Free Republic

Failed CNN boss Jeff Zucker still wants to stay in the media game. To that end he is leading an offer to buy the bankrupt British publishing group behind the Daily Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine. The New York Post reports Zucker, the chief executive of Abu Dhabi-backed investment group RedBird IMI, is ready to pitch $750 million to the Barclay family that would allow them to repay their nearly $1.4 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. RedBird, a venture capital firm that has $1 billion in capital, would then have an option to convert the loan secured against the...

WITH 30 days to go until the US presidential election, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is pulling away from Donald Trump, according to the latest opinion polls. The surveys, one taken following last week’s chaotic presidential debate and the other after Mr Trump tested positive for Covid-19, will make grim reading for the US president as he undergoes treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. A post-debate poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal put Mr Biden 14 points ahead of the president, the biggest gap the survey has recorded this year. Should...

British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has paid “substantial damages” to Melania Trump and apologised “unreservedly” to the US first lady after making a number of false claims about her life in an article. The piece promised to tell the truth on what it described as the “most private and enigmatic” of presidential wives after interviews with “White House insiders, Slovenian school friends and photographers”. The newspaper said in a statement retracting the piece: “Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. Mrs Trump did not leave her design and architecture course at university relating...

Britain's Telegraph newspaper has apologized and paid damages to U.S. First Lady Melania Trump after publishing an article it says contains many false statements. The newspaper said Saturday it apologizes "unreservedly" to Mrs. Trump and her family for any embarrassment caused by the content of a cover story published Jan. 19 in the newspaper's weekly magazine supplement. "As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs. Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs," The Telegraph said. The newspaper did not disclose the size of the settlement with Mrs. Trump.

Full title: British Newspaper Publishes Massive Apology to Melania Trump; Will Pay First Lady ‘Substantial Damages’ and Legal Costs The British newspaper The Telegraph published a massive apology Saturday to First Lady Melania Trump regarding an article published January 19 that began with the admission, “we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published” and concluded with a promise to pay “substantial damages” and legal costs. “We apologise unreservedly to The First Lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these...

Following last Saturday’s (Jan 19) Telegraph magazine cover story “The mystery of Melania”, we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published. Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at University relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she...

Following last Saturday’s (Jan 19) Telegraph magazine cover story “The mystery of Melania”, we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published. Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family. Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at University relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she...

The US Supreme Court agreed yesterday to consider overturning the fraud conviction Conrad Black, the former owner of The Daily Telegraph, who is serving a 6 1/2 year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. The court's justices will hear arguments later this year over the convictions of Black, the former chairman and chief executive of Hollinger International, and two other former executives in connection with payments of $5.5 million (£3.6m) they received from a Hollinger subsidiary. The men argued that they did not commit fraud because they did no harm to the company. They turned to the highest US...

Dallas. The name was already a byword for political violence before Thursday’s massacre – the place where Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F Kennedy in 1963 and shattered America’s post-war innocence. Now, five local policemen lie dead, killed while serving their community. Others fight for their lives. The bloodshed at what was supposed to be a peaceful rally on Thursday night was plainly a hate crime. But how do we define this hate? Was this an act of terrorism, an assault inspired by racial tensions, or both? Whatever the motives behind this madness, race is back at the top of...

Hackers took control of a car and crashed it into a ditch by remotely breaking into its systems from 10 miles away whilst sitting on their sofa. In the first such breach of its kind security experts cut out the engine and applied the brakes on the Jeep Cherokee, sending it into a spin. The US hackers said they used just a laptop and mobile phone to access the Jeep’s on-board systems via its wireless Internet connection. They claim that more than 470,000 cars made by Fiat Chrysler could be at risk of being attacked by similar means - including...

“According to reports” – in other words Nick had a few spare minutes over breakfast, trawled Google News then regurgitated stuff he picked up from a publisher’s PR blurb and a hit piece from the New York Daily News. Lurid allegations by a serious author….please Mr Allen…I think you might have been snorting something white and powdery yourself.

The Daily Telegraph, based on information acquired by the Wikileaks organization, as follows: Al-Qaeda is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build "dirty" bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

Although Rush Limbaugh doesn't actually work from a bunker, he does have a bunker mentality. His studio is on the third floor of a (purposefully) anonymous building 100 yards off the white sands of Palm Beach, Florida, and about a mile from his gated mansion (the one next to Chuck Norris's). Along with the Gulfstream jet (cost: $54 million), fleet of sports cars and eight-year contract, worth $400 million, this mansion is his reward for being the most listened-to talk-radio host in America, a title he has held for 20 years. But it is also his compensation. Professional Right-wing controversialists...

World dispatch -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues Monday August 19, 2002 A little-known fact about Richard Perle, the leading advocate of hardline policies at the Pentagon, is that he once wrote a political thriller. The book, appropriately called Hard Line, is set in the days of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Its hero is a male senior official at the Pentagon, working late into the night and battling almost single-handedly to rescue...

I should seriously write a book called, The Idiots Guide To Not Thinking Seriously About Islam. It’s hard to find a subject where mushy thinking is more in vogue – where political correctness conquers reality more thoroughly. People actually are afraid to think seriously on the subject, because the logical conclusions are too frightening for many to contemplate. And so, there’s no place where comfortable clichés are more readily deployed. Probably the most glaring illustration of inanity here were recent comments by his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. On leaving a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of Tibetan Buddhists...

I was wondering why the antics of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly seemed so familiar last week. Then I realised. It was just like a university faculty meeting. Extravagant, long-winded denunciations of the president are what professors do, not politicians. Sure enough, the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez could not resist brandishing a book by Noam Chomsky – the America-hating darling of all campus Lefties.

May 2003 was an uncomfortable time in Iraq. The President of the United States had just announced that combat operations were complete and force levels were beginning to be reduced, following the defeat of the Iraqi army in the field. But the vacuum that had been created by the toppling of the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein had not been filled - and clearly the people needed some form of leadership after 35 years of one-party rule. That vacuum was made more severe by the removal of the Iraqi army and police, resulting in an outbreak of lawlessness that was...

In the end, it was the sheer preppie courtesy of election night that hit home. When John Kerry defied the logic of the first results and declined to concede the election early yesterday morning, the engines of George W Bush's motorcade were revving and ready to whisk the re-elected President to a public stage to claim victory. But aides told him it would look bad, and might seem "divisive", and perhaps not the sort of thing one Yale man does to another. So Mr Bush held back, and gave his opponent more time to ponder the irrefutable arithmetic of the...

Since so few readers of The Telegraph have a vote in Tuesday's presidential election, it might seem impertinent or redundant for this newspaper to express a preference in the knife-edge contest between George W Bush and John Kerry. But the economic, military and diplomatic power of the United States is so great - and its links with this country so intimate - that it is important to ask which of the candidates would govern America in a way which better served the British national interest. Last year, Britain's exports to the US were worth more than £29 billion; American firms...

It is ironic that the German publisher whose interest in The Daily Telegraph prompted Richard Desmond's outburst was once shut down by the Nazis and later became dedicated to reconciliation between his nation and the Jews. Before he became one of the most influential newspaper publishers in Germany, the late Axel Springer learned his trade at the Altonaer Nachrichten, a small paper near Hamburg. In 1941, it was shut down for failing to comply with Nazi standards. The details of Mr Springer's life were not directly attacked by Mr Desmond this week when the owner of the Daily Express began...