Free Republic

President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky apologized to Trump in a letter after a explosive public argument during an Oval Office meeting. “Zelensky sent a letter to the president. He apologized for that whole incident that happened in the Oval Office,” Witkoff said Monday on Fox News. “I think that it was an important step and there’s been a lot of discussion between our teams and the Ukrainians and the Europeans who are relevant to this discussion as well.” Witkoff said he thought Zelensky sending Trump a letter to apologize for the fiery meeting was...

Federal authorities have charged four defendants with operating one of the largest human smuggling rings in the United States. The indictment alleges that the transnational criminal organization smuggled around 20,000 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala to the U.S. via Mexico. The group is accused of holding individuals hostage, threatening violence, and being responsible for a fatal car crash in Oklahoma in 2023, which resulted in seven deaths, including three minors. The ringleader, Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, and his associate, Marsha Char, have been arrested and pleaded not guilty. A trial date is being set. Another defendant, Helmer Obispo-Hernandez, remains a fugitive and...

CIRITH UNGOL — The One Ring must be returned to its rightful owner, The Dark Lord Sauron, a Sauron-appointed judge ruled this week.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) characterized former President Obama’s interaction with President-elect Trump at the National Cathedral Thursday as an effort to “kiss the ring” of the incoming commander in chief. “I mean it’s about a redemption story, right? I mean, the greatest political comeback of all times,” Mullin said of the Republican on an appearance of “The Benny Show.” “What you see right there is Barack Obama realizing it and realize that he kind of probably should kiss the ring, because President Trump is the most popular man in the world and probably the most popular man in our lifetime...

A federal judge in New York on Saturday authorized two Georgia poll workers defamed by Rudy Giuliani to pursue information about four Yankees World Series rings owned by the former New York City mayor. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss laid claim to the rings as part of their $148 million defamation judgment but when it came time to collect Giuliani asserted that he had given the rings to his son, Andrew, as a gift. The judge's Saturday morning order allows Freeman and Miss to serve a subpoena on Giuliani's accounting firm for his tax returns. An attorney for Freeman and...

The National Health Service in England, founded in 1948 to deliver health care directly to all in need following World War II, is in trouble. Not only is it broke, but it is also broken, as the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer just pointed out in response to a recent government study. The waiting lines for care are prohibitive. A recent study revealed that 8 million people in the United Kingdom are waiting for their care, with 40 percent waiting for more than 18 weeks. An incredible 14,000 people died just last year while waiting for care in England’s...

Even seasoned detectives who were part of an elite squad were left shocked by the mammoth number of men they found gathering in a secret online space to share sickening child abuse material, with babies among the young victims depicted. Strike Force Parker was established by New South Wales Police early last year after a Zoom room comprising more than 500 alleged pedophiles was uncovered. The Child Exploitation Internet Unit led an international effort to unmask those who met regularly to view broadcast vision and images, teaming up with the Australian Federal Police and forces in Victoria, Queensland and Western...

New York weed shops are stocking their shelves with Mike Tyson-branded edibles shaped like an ear with a bite mark – a callback to Iron Mike’s heavyweight showdown with Evander Holyfield. The 57-year-old Brooklyn native — who’s planning a comeback fight against Jake Paul in July — is rolling out his Tyson 2.0 brand “Mike Bites” and he’s planning a promotional blitz at shops next month, including an event in Times Square, a spokesperson told The Post. But the gummies have already appeared at dispensaries Strain Stars in Farmingdale, Housing Works in Greenwich Village, Grow Together in Brooklyn, Flynnstoned in...

The week of last Thanksgiving, Michael Larkin, a business owner in Hamilton, Ohio, picked up his phone and answered a call. It was the local police, and they wanted footage from Larkin’s front door camera. Larkin had a Ring video doorbell, one of the more than 10 million Americans with the Amazon-owned product installed at their front doors. His doorbell was among 21 Ring cameras in and around his home and business, picking up footage of Larkin, neighbors, customers and anyone else near his house. The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted...

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A woman was caught on video taking a home’s entire candy supply for herself Halloween night while in costume. Popular YouTube streamer Andy Signore, host of Popcorned Planet, told WFLA he was out trick-or-treating with his family when he saw what happened on the doorbell’s app. “I caught it happening LIVE, and I was shocked,” Signore said. “I expected some teens to be greedy, but I couldn’t believe an adult woman would take it all.” The video showed the woman, dressed in what appeared to be a barmaid costume, empty both candy buckets into her own...

Ring can hand over footage in 'emergencies' - despite advertising that their policy is to not share anything without permission or a judge intervening. In a statement he said: 'So far this year, Ring has provided videos to law enforcement in response to an emergency request only 11 times,' 'In each instance, Ring made a good-faith determination that there was an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay.' Despite the 'good faith belief' being included in their fine print, this is the first time the company has admitted to actually...

Amazon filed a patent recently that suggests its Ring doorbell cameras may soon be able to identify “suspicious” people by scanning their skin texture, walking style, and voice. This represents the latest in Amazon’s growing push into biometric data collection. The Ring patent, filed and awarded in the United States, is named “Neighborhood Alert Mode,” and essentially works as a digital neighborhood watch device. The patent would allow Ring doorbells to share a picture or video of a person it decides is suspicious to other Righ users in the area. Their doorbells will then begin recording the “suspicious” person even...

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices. The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile. But Sidewalk...

Gizmodo reported: If you have an Amazon Ring smart doorbell, there’s something you should know. A growing number of fire and police departments are interested in your doorbell — or to be frank, in its camera footage — especially if they feel it can help them in their investigations. In fact, there are now 2,014 departments in the program from every U.S. state except Montana and Wyoming.[snip]...The program allows law enforcement officials to contact Ring users in a certain area and ask them to provide footage from their cameras that might be relevant to local investigations.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) is warning House and Senate Republicans not to be “fooled” by President-elect Joe Biden’s upcoming amnesty plan for the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, which he says will provide lip service to federal immigration enforcement. Last week, open borders activists suggested that Biden’s upcoming amnesty plan is the “most aggressive agenda” they have seen in years. The plan is expected to provide amnesty to nearly all illegal aliens living in the U.S. and potentially expand legal immigration, a staple of the corporate lobby’s outsourcing goals.

Frequently asked questionsWhat is Amazon Sidewalk? Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices work better. Operated by Amazon at no charge to customers, Sidewalk can help simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices, and help devices stay online even if they are outside the range of their home wifi. In the future, Sidewalk will support a range of experiences from using Sidewalk-enabled devices to help find pets or valuables, to smart security and lighting, to diagnostics for appliances and tools. "Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network, coming later this year, that helps devices like...

On Tuesday, Jackson, Mississippi's city council signed off on a 45-day pilot program that would let police access Ring surveillance cameras in real time. In partnership with technology companies PILEUM and Fūsus, the pilot program will run through the police department’s surveillance hub, the Real Time Crime Center, from which Jackson’s police department can stream Ring surveillance camera footage. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told WLBT-TV the hope is to better “follow and trace” suspects at the site of a crime. "We'll be able to get a location, draw a circle around it, and pull up every camera within a certain...

The new Always Home Cam is an autonomous drone that can fly around inside your home to give you a perspective of any room you want when you’re not home. Once it’s done flying, the Always Home Cam returns to its dock to charge its battery. It is expected to cost $249.99 when it starts shipping next year. Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder and “chief inventor,” says the idea behind the Always Home Cam is to provide multiple viewpoints throughout the home without requiring the use of multiple cameras. In an interview ahead of the announcement, he said the company has...

Amazon driver delivers, then steals the package… Amazing RING VIDEO of thief-ette, delivering the pkg, then taking a pic with her phone to prove she delivered it, then stealing it....................

The image of a black hole has a bright ring of emission surrounding a "shadow" cast by the black hole. This ring is composed of a stack of increasingly sharp subrings that correspond to the number of orbits that photons took around the black hole before reaching the observer. Credit: George Wong (UIUC) and Michael Johnson (CfA) _________________________________________________________________________________ Last April, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) sparked international excitement when it unveiled the first image of a black hole. Today, a team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme...