That fusion announcement is worth getting hyped about, but practical fusion is still a long way off.

China is working on a more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) support package for its semiconductor industry, three sources said, in a major step towards self sufficiency in chips and to counter U.S. moves aimed at slowing its technological advances.

Mayor Karen Bass’ first day in office didn’t start at City Hall but down the street at the Emergency Operations Center where, flanked by elected officials, she declared the homeless crisis a state of emergency. That move, which will require City Council approval, gives her the ability to more quickly create new interim housing and make a plan to get the most vulnerable Angelenos off the streets as winter weather sets in. Bass met with the general managers of city departments, telling them to bring her solutions to make the government more efficient and responsive when addressing homelessness. “We must bring people indoors faster, and we will,” she said. “We must build housing faster, and we will. We must coordinate shelter and services, and we will. We must have coordination among the city officials and the city departments and we will, because we are doing things differently.” The question is how Bass plans to use the powers afforded to her during an emergency. She has the ability to more quickly dispense money to providers who do the outreach work to homeless people, approve the master-leasing of buildings and expedite the regulatory and permitting processes. Though she could also commandeer property to provide housing, she told The Times’ editorial board she won’t do that because “you’re going to end up tied up in court forever. I’m looking for the quickest way to do this.”

In a statement, Puget Sound Energy confirmed two separate incidents at substations in November.

Gareth Train, the owner of a rural Queensland property where six people, including two police officers, were shot and killed on Monday, had become deeply entangled in an online conspiracy community, where he posted about a mistrust of police and claims the Port Arthur massacre was a false-flag operation. The Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, on Tuesday said there had been “a lot of ammunition and weaponry” at the property, at Wieambilla in the Western Downs, and that the killed officers “did not stand a chance”. Property records show the land is owned by Gareth Train and his wife, Stacey. Police went to the property on Monday afternoon looking for Gareth’s brother, Nathaniel Train, who had been reported missing by family members. Two police officers, constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were shot and killed after arriving at the property and a third officer was injured and taken to hospital. Neighbour Alan Dare, 58, was also shot dead by the armed offenders. Gareth and Nathaniel Train and a woman, who has not yet been identified, were subsequently shot and killed in an operation involving 16 tactical police about six hours later.

The big cat had been sought for evaluation by the National Park Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife after "exhibiting some signs of distress."

It’s the tripledemic that epidemiologists feared—those viruses, with the help of a few other seasonal recurring ones, are working together to fuel weeks of coughing, runny noses, and fevers. So if your kids, your coworkers, and everyone you know has been feeling sick, that’s why.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office has spent over $32,000 in an attempt to stop videos that show deputies abusing an incarcerated man from becoming public. Video obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU) shows PCSO deputies slamming William Tide to the ground at the Land O'Lakes Detention Center during two different incidents on Nov. 17, 2017. Tide was taken to a hospital after the assaults, and CT scans found that he suffered a fractured rib. After Tide filed a complaint about the incident with PCSO, the ACLU requested the video. PCSO refused to comply with the request over the past several years, so in February, ACLU filed a lawsuit against the sheriff's department. PCSO, which has been operated by Sheriff Chris Nocco since 2011, hired a law firm and paid $32,400 dollars in an attempt to prevent ACLU from getting the video. The sheriff cited a public records exemption for video that might compromise the safety of the detention center or officers as its defense for trying keep the footage from being released. But in August, a Pasco County judge ruled against PCSO's attempt to block the videos, which were shared with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay by the ACLU.

Angelo Badalamenti, the composer behind Twin Peaks' iconic and haunting score, has died

Singer Ichiro Mizuki, known as the “king of anime songs,” passed away on Dec. 6, his agency announced on Monday. He was 74 years old. Mizuki made his debut in 1968 as a singer of popular Japanese songs, and switched to anime songs in 1971. He sang more than 1,200 overall, including theme songs for the anime “Mazinger Z” and the “Kamen Rider” tokusatsu superhero TV series. He revealed that he was undergoing treatment for lung cancer in July.

Holding out no longer, Arizona certified the results of the November election Monday after a handful of counties delayed their certifications. However, the long election season in Surry County remains open and ongoing with two seats on the Town of Dobson Board of Commissioners still up in the air. That is because the local board of elections has recommended the state order a new election after a challenge by the losing candidate, and now the two winning candidates are apparently ready to file their own challenges, asking that the election results stand as they were counted on election day. The results are in, and the vote totals themselves are not being challenged. It was the conduct of a poll worker in Dobson that has been called into question. Candidate John Jonczak and Dobson businessman Jimmy Yokeley each filed a challenge to the election results due to activity that may have influenced the vote of some residents. Last week the county board of elections voted 3-2 to advance both challenges to the state elections board for deliberation with a local recommendation that a new election be conducted. The poll worker in question, according to information submitted during a hearing conducted by the local board, told at least one voter that Jonczak was dead, and told other voters that candidate Sharon Gates-Hodges was dead. Gates-Hodges had, in fact, passed away several days before the election, but poll workers sharing such information is prohibited.

Libraries may lose millions – and cut staff, hours, branches, and programming – under an Adams administration proposal.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.  Those messages are being fully, publicly documented here for the first time.  The texts are part of a trove Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that was obtained by TPM. For more information about the story behind the text log and our procedures for publishing the messages, read the introduction to this series. Meadows’ exchanges shed new light on the extent of congressional involvement in Trump’s efforts to spread baseless conspiracy theories about his defeat and his attempts to reverse it. The messages document the role members played in the campaign to subvert the election as it was conceived, built, and reached its violent climax on Jan. 6, 2021. The texts are rife with links to far-right websites, questionable legal theories, violent rhetoric, and advocacy for authoritarian power grabs. One message identified as coming from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021, three days before Joe Biden was set to take office, is a raw distillation of the various themes in the congressional correspondence. In the text, despite a typo, Norman seemed to be proposing a dramatic last ditch plan: having Trump impose martial law during his final hours in office. 

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, meanwhile, are on the rise, signaling the potential start of a much-dreaded winter wave. According to data tracking by The New York Times, cases are up 56 percent over the last two weeks and hospitalizations, which typically lag behind case rises, are up 28 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting that about 9 percent of US counties have high COVID-19 Community Levels, which are based on case numbers and hospital capacity. An additional 35 percent of US counties reportedly have medium community levels.

Iranian ballistic missile deliveries to Russia could violate a UN Security Council resolution and trigger UN sanctions.

The world of cryptocurrency is rich with eccentric characters and anonymous Twitter personalities. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the early figures who called attention to the problems with Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, is a 30-year-old Michigan psychiatrist who investigates financial crimes as a hobby. James Block, who runs a crypto newsletter called Dirty Bubble Media, has gotten overlooked in the swift and spectacular collapse of FTX. On November 2, a report from the crypto publication Coindesk highlighted the troubled balance sheet of Bankman-Fried’s crypto-trading firm, Alameda Research. Two days later, Block’s post titled “Is Alameda Research Insolvent?” went viral, and for good reason: Block had connected the dots from Coindesk’s earlier work to suggest that both FTX and Alameda had their money tied up in their own made-up tokens—an unsustainable circular flow of cash that would eventually sink FTX. Within a week, the company filed for bankruptcy.

“You shut the fuck up,” Chappelle said as the crowd booed the billionaire.

Low water levels have pushed shippers who typically use river barges to use freight rail. But decades of strangled capacity makes rail a bad bet, too.

Answer: They didn't even try

A collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders gathered in Manhattan for the New York Young Republicans Club’s (NYYRC) annual gala Saturday night, where that group’s president declared “total war” on perceived enemies. At the five-hour event, which Hatewatch reporters attended, white nationalists Peter and Lydia Brimelow of VDARE hobnobbed with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and White House official. Donald Trump Jr. was also in attendance. Republicans publicly lauded members of an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era German Nazi party members. Racist political operative Jack Posobiec shared jokes across a table with Josh Hammer, the opinion editor of Newsweek. Multiple recently elected GOP congresspeople applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told the NYYRC crowd in the event’s closing remarks that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol would have succeeded if she had planned it and that the insurrectionists would have been armed.