Free Republic

The People's Bank of China has told major state-run banks to prepare to shed dollar holdings while snapping up offshore yuan, which has continued to fall despite prior interventions, sources told Reuters. The scale of this latest effort to prop up the yuan will be big and could provide a floor to the Chinese currency, according to the report. The amount of dollars to be sold hasn't been decided yet, but Reuters said it will primarily involve the state banks' currency reserves. Their offshore branches, including those based in Hong Kong, New York and London, were ordered to review offshore...

A robot escaped from a testing area in Perm, a city not far from the Urals, and made it on to a busy junction, baffling passersby, but also disturbing traffic. “The robot was learning automatic movement algorithms on the testing ground, these functions will feature in the latest version of the Promobot.” The co-founder of the robot’s maker, Oleg Kivokurtsev, told ura.ru news agency. “Our engineer drove onto the testing ground and forgot to close the gates. So the robot escaped and went on his little adventure.” Kivokurtsev explained.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is planning to release legislation next week that would provide legal status for six years to undocumented immigrants in the United States, he said in an interview Wednesday. Issa, an influential Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, described the legislation as a “come-from-the-shadows” effort that would allow the government to do a full accounting of those who are in the U.S. illegally. Immigrants in this new status would be able to travel to their native country while on this temporary visa, he said.

We are all susceptible to the occasional knee-jerk reaction. We hear something and immediately jump to a position of opposition or support with little or no evidence to support the position. Sometimes such gut responses are correct and are subsequently validated by additional information, but often they are completely off base. As a Second Amendment advocate I run into a lot of jerking knees and gut feelings that can be very difficult to overcome. They usually hit me as questions – like “why should anyone be allowed to have a gun like that,” or “why should anyone be allowed to...

In the wake of National Public Radio firing Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page Thursday afternoon to call for NPR’s defunding. “National Public Radio is a public institution that directly or indirectly exists because the taxpayers fund it,” she wrote. “And what do we, the taxpayers, get for this? We get to witness Juan Williams being fired from NPR for merely speaking frankly about the very real threat this country faces from radical Islam.” Palin acknowledged Williams’ past criticism of her, but asserted her devotion to free...