Free Republic

President Trump didn't play along with the usual narrative at the G-7 summit, and the liberal media predictably characterized him as the villain: Even before then, Mr. Trump had left himself the outlier in the annual session. By departing before the end, he skipped sessions about climate change, oceans and clean energy — ceding not only America’s leadership on those topics, but also its very seat at the table. Lost in this breathless "transcription" of events is the question of whether America should lead on so-called "issues" such as climate change, oceans, and supposedly "clean" energy.

Friday, California's High-Speed Rail Authority published its draft 2018 Business Plan. Its 800-mile bullet-train project's estimated cost is now $77.3 billion, up from $64 billion two years ago, and its final completion has been pushed out another four years to 2033. The current estimate is now more than 70 percent above the $45 billion presented to voters in 2008. The related Associated Press story failed to disclose that original cost estimate, as did three leading California newspapers. The Authority's draft discloses that "More than $3 billion has been expended to date on construction in the Central Valley and planning for...

President Donald Trump said Saturday the U.S. would contribute $50 million to a new World Bank fund conceived by his daughter that aims to help women entrepreneurs access capital and other support. Ivanka Trump joined World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim on the sidelines of the Group of 20 world leaders' summit in Hamburg, Germany, to launch the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative.

Al Gore wants to reverse modernity and save the world from itself through an elimination of its fossil-fuel-based energy system. During the final week of April, his newly created Energy Transitions Commission released a document setting forth a fool's-errand pathway to "decarbonize" the world's energy system. If this sounds familiar, it is. Gore's plan features a new, sophisticated, and expensive public-relations campaign, but it's all based on his views on carbon dioxide first broached in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, which he reissued in 2000 for his failed presidential campaign. The subsequent efforts made by Gore during the...

Former President Barack Obama is traveling to Italy, where he will speak this week about food security and climate change. The former president is expected to go to Milan to meet with several Italians and discuss the issues. On Monday, the former president is scheduled to meet with former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. That evening, he will attend a private dinner held by the Institute for International Political Studies. Obama on Tuesday is expected to give a keynote address to the Seeds and Chips Global Food Innovation Summit. The theme of the summit this year is "The Impact of Technology...

A cop in Texas shot at a car full of teenagers, killing a 15-year-old passenger while investigating a raucous house party near Dallas, police said on Sunday. An officer with Balch Springs Police Department opened fire on a car backing down a street — toward additional cops — in the Dallas suburb around 11 p.m. Saturday. At least one bullet shattered the car window and fatally struck the front seat passenger. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but did not survive. Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing the victim’s family, identified the slain teen as Jordan Edwards, a straight-A freshman...

Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama announced Friday they have picked the prestigious agency that represents Bill Clinton, Mia Farrow and others to handle their post-White House speaking gigs. The Harry Walker Agency will represent both Obamas for speaking appearances, said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president. It's the same firm that recently resumed representing Hillary Clinton for future speeches and handled the speeches she gave for big sums after stepping down as secretary of state in 2013.

TANGIER, Morocco — Behind a tall perimeter wall, studded with surveillance cameras and guarded by Moroccan soldiers, a sprawling new palace for King Salman of Saudi Arabia rose on the Atlantic coast here last summer. Even as the Saudi government canceled a quarter of a trillion dollars’ worth of projects back home as part of a fiscal austerity program, workers hustled to finish bright blue landing pads for helicopters at the vacation compound and to erect a tent the size of a circus big-top where the king could feast and entertain his enormous retinue. The royal family’s fortune derives from...

Jill Stein must be feeling guilty. AFP reports: The former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised the necessary $1.1 million to request a vote recount in Wisconsin, her campaign announced Thursday. The Midwestern state was a key battleground in the November 8 election, helping propel the Republican President-elect Donald Trump past his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to a victory that shocked the nation. Donald Tump won Wisconsin by 22,000, but the Green Party won 31,000 votes in the state. In Michigan, Trump won by 11,000, but Stein got 51,000. In Pennsylvania, she got 49,000 votes, and margin was...

Bill Clinton was paid $1 million in 2015 by Laureate University, an educational institution with branches around the world. American Thinker has previously reported on this relationship between Clinton and the college, as well as the school's flawed bookkeeping that got them in trouble with the SEC. All told, over the last 5 years, Bill Clinton was paid $17.5 million. His position? "Honorary Chancellor," where he acted as an advisor and goodwill ambassador.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Trayvon Martin's parents are scheduled to hold a news conference in Miami Beach. Martin's parents, their attorney Benjamin Crump and members of the National Bar Association are set to meet with reporters Monday morning. They are expected to discuss their plans to address what they say are inequalities in the U.S. justice system.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A major announcement on high speed commuter rail could come from the White House as early as Monday, Channel 2 Action News has learned. The federal government was prepared to hand out billions of dollars to several major cities, according to Washington, D.C., bureau reporter Scott MacFarlane. Its unclear how much money could come to Georgia, said MacFarlane. Local rail agencies were shut out of the first distribution earlier this year. "I think you gotta walk, before you can run. While high-speed rail would be a great asset to any community, where's it gonna go? What kind...

The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was first adopted in 1914 in response to the Titanic disaster. Along with mandating the number of lifeboats and the notification of a ship's routes, it also dictates that any ship in the area of a distress call will divert to assist that ship.

Here's a dose of reality. The father of teen sailor Abby Sunderland told The NY Post that he's broke and had signed a contract to do a reality show, "Adventures in Sunderland," about his family of daredevil kids weeks after she set off on her doomed and dangerous solo sail around the globe. Laurence Sunderland, a sailing instructor who lives in the middle-class Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks with his pregnant wife and seven kids, opened their home to film crews four months ago.

Here's a dose of reality. The father of teen sailor Abby Sunderland told The NY Post that he's broke and had signed a contract to do a reality show, "Adventures in Sunderland," about his family of daredevil kids weeks after she set off on her doomed and dangerous solo sail around the globe.

Here's a dose of reality. The father of teen sailor Abby Sunderland told The Post yesterday that he's broke and had signed a contract to do a reality show, "Adventures in Sunderland," about his family of daredevil kids weeks after she set off on her doomed and dangerous solo sail around the globe. Laurence Sunderland, a sailing instructor who lives in the middle-class Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks with his pregnant wife and seven kids, opened their home to film crews four months ago. "The show might be about family, it might be about Abigail's trip. It's something that...

ROME/VIENNA: When Pat Bond told her lover Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, she was pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion. Bond, who was 28, had a miscarriage, then became pregnant again. This time Willenborg's superiors urged her to give up the child for adoption. Bond kept the child but agreed to a vow of silence. In a signed contract with the Catholic Church, she undertook to keep the priest's identity secret in exchange for financial support for her son, Nathan. In America, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Austria, women made pregnant by priests have signed such pledges...

“NCR makes ATMs,” Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher said Tuesday. “And to me this is equivalent to going to your ATM and finding out that your bank that you and your family have banked with for 125 years has, without even talking to you, transferred all your funds to another company.”

Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when they are merely unhappy, a senior psychiatrist said today. Normal emotions are sometimes being treated as mental illness because the threshold for clinical depression is too low, according to Professor Gordon Parker. Prof Parker said depression had become a "catch-all" diagnosis, driven by clever marketing from pharmaceutical companies and leading to the burgeoning prescription of antidepressant drugs. Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), he said the drugs were being marketed beyond their "true utility" in cases in which people were unhappy rather than clinically depressed.

Study Links Hurricanes to Teen Smokers Jun 25 05:07 PM US/Eastern BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) - Teenagers in a southeast Texas county were more likely to smoke cigarettes if they or their family members were affected by Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, according to a university study. The study by the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston surveyed more than 5,100 middle school and high school students in Jefferson County six to nine months after the hurricanes made landfall. "The physical damage was easy to see, but the psychological damage from the hurricanes was pretty well hidden," said Alfred L....