New Jersey voters approve legalizing recreational marijuana

New Jersey voters chose to legalize marijuana on Wednesday, though it could be months before adults 21 and over can legally buy and use cannabis.

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  • Biden reportedly considering a retired four-star general to lead US military, would be first Black defense secretary if confirmed

    If confirmed, Ret. US Army Gen. Lloyd Austin would be the first Black defense secretary for the United States.

  • Swedish government sidelines epidemiologist who steered country's no lockdown experiment as deaths rise

    The high-profile epidemiologist who led Sweden's no lock-down strategy in the spring appears to be being sidelined by the government after his prediction that greater immunity would mean a lighter second wave proved badly wrong. Anders Tegnell's biweekly press conference was on Thursday pushed into the shade by an overlapping press conference fronted by Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, where new scenarios prepared by the Public Health Agency were announced. "There's certainly a split, and I'm pretty sure that many in the government have rather lost faith in the Public Health Agency," said Nicholas Aylott, an associate politics professor at Stockholm's Södertorn University. "By some counts, we've now got exactly the same level of spread of the virus that we had in the spring, and that's about as clear a refutation of Tegnell's strategy as you could wish for." Dr Tegnell has always insisted that his Public Health Agency has never pursued a herd immunity strategy, but he repeatedly suggested in the summer that his counterparts in Norway, Finland and Denmark would face a tougher task over the winter because of lower levels of immunity in their populations. This month, though, the number of deaths in Sweden has again begun to soar above that of its Nordic neighbours, with 630 deaths so far registered as a result of Covid-19. That is about ten times the per capita death rate in Norway -- where just 30 Covid-19 deaths were registered between October 28th and November 25th.

  • Ex-Overstock CEO Says He’s Put Together an ‘Army of Various Odd People’ to Save Trump

    Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne left behind a cloud of confusion when he resigned in 2019 from the internet retailer he’d founded after panicking investors with his bizarre claims that he had romanced a Russian agent at the behest of “Men in Black” working for the United States government.Now he’s back, with what he has described as his own personal “army,” touting what he claims is proof that Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump.“I’ve funded a team of hackers and cybersleuths, other people with odd skills,” Byrne said in a Tuesday interview at One America News, where OAN personality Chanel Rion praised Byrne as the head of an “elite shadow cyber security team.”Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Claims Maria Butina Offered to Arrange One-on-One for Him With PutinAs Trump’s chances of securing a second term dwindle down to nothing, Byrne has launched a media tour to promote his mysterious hacker team, appearing from an “undisclosed location” on OAN, Newsmax, and a series of far-fringe YouTube shows associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. On Friday, a guest host on the popular Rush Limbaugh talk radio show praised Byrne’s allegations about voter fraud and proposed inviting Byrne on the show.With Trump allies on his legal team and in conservative media scrambling for any evidence that Trump didn’t legitimately lose the presidential race, Byrne has become a hero to the MAGA crowd, despite his history of making off-the-wall allegations.Byrne claims he’s funding teams of “hackers and crackers” who realized all the way back in August that Dominion voting machines could be used to steal the election from Trump. Since the election, those voting machines have figured prominently in Trump supporters’ allegations of fraud, despite the company’s repeated denials and any actual proof the voting tallies were changed.The actual details of Byrne’s supposed hacker super-team, however, similarly thin.“I’m a free agent, and I’m self-funded, and I’m funding this army of various odd people,” Byrne said in a Nov. 23 appearance on a podcast with a QAnon promoter who used the name InTheMatrixxx. “It’s really going to make a great movie someday.”Asked for more details on his hacker team, Byrne referred The Daily Beast to his blog, “DeepCapture.” But the 40,000-word explanation on Byrne’s website focuses on his long-running feud with Wall Street short-sellers, and Byrne’s conversations with a mysterious financial whistleblower called the “Easter Bunny,” rather than on any election investigations team.Byrne stopped responding to emails from The Daily Beast when asked whether any members of his hacker team would be available for interviews.Despite his vague claims, Byrne says he’s been funneling allegations about the election to the White House and one-time Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for weeks. Byrne’s claims are similar to those Powell has made publicly, including an allegation that deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez somehow meddled in the election seven years after his death.“Sidney was the first to really get it, and to get what we’re saying is so vast, that you need kind of a very open-minded person to get it,” Byrne said in the InTheMatrixxx podcast.In the aftermath of the election, Byrne has become the latest with a broad “tech” background to reinvent himself as an expert on voting machines. Byrne is joined in that niche by former 8kun administrator Ron Watkins, who left his position managing the site for its QAnon posts on Election Day and has since appeared on OAN as a so-called elections investigator.During his post-election media tour, Byrne has made a series of other strange claims, including that he could be the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese monk.“I love the Chinese, I speak Chinese, I think I’m the reincarnation of a Shaolin monk, maybe,” Byrne said on the “InTheMatrixxx” podcast.Here’s How Hugo Chavez, Dead Since 2013, Became Responsible for Trump’s Election LossByrne has also encountered some other strange allegations on his media tour. In an appearance on a QAnon YouTube show hosted by a woman named “Cirsten W,” Byrne listened as his host claimed that Bill Clinton and late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been cloned.Byrne’s habit of making oddball claims made headlines in 2019, when he was still the CEO of Overstock. Using company letterhead, Byrne issued a statement claiming that “Men in Black” figures in the federal government had urged him to romance Russian agent Maria Butina, who was at the time allegedly trying to infiltrate conservative circles as a gun rights activist. Overstock’s share price plunged, and Byrne eventually resigned after Overstock’s insurer refused to insure the company with Byrne at the helm.A Senate Intelligence Committee report issued in August lays out a different view of Byrne’s interactions with Butina. In the report, Butina sees Byrne as a potential avenue to reach Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), then a presidential candidate. In a July 2016 email published in the committee report, Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, wrote that Byrne was “stalking” Butina after meeting her at a libertarian conference and claimed that Byrne made her a $1 million offer related to having his child.“Byrne is a bachelor by choice and consequences of his intellectual gifts and limitations, but is now concerned with his mortality and family legacy,” Erickson wrote. “Since meeting Maria, he has found ever more creative ways to pitch a standing $1 million offer to her ‘to have a baby with him.’ He is utterly enamored of her imagined gene stock and believes that a baby would cement not only his familial line but also relations between our two nations.”Byrne didn’t respond to The Daily Beast about the allegations made in Erickson’s email.Byrne’s other allegations haven’t always paid off, either. In 2018, he lost a landmark defamation trial filed against him by a Canadian businessman who had been described on Byrne’s blog as a terrorist financier and drug and arms trafficker, with the plaintiff awarded $1.2 million in damages.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Alleged police beating of Black man angers French

    French authorities have suspended police officers accused of assaulting and racially abusing a Black man in Paris, after CCTV footage of the incident was released and caused an outcry. The music producer, who has identified himself as Michel, was beaten at the entrance to his studio. French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted by France's BFM TV as being "very shocked" by the CCTV and mobile phone images, which were obtained by the LoopSider news outlet and made headline news on French channels. The officers involved were suspended pending investigation at the interior minister's request. Michel told reporters he'd been walking in the street without a face mask, against French COVID-19 rules. When he saw a police car he went into his studio to avoid getting a fine. But the police followed him inside and arrested him, violently. The video purports to show them kicking and beating him, and he says they hurled racial abuse at him too. They then leave, and throw a tear gas canister into the studio. As anger grew, French soccer stars added to the chorus of condemnation. Kylian Mbappe tweeted that the video was "intolerable" and his fellow Les Bleus striker, Antoine Griezmann wrote: "My France is hurting." The alleged attack on Michel risks inflaming racial tension, and fuelling criticism of a draft law that would limit journalists' ability to show images of French police officers at work. The prime minister's office said on Thursday (November 26) it would set up an independent commission to propose a new draft of the legislation. Some "BlackLivesMatter" protests broke out in Paris in June, a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in the United States. The movement resonates in France, in particular in deprived city suburbs, where rights groups say accusations of police brutality, often against people with immigrant backgrounds, remain largely unaddressed. And Paris police were already under fire this week after social media photos and videos showed officers hitting protesters as they cleared out an illegal migrants campsite in a central Paris square.

  • Black firefighters in NC allege racism amid larger reckoning

    WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — They threw her new cellphone on the roof of the station house and placed nails under the wheels of her pickup truck. It was too much for Timika Ingram to bear. “It caused me pain, sleepless nights, suffering, anxiety,” said Ingram, whose four years as a firefighter in North Carolina amounted to a collection of indignities.

  • Ex-CIA boss says Ted Cruz ‘unworthy’ of Texas during Twitter row over Iran killing

    Pair arguing about killing of top Iranian nuclear scientist

  • Danish PM in tears after visiting mink farmer whose animals were culled

    Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen broke down on Thursday when visiting a mink farmer who lost his herd following the government's order this month to cull all 17 million mink in the country to curb the spread of coronavirus. Frederiksen has faced opposition calls to resign and a vote of no confidence in parliament after an order by the government in early November, which it later admitted was illegal, to cull the country's entire mink population. The order was given after authorities found COVID-19 outbreaks at hundreds of mink farms, including a new strain of the virus, suspected of being able to compromise the efficacy of vaccines.

  • Biden's win hides a dire warning for Democrats in rural U.S.

    Democrats once dominated Koochiching County in the blue-collar Iron Range of northern Minnesota. “We’ve got to see if we can get the Democratic Party to moderate and accept the fact that rural Minnesota is not getting more conservative,” said Bakk, who announced last week that he would become an independent after serving 25 years as a Democrat. The party lost House seats in the Midwest, and Democratic challengers in Iowa, Kansas, Montana and North Carolina Senate races, all once viewed as serious threats to Republican incumbents, fell, some of them hard.

  • Six US oil executives jailed for corruption in Venezuela after being lured to business meeting

    Men plead innocence following arrest in 2017 as State Department demands release

  • Spike in F grades across the US as online learning gap emerges amid pandemic school closures

    America's great experiment in "remote learning" during the pandemic has proved disastrous for many children as the first figures from one of its largest school districts showed an explosion in failing grades, and a widening gulf between thriving and struggling pupils. Unlike in the UK, thousands of schools across the United States have still not reopened, having been closed since March. Children from age five up are instead being taught on computer screens at home. Many will end up missing an entire academic year of in-person schooling. An internal report from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, just outside Washington DC, which has 188,000 pupils, was released this week following a Freedom of Information request by a local parent. It confirmed what many families around the country had feared for months. Among children aged 11 to 18 there was an 83 per cent jump in those with two or more 'F' grades, in the first quarter of the 2020-21 academic year, which has just ended. The younger the age group the worse it was. For those aged 11 to 13 the increase was 300 per cent. Among girls in that age group it was 600 per cent. For children with special needs the jump in failing grades was 111 per cent. And for those with English as a second language, it was 106 per cent.

  • WHO says would be 'highly speculative' to say COVID did not emerge in China

    The World Health Organization's top emergency expert said on Friday it would be "highly speculative" for the WHO to say the coronavirus did not emerge in China, where it was first identified in a food market in December last year. China is pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in the central city of Wuhan, citing the presence of coronavirus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe last year. "I think it's highly speculative for us to say that the disease did not emerge in China," Mike Ryan said at a virtual briefing in Geneva after being asked if COVID-19 could have first emerged outside China.

  • Facing the first loss of their voting lives, young Republicans are surprisingly hopeful, but want the GOP to work for Gen Z

    Five leaders of college Republican groups told Business Insider what they thought of President Donald Trump's election loss.

  • French police facing 'worst moral crisis in their history' after string of scandals and controversial ID law

    French police are going through the “worst moral crisis in modern history”, according to one of the country’s leading law enforcement experts, following a string of violent incidents in which officers have been accused of misconduct, brutality and racism. Decades of refusal by successive French governments to introduce UK-style independent oversight and systemic reform have brought its police to a perilous breaking point with swathes of an already sceptical population, according to eminent criminologist Sebastien Roché at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CRNS. The French have long felt ambivalent about their force, which has come a long way since the dark days of 1961 in which officers under the command of police chief Maurice Papon, later convicted of crimes against humanity, massacred an estimated 200 Algerian protesters. “You’ll be covered,” he notoriously told his men. Hailed as heroes in the wake of terror attacks, they have been equally vilified as heavy-handed and trigger-happy in recent mass demonstrations, notably during the “yellow vests” revolt where intensive use of stun grenades and rubber bullets maimed dozens. However, in the past two weeks, the image of the French force has taken a battering of rare intensity, bringing to the fore long-held accusations of discrimination towards minorities, violence and a sense of impunity.

  • U.S. appeals ruling that barred Postal Service changes before election

    The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and President Donald Trump late Friday appealed a federal judge's ruling suspending service changes and requiring aggressive steps to ensure ballot deliveries ahead of the November presidential election, the Justice Department said. The government said it was appealing U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's preliminary injunction orders issued in late September in a pair of legal challenges.

  • I flew on the Spirit Airlines' first 'shuttle' flight from Newark to Boston for $25 and still overpaid – here's why it's a great budget option

    Spirit's new route offers an alternative to the expensive shuttle flights offered by competitors for what is ultimately less than an hour in the air.

  • Heavy shelling hits capital of Ethiopia's Tigray as forces begin offensive

    Heavy shelling struck the capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region on Saturday, the local government and humanitarian sources said, as the city of half a million braced for an attack against leaders of the regional ruling party. Ethiopia's military "has started hitting with heavy weaponry and artillery the centre of Mekele", the local government said in a statement carried by Tigrayan media - a claim confirmed by two humanitarian officials with staff in the city. "The Tigray regional state calls upon all who have a clear conscience, including the international community, to condemn the artillery and warplane attacks and massacres being committed," the statement said. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, announced November 4 he had ordered military operations against Tigray's ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). More than three weeks of fierce fighting has left thousands dead "including many civilians as well as security forces", the International Crisis Group said Friday.

  • Pictured: A doctor hugged a distraught elderly coronavirus patient on Thanksgiving, after warning the public America is headed for its 'darkest days' over Christmas

    Dr. Joseph Varon, of Houston's United Memorial Medical Center, has worked 251 days in the COVID-19 ICU. He said the 'darkest days' are to come.

  • Trump news - live: President ‘considering launching 2024 bid during Biden inauguration’ amid crushing court defeat

    Follow our live blog for all the latest from the White House and beyond

  • Trump's national security advisor and his entourage were said to be treated as 'human petri dishes' in Vietnam, as the US COVID-19 outbreak worsens every day

    Robert O'Brien's airplane crew was also not allowed to enter Vietnam and had to spend the night in Thailand, Bloomberg reported.

  • French face three-year jail term for 'accent discrimination' in victory for regions versus Paris

    French people who discriminate against compatriots due to their accent face a maximum three-year prison term under a new bill seen as a victory for the country’s maligned provincial twangs over well-educated Parisian speech. The law, which was passed after its first reading on Thursday night, places discrimination due to accent on a par with race, gender or handicap. Those who flout it also face a €45,000 fine. Tabled by MPs in President Emmanuel Macron's centrist political party, the law notably seeks to counter prejudice in the workplace against regional and lower-class accents. The issues of “accent discrimination” came to a head in recent months after the appointment in July of Jean Castex, the new prime minister, who is a rarity among senior politicians in having retained his thick southwestern accent. Christophe Euzet, MP for the Mediterranean port of Sète and lead sponsor of the bill, said he had been appalled at the way Mr Castex, a former top civil servant and mayor of Pyrenean town Prades, had been mocked for his accent after taking the top government job. Northern French often equate southern accents with sun, aperitifs and idleness. Mr Euzet, a native of Perpignan with similar southwestern tones to Mr Castex, said it was time to end stereotypes in which a southerner is seen as "a fun guy ... not there to talk about serious things.” “Accents have no right of place in radio and television channels, in the world of politics and the helm of high office, administrations and French public businesses,” he added. Unlike in Britain, French media, in particular, has made no visible effort to employ newscasters and other prominent personalities with provincial twangs. During debates, MPs complained that TV personalities with southwestern accents were “relegated to the rugby column or the weather”. Patricia Mirallès, a Macron MP, whose parents were French from North Africa, recounted “painful” memories of being mocked for her pied-noir accent. Maina Sage, an MP from French Polynesia, denounced what she called “a form of racism” every time she opened her mouth in parliament. “Our nation, which often prides itself on the great diversity of its regions, paradoxically disappoints through the toned-down uniformity of public speech,” said Mr Euzet. The dominance of the Parisian accent is often equated with France notoriously centralised and urban administration whose failure to take into account the provincial mindset fuelled the “yellow vest” revolt two years ago.