“Terrifier” actress Catherine Corcoran responds to the recent fan demand for more nudity in horror films.

To help fight wage theft, some prosecutors are partnering with the state on more cases, or forming special units to pursue labor abuses as crimes. A new felony law could also help, they say.

A letter to U.S. bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre, obtained Sunday, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken Nov. 9, and that there was no chance for an appeal. Pavone had been investigated by his then-diocese of Amarillo, Texas, for having placed an aborted fetus on an altar and posting a video of it on two social media sites in 2016. He posts frequently about U.S. politics and abortion, and the video of the aborted fetus was accompanied by a post saying that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform would allow abortion to continue and that Donald Trump and the Republican platform want to protect unborn children.

Reports of racist bullying at Slaton High School are part of a pattern of discrimination in and around Lubbock, Texas, civil rights groups say. They’re filing complaints and calling on the federal government to investigate.

When 18th Century British explorers set foot in Australia for the first time it must have been quite bewildering to be confronted by a Kangaroo rather than the more familiar – and expected - horse or cows known from back at home. The naturist, John…

Edward Kelley, 33, of Tennessee is accused of planning to kill the federal agents who worked on his investigation and attack the FBI’s field office in Knoxville.

For two decades, Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy’s daughter, has made award-winning, godawful films about America’s political class. Pelosi in the House, a dull documentary about her mother and January 6, proves she is the auteur the liberal establishment deserves.

Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

How could one of the world’s most powerful militaries, led by a celebrated tactician like Mr. Putin, have faltered so badly against its much smaller, weaker rival? To piece together the answer, we drew from hundreds of Russian government emails, documents, invasion plans, military ledgers and propaganda directives. We listened to Russian phone calls from the battlefield and spoke with dozens of soldiers, senior officials and Putin confidants who have known him for decades. ... The Russian military, despite Western assumptions about its prowess, was severely compromised, gutted by years of theft. Hundreds of billions of dollars had been devoted to modernizing the armed forces under Mr. Putin, but corruption scandals ensnared thousands of officers. One military contractor described frantically hanging enormous patriotic banners to hide the decrepit conditions at a major Russian tank base, hoping to fool a delegation of top brass. The visitors were even prevented from going inside to use the bathroom, he said, lest they discover the ruse. ... Mr. Putin divided his war into fiefs, leaving no one powerful enough to challenge him. Many of his fighters are commanded by people who are not even part of the military, like his former bodyguard, the leader of Chechnya and a mercenary boss who has provided catering for Kremlin events. As the initial invasion failed, the atomized approach only deepened, chipping away at an already disjointed war effort. Now, Mr. Putin’s fractured armies often function like rivals, competing for weapons and, at times, viciously turning on one another. One soldier recounted how the clashes became violent, with a Russian tank commander deliberately charging at his supposed allies and blowing up their checkpoint. ... “This is a big burden for us,” Mr. Peskov said, depicting Russia as taking on all of NATO’s military might in Ukraine. “It was just very hard to believe in such cynicism and in such bloodthirstiness on the part of the collective West.”

December 8 marked three years since the first confirmed case of Covid-19. We are again marching into a winter of death. For months we’ve had thousands of deaths per week in the United States, and now children’s ICUs, emergency rooms, and health systems are overwhelmed with Covid-19, flu, and RSV. Cold medicine and antibiotic shortages are being reported. And two weeks after Thanksgiving, national Covid death totals surged from 481 on Monday, December 5, to 1,500 on Thursday, December 8. How did so many in the United States end up desensitized to mass death and disability, angrily opposed to almost all means of mitigating an occasionally fatal airborne virus, and willing to accept so little from the powerful? How did the wealthiest nation in the world — and, on paper, the nation seen as best prepared to meet a pandemic — fail, and continue failing, so epically? The Public Health Disservice Awards (“The Snowzzies”) tries to answer these imponderables. The Snowzzie awards process began with an advisory committee of renowned experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology, anthropology, health equity, economics, and journalism. They created the award categories. After a public nomination process, the committee reviewed the extensive list of nominations and selected winners from a very competitive field of bad actors. They then invited guests to write the announcements of these awards to recognize individuals and institutions who made public health worse in 2022. 

AG Paxton in Texas attempted to get a list of all transgender people through the use of DMV gender marker changes. Ohio, Florida, and Virginia have also attempted to document trans people.

Morocco’s World Cup heroics are forging a new, dissident Third-World solidarity, reflecting the multifaceted nature of Moroccan identity itself: simultaneously Arab, African, and Amazigh. Morocco’s run in this World Cup has been exhilarating. Led by Paris-born coach Walid Regragui, who took over only three months ago, the Atlas Lions have exceeded all expectations, defeating three former European colonial powers (Belgium, Spain and Portugal) and are now up against France. From the mass prayer sessions in Indonesia to the celebrations on the streets of Somalia and Nigeria, this team has won the hearts of millions—Africans, Arabs, Muslims, and migrants who see themselves in this team. Images that will endure: playmaker Hakim Ziyech’s light-footed turns, midfielder Sofian Amrabet—dubbed Minister of Defense—and his barreling runs, and team captain Achraf Hakimi’s post-match embrace of his mother, who worked as a domestic in Madrid, Spain, while raising her children. But for Moroccans, it’s also the Moroccan takeover of the Qatari stadiums that has captivated the world: the pulsating drums, castanets, colorful outfits and elaborate songs. One chant has tens of thousands jumping up and down, “Bougez! Bougez! li ma bougash, mashi Maghribi.” (Translation: Move, move—if you don’t move, you’re not Moroccan.) The most widely circulated memes in Morocco have been clips of players and the coach talking to the press in darija (Moroccan Arabic vernacular), and all the bewilderment and hilarity that has provoked from Western and Arab observers alike. In importing Moroccan stadium culture to Doha, this World Cup also brought hyper-local debates about Moroccan language and national identity to the world stage.

Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, praised Mr. Musk at a New York Times DealBook conference late last month, calling him “the bravest, most creative person on the planet.” Gavin Baker, a private equity investor, recently claimed that a lot of venture-funded chief executives were “inspired by Elon.” And several partners at Andreessen Horowitz, the influential venture capital firm, have tweeted similar encomia to Mr. Musk’s management style.

Polish prosecutors are investigating a “violent release of energy” at the national police headquarters amid media reports that the chief of police fired a grenade launcher in his office.

As 2022 draws to a close, a new grim distinction can be attached to it: in America it was the year of the botched execution. In its annual review of US capital punishment, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reveals the astonishing statistic that 35% of the 20 execution attempts carried out this year were visibly problematic. Several were agonisingly drawn out as officials tried to secure a vein through which to inject lethal drugs, leading lawyers to describe the process as a form of torture. Others were carried out in violation of state protocols. Some went ahead even though there were defects in those protocols themselves. As a result of these severe hitches, seven execution attempts could be construed as having been botched. Such a high proportion of problematic executions points to a gathering storm over the practice of lethal injections, the dominant method of judicial killings in the US which this month mark its 40th anniversary.

Raymond Knowles, the world’s biggest fan of James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster, is about to have 13 years of patience rewarded at last.

SAVAGE, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota man who said he idolized the shooter who killed five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs and was building an arsenal of automatic weapons to use against police was arrested this week as he tried to buy grenades from an FBI informant, according to charges filed this week.

The managing director of Elon Musk’s family office is seeking new equity investors for Twitter as users revolt, advertisers flee, and debt payments loom, according to people familiar with the fundraising effort. Musk’s money manager, Jared Birchall, reached out to potential investors this week, offering shares of Twitter at the same price, $54.20, that Musk paid to take the company private in October, the people said. “Over recent weeks we’ve received numerous inbound requests to invest in Twitter,” it read, according to a copy reviewed by Semafor. “Accordingly, we are pleased to announce a follow-on equity offering for common shares at the original price and terms, targeting a year-end close.” Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor who said he put less than $1 million in Musk’s original takeover of Twitter, confirmed that he was contacted Thursday evening about another funding round at the $44 billion valuation. Gerber said he’s considering it but wants to get a clearer idea of what the plan is. “One could argue he has created value or destroyed value at Twitter. It’s hard to tell at this point,” he said.

The cemetery’s disappearance cleared the way for the expansion of a Microsoft data center, despite layers of federal and state regulations nominally intended to protect culturally significant sites.

Some high-end chains are surprisingly profitable, and they are trying to shape child care policy in Washington. The prices can rival college tuition: Bright Horizons charges up to $44,000 a year for child care in Seattle; at KinderCare in Manhattan, it is up to $40,000. And the services can be attentive. Parents often receive hourly updates: the exact time a baby dirtied a diaper, the number of raspberries a toddler ate at snack time, photos of 3-year-olds at the playground. Millions of American families are coping with a child care shortage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. But one end of the business is thriving: national chains, some charging silver-spoon prices. That split reality is another marker of how income inequality shapes access to basic necessities like child care, and how it has become harder for lower- and middle-income parents, usually women, to get back into the work force after pandemic disruptions. And in the debate over how to fix the country’s threadbare child care system, the big chains have lobbied and donated to politicians to assert their own interests in Washington. Through a lobbying consortium, they were particularly aggressive in negotiations over President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which ultimately did not pass. The consortium said publicly that it supported the bill’s child care proposals, which would have lowered costs for many families. But in lobbying meetings, it argued to policymakers that the bill’s numbers did not add up.