Free Republic

(Reuters) - U.S. political campaigns should make someone in their teams responsible for monitoring online disinformation about their candidate ahead of the 2020 elections, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said on Monday. The recommendation was part of a slew of tips published by the DNC on how campaigns, state parties, the general public and social media companies can combat disinformation. “Campaigns and state parties are not powerless in the fight against online disinformation,” the DNC said in the recommendations. It suggested a press or digital staff member would be best-placed for the role of “counter-disinformation lead.” “The DNC will provide...

WASHINGTON - After three interest rate cuts and a fresh round of record highs for U.S. stock markets, has President Donald Trump lost interest in the Federal Reserve? A count of tweets from Trump about U.S. monetary policy suggest a detente may have taken hold between an elected leader who has lambasted Fed officials with insults like “clueless” and “boneheads” and a central bank whose rate cuts have helped buffer the economy from the administration’s own unpredictable trade and tariff policies. On Wednesday, the Fed left interest rates unchanged at the end of a two-day policy meeting, and signaled it...

France rejects a U.S. proposal this week that would let companies opt out of a proposed international tax reform, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, urging Washington to negotiate in good faith. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin raised serious questions about OECD international tax reform proposals in a letter made public on Wednesday, jarring international officials by floating the idea of a "safe harbor regime". Le Maire said that would mean U.S. companies could opt in or out as they pleased, which he said would be unacceptable to France and other OECD countries. He urged Washington therefore to...

Media bias at its worst: Reuters removes story, instead of correcting it, after realizing they had falsely blamed Trump for something that Obama did Reuters recently reported the following. And please keep in mind that I am quoting the article in its entirety:Story on U.N. study on child detentions withdrawnNovember 18, 2019GENEVA (Reuters) – A Nov. 18 story headlined “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention -U.N. study” is withdrawn. The United Nations issued a statement on Nov. 19 saying the number was not current but was for the year 2015. No replacement story will be issued.Why did Reuters...

(Reuters) - President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that fugitive Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had died in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria,in what he called a major blow to the jihadist group.Baghdadi killed himself during the raid by detonating a suicide vest, Trump said in a televised address from the White House. Here are reactions to the announcement:

Reuters) - Having his morning coffee and cigarette outside a Starbucks in one of the most politically contested counties in the United States, Richard Sibilla recoils at the memory of President Donald Trump's election. But impeach him now? Sibilla can see little upside. "After this he has a much better chance of winning another election, as scary as that sounds," said Sibilla, 39, a resident of Pinellas County, Florida, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. "It's not even worth following because it's all going to help him." Among the public, interviews with more than 60 voters across four of...

NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Traders know that when President Donald Trump tweets he can rock financial markets, often in unpredictable ways, but analysts at JP Morgan have now quantified the impact of his tweets, at least on the U.S. interest rates market. Trump’s tweets, which have in recent months veered toward market-sensitive topics such as trade and monetary policy, have increasingly moved U.S. rates markets, analyst Munier Salem said in a note on Friday. In the report, which runs well over 4,000 words, J.P. Morgan analysts use machine learning techniques and their own volatility model to show how...

WARSAW (Reuters) - More than 1000 people took part in a pride parade in the central Polish city of Plock protected by a cordon of armed police as LGBT rights became a hot button issue in Catholic Poland ahead of a parliamentary election in October. Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has made hostility to gays a central focus of its campaign, depicting LGBT rights as a dangerous foreign idea that undermines traditional values. A pride parade in the provincial city of Bialystok in July was marred by violence after anti-gay protesters chased people through the streets and beat...

Support for U.S. President Donald Trump increased slightly among Republicans after he lashed out on Twitter over the weekend in a racially charged attack on four minority Democratic congresswomen, a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll shows. The national survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Trump told the lawmakers they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” showed his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points to 72%, compared with a similar poll that ran last week. Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, has...

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Joe Biden is still the front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, but the crown is slipping.On a two-day holiday visit to Iowa, the state that kicks off the White House nominating fight in seven months, Biden was greeted by new polls showing his lead narrowing in the state and nationally after a wobbly performance in last week’s first debate. Biden’s halting response to a bruising debate attack on racial issues from rival Kamala Harris, a black U.S. senator from California, has some Democrats in Iowa rethinking their support for the former vice president.

Italy's far-right League was one of the biggest winners in last month's EU elections and its leader, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, has sought to persuade Europe's nationalist parties to set aside their differences and form a 10-party European Alliance for People and Nations in the new assembly. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland's conservative ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), ruled out joining on account of the pro-Russian stance of Salvini, France's National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, which won 29 of Britain's 72 seats in the European...

President Donald Trump said on Monday a deal with Iran on its nuclear program was possible, crediting economic sanctions for curbing activities Washington has said are behind a spate of attacks in the Middle East. "I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal, and I think that's very smart of them, and I think that's a possibility to happen," Trump said during a news conference with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. "It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership," Trump said. "We aren't looking for regime change -- I just...

(Reuters) - The “great majority” of solar cells being produced at Tesla Inc’s factory in upstate New York are being sold overseas instead of being used in the company’s trademark “Solar Roof” as originally intended, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. The exporting underscores the depth of Tesla’s troubles in the U.S. solar business, which the electric car maker entered in 2016 with its controversial $2.6 billion purchase of SolarCity. Tesla has only sporadically purchased solar cells produced by its partner in the factory, Panasonic Corp, according to a Buffalo solar factory employee speaking on condition of anonymity. The rest...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to unite the country on Thursday after a big election win, with his party on course to increase its majority on a mandate of business-friendly policies and a tough stand on national security. Official data from the Election Commission showed Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead in 300 of the 542 seats being contested, up from the 282 it won in 2014 and more than the 272 seats needed for a majority in the lower house of parliament. That would give it the first back-to-back majority for a single party since 1984. “Together...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday it is time for Democratic leaders to allow an impeachment process to start against President Donald Trump, saying the administration’s obstruction of lawmakers’ oversight efforts gives them no choice.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House will unveil the first part of President Donald Trump’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan when it holds an international conference in Bahrain in late June to encourage investment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, senior U.S. officials said on Sunday.The “economic workshop” will bring together government officials and business leaders in an effort to jump-start the economic portion of the peace initiative, which is also expected to include proposals for resolving thorny political issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the officials said. Trump has touted the coming plan as the “deal of...

A former Florida police officer was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for fatally shooting a black motorist who was awaiting a tow truck in October 2015. Nouman Raja, 41, was fired from the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department shortly after he killed Corey Jones, 31, while on plainclothes duty, and was convicted last month by a jury of manslaughter and first-degree murder. The conviction was unusual in a country in which police officers kill roughly 1,000 people each year, a disproportionate number of them black men, usually without facing prosecution, according to a Washington Post database on...

A general view shows the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun Palestinians voiced alarm while Israelis weighed the gravity on Sunday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden election promise to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.Some Israeli commentators saw the right-wing leader’s pledge on Saturday, as Tuesday’s national ballot approaches, as mainly a bid to siphon votes from ultranationalist rivals long advocating annexation. But after years of resisting far-right calls to formally put West Bank land captured in the 1967 Middle East war under permanent Israeli hold, Netanyahu...

The U.S. Department of Defense is proposing to pay for President Donald Trump’s much-debated border wall by shifting funds away from projects that include $1.2 billion for schools, childcare centers and other facilities for military children, according to a list it has provided to lawmakers. The Pentagon gave Congress a list on Monday that included $12.8 billion of construction projects for which it said funds could be redirected. Around 10 percent of the list relates to educational establishments and includes school buildings for the children of service members in places like Germany, Japan, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. The move comes...

Reuters bragged Friday about its scoop that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was once involved in a notorious hacker group, but revealed in the process that one of its reporters willingly sat on the story until after O’Rourke lost his Texas Senate race to incumbent Ted Cruz. Reuters’ Joseph Menn reported exclusively Friday morning that O’Rourke, a former member of Congress and the latest Democrat to join the 2020 presidential race, had a secret membership in an infamous hacking group. The group, known as the Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC), is the oldest and perhaps most influential collection of...