More states are slashing or eliminating taxes, lessening the burden mostly for the wealthy. What does that cost the rest of us?

My Inner Baby sells adult diapers, clothing and incontinence products. One of the store’s owners, Ryan Polokoff, told News 8 in August that the products are used by people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and by people who engage in role play.

The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at $420 a share — an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price.

The agency was told that almost 250 million people in China—roughly 18% of the population—may have caught COVID-19 in the first 20 days of December. Some experts said the number is implausibly large, but Yanzhong Huang, a global health specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank, says it’s “not unreasonable,” given credible reports that 80% of Beijing residents have been infected by now.

Now, a study identifies mutations that transform seemingly useless DNA sequences into potential genes by endowing their encoded RNA with the skill to escape the cell nucleus—a critical step toward becoming translated into a protein.

Get ready for neo-brutalism.

Shankar Mishra, who worked for Wells Fargo at its Mumbai corporate office, was identified as the executive who was terminated.

US law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence since experts first started tracking the killings, a new data analysis reveals. Police across the country killed an average of more than three people a day, or nearly 100 people every month last year according to Mapping Police Violence. The non-profit research group maintains a database of reported deaths at the hands of law enforcement, including people fatally shot, beaten, restrained and Tasered. The preliminary 2022 total – a possible undercount as more cases are catalogued – marks 31 additional fatalities than the year before. In 2021, police killed 1,145 people; 1,152 in 2020; 1,097 in 2019; 1,140 in 2018; and 1,089 in 2017. The earliest data goes back to 2013, when advocates began counting these fatal incidents. A database run by the Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police, also shows 2022 as a year with record killings. In 2022, 132 killings (11%) were cases in which no offense was alleged; 104 cases (9%) were mental health or welfare checks; 98 (8%) involved traffic violations; and 207 (18%) involved other allegations of nonviolent offenses. What’s more, in 32% of cases last year, the person was fleeing before they were killed, generally running or driving off – cases in which experts say lethal force is unwarranted and also endangers the public. The racial disparities have also persisted: Black people were 24% of those killed last year, while making up only 13% of the population. From 2013 to 2022, Black residents were three times more likely to be killed by US police than white people. The inequality is particularly severe in some cities, including Minneapolis where police have killed Black residents at a rate 28 times higher than white residents, and Chicago, where the rate was 25 times higher, Mapping Police Violence reported.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s 26th District faced widespread criticism in June 2020, after its officers stood by as white vigilantes with bats and hammers terrorized Black Lives Matter protesters in Fishtown. But during that period of civil unrest, a mini-scandal was unfolding inside the district headquarters on Girard Avenue. Officer Jose Dones kept taking his pants off.

Enrique Tarrio and three other top Proud Boys lost a last-ditch effort to dismiss their seditious-conspiracy case on Friday, as jury selection in the high-profile prosecution wrapped its second week in federal court in Washington, DC. A full jury is expected to be seated Monday, with opening statements scheduled for Tuesday. The four who had sought to get the case tossed had argued that their defense efforts are irreparably hampered because too many of the witnesses they'd like to call would plead the Fifth due to their own ongoing interactions with the Justice Department. Two potential Proud Boys defense witnesses were also "intimidated" into silence when the federal government threatened prosecution, one of the four, Ethan Nordean, had argued. The defendants had asked US District Judge Timothy J. Kelly to order the federal government to grant immunity to their potential defense witnesses, and to dismiss the indictment if the government refused. In his decision, the judge said he did not find the government's conduct warranted dismissal of the indictment that a total of five co-defendants are being tried on.

Dana White admitted to striking his spouse in a TMZ video.

And he did it on Good Morning Britain.

At a November 18 court conference, US District Judge Loretta Preska announced she would unseal the identities of eight "Does" trying to stay anonymous in a long-running lawsuit between Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex-trafficking pal of Jeffrey Epstein, and Virginia Giuffre, their most prominent accuser. The exception, Preska said, was "Doe 183," whom she identified as someone with ties to Epstein, and whose name appeared repeatedly in Maxwell's criminal trial. "That Doe's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has been a subject of intense media coverage, and Doe 183's name has appeared in numerous places in unsealed portions of Ms. Maxwell's criminal trial transcript," Preska said. "In the court's view, there's no reason to redact Doe 183 from the documents." The lengths that Doe 183 has gone to hide their identity are unusual. They have been fighting for months — perhaps years — to keep their true name out of public court documents. Every single court filing they submitted in the case has been under seal. Nothing from them appears on the public court docket. Even lawyers for Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, who intervened in the case to bring documents about Epstein to light, have not been permitted to see them. What we do know, however, is that every single document they object to unsealing seems to be related to one of Epstein's longtime friends and benefactors: Leslie Wexner.

More than half a million people who deposited money with collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network have been dealt a major blow to their hopes of recovering their funds, with the judge in the company's bankruptcy case ruling that the money belongs to Celsius and not to the depositors. The judge, Martin Glenn, found that Celsius's terms of use - the lengthy contracts that many websites publish but few consumers read - meant "the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius's property."Subscribe to The Post

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Scuffles broke out on Monday outside a village in western Germany that is to be razed to allow the expansion of a coal mine, a plan that is drawing resistance from climate activists. Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police outside the village of Luetzerath before the situation calmed down and officers pulled back, German news agency dpa reported. Protesters previously had set up a burning barricade, and one glued his hand to the access road. The hamlet is to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine, despite protests from environmentalists who fear millions more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere. Activists have been living in houses abandoned by former residents.

Elon Musk said he would fix Twitter’s problem with impostors. The blue check mark on my fake U.S. senator suggests he still has a long way to go. On Tuesday, @SenatorEdMarkey briefly went viral on Twitter. Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), thanked @SenatorEdMarkey in a tweet that garnered 140,000 views. The problem is, @SenatorEdMarkey is actually me, not the real Sen. Edward J. Markey. It’s a test of Twitter’s $7.99 per month Blue “verification” service I made with the permission of the real Democrat from Massachusetts. I wouldn’t blame anyone for being confused: My test account has the senator’s name and photo and a blue check mark that says it is “verified.” But Twitter, it seems, isn’t verifying much of anything. This is the second time I’ve been able to impersonate the senator. Back in November, when Twitter first began selling its iconic blue check marks to anyone for a fee, I showed how easy it was to buy official-looking status with an impostor account called @realEdMarkey. Musk, who bought Twitter in October, got into a Twitter fight with Markey about it. Then Musk shut down Blue and promised that in a new-and-improved version “all verified accounts will be manually authenticated” before they’re given the authority of a check mark.

Numerous anti-homeless laws are being passed across the US as funding for social services is widely reduced, raising welfare concerns among advocates for the unhoused. In Missouri, a new state law that took effect on 1 January makes it a crime for any person to sleep on state property. For unhoused people, sleeping in public parks or under city highways could mean up to $750 in fines or 15 days in prison for multiple offenses. Homelessness advocates have decried the law, claiming that it unfairly targets Missouri’s homeless populations. The law was signed by Missouri’s governor, Mike Parson, last June “We are absolutely hearing that law enforcement is using this new law that’s coming as reason to displace people already,” said Sarah Owsley, advocacy director for the non-profit Empower Missouri, to St Louis Public Radio, days before the law went into effect.

On websites showcasing adult-only content, verifying your age by typing your birthdate and clicking "Go" is deemed a simple process. But in Louisiana, that's no longer the case. As of Jan. 1, 2023, people in Louisiana will need to present proof of their age, such as a government-issued ID, to visit and view pornographic websites like Pornhub, YouPorn and Redtube. The controversial law, known as Act 440, requires adult websites to screen their visitors using "reasonable age verification." The new law applies to any websites whose content is at least 33.3% pornographic material that is "harmful to minors," according to the bill signed last June. The law doesn't specify how the 33.3% would be calculated. "Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material," the bill states.

President Biden announced new immigration restrictions Thursday, including the expansion of programs to remove people quickly without letting them seek asylum, in an attempt to address one of his administration’s most politically vulnerable issues at a time when the nation’s attention is focused on Republican disarray in the U.S. House. The measures will expand Biden’s use of “parole” authority to allow 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to come to the United States each month, as long as a U.S. sponsor applies for them first. But those who attempt to migrate through the region without authorization will risk rapid expulsion to Mexico, as the administration plans to expand its use of the pandemic-era Title 42 public health policy. Mexico has agreed to take back 30,000 border-crossers from those nations each month, U.S. officials told reporters during a briefing Thursday morning. Biden’s new policies represent a move to the center on an issue that has loomed over the first two years of his administration. The changes are likely to draw challenges from immigration advocacy groups, because U.S. law says that anyone can apply for asylum if they set foot on U.S. soil. But officials say people are misusing those laws to cross the border to work, which is not grounds for humanitarian protection. The White House said the measures “will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways.”