Free Republic

Seattle is scrambling to raise the $5,000-a-day hotel costs for 240 asylum seekers who overtook a school play area with tents and foreign flags in a takeover locals called 'threatening.'. Seattle City Council members say they're working with Mayor Bruce Harrell's office to find an emergency solution to the cadre of migrants who camped at Garfield Tennis Courts, part of a community center used by local schools. A $50,000 donation has paid for the migrants and their children to return to the Quality Inn Hotel in Kent, but it's not clear what they will do when the cash for 61...

* Africa and Caribbean join forces in fight for reparations * African Union to draw up its own white paper on reparations * Leaders consider push for special tribunal on slavery * US to decide on a tribunal when "developed and established" April 4 (Reuters) - Support is building among Africa and Caribbean nations for the creation of an international tribunal on atrocities dating to the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, with the United States backing a U.N. panel at the heart of the effort. A tribunal, modelled on other ad-hoc courts such as the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war...

Tuberculosis cases have been detected at migrant facilities in Chicago following a recent measles outbreak in the city's shelters, sparking health officials to urgently start contact tracing. The Chicago Department of Public Health did not disclose the exact number of cases or which shelter it originated from but confirmed that 'a small number of cases' were reported 'in a few different shelters' around the city. 'These outbreaks happen in close quarters, people who are living close to one another,' associate professor of medicine, Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of Chicago Dr. Aniruddha Hazra told Fox 32 Chicago....

Tesla's quarterly deliveries declined for the first time in nearly four years and fell short of Wall Street analysts' estimates amid a challenging competitive landscape in the EV market and questions regarding the company's direction. The Elon Musk-led automaker's stock declined by 4.9% during Tuesday's trading session and slid a further 0.28% in after hours trading, with the stock down nearly 33% on the year. That followed Tesla's announcement that it delivered roughly 387,000 vehicles in the first quarter – well below expectations of about 443,000 and an 8.5% decrease compared to the first quarter of last year. "Let's call...

Disney CEO Bob Iger emphasized that the company would focus on entertaining over advancing "any kind of agenda," just after the media giant survived a proxy fight waged by activist shareholders. Asked during Disney's annual shareholder meeting Q&A on April 3 if the company would just provide entertainment and stay out of politics, Iger said Disney's job was to "entertain, first and foremost." "I've always believed that we have a responsibility to do good in the world, but we know our job is not to advance any kind of agenda," he said on the live-streamed meeting. "For as long as...

On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King III was sitting at home in Atlanta with his siblings, watching the news, when a news bulletin flashed across their TV screen: Their father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had just been assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. It was this memory King shared as he and his wife issued an urgent call to action to protect democracy on the 56th anniversary of his father’s murder. “At that moment, obviously, our hearts started beating very fast and our lives would change forever,” King said Thursday. He and his wife,...

Rob Montz is CEO of Good Kid Productions (“visual storytellers for the American counter-elite”). Good Kid has released Montz’s mini-documentary It Wasn’t Fauci: How the Deep State Really Played Trump. John Tierney talked with Montz about the documentary in the City Journal podcast posted here, which is where I heard about it. Montz narrates the documentary, but Hoover Institution’s Scott Atlas is its prophetic voice. I have embedded the video below. Watch the video while you still can and look back in anger (again). The podcast, by the way, is a useful supplement to the video.

President Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday toward a cease-fire deal that would release the remaining hostages in Gaza and suggested that U.S. policy on the war will depend on Israel’s ability to better protect civilians and humanitarian workers after an attack that killed a contingent of international aid workers this week. Biden spoke with Netanyahu days after an Israeli strike killed seven humanitarian aid workers with World Central Kitchen, a charity group that was distributing food to Palestinians in Gaza. The president told Netanyahu the incident was “unacceptable.”“He made clear the need for Israel to announce...

EVs are really heavy compared to their gas-powered brethren. The heavy battery packs that power the electric motors in electric cars and enable their long trips between charging sessions tend to be the culprit of bloated EVs, which concerns Stellantis (STLA) CEO Carlos Tavares.

One and done........... Scientists have been searching for the optimal coronavirus vaccine since the Covid-19 pandemic started. The mRNA vaccines developed through the federal government's "Operation Warp Speed" program were a massive innovation; however, annually updating those boosters for specific SARS-CoV-2 variants is inefficient for scientists and patients. SARS-CoV-2 is just one member of the Sarbecovirus (SARS Betacoronavirus) subfamily (others include SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002 SARS outbreak, as well as other viruses circulating in bats that could cause future pandemics). Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new vaccine that offers...

This is a little funny. The Washington Post has an article about Democrat data scientist Aaron Strauss, who helps direct progressive spending at the firm OpenLabs, warning his peers that registering young people to vote, young people of color specifically, is helping Donald Trump. The data shows that when Democrats help register young voters, they end up registering people who will vote for Trump. Now they are considering not even holding voter registration drives in target markets because they align with Trump. WAPO – […] A confidential memo circulated among top Democratic donors has sparked a furious debate in Democratic...

There are striking analogies between the interpersonal relationships of humans and the gravitational interaction of physical bodies in space. Consider a two-body system. In both realms, the systems can have stable configurations, leading to long-lived marriages or stellar binaries. But when a third body interacts strongly with these systems, a non-hierarchical three-body system often displays chaos with one of the members ejected and the other two remaining bound. This brings up analogies with interpersonal relationships when a third body is added to a non-hierarchical two-body system. The chaotic gravitational dynamics in a system of three stars inspired the storyline for...

Ripple, the enterprise-focused blockchain service and creator of the XRP Ledger, is introducing its own stablecoin pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar. "The stablecoin market is over $150 billion today and is forecasted to exceed $2.8 trillion by 2028," Ripple said in a statement shared with CoinDesk. "There’s clear demand for stablecoins that deliver trust, stability and utility." The company said the token, which it plans to release "later this year," will be "100% backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government Treasuries and other cash equivalents." The stablecoin will be deployed onto Ripple's institution-focused XRP Ledger along...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday she would move to block the sale of F-15s to Israel after seven aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza earlier this week. “I think it is clear that Congress has a responsibility to act. We have legal tools here. And as I said, we cannot approve the sale of arms to a country that is in violation of our own laws on this. And that includes access to humanitarian relief,” Warren said Thursday during an interview on “CNN News Central.” “This is a moral question; it is also a legal...

Biden 2024 campaign co-chairman Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said Thursday on CNN that he now wants the United States to put conditions on military aid to Israel. Host Sara Sidner said, “You’ve had words with Benjamin Netanyahu. The president has had words with Benjamin Netanyahu. At what point does the policy change? Do you support a change in policy instead of a carrot, instead of words, a stick up saying to Israel that in order to get military aid, you have to change your tact? When does that happen?” Coons said, “I think we’re at that point. I think we’re...

Syndicated radio host Mark Levin tore into prominent CNN Biden flack Dana Bash for trying to gaslight viewers on the dangers of the White House censorship regime. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CNN anchor Erin Burnett April 1 — to her dismay — that it was in fact President Joe Biden’s censorship regime, not former President Donald Trump, that presented the bigger “threat” to America. Kennedy pointed out the Biden administration’s history of jawboning Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to go after the president’s political opponents. Bash, clearly triggered, pathetically tried to “fact-check” Kennedy the...

And over 5 million succeeded. . . . I downloaded all of the HAVV [Help America Vote Verification] data, then re-organized it so I could look at each state by year. The data covered the years 2011-2024. It is important to note that 2024 is only the first quarter, through the first week of March. The takeaways are that: Although about half of all states look kosher, at least ten have one of more years that are highly suspicious. About 15 other states have one or more years that are somewhat suspicious, but would take more investigation to be certain....

President Joe Biden’s administration announced its plan on Thursday to protect bureaucrats from being fired by a potential second Trump administration. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized a rule that protects employees in the civil service by preventing the removal of their status and protections involuntarily, according to a press release. Under the new rule, an administration wishing to shift federal employees to a new category making them easier to fire would have to go through an elongated process, a move meant to be more time-consuming for a future president, Politico reported. “Career federal employees deliver critical services...

KYIV — Wayward entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest pronouncements regarding the war in Ukraine set teeth on edge, as he warned that even though Moscow has “no chance” of conquering all of Ukraine, “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnipro, which is tough to overcome.”“However, if the war lasts long enough, Odesa will fall too,” he cautioned.With a history of urging Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions — and his opposition to the $60 billion U.S. military aid package snarled on Capitol Hill amid partisan wrangling — Musk isn’t Ukraine’s favorite...

Hopefully, this cash can be resurrected. In a heist of Biblical proportions, thieves pilfered about $30 million cash from a Los Angeles-area vault on Easter Sunday – and no one even noticed the empty vault until the next morning. The burglary took place Sunday night at the GardaWorld facility in Sylmar, which handles cash for several businesses in the area, sources told Eyewitness News. The thieves were so stealthy that the safe showed no signs of a break-in from the outside – and the operators of the business were none the wiser until they opened it on Monday, the Los...