Winter Weather Advisory For Northern North Texas Counties In Effect 10PM Tuesday
People in McKinney and north of DFW got a taste Tuesday morning of what everyone in North Texas could be getting later in the week.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who excoriated former President Donald Trump over the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot less than two weeks ago, said on Thursday that he would "absolutely" vote for Trump if he became the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. McConnell, who Trump blasted last week as "a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack," said he expects to see an open contest for the Republican White House nomination in 2024 but showed no hesitation in backing Trump when asked whether he would vote for him as nominee.
In a blow to Democrats, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the chamber cannot include President Joe Biden's proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage in a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill the party aims to pass without Republican votes, lawmakers said on Thursday. Democrats and progressives had hoped to include the minimum wage increase in the legislation to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic and better compensate low-wage workers who have spent months on the front lines of the health crisis as essential workers. Biden is "disappointed in the decision," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement, and "will work with leaders in Congress to determine the best path forward because no one in this country should work full time and live in poverty."
Jason Ravnsborg charged with three misdemeanour counts after accident leading to death of 55-year-old pedestrian
The Trump backers Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and Mike Lindell face defamation lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic that may succeed, experts say.
It is looking ever more probable that Donald Trump will run for the White House again in 2024. His opponents, including some within the Republican Party, say four years is an eternity in politics and much can change. But, in reality it isn’t four years. Candidates will begin officially announcing their runs in early 2023. That's only two years from now. And they will be quietly cultivating donors and influential backers long before that. So it is actually quite a narrow window for anyone else to overhaul Mr Trump before his campaign juggernaut gets going. All eyes are on his speech this Sunday at CPAC, the annual conservative conference, which like Mr Trump has relocated from Washington to Florida. The speech will see him fully re-emerge from his post-presidential cocoon. Indications emanating from Mar-a-Lago suggest the speech will be designed to leave any would-be presidential nominees in no doubt whatsoever that he is still the presumptive first choice. An adviser told The Telegraph that Mr Trump has spent the last weeks taking a break, and practicing his golf swing, but is keen to re-engage in the fight. In terms of age, Mr Trump would be 78 on Election Day 2024. If successful, he would become the oldest person ever elected president. But he would only be six months older than Joe Biden was on Election Day 2020. Even Mitt Romney admitted this week that the former president would win easily if he decides to run. Mr Romney, who has twice voted to convict Mr Trump in impeachment trials, said: "I don't know if he'll run in 2024 or not, but if he does, I'm pretty sure he will win the nomination." There are a host of other contenders, but Mr Trump is far ahead of all of them in polls. Nikki Haley, his former UN ambassador and a 2024 hopeful, got a clear message of his thinking. After she criticised Mr Trump over the July 6 riot at the US Capitol he refused her request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago. Mike Pence, who as his vice president would be the obvious successor to Mr Trump, has declined an invitation to speak at CPAC. That was surprising as he usually speaks. Mr Pence is said to be planning to stay out of the public eye for at least six months. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz, who finished second to Mr Trump in the race for the Republican nomination in 2016, had been looking to go one better this time. Instead, he may have already fallen at the first hurdle following a disastrous decision to go on a family holiday to Cancun while Texas, the state he represents as a senator, was buckling under a devastating storm that left millions without power. (See video below)
From Meryl Streep to Jennifer Lawrence, not every star who won more than once deserved every Golden Globe award they received.
Ozan Kose/GettyMOSCOW—Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has announced that the military had attempted a coup on Thursday, the latest development in a country still recovering from last year’s lost war with Azerbaijan.Now, politicians and political analysts are speaking of Russia’s hand in the attempted coup, pointing to President Vladimir Putin’s strained relationship with Pashinyan. On Tuesday, Pushinyan had insulted Moscow by complaining about Russian missiles, an indirect criticism of the Kremlin’s strategy of waiting to intervene until Armenia was weakened in the conflict, despite its official status as a military ally.“They didn’t explode, or maybe 10 percent of them exploded,” Pashinyan said of the missiles on Tuesday. The military generals—already angry over Pashinyan’s firing of military generals in an effort to modernize the force—objected, setting off the conflict.According to political analyst Artur Paronyan, Russia’s General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov had made a call to his Armenian counterpart, General Onik Gasparyan, earlier in the day. “Moscow clearly signaled to General Gasparyan to get rid of our prime minister,” Paronyan told The Daily Beast.Led by General Gasparyan, dozens of generals signed a statement calling for Pashinyan’s removal over his alleged inability “to make adequate decisions in this crisis.” It marked the first direct intervention by the military in Armenia’s domestic politics since 2008, when 10 demonstrators were killed after the military clamped down on a protest in Yerevan’s Freedom Square.Armenia has healed from that tragedy, and has since changed course. Over the past decade, the country has developed a vibrant civil society, confronting some of its most acute social issues. But the threat of a war with Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has been up in the air for decades. Generations grew up preparing for the next war, and in September, the fighting began. It went on for six weeks, and Armenia was turned upside down.If Kim Kardashian Had an Armenian Man in Armenia, She’d Be At RiskAfter the war, thousands of bitter protesters crowded Yerevan’s center, blaming the government for the defeat and demanding Pashinyan’s resignation. A Russian-brokered ceasefire saved Armenia from defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh, but it also left Armenia desperately dependent on Russia for security.The opposition called for Pashinyan’s ouster, and was joined by the army on Wednesday. Many men in crowds of protesters wore military uniforms and said they would not leave Freedom Square until Pashinyan was gone. On Thursday, General Gasparyan published his statement formally calling for the prime minister’s resignation and criticizing him for “discrediting” the military.In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Pashinyan’s key rival, former Minister of Defense Vazgen Manukyan, claimed he had powerful support from the Russian military. “We blame Pashinyan for the total diplomatic failure in peace negotiations with Baku and for our defeat in the war against Azerbaijan’s aggression.” He added that he was “in touch with all the commanders,” and that he knows that “some operations [led by Pashinyan] were more than dubious.”“Everything that my army managed to win from 1992 to 1993, he lost. We plan to put Pashinyan on trial and investigate why we have lost territories and 5,000 lives,” he said. Manukyan also stressed his support for peaceful demonstrations only, as a civil war would devastate an already vulnerable Armenia.Many of Manukyan’s supporters are openly championing Russian support for the coup. “The war showed us that neither the United States nor France were here to save us. Moscow negotiated peace for us. Even now, Russian peacekeepers are on guard in the conflict zone,” a pro-Manukyan analyst, Stepan Danielyan, told The Daily Beast.Armenian leaders have had a hard time earning the trust of a disillusioned public. The public demanded justice for years after the massacre in Freedom Square, blaming the president at the time, Robert Kocharyan, for ordering the shootings. A velvet revolution swept Nikol Pashinyan, once a political prisoner, to power in 2018. The same year, a court ordered former President Kocharyan arrested on charges related to the shooting incident.“Putin considers Pashinyan a traitor and an enemy who failed in his promises many times,” Sergei Markov, a Kremlin analyst, told The Daily Beast.Markov explained how the conflict between Putin and Pashinyan goes beyond the missile insults. According to media reports, Putin had unsuccessfully lobbied for the release of his friend, former president Kocharyan, after his 2019 arrest.“Putin called Kocharyan on his birthday a few months ago to demonstrate what he thought of that arrest,” says Markov. “Now the Kremlin would like to see [Pashinyan] drink the entire glass of shame so everybody would see what happens to an American puppet.”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.
Erin Schaff/ReutersThe acting chief of the U.S. Capitol Police just came with the receipts.Testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee about the catastrophic breakdown that allowed thousands of MAGA rioters to breach the Capitol, Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman revealed that her predecessor called the House sergeant-at-arms, Paul Irving, at 12:58 p.m. to request the National Guard as rioters breaching the building and forced lawmakers into hiding.Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, called Irving again seven minutes later, according to phone records pulled by Pittman—and then called him at least three more times until 1:45 p.m.“When there’s a breakdown you look for those commanders with boots on the ground to provide that instruction,” Pittman said. “That did not happen, primarily because those operational commanders at the time were so overwhelmed, they started to participate and assist the officers… versus providing that guidance and direction.”First Capitol Riot Hearing Only Raised More Questions About Jan. 6The receipts–which support the narrative that a series of unanswered calls, withheld information, and conflicting orders led to complete malfunction—directly contradicted Irving’s testimony.On Tuesday, Sund testified that he asked for National Guard backup just after 1 p.m. But Irving insisted that was wrong. He said he did not remember the conversation with Sund and claimed he didn’t get an official request until “shortly before 1:30 p.m.” Troops were not approved to help overwhelmed officers at the Capitol until 2:10 p.m.“Mr. Irving stated that he was concerned about the ‘optics’ of having the National Guard present and didn’t feel that the intelligence supported it,” Sund said Tuesday. Irving, who resigned in the wake of the riot, said that was “categorically false.”On Tuesday, Irving said that if Sund, Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger, or any other leaders concluded ahead of Jan. 6 that unarmed National Guardsmen were needed, he “would not have hesitated” to ensure the reinforcement was ready.Pittman’s testimony—and her insistence that Capitol Police did everything possible to contain the insurrection—was just the latest twist in a series of finger-pointing between the top law enforcers in charge of securing the Capitol. During hearings before lawmakers this week, officials have blamed one another for the widespread failures.One failure, Pittman conceded on Thursday, was that nobody in law enforcement knew the mob would be so violent.She told lawmakers that they were prepared for militia groups, white supremacists, and other extremists to be present, but the small organization was not prepared for thousands of “everyday” Americans “who took on a mob mentality.” (Acting D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee revealed on Tuesday that the FBI intel consisted merely of an email sent on Jan. 5.)Officials believe over 10,000 demonstrators were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and that 800 breached the building. About 1,200 police officers responded, Pittman said.She also made the stunning admission that since Jan. 6, Capitol Police have maintained heightened security because they learned that militia groups have chatted about plans to “blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible” in connection with the State of the Union, which has no scheduled date yet. “We know that the insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol weren’t only interested in attacking members of Congress and officers. They wanted to send a symbolic message to the nation as [to] who was in charge of that legislative process,” Pittman said. On Tuesday, Irving insisted that Capitol Police were privy to intelligence provided by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security that “did not support” the likelihood of a coordinated assault at the Capitol.An NYPD Cop’s Road From Terror ‘Victim’ to Capitol Rioter“The department was not ignorant of intelligence indicating an attack of the size and scale we encountered on the sixth. There was no such intelligence,” Pittman said Thursday. “Although we knew the likelihood for violence by extremists, no credible threat indicated that tens of thousands would attack the U.S. Capitol. Nor did the intelligence received from the FBI or any other law enforcement partner indicate such a threat.”Pittman added that because officers at the Capitol were not prepared for a violent mob, lockdown procedure was not properly executed. She added that some officers were also not sure when to use lethal force, and that radio communications between law enforcers were not robust.Five individuals died during the violent riots. Four were pro-Trump protesters, including Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a police officer after attempting to break into the Speaker’s Lobby. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after allegedly clashing with rioters. In the days after the siege, at least two officers died by suicide.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.
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm won Senate confirmation Thursday to be energy secretary, joining President Joe Biden's Cabinet as a leader of Biden’s effort to build a green economy as the United States moves to slow climate change. The vote was 64-35, with all Democrats and 14 Republicans, including GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, voting yes. Granholm, 62, served two terms as governor in a state dominated by the auto industry and devastated by the 2008 recession.
Republican says ‘those big bills are people who gambled on a very, very low rate’ after reports people resorted to using life savings for higher fees amid the freeze
Declassified summary likely to conclude Mohammed bin Salman approved murder of columnist
Nicola Sturgeon has launched an astonishing attack on Alex Salmond after she was accused of behaving like a “tin pot dictator” who risked bringing UK politics into worldwide disrepute. The First Minister accused her former mentor of inventing an “alternative reality” around claims of sexual assault and suggested it was his behaviour towards women, rather than a grand conspiracy, that were the "root" of the allegations against him. Ms Sturgeon was also forced to deny leaning on Scottish prosecutors to censor damning evidence put forward by Mr Salmond, following a fiasco that saw large chunks of his written testimony deleted. The episode over the written evidence, which saw Holyrood quickly back down to the Crown Office which is run by a member of Ms Sturgeon's government, has been seen as a major humiliation for the legislature.
Australia's Fortescue Metals Group has apologised to an Aboriginal group for clearing land on a heritage site while flouting a government condition for representatives of the community to be present when the damage took place. It is the week's second such incident, despite pressure on Australian iron ore miners to show they have improved practices to manage important sites after Rio Tinto destroyed two sacred rock shelters for a mine expansion last May. Fortescue had state government permission to clear the land in the Weelamurra Creek area registered as sacred to the Wintawari Guruma people, on condition that community elders were present to perform salvage and cultural rites, four documents reviewed by Reuters showed.
From Salem to Peabody to Beverly and Lynn, residents reported hearing what sounded like "big screeching" and feeling what seemed like an earthquake.
Why trade for Deshaun Watson if it means the Panthers are left without pieces around him to allow Carolina to succeed?
The Weasleys are the largest family in the series, so even the biggest fans may not have heard all these fun facts and hidden secrets about them.
A pilot at American Airlines radioed Sunday that an unidentified object flew over their jet during a flight while they were over New Mexico.
Pelosi also accidentally called the Wisconsin senator "Don" Johnson. "Not Miami Vice or anything like that?" she said, referencing a TV actor.
Ecuador experienced its deadliest prison riots ever this week when seemingly coordinated fights broke out in facilities in three different cities, leaving 79 inmates dead as of Wednesday and exposing the limited control that authorities have over people behind bars. Hundreds of police officers and military personnel converged on the prisons after the unrest began Monday night in the maximum-security wings as rival gangs fought for leadership. President Lenín Moreno, whose term ends in May, on Wednesday said he will ask other South American countries for help to tackle the crisis in Ecuador's prisons and acknowledged the system is deficient and lacks financial resources.
The nation could now distribute 500 million doses by the end of June - enough to vaccinate all of its adult population.