This Week in Freudenfreude: She's Got a Ticket to Ride (And She Don't Care)
This Week in Schadenfreude: The President's Ratings Aren't What They Once Were
How many polite ways, after all, are there to ask whether the President of the United States has lost his mind? Read more
US Congress Useless
Inflation ticked up to 2.8% November, moving further away from the Federal Reserve's target 2% mark, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports Thursday.
A man accused of putting a bounty on the life of Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino was found not guilty Thursday. A verdict was reached just before 4 p.m. The jury of six men and six women got the case about 12:45 p.m. Thursday. Closing arguments took up all of the morning. The government was unable to provide any evidence to corroborate an alleged murder-for-hire plot. According to the statute, a person commits murder for hire if they take a substantial step toward committing the crime. That substantial step must be an act that strongly corroborates that the defendant intended to carry it out.
The Florida Bar downplayed a congressional finding that Matt Gaetz, President Trump's first choice for U.S. Attorney General, committed statutory rape before it abandoned his prosecution. Roughly the top half of the 70-page file is a report by a bipartisan U.S. House Ethics Committee that concludes the now-former Republican congressman took illegal drugs and paid women, at least one who was underage, for sex for more than three years. The report recaps the committee's investigation that derailed Gaetz's wild ride that let him off short of becoming U.S. Attorney General.
In November 2020, a freak wave appeared, lifting a lone buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters (58 feet) high.
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American version of the app, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the U.S. that has been in discussion for years.
An independent autopsy commissioned by the family of Renee Good, the woman fatally shot by an immigration agent in Minneapolis earlier this month, found she was shot at least three times, sustaining wounds to her head, arm and breast, lawyers for the family said.
US officials on Thursday presented their vision for a "New Gaza" that would turn the shattered Palestinian territory into a glitzy resort of skyscrapers by the sea, a project that could start emerging in three years.
Pope Leo is among world leaders invited to join Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" according to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vaticans top diplomatic official.
Leo, the first U.S. pope and a critic of some of Trump's policies, is evaluating the invitation, he said. Read more
Police have ruled a Florida man's actions self-defense after he shot a felon who allegedly attempted to abduct his wife. According to Fox News affiliate WTVT-TV, citing the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, Nicholas Palomo, a 36-year-old felon who had previously gone to prison for kidnapping and other crimes, attempted to abduct a woman who was walking her dog in Bradenton, Florida, on New Year's Day. The woman managed to run away from Palomo's car and warned her husband, who went outside to confront Palomo.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says trilateral talks on ending the war in Ukraine are to take place with Russia and the US in the United Arab Emirates, after he met President Donald Trump in Davos. "It's all about the land. This is the issue which is not solved yet," Zelensky told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - adding that trilateral talks might provide the two sides with "variants".
France says it has seized an oil tanker in the Mediterranean suspected of being part of Russia's sanction-busting "shadow fleet". French President Emmanuel Macron said the tanker, named the Grinch, was "subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag". Read more
A Minnesota federal magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint charging independent journalist Don Lemon in connection with a protest inside a church in St. Paul on Sunday, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told CBS News. "The attorney general is enraged at the magistrate's decision," said a source familiar with the matter. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been in Minnesota for two days, as the Justice Department has sought to surge prosecutorial and law enforcement resources there.
