Alabama Power and Florida Power & Light hired the consulting firm Matrix to help shape their fortunes. Matrix funded six sites that covered politics, filling a void left by the decline of local news.

George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others. His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year. There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.

Spinach that can reportedly cause hallucinations has been recalled in Australia after officials have warned the public about the toxic product. Riviera Farms recalled its baby spinach on Friday after it was found that some of the products had been contaminated with a weed which might have “health consequences if consumed.” On Monday, New South Wales’ health ministry said in an update that 164 people in the eastern state had reported symptoms after eating the spinach, of which at least 42 had sought medical attention. Symptoms associated with the contaminated spinach can be “severe,” the health body said, and can include hallucinations, delirium or confusion, rapid heartbeat, and dilated pupils.

A confrontation between a member of Elon Musk’s security team and an alleged stalker that Musk blamed on a Twitter account that tracked his jet took place at a gas station 26 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and 23 hours after the @ElonJet account had last located the jet’s whereabouts. The timing and location of the confrontation cast doubt on Musk’s assertion that the account had posted real-time “assassination coordinates” that threatened his family and led to the confrontation. Police have said little about the incident but say they’ve yet to find a link between the confrontation and the jet-tracking account.

Consumer Reports tested 28 dark chocolate bars and found cadmium and lead in all of them. Here's how to limit your heavy metal exposure.

“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.