Free Republic

Three years ago, when Australian politicians took on the titans of Big Tech — crafting legislation to force Google and Facebook to pay for news articles they share on their sites — Google threatened to pull out of the country. If the News Media Bargaining Code became law, Google Australia Managing Director Mel Silva said in a Senate hearing, the company would have “no real choice” but to stop making Google Search available in Australia. Facebook‘s parent went further. After the bill passed the lower house of parliament, Meta blocked Australian news outlets from posting content on Facebook and prevented...

Squadrons of soldiers drafted from all over France; an AI surveillance system that would make China’s president Xi Jinping jealous; both banks of the River Seine barricaded. This is Paris days before the 2024 Olympic Games, which kick off this Friday, July 26. To anyone who does not live in a large European city like London, Paris – often referred to as the ‘City of Love’ – might resemble a dystopian enclave preparing for the Hunger Games. Yasmina, general manager at Hotel Des Ducs D’Anjou, just a few minutes from the Louvre Museum, said the city ‘feels like a jail’...

President Biden’s decision to step aside as the expected Democratic nominee in November has “nothing to do with his health,” his top spokesperson said Wednesday ahead of his prime-time address to the nation. “It has nothing to do with his health. The president is going to speak to this directly to the American people in prime time,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a briefing. “In his letter he talked about the country, he talked about the party, he talked about the moment we’re in right now,” she continued. “It is not about his health. I can say no,...

Libertarian Party of Tennessee Chair Josiah Baker wrote on Tuesday that he opposes the Libertarian Party presidential ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike Ter Maat, and is instead endorsing an alternate ticket of Clint Russell and Josie Glabach. In an opinion article shared via the Libertarian Party of Tennessee’s X account, Baker expressed his belief that the Libertarian ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat does not align with the values and goals of the LPTN. He cited several primary reason for his opposition to the campaign, including his view that Oliver is a weak advocate for the Second...

The planet is as cold as ice and orbits far from its star. The observations from JWST of this cold giant planet. Image Credit: T. Müller (MPIA/HdA), E. Matthews (MPIA) ========================================================================== JWST has imaged a new planet directly and it is quite a fascinating object. It orbits one of the three stars in the Epsilon Indi system and it weighs six times the mass of Jupiter. This super-Jupiter is 20 to 40 times further from its star than Earth is from the Sun – so it is very cold. It also doesn't help that the star, Eps Ind A, is...

Joe Biden directed Department of Homeland Security boss Alexandro Mayorkas to assemble an “independent security review” of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. The inclusion of Obama DHS boss Janet Napolitano ensures that this review will be anything but independent. Napolitano made her public debut in the 1991 campaign to keep Clarence Thomas off the U.S. Supreme Court. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her and Napolitano, then with a Phoenix law firm, represented Hill in the matter. In the confirmation proceedings, Hill’s witness Susan Hoerchner, “suddenly developed amnesia,” about parts of her story that contradicted...

Joe Biden is no longer the Democratic presidential nominee. After weeks of heartburn from the Democratic political establishment—and the unique spectacle of the media finally holding the Democrats accountable for their dishonesty—Biden announced Sunday that he would be dropping out of the presidential race. That announcement followed his disastrous June 27 debate performance against former President Donald Trump, a performance that demonstrated to a flabbergasted America that the president of the United States is fully addled. Biden tried to deny it for weeks. Some played along; most did not. Eventually, Biden’s abysmal poll numbers, combined with strong-arm tactics from political...

Democrats on Wednesday adopted the rules the party will use to choose their presidential nominee, with voting to officially nominate Kamala Harris likely to begin August 1. ... Under the rules approved by the Democratic National Convention’s rules panel Wednesday, presidential hopefuls have until Saturday evening to formally declare their candidacies and until Tuesday, July 30, to submit signatures from at least 300 delegates, with not more than 50 from a single state counting toward the threshold.

The landlord of an abortion facility in Bristol, Virginia, is again attempting to evict the business, but the owner is vowing to stay. Diane Derzis owns Bristol Women’s Health Center, which leases a commercial property building from brothers Chase King and Chadwick King. From the very beginning, the King brothers have tried to evict the abortion facility, claiming in December of 2022 that Derzis was not truthful about the nature of her business when she signed the lease with them. They said that the broker “represented that the type of medical practice of her clients was a general family practice,”...

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) asserted that cross-sex hormones and surgeries were "medically necessary" so that insurance companies would pay for those procedures, allowing concerns about the treatments' affordability to dictate claims about their effectiveness, newly unsealed court documents show. WPATH's standards of care, which guide clinical practice in the United States, were updated in 2022 to include language about the medical necessity of hormones and surgeries because, as one WPATH official wrote in an email, the group was frustrated with America's "obtuse and unhealthy system of healthcare 'coverage.'" Most private insurance plans and state Medicaid policies...

Question is, who else do you know that could answer a question like this one??

Greenland police said they apprehended veteran environmental activist and anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan. Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian-American citizen, is a former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society whose direct action tactics, including high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels, have drawn support from A-list celebrities and featured in the reality television series “Whale Wars.” He was arrested Sunday when his ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, a police statement said. He later appeared before a district court to look into a request to detain him pending a decision on his possible extradition to...

CV NEWS FEED // Billionaire businessman Elon Musk emotionally described how he regrets giving his then-teenage son puberty blockers, adding that the boy was metaphorically “kiIIed by the woke mind virus.” Musk recently sat down with psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson for an interview that aired on DailyWire+ on Monday. “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs,” Musk told Peterson. “And so, I lost my son essentially,” Musk added after a pause. “They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead.” The businessman’s son, now legally...

MOSCOW, July 23 (Reuters) - Residents of Moscow who sign up to fight in Ukraine will receive a down payment of 1.9 million roubles ($21,777) from the city, taking their annual pay in their first service year to 5.2 million roubles ($59,600), the mayor's office said on Tuesday. Total pay will include the downpayment, wages from the defence ministry, as well as regional and federal handouts, the office of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement. The new payments will enter into force immediately, it said. The increase means that annual pay for Russian contract soldiers from Moscow will...

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) mounted a silent protest during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, holding up signs that said “Guilty of Genocide” and “War Criminal” during his address. Netanyahu, who was received with a standing ovation, began his address by acknowledging the Israeli hostages and their families, and by honoring Israeli soldiers in the gallery, — including Ethiopian and Muslim soldiers, and soldiers who, though wounded, returned to the fight. He rebuked anti-Israel protesters, alluding to the thousands who had gathered outside the Capitol, noting that they stood with Hamas and with “evil,” and noting...

Law enforcement officers have uncovered a major embezzlement scheme involving Hr 138 million ($3.3 million) allocated from the state budget for the needs of Ukraine's Armed Forces, the Prosecutor General's Office announced on July 19. The investigation identified 30 suspected officials, including employees of housing and maintenance departments and representatives of commercial structures across Ukraine. According to prosecutors, 15 of these individuals were members of organized criminal groups. The charges include embezzlement and misappropriation of funds related to the procurement of fuel wood, electricity, natural gas, furniture, and construction work on military infrastructure at inflated prices. Some suspects are also...

Hillary Clinton extended support to vice president Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate and said she will have an uphill battle as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket. In an opinion piece on New York Times, Hillary Clinton commended President Joe Biden's decision and said Kamala Harris can defeat Donald Trump. "Ms. Harris is chronically underestimated, as are so many women in politics, but she is well prepared for this moment," Hillary Clinton wrote calling Kamala Harris a fresh start in American politics. Talking about the prejudices that...

Archaeologists have uncovered a "monumental" fortification that protected Jerusalem's biblical kings some 3,000 years ago. The "dramatic" archaeological discovery solved a 150-year-old mystery in the City of David. Since 2007, archaeologists have been excavating the area around the Givati Parking Lot, the largest active archaeological excavation in Jerusalem today. The excavation site on the northwestern side of the City of David has unearthed different layers of the city's life from the Middle Ages to ancient times. The most recent archaeological find is the remnants of a moat that split the City of David in half — separating the king's palace...

Explanation: Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon, Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality. The featured image is a digital composite of a good Moon image and surface height data taken from NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) mission -- and then exaggerated for educational understanding. The digital enhancements, for example, accentuate lunar highlands and show more clearly craters that illustrate the tremendous bombardment our Moon has been through during its 4.6-billion-year history. The dark areas, called maria, have fewer craters...

Almost three-fourths of registered Democrats want someone other than Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee, a CNN poll found Wednesday. The finding exposes a lack of enthusiasm for Harris as the party’s de facto nominee, who appears to be hand-selected by top Democrats. By simply choosing Harris for the nomination instead of holding a democratic process, Democrats will nullify about 14 million votes cast during the Democrat primaries for President Joe Biden. The poll asked Democrats/Democrat-leaning independents who are registered to vote and prefer the Democrat Party to nominate a candidate other than Harris in 2024. “Is...