Free Republic

China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., tapped Martha Stewart and CNBC's Marcus Lemonis as speakers for its upcoming procurement event in Detroit. The Gateway '17 event June 20-21 at Cobo Center in Detroit is driven by Alibaba's need to expand internationally and provide Chinese consumers with high-quality products prevalent in this region. Stewart and Lemonis, host of CNBC's primetime show "The Profit," are joined by Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba, who will keynote the event in a fireside chat with PBS News' Charlie Rose. David Abney, CEO of UPS, is another confirmed speaker. Detroit Mayor Mike...

Reality Leigh Winner, a recently separated Air Force linguist and a new hire by Pluribus International Corporation as a support contractor with a Top Secret clearance, allegedly searched for and printed out a Top Secret government report, folded it up, and dropped it in the mail to an online news outlet. Yesterday, the U.S. Attorney’s office revealed her arrest in an unsealed indictment. The arrest warrant and independent reporting indicate that the classified material was almost certainly a report published by the Intercept just two hours before the indictment became public. Winter apparently searched for this report within classified systems...

Michelle Obama looked out into an audience packed with mostly male tech workers and asked them to make room for women in technology. Obama was a guest speaker at WWDC, Apple's annual developer conference, on Tuesday. She was introduced by Tim Cook himself before sitting down with Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA who now heads up social and environmental initiatives for Apple. Their hour-long discussion touched on Obama's post-White House life, diversity in tech and not falling down the stairs of Air Force One. Apple did not allow press into the event, but CNN Tech spoke to...

An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot. Who Benefits? Start with the question of who benefits — cui bono— same as detectives do when assessing a crime. — Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out connecting something Russian to something 2016 election. Intelligence community (IC) looks like they are onto something, a day or so before ousted FBI Director James...

The race to create self-driving cars is on—but what happens when they’re everywhere and nobody has to drive? That could lead to a “passenger economy” worth $7 trillion by 2050, according to a new report by Intel and analyst firm Strategy Analytics. While the name of the potential new market is lame, the amount of cash it's estimated to drive is not: the study predicts self-driving cars will free up 250 million hours of commuting time per year, providing the backbone for a thriving $800 billion industry by 2035, when the study predicts fully autonomous vehicles will begin to proliferate...

After last September’s revelations that Palmer Luckey donated $100,000 to a pro-Trump organization dedicated to spreading anti-Clinton memes, the Oculus founder disappeared from public view. He resurfaced in March following his departure from Facebook, and is now back in the spotlight with a new company that makes technology designed to monitor border crossings. Information on Luckey’s new startup comes from a New York Times article yesterday that cites three “people familiar” with the matter. The business reportedly uses the same kind of lidar tech found in self-driving cars for the surveillance of country borders and restricted areas such as military...

At the rate his team is going, Fresno Mayor Lee Brand might have to raise his job-creation goals. The first-year mayor has said at several public events recently that he wants to bring 10,000 permanent, new jobs to the city. Those jobs, in turn, would produce a ripple effect leading to the creation of 10,000 more jobs in the local economy. What would Fresno and surrounding cities look like with 20,000 people who are now unemployed going to work? Significantly better. General funds would rise. There would be more revenue for public safety, road maintenance and parks. Families would prosper,...

Sherman City Manager Robby Hefton compared the scope of the planned $1 billion data center development brokered by the Sherman Economic Development Corp. Friday to the impact Panda Power Funds’ 758 megawatt power plant has had on the city. “The possibility of this would be a game changer for the city,” Hefton said. “This type of potential investment, we haven’t seen anything like that ever. The closest thing was Panda and that was a game changer for us as well. So I think this would bode very well for the city for generations to come.” The SEDCO board of directors...

No need to quit your job to start. Just begin laying the groundwork for a more prosperous future in your spare time. Would an extra $500 a month change your financial future? That is definitely possible. In fact, you could earn a lot more per month as a blogger. Once you are in a position to commit full-time to your blog, you can rise up to the $5000 per month income level. That and much more is also possible. Being your own boss means you get to choose your salary.

This week, Judicial Watch released a cache of over 2,000 of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. The documents confirm that classified information was being illegally shared with persons lacking the security clearance to receive them. In a bizarre twist, Clinton attempted to characterize this as "evidence of the massive Russian conspiracy to deny me my right to be president. If you will notice, one of the emails alleges that my trusted aide Huma 'hooked up people from the Russian American Foundation with the right people at the State Department.' Since this email dates from 2010 it proves that...

Amazon.com today announced plans to open a fulfillment center in Fresno that will employ up to 2,500 people. The 855,000 square-foot facility will be located in a burgeoning business zone at Orange and Central avenues — about 1,000 acres that is being primed for e-commerce and data center jobs, said Mayor Lee Brand in an interview. Brand said there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work getting the $100 million project permitted, and he expects a groundbreaking within 30 days, and about one year to build the center — putting an opening in the second half of 2018. It will...

Don't Blame The Russians. Blame The Weiner.... and we're not talking about Oscar.

I've noticed that leaving my browser open to FR really slows down my internet connection and or simply disrupts google Chrome. This started happening after last year's big long crash. Anybody else seeing problems?

Comedienne Kathy Griffin caused a firestorm on Twitter on May 30 after she posted a picture of herself and a fake severed head of President Donald Trump (video below). According to TMZ, Griffin was photographed by Tyler Shields, who has a reputation for shocking pictures. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Griffin reportedly joked that she and Shields would have to flee to Mexico to avoid prison. After hours of outrage on Twitter, Griffin removed the tweet, and tweeted a video apology: According to TMZ, Griffin was photographed by Tyler Shields, who has a reputation for shocking pictures. Griffin reportedly joked that she and Shields...

It is often said that in the future, jobs that were once done by humans could eventually be taken over by robots who are admittedly more efficient due to their lack of the need to rest, take breaks, and sleep. While there are some jobs that are obvious in terms of robots being better at it, there are some that are less obvious, such as the job of a programmer. However a Danish startup by the name of Ulzard Technologies IVS could change that, thanks to their development of AI dubbed pix2code that can help to program applications based on...

Retail trade is one of the biggest job sectors in America, and the vast majority of those workers still clock in at brick-and-mortar stores. But the big growth is coming from e-commerce, which happens to pay a lot better, too. This is a promising development for retail workers who worry about thousands of store closings and the march of automation. E-commerce also offers a potential antidote to years of low productivity growth and income stagnation. “If this new pattern continues, it will raise real wages across the economy and rejuvenate the middle class,” said a report by economist Michael Mandel...

In the next edition of Donald Trump can do nothing right ever, we give you the National Anthem. Shortly before delivering Memorial Day remarks Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, President Trump joined with the audience in the traditional signing of America’s national song. Unlike a lot in Trumpland, it all went off smoothly — but that still didn’t stop a certain class of Twitter liberal from taking exception. The crime this time was Trump’s personal rendition of the anthem, which trolls online apparently deemed insufficiently respectful — or something. Here’s a snapshot of the miasma of faux outrage. (TWEETS-AT-LINK) …...

Recently declassified documents reveal that the Obama Administration's spying on American citizens went far beyond what the law allowed. Under a pretext of surveilling foreigners, intelligence agencies under Obama gathered data on political opponents and illegally shared this information with outside parties. Former FBI Director James Comey falsely assured Congress that "this information was lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked." In contrast, an Inspector General's report found "disregard for rules, inadequate training and deficient oversight." The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) found "hundreds of violations of the FBI's rules" that occurred during Comey's tenure as FBI Director. Senate Minority Leader...

Long-time Democratic Party operative John Podesta proclaimed former House Speaker Newt Ginrich's speculation that DNC staffer Seth Rich may have been assassinated "disgusting." "After so much time has passed I think it's likely that we'll never know why this young man died," Podesta asserted. "The DC police forgot to ask for surveillance tapes from all the CCTVs in the vicinity of the shooting. They forgot to seek witnesses at the bar Seth visited just before he died. They have his laptop, but since he didn't have it with him when he was shot I don't see how it could shed...

An Education Department watchdog says a Louisiana man has unsuccessfully tried to obtain President Donald Trump's tax information using an online student aid tool. Inspector General Kathleen Tighe told a House hearing Thursday that the attempt took place in September, several weeks before the presidential election. The man tried to access Trump's records with the help of a data retrieval tool used by college students applying for financial aid....