Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s political world is collapsing. Top allies have either publicly or privately called on him to step aside. Major donations have fallen off a cliff. Grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of a campaign that needs to aggressively scale up three months before the presidential election. Members of his own re-election effort have already declared he has no path to victory. Since a disastrous debate in Atlanta upended the trajectory of his campaign three weeks ago, Biden has again and again attempted to dig in, bucking efforts to dislodge him from power. But...

With just weeks away before the Iowa Caucus, the candidates in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary not named President Donald Trump do not seem to be gaining any real traction. Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is in a (distant) second to Trump, has been under the most scrutiny, and rumors of his campaign's suspension are swirling again. The Washington Examiner reported that Ryan Tyson, a long-time adviser of Gov. DeSantis, has supposedly said the campaign is in the "make the patient comfortable" stage, a phrase used for a person in hospice care. However, Gov. DeSantis's communications director, Andrew Romeo, denied...

Avaya Holdings Corp, Tuesday Morning, Sorrento Therapeutics—what’s the common thread between these very different companies? Avaya is in a telecom equipment business. Tuesday Morning is a discount retailer; and Sorrento is a biopharmaceutical group. Still, these three companies have a lot in common: within a few days, the three of them went bankrupt. The Chapter 11 filings, which took place in mid-February, illustrate the rebounding of the insolvency wave, after two unusual years of a low bankruptcy diet. The most recent statistics from American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), the analysis expert on that topic, revealed a very active January 2023. Total...

1,212 watching now Started streaming 2 hours ago #paris #protests #englishnewslive Barricades Set On Fire In Paris As Pension Reform Protests Turn Violent | Paris Pension Protest News Protesters angered by the French government's surprise move to force through its pension reform clashed with riot police in Paris on Thursday evening as barricades of garbage bins and trash were set on fire in the streets. #paris #protests #englishnewslive #cnnnews18live #news18live n18oc_world link u tube linkius

The European Union’s member states and parliament are set to reach a deal that would effectively ban the sale of new combustion-engine cars from 2035. It is a key milestone for the bloc to meet its mid-century climate neutrality target. Discussions between the two sides, as well as the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, could conclude with an agreement as soon as Thursday, according to Jan Huitema, the main lawmaker in negotiations. A deal would mean that all new autos will have to be zero-emission by 2035, with a 55 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of this...

Kids are expensive and single, child-free women are taking note. New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed that single women without kids pocketed $65,000 more in wealth in 2019 than single, child-free men, who has an of $57,000. Single mothers, on the other hand, had only $7,000. This is unsurprising since on average, it takes about $286,000/year to raise two children in the US according to the USDA as reported by Bankrate. These staggering figures, along with improved sex education and more financial independence among women, may correlate to the drop in US births. *Based on...

growing number of Americans are using 'buy now, pay later' services to purchase basic goods such as groceries, raising concerns about consumers taking on more debt. Installment-pay services such as Klarna and Afterpay offer interest-free short-term loans to cover purchases, but the fines for late payments can be steep, and critics fear their ease of use could lure shoppers into dangerous debt. In 2021, $45.9 billion in pay-later transactions were made online, a sharp increase from $15.3 billion the year before, according to a GlobalData analysis reported by the New York Times. Food accounted for about 6 percent of the...

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e all know it by now—the pandemic has caused things to get more expensive. Producers are paying more for energy, labor and transportation, and they're passing the cost on to consumers. Rising gas prices are obvious, but at the grocery store, shrinkflation can look like products with suspiciously smaller amounts selling for the same price as before. Or, the products themselves might be changing—the milk, cream and sugar in your favorite ice cream might be replaced with cost-saving bulking agents like corn syrup solids and whey protein. The Consumer Price Index may not even reflect all these shifts: It doesn't...

When Beth Brown needs groceries, she often does her shopping in her own backyard. Brown estimates she's saving $400 per month on groceries by growing vegetables like lettuce, squash, tomatoes and cantaloupe. The nurse and single mom of two boys said she's trying to save everywhere she can as prices skyrocket. "The prices of food have really gone up just everywhere," Brown told CBS News. "So I have been growing a lot more vegetables to kind of keep up with that."

Lawmakers are pushing the Federal Reserve to move swiftly toward issuing a digital dollar, to combat steps from China and others they say could one day threaten the U.S. status as the global reserve currency. The bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Reps. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) and French Hill (R., Ark.), has sought for the U.S. to counter global competitors launching digital versions of their currencies. The House Financial Services Committee, which both serve on, might vote on related legislation as soon as next month. Ms. Waters has framed competition over new forms of central-bank money as “a new digital...

US President Joe Biden voiced his concern Monday over China's extension of military drills around Taiwan, but added that he did not expect the tense situation to escalate further. Biden spoke to reporters after Beijing said it carried out fresh military drills around the self-ruled island on Monday, defying calls to end days of exercises in the wake of a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The military exercises, China's largest-ever, had been expected to draw to a close on Sunday. "I'm not worried, but I'm concerned they're moving as much as they are. But I don't think they're...

arly this month China’s president Xi Jinping encouraged the country’s youth to establish “great ideals” and incorporate their personal goals into the “bigger picture” of the Chinese nation and people. “‘China’s hope lies in youth,” he said in a major speech. But on China’s internet, some young people say their “ideals” simply cannot be achieved and many of them have given up on trying. Frustrated by the mounting uncertainties and lack of economic opportunities, they are resorting to a new buzzword – bai lan (摆烂, or let it rot in English) – to capture their attitude towards life. The phrase,...

Southern California might be a great place to live, but the pandemic and an expensive housing market have pushed many residents to move—like, all the way to Mexico. Year-over-year home prices in the Los Angeles metro area were up 15.2% in 2021, while prices in Southern California overall went up 15.4%, according to a report by Norada Real Estate Investments. Shockingly, almost half of America’s “million-dollar cities,” where the average price of a home is at least $1 million, are in California, according to a Zillow study published today. The Los Angeles metro area has 57 million-dollar cities, and the...

NEW YORK, Jan 31 (Reuters) - U.S. public pension funds will likely have to switch to more aggressive investment strategies in the coming years to fill funding gaps despite assets held by sovereign investors having grown to record levels amid the 2021 equity market boom, a new report said. On average, the difference between assets and liabilities at U.S. public pension funds, known as the "funded ratio," remains "unsatisfactory" at less than 75%, sovereign investor specialist Global SWF said in a report. To boost returns, many will likely have to focus on alternative assets, including private equity and private credit,...

In other words, of the 130 million U.S. households, there are 23.1 million "nuclear family" homes in the U.S. -- the fewest since 1959. Here are some other related numbers from the same report: Percentage of U.S. adults living with a spouse: 50 percent (87 percent in 1960). Average age of a woman at first marriage: 28.6 years (20.4 years in the 1950s and 60s). Average age of man at first marriage: 30.4 years. Over 37 million adults lived alone in 2021 (33 million in 2011). 55.4 births per 1,000 in the second quarter of 2021 (58.5 in 2019). ---...

It’s anticipated that he will go beyond his already revealed ‘Winter Plan’ and address booster shots, lockdowns and mask mandates. Earlier this month Biden announced a Covid plan to battle the virus throughout the colder months, which included booster shots for all adults, vaccinations for kids in efforts to keep schools open and expanding free at-home Covid testing.

The Marine Corps announced that it is restricting its amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs) from operating in the water for the foreseeable future — a major limitation for a vehicle designed to take Marines from ship to shore. Eight Marines and a Navy corpsman died when an AAV sank hundreds of feet into the ocean during exercises on July 30, 2020. A series of four subsequent investigations by the Marine Corps and the Navy found that no single problem caused the AAV to sink that day. Instead, a combination of poor maintenance and training, safety shortcuts, and mechanical failures led to...

RUSSIA has threatened to deploy intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe, as tensions over Ukraine intensify. The warning from the country’s foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov comes amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the Kremlin has massed 175,000 troops. Vladimir Putin has been warned of “massive consequences” if he invades Ukraine as Russia masses troops on its neighbour’s border. Ryabkov has now threatened to revive Intermediate-range nuclear missiles, deployed in large numbers by both sides in the Cold War in the early 1980s. He denied Russia was planning to invade Ukraine said Moscow would “respond militarily” if Nato...

Zeldin tells Brian Kilmeade New York leaders need to 'respect individual liberty' Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., on Friday slammed the new indoor mask mandate from the New York governor as "consistently inconsistent." Zeldin announced earlier this year his candidacy for governor on the Republican side. NEW YORK ORDERS MASK MANDATE FOR INDOOR PUBLIC SPACES STATEWIDE LEE ZELDIN: I'm totally opposed to this new statewide mask mandate that [Kathy] Hochul just put out. This is coming right after we saw Bill de Blasio in New York City earlier this week, imposing a vaccine mandate on all private employers inside of New...