
President Biden on Wednesday delivered a eulogy at the funeral of former Sen. John Warner, R-Va., at Washington National Cathedral. “I had the privilege of serving with John for three decades in the United States Senate,” Biden said. “While we represented different political parties, I can say without hesitation John was a man of conscience, character and honor, with a deep commitment to God and country.”

Last summer, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci was reportedly sent mail containing white powder that "literally blew up in his face," Politico writes, per a preview of the new book Nightmare Scenario by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. Luckily, chemical testing came back negative for both anthrax and ricin, but not before Fauci was hosed "down to his skivvies in a chemical lab," standing "naked in what looked like a kiddy pool" while his team awaited results, per Politico. Previously reported excerpts of Nightmare Scenario revealed Trump once joked he hoped COVID-19 would "take out" former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and had even proposed the U.S. house COVID-19 patients at Guantanamo Bay.

A Kansas City man convicted of stabbing his father to death three years ago was sentenced Thursday to a term of life in prison, according to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office. Curtis V. Lee, 43, was found guilty by a jury in April on charges of first degree murder and armed criminal action, court records show. Lee was arrested by Independence police in the early hours of April 18, 2018 in the 3500 block of South Lynn Court after officers responded to a residence and found Charles and Clyde Burton — Lee's uncle and father — stabbed to death.
Delivering remarks after announcing a deal with a group of Republican senators on infrastructure, President Biden responded to a question about trusting Republicans on the agreement. Biden said, “I've worked with a lot of these people who are in the room. I know them.

The virus that causes Covid-19 could have started spreading in China as early as October 2019, two months before the first case was identified in the central city of Wuhan, a new study showed on Friday. Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal. The most likely date for the virus's emergence was November 17, 2019, and it had probably already spread globally by January 2020, they estimated.

Royce Wood, the man accused of shooting a Rhome police officer June 13, was arrested without incident by the U.S. Marshals Service in Batesville, Arkansas, early Thursday morning, according to the Wise County Sheriff's Office. Wood and his girlfriend, Tiffany Caswell, were arrested together for separate charges against them in Wise County. Caswell and Wood are believed to have been involved in a home invasion robbery on Coyote Trail on June 12, Akin told the Wise County Messenger.

Parts of Sydney's central and eastern suburbs, including Bondi Beach, will be locked down after a jump in Covid cases. The city is battling to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant. It is the first lockdown in Australia's largest city - home to 5.3 million people - this year.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday said he is not convinced that Kevin Strickland is innocent, making him the first official to publicly doubt prosecutors' assertions that the Kansas City man was wrongly convicted four decades ago. In an interview with 41 Action News, Parson said he does not know if Strickland, 62, is “innocent or not” in a 1978 triple murder in Kansas City that the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office now says he did not commit. Parson's comments came more than 40 days after Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced her office had concluded Strickland, who was 18 when he was arrested, is “factually innocent” in the April 25, 1978, shooting at 6934 S. Benton Ave.

An Australian man whose mother died while he was in a hotel quarantine has gone on hunger strike to draw attention to the impossible situations facing people who seek exemptions from Covid restrictions on compassionate grounds. James Turbitt, who lives in Belgium, made an emergency dash home last week after he learned his 62-year-old mother was in hospital in Perth, Western Australia. “This is probably the most compelling reason for a compassionate exemption," Mr Turbitt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Three Texas men who used a dating app to target gay men to carjack, kidnap and commit other hate crimes have been sentenced to federal prison ranging from 11 years to 22 years. A fourth Texas member of the group is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 6 for committing hate crimes against gay men. He faces a maximum of 26 years in prison.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the bipartisan group of lawmakers who negotiated an infrastructure deal. President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the group reached a deal. The New York lawmaker called out the group for its lack of diversity.

An overworked 911 call-taker didn't send a Fort Worth police officer on a June 1 domestic call that ended in a double-murder and suicide, according to a news report. Ex-911 operator Kate Colley told KXAS-TV that the stressed 911 dispatcher received a call from Holly Beverly, who reported that her estranged husband was on his way to her apartment in west Fort Worth to harm her. The operator didn't send an officer because the suspect wasn't actually on the scene yet, Colley told the TV station.

But hidden inside the code of these games is a piece of crypto-mining malware called Crackonosh, which secretly generates digital money once the game has been downloaded. Criminals have made more than $2m (£1.4m) with the scam, researchers say. The researchers, at Avast, say the "cracked" games are spreading Crackonosh fast and the cyber-security software company is now detecting about 800 cases on computers every day.

A man has filed a lawsuit against the Kansas City Police Department alleging he was “violently” thrown to the ground during a wrongful arrest last year. Murray Anderson, Jr., 47, claims Officer Jose Romero Jr. placed a knee on his neck after he was handcuffed and taken to the ground following a nearby assault. The assault Romero and other officers responded to occurred on the afternoon of May 24, 2020, outside reStart Inc., a shelter for the homeless community at 918 E. 9th St., according to the lawsuit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court in May.

A federal judge on Thursday weighed whether to dismiss Dominion's defamation lawsuits. Dominion is suing all three Trump allies over election conspiracy theories. A federal judge heard arguments Thursday over whether to allow multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems to proceed against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

The Murdaugh family will soon be offering a $100,000 reward for information that will lead to an arrest and conviction in Paul and Maggie's murders, a Columbia lawyer told The State Media Co. and The Island Packet on Thursday. A local towing company owner also confirmed with The Island Packet that it towed a Chevrolet Suburban from the Murdaugh property to the Colleton County Sheriff's Office the morning after the killings. These are the latest developments as the June 7 double homicide investigation of Paul Murdaugh and his mother Maggie outside their home in Colleton County approaches its third week.
Britney Spears got real with her fans on Thursday, writing on Instagram that based on the pictures and videos she posts, "my life seems to look and be pretty amazing," but she doesn't want people to "think my life is perfect because IT'S DEFINITELY NOT AT ALL." During a public hearing on Wednesday, the 39-year-old singer spoke out against the court-ordered conservatorship she's been under for the last 13 years, calling it "abusive." The experience has been "traumatizing," Spears said, and she is depressed. "I apologize for pretending like I've been okay these past two years," she added.

Firms which have had most of their staff working from home throughout the pandemic are beginning to share their plans for when coronavirus restrictions end. Almost all of 50 of the UK's biggest employers say they do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time. However, Goldman Sachs has told its UK bankers they need to be ready to return to the office with boss David Solomon describing working from home as "an aberration".

Kris Rodeman finally got to see her son Wednesday. The mother of the 16-year-old was beside herself with worry, angry and concerned that her son, currently in the Southwest Florida Juvenile Justice Center, is in pain. At issue is the shocking a week ago of her son with a Taser stun gun in the San Carlos Park neighborhood where his girlfriend lives.

Schumer and Pelosi are plowing ahead with a separate spending package without the GOP. A bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure deal is in sight after weeks of sputtering negotiations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that a bipartisan infrastructure plan won't get voted on in the House until the Senate approves a Democrat-only package.

A North Carolina woman won a top lottery price after settling for a different ticket. Joanne Pacheco bought the winning “7” scratch-off lottery ticket from the Lakeland St. Mini Mart in Durham over the weekend after the one she wanted to buy was sold out, according to the North Carolina Education Lottery. “They didn't have my tickets,” she told lottery officials.

When the Duke of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey that his family had “literally” cut him off financially, sources close to the Prince of Wales could not hide their surprise. It has now emerged that the Prince of Wales gave the Duke and Duchess a “substantial sum” when they stepped back from their official roles, apparently contradicting Prince Harry's claim that they had only been able to afford their new life in California because of his inheritance from his mother. The Clarence House annual review revealed that Prince Charles gave a total of £4.5 million to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the last financial year, down from £5.6 million the previous year.

Workers linked to a US company were interrogated by Chinese officials in April, sources told Axios. The workers were linked to nonprofit Verité, which investigates labor abuses in global supply chains. The State Department said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports.

The British billionaire's daughter-in-law who killed a top police officer in Belize is breaking her silence to tell the story of how she accidentally shot him—and how she is now locked in a battle to see her own children. “I feel like I'm living in a movie and I don't know what the endgame is,” Jasmine Hartin, the partner of Lord Michael Ashcroft, told the Daily Mail in her first interview since her arrest. Hartin is charged with manslaughter by negligence in the shooting death of Police Superintendent Henry Jemmott last month—a sensational case that has gripped the Central American country and made headlines around the world.

WASHINGTON – Defendants facing defamation lawsuits brought by Dominion Voting Systems argued that the First Amendment protects them from being sued over claims they made about the 2020 presidential election because Dominion – a private company that manufactures voting machines – is a public figure that took on a governmental role. Sidney Powell, a lawyer and conservative firebrand; Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's personal attorney; and Mike Lindell, founder and chief executive of MyPillow and a prominent Trump supporter, are each facing billion-dollar lawsuits accusing them of falsely claiming that Dominion rigged the last election to help President Joe Biden.
“The pandemic has unequivocally proven the public health value of masks. And they should stick around in certain situations.”
“With the steady thrum of anti-mask sentiment in the U.S., it’s highly unlikely that they will continue to be a ubiquitous sight.”
“Wearing masks on airplanes or other modes of transit ... can help keep everyone safe.”
“Just because masks are common in many other nations ... is hardly a reason to emulate the practice.”
“The fact that the flu all but vanished ... is not evidence alone that masks were responsible.”