David “Jim” Penman wears many hats. Lawnmowing mogul, dabbler in race science, celibacy advocate – and now king. Enraged at Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ lockdowns, Penman is creating his own country and declaring independence from Victoria. Now, we’re about as confused as you are. Lockdowns are a distant, unpleasant memory and COVID-19 restrictions are a thing of the past. But Penman still isn’t over it. Unless Andrews offers him an apology, he will be going full sovereign citizen on Saturday. “We intend to try and join Tasmania, it’s a much better state,” he said. What exactly does that mean? In Penman’s words: “We just declare independence. It’s like when the United States colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776. “If you’ve got unjust and tyrannical government, you can secede.” This was news to us. But Penman reckons there’s precedent for such strange behaviour, pointing us to Prince Leonard of Hutt River province, an eccentric Western Australian who, in a fit of rage over wheat quotas in 1970, declared himself sovereign ruler of his own “micronation”, a charade he kept up for 50 years. Penman’s plans for the nation of “Jimland” are similarly regal.

Last summer, a group of Ukrainian volunteers, working closely with their country’s intelligence service, apparently came close to persuading three Russian aviators who were in the midst of bombing Ukraine to defect with their warplanes in exchange for $1 million a piece.

On March 27, social media users reported receiving notification of Chandler's release by VINE, a custody request system that makes criminal case information available to the public. Later that day, Chandler's VINE record was updated to state she was out of custody and released by court order.

Douglass Mackey, a supporter of former president Donald Trump who used Twitter to disseminate false information to redirect would-be voters of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, was convicted Friday on a charge of conspiracy against rights, the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office announced. A federal jury issued the verdict after a week-long trial in New York. Mackey, 33, faces 10 years in prison. “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors said Mackey used a Twitter alias with about 58,000 followers — @Ricky_Vaughn99, reportedly derived from actor Charlie Sheen’s character Ricky Vaughn in the 1989 film “Major League” — to circulate messages on Twitter that encouraged Clinton’s supporters to “vote” via text message or social media, methods that were not valid..

The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery," the theories backed by 15th-century "papal bulls" that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today. A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples" and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith. The statement, from the Vatican's development and education offices, marked a historic recognition of the Vatican's own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers and was issued as history's first Latin American pontiff, who has made remarkable apologies to Native peoples, was hospitalized with a respiratory infection. Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement, even though it continued to take some distance from acknowledging actual Vatican culpability. The statement said the papal documents had been "manipulated" for political purposes by colonial powers "to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities."

Harvard University is holding an event to help graduate students sign up for government food assistance programs. The university’s Health Services office sent a flier to graduate students Wednesday afternoon encouraging them to come to a “SNAP Benefits Sign-Up” event on Thursday afternoon. SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is the program that replaced food stamps. “Fuel your body & stock your pantry,” the flier reads. “Did you know that grad students may qualify to receive assistance paying for food & groceries?” This is notable in part because Harvard's graduate student workers have gone on strike twice in the last several years in part over their low pay from the university. It's also notable because Harvard is one of the richest academic institutions in the world, and has the largest endowment of any university in the world, with around $50 billion under management.

Plants make clicking sounds that animals may hear, travel 16 feet, and have now been tuned down for human ears to hear for the first time.

With public evidence that makes it harder for cops to deny misconduct, forensic re-creations of police abuse are leading to landmark legal settlements.

Hero Lawson told WVLT-TV that she used her phone to record the teacher, who the station did not identify, after he used the N-word in class Monday and tried to justify it.

EMMETT, Idaho — Valor Health in Emmett announced they will no longer provide labor and delivery services as of June 1, 2023, due to staffing and financial challenges. In a press release, Valor Health says they are facing serious problems due to inflation, staff shortages, decreasing reimbursements and impacts of COVID-19. The hospital is projected to deliver less than 50 babies this year. "It has been increasingly difficult and unsustainably expensive to recruit and retain a full team of high quality, broad spectrum nurses to work in a rural setting where nurses need to be proficient in many different fields," the release said.

BOISE, Idaho — Helping a pregnant minor get a legal abortion in another state could soon be punishable by prison time in Idaho. The Idaho Senate passed the "abortion trafficking bill" 27-7 on Thursday, along party lines. The House passed the bill with amendments later that afternoon, sending it to the governor's desk. Gov. Brad Little could sign the bill, veto it or let the bill pass into law without his signature. H 242 makes it illegal for someone to obtain abortion pills for a minor; it also prohibits “recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor" without parental consent. If local prosecutors refuse to try a case like this due to lack of evidence or any other reason, there are provisions within the bill to allow Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador to prosecute it instead. On Thursday, Stanton Healthcare, a clinic known for its anti-abortion stance, released a statement calling those who send abortion pills through mail "drug cartel-type groups" in response to Labrador issuing a legal analysis to a lawmaker.

The Breakfast Ramen includes notes of pancakes, sausage, and eggs.

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He and his team recruited 94 healthy volunteers who spoke one of two unrelated native languages — German or Levantine Arabic — for structural MRI brain scans. The Arabic speakers had arrived recently in Germany as refugees and didn’t yet speak German. They tended to have stronger connections across their left and right hemispheres, the scans revealed, whereas the German speakers had a denser network of connections within the left hemisphere.

As a Virginia County faces a budget gap of over $21 million, school officials have floated radical cuts to key programs, including eliminating libraries and specialty programs. (Fun Fact! This is literally illegal per state laws.)

Spotsylvania Co. school board member Kirk Twigg is facing a felony count of forging a public record and a misdemeanor count of tampering with a county record.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Walt Disney World and a special tax district are once again making headlines, but this time, it's with a new cast member: England's King Charles III. In a quiet move that's enchanting the internet, the former Reedy Creek Development board signed its power back to Disney before leaving office, a binding declaration that doesn't expire until England's monarchy dies out.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, has issued a number of rulings targeting Obamacare in recent years. A federal judge in Texas has struck down Affordable Care Act provisions that require health insurers to provide some free preventive care services. The ruling could jeopardize coverage nationwide for people relying on the health care law for preventive services, such as screenings for cancer, as well as HIV drugs. In the decision, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor mentioned his previous ruling on the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which was created under Obamacare and helps determine preventive services coverage, saying it violates the appointments clause of the Constitution and therefore its related preventive care mandates are unlawful. O'Connor also said Obamacare's requirement to cover drugs preventing HIV, known as PrEP, violates the religious rights of plaintiffs under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

A new civil suit against Binance filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accuses the crypto giant of a slew of counts, including failing to register its derivative products and failing to fence off its services from U.S. customers. But it’s also filled with specific details about alleged criminal activity from the top officers of the company, whom the CFTC accuses of knowing about and engaging in criminal transactions. “Internally, Binance officers, employees, and agents have acknowledged that the Binance platform has facilitated potentially illegal activities,” the CFTC’s complaint reads, citing the example of a conversation between former chief compliance officer Samuel Lim and another colleague in February 2019 about a transaction with Hamas, a militant group. Lim reportedly told the colleague that terrorists typically send “small sums,” because “large sums constitute money laundering.” The colleague responded, “can barely buy an AK47 with 600 bucks.”

A Manhattan grand jury has made Trump the first former president in American history to face criminal charges