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San Francisco’s Vaillancourt Fountain caught fire as it was being disassembled on Wednesday morning, sending plumes of smoke into the sky as flames licked the sculpture’s 10-ton cantilevered arms. The news comes just a couple of weeks after the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department announced it was preparing to take apart the controversial landmark ahead of a $40 million renovation of the Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park. “Today, during torch cutting activity, debris inside the tubes ignited,” Coma Te, director of communications for the San Francisco Arts Commission, which owns the fountain, told SFGATE in an email. “The...

CTRL F ‘WHITE MEN’ I hate predictions and even as I am a terminal optimist, I hesitate to say this, but: The New York Times is dead to rights cooked. The Trump Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is suing The New York Times for workplace discrimination. A current employee of the Times – you read that correctly – is working with administration lawyers on a suit charging that the paper is racist against white men and that racism is a matter of employment policy. Totally illegal by the way and has been for decades. Elites would be shocked to learn...

Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis spent months, even longer, trying to put together an organized crime case against President Donald Trump as Democrats were weaponizing a number of government agencies to attack him. It fell apart when an appeals courts commented on her decision to hire a paramour to work on the case, and both he and she were ordered off the case entirely. Now it appears that taxpayers may never know the actual amount of money wasted in the political agenda. A report from the investigators at the Center Square explained some expenditures are known, others remain concealed. The report...

A 12-year-old Georgia boy was left heartbroken after his therapy pig was allegedly killed by three ghoulish neighbors – who were found with the dead animal in aprons and gloves beside a boiling pot of water. Garrett Cox, who has ADHD and autism, is now struggling to cope after Bootsy, his 400-pound emotional support pig, was savagely shot dead after wandering from her pen and off the family’s Hoschton property, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, last week, according to multiple reports. “I miss her so much,” the young boy told WSB-TV about the award-winning pig, while clutching the ribbons...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ Bringing Cheer To Orphans! U.S. Army soldiers assigned to Team 3215, A Co., 432d Civil Affairs Battalion, attached to Task Force 82, and soldiers assigned to the 57th Detachment, Slovak Armed Forces Civil Military Cooperation, celebrated the holiday season with Slovak orphans at the Centrum pre deti a rodiny-Necpaly (Center for Children and Families-Necpaly) in Lešt’, Slovakia. Gifts were brought to the Center to communicate the importance of celebrating the holiday season with the community and demonstrates the strong partnership among friends and allies. (U.S. Army Photo courtesy...

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: New Synodal Document Promotes Homosexual Testimony Against Catholic TeachingA newly released Synodal report doesn’t just suggest reform—it openly redefines sin, elevates homosexual testimony, and calls for a sweeping “paradigm shift” in Catholic teaching. Beneath its dense language lies a direct challenge to centuries of doctrine. What’s being proposed is not development—but transformation. On May 5, 2026, Cardinal Mario Grech introduced the Synod on Synodality’s publication of the Final Reports of Study Groups No. 7 and No. 9:“These two reports touch the very heart of ecclesial life. The first reminds us that the selection of a bishop is...

President Donald Trump’s abrupt reversal on his plan to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz came after a key Gulf ally suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, according to two U.S. officials. Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing “Project Freedom” on social media Sunday afternoon, the officials said, angering leadership in Saudi Arabia. In response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it would not allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort, the officials...

Former President Barack Obama and outgoing "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert took turns singing the praises of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during their interview Tuesday night. During a prerecorded interview that aired Tuesday from the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Colbert spoke with Obama about the direction of the Democratic Party, specifically regarding the ongoing rift between the liberal and the progressive wings of the party. "So you have great leaders. You have people like (Virginia Governor) Abigail Spanberger and (New Jersey Governor) Mikie Sherrill, very centrist. But then you have further left, like AOC and Zohran Mamdani,"...

A team of scientists in China recently demonstrated this somewhat comically idealistic solution, reporting their findings in a recent paper published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials. This new “living” plastic, as the team describes it, contains plastic-degrading microbes that activate and self-destruct on command. Although this isn’t the first time scientists have tested similar materials, the new experiment looks promising. A proof-of-concept test with a wearable plastic electrode confirmed that, as intended, the plastic degraded completely within two weeks. Scientists had consistently explored whether some bacteria known to be capable of breaking down polymers could be engineered within plastic. In...

"Any woman born in the samurai status group was a 'female samurai' even if she never picked up a weapon, just as any man born into that status group was a samurai, no matter how wimpy/untrained/etc. he may have been," Sean O'Reilly, a professor of Japan studies at Akita International University, told Live Science in an email.It's unclear how often female samurai fought in battle, however. Women who fought in battle are sometimes called "onna-musha," which translates to "women warriors.""I must say, as an historian, that onnamusha -- female warriors -- were probably not as frequent or as militarily significant...

The Justice Department plans to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to intervene in President Donald Trump's appeal of the $83 million jury verdict in a defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll. The DOJ explained in a Tuesday filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which cites the Westfall Act, that the federal government should be substituted as the defendant in the lawsuit. The DOJ had previously certified that Trump was acting "within the scope of employment" when he made statements that Carroll claimed were defamatory, The Washington Examiner reported. The 2nd Court of Appeals denied...

ATLANTA (AP) — The federal government can keep the 2020 election ballots from Georgia’s Fulton County that were seized by the FBI from a warehouse near Atlanta, a judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee’s decision came after lawyers for the county had argued that the ballots and other election materials, as well as any electronic copies the Justice Department has made, should be returned because the seizure was improper and unconstitutional. The Jan. 28 seizure by the FBI targeted the elections hub in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of the city of...

Ripple effect: Google started turning Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, into an AI browser last year in response to threats from popular AI-native rivals such as OpenAI. Recent reports have uncovered that this transition includes silently installing a large cache of AI weights on an unknown but potentially significant number of devices. Google Chrome users who have noticed unusual disk activity or unexplained drops in available storage should look for a folder called "OptGuideOnDeviceModel" inside their Chrome directory. It holds roughly 4GB of weights for Google's Gemini Nano LLM, downloaded by the browser without user consent. Deleting the...

A man driving for Lyft is accused of trying to lure at least two Princeton University students, according to the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office. In one reported incident, a female university student was on Prospect Avenue around Noon on April 16, 2026, when a car stopped and the driver asked for directions, officials said. The driver gave the student a $100 bill, got out of the car and then demanded a sexual act from her, officials explained. According to prosecutors, the girl dropped the money and ran away. The driver was found to be in a black-colored Jeep Patriot during...

Smart electrical panel manufacturer Span has announced a new collaboration with technology and semiconductor giant Nvidia to develop XFRA, a network of devices that convert unused electric capacity in homes and small businesses into a distributed compute cloud.

'How did we get here as a culture?' Paltrow asked Swisher. 'Obviously there's so much revenue and profit driving this whole thing, that's at the heart of it,' she continued. 'But how do you think we got to this place in culture where nothing matters and now all that matters is kind of these super rich white dudes who are breaking rules, setting rules, seemingly not caring so much about the downstream impact on everything, from health to culture.' Swisher responded, 'I think we have an idolatry of innovators, an idolatry of wealth, and if you're wealthy, you must be...

A new Harvard/Harris poll finds that former Vice President Kamala Harris has opened up a significant lead in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Ms. Harris is the choice of 50% of Democrats surveyed, while her next closest competitor, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), gets the nod from just 22% of the donkeys. Bringing up the rear is a cast of characters each polling in single digits. Oddly, this new presidential polling momentum for Ms. Harris arrives just as some Democrats wonder out loud if she really should be running for governor of California.

This is a live news commentary / legal analysis show (aired around May 6, 2026) hosted by criminal defense attorney Robert Gouveia. It covers three main current events with a focus on accountability, fraud, and law enforcement actions. 1. Virginia Democrat Raided The show discusses an FBI raid targeting a Virginia Democrat (likely involving election-related or fraud allegations, based on context from similar recent stories). Gouveia frames it as part of broader scrutiny of Democratic officials. 2. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Fraud Scandal Major focus on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and her alleged ties to a massive Minnesota fraud scandal,...

Federal authorities are in LA's MacArthur Park to announce the results of a massive takedown targeting an open-air drug market.