The toxic rare earth mining industry at the heart of the global green energy transition A six-month investigation by Global Witness followed the outsourcing of this highly toxic industry across the Chinese border into Myanmar. There, heavy rare earth mining has exploded so quickly that within just a few years a mountainous corner of Myanmar, known as Kachin Special Region 1, has become the world's largest source of supply. This region is a semi-autonomous territory run by militias that are affiliated to Myanmar's brutal military regime. The mining is illegal under Myanmar's laws, and hardly exists on paper. Yet the damage that global demand for products manufactured by international companies is fuelling in this remote, lawless part of the world is all too real for the communities who are now risking their lives to defend their land.

Year Brooke Jenkins didn’t just quit her job as a local prosecutor to volunteer for the recall against her former boss Chesa Boudin. Newly filed ethics records show she also raked in more than $100,000 as a consultant for Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a nonprofit that shares an address and virtually the same name as the organization behind the district attorney’s recall but is legally a separate entity. A board member for both groups was also one of the biggest funders supporting the recall. Attempts to reach representatives for both Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy—the latter of which supported the recall—to clarify their relationship to one another and connections to the campaign to oust Boudin were not successful. Jenkins earned the six-figure salary in the roughly six months before Mayor London Breed appointed her district attorney on July 8, according to a spokesperson for the DA and a form she filed this week reporting her economic interests. During that period, Jenkins was volunteering as a spokesperson on the recall campaign. This marks the first time Jenkins publicly disclosed the earnings from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Harold Duane Poole was waiting with his semiautomatic service rifle — and an explanation — when deputies arrived at his sprawling wooded property on a warm spring night last year and found a bullet-riddled body near the driveway. A veteran of the DEA’s military-style commando teams, Poole acknowledged he fatally shot a mentally ill neighbor just minutes after calling law enforcement to report the man was trespassing on his land – yet again – “out of his mind” and threatening him with a rock. “I’m going to kill you!” Poole recalled Chase Brewer yelling before he responded by firing eight high-powered rounds, striking the man in the chest, gut and hip. Sheriff’s investigators were skeptical of Poole’s self-defense claim from the start, reports show, mostly because he mentioned in his call for help that the trespasser was already leaving. No rock of any kind could be found. And the shooting happened 200 yards from Poole’s house, near the edge of his property, prompting deputies to determine Mississippi’s “castle doctrine” didn’t apply. Yet a little more than a year after Poole was arrested on a murder charge in the April 27, 2021, shooting, he has quietly returned to work as a supervisor in the DEA office a half-hour’s drive north in Jackson after a grand jury this spring declined to indict him.

Amtrak’s top executives received six-figure incentive bonuses in 2021, their biggest payouts in years, despite the service’s lackluster financial performance and weak ridership caused by the pandemic, according to data obtained by The New York Times. The compensation data, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, showed that annual incentive payouts made to Amtrak’s senior leaders have grown significantly in recent years. Nine top executives received bonuses exceeding $200,000 in the 2021 fiscal year, up from six executives in 2019. Far smaller bonuses were awarded in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and none were given in 2015 or 2020. Last year’s payouts came as the federal government made its largest investment in passenger rail since Amtrak started operating in 1971. As part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed in November, Congress set aside $66 billion for the rail sector, a third of it specifically for Amtrak, which has for years called for greater investment to update, modernize and expand passenger rail service in the United States. Amtrak has lost money ever since Congress created it a half-century ago to serve as the nation’s passenger rail operator. The service appeared to be on the verge of breaking that losing streak in late 2019, but the coronavirus erased that hope. As ridership plunged early in the pandemic, lawmakers provided Amtrak with $3.7 billion in emergency relief. The rail service furloughed more than 1,200 workers, encouraged others to leave with buyout offers and paused hiring for 16 months. Last fall, its work force was still 1,500 employees — or more than 8 percent — smaller than it was before the pandemic. The service has been hiring rapidly, but ridership this year through May was still down more than a third from the same period in 2019.

Two Indiana officers were suspended after a stunning courtroom revelation that police thought a potential town council candidate was anti-police and arrested him, stopping him from running for office. During a July 19 hearing, Franklin County Prosecutor Chris Huerkamp dropped charges that included drug possession against Trevin Thalheimer after an officer and witness recounted how Brookville police talked about Thalheimer. Huerkamp, who also did not pursue a rape charge police had investigated, said he was “disturbed beyond words” by the alleged police conduct and reported the incident to the Indiana State Police, which launched a criminal investigation. The transcript of the hearing was made public Monday. Brookville Police Chief Terry Mitchum and the investigating officer, Ryan Geiser, were suspended with pay from the nine-person force Thursday by the town’s council, which ordered them to stay away from other officers and town property. The council installed an interim chief in a brief emergency meeting and said it would begin searching for a permanent replacement. Thalheimer said he decided not to run in the May 3 primary race for town council since the arrest rocked his hometown of 2,500 people and consumed his life. Immediately after he got out of jail, where he was held for about an hour, he said he couldn’t leave his bed. He said he felt he had been “destroyed” by the criminal charges, which exacerbated his depression and anxiety. “I have a bad taste in my mouth about politics,” he said. “I knew politics was dirty, but I didn’t know I’d have to dumpster dive.”

Trees are advancing into the Arctic tundra and retreating from boreal forests further south, where stunting and die-offs are expected

“Grease” alum Eddie Deezen has reportedly been transferred to state care in Maryland after he was found mentally unfit to stand trial in a burglary case.

The rapper said a 2020 story about a harassment campaign he launched against a Twitter user cost him his livelihood.

EDMONTON — Alberta has awarded a prize to an essayist who argues the sexes are not equal and that women should pick babies over careers to avoid the province having to import more foreigners and risk “cultural suicide.”

This is the antiquated system the IRS uses to process millions of tax returns each year.

In an unprecedented move, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced at a news conference Tuesday morning that prosecutors “can no longer stand by these convictions.”

Tenants of the Loop Lofts in the Central West End were given just three days' notice to move out of the apartments after recent flooding.

Jumping spiders have REM-like twitches when they sleep, suggesting dreams may be much more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously realized Barred from her lab by pandemic restrictions, behavioral ecologist Daniela C. Rößler caught local jumping spiders and kept them in clear plastic boxes on her windowsill, planning to test their reactions to 3-D-printed models of predatory spiders. When she came home from dinner one night, though, she noticed something strange. “They were all hanging from the lids of their boxes,” says Rößler, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She had never seen jumping spiders suspended motionless on silk lines like this before. “I had no idea what happened,” Rößler says. “I thought they were dead.” It turns out the jumping spiders were simply asleep—and that Rößler had discovered an alternate sleeping habit of the species Evarcha arcuata, which had been known to build silk sleeping dens in curled-up dead leaves. But the real surprise came when she decided to spy on them all night. She bought a cheap night-vision camera, duct-taped some magnifying lenses to it (E. arcuata is typically around six millimeters long) and aimed it at a sleeping female spider. What Rößler saw on the recording astonished her.

Attorney Mark Bankston said the photo may not have been sent with the consent of Jones' wife, which he said might run afoul of state laws.

Former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, suggested the FBI has become so corrupt, they may have planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago.

The city of Oakland has agreed to significantly change how it conducts closures of homeless encampments, settling a lawsuit filed by a group of unhoused residents in 2018. The city must now provide one week’s notice before closing a camp, more carefully store residents’ belongings, and avoid closing camps during rain or extreme weather. “By approving this settlement, those changes will take effect,” said Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas at a special, half-hour meeting of the council Tuesday morning, where the agreement was approved. Under the settlement agreement, the city will also pay $250,000 to members of the Housing and Dignity Village community and encampment.

Not since Hillary Clinton dabbing on ‘em has a meme been so brutally murdered in public the way “Dark Brandon” was on Monday when several administration officials, and high-profile Democrats, started tweeting photos of president Joe Biden with laser eyes. If you’re not terminally online, Dark Brandon is a riff on Dark MAGA, a short-lived meme about Trump. Dark MAGA’s few proponents said that Trump would return (probably in 2024) with the gloves off, ready to punish his enemies. To demonstrate this new more authoritarian Trump, a few supporters photoshopped Trump and created art that looked “fashwave.” (It was lame and Dark MAGA, as I wrote before, barely existed.)

A new lawsuit from a former Project Veritas employee alleges all sorts of misdeeds: porn at work, a near-fatal drug overdose, an abortion, and poop.

The arrest occurred overnight near Exit 277, according to a Santa Rosa police dispatcher and an employee at a nearby gas station.

In “One Beautiful Spring Day,” the cartoonist takes his orders from the imaginary world that he creates.