An independent investigation released on Monday showed abuse and misconduct "had become systemic" in the U.S. top-flight National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and that the league, teams and the governing U.S. Soccer body failed to adequately protect players. NWSL was forced into a reckoning a year ago as a report from The Athletic outlined allegations of sexual abuse by former North Carolina Courage head coach Paul Riley, after speaking to more than a dozen players he had coached since 2010. The Athletic said Riley denied "the majority" of the allegations. The fallout engulfed the league, prompting the departure of former Commissioner Lisa Baird and demands for reform, while half of the NWSL teams parted ways with their head coaches over player complaints before the end of the 2021 season. U.S. Soccer brought in U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates and King & Spalding LLP to conduct the independent inquiry and released the full findings. "Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct - verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct -had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches, and victims," the Yates' report said. U.S. Soccer founded the NWSL in 2012 and operated as manager, providing logistical and financial support, through 2020. It continues to provide oversight over the league. The Yates report said the league, its teams and U.S. Soccer failed to put in "basic measures" for player safety at the NWSL's inception, or "respond appropriately when confronted with player reports and evidence of abuse."

Democratic state House candidate Allie Braswell is criticizing his Republican opponent Carolina Amesty for living and registering to vote in a Windermere home owned by a nonprofit religious organization, Central Christian University, where Amesty is vice president. “How can you represent me if you’re not facing the same responsibilities that I have, paying taxes on the very home that you live in?” Braswell said. As a non-profit and religious group, Central Christian is exempt from income taxes and most property taxes. Amesty, 27, said the home is designated for the president of the university, her father Juan Amesty, who founded the organization, and she lives there with her parents. She compared it to Barker House, the official residence of the president of Rollins College. In its annual report for 2022, Amesty is listed as the vice president for Central Christian University, with Juan Amesty as president and CEO. Her annual salary from the nonprofit was listed on her financial disclosure form as $107,000. Since September 2020, Amesty has been registered to vote at the address in Windermere, which she also gave as her mailing address in her disclosure form. The home is listed by the Orange County Property Appraiser as being assessed at $1.04 million and with a market value of $1.17 million. Property records show it was purchased by Central Christian University in March 2022 for $1.33 million. Florida law allows property tax exemptions for not-for-profit organizations that own real estate for religious purposes. The property records didn’t indicate whether Central Christian will be paying property taxes for the Windermere home for this year.

The end of universal free school meals has left a growing number of families in a financial quandary: unable to keep up with school lunch payments, yet unable to qualify for free or reduced-price meals. A flood of families have applied for a price break now that school meals cost money for the first time since the early days of the pandemic, and sky-high prices of other essentials constrict parents’ budgets. Many families are within $100 of the modest limit for qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, according to school nutrition directors. “I’ve cried with a lot of families,” said Angie Richey, nutrition services supervisor of Roseville Area Schools in Minnesota. “I had to tell one family of six that they were $33 over.” A dozen school nutrition directors — from districts large and small, urban and rural, wealthy and low-income — told NBC News they have had to reject applications from a mother whose insulin price rose significantly; a father who lost his job during the pandemic and has found only part-time work since; and a mother of five whose only income is disability payments because she has cancer, among others.

The artist formerly known as Kanye West wore a t-shirt with the phrase “White Lives Matter” emblazoned across the back during the Paris event.

A U.S. judge on Friday dismissed Mexico's $10 billion lawsuit seeking to hold U.S. gun manufacturers responsible for facilitating the trafficking of a deadly flood of weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border to drug cartels. The decision by Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor in federal court in Boston is a victory for Smith & Wesson Brands Inc (SWBI.O), Sturm, Ruger & Co (RGR.N) and others accused of undermining Mexico's strict gun laws by designing, marketing and selling military-style assault weapons that cartels could use. Mexico said it would appeal the decision. "This suit by the Mexican government has received worldwide recognition and has been considered a turning point in the discussion around the gun industry's responsibility for the violence experience in Mexico and the region," Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement. Saylor said federal law "unequivocally" bars lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible when people use guns for their intended purpose. He said the law contained several narrow exceptions but none applied.

A federal appeals court judge appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, which he said was plagued by "cancel culture" and students disrupting conservative speakers.

The second round of Brazil's presidential campaign kicked off Monday after right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro outperformed polling and robbed leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of an outright victory in the first round of voting.

Sacheen Littlefeather (Apache/Yaqui/AZ), a Native American civil rights activist who famously declined Marlon Brando’s 1973 Oscar for Best Actor in “The Godfather,” has died at the age of 75, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Instead of accepting the award, Littlefeather spoke about the mistreatment of Native Americans, a shift toward political stances that continues at the prestigious awards ceremony to this day. “For decades, the Oscars largely steered clear of politics and social issues, acquiring a reputation as Hollywood’s biggest night while serving as a glitzy showcase for the movies and the people who made them,” the Washington Post wrote in its obituary. “Ms. Littlefeather’s speech helped change that, ushering in a new era in which actors and filmmakers increasingly used their acceptance speeches to call out injustice, criticize politicians and urge the industry to diversify its ranks and better represent women and people of color.” Her death comes just weeks after the Academy apologized to Littlefeather, who had been “professionally boycotted” after the incident.

The District of Columbia’s highest court revived two lawsuits that claim CVS and Walmart are misleading consumers by selling unproven homeopathic products alongside FDA-approved over-the-counter medicines on their store shelves and websites.

Two decades of pat-downs, and there is little evidence that we are any safer. The family might not have known it, but they had run into one of air travel’s many gray areas. Without a formal death certificate, the passenger could not be considered legally dead. And US law obligates airlines to accommodate their ticketed and checked-in passengers, even if they have “a physical or mental impairment that, on a permanent or temporary basis, substantially limits one or more major life activities.” In short: she could still fly. But not before her body got checked for contraband, weapons, or explosives. And since the TSA’s body scanners can only be used on people who can stand up, the corpse would have to be manually patted down. “We’re just following TSA protocol,” Cooper explained. Her colleagues checked the corpse according to the official pat-down process. With gloves on, they ran the palms of their hands over the collar, the abdomen, the inside of the waistband, and the lower legs. Then, they checked the body’s “sensitive areas” — the breasts, inner thighs, and buttocks — with “sufficient pressure to ensure detection.” Only then was the corpse cleared to proceed into the secure part of the terminal. Not even death can exempt you from TSA screening.

Paul Doerr is hardly the only suspect in the case—far from it. Among the rogue’s gallery of other presumptive Zodiacs are a house painter, a former schoolteacher, a sports car dealer, a theater operator, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. “There are probably 50 or 100 suspects named every year,” sighs Richard Grinell, the former postman who runs the website Zodiac Ciphers and has been following the case for a decade. In October, a self-described “national task force of seasoned investigators” called the Case Breakers pointed to a brand new Zodiac suspect. Their theory was quickly debunked, but not before Fox News picked up the story, leading to hundreds of credulous media reports.

A 14-year-old Tucson girl was denied a refill of a life-saving prescription drug she had been taking for years just two days after Arizona’s new abortion law had taken effect. 14 year old Emma Thompson has debilitating rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis which has kept her in and out of the hospital for most of her life. She relies on methotrexate to help tame the effects of the disease. But methotrexate can also be used to end ectopic pregnancies, to induce an abortion and that’s where the problem arises. “As a mother who has had to deal with my child being very ill most of her life, I was scared, I was really worried,” said her mother Kaitlin Preble. “I was shaking. I was in tears. I didn’t know what to do.”

Inmates across the deep-red state are refusing to work, demanding better treatment and an overhaul of out-of-whack standards that offer little chance of rehabilitation

In Colorado family courts, parents can request an expert evaluation of their case, which sometimes includes allegations of abuse. Mark Kilmer is routinely appointed to evaluate families despite his own history of domestic violence. Elina Asensio had a restraining order in place against her father when she met with a court-appointed psychologist assigned to determine whether he should be part of her life. She expected Mark Kilmer, the Colorado “parental responsibility evaluator” appointed to her parents’ custody case, would want to hear about the incident that had led to her father being charged with felony child abuse and pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault. The 14-year-old was surprised, then, as she talked to Kilmer on the front porch of her mother’s suburban Denver home in October of 2020, that he didn’t seem interested in learning about it. A year earlier, according to police reports, her father had grabbed Elina from behind by her lucky charm necklace and hoodie and dragged her up a flight of stairs. “Dad, I cannot breathe. … You’re hurting me, stop it,” Elina had screamed, according to the police report. She was left with burst blood vessels on her eyelids and a deep cut from ear to ear where the necklace had dug into her neck, according to the police report. A child welfare investigator described the resulting scar as a “ligature mark,” the imprint left after strangulation. It was Elina who first brought up the incident, mentioning it after Kilmer asked why, “if you love your Dad,” she was not attending therapy with him, according to notes that accompanied Kilmer’s report to the court. “I still feel my dad’s hands around my neck sometimes,” she recalled telling Kilmer, who is the brother of actor Val Kilmer. He responded with a blank stare, she said.

The agency tried — and failed — for decades to tie the Queen of Soul to “extremists”

The Arizona body donation center where FBI agents discovered a woman's head sewn onto a male body "like Frankenstein" also sold an elderly woman's corpse to the U.S. Army to be blown up in a "blast testing" experiment. Jim Stauffer donated his mother's body to the Biological Resource Center (BRC) in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2013 after she died aged 74. Doris Stauffer suffered from Alzheimer's during the final years of her life. Doctors believed the disease may have mutated, as she did not have the usual Alzheimer's gene, and they hoped to study her brain after her death.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 4-0 Thursday on to adopt new rules to address growing risks of orbital debris to space exploration by shrinking the time to remove defunct satellites.

After the match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya had ended, supporters from the losing team invaded the pitch and police fired tear gas, triggering a stampede and cases of suffocation.

Yesterday, the world got a look inside Elon Musk’s phone. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is currently in litigation with Twitter and trying to back out of his deal to buy the platform and take it private. As part of the discovery process related to this lawsuit, Delaware’s Court of Chancery released hundreds of text messages and emails sent to and from Musk. The 151-page redacted document is a remarkable, voyeuristic record of a few months in the life of the world’s richest (and most overexposed) man and a rare unvarnished glimpse into the overlapping worlds of Silicon Valley, media, and politics. The texts are juicy, but not because they are lurid, particularly offensive, or offer up some scandalous Muskian master plan—quite the opposite. What is so illuminating about the Musk messages is just how unimpressive, unimaginative, and sycophantic the powerful men in Musk’s contacts appear to be. Whoever said there are no bad ideas in brainstorming never had access to Elon Musk’s phone. In no time, the texts were the central subject of discussion among tech workers and watchers. “The dominant reaction from all the threads I’m in is Everyone looks fucking dumb,” one former social-media executive, whom I’ve granted anonymity because they have relationships with many of the people in Musk’s texts, told me. “It’s been a general Is this really how business is done? There’s no real strategic thought or analysis. It’s just emotional and done without any real care for consequence.”

The Kalalau Trail is considered a dangerous trail, located in the Napali Coast State Wilderness Park of Kauai. Most people know this trail for the first 2 miles to Hanakapiai Beach, but permitted backpackers can go the full 11 miles to Kalalau Beach at the end, where camping is allowed. Set among a coastline of steep cliffs, valleys and streams, the Kalalau Trail requires the most rescues on Kauai. Aside from the usual risks that come with hiking, rain on this coastline can cause the many streams in the area to flash flood. Kauai’s red clay dirt can crumble when dry and be extremely slippery when wet. Strong ocean currents can pull swimmers out to sea. Deaths on the trail happen often enough that a sign posted at Hanakapiai Stream tallies its victims — close to 100 the last time I visited. This doesn’t include deaths at other streams and beaches, those from falling rocks or falls from great heights. Still, the trail’s wild and remote beauty attracts day hikers, backpackers, free spirits and illegal campers, who stay for extended periods. About 500,000 visitors and residents ventured out on the trail in 2015, according to the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.