Free Republic

Cook County has erased nearly $665 million in medical debt for local residents since launching the effort in 2022, according to new figures released Thursday. County leaders are celebrating the latest milestone of the program, which has so far helped almost 557,000 people have some of their debt abolished. The effort has relieved the most debt for people on Chicago’s South and West sides and in the south and west suburbs.The amount erased ranges from around $600 to $4,000 on average per person depending on where they live.

Google has quietly updated the webpage for its Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology (RAI-HCT) team, removing language related to DEI. It is yet another sign that the ultra-woke tech giant is extending an olive branch to the Trump administration. TechCrunch reports that Google has made significant changes to the webpage describing the work of its Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology (RAI-HCT) team. The team, which is responsible for conducting research into critical areas such as AI safety and fairness, has had its mission statement altered, with mentions of “diversity,” “equity,” and related terms being removed or replaced with...

Republican Donald Trump has pulled into a virtual tie with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the final poll commissioned by The Post ahead of Tuesday’s election — erasing a four-percentage point deficit as the race entered October. The survey by Leger found Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, each receiving 49% support among likely voters, with the remaining 2% saying they would back another candidate. Harris has lost two points of support from the Oct. 1 Leger poll for The Post, which showed her leading the 45th president 51% to 47%.

A New Jersey high school has come under criticism for digitally removing Donald Trump logos from two students' yearbook photos and removed a quote by Trump set to appear under the freshman class president's photo. Wall Township High School junior Grant Berardo was disappointed to see that the "Trump: Make America Great Again" text on his shirt was no longer there; the logo was there in the photo proofs in November, according to a report from CNN. "He was disappointed. This was the first election he has been interested in," Berardo's father said. He wants the yearbooks reissued and an...

The map of the Middle East displayed in an Obama administration video released days before President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel shows the Jewish state dispossessed of substantial parts of its current territory, including its capital. The map of Israel, displayed repeatedly during the video, shows the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, northern Israel, and areas surrounding what is currently the West Bank as non-Israeli territory. The Golan Heights is shown as part of Syria; Jerusalem is shown as part of the West Bank; and northern Israel is shown as part of Lebanon. The itinerary on the White House website also implies...

Quietly and without much notice, the Air Force has reversed its policy of publishing statistics on drone strikes in Afghanistan as the debate about drone warfare hits a fever pitch in Washington. In addition, it has erased previously published drone strike statistics from its website. Since October, the Air Force had been providing monthly updates on drone strikes -- or in its words "weapons releases from remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)." But today, Air Force Times reporters Brian Everstine and Aaron Mehta discovered something was amiss: The statistics published for February "contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had...

Guess MSNBC missed the part of Pres. Obama's Tucson speech decrying the way our politics have become "so sharply polarized" . . . During today's Morning Joe, MSNBC aired a promo for PBO's impending State of the Union that featured video from previous SOTU speeches. Notably missing were any clips from past Republican presidents. Instead we were treated to a montage of JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Obama and even Jimmy Carter. Think Ronald Reagan, or W just a few months after 9-11, might have said something inspirational in their SOTUs? Not in the mind of MSNBC.

A long-time Jewish neighborhood in the Lebanese city of Sidon that kept its Jewish name throughout the tribulations of Lebanese-Israeli tensions has finally lost the name. The residents renamed the neighborhood, known for decades as Haret al-Yahud (Neighborhood of the Jews), Haret Gaza. It happened at the end of last week, when the Arab world commemorated International Quds Day (Jerusalem Day). Sidon is the third-largest city in Lebanon, located about midway between the two largest cities, Tyre and Beirut, and only some 60 kilometers from Israel. Haret al-Yahud was long populated mostly by Jews, part of the Lebanese Jewish population...

Army Spc. Claudia Carreon has a 2-year-old daughter, but cannot remember being pregnant or giving birth. She has two brothers and two sisters, but doesn't know who they are without nametags. She sometimes can't recall what she ate for breakfast, or where she put things when she cleaned up. "My mother found the toaster in the refrigerator," said Carreon, 32, an Iraq War veteran left with a brain injury that wiped her memory clean. The Tucson woman now lives in a discombobulated world, where conversations often don't make sense, hallucinations come without warning and relationships must be reconstructed daily from...

When time erases written languages By Greg Lavine The Salt Lake Tribune While researchers periodically hail new finds as the earliest examples of human writing, few scientists have systematically peered into the other end of the process -- the fall of a culture's written symbols. Writing systems, like cultures, have come and gone throughout human history. Brigham Young University anthropologist Stephen Houston and other colleagues studied several dead script systems from around the globe to look for similarities and differences in their respective demises. "What's interesting is why people choose, or are forced, to drop something that had been enormously...