Free Republic

Paramount boss David Ellison is believed to have assured Trump officials that if the government approves the company's acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), he would overhaul the President's media arch-nemesis, CNN. Netflix announced last Friday that it reached a deal to acquire Warner and HBO properties for $72 billion, but Paramount immediately launched a hostile counterbid, taking its case directly to shareholders. The Netflix-WBD merger is facing a stiff challenge from Paramount, whose majority shareholder is billionaire Trump ally, Oracle founder Larry Ellison. On Monday, Paramount made its move, offering $77.9 billion in all-cash and urging Warner shareholders to...

A group of Japanese tourists in Bali has sparked widespread criticism after being caught on camera stealing multiple clothing items from a local street vendor. The incident, which many online users are calling “an embarrassment,” has gone viral across social media platforms. The shop owner discovered the theft after completing the store’s daily inventory and noticing that 11 clothing sets were missing. Suspicious of the unusually large discrepancy, he reviewed the CCTV footage, only to find that the missing items had been taken by visiting tourists posing as customers. The surveillance video shows what appears to be a small clothing...

The Trump administration announced $12 billion in one-time payments to farmers in the wake of this year's tariff hikes on Monday, primarily targeting farmers who grow crops such as soybeans and corn. The move was outlined during a White House roundtable event, featuring farmers affected as well as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. Trump touted the program in relation to the revenue the government is taking in as a result of his sweeping tariff program and also referenced his popularity among farmers. "What we're doing is we're taking a relatively small portion of that, and we're...

When Stephen Scheeler became Facebook's Australia chief in the early 2010s, he was a true believer in the power of the internet, and social media, for public good. It would herald a new era of global connection and democratise learning. It would let users build their own public squares without the traditional gatekeepers. "There was that heady optimism phase when I first joined and I think a lot of the world shared that," he told the BBC. But by the time he left the firm in 2017, seeds of doubt about its work had been planted, and they've since bloomed....

Waymo is hitting the brakes on its robotaxi software and issuing a voluntary recall after school bus safety concerns came to light earlier this year. The recall won’t necessarily pull cars from the road but will instead see them updated. It comes after an investigation by Nexstar’s KXAN found the company’s driverless vehicles illegally passed school buses with their stop arms out in Austin, Texas. The Austin Independent School District said similar incidents occurred at least 19 times this school year, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation in October. In November, cameras captured a Waymo...

Paramount has officially launched a tender offer for current WBD shares at $30 per share, all cash. That bid is backed by $41 billion in equity financing. The remainder will be money from RedBird Capital and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Paramount also has $54 billion in debt commitments from Bank of America, Citi and Apollo Global Management. Paramount’s tender offer will be open for 20 business days, Paramount Chief Strategy Officer Andy Gordon said during a conference call for investors Monday. Warner Bros. Discovery has 10 days to respond, and after the 20 business days are up, Paramount has the...

It bars children younger than 16 from holding accounts with Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch. The platforms face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts. TRANSCRIPT As young Australians, we will be completely silenced and cut off from our country and the rest of the world with this ban. It's like we've just grown up with this our entire lives and now it's just being taken away from us all of a sudden. We wouldn't even know what else we...

Age quiz time! Give yourself one point for each thing you've NEVER done. Lowest score wins. Used a rotary phoneUsed a 3.5 inch floppy disc (the new upstarts)Used an 8 inch floppy disc Used a typewriter Taken photos with a film camera Listened to music on a CD Listened to a cassette tape (and rewound one with a pencil). Listened to a vinyl record Listened to music on a Walkman Listened to music on a boombox outside Watched a video from a VHS tape Accessed the internet by dial-up (Was 56 kpbs "fast" for you? It sure was for me!)...

They call their newsletter "Politico Pro," but it can sound more like "Politico Promo." Take reporter Andrew Howard with his embarrassingly unskeptical pitch for funds on Monday, "Anti-Trump former Republicans have a multimillion-dollar plan to save House Democrats."When you hear the name "Lincoln Project" you should check your pocket to make sure the contents of your wallet are still intact. A co-founder of the Lincoln Project, Steve Schmidt, is back at the political money trough searching for funds using the name of the Save America Movement (SAM). And all they say they need is about $100 million.

Price of metal has more than doubled this year amid booming demand from investors and industrial users Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/c68c708f-282d-45fe-a9cd-b8871e43ed93 Silver prices have punched through $60 per ounce for the first time amid a historic rally driven by a scarcity of...

As federal health care subsidies barrel toward expiration, a bipartisan group of 35 U.S. lawmakers is calling on leaders in the House and Senate to hold a vote on extending the benefits before the end of next week. The group includes Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican who has been pushing for a renewal of the subsidies, known as the enhanced premium tax credit. The subsidies, passed by Democrats in Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped lower insurance premiums for plans purchased through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, but are now slated to expire on Dec. 31. Many Coloradans have...

The U.S. government should NOT be giving $400 million to Ukraine—especially with Zelensky refusing to respond to the President on the peace deal. The Ukrainian government was just busted for public corruption, and you can guarantee money laundering is involved. The fact that Congress is still sending them funding is horrifying. This needs to be taken out of the NDAA.

President Trump will head to Pennsylvania on Tuesday for his first rally in five months amid signs of growing anger among his supporters at a failure to bring down the cost of living. Trump has touted the falling cost of petrol and eggs as evidence that his economic strategy is working and blames Democrats for talking about the “hoax” and “con job” of an affordability crisis. Inflation remains at 3 per cent, however, the same as when he took office, and some staples such as beef and coffee are up much more than that. Polling for Politico suggests that 37...

Reporting live from Central America. The General Elections from 30 November gives dysfunction a bad name. Let me bring you up to date. My source is local Honduran television, before the signal was mysteriously cut, just now. The conservative candidate from the National Party "Tito" Asfura remains in the lead by 42,407 votes (1,298,835 votes) over the moderate Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla with (1,256,428). The socialist (let's be honest, communist) Libre Party candidate Rixi Moncada is a distant 3rd with 618,448 votes. The current president Xiomara Castro is from the Libre Party and under the Honduran Constitution, cannot run...

James Talarico, Texas state representative and Senate primary rival, said in a statement emailed to Newsweek Monday: "We’re building a movement in Texas—fueled by record-breaking grassroots fundraising and 10,000 volunteers who are putting in the work to defeat the billionaire megadonors and puppet politicians who have taken over our state. Our movement is rooted in unity over division—so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race." Overall, polling remains tight for both Crockett and Talarico regardless of who the Republican rival ends up being, but a rundown from Real Clear Polling showed the GOP still winning, regardless of the nominee, by...

The interception of a sanctioned Russian tanker by the USS Stockdale near Venezuela has turned a slow-burning sanctions story into a visible test of sea power, energy leverage, and political resolve in the Caribbean. As Washington tightens the screws on fuel shipments that have been worth roughly 3 billion dollars to Nicolás Maduro's government, the encounter signals that the era of quiet workarounds is giving way to open contests on the water. I see this clash as more than a one-off naval drama. It is the moment when a shadowy sanctions evasion network, a fragile petrostate, and a resurgent U.S....

Explanation: Saturn is bright in Earth's night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can only bring Saturn's day side into view. In fact, this image of Saturn's slender sunlit crescent with night's shadow cast across its broad and complex ring system was captured by the Cassini spacecraft. A robot spacecraft from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn...

EXCLUSIVE - A North Carolina high school student said she was accused of vandalism by her school and told she was being investigated by law enforcement after she painted her school's "spirit rock" with a religious and patriotic tribute to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. According to a new complaint filed Monday and shared first with Fox News Digital, Gabby Stout, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School, called her school's front office on September 12 to ask if she could paint the school spirit rock with a patriotic message honoring Kirk, who was killed two days prior. Stout was...

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday overruled a preliminary injunction from liberal U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, allowing a federal provision to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business through Medicaid to take effect and continue during ongoing litigation. The decision, which lifts a temporary block on the funding ban, marks a significant victory for pro-life advocates who have long pushed to redirect taxpayer dollars away from the abortion company. The American Center for Law and Justice, which filed amicus briefs supporting the government’s position, hailed the ruling as a “crucial” step in “defending the sanctity of life...

Last week, a Catholic church in Massachusetts made headlines with its Nativity display — in which Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus were replaced by an empty manger and an anti-ICE poster. Now, it seems the church’s pastor is refusing to take down the display for the time being, against the wishes of his church authority. St. Susanna, located in the Boston suburb of Dedham, “displayed a Nativity scene outside the church with an empty manger and a sign that says, ‘ICE was here,’” Fox News reported Wednesday. The implication, of course, is that the baby Savior was either apprehended or...