Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who shaped Catholic doctrine for decades before surprising the church by resigning as pontiff, died Saturday at age 95, the Vatican announced.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican press secretary Matteo Bruni told media.
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The House Ways and Means Committee that is controlled by Democrats released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday.
The New York Post reported the returns cover the years 2015 to 2020. The Trumps reported positive income of $24.3 million in 2018 and $4.4 million in 2019 and had negative income in four of the six years in which tax returns were released.
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Despite a historically tight labor market, small business owners reported that hiring difficulties had eased in December, markedly improving compared to November, according to a poll conducted by Vistage Worldwide for the Wall Street Journal published Friday.
Of the roughly 650 small business owners polled, almost 25% reported that hiring was easier in December than at the start of the year, while just 20% said it was harder, according to the WSJ. In November, those numbers were 18% and 25% respectively, and some small business owners reported success thanks to pay raises and hiring freezes or layoffs at larger firms.
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Colleges offered students the opportunity to enroll in unique courses during the 2022 semesters, the Daily Caller News Foundation found.
These courses tackled a variety of topics including “whiteness” and queerness, while others focused on subjects such as pornography and pop culture. Some of the courses sparked national backlash, forcing the schools to either defend or reconsider what they teach students in the classroom.
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Michigan lost 3,391 residents between July 2021 and July 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 population estimates.
More people moved into the state than out, but deaths outpaced births by 12,482. Michigan experienced 117,639 deaths and only 105,157 births, which, along with the state’s dropping birth rate, could threaten Michigan’s status as the 10th most populated state if the trend continues.
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Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, urged doctors at state medical boards to pressure Big Tech to stifle “medical misinformation” right after he declared that there is no “scientific or medical dispute” about the benefits of using experimental drugs and surgeries to force male bodies to resemble female bodies or vice versa.
Levine, the assistant secretary of health at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, presented an extremely dubious worldview as the established position of science, and acted as though no rational person would dare dissent.
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The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added 18 new LGBTQ+ entries in 2022, including words like gender-affirming, multisexual, top and bottom.
The OED added nearly 2,000 words in the past year, according to announcements from March, June and September, with 18 of those words updated or added to specifically define ever-evolving LGBTQ+ terms. In March, OED added anti-gay and anti-homosexual, with the former receiving a specific definition while anti-homosexual was listed only as a subcategory.
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In 2022, conservatives flipped dozens of school boards across the county, enacting conservative priorities and amending school policies to increase transparency in the classroom.
Moms for Liberty, an organization of conservative parents and school board candidates working towards parental rights in education, and the 1776 Project PAC, a political group that helps school board members against Critical Race Theory (CRT) get elected, endorsed candidates that won many of their races to flip school boards in 2022. School boards throughout the country also banned CRT, adopted new gender identity policies to involve parents and ousted administration in favor of mask mandates.
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Like a slow-motion train wreck that wasn’t thwarted, the Christmas holiday travel disaster was forewarned to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg a month ago by members of his own party who pleaded he take more aggressive action to force airlines to address wary consumer concerns about growing flight cancelations, delays and ticket refunds.
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A 28-year-old man has been arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with the stabbing deaths last month of four University of Idaho students, according to several news reports Friday.
Paperwork filed by Pennsylvania State Police show Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was being held for extradition in a criminal homicide investigation based on an active arrest warrant for first-degree murder issued by the Moscow, Idaho, Police Department and Latah County Prosecutor’s Office, according to the Associated Press.
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The Biden administration is considering expanding the Trump-era illegal immigrant expulsion policy known as Title 42, Reuters reported Wednesday.
The plan includes adding Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians to the list of nationalities expelled under the policy, according to Reuters. The change in policy will also add a humanitarian pathway for migrants of those countries to enter the U.S. if they have sponsors and are vetted at ports of entry.
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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been forcing teachers across the country to follow certain guidelines demonstrating their commitment to “LGBTQ inclusivity” in their classroom instructions.
As reported by Breitbart, the CDC-issued “assessment tool” asks teachers numerous questions about school employees and their loyalty to the concept of “queer theory,” and forcing sexual education teachers to use gender-neutral language, forbidding them from using terms such as “boy” and “girl.”
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European countries are looking to recycle the heat generated by data centers to warm homes, the latest in a series of measures to find heat amid an ongoing energy crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) specified Tuesday that Gun Control Act (GCA) regulations cover types of incomplete pistol frames used in “ghost guns.”
The bureau argued in its open letter to federal firearms licensees that partially complete Polymer80, Lone Wolf and similar striker-fired semi-automatic pistol frames “may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted” to a functional frame and thus fall under GCA jurisdiction based on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) “Frame or Receiver” rule. The rule, which became effective in August, says regulations for completed firearms also apply to gun parts kits that can be readily converted into them.
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Michigan’s current $9.87 per hour full minimum wage will increase to $10.10 on Jan. 1.
Another increase could transpire in the coming year as well, depending on a determination by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
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I fear that the investigations Republicans have promised in the House next year will be little more than another round of toxic partisan gamesmanship. But there is one investigation Congress should undertake, and that is into so-called “gain-of-function” research.
Before the pandemic, I suspect that most of you, like me, had never heard of gain-of-function research. What we learned during the pandemic is that scientists around the world routinely tinker with the genome of viruses to see how the induced changes will affect replication of the virus (contagiousness) and the effects it has on its host (lethality). Such research has apparently been going on for decades and is routinely funded by governments, including ours.
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Well before Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) admitted to fabricating key details of his biography, lying about one’s past was a rich political exercise. President Joe Biden got caught boasting about bogus academic credentials, Hillary Clinton made up a sniper attack in Bosnia, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had to apologize for claiming Native American heritage.
Santos made headlines this week for admitting to the New York Post and WABC radio that he lied on the campaign trail about his education and work experience – specifically about where he attended college and his alleged employment history with high-profile Wall Street firms.
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Several universities across the country have banned TikTok from campus-owned devices or wifi after their prospective states approved similar bans throughout the month.
Sixteen states have banned TikTok, a Chinese-owned company and alleged national security threat, from being used on state-owned devices, according to Government Technology. Four states have banned the app on “some” state-owned devices, while Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita of Indiana filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly making false claims about its content.
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Johana Tablada, deputy director general for the United States of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in an interview for OnCuba that the United States will begin the deportation of the Cubans it has detained and who have not passed the credible fear interview, whom she calls “inadmissible.”
These deportations come after an unprecedented wave of Cuban immigrants in history, in which hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left the island and made long and dangerous journeys from South and Central America to reach the United States through the border with Mexico.
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A new survey suggests that younger parents don’t share the same values or priorities for civics education as their older peers. According to the survey, conducted by RealClear Opinion Research and funded by the conservative Jack Miller Center, nearly nine out of ten Americans agree that teaching children about our nation’s founding principles is “very important.” But seven out of ten don’t think schools are doing a good job of it.
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“Where’s the racism?”
This is the question that college presidents nationwide—and most everyone in their administrations—refuse to answer.
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Students enrolled during the pandemic could earn up to $70,000 less in income throughout their lifetime compared to peers who graduated before schools were temporarily closed, according to a study by a Stanford University economist.
The study, conducted by Eric A. Hanushek, found that the hiccup in steady education could cause students to earn 5.6% less than they would have before the pandemic as these students are more likely to be less educated and more underprepared for adulthood. This results from time lost in the classroom during the pandemic as schools were forced to close and/or operate online.
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Pope Francis on Wednesday asked for prayers for his 95-year-old predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who the Vatican said is constantly receiving medical care.
At the end of his weekly general audience, Francis said in Italian: “I would like to ask all of you for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who, in silence, is sustaining the Church,” as translated by Reuters.
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Two hundred and thirty-one years ago this month, America’s founders enshrined free speech as the first protection in the ratified Bill of Rights with a declaration that the government could not infringe expression. A series of blockbuster revelations at the end of 2022 show just how imperiled those protections have become in the era of Big Tech.
From Elon Musk’s “Twitter files” to an FBI agent’s candid testimony, Americans have gotten a glimpse into a once-hidden enterprise where federal agencies pressured social media platforms – directly and through proxies – to censor content under their terms of service. The goal, it appears, was to preserve the ruling elite’s favored narratives on everything from the pandemic to election integrity.
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Barry Croft Jr. was sentenced to 19 years and seven months in prison Wednesday after being convicted of planning to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
A jury found Croft guilty in August of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, possession of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an unregistered destructive device, with his associate Adam Fox being convicted of the first two crimes. The men intended to kidnap Whitmer from her Michigan vacation cottage and hold back her security detail and any law enforcement responders with destructive devices, according to the Western Michigan U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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The year 2022 brings an end to an era of illusions: a year that saw the end of the post–Cold War era and the return of geopolitics; the first energy crisis of the enforced energy transition to net zero; and the year that brought environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing down to earth with a thump—for the year to date, BlackRock’s ESG Screened S&P 500 ETF lost 22.2% of its value, and the S&P 500 Energy Sector Index rose 54.0%. The three are linked. By restricting investment in production of oil and gas by Western producers, ESG increases the market power of non-Western producers, thereby enabling Putin’s weaponization of energy supplies. Net zero—the holy grail of ESG—has turned out to be Russia’s most potent ally.
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Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican nominee for governor, is appealing a Maricopa County judge’s dismissal of her lawsuit challenging her defeat to Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is currently serving as secretary of state.
In a notice of appeal filed Tuesday, Lake asked the Arizona Superior Court to reconsider all 10 counts that she brought up in her original lawsuit as well as the attorneys’ fees she was ordered to pay.
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A lot of us likely remember the glee we felt as children at the onset of summer vacation, followed by the anxious anticipation of back-to-school time. For some children and teenagers, the start of a new school year generates intolerable levels of anxiety and depression. For a desperate portion of these young people, suicide seems like the only exit.
A new study, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), finds a striking correlation between attendance in school and incidences of youth suicides. Analyzing several pre- and post-pandemic data sets, the researchers conclude “that youth suicides are closely tied with in-person school attendance.” According to the paper’s authors, youth suicides fall during the summer months and rise again when school begins. Notably, they found that in areas of the US where school begins in August, youth suicide rates also increase in August, while in areas that begin school in September, the youth suicide rate doesn’t increase until then.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted it has “no records” of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants released into the country with electronic tracking devices, the agency said in a Dec. 22 letter to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
ICE informed TRAC that it had “no records” of the 377,980 individuals monitored by the agency’s “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) program used to electronically track illegal immigrants released into the country. TRAC had asked for data via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on those in ATD custody from the start of fiscal year 2019 to August 2022.
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A day before the fateful Jan. 6 riot rocked the U.S. Capitol, security officials in the House and Senate received a warning of a possible aviation terror threat to the seat of Congress but shrugged off the concerns until congressional leadership found out from news media and began pressing for answers.
“Are you making any notification regarding the intel that I’m told is going public?” then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving texted Michael Stenger, his counterpart in the Senate, about the aviation security threat early on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, according to text messages reviewed by Just the News.
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Former President Donald Trump said he asked his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, to not be involved in his 2024 reelection campaign.
“Contrary to Fake News reporting, I never asked Jared or Ivanka to be part of the 2024 Campaign for President and, in fact, specifically asked them not to do it – too mean and nasty with the Fake & Corrupt News and having to deal with some absolutely horrendous SleazeBags in the world of politics, and beyond,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.
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There are a record number of asylum cases backlogging U.S. immigration courts under President Joe Biden, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
There are roughly 1.6 million asylum cases, a record number, backlogging the system, according to TRAC, which analyzes and compiles government data. The wait times for court appearances have increased to an average of 4.3 years nationwide, TRAC reported.
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Adam Fox was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison for his lead role in a 2020 plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to NBC News.
A retrial jury found Fox guilty in August of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and possession of a weapon of mass destruction, also convicting Barry Croft Jr. of those charges and possession of an unregistered destructive device. The prosecution had lobbied for Fox to receive a life prison sentence, according to NBC News.
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President Biden has promised that the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this August, will “lower the cost of prescription drugs and health care for families” thanks to provisions that allow the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate the price of some medications directly with pharmaceutical companies.
Critics are decidedly less enthusiastic. They say the IRA’s new drug price provisions are more akin to government price-fixing than negotiation – an unprecedented power grab in health care.
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California is considering paying “reparations” to black Californians who are directly descended from enslaved people, which may surprise most Californians. After all, slavery was never legal in the Golden State.
Governor Gavin Newsom, heedless of the fiasco he’s inviting, formed a “Reparations Task Force,” no doubt with his future presidential aspirations in mind. The task force issued an interim report in June, detailing California’s “history of slavery and racism and recommending ways the Legislature might begin a process of redress for Black Californians, including proposals to offer housing grants, free tuition, and to raise the minimum wage.”
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Christians are facing genocide in several countries as the persecution of followers of the religion has increased in at least 18 nations, according to recent research.
The Catholic group Aid to the Church In Need released a report earlier this year titled, “Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report On Christians Oppressed For Their Faith 2020-22,” which highlighted “human rights violations” against Christians in 24 countries.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that a COVID-19 era immigration order remain in place.
Title 42 is an order allowing border authorities to swiftly deport migrants if they hail from a country known to host a communicable disease such as COVID-19. Border officials have deported an estimated 2.5 million migrants under the order since its implementation. Many detractors of the Biden administration’s approach fear that its end could prompt an even greater surge.
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Twitter altered the COVID conversation by censoring information that was true but not in line with U.S. government policy, discrediting public health experts who disagreed and suppressing contrarian users, the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” showed Monday.
“[B]oth the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s pandemic content according to their wishes,” reporter David Zweig said in the 10th Twitter Files release.
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Multiple universities across the country have rescinded honorary degrees, which are given to recognize the achievements of individuals who were not students at the university, from prominent members of the Trump administration.
Last month, Syracuse University put wheels in motion to rescind an honorary degree from former New York City mayor and lawyer to former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Business Insider reported. The university has not revoked an honorary degree in its 152-year history.
Giuliani argued that there was widespread election fraud during the 2020 election. He faced a criminal probe in Georgia regarding the presidential election results and appeared before a grand jury in August.
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Americans are rating their mental health at an all-time low, including nearly one-in-five young adults who describe their mental health as “poor,” according to a new poll released Wednesday.
Overall, three-fourths of Americans say their mental health is “good” or “excellent,” which is the lowest number on record for Gallup. The polling outlet has conducted an annual mental health survey since 2001. In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, 85% of Americans described their mental health as good or excellent.
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Tax forms have revealed that, over the course of 2021, numerous nonprofit groups backed by far-left billionaire George Soros donated tens of millions of dollars to groups and initiatives that actively campaigned against the police.
Fox News reports that nonprofit groups that are members of Soros’ Open Society Foundations network collectively gave at least $55 million to such anti-police movements. This included groups utilized by progressives to actively dismantle law enforcement, as well as databases that track donations to police departments and police unions.
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While the Biden administration has officially reversed the military COVID-19 vaccination mandate, servicemembers who escaped discharge for refusing the vaccine still risk retaliation and could be booted anyway, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ongoing class action lawsuits thwarted the military’s efforts to discharge thousands of troops who objected to the mandate before the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law Friday, overturned it. However, servicemembers may risk reprisal even after the deadline passes for the Department of Defense (DOD) to implement the repeal, staining the records of thousands of servicemembers for the remainder of their careers, experts explained to the DCNF.
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Amazon Smile continues to deny admission to Christian organizations that support traditional marriage and religious freedom, opting instead to place them on a proverbial naughty list by recommendation of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Amazon Smile allows customers who sign up to have 0.5% of their purchases donated to their favorite charity. Organizations on SPLC’s “designated hate groups” list, however, are barred from registering, according to Amazon’s website.
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Government employees in four states are violating federal laws and assisting the Left by providing voter information, a conservative legal group argues in suing those states.
The Thomas More Society alleges in its lawsuits against Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC, shares voter information with at least one left-leaning nonprofit.
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The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant – ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.
“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
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Minnesota and Wisconsin placed in the top 10 of a recent nationwide prosperity index while Iowa and Michigan trailed behind, at 12th and 29th, respectively.
Wisconsin placed third and Minnesota placed eighth in the American Dream Prosperity Index that the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream produced with Legatum Institute. The index measures prosperity through three domains: Inclusive Societies, Open Economies and Empowered People. The domains contain 11 pillars of prosperity that are built on 49 actionable policy areas and more than 200 indicators.
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Democrats are moving to implement new voting laws at the state level following their midterm wins, according to The New York Times.
Democratic governors and state legislators have expressed plans to push automatic voter registration, voter pre-registration for minors, an expansion of early and absentee voting and criminalization of election misinformation, according to the NYT. The party retained most of its governors in the 2024 election and maintained its hold over several key state legislatures, creating a clear path to instating many of its favored voting policies.
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The late, great Rush Limbaugh frequently opined on his radio show that progressivism’s appeal stems from the fact that its followers are required to do nothing but “care.” Simply vent empathy or outrage—especially on social media—on behalf of an approved left-wing cause, and your otherwise dreary life can seem meaningful in the belief you are both morally superior to your ideological opponents and also saving the world. It’s a seductive pitch that has been all too successful.
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Walmart has launched a drone delivery service for customers in Florida, Texas and Arizona as the grocery chain expands its delivery operations.
Customers in the Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa and Orlando areas are able to have same-day delivery via drone, Walmart announced earlier this month.
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