Free Republic

France on Saturday accused Australia and the United States of lying over a ruptured Australian contract to buy French submarines, warning a grave crisis was underway between the allies... ...Speaking to France 2 television, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian gave no indication Paris was prepared to let the crisis die down, using distinctly undiplomatic language towards Australia, the United States and Britain,...

A GIRLFRIEND drew up a 17-page 'relationship contract' with her boyfriend just two weeks after they met on Tinder - demanding he pay for date nights, buy flowers twice a month and work out five times a week. Annie Wright first met her boyfriend Michael Head in October last year and after deciding he was 'her person' they agreed to be exclusive soon after. Determined to make the relationship work after having her 'boundaries crossed' in a previous toxic relationship, 21-year-old Annie joked they should write down their 'terms and conditions' for dating - and law student Michael eagerly agreed....

The president knows what he ordered the CDC to do is illegal. He did it anyway to appease the left wing of his party.An astonishing thing happened this week in Washington that didn’t get much critical coverage from a media establishment loath to criticize President Biden. At the behest of congressional Democrats, Biden flouted the Constitution and broke his oath of office by issuing a ban on evictions that he and his advisers know to be illegal.By “ban on evictions” I mean the president issued a blatantly unconstitutional decree that renters all across America don’t have to pay rent. If...

A woke school superintendent in a ritzy part of Connecticut has resigned just days after agreeing to a new $225,000 contract — with parents blaming him for “alienating” them with his “strong liberal ideologies,” according to a report. Rydell Harrison announced his resignation from the district covering Easton and Redding in a letter Friday blaming “a number of unique challenges” that led him to question if the job was “a good fit for me.” It came less than two weeks after he agreed to a new contract to stay for another two years, with an annual salary of $225,000 plus...

Former President Donald Trump's company sued New York City Monday for allegedly wrongfully terminating contracts the Trump Organization had to operate city facilities. "The City has no right to terminate our contract," Trump Organization officials said in a statement. "Mayor [Bill] de Blasio's actions are purely politically motivated, have no legal merit, and are yet another example of the mayor's efforts to advance his own partisan agenda and interfere with free enterprise." Mayor de Blasio announced in January he was moving to terminate the contracts with the former president's company following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. "The...

A Pennsylvania woman has been charged in a murder-for-hire plot after allegedly trying to have her husband killed on a payment plan. Claudia Carrion, 44, stands accused of criminal solicitation to commit homicide after she allegedly tried to hire an undercover detective as a hitman to take out her husband–who she believed was abusing her and her family as well as cheating on her with several other women. She was arrested and charged on Friday after an undercover operation that was conducted on Thursday, police claim. According to a criminal complaint reviewed by local independent news station WFMZ, the defendant...

YouTube TV has been removed from Roku's channel store, after Roku and YouTube TV parent Google failed to come to a distribution agreement amid accusations that the tech giant made anti-competitive demands. Why it matters: These spats happen regularly between Pay-TV providers and linear TV networks. But in the digital era, this is one of the rare times in which consumers will have a major streaming network removed from their platform's channel store due to a breakdown in negotiations. Details: The channel will still be available for existing YouTube TV customers, but new users that wish to download the app...

Howard Stern is close to a contract extension with SiriusXM. According to Bloomberg, the renewal will raise his salary to a ground-breaking $120 million per year. Stern’s current contract, which pays him between $80 and 100 million a year, runs through December.

A $90 million state contract with a South Bay company that started manufacturing N95 masks during the coronavirus pandemic is in jeopardy after the company’s respirators failed to pass muster with federal inspectors. California officials had distributed 7.2 million N95 masks from Advoque, a Santa Clara company that normally makes in-store product displays, before the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health last week revoked the temporary certification it had previously granted the business. Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services, said the state had another 3 million masks from the company on hand as...

I have a minor construction project on my property. It's about $11k for one part and about $5k for a second part. the job is for a retaining wall. I need it to be reinforced concrete with a brick façade. the concrete guys don't do brick and vice versa. how best to specify the contracts? should I be writing the contracts? when should the second contract be signed relative to the first contract? I am already taking the liberty of placing the two contractors in touch with each other-- at least giving them each the other's contact info. I don't...

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) is under fire again, after a controversy surrounding contracts for consultants hired to run data for the state of Michigan during COVID-19. Gov. Whitmer announced on Monday that a $200,000 no-bid contract would be signed and would allow subcontractors to be hired to help track data surrounding COVID-19, mainly those who have contracted the virus and who they may have interacted with. After Gov. Whitmer announced the contract, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services revealed that the data collection program would be spearheaded and overseen by Great Lakes Community Engagement, which specializes in data...

Portland, OR – Cascade Policy Institute has submitted a letter to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requesting that the agency enforce contracts with TriMet for three light rail projects: the Yellow Line, the Green Line, and the Orange Line. Each project received substantial federal funding, which came with contractual obligations to provide minimum levels of service. TriMet has not met those obligations. For both the Yellow and Green Lines, TriMet is supposed to be providing 8 trains per hour during peak periods. Current service on those lines is 4 trains per hour. For the Orange Line, TriMet is supposed to...

The Pro’s and Con’s to Contracting Overseas Today, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women working overseas on various contracts and making good money, probably two to three times what they can make in the United States. Naturally, the best-paying jobs are in high-threat environments such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. Yes, these places can be dangerous. Since 2001 over 3,300 civilian contractors have been killed, and almost 95,000 were injured in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. The vast majority were third-country nationals, or TCNs, from places like Peru, Colombia, Philippines, Fiji, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and so on....

Now and then the topic of contract or compact as it applies to our Constitution comes up on the web. Outwardly, it’s a sleep-worthy subject. Who cares one way or the other? My American Heritage Dictionary doesn’t help very much in distinguishing between the two. Where contracts imply two parties negotiating across a table, a compact is along the lines of a group of people agreeing to do certain things. Contracts also have an element of enforceability typically not associated with compacts. The subject isn’t as mundane as it appears because it touches the core of our self-worth as republican...

North Carolina officials are trying to figure out how to unwind parts or all of a 2014 public-private partnership that is building managed toll lanes on a Charlotte-area highway.Ever since the ink dried on North Carolina’s first transportation P3 contract, the plan to relieve severe congestion in the Charlotte region has generated controversy.Public opposition remains just as fierce today to the project that will add express lanes on Interstate 77, even though more than one report says the deal with I-77 Mobility Partners LLC, a consortium led by Cintra Infraestructuras S.A., was properly authorized and permitted.The 26-mile-long project is designed...

Joseph Farah It must be nice to be Jeff Bezos.How do you become one of the richest men in the world by founding a company that only recently gave a thought to profitability?Amazon has been around a long time. It’s one of the few Internet companies that was doing business 20 years ago, when I launched WorldNetDaily.com, now known as WND.com.But it was less than three years ago that Amazon began to achieve any profits to speak of. And, even today, you’d be shocked to know how high its revenues are and how relatively low its profits are. snip...

They’ve butted heads and talked of lawsuits as the MoPac Boulevard toll lane construction project has dragged on two years beyond its target completion date. Now the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and its toll project contractor appear to be near a financial settlement. The mobility authority board, in a specially called meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning, will consider an agreement with CH2M, the Denver-based engineering and construction firm that in April 2013 agreed to design and build the 11-mile project. The contractor agreed then to a fixed price of $137 million. But in a March 2017 memo, written when...

Dive Brief: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group a 10-year, multimillion dollar contract to design an active traffic management (ATM) system for Interstate 76 through Philadelphia, according to Traffic Technology Today. Jacobs' services for the Schuylkill Expressway will include preliminary and system engineering, design, analysis of alternatives, right-of-way acquisition and construction consultancy.The final ATM system could include occasional use of the shoulder, connected vehicle technology, variable speed limit signage and traffic jam detection and alerts. PennDOT could also implement features like ramp metering, junction control, dynamic lane assignments, and multimodal strategies in tandem with shoulder use....

On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government. Let's hold Donald Trump and his administration accountable to their promises. Then again, even if he does nothing, he'll still be infinitely better than his predecessor. Please visit and sign at: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contract/

Measures to clean up Washington • Actions to Protect American Workers • Actions to Protect American Workers Since no media outlet in the country to my knowledge has or will sit down with Donald Trump before the election, and in a logical way go over and review his Contract with the American Voter, I shall do my own review. Considering what is at stake in this election, wouldn’t it be nice to have an explanation from Trump, and a critique, so the voters can make an informed decision? I think Trump is doing a tremendous disservice to himself, all his...