Free Republic

President Donald Trump is set to bump up his request for (FY 19) border-wall funding by $500 million, a new report says. The president will request at least $2.2 billion to build the wall in the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in September, according to Politico.

Disney has decided to pull access to several purchased Christmas videos from Amazon during the holiday season, as the movie studio wants its TV-channel to have the content exclusively. Affected customers have seen their videos disappear from their online libraries, showing once again that not everything you buy is actually yours to keep. One of the best ways to deal with online piracy is to make content available legally. This is common knowledge by now, but copyright holders still believe that exclusivity can earn them more in the long run, even when it hurts legitimate customers. A good example of...

U.S. cable TV operators lost 741,000 basic video customers in the third quarter, research firm SNL Kagan reported Wednesday. That’s the single largest quarterly drop for cable since SNL Kagan began compiling data for the segment in 1980. Cable’s share of the multichannel pay television market continues to slide, dipping to 60.3% from 62.9% in Q3 2009. Gains in telecom and satellite TV services were not enough to offset the loss of cable subscribers, so the overall multichannel pay-TV market lost 119,000 customers last quarter.

Delta Air Lines has added a $5 surcharge for paying checked baggage fees at the airport instead of online, matching moves by some other airlines. Atlanta-based Delta already charges $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for the second checked bag on domestic flights. But starting Aug. 4, Delta will start charging those who pay for checked bags at airport ticket counters, kiosks and curbs $20 for the first checked bag and $30 for the second checked bag, for tickets purchased July 15 or later. The fees for paying for checked bags online remain the same.

Some stuck without power powerless to fight bank fees Friday, September 19, 2008 By Margaret Harding THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH When his power returned without Internet service Monday, Tom Perry had a bit of a financial freakout. "It was kind of a panic-stricken moment there: 'Oh, no, what am I going to do?' " said Perry, whose credit-card and mortgage payment were both due that day. Perry, like many others, pays his bills online. Online banking and bill payment are pushed as the easiest and most efficient ways to handle such transactions, but a power outage such as the one central...

Chaz Albert, a freshman at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., is a passionate "texter," someone who loves to send and receive pithy text messages via cellphone. He does it at home, at school and at work. He often prefers texting over talking on his cellphone. Last month, though, Mr. Albert's habit caught up with him. Only $80 of his $400 cellphone charges were his father's, and most of his own, he said, were for text-messaging. "I was shocked, but I couldn't do anything about it," he said. "I didn't realize that I got charged for reading text messages. My...