A small California city that was overrun by visitors four years ago when heavy winter rains produced a “super bloom” of wild poppies has a message for the public after this year's deluge: Do not come. The poppies are beginning to bloom but so far on a small scale — and the canyon where they grow and parking areas are now completely off-limits, Lake Elsinore Mayor Natasha Johnson told a press conference where she recounted the chaos of 2019. Poppies are found throughout California in spring and summer, but usually not as extensively as the blankets of gold that in 2019 covered slopes near Lake Elsinore, a city of 71,000 in Riverside County about 60 miles (96 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.
For the past year and a half, with scant public attention, squads of archaeologists digging at the Miami River site of a planned Related Group residential tower complex have unearthed remarkable finds, consisting of thousands of fragmentary prehistoric tools and artifacts, rare and well-preserved animal and plant remnants, vestiges of ancient structures and human remains — including some relics dating back to the earliest days of civilization on the planet. The discovery, they say, may be the most significant in a series of archaeological finds made at the mouth of the Miami River in the past 25 years that include the Miami Circle National Historic Landmark, thought to be around 2,000 years old. “There are artifacts going back sequentially over those thousands of years,” said William Pestle, an archaeologist and chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Miami, who is not involved in the excavation at the Related site but is familiar with the discoveries there.
Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible. “Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden's address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday. Greene did not discuss the Pentagon disclosure that three Chinese balloons passed over the US during the presidency of Donald Trump, only for the Trump administration to fail to spot them.
A Canadian woman who works at a grocery store in Ontario was left shocked after she received a racist letter at her workplace. Nadine Davis has been working at the FreshCo grocery store in Peterborough, Ont. as a cashier for nearly 18 years. In an interview with The Peterborough Examiner, Davis explained she was "shocked" and fought back tears while saying she couldn't talk about it.
At a contentious city council meeting Monday night, Goddard Mayor Hunter Larkin invoked the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, suggesting that he—Larkin—was also a visionary attempting to “change the world.” In a move that one Goddard resident likened to “Germany in 1935,” Larkin manipulated existing rules to reclaim a position he'd lost in May 2022 following a news report detailing questionable ties to a local real estate family. After his ouster in 2022, Larkin was arrested for DUI, then launched a bid for the statehouse, promising he would spend his time focusing on “voter integrity, the right to bear arms, protecting the unborn and keeping Critical Race Theory (CRT) out of schools.”
The face of a 2,000-year-old ancient Nabataean woman has been fully reconstructed in what is thought to be a world-first. A team of archaeologists and academics have given us some insight into the appearance of the Arab Nabataean civilisation. The woman shown is known as Hinat, and is thought to have been a prominent figure who died around the first century BC.
A former Victoria's Secret sales manager is opening up about a little-known secret in the retail world — one that she hopes will help curb store theft in the future. According to Kenzie Rae (@kenzieraesch), she used to work at an unnamed Victoria's Secret location where she witnessed many instances of shoplifting. In fact, she estimates that someone would steal from the store at least once a day, which resulted in high losses for the struggling lingerie company.
A federal lawsuit was filed Monday against the Kenosha Unified School District, City of Kenosha and a Kenosha police officer on behalf of a 12-year-old girl and her father. In a 14-page complaint, the girl's attorney, Drew DeVinney, says former officer Shawn Guetschow used "unreasonable and excessive" force and that he "acted with malice or in reckless disregard" of the girl's rights, when he restrained her during a lunch room fight, by placing his knee on her neck for more than 20 seconds. Guetschow had been working part-time as a school security guard for the school district, while also serving as a Kenosha police officer.
An intruder broke into Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where presidential Air Force One planes are kept, and was soon fired upon by a base resident Monday. The individual gained access to the base Monday morning, before being spotted at a housing area inside the base. JBA houses AF1 jets and other presidential aircraft.
A woman on TikTok is blowing the lid off of something that recently happened to her in an effort to expose workplace exploitation. “I had to calm down before making this video, because the audacity,” says Kiki (@kikirough), before explaining in her TikTok that she was one of the thousands of Americans laid off about a month ago. In a nutshell, Kiki says the CEO was in a bind and asked her to do something that no one else in the company knew how to do after her departure.
The IRS is advising millions of taxpayers to hold off on filing their tax returns until the agency can issue guidance on whether state rebate checks issued in 2022 will count as taxable income. Last year, 19 states approved stimulus or rebate payments, and the IRS still hasn't figured out what tax treatment will apply to those funds. "The IRS is aware of questions involving special tax refunds or payments made by states in 2022; we are working with state tax officials as quickly as possible to provide additional information and clarity for taxpayers,” the IRS said in a statement.
An elementary school principal and PE teacher are no longer teaching children in Banks County after an investigation found allegations they had sex on campus are true. A third-party investigation, requested by Banks County Superintendent Dr. Ann Hopkins, began after Banks County Elementary School Principal Dr. Dana Simmons raised concerns that PE teacher Dylan Charles had bugged her office. The report states that Dr. Simmons believed Charles had details on Board of Education activities that he should not have.
Porn star Ron Jeremy was committed to a state mental health hospital after being found incompetent to stand trial on rape and other charges, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles District Attorney said on Tuesday. Jeremy can be held for up to two years, said Greg Risling, spokesperson for the district attorney's office. The 69-year-old had been charged with 30 counts of rape and other sexual misconduct stemming from incidents in the Los Angeles area over a 23-year period.
A company called Tomorrow Biostasis is focusing on human cryopreservation in the hopes it can eventually reverse death. Liquid nitrogen is the main ingredient used to ensure cryopreservation. The waiting list for Tomorrow Biostasis, a cryopreservation startup based in Germany, is in the hundreds.
Kim Jong Un had not been seen in public for 36 days, fueling speculation about his health. But North Korea's leader attended a meeting with military officials on Monday, reports said. He was discussing war strategies as tensions rise around the Korean peninsula, the reports said.
A South Florida Lyft driver who went missing more than a week ago has died, his daughter confirmed Tuesday. Lindsay DiBetta posted on Facebook that the family would be announcing information on services for her father, Gary Levin, in the next few days. “The stories I have received about him from friends, family and complete strangers over the last week have lifted me up more than you can ever realize.”
1. On why the US doesn't need free healthcare:
TikTok user Surya Garg shared a story about being asked to switch seats on a plane. Garg says she was asked to move seats so a mom could sit with her teenager, but she refused. The video created debate and reignited popular flight etiquette discourse on the app.
Former President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Tuesday, seizing on a story that his rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination partied with underage students when he worked as a teacher at a Georgia high school. In five successive posts Tuesday to his social media site, Truth Social, Trump went after DeSantis. Two of them referenced a story published by the far-right website Hillreporter.com that claimed DeSantis had been photographed "partying with underaged students" at the Darlington School, a private K-12 school in Rome, Ga., where DeSantis taught from 2001-02.
Attorneys for Gabby Petito's family have released a previously unseen photo of blood on her face taken during a Utah domestic violence stop just weeks before her suspected murder at the hands of ex-fiance Brian Laundrie. The law firm Parker & McConkie first described the existence of the photo in a November 2022 wrongful death lawsuit against the Moab City Police Department, which encountered the travel-blogging couple on Aug. 12, 2021, after a witness reported seeing Laundrie hitting Petito and trying to take her phone and drive off without her outside the Moonflower Co-op, an organic grocer off the city's main drag. The photo was taken by Petito herself shortly before the stop, and it was recovered from her phone, according to the law firm.
“Daily Show” guest host and comedian Chelsea Handler tore into Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after the conspiracy theorist complained that her job is “practically year-round” and doesn't allow lawmakers to be “regular people.” Greene, who last year spoke at a white nationalist event, also griped that she meets people who tell her “crazy things... that they believe because they read it on the internet.” “Well, if that's not the pot calling the kettle QAnon,” Handler replied.
A rancher who lives near Arizona's border with Mexico is being held on a charge of first-degree murder in last week's fatal shooting of a man tentatively identified as a Mexican citizen. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's office in Nogales, Arizona, confirmed Monday that George Alan Kelly, 73, was arrested last week in the killing. Authorities believe the victim was Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, 48, who lived just south of the border in Nogales, Mexico, because of a Mexican voter registration card he carried.
ABC's Jonathan Karl called out Sen. Marco Rubio during a tense exchange about the Chinese spy balloon. Rubio said Biden should not have "waited so long" to tell people about the balloon. ABC anchor Jonathan Karl called out Sen. Marco Rubio during a tense exchange on Sunday about the Chinese spy balloon.
PLYMOUTH − Attorneys painted two diametrically different pictures in a court hearing Tuesday of the woman accused of strangling her three children in her Duxbury home last month. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, on the contrary, said Lindsay Clancy knew exactly what she was doing when she "created the situation" to kill her three children, and suggested she was of sound mind. Clancy, 32, was arraigned Tuesday on two charges of murder in Plymouth District Court, where she appeared via a Zoom call from a hospital bed.
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday is likely to be one of the deadliest this decade, seismologists said, with a more than 100 km (62 miles) rupture between the Anatolian and Arabian plates. Here is what scientists said happened beneath the earth's surface and what to expect in the aftermath: WHERE DID THE EARTHQUAKE ORIGINATE? The epicentre was about 26 km east of the Turkish city of Nurdagi at a depth of about 18 km on the East Anatolian Fault.
“In the current housing crisis, families are faced with frequent moves, evictions, and homelessness.”
“Rent control restricts supply and is economic madness.”
“Should we simply allow the cycles of displacement and segregation to occur without any policy intervention?”
“Rent control is a mistake … Even if it provides short-term relief. It eventually hurts the very people it’s trying to help.”
“The law already protects homeowners from unchecked market forces. It’s time for the law to better protect renters too.”