The soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again. In New York, the City Council is moving to get rid of tests for specialized schools because whites and Asians outperform blacks and Latinos.
US inflation rose by more than expected in the year to September, according to official figures, in the final data release before the midterm elections next month. The pace of price rises increased to 3.7%, up from 3.4% in the 12 months to August. Inflation was above forecasts, driven by higher gasoline prices which have spiked following disruption to Middle East energy supplies due to the US-Israel conflict with Iran. The elections are being fought over cost of living pressures across the US. Read more
President Donald Trump was set to be deposed Friday in a defamation lawsuit he filed against the British Broadcasting Corporation, but his lawyers recently canceled the session and said he is unavailable through at least mid-December, according to a court filing. "The President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance," Trump's attorneys told lawyers for the BBC late last month, the network's attorneys said in motion Tuesday. The BBC is asking a judge to force Trump to set a firm date to submit to questioning in the case.
The conspiracy theory that James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, recently went to Ohio to receive treatment for mental health issues began after he stopped making campaign appearances at the beginning of October. Several readers asked us about these claims, which they saw on social media. Talarico and a campaign spokesperson have said that he was at his Austin, Texas, home, recuperating from the flu at the time. And the New York Times said it verified that Talarico was at his house by reviewing time-stamped camera images from Talarico's home security system that was provided by his campaign. Read more
Donald Trump is a "corrupt, senile felon" whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, "godfather" of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself. Read more
Democratic Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, whose home was raided by immigration agents this week as part of a federal criminal investigation into her, has become the 17th Democrat to be probed during President Donald Trump's second term. Read more
Pope Leo XIV had surgery on Tuesday to remove a cancerous growth in his lung, the Vatican announced.
The surgery, performed at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, involved removing the lower lobe of the Pope's right lung, according to a statement by Leo's doctors released by the church. Lung tissue examined after the surgery confirmed a previous test that revealed a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, the Vatican said.
Katie Zacharia's tenure as White House press secretary got off to a rough start Tuesday, when she made her briefing-room debut.
The 41-year-old conservative commentator turned top Trump official began her appearance by reading from a script that lavished praise on President Donald Trump. She then took questions from three reporters before fleeing the room.
Her entire appearance at the podium barely lasted 14 minutes, during which she stumbled through her prepared remarks and called on reporters from a list. Read more
President Donald Trump's administration has asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign from her position as US ambassador to Greece, the new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia announced in her premiere briefing. Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host, had been facing mounting scrutiny after reports she allegedly asked a Trump donor to pay her hefty credit card bill in exchange for access to his administration. Read more
Ex-NYC Councilman Daniel Halloran (54) was detained by CBP at Miami Int'l Airport when an inspection of his smartphone revealed thousands of files of child pornography. Dan Halloran was previously investigated and convicted for a litany of blasphemies and crimes. This miscreant is just one of an army of Republican hypocrites in the GOP, AKA the "Guardians of Pedophiles."
Throw away the key for this corrupt sexual deviant
Chargers vs Broncos ... An old man can hope, can't he?
The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement that today's attack on King Khalid international airport in Riyadh "resulted in injuries" but did not specify how many. The statement said that an "assessment of the damage and verification of the safety of the facilities is ongoing". Earlier on Sunday, an "unidentified projectile" hit Riyadh's international airport, the same site targeted in Saturday's strike which injured hundreds of people and killed 12. Minutes earlier, Yemen's Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack.
Leadership positions at the Tennessee Valley Authority are the most lucrative government jobs in the U.S. Since 2020, the top six executives at TVA have collectively banked nearly $90 million. CEO made $12M a year for three years. Part of those salaries came from decisions to put more fossil fuel infrastructure in the Tennessee Valley, and residents essentially signed the checks through their electricity bills, according to a new report by the Center for Biological Diversity. "People who rely on TVA for power are the ones losing out. They're continuing to pay executives who are making decisions contrary to the public good," said Gaby Sarri-Tobar, an energy justice campaigner at the center. Read more
Zohran Mamdani, New York City's mayor, set off a firestorm of criticism Wednesday morning with a social media post ostensibly intended to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis. It devoted a brief paragraph to condemning Hamas and commiserating with its victims. The rest was a much longer denunciation of Israel's "ongoing genocide in Gaza," a "world in which occupation and apartheid continue" and a situation in which "our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment." In response, Ammiel Hirsch, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said the statement was "so offensive to so many Jews that it is hard to describe how offensive it is." In fact, it's a moral obscenity. Let me count the ways.
Nine people were killed, including children, during a mass shooting in Erie, Pennsylvania, officials said. Police first responded to a home on Perry Street in Erie on Friday, Oct. 9, around 5 p.m., after witnesses reported seeing a gunman firing shots outside the house before entering the residence. When police arrived, they found two women who had been shot to death in the street. The shooting escalated into a standoff as Erie Police and SWAT teams surrounded the home. More shots were then heard inside the home. When police entered, they found the bodies of seven other people, including children, as well as the gunman who died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to investigators.
An ICE agent who was found sleeping on a lawn in Fresno was shot in the stomach after police say he refused to move and attacked the 72-year-old homeowner, causing the homeowner to shoot him in response. Police say 32-year-old David Gonzalez of Texas also appeared intoxicated during the incident. Investigators established that one of the two victims in the incident returned home to find the ICE agent, David Gonzalez, sleeping on her front lawn. She told her 72-year-old father, who also lived there, causing her father to go outside to send Gonzalez on his way. Officers say Gonzalez refused to move and assaulted the 72-year-old victim, forcing him to the ground. The 72-year-old victim's daughter then intervened, causing him to attack her as well. The 72-year-old victim then produced a gun and shot the ICE agent, David Gonzalez, in the stomach.
