Free Republic

JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors announced Thursday that they are quitting or, in the case of BlackRock, substantially scaling back involvement in a massive United Nations climate alliance formed to combat global warming through corporate sustainability agreements. In a statement, the New York-based JPMorgan Chase explained that it would exit the so-called Climate Action 100+ investor group because of the expansion of its in-house sustainability team and the establishment of its climate risk framework in recent years. BlackRock and State Street, which both manage trillions of dollars in assets, said the alliance's climate initiatives...

As if the world doesn’t have enough problems, people are now worried that an evil demon locked in a rock for almost 1,000 years is on the loose. The so-called ‘killing stone’ that kept the malevolent spirit imprisoned all this time has split in two, sending believers into a state of panic.

Former Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough said Monday his pet rock could have toppled Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, thanks to all the baggage she carried into the contest. “My pet rock could have gotten 45 percent against Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Scarborough said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Maybe if my pet rock didn’t make any gaffes in the three debates, my pet rock could have beaten Hillary Clinton.” Mr. Scarborough, a Republican, said the election was not about President Trump, who won the electoral college and lost the popular vote to Mrs. Clinton by a 48 percent...

;-P

Creator of the Pet Rock, Gary Dahl, Dies at Age 78 Gary Dahl's invention of the pet rock made him a millionaire after it went on sale in 1975. Gary Dahl, the creator of the Pet Rock—”one of the most ridiculously successful marketing schemes ever,” Newsweek once said—died at age 78 on March 23. Dahl first came up with the concept as joke while working as a freelance copywriter, but the idea of a minimal-effort “pet” and its clever packaging resonated with the times—and quickly made him a millionaire after the rocks went on sale for $3.95 apiece in 1975,...

In 1975 advertising executive Gary Dahl had one of the simplest and most rewarding marketing ideas of the decade. He placed a shiny little rock in a box decorated as an animal carrier and offered it to consumers to buy and keep as a “pet.” Dahl marketed this (unique) product by reminding consumers of the unwanted expense, time and effort that conventional pets take compared to his lovable and low-maintenance “pet rock.” Within a six-month period, the Pet Rock received national fad appeal and Dahl made millions of dollars before market saturation and copycat competitors, in combination with the next...

WhiteHat Security said Wednesday that it had found an issue in how Safari's AutoFill feature handles personal information, which could open up the personal information of a web surfer simply by visiting a malicious website.Using a few lines of code, the hacker would be able to obtain the information without the user even knowing it occurred. The "Using info from my Address Book card" option would need to be checked in AutoFill preferences in order for the hack to work.There is one positive: AutoFill does not work with fields starting with numbers, meaning street addresses and phone numbers would not...

In an action that spoke far louder than words, Pope Benedict yesterday walked out of an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem after the chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority launched into an anti-Israeli diatribe. The pontiff, on his first day in Jerusalem, did not realize at first that Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, speaking in Arabic, was condemning the "crimes of the Jewish state" and accusing Israel of having "slaughtered women, children and senior citizens." But as soon as he was told the nature of the sheikh's tirade, he stood and left the meeting, which took place at Notre Dame church, before...