Free Republic

An artificial intelligence data center was running up a water bill for the ages, and local residents were the ones to point out the problem. In November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Microsoft had a new “superfactory” named Fairwater spanning over 1 million square feet outside of Atlanta. Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich explained why the site is so massive. “To make improvements in the capabilities of the AI, you need to have larger and larger infrastructure to train it,” he said in a statement. The site developer, Quality Technology Services, purchased the plot in 2022 for $154 million. Ironically, Microsoft...

Georgia residents were left outraged when they discovered a massive data center had been guzzling up nearly 30 million gallons of water without paying for it. The issue began last year when residents in the affluent subdivision of Annelise Park in Fayetteville noticed their water pressure was unusually low, Politico reports. When the county utility then investigated the problem, officials discovered that developer Quality Technology Services (QTS) had installed two industrial-scale water hookups to the approximately 6.2 million square foot data center campus - located about 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One of the water connections appeared to have...

A 12-year-old Georgia boy was left heartbroken after his therapy pig was allegedly killed by three ghoulish neighbors – who were found with the dead animal in aprons and gloves beside a boiling pot of water. Garrett Cox, who has ADHD and autism, is now struggling to cope after Bootsy, his 400-pound emotional support pig, was savagely shot dead after wandering from her pen and off the family’s Hoschton property, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, last week, according to multiple reports. “I miss her so much,” the young boy told WSB-TV about the award-winning pig, while clutching the ribbons...

This winter, the Upper Colorado Basin saw some of the lowest snow totals in recorded history. As a result, federal officials made a decision to limit water releases from Lake Powell downstream in the coming months. Officials say that will result in substantial drops in Lake Mead's elevation. "All we’re seeing are depletions,” Kyle Roerink, advocate with the Great Basin Water Network, said. “We are dealing with changing snowpacks, changing runoff patterns, increasing evaporation rates, drier soils, and other natural phenomena that are depleting our bank accounts and our savings accounts," he said. Water managers face an encroaching deadline for...

The sound you can’t hear might just save your house. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi blockbuster, but firefighters in California are firing up a fascinating new way to fight flames — with sound waves. The San Bernardino County Fire Department recently showed off a futuristic system that detects and extinguishes flames without water or chemicals. Instead, it uses powerful — but completely silent — sound vibrations to snuff out the fire itself. The red-hot technology, inspired by NASA experiments and developed by Sonic Fire Tech, works by first spotting flames with infrared sensors and AI. Once a...

The annual festival of Songkran usually signifies a dazzling week-long celebration — but this year’s death toll paints a picture that’s anything but. While the Thai holiday is globally famous for being the “world’s largest water fight,” the reality on the ground is a horrific cycle of road accidents, drunk driving and reckless behavior. In the first three days of Songkran this year, more than 191 deaths have been recorded with 951 accidents and 911 injuries. Despite the government’s road safety campaign, enforcement of stricter drunk driving laws and increased police checkpoints, the carnage continues. Marking the Thai New Year,...

Emmy award-winning director Marina Zenovich's Water & Power: A California Heist, a National Geographic documentary film executive produced by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, unfolds like a real-life version of the 1974 film noir "Chinatown," uncovering the exploits of California's notorious water barons, who profit off the state's resources while citizens endure a debilitating water crisis.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., is facing online mockery after his Senate campaign’s election night watch party charged customers exorbitant prices for water, despite claiming to champion affordability issues. Krishnamoorthi, a five-term House lawmaker, narrowly lost to Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in a bruising Democratic primary Tuesday night. Krishnamoorthi supporters had to pay nearly $13 for water and $22 for a glass of wine at an event at a Chicago hotel while watching the returns come in. Online observers noted the irony of the steep prices as Krishnamoorthi’s Senate campaign was one of the most prolific fundraisers in the country. The...

For around 700 years, Native people of the American Great Plains hunted bison at a site in central Montana that archaeologists call Bergstrom. Then, around 1,100 years ago, humans abandoned the site even though bison remained abundant in the area, according to a statement released by Frontiers. "The Bergstrom site presented a puzzle," paleoecologist John Wendt of New Mexico State University said. "Why would hunters stop using a site that had worked for so long?" In 2019, Wendt's team began digging and investigating three-foot-by-three-foot excavation pits to try to better understand the Bergstrom site's use and eventual disuse. Researchers collected...

Direct link in the "source URL". At stake is that, if there is an attempt to build the Third Temple, it would require demolition of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest religious site in Islam after Mecca and Medina, probably prompting the whole Muslim world, both Sunni and Shi'a, to go to war. Nearly 2 hours. Transcript in the comments.

Gavin Newsom launched a new water policy this week that does almost nothing for water. Perhaps he thinks it will help his nascent presidential campaign. Newsom’s biggest weakness as a presidential candidate is his record. He cannot point to any major achievements after two terms. That’s the real drought his plan aims to address. Newsom called his policy the “most ambitious water plan in California history.” If so, the obvious question is why he waited until the last months of his administration to launch it.

A giant reservoir of "secret" fresh water off the East Coast that could potentially supply a city the size of New York City for 800 years may have formed during the last ice age, when the region was covered in glaciers, researchers say. Preliminary analyses suggest the reservoir, which sits beneath the seafloor and appears to stretch from offshore New Jersey as far north as Maine, was locked in place under frigid conditions around 20,000 years ago, hinting that it formed in the last glacial period due, partly, to thick ice sheets. Last summer, researchers went on an expedition to...

Staff. July 25, 2025 Ilhan Omar’s Father and the Isaaq Genocide: The Truth Revealed. Between 1987 and 1989, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland. This dark chapter in Africa’s history, which was known as the Isaaq Genocide, was a merciless military campaign that resulted in the killing of over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. It also involved widespread forced displacement, scorched‑earth destruction of the second and third largest cities (Hargeisa and Burao),...

There’s more bad news over at Grand Canyon National Park: All of the park’s hotels on the South Rim will be closing indefinitely to overnight visitors as of Saturday, Dec. 6. Properties that will shutter include El Tovar, Bright Angel Lodge, Maswik Lodge, Yavapai Lodge and Trailer Village, park officials stated in a news release. The closures come on the heels of the devastating Dragon Bravo Fire on the park’s North Rim, which destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, the visitor center, a wastewater treatment plant and more than 100 other buildings. The South Rim’s hotels are closing due to...

National Resources Limited claims massive new gold and copper discovery, raising hopes for a mining bonanza and fears of local conflict At the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum 2025, Muhammad Ali Tabba, chairman of National Resources Limited (NRL) and CEO of Lucky Cement, unveiled what he claimed are hitherto unknown substantial gold and copper reserves in Balochistan’s Chagai district. Announced in the company of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief General Muhammad Asim Munir, Tabba’s claimed discovery signals a potential turning point for Pakistan’s laggard mining industry at a time global gold prices are touching record highs of over...

Pakistan’s top general has set off alarm bells with an unprecedented warning—delivered not in Islamabad, but from Tampa, Florida. Speaking at a private dinner, Army Chief Gen Asim Munir said, "We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us." According to reports, this marks the first known instance of a nuclear threat being issued from American soil against another nation. The remarks came during a function hosted by businessman Adnan Asad, Tampa’s honorary consul, where around 120 guests of Pakistani origin were present. Security at the gathering was tight—cellphones...

Experts warn drought and water mismanagement have made the city's development unsustainable Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has suggested his country's capital will need to be moved from Tehran due to ecological unsustainability in the city. Speaking at a meeting in Qazvin, the president warned that relocating the capital would become unavoidable given the overcrowding and water shortages in the city of 9.7 million. His government has proposed the underdeveloped Makran region in southeastern Iran as a possible new location. "When we proposed relocating the capital, we lacked the budget - otherwise it might have happened," Pezeshkian told officials. "People said...

A misconduct probe into the boss of Silicon Valley’s largest water supplier has dragged on for a year – with no answers as to what the agency has discovered — while he continues to collect paychecks. A Santa Clara Valley Water spokesperson has confirmed CEO Rick Callender is still on leave. But the agency won’t say whether the investigation has concluded, or how much public money the agency has spent thus far to both investigate and pay its leader.

Iran is facing a mounting crisis, one that is driving their nation to the brink of disaster. This disaster is not the result of Israel or the United States dropping bombs on Iran, nor the result of crippling sanctions. The catastrophe Iran is facing is an unprecedented drought. The skies are shut up, the clouds are dry, the reservoirs are empty, the land is parched, and catastrophe looms. Here are some of the sobering facts about this deepening crisis, which constitutes the worst drought in the nation’s recorded history. Iran has suffered six consecutive years of drought. 10% of the...

In recent days, prolonged water cuts across Tehran have created widespread panic among the Iranian capital’s 10 million residents. Last week, after years of drought and reduced rainfall and snowfall, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that Tehran’s residents would have to ration water—and eventually evacuate the capital—if there was no rain by late November. They’ve had years of warning, but Iran’s rulers have done nothing to resolve an increasingly existential water crisis. A few experts have been warning about the impending doom for decades. Most Tehranis, insulated from the hardships long faced by poorer, peripheral provinces, are only now feeling...