The candidate for the Supreme Court vacancy has a history of tough-on-crime sentences and opinions that higher courts subsequently tossed out.

A site listing NFTs for sale of songs from a ton of artists, HitPiece, launched recently to mass condemnation from musicians, labels, and fans. While the site claimed to give people the opportunity to "own a song," the many artists who found their work listed, from big names to small, all said they hadn't given permission for their songs to be "sold" in this way. Veteran rapper MC Serch was quickly discovered to be one of those behind the behind the venture, although his response on Twitter to people asking for an explanation and their music to be removed was limited to a single reply, "DM me please and let’s chat if that’s cool." The site went offline following the uproar and is currently only displaying a beta logo, links to social media, and the following text: "We started the conversation and we're listening." They also released a statement on Monday night (2/1). "Clearly we have struck a nerve and are very eager to create the ideal experience for music fans," it reads. "To be clear, artists get paid when digital goods are sold on HitPiece. Like all beta products, we are continuing to listen to all user feedback and are committed to evolving the product to fit the needs of the artists, label, and fans alike."

When President Joe Biden met with U.S. governors at the White House on Monday, he was the only one given a glass of water — lest anyone else remove their mask to take a drink. The president was seated more than 10 feet from everyone, including Vice President Kamala Harris and members of his Cabinet. A White House staffer who was wearing a surgical mask when Biden entered the room was quickly handed an N95 version. These are just some of the extraordinary efforts on the part of the White House to keep the president from getting COVID-19, even though he’s gotten both of his regular vaccinations and his booster. It’s no surprise that unusual steps are taken to protect any president. But the strict precautions could also threaten to undercut the Biden administration’s own efforts to tell Americans — especially those who are vaccinated and boosted — that they can get on with something closer to their normal lives in the face of the omicron wave.

If the Dolphins owner offered Flores $100K for each loss in 2019, it would call into question the competitive integrity of the game. The NFL should want to investigate that. Apparently it doesn't.

The “Sleng Teng” riddim revolutionized reggae music in the mid-1980s, and has spawned hundreds of versions in the decades since then. Less well known is the story of how the distinctive bassline originated in a preset sample included on a Casio electronic keyboard and the work of a young developer fresh out of college.

So what happened this time? Coffeezilla, a YouTuber who investigates fraudsters and scams, posted a 23-minute video breaking it down. In short, Ice Poseidon tricked his followers to invest in CxCoin, a platform the streamer founded for content creators to get cryptocurrency donations, then pulled the rug from everyone. He took that money ($500,000 in total), pocketed $300,000, and allegedly bought a Tesla.

At 60 years old, Kendall Schoelles, pronounced shell-ess, has never worked a land job. This morning, like most others, he drops his anchor, a rusted engine block, into 5 feet of latte-colored water, grabs a 10-foot-long rake handle made of pine, and steps to the edge of the boat. The rake’s handles cut a V against dawn’s cobalt sky. Then, as it drops in the water, the teeth clawing for shells make a muffled crunch. Schoelles harvests oysters from beds his grandfather established in the early 1900s, 11 miles west of Apalachicola, Florida. He’s made his living aboard this 22-foot plywood skiff since 1984. Back then, over 400 similar skiffs would be spread across the bay — anchored at Cat Point, Indian River Lagoon, Dry Bar, Hagan’s Flats, 11 Mile, and Nick’s Hole. Decades of accumulated oyster shells made up the beds (or reefs) sitting a few feet below the water’s surface. The oyster tongers would anchor over their favorite beds and literally rake up the oysters growing on top of the reef — with some rake loads yielding a dozen perfect oysters. A few local boat makers were building two to three skiffs per month in open-air backyard shops. Oyster shucking houses dotted the shore and the docks in downtown Apalachicola, neighboring Eastpoint, and down the bay to Tommy Ward’s 13 Mile Oyster House. Schoelles and his oyster tonger peers could clear $200-$300 a day. This year, though, no one is taking oysters. In 2020, the state of Florida, responding to a historic collapse in oyster populations, closed Apalachicola Bay to all wild oyster harvesting for up to five years.

Tesla is recalling nearly 54,000 cars and SUVs because their “Full Self-Driving” software lets them roll through stop signs without coming to a complete halt. Recall documents posted Tuesday by U.S. safety regulators say that Tesla will disable the feature with an over-the-internet software update. The “rolling stop” feature allows vehicles to go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) per hour. The recall shows that Tesla programmed its vehicles to violate the law in most states, where police will ticket drivers for disregarding stop signs. The Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, said it is not aware of any state where a rolling stop is legal.

Masato Sagawa's neodymium-iron-boron magnet has become central to our modern way of living.

On January 22, more than 8,000 King Soopers grocery workers in Colorado with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 approved a new three-year contract, officially ending a ten-day strike at 78 stores. The walkout was triggered by concerns over pay, health benefits, and COVID safety measures. Under the new contract, most workers will receive $2 more an hour; some positions will get more than a $5-an-hour boost. The company will pick up a larger share of health care costs, provide better protections on pension benefits, and adopt stronger safety measures to protect employees from both violence and pandemic infection. The company also agreed to add 500 full-time new employees within 90 days after contract ratification, and to create a faster path for part-time employees to get full-time jobs. “This would not have been possible without the support of our allies throughout Colorado and across the country,” said Kim Cordova, UFCW Local 7’s feisty president. Many consumers refused to cross the strikers’ picket lines. King Soopers advertised for replacement workers, but too few people applied for jobs as strikebreakers. The company had a hard time keeping stores open because of inadequate staff.

The pandemic has burdened teachers like never before, and many don’t know how much longer they can take it.

For the last five years, the publishing industry’s most compelling story has been a mystery. Somebody had been going to extraordinary lengths to steal manuscripts—mostly, but not always, unpublished ones—from agents, publishers, authors, and literary scouts across three continents by creating an extraordinary number of fake email addresses. The person behind the scheme had an impressive facility for languages (though his English, oddly, wasn’t spectacular), as well as a palpable brazenness; a number of people I spoke to who received emails from him noted their “chatty,” familiar tone. As the industry eased into the Covid-19 pandemic and everyone’s world got a little bit smaller, the emails increased and interest among members of the industry in this strange caper heated up. On one level, the plot was incredibly elaborate and time-intensive: the stuff of Ocean’s 11. It involved registering hundreds of fake domains and creating a fake database to steal emails and passwords, and required an intimate knowledge of the international publishing world, both its luminaries and factotums. He could be threatening if people called out his flimsy deceptions; he told several of his victims he knew where they lived and that he would pay them a visit one day. His identity was long unknown—until the FBI arrested him earlier this year. Now everyone in the publishing industry is asking, What motivated him?

With salmon on the brink of extinction in the Pacific Northwest, a team of scientists will launch an international expedition Tuesday into the remote Pacific Ocean which they hope will hold clues to the fish's survival. "Conditions are rough, you've got lots of really big storms," says salmon biologist Laurie Weitkamp, one of the scientists leading the journey backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After the planned launch from Port Angeles, Wash., their 200 foot research vessel will spend a month trawling for salmon near the Bering Strait, in waters that are notorious for high swells and dangerous winter storms. "I've head many people tell me I'm absolutely crazy to be out there," she says. Weitkamp is actually thrilled though. This is seen as a first of its kind expedition where four research vessels and sixty scientists from the US, Canada and Russia will cover a huge swath of the salmon's ocean territory at once. She and her colleagues at NOAA already know a lot about why the salmon aren't making it to the ocean: think dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries, warming rivers, lower river flows. But they understand less about what's going on out in the sea, which may be the most important part of the famed fish's journey and key to its ultimate survival.

CHICAGO (AP) — The combination of two storied Chicago news brands has created one of the country's largest local nonprofit news organizations. Chicago Public Media, which owns WBEZ, the local NPR affiliate, announced Monday it completed a deal to buy the Chicago Sun-Times, the punchy tabloid with roots that stretch back to the mid-19th century.

Harris County judges routinely “rubber stamp” the prosecution’s proposed version of events at a key point of death penalty appeals, pushing condemned prisoners closer to execution with little regard for defense claims, a new study finds. Some legal experts say the study reveals a “rigged” system where the state is effectively ghostwriting appeals decisions that judges sign off on, often without allowing hearings and sometimes within just a few days. “This is the heart of the reason the Texas death penalty system is so broken,” said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. The yearlong study of roughly 200 proceedings was first published in a federal appeal filed earlier this year by defense lawyer Jim Marcus. It says that in the vast majority of death penalty cases — more than nine times out of every 10 — judges are simply accepting prosecutors’ arguments, sometimes adopting their language, spelling errors and all.

It's a boy!

Although Tupac Shakur was getting the cold shoulder from Hollywood post-release, he triumphantly got one of the leads in Gridlock’d, playing a role Laurence Fishburne and others passed on.

'The Good Place' creator Michael Schur has written a new book on moral philosophy, and it's not great

This is the second time in less than a month that historically Black colleges or universities have been targeted by bomb threats.

The U.S. National Weather Service Miami-South Florida warned the public on Sunday that immobilised iguanas could fall out of trees due to unusual cold temperatures across the region.