A U.S. immigration judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration can move forward with its deportation case against Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and prominent pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested in New York City last month. Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana stated she did not have the authority Read More…
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday the termination of $5.1 billion worth of Pentagon IT and consulting contracts, targeting major firms such as Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The move, he said, is aimed at eliminating “wasteful spending” and redirecting funds toward core defense priorities. In a Department of Defense memo, Hegseth ordered the Read More…
The U.S. Senate confirmed retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a 60-25 vote on Friday, officially filling the nation’s top military post nearly two months after President Donald Trump ousted the previous chairman. The confirmation vote came just before lawmakers departed Washington Read More…
(The Center Square) – Billionaire Alex Meruelo is looking to use nearly $100 million in Reno city redevelopment funding for a new multi-use stadium at the University of Nevada, Reno. The public funds would come from a property tax cut, called Tax Increment Financing, which would take off a significant portion of Meruelo’s $1 billion Read More…
Two illegal immigrants who were previously deported for sexually assaulting children were arrested within two hours of each other in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday. Customs and Border Protection disclosed that one of the illegal immigrant sex offenders originally hails from Guatemala and was found with a group of other migrants trying to enter Read More…
Fraud rings stole billions of dollars from at least 11 states, including Washington, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ferguson’s novel approach to rooting out the embezzled funds included searching for bank accounts where the scammers had not yet withdrawn all stolen funds and then initiating a legal effort to reclaim the funds. Investigators from the Attorney Read More…
Saudi Arabia has started moving earth and tunneling through mountains to build a futuristic linear city that officials hope will host its first residents in 2024, the project’s chief executive said. Employees are still developing regional master plans and a “founding law” for the mega-project called Neom, Nadhmi Al-Nasr said in an interview in Riyadh. But Read More…
A clip from the former football quarterback’s new show – Colin in Black & White – has gone viral and caused a social media frenzy to erupt as the 33-year-old attempts to draw similarities between scrutiny players receive from coaches to that of slavers. In the clip, Kaepernick – who earned more than $40million during his time Read More…
AUSTIN, Texas — The Biden administration rejected Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s appeal that the federal government reimburse the state for millions of dollars spent responding to the border crisis. In a letter sent Sunday, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell denied the Republican governor’s request that it reconsider its denial to approve the state’s request for an Read More…
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell died Monday from complications of COVID-19, his family said in a statement. He was 84. “General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19. He was fully vaccinated,” the family said Read More…
FBI agents on Tuesday swarmed the home of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in Washington, D.C., an agency spokesperson confirmed to NBC News. The reason for their presence wasn’t immediately clear. The spokesperson said the agency is conducting “law enforcement activity at the home” but wouldn’t elaborate. The investigation is being led by federal investigators in Read More…
The former head of the Food and Drug Administration said Sunday that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children will be a “multiyear effort.” “I think that’s a very long way off,” Scott Gottlieb said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “The older kids, the high school kids, the middle school kids, do seem to get into trouble more with COVID. It’s harder Read More…
“TPD along with other law enforcement agencies are working a very active scene near 400 N. Toole Ave. in the downtown area,” Tucson Police Department said on Twitter. “Please avoid the area on Toole Ave. between N. 4th Ave & N. 6th Ave. Information is limited at this time, updates to follow.” The shooting aboard Read More…
Katie Couric has been banned from promoting her new book on CBS after she slammed the network — and its former boss Les Moonves’ bad breath — in her dishy tome. The former “Today” anchor — who disastrously hosted “CBS Evening News” from 2006 to 2011 — had been booked to promote her bombshell memoir, “Going Read More…
WELLINGTON, New Zealand—New Zealand is ending its effort to keep Covid-19 out of the remote South Pacific country as the economic costs mount and after its latest lockdown failed to halt the spread of the virus. Pandemic restrictions in the country’s largest city, Auckland—in place after a Covid-19 outbreak in mid-August—will be eased in stages starting this week, Read More…
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether three Federal Reserve leaders violated insider trading rules in 2020, when they bought and sold assets as the central bank ramped up efforts to save the U.S. economy from economic turmoil. Warren, who sits on the congressional committee that oversees the Fed, pressed Read More…
A capital murder trial began Tuesday for a nurse accused of killing four patients at an East Texas hospital in 2017. William Davis, 37, allegedly killed four men who had been recovering from heart surgery at Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler by injecting air into their arteries, prosecutors allege. “No one expects this is going Read More…
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told staff at Rikers Island on Monday not to ask for bail in many nonviolent cases, even though the policy could result in additional “low level” crimes. Under the new directive, trial division attorneys should avoid asking for bail when “the threat of confinement under these conditions outweighs the threat to Read More…
United Airlines Holdings Inc. is moving ahead with plans to terminate close to 600 employees who didn’t meet its Covid-19 vaccination deadline, company officials said Tuesday. United in August said it would require all of its 67,000 U.S. employees to be vaccinated—the first major U.S. airline and one of the first large U.S. companies to do Read More…
NEW YORK (AP) — Matt Amodio’s historic run on “Jeopardy!” has now netted him more than $1 million in non-tournament play, making him the third person in the show’s history to pass that mark. The only other contestants to win more than $1 million in regular season games are Ken Jennings, whose 74-game streak netted Read More…
The FDA shopped from a menu of aborted fetus organs to insert into lab mice as part of taxpayer-funded experiments, according to government records—a practice that watchdogs said may violate federal law. From 2012 to 2018, Advanced Bioscience Resources, a nonprofit fetal tissue supplier, charged the FDA $340 per aborted fetus liver and $515 per Read More…
DEL RIO, Texas — State troopers deployed to the border by Gov. Greg Abbott are being credited for doing the federal government’s job and stopping thousands more migrants in Mexico from illegally crossing into the United States after well over 15,000 made it through here late last week. A swarm of Texas Department of Public Safety officers, known Read More…
(Bloomberg) — Most people don’t give fertilizer a second thought — except maybe when driving through a particularly fragrant agricultural area. But with prices for some synthetic nutrients at their highest levels since the financial crisis, it could mean weaker harvests and bigger grocery bills next year, just as the world’s supply chains start to Read More…
Arkansas is using federal coronavirus relief funds to buy children’s books about the coronavirus for distribution to schools in the state that are produced by a company co-founded by former Gov. Mike Huckabee. The Department of Education inked a $245,300 deal with the Florida-based business EverBright Media to distribute “The Kids Guide to Coronavirus” booklets Read More…
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A Maryland Eastern Shore judge who was about to be arrested at his home on federal charges of sexual exploitation of a child was found dead Friday, officials said. FBI agents went to the residence of Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Jonathan Newell in Henderson, Maryland, early Friday. “Upon entering the residence Read More…
Dr. Anthony Fauci has expressed his support for COVID-19 vaccination requirements for air travel – as the Biden administration did not rule it out. “I would support that if you want to get on a plane and travel with other people that you should be vaccinated,” the White House chief medical adviser said in an Read More…
Car manufacturers including Ford, Volkswagen and Daimler are still struggling to deal with the impact of the global chip shortage, with executives from each of the companies warning a lack of silicon is likely to remain a problem. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius and Ford Europe chairman of the management board Gunnar Herrmann told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach Read More…
The Biden administration on Monday unveiled a major permanent increase to the food stamp benefits that help 42 million Americans buy groceries — a record bump up for one of the country’s largest safety net programs. The average monthly benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be roughly 27 percent higher than they were Read More…
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Attorneys for three former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s death asked a judge Thursday to bar their upcoming trial from being livestreamed, saying some witnesses won’t testify if the proceedings are broadcast. The request from attorneys for Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao is an about-face from their earlier request to Read More…
“One of the first things he asked me … was whether or not I was vaccinated,” Firlit, 39, told the Chicago Sun-Times. She was not, she said, explaining that she has had “adverse reactions to vaccines in the past” and that a doctor advised her against getting inoculated against the coronavirus. “It poses a risk,” she Read More…
NEW ORLEANS, La. — All of New Orleans is without power as Hurricane Ida continues to hit Louisiana with high winds, heavy rain, and storm surge. Entergy New Orleans said Sunday evening that all of Orleans Parish was without power due to “catastrophic damage” to its transmission system. Entergy’s outage tracker on its website showed more Read More…
U.S. troops do not currently have the capability to help people reach Kabul airport to be evacuated from Afghanistan because they are focused on securing the airfield, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday. The speed with which Taliban forces retook Afghanistan, as U.S. and other foreign forces withdrew after a 20-year war, has Read More…
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials on Wednesday announced plans to dispense COVID-19 booster shots to all Americans to shore up their protection amid the surging delta variant and signs that the vaccines’ effectiveness is slipping. The plan, as outlined by the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other top health Read More…
President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan Wednesday, blaming the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country squarely on the Afghan army and a peace deal brokered with the Taliban by the Trump administration. In an interview with ABC News‘s George Stephanopoulos, Biden argued that there was no way the intelligence community could Read More…
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates said his climate investment fund will commit $1.5 billion for joint projects with the U.S. government if Congress enacts a program aimed at developing technologies that lower carbon emissions. A roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate this week would give the Energy Department $25 billion for demonstration projects funded Read More…
The Army recently inked a $3.5 billion contract with Pfizer Inc. for the pharmaceutical company to produce 500 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine. But those shots are not planned for soldiers’ shoulders. Instead, the contract award states, they are for “international donation” and procurement is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2022, according Read More…
The district attorney of Albany County, New York, said Tuesday that his office is criminally investigating Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been accused of sexually harassing multiple women. DA David Soares also said his office would “welcome any victim to contact our office with additional information” about Cuomo. And Soares said he plans to request investigative Read More…
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has asked businesses in the state to only serve customers who are completely vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to avoid a “worst case scenario,” the governor said on Monday. “I am asking them, and suggesting to them, go to vaccine-only admission,” Cuomo said during a press conference, referring to private Read More…
More than 50 prominent medical organizations Monday called for all health-care employers and long-term care facilities to require COVID-19 vaccinations for their entire staffs. The call for action comes as the delta variant fuels a nationwide surge of COVID deaths and infections among unvaccinated Americans. Last week, the American Hospital Association and America’s Essential Hospitals Read More…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For the second consecutive year, U.S. adults’ positive ratings of relations between Black and White Americans are at their lowest point in more than two decades of measurement. Currently, 42% of Americans say relations between the two groups are “very” or “somewhat” good, while 57% say they are “somewhat” or “very” bad. Read More…
A New Jersey health system fired six supervisors who refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19. RWJBarnabas Health announced that over 99% of its nearly 3,000 management staff have been vaccinated against COVID-19 but that six supervisors who were not “are no longer employees of RWJBH.” READ FULL STORY
Government employees are suing Connecticut to avoid returning to work, arguing that commutes contribute to climate change. Public employee unions in Connecticut are insisting their members continue to have the option to work full time from home, citing environmental and legal concerns. Democratic governor Ned Lamont allowed government employees to work exclusively from home during Read More…
TOKYO (AP) — Kara Eaker, an alternate on the United States women’s gymnastics team, has tested positive for COVID-19 in an Olympic training camp in Japan. Al Fong, the personal coach for both Eaker and fellow Olympic alternate Leanne Wong, confirmed the positive test in an email to The Associated Press on Monday. The coach Read More…
Ten people were wounded in two mass shootings in Chicago Wednesday — just 12 hours apart, police said. The first of two mass shootings occurred in West Garfield Park on the city’s West Side, where a gunman approached a group standing outside and opened fire, striking four women and a man, police said. The victims, Read More…