Exchange Healthcare Program Manager Robin Williams shares his name with a celebrity. In 2004, he posed for a picture of him eating a hot dog, and became a celebrity himself.

When Brazos County officials removed an early voting location off Texas A&M University’s campus — a decision that spurred accusations of student voter suppression — at least one county commissioner cited poor voter turnout as a partial reason for the relocation. But data shows it was one of the county’s most popular early voting sites in recent general elections. Commissioner Nancy Berry, who oversees the precinct that includes A&M, mentioned turnout at the Memorial Student Center as a supporting factor in moving the polling location to College Station City Hall for November’s midterms, according to College Station’s newspaper, The Eagle. And she similarly told the Houston Chronicle the location traditionally had “second-to-last in voter turnout” of the five early voting locations — something that Kristina Samuel, an A&M senior and president of voter engagement group MOVE Texas A&M, said she was also told. According to Brazos County in-person voting data reviewed by The Texas Tribune, the MSC had the county’s second-highest number of early voters in the 2018 and 2020 general elections. The county’s data shows that the MSC received 56,439 early voting ballots in 2018. The number fell during the pandemic in 2020 to 14,717 early votes, but this was in line with dips at all other polling locations in the county.

We are keeping many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public, a jaw-dropping new statistic shows. That serves as proof that it’s time to rethink our incarceration policies for those with a low risk of reoffending. To protect those most vulnerable to covid-19 during the pandemic, the Cares Act allowed the Justice Department to order the release of people in federal prisons and place them on home confinement. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that only 17 of them committed new crimes. That’s not a typo. Seventeen. That’s a 0.15 percent recidivism rate in a country where it’s normal for 30 to 65 percent of people coming home from prison to reoffend within three years of release. Of those 17 people, most new offenses were for possessing or selling drugs or other minor offenses. Of the 17 new crimes, only one was violent (an aggravated assault), and none were sex offenses.

As Tropical Storm Ian’s waters rose relentlessly inside Omayra Ramos’ first-floor apartment, seeping in through a slider door, then bubbling up from the toilet and tub, and finally bursting through a bedroom wall, so did terror in the 38-year-old disabled woman. “I felt like it was the end,” she said Tuesday, recounting her family’s ordeal at Cypress Landing Apartments. Ramos, whose power-wheelchair failed in the flood, escaped to a second-story apartment, carried by her mother’s boyfriend as the deluge ravaged the apartment complex, home to more than 200 families, on Winegard Road across from Oak Ridge High School. Though the water has receded, trouble for most renters got worse Monday. Many said they were notified by email by PMI Florida, the complex’ property manager, they had to get out by Halloween. The company cashed October rent payments before telling tenants they had to leave, some said.

Two former eBay executives were given prison time Thursday for their involvement in a cyberstalking scheme that targeted a couple behind an e-commerce blog that was perceived as critical of the company. James Baugh, eBay's former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to almost five years in prison, while eBay's former director of global resiliency, David Harville, was given two years behind bars. Both pleaded guilty to charges in the case. Baugh, Harville, and a number of other eBay executives in 2019 hatched a campaign to harass Ina and David Steiner, the editor and publisher of eCommercebytes, a website closely followed by online sellers. Prosecutors said the executives went after the couple after former eBay CEO Devin Wenig and other leaders inside the company were enraged by their coverage of the company. What unfolded was a bizarre and convoluted "three-part harassment campaign" that was intended to "intimidate" the Steiners and influence their reporting on the company, prosecutors said in a statement. EBay executives repeatedly sent the couple harassing and threatening messages on Twitter. The campaign escalated further when the Steiners began to receive "disturbing deliveries" to their home outside of Boston, including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects, prosecutors said. Additionally, Craigslist posts appeared online inviting strangers to experience sexual encounters at the victims' home. Baugh, Harville and others also traveled from California to the Steiners' home to surveil the couple. They hoped to install a GPS tracker on the couples' vehicle, but the garage was locked, so Harville purchased tools to break in, according to prosecutors. Five other eBay employees have pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the matter.

Stop giving these soulless dorks your money.

Maitland Jones Jr., a respected professor, defended his standards. But students started a petition, and the university dismissed him.

Almost everyone has felt the sting of rising prices. As of August, 60% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent LendingClub report — a number that hasn’t budged much since inflation hit 40-year highs. A year ago, the number of adults who felt stretched too thin was closer to 55%. Even high-income earners are feeling the strain, the report found. Of those earning more than six figures, 45% reported living paycheck to paycheck, a jump from the previous year’s 38%.

Unlike the affluent seaside communities of Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach, where the media has descended to chronicle every detail of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, the people who live in the squat homes in Dunbar have faced the crisis mostly on their own. And for many in the historically African American neighborhood, there's a sense of anger and frustration. "They're saying the islands got destroyed," observes 24-year-old Lexxus Cherry. "Well, we're destroyed, too. We're really messed up here." There's no electricity. Water comes out of the faucet, but it's little more than a thin brownish stream, unsafe to drink. A faint smell of sewage wafts up from the street. When people here call the power and water authorities, they get only vague assurances. No promises, and no timeframes.

At least 42 people are dead in Lee County, one of the areas hardest-hit by Hurricane Ian where rescue and recovery efforts are still ongoing. Local officials are now facing questions about why they didn't urge people in the path of the destructive Category 4 hurricane to evacuate sooner. Last Sunday — three days before the storm landed on the peninsula — the National Hurricane Center predicted that Ian could bring a storm surge of 4 to 7 feet from Englewood to Bonita Beach, which includes all of coastal Lee County. According to the county's emergency management plan from 2018, even a 10% chance of a six-foot storm surge is enough to prompt the evacuation of Zone A. That includes the barrier islands, the shoreline and inland areas along the Caloosahatchee River. But officials didn't order a mandatory evacuation at that time, even as neighboring Charlotte County required residents to go on Monday. Instead, Lee County authorities waited until Tuesday to institute mandatory evacuations for people expected to be in the areas most impacted by the storm.

Sorry Mario, your ass is in another castle

Elon Musk has offered to proceed with the Twitter deal at a price of $54.20 per share, two people familiar with the negotiations said, a stunning development weeks before the two sides were due to face off in a trial. Musk sent his new proposal in a letter overnight and Twitter is considering whether to accept the proposal, one person familiar with the situation said. The letter from Musk’s side said they were ready to close the deal and end all litigation, the person said.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died.

Following Parliament’s approval, EU consumers will soon be able to use a single charging solution for their electronic devices.

The satirical publication is supporting a Parma, Ohio, man fighting a civil case against police after his arrest for creating a parody Facebook page.

I contributed to The Hill TV’s “Rising” for three years. But one monologue defending Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Palestinians cost me my job.

Officer Houston Tipping died in May in what the LAPD called a tragic accident. His family's lawyer has been contesting these claims for months.

In a scandal that will surely make Mitt Romney—who famously strapped his family dog atop the roof of his car for a road trip—look like a PETA activist, a review of 75 studies published by Mehmet Oz between 1989 and 2010 reveals the Republican Senate candidate’s research killed over 300 dogs and inflicted significant suffering on them and the other animals used in experiments. Oz, the New Jersey resident who’s currently running for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, was a “principal investigator” at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs for years and assumed “full scientific, administrative, and fiscal responsibility for the conduct” of his studies. Over the course of 75 studies published in academic journals reviewed by Jezebel, Oz’s team conducted experiments on at least 1,027 live animal subjects that included dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and small rodents. Thirty-four of these experiments resulted in the deaths of at least 329 dogs, while two of his experiments killed 31 pigs, and 38 experiments killed 661 rabbits and rodents.

Venezuelan arrivals said they were approached by a woman offering $15 an hour.

The woman has receipts—and a “get well” card she says the football star, now a Senate candidate, sent her.