The Democratic senator won his re-election bid against Walker, the scandal-plagued, Trump-backed political neophyte.

The FBI is asking about two websites in connection with last month’s shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado that left five dead and 17 others injured, a former neighbor and friend of the suspect told NBC News.  The former neighbor, Xavier Kraus, said an FBI agent asked him about the two websites at an FBI field office in Colorado Springs last Thursday afternoon after an agent called him earlier that day.  One of the websites, Kraus said he told investigators, was created by Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, who was charged Tuesday with 305 criminal counts, including first-degree murder and bias-motivated crimes, in the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs shortly before midnight on Nov. 19. Aldrich was subdued by three club patrons shortly after the shooting began and was then arrested by authorities. The website allegedly created by Aldrich is a forum-type “free speech” site where people have anonymously posted racist and antisemitic memes, language and videos. A video on the homepage titled “Wrong Targets” advocates for killing civilians as part of a larger effort to “assassinate the elites at the top” and “cleanse” society. 

Next time you’re at airport security, get ready to look straight into a camera. The TSA wants to analyze your face. The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly testing controversial facial recognition technology for passenger screening at 16 major domestic airports — from Washington to Los Angeles — and hopes to expand it across the United States as soon as next year. Kiosks with cameras are doing a job that used to be completed by humans: checking the photos on travelers’ IDs to make sure they’re not impostors. The TSA says facial recognition, which has been banned by cities such as San Francisco, helps improve security and possibly also efficiency. But it’s also bringing an unproven tech, with civil rights ramifications we still just don’t understand, to one of the most stressful parts of travel. After hearing concerns from Washington Post readers who encountered face scans while traveling, I wanted to know how the TSA is using the tech and what our rights are. Everybody wants better safety, but is this really safer — and what are its real costs?

A deranged Florida man has been arrested for having sex with a dog in front of shocked families before ransacking a church nativity scene and attempting to steal a car, police said.

Firefighters in Iowa were summoned to a doggie "day camp" but arrived to find the fire alarm had accidentally been pulled by a canine camper. "She didn't seem to care at all. The other dogs were freaking out," she said.

A Manhattan jury has found two Trump Organization companies guilty on multiple charges of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records connected to a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation for top executives.

The rental car company Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. announced on Monday that it would pay about $168 million to settle disputes with hundreds of customers who claim they were falsely accused of vehicle theft. The company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, occasionally recorded certain vehicles as stolen, even after customers had extended and paid for their rental periods, sometimes leading to frightening run-ins with the authorities, and even jail time, according to lawsuits filed on behalf of customers across the country. Though Hertz initially contested these claims, the company, which in February hired a new chief executive, has since acknowledged some wrongdoing. In a statement on Monday, Hertz said that the payout would resolve 364 pending claims relating to vehicle theft, bringing the vast majority of such claims to a conclusion. The allegations, reported last year by CBS News, and detailed in court documents, include ones from customers who say they were arrested at gunpoint; thrown in jail; or prosecuted after the company claimed they had stolen one of its vehicles. In February, after a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Delaware ruled that Hertz must make public the number of people it filed complaints against, the company revealed it was filing thousands of police reports each year.

The layoffs are expected to cost $8 million to $12 million in restructuring charges, the company said in an SEC filing.

Argentine Vice-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was convicted and sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office for a fraud scheme that embezzled $1 billion US through public works projects during her presidency. A three-judge panel found the Peronist leader guilty of fraud, but rejected a charge of running a criminal organization, for which the sentence could have been 12 years in prison. It's the first time an Argentine vice-president has been convicted of a crime while in office. The sentence isn't firm until appeals are decided, a process that could take years. She remains immune from arrest meanwhile, as long as she can keep getting elected. Speaking after the verdict, she described herself as the victim of a "judicial mafia." Her supporters vowed to paralyze the country with a countrywide strike. They clogged downtown Buenos Aires and marched on the federal court building, beating drums and shouting as they pressed against police barriers. Fernandez roundly denied all the accusations. Argentina's dominant leader this century, she was accused of improperly granting public works contracts to a construction magnate closely tied to her family.

An EU attempt to raise awareness of its digital presence among younger, politically disengaged audiences, has proven a disaster. A “24-hour beach party” in the metaverse has reportedly failed to connect, drawing just six attendees.

Shorts in the winter. Yes, it's a thing.

On Monday, the court heard 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case that the theocrats on the court will likely use to undermine marriage equality. The conservative-controlled Supreme Court has already attacked reproductive rights by means of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. It’s set to revoke affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Next on its list of things to take away are LGBTQ rights.  On Monday morning, the court heard 303 Creative v. Elenis, the case conservatives will use to roll back human progress still more. As usual, the theocrats on the court can be expected to rule on the side of bigotry—in the guise of “religious freedom”—to the detriment of everybody else.  At issue is a Colorado-based website designer, Lisa Smith, who has an irrational hatred of same-sex marriage. She wants to start making marriage websites but insists she should be able to deny this service to same-sex couples, even though no same-sex couple has asked her to design anything. It reminds me of when, during the Wedding at Cana, Jesus said “You only have water? You ran out of wine? Wow. Instead of helping out, I’m ordering everybody to mock you and go home.”  The state of Colorado classifies Smith’s business as a “public accommodation,” meaning it’s a service that is open to the general public. As such, Smith falls under Colorado’s anti-discrimination statute, which makes it illegal for her to deny services to people based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Smith argues that complying with the anti-discrimination statute is an infringement on her free speech. Her case was taken up by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a right-wing religious organization that was last seen defending the right of a bigoted baker to deny service to same-sex couples who wanted to buy wedding cakes.

Claire Boucher and William Gratz had their sights set on the southern reaches of the Mississippi River when they packed their chickens, a sewing machine and 20 pounds of potatoes into a houseboat they crafted from scratch. Calling themselves Veruschka and Zelda Xox, river names worthy of the grand adventure they envisioned, the young couple pushed off from the riverbank in north Minneapolis the first week of June. But their journey ended only a few miles downstream after engine trouble and a three-week tangle with the cops. The Minneapolis park police trailed them from river bank to river bank, as Boucher and Gratz tried to get their boat in working order, often tying up to trees and hopping ashore to gather supplies from Craigslist and hardware stores.

In 2014, an octopus made headlines for starving herself while protecting her eggs. Why does she remind me of my mom?

New Mexico State basketball players and coaches skipped town in a university-owned bus while investigators were trying to interview them and find the gun that was used by one of their players in a self-defense defense shooting on the UNM campus hours before tipoff, according to a report obtained by Target 7. As a result, a detective sped down Interstate 25 with lights and siren on and pulled over the bus as it was headed back to Las Cruces with evidence on board. Eventually, state police found the gun with an assistant basketball coach at an Albuquerque hotel, a tablet on the bus and the cell phone belonging to NMSU forward Mike Peake that ended up in the hands of a university administrator in Las Cruces. Two coaches had initially said they did not know where the gun was, according to the report.

With demand for housing in cities skyrocketing, the most obvious next step would be to turn empty offices into apartments and condos. But the push to convert underutilized office space into housing has been sluggish.

Sex outside marriage will carry a jail term of up to a year under the new laws, which take effect in three years.

A conversation about the “mediocre monopolists” of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the real lessons of science fiction. .... "They are regular, venal mediocrities who use their access to the capital markets to buy everyone who might threaten them."

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who in the early 1970s used a self-deprecating and sexualized confessional style to create what is believed to be the first autobiographical work by a woman in underground comics — and who continued to explore her life after her marriage to Robert Crumb, a giant of the genre — died on Wednesday at her home in the small French village of Sauve. She was 74. Her family said the cause was pancreatic cancer. In her raw, sometimes crudely drawn work, Ms. Kominsky-Crumb unabashedly described her abusive childhood, her cosmetic surgery and her hypochondria, as well as her sex life and her long open marriage to Mr. Crumb, with whom she occasionally collaborated. She called her magnified, zaftig alter ego The Bunch. “I have stayed out of the mainstream my entire life,” she told Artforum earlier this year, “partially because the work itself determines that it’s not mainstream work. We started our comics off in the revolutionary underground. I was a painter with a degree in fine art, and I chose to do stuff that could be read on a toilet.” In the male-dominated world of underground comics, Ms. Kominsky-Crumb established the tone for her idiosyncratic career as a member of a collective of female artists in San Francisco. Her first autobiographical story, “Goldie: A Neurotic Woman,” appeared in the inaugural issue of the collective’s Wimmen’s Comix, published in 1972. In the story, Goldie — the name comes from her original surname, Goldsmith — refers to herself as “a giant slug living in a fantasy of future happiness.”

Women-led protests have swept Iran since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.