Free Republic

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday launched a page on his campaign website he says is to combat "misinformation and disinformation" being spread online and by political leaders regarding the ongoing wildfires in Southern California. He says the site will "continue to update and provide valuable, fact-based information to the public around policies, budget allocations, personnel on the ground and more.." The webpage is notably located on Newsom's campaign website funded by Newsom for California, and not on an official government site. “There is an astonishing amount of mis- and dis-information being spread online -- much of it by so-called leaders...

As quickly as the Sunset fire started charring through Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, an AI-generated photo of the Hollywood sign ablaze was rapidly circulating on social media. It was just one example of misinformation surrounding the Los Angeles-area fires spreading on social media, and experts warn that false information during natural disaster events disrupts recovery efforts and harms community trust. ** Misinformation can emotionally exploit a situation, hijack conversations from emergency information and, in some cases, lead to financial scams, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ** Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid...

More than 1500 years ago, a vast culture known as the Hopewell tradition (or Hopewell culture) stretched across what is today the eastern United States. The cause of the culture's decline has long been debated, with war and climate change two of the possibilities, but now a new avenue of inquiry has opened up: debris from a near-Earth comet. Researchers working across 11 different Hopewell archaeological sites covering three states have found unusual concentrations of iridium and platinum in their digging – telltale signs of meteorite fragments. Meanwhile, a charcoal layer in the sediment suggests an intense period of high...

Dinosaur Breath The largest flying creature alive today is the Andean condor Vultur gryphus. At maximum size it weighs about 22 pounds and has a wingspread of about 10 feet. But 65 million years ago in the late cretaceous period, the last age of dinosaurs, there was another larger flying animal, the giant pterosaur Quetzalcotalus. It had a wingspread of over 40 feet, the size of a small airplane. Other pterosaurs were also quite large. The pteranodons of the late jurassic period, the classic flying dinosaurs of magazine illustrations, had a maximum wingspan of about 33 feet. This presents a...

North Korea is so isolated that rather than bring the Internet to its hackers, it brings them to it—in a swank hotel in China. The luxury hotel that has been called a command post for North Korean hackers would make for a unique holiday getaway and give you lots to talk about back home. “Surprisingly Great Hotel - Clean, Tasteful.... and North Korean!” says a trip advisor review for the Chilbosan Hotel in Shenyang, China. For just $53, you get “a deluxe twin room,” including a North Korean breakfast considerably more substantial than those enjoyed by the vast majority of...

Extremists are threatening an environmental disaster by sparking a series of catastrophic wild fires. We first posted on this last year. Western intelligence agencies fear that Al Qaeda terrorists are planning a “global fireball” in a new departure in its war on the West. Deliberately lighting forest blazes in Europe, the US and Australia would not only stretch emergency services but leave insurance companies facing multi-billion pound damage bills as the credit crunch bites. The fires would also create a pollution disaster, with billions tons of climate change gases escaping into the atmosphere. The so-called “forest jihad” is being championed...

of course, it didn't take the dhimocrats long to make it about the war in Iraq... honey, just how low can you go??? California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer complained on Capitol Hill Tuesday that the ability of the state's National Guard to respond to disasters like the fires has been compromised because too much of its equipment and personnel are committed in Iraq. Just goes to show how little the friggin' woman knows about her own state's NG: While less than a fourth of the California National Guard is deployed... So, 20,000 NG members is CA... 5,000 deployed... and the...

WASHINGTON — Senators threw their hands up yesterday, unable to reach consensus on how to implement even pieces of President Bush's strategy to clean out forests and reduce wildfire risks. It appears the task could fall to the administration to change its regulations and implement what it can from President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative," announced last month in a charred corner of the Pacific Northwest. The Democratic-controlled Senate is deadlocked over how far Congress should go to exempt the most fire-prone forests from environmental and judicial reviews, as Bush requested. "I am not here to blame anybody," said Sen....

Wednesday, June 26, 2002NewsMax.com - PHOENIX – Self-described "environmentalists" have opposed forest management programs that could have prevented wildfires such as those burning thousands of acres in Arizona and Colorado, the new chairman of the Western Governors Association said Tuesday.President Bush also made a mocking reference Tuesday to the extremist so-called Greens, who would better be dubbed Grays, in "honor" of the ashen color of the land where pine forests once thrived.Speaking to reporters after an association meeting, Gov. Judy Martz, R-Mont., said as incoming chairman, her priority would be reducing the threat of wildfires to communities and the environment....