This year began with a deadly New Year's Day car-ramming terrorist attack in New Orleans and is finishing with a flurry of horrific shootings, including a mass shooting at Brown University, but 2025 is also poised to end with the largest one-year drop in U.S. homicides ever recorded, according to data from cities both large and small. Based on a sampling of preliminary crime statistics from 550 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a roughly 20% decrease in homicides nationwide, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News. "So, even taking a conservative view, let's say its 17% or 16%, you're still looking at the largest one-year drop ever recorded in 2025," said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and the New Orleans Police Department.
Dear President Trump, Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart"that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we'd be better off without"perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass. Read more
The Honorable US District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston granted an emergency request by several South Sudanese nationals and an immigrant rights group to prevent the temporary protected status (TPS) they had been granted from expiring on 5 Jan 2026.
The FBI informs that in 2025 US consumers reported $333.5 million in losses linked to bitcoin ATM machines at retail-adjacent kiosks located in convenience stores, supermarkets, and fuel stations.
Filed by State Rep. Jeff Holcomb (R-Spring Hill), HB 917 makes it illegal for health care providers to discriminate against patients based on their vaccination status, expands parental authority, spreads disinformation about childhood vaccines the way HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr does, and makes Ivermectin available without a prescription.
" We are the free world now." Those words from Raphael Glucksmann, a French socialist member of the European Parliament, captured the pearl-clutching outrage of Europeans after the Trump administration did what no prior administration has ever done " stand up to Europe to defend the freedom of speech. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five figures closely associated with European censorship efforts from traveling to the U.S. This includes Thierry Breton, the former European Union commissioner responsible for digital policy.
President Trump said Monday the new White House ballroom he tore down the East Wing to build will have a "drone-free roof."
A report from the Costs of War project at Brown University revealed that 20 years of post-9/11 wars have cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion and have killed more than 900,000 people. Read more
Far smaller and closer to the Sun than it should be, Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission arriving in 2026 might solve the mystery. At a cursory glance, Mercury might well be the Solar System's dullest planet. Its barren surface has few notable features, there is no evidence of water in its past and the planet's wispy atmosphere is tenuous at best. The likelihood of life being found amidst its scotched craters is non-existent. Yet, look closer and Mercury is a fascinating, improbable world that is shrouded in mystery. Planetary scientists remain flummoxed by the very existence of the closest planet to our Sun. This peculiar planet is tiny, 20 times less massive than Earth and barely wider than Australia. Yet Mercury is the second densest planet in our Solar System after Earth due to a large, metallic core that accounts for the majority of its mass. Read more
For a certain class of book-reading American " the type with a taste for deeply reported stories about left-behind parts of the country " [Beth Macy], the woman running for [the Appalachia-based 6th Congressional District of Virginia], is something of a household name. An award-winning reporter for the Roanoke Times for 25 years, she's the author of five nonfiction books, including three of particular note: Factory Man, her critically acclaimed 2014 debut about globalization's ravaging of Virginia's furniture industry; Dopesick, a 2018 tome on America's opioid crisis that turned into a Hulu series; and the recently released Paper Girl, a memoir about her own hardscrabble childhood and the plight of her fading Ohio hometown. Read more
Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years. According to new research, doctors are saving the lives of thousands of victims of attack who four decades ago would have died and become murder statistics. Although the study is based on US data, the researchers say the principle applies to other countries too: "There is reason to expect a similar trend overall in Britain," said Dr Anthony Harris, the lead author of the study. Read more
Cody Wayne Adams (33) was charged with first-degree manslaughter after he fatally shot Sandra Phelps on a neighboring porch with a .45 Glock pistol while he was conducting target practice against a Red Bull can on his property on Christmas Day.
Dummkopf Trumpf beside PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday:
When asked if PM Benjamin Netanyahu will get a pardon from President Isaac Herzog:
A sweeping new law related to military veterans aims to provide more services and recognition for service members, including establishing a Veterans' Month, adding commemorative license plates and expanding family services. The comprehensive bill that tweaked existing law unanimously cleared both chambers of the General Assembly before Gov. Ned Lamont signed it into law in June.
The Trump Administration is significantly off pace to meet the President's promise for the largest deportation operation in American history.
In what looks to be the first successful use of Garmin's Autoland product outside of testing, the FAA has confirmed a small plane made a safe emergency landing completely guided by automation at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado.
