LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A federal judge has denied the U.S. government's request to release from prison a former FBI informant who made up a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that later became central to Republicans' impeachment effort. The decision, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright in Los Angeles, comes weeks after a new prosecutor reassigned to Alexander Smirnov's case jointly filed a motion with his attorneys asking for his release while he appeals his conviction. In the motion, the U.S. government had said it would review its "theory of the case."
The FBI has reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington following the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers. That's according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the personnel decisions, which were first reported by CNN. The FBI did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Two Belgian teenagers were charged Tuesday with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. read more
Opinion from The Guardian. There are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose -- the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you'd think the writer was laying it on a little thick. Among these is the all-female flight by Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company ... read more
Wall Street's biggest banks reaped almost $37bn in trading revenues in the first quarter of the year -- their best performance in more than a decade -- as Donald Trump's administration unleashed a barrage of market-moving announcements. The combined performance by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup marks a return to favor for a business that until 2020 had been a shadow of its pre-financial crisis form.
43. He's new.
An African pope would have been really good for business.