove around Hollywood, the city of West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley on Feb. 24, 2021 “looking for French bulldogs,” prosecutors said previously. They found Lady Gaga’s dog walker, Ryan Fischer, with the pop star’s three pets. Jackson also admitted the allegation of inflicting great bodily injury and to a prior strike, the DA’s office said Monday. He was sentenced to 21 years...

Long-delayed plans to fix maintenance platforms and put up stainless steel mesh nets on both sides of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge are still far from completion, at a skyrocketing cost of nearly $400 million, according to recent court filings. In 2018, contractors Shimmick Construction Company and Danny’s Construction Company, referred to as SDJV in court filings, were supposed to begin work updating decades-old maintenance and inspection platforms, replacing handrails and adding wind fairing as well as suicide deterrence nets to the bridge. But they say the project as it was originally drawn up by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway...

Everyone knows that Hunter Biden left his infamous laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware. The store owner even contacted Hunter to get him to pick it up, but he never returned for it, effectively forfeiting the device per the store’s policy — which Hunter Biden agreed to. But on Sunday, the New York Times bizarrely claimed the laptop had been “stolen” in a report about the release of the “Twitter files” by Elon Musk. “Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals,” Michael M. Grynbaum, a media correspondent...

Eight in ten employees at the CDC are working from home, per a FOIA request Experts fear this will leave the organization unable to learn from mistakes It comes after agency revealed it would sack 3,000 people hired to fight Covid Most employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are still working from home. The federal health agency, responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request said 80 percent of staff were still partially or fully working from home. Dr Stephen Cochi, who worked at the CDC for four decades before retiring this year, warned remote...

The White House on Monday dismissed a release of Twitter emails showing internal discussions around suppressing stories about Hunter Biden's laptop as 'old news' and a distraction from the real issue of why the platform was not doing more to tackle hate speech. Conservatives have seized on the release, dubbed the 'Twitter files', as evidence that Democrats are in league with tech giants as they suppress unflattering stories. But Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre played down the impact of Elon Musk's decision to release the information. 'We see this as an interesting ... or a coincidence, if I may, that he...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel unveiled a monument in a north Moscow square on Tuesday to Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, pledging to deepen their friendship in the face of U.S. sanctions against both countries. SNIP But Putin evoked his memory as he told Diaz-Canel the two countries needed to build on the "solid foundation of friendship" established between Castro and Soviet leaders. "It's a real work of art - dynamic, in motion, moving forward. It creates the image of a fighter," Putin said of the statue, which portrays Castro gazing into the distance with...

A 14-year-old girl has died and another, aged 13, has been seriously injured after they were attacked by a man with a knife while walking to school in southern Germany. Police say the suspect came out of a refugee shelter in the village of Illerkirchberg on Monday morning and attacked the pupils. The older girl later died in hospital. German police have arrested a 27-year-old man, who they say is an asylum seeker from Eritrea. Officers searched a nearby building and found him with a knife they suspect was used in the attack. Two other men were also detained. The...