Winter storm brings rare snowfall to the Las Vegas Strip
The snow dusted casino marquees and prompted revelers to erect a snowman near the famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.
The inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was splashed across the front pages of newspapers in the United States and around the world on Thursday, a day after they were sworn into office.
Thousands of national guardsmen were turfed out of the Capitol building on Thursday and sent to sleep in car parks, before being allowed back in late at night after complaints from lawmakers. Despite the quick reversal, two Republican governors commanded their troops home in protest. US Capitol police had ordered the reservists to vacate the building and set up camp outdoors or in nearby hotels, with thousands ending up stationed outside or in car parks. “Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed,” one of the guardsmen told Politico. The National Guard were brought into the US capital to provide security after Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6.
Transgender kids would be banned from playing on school sports teams for the gender with which they identify under a GOP-backed bill that advanced Thursday in Montana, one of more than a dozen states where lawmakers are proposing restrictions on athletics or gender-confirming health care for trans minors this year. The order immediately sparked a backlash from conservative groups, a split that reflects the deep divisions in the U.S. around transgender youth. Proponents of the Montana bill say allowing transgender athletes to compete can create an unfair playing field in middle and high schools, especially in girls' sports.
800 feet up in the sky, the Dreamy 6,000 square foot space offers panoramic views from the East River to the HudsonOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest
The evenly split Senate is having a hard time agreeing who's in charge.Georgia's two new Democratic senators were sworn in Wednesday, giving Republicans and Democrats 50 senators each, with Vice President Kamala Harris as a Democratic tiebreaker. The two parties are now working out a power-sharing agreement, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) commitment to the filibuster is standing in the way.McConnell on Thursday formally acknowledged Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as the chamber's new majority leader. But as he has been for days, McConnell again implored Democrats to preserve the filibuster that lets a senator extend debate and block a timely vote on a bill if there aren't 60 votes to stop it. Democrats "have no plans to gut the filibuster further, but argue it would be a mistake to take one of their tools off the table just as they're about to govern," Politico reports; More progressive senators do want to remove the option completely.If his filibuster demands aren't met, McConnell has threatened to block the Senate power-sharing agreement that would put Democrats in charge of the body's committees. But Democrats already seem confident in their newfound power, with Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) telling Politico that "Chuck Schumer is the majority leader and he should be treated like majority leader." Giving in to McConnell "would be exactly the wrong way to begin," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) echoed.Other Democrats shared their resistance to McConnell's demands in tweets. > McConnell is threatening to filibuster the Organizing Resolution which allows Democrats to assume the committee Chair positions. It's an absolutely unprecedented, wacky, counterproductive request. We won the Senate. We get the gavels.> > -- Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) January 21, 2021> So after Mitch McConnell changed the Senate rules at a blistering pace during his 6 years in charge, he is threatening to filibuster the Senate's organizing resolution unless the Democratic majority agrees to never change the rules again.> > Huh.> > -- Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 21, 2021More stories from theweek.com Trump's team fired the White House chief usher right before Biden took office, maybe at Biden's request 7 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's White House exit Biden has stopped construction on Trump's border wall, but the fate of outstanding contracts is unclear
Southlake is known for its top-ranked public schools. But a heated fight over a diversity plan has some parents questioning their future in the city.
The move prompted an outcry from some troops.
President Joe Biden signed 15 executive actions on Wednesday hours after he was sworn into office, many aimed at sweeping away former President Donald Trump's policies, including mandating masks on federal property.
President Biden pushed back on a reporter at a press briefing on Thursday, who questioned whether the new administration’s coronavirus vaccine goal is ambitious enough. Biden has set a goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans during his first 100 days in office. During the press conference, Biden called the Trump administration’s distribution of coronavirus vaccines a “dismal failure so far,” warning that “things are going to continue to get worse before they get better.” However, the seven-day rolling average for coronavirus vaccine doses administered to Americans currently sits at 912,000, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker. (On Wednesday alone, 1.6 million doses were administered.) This indicates that the Biden administration is not far from its goal of vaccinating one million Americans per day. On Thursday, Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller asked Biden if the vaccination goal was “high enough,” since “that’s basically where the U.S. is right now.” “When I announced it you all said it wasn’t possible. Come on, give me a break, man,” Biden responded. “It’s a good start, a hundred million.” Internal projections from the Trump administration showed that the U.S. could administer at least 170 million doses by the end of April, two Trump administration officials told Bloomberg. During the press conference, Biden also announced that he would invoke the Defense Production Act to “accelerate the making of everything that’s needed to protect, test, and vaccinate and the care of our people.” Biden warned that the death toll from coronavirus infections would hit 500,000 in February. Over 408,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 as of Thursday.
With just over 30 minutes left in his presidency, now-former President Trump issued a full pardon to Albert J. Pirro, Jr., ex-husband of Fox News firebrand and Trump defender Jeanine Pirro.Why it matters: This was Trump's final act as president, and he issued the pardon during the inauguration of Joe Biden.Support safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.Details: Albert Pirro was sentenced to 29 months in federal prison in 2000 on charges of conspiracy and tax evasion. * The final pardon comes after Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations just after 1 a.m. on Wednesday, many of which went to his allies engulfed in corruption scandals. * The pardons include one for his former chief strategist Steve Bannon; former top Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy, and rapper Lil Wayne. Go deeper: The Swamp wins. Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.
Returned Honduran migrants are directing anger against their president this week after their U.S.-bound caravan was blocked by the region's security forces, accusing him of making their county unlivable while thwarting their escape to a better life. Honduras is reeling from two back-to-back hurricanes that devastated Central America in November, as well as an historic economic contraction on the back of coronavirus pandemic. President Juan Orlando Hernandez has also been under fire from U.S. prosecutors that have accused him of having ties to drug cartels, an allegation he has strongly denied.
A GoPro camera was found inside a bathroom and changing area at a Premier Athletics facility, which trains young cheerleaders, gymnasts and dancers in Franklin.
The latest jackpot-winning Powerball ticket, worth $731.1 million, was sold in a struggling coal mining town whose biggest previous claim to fame was being the hometown of baseball legend Lefty Grove. The store will get a $100,000 bonus for selling the ticket to the fifth-largest lottery prize in U.S. history. An even larger Mega Millions jackpot will be up for grabs Friday night.
Beau Biden, who served in the Guard, is buried at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Church cemetery in Greenville, Delaware.
Twitter suspended an account linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Friday after it made a post apparently threatening former US president Donald Trump. Earlier on Friday, the @khamenei_site account shared an image of a golfer resembling Mr Trump under the shadow of an aircraft. The accompanying message threatened vengeance for the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, whose assassination Mr Trump ordered in a US drone strike in Iraq last January. The tweet in Farsi repeated comments Ayatollah Khamenei made last month that “those who ordered the murder of General Suleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.” The unverified account is one of several believed to be run by the office of the 81-year-old leader. The tweet prompted calls for Twitter to suspend the Iranian leader's account, after the social media platform permanently suspended Mr Trump’s account earlier this month for posts inciting violence. Earlier this month Twitter removed a tweet by Ayatollah Khamenei questioning the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines from the US and the UK, saying the post violated its rules against coronavirus misinformation. "Importing vaccines made in the US or the UK is prohibited. They're completely untrustworthy," said the post in English on the unverified account @khamenei_ir, which shares the Supreme Leader's statements. That account, which has over 884,000 followers, and others associated with Ayatollah Khamenei are still online. Twitter briefly suspended several accounts belonging to Ayatollah Khamenei last March, after mistakenly identifying them as spam content.
Apparent U-turn by Pentagon officials could pose questions about police response
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) should carry out an internal investigation into the conduct of its case against former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos. Lopez Obrador said the investigation should look into who within DEA "fabricated" the case, after the Mexican attorney general's recent decision not to press charges against Cienfuegos. Lopez Obrador said the hundreds of pages of evidence the DEA provided, which he controversially ordered to be shared publicly, was riddled with inconsistencies.
The White House's top adviser on Covid-19 has said he feels liberated now that Donald Trump has left office – because now he can finally tell Americans the truth about the virus. In extraordinary remarks to reporters at a briefing on the virus, Anthony Fauci said that President Joe Biden's administration would be "completely transparent, open and honest" with the public rather than "point fingers", like his predecessor. Dr Fauci, who often clashed publicly with Mr Trump, also said he felt "really uncomfortable" about things said by the White House as it dealt with the virus that has now killed more than 400,000 Americans, including announcements on hydroxychloroquine – and he said he feared "repercussions" from Mr Trump if he misspoke. Speaking at his first White House briefing as President Biden's top Covid adviser, Dr Fauci was asked to compare his experience under the previous administration to the new one. The 80-year-old initially said he wasn't sure he could "extrapolate" based on first impressions. But then he said: "One of the things that was very clear as recently as about 15 minutes ago, when I was with the president, is that one of the things that we're going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest. "If things go wrong, not point fingers but to correct them and to make everything we do be based on science and evidence."
Senators expressed outrage after troops were asked to move their rest area and some ended up in a parking garage. The troops later returned.
A prominent Chicago family law attorney who was charged last summer with sexually assaulting a colleague has been charged with doing the same thing to two other women, including a client who says he told her that if he didn't have sex with him, she'd lose custody of her children. Prosecutors outlined the new charges against David Pasulka, 61, during a court hearing on Wednesday that ended with Judge Susana Ortiz setting his new bail amount at $100,000 on charges of sexual assault, aggravated sex assault and criminal sexual abuse. Pasulka, who was already out on bond in the initial case, was released from custody after posting the new amount, according to the Cook County Jail.