European security officials on Monday and Tuesday observed Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines likely caused by underwater explosions, according two Western intelligence officials and one other source familiar with the matter. It's unclear whether the ships had anything to do with those explosions, these sources and others said " but it's one of the many factors that investigators will be looking into. Russian submarines were also observed not far from those areas last week, one of the intelligence officials said. But the sightings still cast further suspicion on Russia, which has drawn the most attention from both European and US officials as the only actor in the region believed to have both the capability and motivation to deliberately damage the pipelines.
Rapper Coolio dead at 59
Charlie Savage: Former President Donald J. Trump's request that a judge intervene in the criminal investigation into his hoarding of government documents by appointing a special master increasingly looks like a significant blunder, legal experts say. Read more
Perry Greene, the husband of 14th District U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, filed for divorce in Floyd County Superior Court on Wednesday stating that the marriage is "irretrievably broken." He motioned to have the divorce filed under seal. Read more
The Department of Justice has a treasure trove of evidence against the Oath Keepers. Two of the members charged with seditious conspiracy have already struck deals, pleading guilty and cooperating with prosecutors. In addition, the government has a mother lode of text messages between group members that not only showcases their planning but also their links to Stone and other people in Trump's orbit. Unable to deny that they were up to their necks in seditious conspiring, the five Oath Keepers are going to trial with a novel defense: Blaming Trump for telling them to do it. "They intend to tell the jury that when armed teams of Oath Keepers made plans to rush into Washington from Virginia on Jan. 6, 2021, they believed they would be following legal orders from the president himself," the New York Times reports. Because they claim to have been acting on orders from Trump, the defendants plan to argue they believed the insurrection was legal.
A hard-line Christian activist and an evangelical church in North Texas are arguing that federal employment protections for LGBT workers don't apply to bisexuals.
In a brief filed with the federal appeals court last week, their lawyers argued the U.S. Supreme Court's 2020 decision barring employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, or gender identity, does not apply to bisexuals " as long as bi-men are being discriminated against "on equal terms" as bi-women.
"An employer who discriminates on account of an employee or job applicant's bisexual orientation (or conduct) cannot engage in sex' discrimination as defined," the lawyers wrote, "because that employer would have taken the exact same action against an identically situated individual of the opposite biological sex."
It was January of 2017, and a newly inaugurated President Donald Trump held a reception at the White House to meet with top congressional leaders. Hors d'oeuvres were on the menu. And the new president turned to a row of racially diverse Democratic staffers and asked them to retrieve the canapes, according to a new book.
Although Putin may be willing to take greater risks as the military situation in Ukraine deteriorates, he likely knows now that the cumulative effect of his multiple blunders in Ukraine has been to jeopardize the stability of his regime and the Russian Federation itself. Russia is a pariah state; the entire nation and its leading figures, right down to Putin's rumored girlfriend, are under sanctions. Young men, supposedly Russia's great macho warriors, are jamming the roads to Finland and Georgia trying to flee the country. Putin's own commanders are asking for permission to retreat, and even some of Putin's most gleeful warmongers in the Russian media, including the ghoulish Margarita Simonyan, seem freaked out by the accelerating disasters that have changed Russia's image from a major power to a cornered weakling in only seven months. Read more
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's first proposed budget expands funding for the Seattle Police Department by $20 million " largely by transferring parking enforcement back to the department " and uses payroll taxes to help fill a $140 million-plus revenue shortfall.
A global study examining more than 30,000 umbilical cord blood samples recently found PFAS in every single one. Worse, these samples were up to five years old"meaning PFAS have been nearly ubiquitous for longer than we otherwise might have thought.
More than 18 months after the rioting at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, an estimated 13 million U.S. adults, or 5% of the adult population, agree that force would be justified to restore former President Donald Trump to the White House and an estimated 15 million Americans believe force would be justified to prevent Trump from being prosecuted , should he be indicted for mishandling classified documents, according to a new study from the University of Chicago. "We have not just a political threat to our democracy, we have a violent threat to our democracy," Dr. Robert Pape, the director of the University of Chicago's Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) told "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan on Sept. 18. "Today, there are millions of individuals who don't just think the election was stolen in 2020; they support violence to restore Donald Trump to the White House."
Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be disclosed.
The National Hurricane Center put out a special advisory at 7 a.m. to say that Hurricane Ian had strengthened to 155 mph maximum sustained winds, just 2 mph below Category 5 strength. The center said it could have that strength just before landfall at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
The Alameda County Sheriff's Office in Northern California has stripped 47 deputies " 10% of the force " of their guns and arrest powers because they failed psychological exams, it was reported Monday. It was "horrible" to have to relieve the deputies of their duties, sheriff's spokesman Lt. Ray Kelly told KTVU-TV. The station obtained a copy of a letter notifying the deputies of their change of status last Friday. The deputies will still receive their pay and benefits. The move came after the Sheriff's Office conducted an internal audit of deputies' psychological examinations from January 2016 to the present. The letter from Sheriff Gregory Ahern notified a deputy " whose name was blacked out in the copy " that the deputy had been graded "D. Not Suited" in a psychological evaluation and under state law couldn't serve as a peace officer.
Ernesto Herrera should have wore his Nikes when he attempted to serve a subpoena to Texas AG Ken Paxton in a case brought by nonprofits wanting to help Texans pay for out of state abortions. When Herrera knocked on the door of Paxton's house he was initially greeted by Paxton's wife Angela. He identified himself and his purpose. She told him that the AG was on a phone call and not available. About an hour later a vehicle pulled into the drive and Paxton walked out from his garage. Herrera, who was still waiting, began to walk towards him and announced himself. At that point Paxton "turned around and RAN back inside the house." Angela Paxton then exited the house and opened the doors on a truck in the driveway. Ken Paxton then ran from the house, jumped into the vehicle and they drove away.
In his strongest, gloomiest speech since taking the helm of the United Nations in 2017, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the six-day gathering telling leaders that the survival of humanity and the planet are at stake, and nations aren't tackling the challenges to reverse course. "We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction," he said. "Our world is in peril " and paralyzed." General Assembly President Csaba Krsi said he heard, from leaders, a resounding message: that the war in Ukraine, whose effect is being felt around the world, must end. "Yet be it the largest and the most acute, the war in Ukraine is one of nearly 30 armed conflicts worldwide," Krsi said. "And none of them is improving." Read more
