Free Republic

A Detroit man who was mauled by three dogs as he walked home from a bus stop has died from his injuries. Harold Phillips, a 35-year-old father, died Friday evening, four days after he was attacked by the dogs as he walked to his house from a bus stop, his wife said. Detroit Animal Control and Care explained how the three dogs got out of a fenced yard and viciously attacked him. Phillips was hospitalized following the attack and had to have his right arm amputated but things went from bad to worse. The three dogs owner, Roy Goodman, has...

A pigeon accused of being a Chinese spy and serving eight months in Indian detainment was freed into the wild Tuesday after police determined the bird was innocent. The fowl was captured near a Mumbai port in May when onlookers noticed two rings tied to its legs with written words resembling Chinese letters, according to the news agency Press Trust of India. The scribblings led Indian police to suspect the feathered critter could be a Chinese agent seeking confidential intelligence from India. They took the bird into custody to investigate and later transferred it to Mumbai’s Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit...

The number of American workers hired by international companies grew 62% last year, according to the State of Global Hiring Report from Deel, an HR platform that specializes in global hiring. The report is based on 300,000 contracts between Deel customers and workers for both contractors and full-time employees, and roughly 85% of those contracts are for remote positions. American workers are most likely to be hired by companies in the U.K., Canada, France, Singapore and Australia. The spike in U.S. workers vying for remote jobs headquartered overseas “feels correlated with the elimination of remote roles” stateside, says Deel CEO...

Hopelessness is at epidemic levels and taking a toll on people and organizations. Workers of all ages are feeling more hopeless than ever. A national poll released this past spring by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that nearly half of Americans under 30 years old reported feeling “down, depressed, or hopeless” at least several days a week. In 2023, U.S. employee engagement fell at a rate 10 times faster than in the previous three years, according to one estimate. Globally, employee stress is at a record high, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023...

China's youth came of age during a time of huge economic growth. But now, a sense of gloom is hanging around them as the country's economy plateaus. China's slower-than-usual economic growth has put pressure on the country's millennials and Generation Z. Reared by a generation of Chinese who made their wealth during nearly four uninterrupted decades of explosive economic growth, they face much lower expectations for economic dynamism and their own prospects going forward. "China's golden years, the two decades or so after our country's reform and opening-up policies, are over. There's nothing I can do about this. I can...

American taxpayers footed the bill for at least $1.8 trillion in federal and state health care expenditures in 2022 — about 41% of the nearly $4.5 trillion in both public and private health care spending the U.S. recorded last year, according to the annual report released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. On top of that $1.8 trillion, third-party programs, which are often government-funded, and public health programs accounted for another $600 billion in spending. This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain,...

When Moody’s Investors Service announced to the world it might downgrade China, the lessons from Japan’s deflationary nightmare were written between the lines in bold font. This week’s big economic news in Asia was Moody’s slashing Beijing’s country's credit outlook. It dropped just a few weeks after Moody’s also lowered Washington’s rating outlook to “negative” from “stable.” The warning to Beijing, though, seemed timed to spur Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government to change course on debt before it’s too late. The central worry, of course, is China’s default-plagued property sector, a threat that echoes Japan’s 1990s bad-loan crisis. Another dynamic...

The violence in Israel and Gaza is starting to pull public attention back to the Middle East, even amid a massive military buildup in the South China Sea and simmering tensions over Taiwan. President Biden insists the U.S. can provide military support to both Ukraine and Israel, while remaining vigilant in the Indo-Pacific. But keeping the focus on China while embroiled in two foreign wars will test the president in a crucial election year. China’s navy stands as the world’s largest in terms of number of vessels, with expectations it will expand by almost 40 percent by 2040. Amid the...

The Alt operating system developed by Moscow, Russia-based Basalt SPO has been recompiled to support Chinese Loongson processors based on the LoongArch architecture. Blacklisted Loongson has actively supported the porting process. The OS is available as a distro with a basic set of programs (Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice) that can be installed on desktops, workstations, and servers. Alt is now the first Russian operating system capable of running on Loongson's processors based on the 64-bit LoongArch architecture, such as LS5000 and LS6000 series, which some in Russia consider alternatives to x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel. Recently, China lifted the export...

Although artificial intelligence is in its early stages in the health-care industry, it already has triggered legal action. A class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that UnitedHealthcare used an artificial intelligence algorithm to wrongfully deny coverage under Medicare Advantage health policies. The insurer made health-care determinations using its nH Predict algorithm, overrode physician recommendations, and denied elderly patients’ claims for stays in extended-care facilities, according to the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. The plaintiffs also alleged the technology lets the company “aggressively deny coverage, because they know they will not be held accountable for...

China’s leaders look like they are now panicking over population decline. Will they force couples to procreate? Or will they industrialize the process of procreation? Xi Jinping, in remarks published by the official Xinhua News Agency on Oct. 30, told women to start a “new trend of family.” Linking “family harmony, social harmony, national development, and national progress,” he said it is necessary to “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing and strengthen guidance on young people’s view on marriage, childbirth and family.” The Communist Party, is considering more coercive policies. Since the first years of communism in...

Hunter Biden had sent that WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017, to Raymond Zhao, an associate of CEFC, the Chinese energy giant Hunter and James Biden began courting in 2016, while Joe Biden was vice president. After Joe Biden left office at the end of the Obama administration, according to one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, the Chinese communist-connected CEFC sent them a $3 million wire in March of 2017 as a “thank you” for the Bidens’ assistance in furthering their business interests. But CEFC had committed to investing another $10 million, which an email recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned...

The Environics Institute, a Canadian research agency that conducts public opinion surveys and collects data on government, social and economic issues, has released its annual study on Canadian public opinion on immigration. The report found that over the past year, Canadians have become pessimistic about the direction of the country and the economy. When asked if there is too much immigration in Canada, 4 out of 10 respondents strongly or somewhat strongly agreed. This is a rise of 17 percentage points over the 2022 numbers. However, looking at it another way, that means 6 in 10 did not feel that...

President Joe Biden’s deputies welcomed at least one economic migrant into the United States during the last 12 months for every American newborn or high-school graduate. Roughly 3.5 million economic migrants crossed the southern border during the government’s October-to-September budget year, according to federal data released October 21. In contrast, 3.67 million Americans were born during the matching 12-month period in 2022, according to the Census Bureau. That 2022 number includes at least 400,000 births to illegal migrants. The inflow also creates vast economic competition for the 3 million American youths who graduated from schools in the 10 months up...

Son, you’re eight years old now, and you’ll probably hear this soon enough from the other kids on the playground anyway, so I might as well tell you. Santa isn’t real, the Tooth Fairy is imaginary, and there’s no such thing as the “invisible hand of the market.” Why did your mother and I lie to you? Well, we didn’t so much lie to you as tell you stories that were untrue, stories that we hoped would add magic to your childhood and also reassure you that capitalism is a good and fair system for everyone, instead of one in...

Venezuela said Wednesday it had seized control of a prison from the hands of a powerful gang, in a major operation involving 11,000 members of its security forces. The Tocoron prison had served as the Tren de Aragua gang's headquarters, where it had installed amenities such as a zoo, a pool and gambling rooms. An AFP team saw security officers carrying motorcycles, televisions, air conditioners and microwaves out of the jail. Tren de Aragua, Venezuela's most powerful local gang, is involved in crime countrywide and has spread its tentacles to neighboring nations. According to an investigation by Venezuelan journalist Ronna...

A new survey from CBS News finds that 48 percent of Democrats feel like they’ve heard “not much” or “nothing at all” about what Kamala Harris has done as vice president, and 48 percent of independents say her work in that role has made them think worse of the Biden administration. Joe Biden can’t pass the torch to a vice president seen as a sure loser in 2024. In 2024, the Democrats will have, “the same guy with the same team around him, but older.” Back in 2019, Biden himself reportedly signaled to aides that he would serve only a...

I've seen a couple of good leaders, and a lot of bad managers throughout my 20-year career in tech and as a head of analytics at companies including eBay, Amazon, and GameStop. I spent time reflecting on why so many managers fall into the category of a bad manager, instead of into the category of a great leader. 1. Most managers didn't set out to be a leader or manager Almost all started out as individual contributors, and many then found themselves working in management because it provided a higher salary. 2. Too many focus on actually managing instead of...

The suicide rate among U.S. veterans may be much higher than estimated by state and national data, according to a study conducted by the national nonprofit America's Warrior Partnership (AWP). According to the research, in the states examined—including Alabama, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, and Oregon—the daily rate of suicide among former service members was 1.37 times greater than previously reported by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). If the eight states collectively represented the national rate, the veteran suicide rate would be 2.4 times greater than previously reported by the VA, according to the study. That means that...

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday that American companies have complained to her that China has become “uninvestable” as the level of risk associated with doing business there has spiked amid factors such as changes to counterespionage laws and raids on foreign firms. U.S. companies doing business in China face a host of new challenges, including “exorbitant fines without any explanation” and “revisions to the counterespionage law, which are unclear and sending shockwaves through the U.S. community.” One example of seemingly arbitrary crackdowns U.S. companies face in China was a recent ban by Beijing of American chipmaker Micron Technology...