Free Republic

The prices of goods and services charged by U.S. businesses rose by less than expected in May, adding to the evidence that President Trump’s tariffs are not putting upward pressure on inflation. The producer price index for final demand ticked up 0.1 percent last month, half of what economists had forecast. Core producer prices, a metric which excludes food and energy, also rose 0.1 percent, one-third of the 0.3 percent increase forecast by economists. If trade services, a measure of retail and wholesale margins, is also excluded, prices still rose by just 0.1 percent. Compared with a year ago, the...

Confidence is growing that a more active than average Atlantic hurricane season is about to begin in just over a week. NOAA is now forecasting a 6-in-10 chance of an above-average hurricane season. By The Numbers: NOAA expects 13 to 19 storms to form in 2025, six to 10 of which will become hurricanes and three to five of which will reach Category 3 status or stronger, according to the outlook released Thursday. These ranges are on the high side of the 30-year average for both hurricanes and storms. The range for the number of hurricanes is slightly shy of...

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the new Covid vaccine as early as Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the agency’s planning. It’s the third time the vaccines have been updated to match circulating strains since the original series. The shots should be available within days. The FDA and HHS declined to comment on the expected update. The timing of the new vaccines — last year's rollout was in mid-September — is significant, since most of the U.S. is still caught in the summer wave of Covid illness. As of Monday, the Centers for Disease Control...

Moldova’s national intelligence agency warned Tuesday against "unprecedented" Russian interference as the country gears up for a referendum on joining the European Union and a presidential election. The Intelligence and Security Services, or SIS, released a report saying it has gathered data indicating Russia plans to launch vast hybrid attacks against Moldova through 2024-2025 to try to bring the former Soviet republic back under Moscow's influence. Head of the SIS, Alexandru Musteata, said in a press conference that Russia sought to undermine the democratic polling this year in the eastern European country. "There is information about an attempt to compromise...

An article published Friday detailed how some Hispanic ranchers are abandoning their previous allegiance to the Democratic Party under the Biden administration. Ranchers in New Mexico’s Tierra Amarilla are part of a broader trend of Biden losing support among Hispanic populations in rural parts of the country, Axios reported. Their growing disdain for our current president comes from Biden’s progressive policies on so-called “environmental protection” that are actually just destroying the generational wealth of Hispanic landowners. Ranchers in the region were predominantly Democrat voters, but the tides are turning red as the Biden administration continues to haemorrhage support. Apparently many...

Prices received by U.S. businesses for goods and services rose by much more than expected in June, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The Producer Price Index rose 7.3 percent in June from 12 months earlier, the largest demand since 12-month data were first introduced in 2010. Compared with May, the index rose one percent. On average, this index rose by around 0.2 percent per month in the pre-pandemic Trump administration.

KITCHENER -- A woman in her 90s living in a Kitchener long-term care home has died from COVID-19, marking the first related death in a fully immunized person in Waterloo Region. On Sunday, health officials said the Village of Winston Park long-term care home is currently going through a COVID-19 outbreak.

Police in New Orleans are searching for four suspects involved in a brutal beating of two tourists during a robbery Saturday night in the city's famed French Quarter that left one victim critically wounded. Surveillance video released by police late Sunday shows the victims attacked by four black men who beat them, stole their wallets and cell phones, and then fled, according to FOX 8. The violent attack took place on the 200 block of Bienville Street, one block from Canal Street, just before 9 p.m., according to police. One of the victims is seen being punched by one of...

<p>PALM BEACH, Fla. -- President-elect Donald Trump is telling visitors to his Florida club that he plans to write his inaugural address himself and is drawing inspiration from Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.</p> <p>That’s according to a person who has spoken with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the South Florida club where he is spending the holidays.</p>

Force Academy because it had a culture that tolerated rape. Alexis Jones-Hardy told Channel 2 Action News that she quit the academy in 2012 after an attack on her and on other students. She said women who reported the attacks were treated harshly by classmates. “I kept saying, ‘Stop, stop, I’m not having sex with you,’” Jones-Hardy told the news station. “I must have said no at least 30 times.”

America’s first foray into rolling back prohibition 2.0 is barely underway, and already marijuana prices have dropped low enough to convince some cartel farmers in Mexico to abandon the crop. Mere months after two US states legalized marijuana sales, five Nobel Prize-winning economists released a UN report recommending that countries end their war on drugs. It would seem they were onto something. But in order to further decrease drug-trade violence in so-called producer states, the US first needs to legalize marijuana, but then also the US must stop using the UN to pressure producer countries into supply-based drug prohibition. Latin...

The U.S. Air Force Academy’s superintendent is calling for a full investigation into cadet athletes after reports of sexual assaults, drugs and cheating, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported. According to documents released to the newspaper through the Freedom of Information Act, parties dating to 2010 included cadets who were smoking synthetic marijuana, drinking until they became ill, and possible use of date-rape drugs to incapacitate women for sexual assaults. The troubled group – which reportedly included two Air Force football stars who were court-martialed – created such a wild culture that leaders at the academy canceled an undercover sting planned...

expected jump in food costs echoes the findings of a new informal survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which showed the average cost for a July 4th picnic for 10 is $58.72, 5.4 percent higher than last year. The survey is based on retail prices from 84 shoppers' findings in 26 states and Puerto Rico. Meat and dairy prices rose the most. The cost of ground round shot up 13.4 percent, pork spare ribs 13.2 percent and American cheese 14.3 percent.

Thirty-four nuclear missile launch officers have been implicated in a cheating scandal and have been stripped of their certification, and three others have been implicated in a drug probe, in what the Air Force believes is the largest such breach of integrity in the nuclear force, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Wednesday. The officers apparently texted to each other the answers to a monthly test on their knowledge of how to operate the missiles. The number includes who did the cheating as well as those who may have known about it but did not report it. The cheating,...

(CNSNews.com) -- Females in the Marine Corps currently are not required to do even a single pull-up, and a deadline mandating that by Jan. 1, 2014, they be able to do at least 3 pull-ups as part of their training has been delayed for at least a year, the Corps quietly announced on social media. Unlike their female counterparts, male Marines have long been required to do at least 3 pullups as part of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). That's the minimum requirement for males. - See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/female-marines-not-required-do-1-pull#sthash.d11sA26X.dpuf

Illinois' $97 billion pension problem isn't doing any favors for Chicago. Moody's Investors Service late Wednesday downgraded the city's debt rating from Aa3 to A3 because of the city's "very large and growing" pension liability.

Earth's internal engine is running about 1,000 degrees Celsius (about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than previously measured, providing a better explanation for how the planet generates a magnetic field, a new study has found. A team of scientists has measured the melting point of iron at high precision in a laboratory, and then drew from that result to calculate the temperature at the boundary of Earth's inner and outer core — now estimated at 6,000 C (about 10,800 F). That's as hot as the surface of the sun. The difference in temperature matters, because this explains how the Earth generates...

A seven-year-old boy has died four days after being savaged by two pit bull mix dogs belonging to his neighbour. Tyler Jett was dragged from his bike as he cycled home from school. He was just yards from his home in Calaway, Florida, when the two dogs, an Alapha blood bulldog and brindle bulldog, escaped and pounced on him. Family members hearing his screams ran from their home and managed to pull the dogs off him.

<p>The number of Americans designated as "not in the labor force" in February was 89,304,000, a record high, up from 89,008,000 in January, according to the Department of Labor. This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February.</p>

Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over. And the situation is even worse than it appears. Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What's more, these jobs aren't just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren't just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers ... this "hollowing out" of the middle-class...