BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a commercial development project that included a microbrewery in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement, according to a report by federal investigators released Wednesday.

Two decades ago, the destruction of the World Trade Center plunged many novelists in the West into feelings of powerlessness and marginality. Fanatics of seemingly obscure background and motivation had set off colossal explosions in what Don DeLillo in Falling Man called the ‘narcissistic heart of the West’. Martin Amis was not alone in ‘considering a change of occupation’. Ian McEwan claimed to have found it ‘wearisome to confront invented characters’. ‘I wanted to be told,’ he said, ‘about the world. I wanted to be informed. I felt that we had gone through great changes and now was the time to just go back to school, as it were, and start to learn.’ This learning process could have begun with fiction from outside the West. Unlike the novelists blindsided on 9/11, and since, by the ferocity of political antagonism, writers from Asia, Africa and Latin America had always written from within, and often about, the experience of violence and disorder; they couldn’t remain oblivious to conflicts over food, water, land and identity. After 9/11, however, amid Western preparations for retribution in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, facts rather than fiction – the facts of history, politics, sociology and, especially, religion – suddenly seemed crucial to re-education in the self-involved West. In the abrupt efflorescence of Western curiosity about far-off lands and peoples, I was one of those tasked with answering the puerile question ‘why do they hate us?’ Early in 2001, a few months after publishing my first novel, The Romantics, I had travelled to Afghanistan. I wrote at length, in Granta and the New York Review of Books, about the way the country had been ravaged by the Soviet Union, the ‘free world’ and Saudi-sponsored Islamic fundamentalists. I tried to describe this recent history from the point of view of the Afghans. Soon after 9/11, however, I found myself routinely invited by the American and European media to share my expertise on ‘terrorism’.

Let me take you back to our favourite table at the West Hollywood Sunset Marquis where DC publisher Dan Didio knew how to hook me like a prize trout – he and his writers had ‘come up with’ plans he told me, to shake up the Superman books; plans that included Superman’s son graduating to the primary role as Earth’s heroic protector while a disillusioned older Superman became ever more right wing and authoritarian… eventually assembling a new version of the Authority team to enact his patrician will. Concurrent plans existed to push Supergirl in an increasingly fascistic direction for reasons that made scant sense to me. Why, I say, oh why, is it so hard to simply serve the concept and write the adventures of a smart, creative and kind-hearted teenage girl with superpowers? What purpose earthly or unearthly is served by making this character an embittered space tyrant? The notion behind the Superman and the Authority series as it was proposed to me was that Superman – who had aged in real time since his 1938 arrival on Earth and was now 82 going on 55 and with diminishing powers - would inevitably grow more and more autocratic as he got older and his son took his place as a new and more popular switched-on Superman. Dan knew exactly how I’d feel about this. He waited for me to take a breath while he ordered another bottle of our favourite ZD. Then, waving a fork in an unnecessarily aggressive manner, I got going… I liked the idea of an older Superman rethinking his mission and turning into what I saw as a Doc Savage pulp hero figure with his own team of expert operatives… but as for the rest of it… I questioned the desire to attribute the worst aspects of human behaviour to characters whose only useful function, as I see it, aside from simply entertaining young people and anyone else who fancies an uplifting holiday in a storybook world far from the grinding monotony of pessimism and disillusion, is to provide a primary-coloured cartoon taste of how we all might be if we had the wit and the will and the self-sacrifice it takes to privilege our best selves and loftiest aspirations over our base instincts. While that great day is unlikely to happen any time soon in any halfway familiar real world, why not let comic book universes be playgrounds for the kind of utopian impulses that have in the past brought out the best in us? To undermine the fundamental appeal of superheroes like Superman and Supergirl by re-casting them as anti-heroes at best or outright monsters - dragging imaginary childhood paragons off their pedestals to reinforce a fairly facile point about the tendency of real world heroes to exhibit feet of clay, struck me and strikes me still as imaginatively lazy. Using kids’ adventure heroes to make hackneyed observations about typical human behaviour that does not in fact apply to made up comic book characters strikes me as – I don’t know - whimsical? Dilettantish? A squandering of energy and creativity?

The U.S. seizure of Afghan government funds after the Taliban took power has put millions at risk of starvation. A lead attorney for some families of 9/11 victims who sued the Taliban — plaintiffs who could receive billions of dollars as a result of the Biden administration’s decision to seize the reserves of the Afghanistan central bank — also worked until January at the Biden White House on Afghanistan issues. Lee Wolosky, co-chair of the litigation department at the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, was appointed to aid with Afghan evacuees in September 2021 and returned to his firm last month. After the fall of Kabul, the U.S. government seized the assets of the country’s central bank, and last week the administration announced it would hold half of the roughly $7 billion for families who had brought suit against the Taliban, and deploy the other half at some undetermined point in time “for the benefit of the Afghan people.” On Monday, Wolosky himself signed a brief asking the judges in the families’ case against the Taliban to move forward with enforcing the settlement. The long-running lawsuit stands to be a lucrative payday for the high-powered attorneys working on the once long-shot case. Lawyers often take a percentage of damages awarded, which in this case easily puts the payout into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Families with school-age kids have borne the brunt of the pandemic. Will they make themselves heard at the ballot box? Regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, everyone can agree that parents have had a particularly difficult few years. Many parents of school-age children, and particularly mothers, had to leave their jobs to take care of children unable to attend school. Children have struggled with virtual learning, as well as the mental health and educational effects of not being able to sit in a classroom. Families have had to sort through an ever-shifting welter of pandemic guidance, adjusting on the fly to changing circumstances, as well as a lack of consistency: Masking requirements differ from district to district, community to community, and state to state. The chaos and inconsistency has naturally manifested itself in our politics, as well. Children and schools have increasingly become the focal point of several political maelstroms, from school system coronavirus policies to the information being taught in the classroom, virtual or not. As these debates have raged, many parents have lost the cushion provided by an expanded child tax credit that expired at the end of last year, while inflation has reached its highest point in decades. The party in power typically suffers significant losses in midterm elections, and Democrats are in danger of losing one or both chambers of Congress. Already facing a hostile environment and a myriad of messaging challenges, Democrats may also need to convince the parents of young children that they are the party best equipped to address these overwhelming concerns.

On Jan. 21, FBI agents raided the home and campaign office of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). And it wasn’t long before the love came pouring in on Twitter, with Cuellar die-hards stuffing his replies with encouragement a few days later. “Here we will be supporting until the end.” “Bravo many more achievements.” “We are getting better and better.” “For better things for the country!!” “Hopefully Henry can stay in congress.” But these well-wishers aren’t constituents, supporters, or adoring fans. They’re a coordinated network of fake troll accounts, and they’re on a mission. Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, had never seen much engagement before the raids, with his tweets normally only drawing a half dozen or so replies. But after the FBI came knocking, Cuellar’s replies teemed with critics calling on him to resign, reminding him of the investigation, and taunting the nine-term congressman with the thought of prison. Within a week, those replies were matched with missives from ostensible supporters swooping in to battle the haters.

The facial recognition company Clearview AI is telling investors it’s on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable,” according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post.

An analysis of 40 major metro areas revealed unequal levels of investor activity, with southern cities and Black neighborhoods disproportionately affected

Disney's first Storyliving community will open in California's Coachella Valley. Other locations around the U.S. are under exploration.

Jon Christiansen says he has reason to feel paranoid. In 2020 and 2021, while law enforcement and other officials painted a picture of rising crime rates and an ongoing struggle to recruit enough police officers, Christiansen and other activists in left-leaning organizations were the subject of what they say was a politically motivated and wasteful undercover investigation. “I’m blown away by the amount of resources the city had to have spent to spy on peaceful political groups,” says Jon, who co-founded the Chinook Center with wife Sam Christiansen and Shaun Walls. “This certainly doesn’t seem like a wise use of taxpayer money — to have an undercover cop spending hours to discover that the Tenant Union helps tenants, that the [Democratic Socialists of America] and Our Revolution try to pass laws and elect candidates that reflect their values, or that the Chinook Center is a space for groups to organize. All of those groups are completely above ground and explicit about their goals.” The investigation started after the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, when a CSPD undercover officer spent a year posing as a political activist to infiltrate a variety of progressive organizations including the Chinook Center, the Colorado Springs chapter of the DSA, the Colorado Springs Tenants Union, and the Colorado Springs Mutual Aid and Solidarity Union. Officer April Rogers, using the alias “Chelsie Kurti,” gained access to internal chat groups, membership rosters and email accounts associated with the groups.

President tells story of woman who called county government to have dog removed from lawn – so Biden put it on her front step

What does society owe immunocompromised people?

Synthetic human faces are so convincing they can fool even trained observers, and they may be highly effective for use in scams

A private prison company will run a new U.S. pilot program that would place hundreds of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border under house arrest, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Reuters, an approach that critics say is an extension of for-profit detention.

The unnamed flier reportedly attempted to breach the cockpit before turning to the aircraft’s door.

The furniture giant is hungry for Romania’s famed trees. Little stands in its way.

A 9-year-old girl has died after she was struck by a bullet fired by a man who had just been been robbed, Houston police said Tuesday. She is the second 9-year-old girl to be shot in the city within a week. The robbery victim, 41-year-old Tony D. Earls, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Houston Police Department said. Police Executive Chief Matt Slinkard said Tuesday that the robbery occurred around 9:45 p.m. on Monday at a Chase drive-through ATM in southeast Houston. The suspect approached on foot while the robbery victim was in his vehicle at the ATM and robbed him at gunpoint, police said. "The shooting suspect first shot at the robbery suspect, who was fleeing on foot, and then at a pickup truck he thought the robbery suspect had gotten into," police said. The pickup was not involved in the robbery and instead had a family of five inside. The 9-year-old girl was struck in the head as she sat in the back seat, police said.

We've known for a while that the 2022 GMC Hummer EV weighs a lot—about 9,000 pounds. It's also been known that much of the bulk can be attributed to its ginormous battery, but until now, we weren't sure exactly how much. Thanks to documents submitted by General Motors to the EPA and later spotted by Car and Driver, we know the electric Hummer pickup's Ultium battery pack weighs a staggering 2,923 pounds on its own. That's about 600 pounds more than a new Mazda MX-5 Miata, in case you're curious. This is for the top-spec pack you'll find in the Hummer EV Edition 1, which has a usable capacity of 212.7 kilowatt-hours. A total curb weight of 9,063 pounds is confirmed by these documents as well, meaning a little over 32 percent of the pickup's heft comes from the battery.

Employees of Meta, the freshly rebranded parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, have a new term to refer to themselves: Metamates. During a virtual all-hands meeting at the company on Tuesday, according to Verge senior reporter Alex Heath, CEO Mark Zuckerberg rattled off a list of new corporate values that Meta will go by. One of the most important is the catchphrase “Meta, Metamates, me,” designating the order of importance by which Meta employees should rank their own interests vs. their colleagues’ and the company’s well-being. The Washington Post subsequently confirmed Heath’s account of the presentation.

“High gas prices will almost certainly be blamed on the party in power, so it really seems like the Saudis are using the oil weapon against Democrats here.”