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Take this with a grain of salt, but users have reported another privacy transgression by Microsoft. According to the report by users from the Resetera forum and elsewhere, Copilot Gaming, an AI specially for gaming-related AI tasks, is taking screen captures of your gameplay for training. While that would be fine if the user knew about it and enabled it willingly, it appears to be turned on automatically and without informing users about the data collecting and use of the data. According to the user who noticed it first by monitoring network traffic, the AI is using OCR technology to...

The appeal calls it the "most politically charged prosecution" in U.S. history.New York's intermediate appellate court should overturn President Donald Trump's criminal hush money convictions because his trial was "fatally marred" by faulty evidence and overseen by a judge who should have recused himself, his attorneys argued in a court filing late Monday.Trump's formal appeal, 17 months after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts, asks the Appellate Division's First Department to reverse what his lawyers call the "most politically charged prosecution in our Nation's history."Trump was found guilty in May 2024 after a six-week trial over...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not go to a regional leaders summit in Malaysia this week to avoid meeting President Donald Trump and having possible conversations about Pakistan, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Modi was at first supposed to go to the meeting in person, but he changed his plans at the last minute and decided to attend virtually, according to Business Recorder. Indian officials were concerned that Trump would again bring up his claim that he mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May, the sources said, according to...

The size of the text just changed. It only seems to be Freerepublic.com All other websites are normal. I've seen a few vanities posted about this. What's the fix?

U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who appeared in federal court on Tuesday sporting his trademark dark green uniform and crew cut, seems likely to become a regular presence there. U.S. District Court judge Sara Ellis ordered Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief overseeing the agency’s operations in Chicago and previously in Los Angeles, to appear in federal court each weekday at 6 p.m. to report on daily immigration operations. She also ordered that he turn over all agents’ use of force reports from Sept. 2 through Oct. 25, as well as the bodycam footage corresponding to those reports, by...

The retreat from Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Grande Armée in 1812 was a cataclysmic event that marked the beginning of the end for his empire and personal dominance in Europe, with about 300,000 soldiers perishing in a force that originally numbered roughly a half million. A new study involving DNA extracted from the teeth of 13 French soldiers who were buried in a mass grave in Lithuania's capital Vilnius along the route of the retreat is offering a deeper understanding of the misery the Grande Armée experienced, detecting two pathogens not previously documented in this event. "Vilnius...

A lab team in North Carolina reports that a compound formed when people consume sucralose can damage DNA. The same compound also appears in trace amounts in some store bought sucralose. The team used human cells and lab grown gut tissue to probe effects of sucralose byproducts. A new study mapped DNA damage, gut barrier changes, and gene activity. “Our new work establishes that sucralose-6-acetate is genotoxic,” says Susan Schiffman, corresponding author of the study and an adjunct professor in the joint department of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel...

Summary Combined bank to have $288 billion in assets Comerica shares surge, Fifth Third falls marginally Deal expected to boost retail franchise Analysts expect a flurry of regional bank deals

Part of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign centers around the belief that billionaires shouldn’t exist. Now, those ultra-wealthy earners are aiming to stop the mayoral candidate, in part, by boosting the profile of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s opponent for this cycle. Part of Mamdani’s bid has been to tax the ultra-rich and wealthy corporations, which include an additional 2% tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year. Despite these multi-million dollar oppositions, Mamdani is maintaining a lead in the mayoral race. Some of the groups opposing Mamdani include “Fix the City” (pro-Cuomo committee) and “Defend NYC”...

Live video of Hurricane Melissa.

If you are strongly opposed to the NFL choosing Bad Bunny to perform the Super Bowl Halftime Show, you are not alone. However, if you approve of Bad Bunny or don’t care, you’re also not alone. That seems to be the main takeaway from a recent Quinnipiac poll, which shows that 48 percent of respondents approve of the selection of the Puerto Rican rapper for this year’s halftime entertainment. In comparison, 29 percent disapprove and 24 percent have no opinion. The numbers break down along party lines. “Democrats (74 – 10 percent) and independents (52 – 22 percent) approve of...

Among political conservatives, there is no hotter potato at the moment than the civil liability protections afforded by Section 230 to online operators. Unless Republicans learn to love it again and reject the censorship lawfare complex favored by Democrats, they risk dooming our tech leaders and everyone who uses their products to the sharks circling our legal system.The twenty-six words tucked into the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shielded publishers from liability so they could host and moderate content and still allow a wide range of speech without fear of lawsuits. Since then, Section 230 has evolved to be one...

All along we've been told this was about aggressive expansionism and applied a strategy of deterrence. That was wrong.With the imposition of new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producers and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s dismissal of visiting Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev as a “propagandist,” the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine seem to be hanging by a thread. Their success or failure will depend on a simple premise: one must understand a problem in order to resolve it. Unfortunately, the West has been misdiagnosing the problem it faces in Ukraine for more than a decade, with increasingly...

The film dispels the comforting illusion that technology can shield us from a nuclear attack.Director Kathryn Bigelow’s new thriller, “A House of Dynamite,” is not simply a gripping film — it is a wake-up call. The movie dramatizes, in real time, the terrifying 30-minute window between the launch of a nuclear missile bound for the U.S. and its impact. In doing so, the film exposes a brutal truth that too many decision-makers and policy experts in Washington refuse to admit: Long-range missile defense will not protect us. Our only real path to escape nuclear catastrophe lies in reducing global arsenals.From...

Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races show the Republican candidates currently matching or beating Donald Trump’s past presidential margins. This is big for these state races and for gauging the overall country’s mood. It could be bigger still if it presages a Republican threat to Democrats’ “second blue wall” in 2026 and 2028.In Virginia, the Republican, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, has been trailing the Democrat, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, by double digits as recently as the beginning of October. Before Republican Glenn Youngkin upset Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s bid for a second term in 2021, four of Virginia’s previous five governors...

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell — long known for his hot temper — had a conniption over the popularity of CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, who frequently advances pro-Trump and conservative viewpoints in panel discussions. In a lengthy monologue, an irate O’Donnell railed against one of his network’s primary competitors for employing somebody with different viewpoints. “And now CNN eagerly pays a Trump supporter to lie on CNN every day and night for Donald Trump. CNN did this during the first Trump presidential campaign and presidency. CNN regularly paid Trump supporters to lie about Trump on CNN,” O’Donnell ranted. “But the...

For more than 30 years, the author and public intellectual Peter Brimelow has argued for and published the writings of like-minded “immigration patriots” who support strong restrictions on immigration.Standing at the right edge of the policy debate, he has drawn the ire of pro-immigration advocates who ascribe racism to his positions. Left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League label him a “white nationalist.” They put him and VDARE, the nonprofit he established in 1999, on their well-publicized “hate” lists.Brimelow claims those long-running battles over protected speech are the reason he has been targeted by New...

Thomas Lukaszuk, a former deputy premier of Alberta who circulated a petition to make it official policy for the province to stay in Canada, says it has more than 456,000 signatures. The final tally is far greater than the required 294,000 signatures to initiate a possible referendum in Alberta. The "Forever Canadian" petition started as a counter to separatists who want a referendum on Alberta independence and asks: "Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?" "The number of signatures don't surprise me because I know that the vast majority of Albertans are proud Canadians," Lukaszuk told reporters on...

EXCLUSIVE: Bishop Eleganti criticizes Vatican for installing Muslim prayer carpetBishop Eleganti said the Vatican is promoting ‘a kind of emotional religion that no longer takes the truth and difference seriously, because there is only unity in truth. Everything else is an illusion.’Bishop Marian Eleganti has criticized the Vatican for installing a prayer carpet for Muslims in the Vatican Apostolic Library.In an exclusive interview, Bishop Eleganti told LifeSiteNews that “Islam is naturally expansive.”“As soon as a Muslim prays there, somehow in the minds of the faithful—I’m not entirely sure about this—but I wouldn’t be surprised if it then becomes a kind...

Imagine if you threw a party and no one came. Pretty humiliating, right? Well, imagine if you represented the party of big government, lost the presidency and both houses of Congress, then demanded a federal shutdown to impose your welfare-state agenda on the nation — and no one seemed to care much. In that scenario, you’ve become your own worst enemy: You’ve inadvertently made your adversaries’ case that there really isn’t a meaningful voter constituency for a big-government leviathan.The Obamacare premium subsidies which you have made the central issue in your shutdown stand aren’t beloved the way you thought. You...