WorldINSIDERMan, 41, had no teeth and could barely speak after his mother locked him in their suburban apartment for 28 years, say reports
A mother, aged 70, has been arrested on suspicion of unlawful deprivation of liberty and grievous bodily harm. A relative discovered the man in a Stockholm flat covered in "urine, dirt, and dust," according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen. According to prosecutors, the 70-year-old was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of unlawful deprivation of liberty and grievous bodily harm.
PoliticsThe TelegraphFormer Bill Clinton associate claims ex-president did visit Jeffrey Epstein’s private island
Former US president Bill Clinton did visit Jeffrey Epstein's infamous private island despite his claims to the contrary, his former associate has claimed. Doug Band, who worked for Mr Clinton for around two decades, claimed the former president flew on Epstein's jet dozens of times and visited the convicted sex offender's private Carribean island in January 2003. Although ignorant of Epstein's crimes at the time, Mr Band claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that he attempted to keep his boss away from the financier after a 2002 trip to Africa.
U.S.The WeekFlorida attorney reportedly under investigation after telling Republicans to change 'your address for the next 2 months' for Georgia runoffs
A Florida attorney is reportedly under investigation after trying to register to vote in Georgia ahead of the January runoff election and encouraging other Republicans to change "your address for the next two months" so they can vote in the state as well, WSB-TV reports. Attorney Bill Price in a Facebook video that has since been deleted was reportedly seen speaking to members of the Bay County GOP in Florida last month, saying "we have to do whatever it takes" to "hold the Senate" and that he's "moving to Georgia" for the January runoff. "And if that means changing your address for the next two months, so be it," Price says.
U.S.ReutersFire sweeps through Southern California canyon, residents flee
A blaze that ignited overnight in a single-family home injured two firefighters and forced residents of a rustic Southern California canyon to flee their homes on Thursday, as flames tore across some 4,000 acres of dry brush and wooded hillsides. The Bond Fire, which broke out at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, was driven through Silverado Canyon in Orange County by gusty Santa Ana winds. "There were two firefighters that were injured while battling the Bond Fire this afternoon," the Orange County Fire Authority said on Twitter.
PoliticsAssociated PressTrump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info
The official serving as President Donald Trump's eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press. Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago.
U.S.NBC NewsCalifornia governor introduces new stay-at-home order amid Covid-19 surge
California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a new regional stay-at-home order on Thursday, days after he said that most of the state's intensive care beds could be over capacity within weeks amid a surge in coronavirus cases. The order, which will be applied by region, will require bars, wineries, hair salons and other nonessential businesses across five areas to close for three weeks once the region's intensive care capacity falls below 15 percent, he said. Statewide travel will also be temporarily halted, Newsom said, but schools will remain open and he encouraged people to visit parks and exercise.
HealthThe WeekPfizer will only deliver half the vaccines it expected to this year
Pfizer Inc. will only be able to deliver half the COVID-19 vaccine doses it promised to ship by the end of the year, the company said Thursday. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE projected it would distribute 100 million vaccines worldwide in 2020, but has cut that to 50 million. "Scaling up the raw material supply chain took longer than expected," a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, and the vaccine's clinical trial finished "somewhat later than the initial projection" as well.
U.S.USA TODAYWisconsin court binds Kyle Rittenhouse over for trial on six counts in Kenosha shootings
A lawyer for Kyle Rittenhouse used Thursday's preliminary hearing to offer a preview of the self-defense arguments he will raise at a trial over shootings that killed two people and wounded a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August. Rittenhouse, 17, who was freed on $2 million bail on Nov. 20, appeared at the hearing via Zoom with his attorney, Mark Richards, from Richards' office in Racine, Wisconsin.
- PoliticsAssociated Press
Iowa Democrat to challenge 6-vote loss in appeal to US House
A Democratic congressional candidate who trailed by six votes after a recount said Wednesday she will forgo further legal challenges in Iowa and instead appeal directly to the U.S. House for additional recount proceedings. Rita Hart's campaign had until Wednesday afternoon to contest the election under Iowa law following Monday's certification of results in which Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was declared the winner of the closest House race in decades. An election contest in Iowa would have set in motion the formation of a five-judge panel that would have been required to rule on who won the race by Tuesday, Dec. 8.
LifestyleArchitectural Digest10 Remote Airbnbs As Stunning As They Are Secluded
From a private island to a tiny Vermont tree house Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
PoliticsThe IndependentBuilders of Trump’s wall on Mexico border hold crisis talks after Biden pledges to end construction
Federal agencies building Donald Trump's partially-completed wall along the southern border with Mexico are said to be holding urgent meetings as they prepare for a stop-work order under a Joe Biden presidency. Quoting officials at the US Customs and Border Protection and the US Army Corps of Engineers, The Washington Post reports that both agencies acknowledge the wall will remain incomplete in areas that construction crews will be unable to finish before inauguration day on 20 January. While termination clauses allow the government to break contracts, companies ordered to down tools will be entitled to compensation from a Biden administration for costs of "demobilization" to withdraw workers and equipment.
CelebrityINSIDERA Houston Instagram influencer was found dead and naked on the side of the road. Her mother believes she was murdered.
Alexis Robinault, an influencer in Houston also known as Alexis Sharkey, was found dead over the weekend. "I believe solely that she was murdered, because of the manner in which her body was left," her mother, Stacey Robinault, told Insider in an interview. A 26-year-old Instagram influencer from Houston, Texas, was found dead on the side of the road on Saturday.
PoliticsThe WeekWisconsin Supreme Court declines to hear Trump's election challenge
The Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear a case from President Trump's legal team that seeks to challenge the state's presidential election results, The Washington Post reports. On Thursday, the court ruled that Trump's team should have taken up the matter with a lower court. The ruling is yet another blow to Trump's longshot effort to overturn his election loss in several states; he has claimed voter fraud led to President-elect Joe Biden's victory, but there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
U.S.USA TODAY'The wettest day ever': At least 6 people missing, homes destroyed after record-breaking Southeast Alaska rainstorm
Evacuations and search and rescue efforts were underway Wednesday after a record-breaking rainstorm swept across Southeast Alaska, triggering mudslides and widespread flooding. Multiple precipitation records were broken Tuesday across the region, including a single-day rainfall record from 1946, according to the National Weather Service in Juneau. Tuesday] was the wettest day ever recorded at our weather stations at the airports of Skagway, Haines and in Juneau, Meteorologist Aaron Jacobs told USA TODAY, adding that some areas have seen 30 to 40 inches of snow.
PoliticsReutersIndonesia sees new daily record 8,369 coronavirus cases
Indonesia recorded its biggest daily rise in coronavirus infections on Thursday with 8,369 new cases, according to its COVID-19 task force, which attributed the jump to a lag in some areas reporting cases. The sharp spike – more than 2,000 cases higher than the previous record on Sunday – brings Indonesia's infections total to 557,877, among the highest in Asia. Cases have steadily risen since March but the volume of new daily infections has increased in recent weeks, with record daily infections in four of the past nine days.
U.S.Charlotte Observer14-year-old screams in middle of night when man grabs her through window, NC mom says
A 14-year-old was sleeping when a man reached into her window in North Carolina, according to her mom. Tanisha Washington said it was just after 2 a.m. on Oct. 28 when she heard her teen daughter scream. “I knew something was wrong, and I knew that she was scared,” she told McClatchy News in a phone interview on Wednesday.
WorldThe IndependentFauci apologises for ‘misunderstanding’ after suggesting UK rushed Covid vaccine approval
Dr Anthony Fauci said he has “great faith" in the UK's scientists and regulators, as he “set the record straight” on comments which seemed to suggest the UK had rushed through its approval of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. America's top infectious diseases expert said on Wednesday evening he did “not mean to imply any sloppiness, even though it came out that way”. Dr Fauci had said UK health authorities did not scrutinise vaccine trial data as “carefully” as US officials have been doing, after the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) approved Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine on Tuesday, making Britain the first western country to green light the injection.
- PoliticsYahoo News Video
Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. is ‘embarrassed’ by misinformation surrounding election integrity in his state
As a pair of critical Senate runoff races approach on Jan. 5, Georgia Republican leaders find themselves in a conundrum, trying to balance indulging President Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud with supporting state GOP election officials. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is frustrated with the misinformation about the election process in his state. I'm actually embarrassed at the amount of misinformation that continues to show up on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts and blogs that takes literally 10 seconds to debunk,” Duncan told Yahoo News.
U.S.Business InsiderMore than half of the money from the Paycheck Protection Program went to just 5% of recipients
Over half the funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) went to just 5% of total recipients. In the past, Republicans have said the program has been working as intended, but banks have reported record business-loan fraud suspicion in the months of June and July. Over half the funds from the US' Paycheck Protection Program went to just 5% of recipients, according to new data released by the Treasury Department on Tuesday.
WorldThe New York TimesHe Escaped Death as a Kamikaze Pilot. 70 Years Later, He Told His Story.
For more than six decades, Kazuo Odachi had a secret: At the age of 17, he became a kamikaze pilot, one of thousands of young Japanese men tasked to give their lives in last-ditch suicide missions near the end of World War II. As he built a family and a career as a Tokyo police officer, he kept his secret from virtually everyone, even his wife, who knew only that he had served as a Japanese Navy pilot. The experience, he felt, would be too hard to explain to a society that mostly viewed the kamikaze as maniacal zealots who volunteered for an unthinkable sacrifice.
PoliticsThe IndependentIvanka Trump calls AG probe example of ‘vindictiveness’ and a ‘waste of taxpayer dollars’
Ivanka Trump called the corruption investigation into her father's inauguration a 'politically motivated' 'waste of taxpayer dollars' after she was herself deposed. Ms Trump, the president's daughter and senior adviser, was deposed on Tuesday as part of Washington DC attorney general Karl A. Racine's investigation which accuses the president's 2017 inauguration committee of vastly overpaying for space at a Trump hotel in DC She tweeted her frustrations on Thursday, as well as a screen shot of a 2016 email she says she sent to a senior employee at the hotel asking he charge the committee a “fair market rate.
PoliticsThe WeekTrump gives 45-minute speech about voter fraud — which 1 analyst says he'd be making in court if it had any merit
President Trump has combined dozens of his favorite conspiracy theories about the 2020 election into one incredibly debunked Facebook video. In a 45-minute video posted Wednesday, Trump repeated debunked lie after lie about the 2020 election, including claims that Dominion voting machines were rigged; Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security had looked into claims about the machines changing ballots and found no evidence. Trump also falsely suggested mail-in ballots were somehow rigged against him, despite it being known before the election that mail-in ballots would tend to go for President-elect Joe Biden, and that there have been no instances of widespread fraud found since.
BusinessBusiness InsiderI just flew on the first Boeing 737 Max passenger flight since the plane was grounded. The flaws that killed 346 people were the least of my concerns.
American Airlines operated the demonstration flight a few weeks before it is planning to reintroduce the Max to regular customer service. In March 2019, the Boeing 737 Max was grounded worldwide after the second of two fatal crashes caused by a flaw in the airplane. Today, I climbed aboard the plane for its first passenger flight of 2020, which the Federal Aviation Administration allowed after 20 months of inspections, deliberations, hearings, redesigns, lawsuits, and debates.
BusinessReutersThe new black gold? Big Oil bets on retail networks in an electric era
The renewable energy and power businesses oil companies are moving into, however, tend to have lower returns on investment, making it important for firms such as BP and Shell to find ways to boost their overall returns in low-carbon economies. That's why Shell plans to expand its retail network by more than 20% to 55,000 sites worldwide by 2025. BP aims to increase its network of filling stations by nearly 50% to 29,000 by 2030 and boost its EV charging network to 70,000 points.
PoliticsThe WeekTrump reportedly derailed a GOP meeting about the Georgia Senate runoffs by praising QAnon
President Trump reportedly needs no encouragement to start praising the dangerous, baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. The most pressing matter for federal Republicans right now is the upcoming Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will determine control of the body. Trump is reportedly not thrilled with Georgia and that fact that it flipped for President-elect Joe Biden, and is publicly upset with Republican leaders in the state who haven't somehow overturned the election for him.
“This metastasizing debt crisis has had tremendous social costs. An entire generation has been set back.”
“It is not the government’s job to step in and rescue those who took on more debt than their future incomes would support.”
“Many student-borrowers need relief, but well-off borrowers who are thriving — thanks to their college degrees — do not.”
“It will stimulate the lagging economy. And though not everyone will directly benefit, the country as a whole will improve.”
“Canceling student debt would cost billions of dollars each year and would exacerbate, not lessen, economic inequalities.”