Free Republic

A trio of Big Apple homeowners has filed suit to delay the state’s controversial new tax on luxury second homes — claiming Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration bungled the rollout and unfairly put the burden on homeowners. The disgruntled owners charge that City Hall is unfairly burdening them by forcing them to prove they are full-time New Yorkers if they do not want to pay the pied-à-terre tax, according to the suit filed Friday in Staten Island Supreme Court. The city Department of Finance “has arbitrarily and capriciously foisted onto New York City residents the burden of proving they are not...

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - An arrest in a nearly 40-year-old cold case brings an Ozark family one step closer to justice. 22-year-old Ronna Bremer disappeared in 1988 from her home in Christian County. Ronna’s ex-husband is now behind bars as he is accused of killing her and their unborn child. After years of opening and closing the case, gathering evidence, going back over interviews, and even conducting new ones, Sheriff Brad Cole of the Christian County Sheriff’s Office says Joel’s arrest is a win for the family and everyone involved in the investigation. “What’s been going on for the last...

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $1.25 million to a campaign working to defeat a November pro-life ballot measure that would restore Missouri’s protections for unborn babies and reinstate limits on abortion. The contribution went to Stop the Ban, the PAC opposing Amendment 3. The group reported the donation Wednesday to the Missouri Ethics Commission and has now raised more than $6.5 million. Bloomberg previously gave $1 million in 2024 to Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, which successfully pushed the amendment that overturned the state’s laws protecting babies. Amendment 3, placed on the November 3 ballot by state...

The Women's National Basketball Players Association released a statement on Friday, emphasizing diversity and inclusion while saying the organization "will not be used as political pawns." "We embrace justice equity, diversity, and inclusion," the statement read. "Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women's sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns." Though not mentioned by name, the WNBPA's statement comes...

If this isn't the modern left in a nutshell, I don't know what is. Taking a page from the "suing Kia for carjackings" playbook deployed in places like Chicago, Mamdani has decided to crack down on hooligans and ne'er-do-wells using high-powered e-bikes and e-scooters to hurt themselves, hurt others, and be general nuisances to society by ... banning sales of these products. Funny how these e-bikes and scooters are fine in non-metro areas and low diversity areas, but in New York City they have to be outlawed. Tale as old as time. Anyone with their eyes open can see what's...

If you’re wondering how many steps a day after 60 is enough, research suggests that about 6,000 to 8,000 daily steps can provide meaningful health benefits, with many of the biggest gains happening well before the often-cited 10,000-step goal.1,2Walking is one of the simplest ways to stay active, support your health, and boost your energy. If you’re looking for even more motivation to lace up your shoes, explore the benefits of Walking for Exercise: Your Secret Anti-Aging Power. You don’t need to spend hours exercising or hit a magic number every day to see results. Small increases in movement can...

A male former NBA player is declaring himself eligible to join the WNBA, attempting to highlight how the league’s rules inadequately define women and effectively allow trans players. Former Utah Jazz center Enes Kanter Freedom on Friday released a video saying he meets the WNBA’s criteria for players and that his representatives plan to hold the league to the letter of their governing framework. “If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA,” Freedom said. “My team and I have carefully examined the WNBA eligibility criteria and...

Eric Swalwell once dated Katie Miller, the woman now married to Trump's top deputy Stephen Miller, and the long-buried romance has reportedly surfaced at the center of the fight over the FBI's 'Fang Fang' files. Lawyers for the disgraced former Democratic lawmaker brought up the relationship as they battled to stop the Justice Department from making public its investigative file on his ties to suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang, according to the Sources Say newsletter. Fang, who fled to China in 2015 as the FBI closed in, spent years cozying up to rising California Democrats, helping bundle donations for Swalwell's...

The decision reflects internal findings that the upcoming ‘Astra’ model may possess ‘critical cyber capabilities’ and follows a string of AI-testing incidentsOpenAI is pausing some activities involving an upcoming artificial-intelligence model, Astra, after internal evaluations led the company to conclude it “cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities,” the company said in a blog post on Friday. The announcement of the slowdown, which represents one of the first times an AI developer has publicly held back model development due to security concerns, follows a series of loss-of-control incidents that have raised alarm among cyberdefense professionals and AI-safety researchers. During evaluations over...

Those who first dreamed of artificial intelligence saw it as an instrument for the perfection of modern secular society. The IBM Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, where some of the earliest AI applications made their public debut, advertised a streamlined future in which technologically enhanced problem-solving was extended to all areas of life. Things have turned out somewhat differently. The AI era that began with the 2022 launch of ChatGPT often seems more consumed by theological concerns than by technical ones. The technology has given rise to a phantasmagoria of prophecies, heresies and false messiahs of the sort one...

LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, whose sponsorship deal with a now-bankrupt green banking company is at the center of an NBA investigation, also had an undisclosed sponsorship agreement allegedly worth millions of dollars with the company that designed the Clippers' videoboard inside the Intuit Dome, former ESPN contributor Pablo Torre reported on his podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out" on Thursday. Torre interviewed someone identified as an "anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome" who alleged that the sponsorship deal "was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to...

Columbia will once again require standardized test scores for undergraduate applicants, beginning in August 2027, the University announced Friday. With the change, Columbia is the final Ivy League school to reinstate test score requirements, which most universities made optional in 2020. Students applying to Columbia College or the School of Engineering and Applied Science will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores for the 2027-28 admissions cycle. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities, including Columbia, waived standardized testing requirements, citing concerns about access to testing opportunities. Columbia has deviated from its peers by extending the waiver for more than...

Central Fire District of Santa Cruz rescued a seagull Tuesday evening after it became tangled in a wire that was caught in a tree at Black's Beach. Viewer video from Steven Hamm shows Santa Cruz Central Fire firefighters using a ladder truck with an aerial platform to reach the bird, which was perched high above the beach. Two firefighters can be seen carefully cutting the line wrapped around one of the seagull's legs before safely freeing the bird. As the bird is freed, cheers and applause can be heard from people watching the rescue below. Amy Redfeather with Native Animal...

A federal judge granted Carmine Agnello, the grandson of late mob boss John Gotti, a delay in his self-surrender date, with caveats to allow him to donate a kidney to his mother, Victoria Gotti. In a ruling issued Thursday, the judge said Agnello can postpone his surrender to prison until Sept. 18 if the transplant takes place on or before his original Aug. 10 surrender date. If the procedure does not occur by then, however, Agnello must report to prison on Monday as previously ordered, according to court records. The judge also directed Agnello to notify the court once the...

Learn how Viagra trapped cholesterol inside cancer cells and why statins may strengthen the effect.A man might take Viagra for erectile dysfunction and a statin for high cholesterol, treating two problems that seem to have nothing to do with cancer. But if he is later diagnosed with cancer, he may already be taking two medications linked to a lower risk of dying within five years. In a study published in Cancer Research, researchers found that sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, trapped cholesterol inside cancer cells and reduced lung metastases in several mouse models. Men who filled at least three...

Vitale was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021, when he revealed he had melanoma.Longtime college basketball announcer Dick Vitale says he is making positive strides after announcing in April that he had been diagnosed with cancer for the fifth time. The 87-year-old Vitale said on social media Wednesday that recent blood tests came back “very good” and that the immunotherapy treatments that he has been receiving are “very effective in wiping out the cancer.” Vitale was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021, when he revealed that he had melanoma. He also was diagnosed with lymphoma and, after being declared cancer-free,...

Nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults—21%—are illiterate, and 130 million people can’t read a simple story to their children or sound out more than a few basic words. The problem isn’t confined to high school dropouts, those with disabilities, and non-¬English speakers. It affects university students, working professionals, and those who grew up speaking English at home. It goes beyond the inability to enjoy books, skim websites, and write emails. Medication instructions, ingredient labels, and posted warnings can conceal deadly risks from nonreaders.The problem starts in elementary school, where a battle over how to teach reading continues to rage and fewer...

Explanation: There are more than half a million galaxies in the central panel of this image from the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. This is the COSMOS field, a patch of sky several times larger than the full moon, first observed by Hubble. It has also been observed by Webb and other telescopes because it contains comparatively few bright stars from our own galaxy, offering a relatively unimpeded view of other galaxies outside the Milky Way. The outer panels, numbered 1-10, show zoomed-in views of the corresponding small regions highlighted in the central panel. The variety of galaxy...

Just a month before Taylor Fresh Foods began grappling with a sweeping multi-state lettuce recall, the Salinas-based company filed a civil lawsuit against one of its former presidents and his wife, accusing the couple of a yearslong, $32 million embezzlement operation. According to the lawsuit, filed June 5 in federal court, Brian Thure, the former president of a Taylor Fresh Foods subsidiary in Tennessee, allegedly spent millions of dollars in company money on unauthorized purchases, including a UC Berkeley endowment, a luxury home in Hawaii and a 400-acre ranch in Humboldt County. Brian Thure’s wife, Julie Thure, was also named...