Free Republic

Some workers at Facebook are unhappy with the social media giant's decision to not take any action on controversial posts by President Donald Trump, despite having been flagged on Twitter. Some of the employees are calling on Facebook executives to reconsider the decision to keep up Trump''s controversial posts about mail-in ballots and the Minnesota protests. 'I have to say I am finding the contortions we have to go through incredibly hard to stomach,' one employee was quoted in an email as reported by The Verge.

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) – In an alert that appeared aimed squarely at Iran, the U.S. Navy issued a warning on Tuesday to mariners in the Gulf to stay 100 meters (yards) away from U.S. warships or risk being “interpreted as a threat and subject to lawful defensive measures.”

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow has begun investigating the safety of a Russian-made medical ventilator, some of which have been sent to the United States, after six people died in hospital fires reported to involve two such machines.

U.S. crude oil futures turned negative Monday for the first time in history as storage space was filling up, discouraging buyers as weak economic data from Germany and Japan cast doubt on when fuel consumption will recover. Physical demand for crude has dried up, creating a global supply glut as billions of people stay home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery fell more than 100% to settle at negative $37.63 per barrel. Meanwhile, international benchmark, Brent crude, which has already rolled to the June contract, traded 8.9% lower at $25.58 per...

FLORENCE - In the storm of infection and death sweeping Italy, one big community stands out to health officials as remarkably unscathed - the 50,000 ethnic Chinese who live in the town of Prato. Two months ago, the country’s Chinese residents were the target of what Amnesty International described as shameful discrimination. But in the Tuscan town of Prato, home to Italy’s biggest single Chinese community, the opposite has been true. Once scapegoats, they are now held up by authorities as a model for early, strict adoption of infection-control measures. Ethnic Chinese make up about a quarter of Prato’s population,...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a drug touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential miracle cure against COVID-19 was effective against the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Trump had said that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, could be among "the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" for its potential effects against COVID-19. "The efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 patients has to date not been proved," a spokesman for the European Commission said on Tuesday, relaying an internal opinion from the European Medicine Agency. The...

The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. That is partly because America’s central bank is not allowed to take much credit risk itself, and loans to lower-rated borrowers have a higher chance of losses. The risk is exacerbated by the spread of coronavirus which have brought economic activity to a screeching halt. To alleviate that constraint, the U.S....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The coronavirus pandemic is forcing President Donald Trump to show empathy to console Americans under siege, and it’s not easy for a brash leader more accustomed to bellicose politics.

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump offered a preview of his re-election campaign playbook last year when he visited the building site of a multi-billion-dollar cracking (sic) unit in western Pennsylvania, hailed as one of the largest construction projects in the country. To Trump, it was a pitch-perfect example of a booming economy. Except today, the site sits largely empty, after the coronavirus outbreak forced oil company Royal Dutch Shell to halt construction. The project’s thousands of workers are now unemployed, adding to the nearly 3.6 million Americans who filed for jobless benefits in the last two weeks. The tension between...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary has banned the commercial export of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an ingredient used in drugs for coronavirus treatment in several countries, the government said on Wednesday. The ban applies to hydroxychloroquine sulfate and drugs containing the ingredient. “As Hungary is one of the world’s largest exporters of this ingredient, the protection and medical supply of the Hungarian population is now a priority,” the government said in a statement on its website.

The number of people worldwide struggling with extreme heat and humidity by the end of the century could be more than four times as many as today if planet-warming emissions continue to rise, hiking economic losses and health costs, scientists have warned. Spending on mental health, in particular, could soar as more families have trouble sleeping and working, and heat aggravates existing mental health problems, one of two new studies found. "Heat and humidity extremes have real impacts on health and productivity," said Bob Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University, and an...

Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned. The American disease expert, a medical epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency, left her post in July, according to four sources with knowledge of the issue. The first cases of the new coronavirus may have emerged as early as November, and as cases exploded, the Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to help. “It was...

China could be facing a locust invasion, a government body warned on Monday, urging local authorities to prepare for the arrival of the voracious insects that are already in neighboring Pakistan and India.

FRESNO, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg vowed on Monday he would not let President Donald Trump bully him as the war of words between the two New York business tycoons and political rivals became nastier.

MEXICO CITY - The United Nations said in a post on Twitter on Friday it is concerned about the impact Mexico’s migrant operation is having on children and vulnerable people, saying the country had a right to protect its borders but not to use excessive force. Mexican authorities have adopted tougher measures against Central American migrants, detaining 800 who had entered Mexico from Guatemala seeking to reach the border with the United States.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is facing a barrage of criticism at home that he is doing U.S. President Donald Trump’s bidding after erecting a “wall” of security forces near the Guatemala border to keep out Central Americans. Mexico has bowed to demands from Trump, under the threat of punitive tariffs, to contain mass movements of migrants, most of them from Central America, who have been crossing through Mexico on their way to the U.S. border. Lopez Obrador was questioned at his daily morning news conference for a second day in a row about how the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has been steadily climbing in popularity this year and is now tied with former Vice President Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination among registered voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national poll. The online poll, released Thursday, shows that 20% of registered Democrats and independents said they would back Sanders over 11 other candidates to run in the general election against President Donald Trump, an increase of 2 percentage points from a similar poll that ran last week. Another 19% supported Biden, 12% said they would vote for Senator Elizabeth Warren,...

STRASBOURG, France - The EU budget chief said the bloc needs to invest dedicated funds to avert a “climate crash” as Brussels detailed how it planned to pay for a trillion euro push to cut net C02 emissions to zero by 2050 and protect member countries dependent on coal. “We need climate cash in order to avoid a climate crash,” European Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn told Reuters on Tuesday. Of the 1 trillion euros of the EU’s 10-year investment plan, roughly half is to come from the EU long-term budget, the Commission said. This will trigger more than 100 billion...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday will discuss the strategy and timing for sending articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate as Republicans balk at a call to dismiss the charges without a trial. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will convene the meeting at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) for a check-in session after saying on Sunday she planned to send the impeachment charges, which she has held since the House passed them in December, to the Senate this week. Pelosi could also unveil the names of the lawmakers who will be the...

Iranian General Qassem Soleimani arrived at the Damascus airport in a vehicle with dark-tinted glass. Four soldiers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards rode with him. They parked near a staircase leading to a Cham Wings Airbus A320, destined for Baghdad. Neither Soleimani nor the soldiers were registered on the passenger manifesto, according to a Cham Wings airline employee who described the scene of their departure from the Syrian capital to Reuters. Soleimani avoided using his private plane because of rising concerns about his own security, said an Iraqi security source with knowledge of Soleimani’s security arrangements. The passenger flight would be...