Artwork’s appearance fuels fears family will use return to power to further stifle efforts to recover ill-gotten wealth

New York, Washington and a number of other major cities have reported increases in violent crime since the start of the pandemic.

The popular rapper Young Thug was arrested in Atlanta on Monday, and faces a slew of accusations from Fulton County's district attorney, including that he was allegedly a founder and active leader of the violent Young Slime Life street gang. The 80-plus page indictment charges both Young Thug and another rapper, Gunna, with gang-related crimes, and includes more than 25 others who have allegedly participated in YSL gang activity. The New York Times reported that the lawyer for Young Thug, whose legal name is Jeffery Williams, said that YSL was not a street gang and claimed that the indictment was "baseless to include him." “Mr. Williams came from an incredible horrible upbringing, and he has conducted himself throughout his life in a way that is just to marvel at,” Attorney Brian Steel said.

Researchers from The Children's Hospital Westmead in Sydney, Australia released a study that confirmed not only how infants die from sudden infant death syndrome, but why.

Crypto markets are bottoming out and nothing’s immune, not even the potions critters use to breed in the Pokémon-style collectathon Axie Infinity. Called Smooth Love Potions, the currency has been trending down for some time now as players flood the market with it. For the first time in its history, however, it’s now worth less than a penny, even if you round up. “Axie Infinity’s SLP (Smooth Love Potion) utility currency went to zero! (approximately),” game developer Lars Doucet tweeted Thursday. “It’s now down to $0.004, rounding to the closest cent gives you $0.00.”

When now-Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) first ran in 2010, he had a zinger for his opponent, then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). “I would like to ask Russ, ‘Have you ever witnessed a partial-birth abortion?'” Johnson said, attacking the liberal stalwart for supporting the right to a late-term abortion. It’s a throughline for Johnson, and for the conservative movement as a whole.

Biden appears to have squandered this opportunity. After wasting months of valuable Senate floor time, Biden announced last November that he would appoint former Trump official Derek Kan and former Obama official Dan Tangherlini to fill these two vacancies. Based on their professional backgrounds and testimony to the Senate last month, it is unlikely that either Kan or Tangherlini would push to fire DeJoy if confirmed to the board.

In a comedy first, the late actor-comedian self-shot a final hour of new stand-up to be released in the event of his death: "The material's fantastic … I hope people appreciate that he did this."

Science also reveals that Canadians like myself have comparatively pendulous and girthy dongs. I take no pleasure in reporting this.

Two historic towers are slated for demolition for no good reason. Pork returned to Congress this year, and Illinois had quite the haul. Among the earmarks for the state in the latest federal budget, Illinois legislators notched $450,000 for a YWCA domestic violence center, $1 million for a Chicago El station, $660,000 for a project to study climate change and agriculture … and one item meant not to build but to destroy: $52 million to tear down a pair of century-old, terracotta-clad skyscrapers in Downtown Chicago. That grant is the work of Sen. Dick Durbin, who scored the earmark to level a half-block of the Loop because the buildings there offer a dangerous vantage point onto the courthouse next door. At least, so says Durbin, the FBI, ATF, and the U.S. Marshalls Service, which have argued that the towers’ position on the same block as the Dirksen Federal Building creates “significant public safety vulnerabilities.” Never mind that the condemned towers were built in 1913 and 1915, and the courthouse in 1974, and all three have happily co-existed across 90 feet of sky ever since. Times have changed, and taxpayers are now set to fund what looks like an architectural, environmental, and economic debacle in the name of counterterrorism. It’s not even clear the plan makes sense from a security perspective. The widespread application of this standard—that a tall building near a courthouse is a security risk—would require rigging American downtowns with thousands of pounds of TNT to liberate American government buildings from their contexts. Some experts think the reasoning doesn’t hold up. “There’s more to this than just a building too close. Either they want the land to do something else or there’s a specific threat or there’s some politics,” said Randy Atlas, an architect with a specialty in security who has worked on courthouses. “Every metro downtown has a federal courthouse, often within 100 feet of an adjacent building.”

The crypto market's inevitable crash will pull America's politics in an even scarier direction.

Some staff at Sony Group Corp. are seething following an email Thursday from the head of PlayStation that urged employees to “respect differences of opinion” on abortion rights before entering into five detailed paragraphs about his two cats’ first birthday.

St. Luke's says there was a "concerted effort to disrupt" hospital business by trespassing at both the Meridian and Boise hospital campuses and false statements related to a child protective services case. According to the lawsuit, the hospital and its staff were also attacked online attacks related to the case. “It is important for us to stand up to the bullying, intimidation and disruption, and the self-serving and menacing actions of these individuals, for the protection of our employees and patients, and to ensure our ability to serve our community,” Chris Roth, president and CEO of St. Luke’s Health System, said. According to the suit, the defendants called on their supporters to protest at St. Luke’s Boise, forcing ambulances to divert and the hospital to warn doctors, nurses, and other employees not to enter or leave the building. “St. Luke’s has not been the only target of these individuals and believes that no one should be subject to such abuse. Inaction would signal this type of behavior is acceptable in our community. It is not,” Roth said.

The chorus of those wanting a weaker labor market is getting louder and louder. After the recent job numbers were released last week, Bank of America analysts said in a note they are essentially "rooting against the home team" and hope the numbers stop being so strong. As higher wages contribute to inflation, the Federal Reserve appears to agree. “Chair Powell keeps mentioning the relationship between the high level of job openings and wage/price inflation,” Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek, wrote in a newsletter on Tuesday. “He’s not talking to investors. He’s talking to corporate America, and his goal is to have companies essentially institute a hiring freeze and end the cycle of paying up for new hires.”

Memes, supercuts, and livestreams of the trial have taken over social platforms

The news comes as billionaire Elon Musk seeks to complete his $44 billion deal to buy the company and take it private.

Jane never expected so many people to see the chalking she and her friend made on Saturday afternoon. She really only cared that one person did, and that was her Bangor, Maine, neighbor, Sen. Susan Collins. And Collins most certainly saw it. So did countless others across the country, thanks to the Republican senator herself, who called the police over the polite chalk message and took the story of the colorful abortion rights message from her sidewalk to the national news cycle.

Chobani employees who need to travel out-of-state for women's reproductive health care not available in Idaho will have their travel and lodging expenses covered, the company's CEO announced Thursday. CEO Hamdi Ulukaya announced on social media transportation, lodging and childcare costs for an employee or their dependents will be covered under amended company health plans. A memo sent to employees Thursday notes the updated policies also applies to cancer treatment, transplant surgery, bariatric surgery, gender reassignment care, abortion and other non-routine procedures that require travel.

The mom-and-pop shops of the past are gone. In their place? Skeleton crews, long waits, and endless bureaucracy. To understand this sudden trans­formation in the $56 billion durable medical equipment market, of which complex rehabilitation technology (CRT) is one part, experts and advocates point to a decade-old decision by Medicare to abandon set prices in favor of ones set by competitive bidding. By one estimate, the move reduced the federal government’s costs by 35 percent. But at the same time, locally owned wheelchair shops quickly began to disappear as large corporations offered rock-bottom bids to Medicare and private insurers. Numotion, based in Brentwood, Tennessee, was one of the winners to emerge from the new system. Formed by the union of two PE-backed companies, Numotion spent the last decade buying up dozens of smaller suppliers from coast to coast, now employing about 3,000 people in 47 states. National Seating and Mobility, based outside Nashville and owned by the PE firm Cinven, is Numotion’s biggest competitor; it has acquired more than 50 suppliers in the United States and Canada since 2014 and now has 2,600 employees in 174 locations. Brendan Schroeder, a senior analyst at the health care advisory firm Provident, estimated that Numotion and NSM together control more than half the CRT industry. “They’re the two behemoths,” he said. (Neither company was willing to disclose revenue figures or other financial information when asked.) But consolidation and the downward pressure on reimbursement rates have come at a big cost to wheelchair users, ­according to customers and advocates for disabled people.

The cryptocurrency market continued to hemorrhage money Thursday, with the most popular coins down double-digit percentages over the past 24 hours. And absolutely no one knows when things will bottom out, with many people worried the entire market of fake digital money could go to zero as the stablecoin Tether officially traded below $1 for the first time ever early Thursday. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, is down 11.2% over the past day, currently sitting at $27,959—roughly 58% lower than its all-time high of $69,000 in mid-November. Ethereum has struggled even worse in the past 24 hours, down 19.9% to a price of $1,930.