early two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world's corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs. Coral reefs, which harbour at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change. Shark and ray species -- from apex predators to filter feeders -- play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that "cannot be filled by other species", said Samantha Sherman, of Simon Fraser University in Canada and the wildlife group TRAFFIC International. But they are under grave threat globally, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications, which assessed extinction vulnerability data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to look at 134 species of sharks and rays linked to reefs. The authors found 59 percent of coral reef shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, an extinction risk almost double that of sharks and rays in general. Among these, five shark species are listed as critically endangered, as well as nine ray species, all so-called "rhino rays" that look more like sharks than stingrays.

The CEO of Scottish brewery BrewDog apologized for a costly snafu.

Skinamarink is hypnotically creepy—and very slow. Writer-director Kyle Edward Ball discusses its conception and the rumors surrounding its release.

For many cooks, waiters and bartenders, it is an annoying entrance fee to the food-service business: Before starting a new job, they pay around $15 to a company called ServSafe for an online class in food safety. That course is basic, with lessons like “bathe daily” and “strawberries aren’t supposed to be white and fuzzy, that’s mold.” In four of the largest states, this kind of training is required by law, and it is taken by workers nationwide. But in taking the class, the workers — largely unbeknown to them — are also helping to fund a nationwide lobbying campaign to keep their own wages from increasing. The company they are paying, ServSafe, doubles as a fund-raising arm of the National Restaurant Association — the largest lobbying group for the food-service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses. The association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the subminimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters. The federal minimum wage has risen just once since 1996, to $7.25 from $5.15, while the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 since 1991. Minimums are higher in many states, but still below what labor groups consider a living wage. For years, the restaurant association and its affiliates have used ServSafe to create an arrangement with few parallels in Washington, where labor unwittingly helps to pay for management’s lobbying. First, in 2007, the restaurant owners took control of a training business. Then they helped lobby states to mandate the kind of training they already provided — producing a flood of paying customers.

A black principal, four white teens, and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime.

From the outset, it's clear this is not for your average Magic player. These cards can't be used in tournament play, and unless you use sleeves with covered backs you wouldn't want to play them in a normal game. Some of the cards available are even banned from commander decks so playing a game with them is going to be tough. They also cost $999 for four boosters totaling 60 cards. That's $250 a booster, or $17 per card. So no, these are not for playing...The set itself is a little underwhelming when you first open the box.

On the first day of the new year, the city of Scottsdale, Arizona officially stopped transporting water to the unincorporated neighboring area of the Rio Verde Foothills.

It features tasteful inclusions like NFT wallpapers and a Doge room

Lycoming County, Pa., officials were persuaded to conduct a 2020 recount, a three-day undertaking that showed almost no change, but left skeptics just as skeptical.

The outsider streaming site that just partnered up with Donald Trump Jr. is growing — but not in the way most people think Trump Jr., whose office did not return a request for comment, isn’t the only right-wing celebrity struggling to connect on Rumble despite boasting an army of supporters there. Follower count doesn’t automatically correlate to views, and a channel that seems moribund can score a breakout hit here and there, yet it’s hard not to notice a pattern. Dinesh D’Souza, the conspiracy theorist pardoned by President Trump for his felony conviction in an illegal campaign contribution scheme, has even more followers — 1.71 million — yet the average view count for his videos is in the low hundreds. Many of Sean Hannity’s don’t reach a thousand. Same for Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. (Both have over a million subscribers.) Steve Bannon’s channel does about as well as Trump Jr.’s, as does Rep. Matt Gaetz’s. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have even less traction, and paltry subscriber counts: 22,000 for Greene, under 3,000 for Boebert. Yet political valence isn’t readily obvious in conspiracy theory videos like “Bizarre CIA Files Released on Lost Ancient Human Civilizations” or “Something is Definitely Happening on the Moon,” two videos from an account called Bright Insight, at 81,000 and 50,000 views. Russell Brand, the British comic who launched an exclusive show with Rumble after YouTube removed one of his posts for Covid-19 misinformation, also courts viewers with guests who “expose” the supposed lies of “mainstream archaeologists” and topics such as “Prince Harry Saga – The TRUTH About The Deep State?” He’s creeping up on a million subscribers and regularly breaks the 100,000 views threshold, which is great by Rumble standards but a fraction of his YouTube traffic. Up-and-coming streamers gain clout by spinning ever more complicated plots. Drew Hernandez, a relative newcomer to the site with 16,000 followers, has already drawn attention by wondering if the New World Order will enslave us in the Metaverse and weighing in on the fashion brand Balenciaga’s imagined ties to Satanism. At 50,000 and 80,000 views, these segments are outpacing videos shared by users with platforms 100 times larger. Even Bongino will occasionally drop an episode framed around a question like: “Are We Living In A Simulation?” The popularity of these esoteric subjects hint that Rumble’s audience is there to strip back appearances or assumptions to reveal forbidden knowledge — the kind presented by figures who position themselves as fiercely independent thinkers dismissed by powerful institutions. Accordingly, one reliable path to stardom on Rumble, a place that Pavolvski aims to make “immune to cancel culture,” is to be kicked off or unwelcome on the rest of the internet. Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer and self-professed alpha male guru now facing charges of sex trafficking in Romania, is the most notorious example, with nearly a million followers. Until his detainment, he enjoyed high engagement as an exile from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, bringing in hundreds of thousands of views, for example, on an interview he gave to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The announcement of his debut on Rumble briefly sent it to number one on the Apple and Google app stores. Tate has privately bragged that the deal he signed with Rumble in 2022 was worth $9 million, according to CNN, which the company did not deny. Instead, they issued a statement condemning human trafficking and sexual abuse.

About a year ago, not long after Eric Adams was sworn in as the mayor of New York, an old friend and church leader named Lamor Whitehead went to an auto shop in the Bronx, to drop off a Mercedes-Benz G-Class S.U.V. that had been in a crash. Whitehead led a small church in Brooklyn called Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries. People called him Bishop. The shop he visited, No Limit Auto Body, was operated by a man named Brandon Belmonte, who was involved in real estate. Federal prosecutors would later refer to Belmonte as “a businessman.” The Mercedes was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar job. Belmonte paid the thirteen-thousand-dollar bill for a rental replacement while the work was getting done. Whitehead wanted more. “He basically says, ‘You got to give me another five grand,’ ” Belmonte recalled. “I said, ‘Bro, the job was only twenty-five thousand. Thirteen and five is eighteen. The parts were seven grand. I’m gonna make zero.’ ” It occurred to Belmonte that Whitehead wasn’t trying to negotiate—he was asking for a kickback. He promised to make it worth Belmonte’s while. “I got City Hall in my back pocket,” Whitehead said, according to Belmonte. Whitehead explained that he was close with Adams, going back to when Adams was Brooklyn borough president. He told Belmonte that Adams had once offered him a fifty-million-dollar construction contract. “Eric’s doing big things,” Whitehead continued. “I gotta get mine.” He mentioned a property that Belmonte was developing in the Bronx. “He said, ‘Eric Adams can make it a homeless shelter, and you’ll get city benefits,’ ” Belmonte recalled. Whitehead offered to broker a meeting with Adams. “He kept telling me we’re gonna make millions together,” Belmonte said. “And he said, ‘You gotta give me the five grand or I’m gonna beat you up.’ ” (Whitehead, through his lawyer, denied this and other accounts of his actions described in this article.) On a friend’s advice, Belmonte called an investigator at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. “I said, ‘I think the mayor of New York is on the take,’ ” Belmonte recalled.

Republican Robert Spindell, a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, is proud as a peacock of the work Republicans did to suppress the vote in Milwaukee in the November 2022 election. Spindell, who also serves as chairperson of the party’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes much of Milwaukee County and almost all of the city of Milwaukee, sent an email to Republicans in the district hailing the party’s success at undermining the democratic process: “In the City of Milwaukee, with the 4th Congressional District Republican Party working very closely with the RPW, RNC, Republican Assembly & Senate Campaign Committees, Statewide Campaigns and RPMC in the Black and Hispanic areas, we can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.” “…this great and important decrease in Democrat votes in the City” was due to a “well thought out multi-faceted plan,” Spindell bragged, that included: “Biting Black Radio Negative Commercials run last few weeks of the election cycle straight at Dem Candidates… A substantial & very effective Republican Coordinated Election Integrity program resulting with lots of Republican paid Election Judges & trained Observers & extremely significant continued Court Litigation.” Urban Milwaukee shared these comments with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, who was momentarily stunned. “Wow,” Wikler said. “That’s as ugly as it gets. I have never seen someone take credit so blatantly for suppressing the vote. We saw the same techniques with the Russian effort to suppress the vote in 2016.”

The Black teacher died hours after being tasered six times by the LAPD. Police later released preliminary drug tests, which experts say mean little more than a public relations tactic.

The owner’s brother, a Santos donor named Rocco, was once charged with human trafficking.

Pittsburgh Police officers have been instructed to resume enforcing minor traffic violations — like an expired registration sticker or a poorly secured license plate — despite a 2021 ordinance to prevent them from doing so in the absence of a larger infraction. A spokesperson for the department said the memo came as a result of “recent changes in state law.” But some legal experts question whether there’s sufficient reason to compel a reversal of the policy. The city ordinance prohibits Pittsburgh police officers from pulling over a motorist if the primary reason is one of eight minor traffic violations. (Officers could pull over a motorist for another reason and still issue a ticket for a secondary infraction.) Advocates argued that racial bias can lead to disproportionate enforcement against Black and Latino residents. The ordinance was an attempt to mitigate those disparities modeled on similar legislation in Philadelphia. According to Pittsburgh Police data, Black residents make up only about 22% of the city’s population, but accounted for 42% of traffic stops in 2021. Stangrecki told WESA another reason for the reversal was to boost morale among the city’s police ranks. He said he’s received steady feedback that the ordinance is “preventing them from doing their jobs.”

Swift consumer action prompted Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast to to scrap licensing updates. The players aren't done yet.

Zoo officials said they issued a "code blue" for a "non-dangerous animal that is out of it habitat."

For the past five weeks, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, sandwiched between Azerbaijan and Armenia, has been blockaded by Azerbaijan. As much of the world celebrated Christmas and New Year, over 120,000 Armenian residents of the region—the oldest continuously inhabited Armenian homeland, dotted with Armenian churches and monasteries and monuments predating the spread of Christianity to Europe by decades—were cut off from the world. A group of Azerbaijani citizens identifying as “environmental activists” barricaded the Lachin corridor, a mountainous road that serves as the only path between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, since December 12. The flow of food and medicine fell to a trickle before the supplies essential for the continuation of normal life gradually disappeared altogether. A place that once received 400 tons of food and medical supplies daily now barely receives a few carloads on a good day. Hospitals have indefinitely put surgeries on hold. Children are going hungry. There is an acute shortage of fuel as temperatures drop to below -4°C, and families are burning scraps to heat their homes. Armenians, a people who endured a protracted genocide under the Ottoman Empire before being exposed to Soviet autocratic rule in the 20th century, are being subjected to collective punishment in the 21st century with the intent of driving them out of their home. Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian territory, is known to Armenians as Artsakh. Despite its history and demography, it was handed to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921 by Joseph Stalin, who implemented the imperial method of disrupting cohesive national and ethnic communities to keep diverse populations in check. In 1988, the people of Artsakh voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to dissolve Moscow’s artificial cartography, secede from Soviet Azerbaijan and assert their Armenian identity.

Bryan Kohberger was studying crime. Does that tell us anything?

Roiland was charged with domestic battery and false imprisonment in May 2020 after an incident with a woman he was dating, according to a criminal complaint.