Free Republic

Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a $111.6 billion executive budget for fiscal year 2025 that restores $515 million in school funding and will put more cops on Big Apple streets — but falls short of plugging more than $58 million in cuts for libraries. The proposed spending plan, released by City Hall on Wednesday, came in at $2.2 billion above the preliminary budget announced in January and carves out billions for the city’s migrant crisis. The plan, which is $4 billion more than the current budget, benefited from higher-than-expected tax revenues and proactive cuts in city spending critics contend were premature...

A proposal to use $30 million from the city’s share of the latest COVID-19 relief package to fund cash assistance payments to Chicagoans struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic is set to be introduced to the Chicago City Council on Wednesday. The proposal authored by Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) would send 5,000 families $500 per month for a year as part of an effort to study whether a universal basic income could help Chicagoans recover from the economic catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic and fight poverty.

Lockheed Unveils Plans for Orbiting Mars Base Camp and Lander Within 10 Years By Mike Killian Mars Base Camp is Lockheed Martin’s vision for sending humans to Mars in about a decade. The Mars surface lander called the Mars Accent Descent Vehicle (MADV) is a single-stage system that uses Orion systems as the command deck. It could allow astronauts to explore the surface for two weeks at a time before returning back to the Mars Base Camp in orbit around Mars. Credits: Lockheed Martin Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, officials with Lockheed Martin today revealed...

Ottawa (AFP) - Canada will impose a national minimum carbon price in 2018 in order to meet its Paris accord commitment to slash greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday. "All Canadian jurisdictions will put a price on carbon pollution by 2018... To get there, the government will set a floor price for carbon pollution," he said in a speech to parliament. Each province will have a choice in how they implement the pricing, he added, for example, by imposing a carbon tax or adopting a cap-and-trade system. The federal government, Trudeau said, is proposing a minimum price...

China has completed production of the world's largest amphibious aircraft, state media has said, the latest effort in the country's program to wean itself off dependence on foreign aviation firms. The state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled the first of the new planes, dubbed the AG600, Saturday in the southern port city of Zhuhai, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The aircraft, which has a maximum range of 4,500 km (2,800 miles), is intended for fighting forest fires and performing marine rescues, it said. At around the size of a Boeing 737, it is far larger than any...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday with state television showing Emad precision-guided missiles in store which the United States says can take a nuclear warhead and violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution. The defiant move to publicize Iran's missile program seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement. Tasnim news agency and state television video said the underground facility, situated in mountains and run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani. Release of...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Reducing the human carbon footprint is a "moral imperative," University of California President Janet Napolitano said Tuesday as she vowed to turn the system's 10 campuses into a living laboratory for solutions that can be scaled up to state, national and global levels. Napolitano made the comments at a two-day climate change summit at UC San Diego, where researchers discussed their blueprint for actions that they say the state and the world should undertake to tackle the problem — including reducing the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1 billion people. The plan will be presented at...

Iranian military leaders have unveiled a new long-range drone capable of reaching Israel and most of the Middle East months after capturing a U.S. one. General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, described the weapon as a key strategic addition to Iran's military capabilities. Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard's aerospace division, said the Shahed-129, or Witness-129, has a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) and can carry out reconnaissance missions or be armed with 'bombs and missiles'. That covers much of the Middle East including Israel and nearly doubles the range of previous drones produced by Iranian technicians,...

TOKYO — Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi Wednesday unveiled an electric motor that does not use "rare earths", aiming to cut costs and reduce dependence on imports of the scarce minerals from China. The prototype 11 kilowatt motor does not use magnets containing rare earths and is expected to go into commercial production in 2014, the company said. Hitachi started work on the project on 2008. Other Japanese firms, including automaker Toyota, have been working towards the same goal, spurred on by high prices of the minerals. Permanent magnet motors usually contain rare earth such as neodymium and dysprosium and are...

The US military will become "leaner" while maintaining superiority as it switches focus to the Asia-Pacific, US President Barack Obama has announced. In a rare appearance at the Pentagon, he unveiled a far-reaching defence review under which thousands of troops are expected to be axed. He said the tide of war was receding, and the US needed to renew its economic strength. The Pentagon faces more than $450bn (£288bn) in cuts over the next decade. "So yes, our military will be leaner," Mr Obama told reporters, "but the world must know - the United States is going to maintain our...

"We didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction. That was true last week. That was true last year. That was true the day I took office." --Barack Obama, Aug. 8, 2011. Barack Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. That was 972 days ago this morning, almost to the hour when he finally offered his newest full-blown deficit reduction plan. (Snip) If it's Monday, the campaigning president must be issuing a new plan for something (before another $35,800 per ticket fundraiser in New York City). Last week it was his...

The White House announced a strategy to help police, schools and other local organizations counter the threat of domestic radicalism, a broad plan involving federal departments not usually associated with national security. The effort is modeled on anti-gang initiatives developed in the 1990s and programs intended to prevent school shootings like the tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. Although short on details, the eight-page outline for the first time called on all parts of the U.S. government, including the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, to devise ways to help communities identify extremist agendas that...

Tehran, Iran - Iran on Monday unveiled underground missile silos for the first time as it kicked off 10 days of large-scale war games, the country's latest show of military force amid a standoff with the West over its disputed nuclear program. State TV broadcast footage of deep underground silos, claiming that medium- and long-range missiles stored in them are ready to launch in case of an attack on Iran. The sites are widely viewed as a strategic asset for Iran to launch a strike in the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. (Snip) An

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday unveiled a near $66 billion revised budget plan that does not raise taxes but instead relies on attrition and layoffs to cut about 7,000 city workers. Though the city is spending the majority of its reserves, "even that will not be enough to avoid layoffs of some city employees, including teachers," Bloomberg, a political independent, said at a webcast news conference. The school system, the nation's biggest with over a million pupils, stands to lose about 6,000 teachers. These are the first teacher layoffs in decades. Despite an...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lenders would be required to make sure prospective borrowers have the ability to repay their mortgages before giving them a loan, under a proposal released by the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. The rule, which is required by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is intended to tighten lending standards and combat home lending abuses that contributed to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The rule would establish minimum underwriting standards for most mortgages and lenders could be sued by the borrower if they do not take the proper steps to check a borrowers ability to repay the loan. The law...

The world’s first gold bar vending machine has been unveiled at Emirates Palace. The Gold To Go machine, itself covered in 24-carat gold, dispenses one, five and 10 gram bars as well as one ounce bars of gold, the National reported on Thursday. Six gold coins of varied weights and engraved with symbols of gold-producing nations Canada, Australia and South Africa, are also dispensed by the machine. About AED175 will buy a one gram bar, AED760 a five gram bar and AED4,645 an ounce, the paper reports. “It brings gold to the public,” Thomas Geissler, the chief executive of Ex...

WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke unveiled a new $100 bill equipped with two new security features. The bill will go into circulation Feb. 10, 2011. The Fed, along with the Treasury Department, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Secret Service, "continuously monitor the counterfeiting threats" for each denomination and redesign decisions are made based on those threats, Mr. Bernanke said.

NASHVILLE — The organizers of the National Tea Party Convention on Friday unveiled plans for a July conference and a political group that they ambitiously predict will raise $10 million to help conservative candidates around the country dedicated to the small-government ideals of the tea party movement. The group, Ensuring Liberty Corp., is a nonprofit that will do direct marketing and organizing and will eventually be accompanied by a political action committee arm of the same name that will contribute directly to candidates. Its group’s president, Mark Skoda, presented it, during a news conference jam-packed with national and international press,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama Monday unveiled a budget projecting a record deficit this year, with billions of dollars to curb unemployment and tax hikes on the rich to tame big fiscal shortfalls. "It's a budget that reflects the serious challenges facing the country," Obama said at the White House after sending the mammoth spending plan to Congress. "We're at war, our economy has lost seven million jobs the last two years and our government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy." The 3.834 trillion dollar budget includes a freeze on...

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday proposed $33 billion in tax credits to coax small businesses into hiring workers as he underscored his commitment to pushing job creation to the top of his agenda. With public frustration over double-digit unemployment eroding his popularity, Obama has begun rolling out initiatives aimed at backing up his jobs pledge made in his economy-focused State of the Union Address earlier this week. The latest proposal calls for a $5,000 tax credit for every net new worker hired in 2010. The amount would be capped at $500,000 per firm to make sure that...