Free Republic

Paid-for "certification" of service animals — bought online or anywhere else — never passed the smell test, and now it doesn't pass the legal test in Oklahoma. Deanna Fields, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Association of Oklahoma, brought a new law to my attention after I'd reported difficulties surrounding service animals, federal fair housing law and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gov. Mary Fallin signed H.B. 3282 May 1. It goes into effect Nov. 1. The law, by Rep. Chris Kannady, R-Oklahoma City, and Sen. Kim David, R-Porter, has received no media attention, despite recent violent dog attacks and...

Two South Florida McDonald's customers think the fast-food giant is being awfully cheesy with how it charges customers for a signature item that has been on its menu since 1975. According to a class-action lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale federal court on May 8, Cynthia Kissner, of Broward County, and Leonard Werner, of Miami-Dade, say they have had to pay for cheese they don't want on their Quarter Pounder sandwiches. The suit asks for at least $5 million. It comes down to this: On the menu, a hamburger at Micky D's is cheaper than a cheeseburger. According to the lawsuit,...

The future for American commercial space activity is bright. Space entrepreneurs are already planning travel to Mars, and they are looking to the moon as the perfect location for a way station to refuel and restock Mars-bound rockets. As much as this sounds like the plot of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it is coming closer to reality sooner than you may have ever thought possible. A privately funded American space industry is the reason. This industry is making progress in leaps and bounds. The global space economy is approaching $350 billion and is expected to become a multitrillion-dollar industry. There...

When a passenger requests a pickup from a ride-share service, the app pings a nearby driver, who can accept or decline the trip. All drivers in a market charge the same rate: in Chicago last year, the base fare for UberX was $1.70, plus $.20 per minute and $.95 per mile. It’s a transparent system that seems perfectly designed to eliminate disparities in how much male and female drivers can earn—right? Not quite, according to research coauthored by John List, the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, and collaborators at Stanford and Uber.

Keith Olbermann is coming back to ESPN's airwaves. The outspoken sports and politics commentator has been granted an "expanded role" with the Disney-owned sports broadcasting giant, a Friday report from New York Post claims. "Since we started this, my sixth separate tenure with ESPN, in January, I’ve found the variety of assignments to be the most fun and energizing of all my stints,” he said in a statement on his new gig. “Adding stuff, like being a rookie 59-year-old play-by-play guy, plus the Rip Van Winkle of SportsCenter, only adds to the smorgasbord. Can’t wait, and at my age, I...

The French government has agreed to absorb €35 billion in debt from the state railway SNCF, a top union official said Friday, as it seeks an end to nearly two months of strikes. Luc Berille, the head of the UNSA union, said that the state had proposed taking on €35 billion ($41 billion) of the SNCF’s €46 billion of debt, starting with €25 billion as soon as 2020. “The prime minister was specific,” Berille said after talks with premier Edouard Philippe, adding that the government would increase infrastructure investment by €200 million a year to reach an annual total of...

It is perhaps our most astonishing social contract. Universal, essential and (mostly) binding, it depends of a certain amount of skill, (hopefully) a modicum of training and, most of all, trust. I am talking, of course, about driving a car. And even though, in the span of just a century and a quarter, it is now just as common an everyday task as taking out the garbage or shopping for groceries, it remains an amazing — possibly the most amazing — social construct we all share. Think about it for just a minute. Except for the time spent on divided...

A TEAM of stem cell researchers have done the seemingly impossible and successfully combined artificial human cells with the embryo of a chicken in a shock new experiment aimed at trying to better understand developing life. ================================================================================== Until now, scientists have been unable to answer how certain cells in a developing embryo decide to become muscles or limbs, while others become bones and nerves. But now researchers led by Dr Ali Brivanlou, from Rockefeller University in New York, have achieved the unimaginable in a shock experiment. By grafting petri dish-grown human cells onto the embryo of a chicken the scientists...

Seems to me the author is Iranian but lives in the US or Europe. Lots of videos and photos. He is coordinating video coming out of Iran. See coverage of Israeli missile strikes on Iran- Al Quds forces bases within Syria scroll down to May 23 and 24. Many Iranians in Syria are getting wasted and so are Hezbollah missile production lines. Iran is have lots of trouble delivering gasoline due to unrest and truckers strikes.

You’re gonna love the new Starbucks! Starbucks recently enacted their “Third Place Policy” which means employees should consider anyone who enters the establishment a customer regardless whether they make a purchase. “We are committed to creating a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome,” Starbucks said. Because customers who pay north of $5.00 for a fancy latte want to have a side of syringes. Starbucks enacted this policy after they faced a huge backlash when two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia location. This new policy is not only upsetting Starbucks employees, but paying customers as well,...

Ride hailing app Uber wants to build flying taxis in France and announced on Thursday it would invest €20 million to develop the project. The American company made the announcement at the VivaTech technology fair in Paris on Thursday. It wants to develop an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in France over the next five years and will throw €20 million at the flying taxi project, known as Uber Elevate. That will include a new research and development center in Paris, its first technology hub outside of North America. The center will focus entirely on flying cars. […] Co-organizer...

Disney and Pixar's The Incredibles 2 is tracking for a huge box-office debut of $140 million-plus in North America. If so, that would make the best domestic start ever for an animated movie, exceeding the $135 million launch of fellow Pixar film Finding Dory. The film opens in theaters on June 15, nearly 14 years after The Incredibles hit the big screen and turned into an instant classic. Incredibles 2 was directed by Brad Bird, who also wrote and helmed the first film. Along with Bird, Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L. Jackson and John Ratzenberger reprise...

Nearly six years after a federal jury awarded Apple over $1 billion for Samsung infringements of iPhone intellectual properties, a jury retrying the damages portion of the case has reached a unanimous verdict, modifying the figure to $538,641,656 across five design and utility patents. The verdict comes after years of damages-only retrials and appeals, including a visit to the United States Supreme Court.Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. began in April 2011 with Apple’s allegation that certain Samsung smartphones infringed on iPhone inventions including patents and trademarks. Apple won the trial in August 2012, receiving an initial award of...

Would you like to send all or some telemetry back to the Windows goliath? Microsoft is rolling out an update to Office products to introduce Windows 10-style telemetry data slurping. Or rather the software business has made it very clear to users it is doing so and they cannot opt out.With a certain piece of European legislation around the corner concerning privacy, the timing is interesting to say the least.El Reg was last week informed by a reader that the standalone version of Word 2016 had begun displaying a message forcing users to “Share how you use Office” with options...

Interesting lead up to the freedom in America. Why England really outlaws slavery before America.

The Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures index, currently is at 1.9 percent, while the headline rate including energy and food prices is at 2 percent. Fed officials described wage pressures as "moderate" though it noted there has been more pressure in industries where labor supply is tightening. Fed officials see 2 percent inflation as a level that sustains economic growth without putting too much upward pressure on prices. After seven years of keeping its benchmark interest rate near zero, the FOMC began raising rates in December 2015, with the current target range at 1.5 percent to...

[Dayglored note: This problem report involves AVAST! antivirus breaking the April Update. AVAST personnel deny the claim...] Apps fingered in vanishing desktop snafu Updated The troubled Windows 10 April 2018 update is facing another issue, with some users losing access to their desktop after installing the new code.The problem, which first appeared in a posting on a Microsoft support forum on 14 May, has gained a bit of traction over the last two days with users taking to social media as they go through the three stages of installing this update: frustration, fury and despair.The affected users report that after...

Tesla said Wednesday that they have been able to recover enough data to confirm that autopilot was not engaged when a Bay Area driver veered off the road in a Model S and plunged into a pond. “We have been able to recover enough data from the vehicle to confirm that Autopilot was not engaged at the time of this accident," Tesla said in a statement.

For the millions who are flying somewhere this summer, they may want to pack some extra patience. The industry trade group Airlines for America is expecting a record 236.1 million people to take a flight between June 1 and Aug. 31, an increase of 3.7 percent from last summer. "As the economy grows along with household net worth, passengers are taking advantage of persistently low airfares for their summer travel plans," said John Heimlich, vice president and chief economist at Airlines for America. Heading into Memorial Day weekend, the travel app Hopper said the average domestic airfare is $336 and...

Multiple signs of inflation in freight-related industries are at or near historical highs, in what could be an early sign that price pressures are building and ready to reverberate around the economy. Freight marketplace DAT keeps track of supply and demand in the freight industry through a bulletin board that matches companies with loads to be delivered to the vehicles that will take the goods to the marketplace. The measures are in the spot market, where vendors that don't contract their deliveries find drivers for their products. Recent readings show demand for vehicles skyrocketing, a sign that generally points to...