Free Republic

India has emerged as the world's largest and most active market for large language model (LLM) adoption, according to an analysis by Bank of America (BofA) on Wednesday. The country now leads globally in the number of users for popular AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, both in terms of monthly active users (MAUs) and daily active users (DAUs). India has the second-largest online population in the world, with more than 700-750 million mobile internet users. Affordable data plans have made AI access easier, with users able to consume 20-30 GB of data a month at around $2....

Online education platform Coursera (COUR.N), opens new tab said on Wednesday it would buy rival Udemy (UDMY.O), opens new tab in an all-stock deal, valuing the combined company at $2.5 billion, as the industry consolidates after a post-pandemic slowdown and heightened investor scrutiny. Udemy shareholders would receive 0.8 shares of Coursera for each held, valuing the company at about $930 million, according to Reuters calculation. Coursera shares were up about 4%, while Udemy jumped nearly 22%. Coursera and Udemy bet that a combined platform will be better positioned to capture corporate demand for workforce training, particularly in artificial intelligence, data...

Trump Media & Technology is merging with fusion energy company TAE Technologies in a deal worth more than $6 billion, aiming to harness the fledgling technology to power energy-hungry artificial intelligence data centers. TAE, which is privately owned, is developing technology aimed at producing energy by fusing atomic nuclei. Trump Media & Technology owns President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform. The merger comes amid a difficult year for Trump Media shares, which trade under the ticker DJT — the same as Mr. Trump's initials. Through Wednesday, the stock was down 69% for the year, even as the S&P 500 had...

There is an old American promise that has always been more fragile than we like to admit, and today it is being broken in plain sight. The promise was never that everyone would succeed. It was that everyone would be allowed to compete under one set of rules, and that those rules would not be rewritten midstream to punish someone for what he is rather than what he has done. When Americans say they reject caste, they mean that no class of people is preemptively marked for exclusion. That promise is now being quietly revoked. Over roughly the last...

Sergey Naryshkin noted that "there are clear tendencies toward isolationism, which US President Donald Trump and US Vice President JD Vance do not hide"MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. The United States’ new national security strategy puts America's interests first, a rational approach, Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said in an interview with TASS. "Of course, it is pro-American, and it is very sound. Undoubtedly, it is based on US national interests," Naryshkin said in response to a question on the matter. He added that "there are clear tendencies toward isolationism, which [US President Donald] Trump and [US...

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced a merger Thursday with the nuclear fusion company, TAE Technologies (TAE). The all-stock transaction is valued at more than $6 billion, according to TMTG. President Donald Trump has previously moved to bolster nuclear energy through executive action — though fusion technology has infamously struggled to deliver commercially viable and grid-scale power, despite decades of research.

The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the actions of an air traffic controller and Army helicopter pilots played a role in causing the Jan. 29 collision between an airliner and a Black Hawk near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, including a group of elite young figure skaters. It was the deadliest plane crash on American soil in more than two decades. The figure skaters, their parents and coaches who had just attended the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, were among those on the plane. The official response, made in court documents responding to the first lawsuit filed...

'I believe in Hell': Kirk Cameron clarifies position on eternal damnation, announces plans for roundtable discussionActor and evangelist Kirk Cameron has responded to controversy surrounding a recent discussion on the doctrine of Hell, emphasizing that he fully believes in Hell, judgment and conscious suffering, but is openly questioning whether that suffering is eternal.In a video posted to social media Wednesday, Cameron addressed the "swirling" controversy sparked by his Dec. 3 podcast episode with his son James, where he voiced support for the theological position of conditional immortality, also known as annihilationism.Cameron, 55, began by posing a hypothetical question from a...

It’s been three days since the jihad against innocent Jews at Sydney’s Bondi beach. A nation’s grief is swiftly turning to anger and Australia’s prime minister is floundering. As more is learned about the father-and-son killers who took 15 lives and wounded many more, questions are piling up. How did the father enter the country? How did security agencies lose track of the son, who not only imbibed his father’s Jew hate, but may have been further radicalised by reportedly studying with one of Sydney’s most notorious Islamist hate preachers? How did they manage to go to a militant area...

CHICO, Calif. - A viral video filmed inside a Chico Target has stirred controversy this week. The video, featuring an Enloe Health medical assistant confronting a Target employee over her shirt, has gained nationwide attention. The incident occurred on Monday night and quickly spread online. Jeanie Beeman, the Target employee involved, spoke with Action News Now about her experience. She said she was unaware of the video until police visited her home to check on her Tuesday evening. Beeman said she was shocked by the encounter and did not expect the reaction over what she was wearing, a red shirt...

Reading political tea leaves three years before an election is a bit like predicting the weather for your 2028 summer vacation—entertaining, perhaps, but utterly useless for packing your bags. Yet here we are, with breathless headlines announcing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has “taken the lead” over Vice President JD Vance in a hypothetical matchup. The progressive left is practically popping champagne.For those who haven’t followed their trajectories, the contrast between these two couldn’t be sharper. AOC burst onto the scene in 2018, unseating a longtime Democratic incumbent and quickly becoming the face of democratic socialism in America. The Green New Deal,...

In his latest hate-Trump rambling December 17 Substack column, former New York Times columnist Krugman sneered, “An A+++++ Economy, My A++,” mocking the president’s assessment of the current state of the economy. It’s worth a reminder that Krugman just recently had the audacity to call Bidenomics the “triumph that nobody appreciated” in November. That’s basically the equivalent of saying the Biden economy was “A+++++.” Cue the canned laughter. He’s the same person that gaslit Americans who were struggling under President Joe Biden’s overbloated multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spend spree that they were only complaining because they “hate” Biden. We’d advise him to sit...

U.S. nonprofit AARP projected on Thursday that out-of-pocket savings from the first 10 Medicare Part D drugs negotiated under the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act will exceed 50% on average next year. The report, based on data from stand-alone Part D plans in five states with high Medicare enrollment, forecasts that Medicare enrollees will witness significantly lower monthly expenses for these medications beginning Jan. 1. In August 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the first 10 Part D drugs selected for pricing negotiations, including blockbuster therapies from companies such as Bristol Myers (BMY)/ Pfizer (PFE) and...

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro denounced right-wing podcast titan Tucker Carlson as “an opponent of conservatism” who “has trafficked in nearly every conspiracy theory under the sun” in a speech*** Shapiro appeared at the largest conservative think tank in DC ostensibly to discuss his book, “Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics).” Instead, he took advantage of the platform to address what he called “the elephant in the room.” “If we care about conservatism, if, as Heritage Foundation proclaims, our goal ought to be to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of...

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Digital spoke to Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins shortly after she unveiled millions in alleged fraud in the state’s assisted living program and identified an individual already indicted for fraud who is still receiving payments from the state, adding to the already exploding fraud scandal in the state. The Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, chaired by Robbins, held a hearing that focused on a new sector of fraud, the state’s assisted living programs, that comes amid a massive unfolding fraud scandal in the state that has affected a variety of other sectors and resulted in...

Yesterday the Pennsylvania state House passed the measure for abortions up to birth by one vote. Not only would it allow abortions on demand throughout pregnancy, it would force Pennsylvania residents to fund abortions. ““House Bill 1957 is a highly regressive form of legislation which would wipe out protections against taxpayer funding of abortion at a time when the vast majority of taxpayers do not want their hard-earned money to pay for abortion,” said Maria Gallagher, executive director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, the Keystone State affiliate of National Right to Life. “The vote was as tight as it could...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is investigating whether Colorado providers helped nearly 3,000 people swindle taxpayer money from Uncle Sam, The Post has learned. The investigation comes after an internal HUD audit found that benefits were granted to 221 dead people, while another 87 were otherwise ineligible. The department also said that another 2,519 beneficiaries will need to undergo additional verification. “From deceased tenants to individuals receiving HUD housing benefits who were never supposed to, the Department has questions for HUD-supported housing providers in Colorado, and we expect prompt answers and enforcement action,” a HUD spokesperson told...

Thousands of immigrant truck drivers are breathing a sigh of relief after California said Tuesday it’s preparing to reissue commercial licences it planned to revoke after federal pressure. State transportation officials confirmed that the Department of Motor Vehicles will start reissuing the contested licences to 17,000 immigrant drivers who were sent 60-day cancellation notices on Nov. 6.

Multiple people are feared dead after a private jet crashed and exploded into flames on Thursday at a North Carolina airport frequented by NASCAR teams and Fortune 500 companies. The Cessna C550 plane went down at Statesville Regional Airport at about 10:15 a.m, authorities said. Footage shot by WSOC-TV captured the aircraft entirely engulfed in flames as emergency crews rushed onto the runway. It wasn’t immediately clear how many were onboard but the local sheriff’s office said there were a number of fatalities. The airport is owned by the city and “provides corporate aviation facilities for Fortune 500 companies and...

The Trump administration has acted to ban gender-affirming care for minors across the country. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Thursday it could pull federal funding from any US hospital that offered transgender surgeries or pharmaceutical treatment. The department's announcement said the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a notice of proposed rulemaking that will bar hospitals from performing 'sex-rejecting' procedures on children under 18 if the institutions want to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. 'These procedures include pharmaceutical or surgical interventions of specified types that attempt to align a child’s physical appearance...