Disasters have not fallen evenly on Iola and Port Arthur. Hurricane Harvey flooded almost the entire coastal city on the Louisiana border, which was damaged by Ike and Rita before that. Iola, a tiny Grimes County community 100 miles inland, largely is insulated from tropical storms. Both cities applied for federal Harvey disaster aid distributed by the state. Iola pitched a wastewater system that would serve 379 people. Port Arthur proposed the replacement of century-old storm water pipes to help 42,000. The state funded Iola’s project. Port Arthur got nothing. “With our susceptibility to being affected by hurricanes, if those places got money, you know it wasn’t fairly done,” said Port Arthur Mayor Thurman Bartie. A Houston Chronicle investigation found the $1 billion in aid distributed by the Texas General Land Office in May disproportionately flowed to inland counties with less damage from Harvey than coastal communities which bore the brunt of the storm.

European empires and nations have come and gone, but for more than 1,500 years, a Slavic-speaking ethnic group has remained in Germany.

He's the veteran pollster whose advice led to the use of "climate change" instead of "global warming", and "death tax" by political opponents of inheritance tax. Now Dr Frank Luntz is testing public opinion in Britain to find an alternative to "capitalism", after 170 years of use, because he fears it is becoming a "bad word". A case in point, says Dr Luntz, 59, was the partly successful campaign by activists demanding that companies withdraw their advertising from GB News, the new centre-right t

THORNTON, N.H. (AP) — Surveillance video helped police get to the bottom of a series of vehicle break-ins in town of Thornton. Home security footage captured the bandit — a black bear — opening the door of a vehicle and then crawling inside.

Singer Macy Gray says the flag should be redesigned to represent all Americans

Mexico’s national team will play its first two home matches in World Cup qualifying without spectators, a penalty for its fans’ use of an anti-gay chant during last spring’s pre-Olympic tournament in Guadalajara, the country’s soccer federation announced at a Mexico City news conference Friday. The games Mexico will play behind closed doors are against Jamaica on Sept. 2 and Canada on Oct. 7. The federation was also fined $73,000 following an investigation by FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. “What for some seemed to be fun, I have news for you. It isn’t,” Yon de Luisa, the president of the Mexican federation, said at the new conference. “Because of it we’re kept out of the stadium and kept away from our national team. Please stop. Stop now.” The actions are the strongest ever taken against Mexico for the chant and more sanctions could be coming. FIFA is said to still be looking into the use of the chant during four recent games in the U.S., three of which were halted by officials because of fan behavior.

An investigation found one or two things that suggested he was a bad guy!

Some said they didn't know their thermostats were being accessed from afar until it was almost 80 degrees inside their homes.

A Starlink beta user in Arizona said he lost Internet service for over seven hours yesterday when the satellite dish overheated, demonstrating one of the drawbacks of SpaceX's broadband service. When the user's Internet service was disrupted, the Starlink app provided an error message saying, "Offline: Thermal shutdown." The dish "overheated" and "Starlink will reconnect after cooling down," the error message said.

Echolocation is a form of orientation behavior in which some animals can assess environments in which vision is ineffective. Echolocating mammals have been recognized for decades, including microbats and toothed whales. Recently, the Chapa soft-furred tree mouse (Typhlomys chapensis) of the rodent family Platacanthomyidae was suggested to echolocate but this was not practically evidenced. There are three other recognized species in the soft-furred tree mice genus (Typhlomys) that share similar ecological and morphological traits, suggesting that echolocation may be a general trait within this genus.

Benjamin Glynn, from Helmsley, faces up to six months in prison

Not mobile-friendly. Not accessible. English-only. Looks like a scam. This week, the IRS launched its “Non-filer Sign-up Tool” for households that are eligible for the newly expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) but do not typically file taxes because their income is too low. As we have pointed out here in several pieces, there are design flaws with the CTC that will make it unnecessarily difficult—both for households and for administrators—to get these benefits to the very poor who stand to gain the most from the program. Judging by messaging coming out of the White House, the expanded CTC is the administration’s flagship antipoverty program. Fact sheets published by the administration continue to cite estimates that the program will “[cut] child poverty by more than half”. These estimates, however, depend on the program generating a 100% participation rate which, as we have discussed previously, will be difficult to achieve under the statutory constraints as well as unfortunate administrative execution.

Former Vice President Mike Pence remarks during the conservative Faith & Freedom conference on Friday were briefly disrupted by hecklers, likely over his refusal to help former President Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss.

"All these people really hate me because I want the wrong fictional people to kiss.”

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft a statement on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a political push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights. The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter, and exposes bitter divisions in American Catholicism. It capped three days of contentious debate at a virtual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The measure was approved by a vote of 73 percent in favor and 24 percent opposed.

Percentage of churchgoing Americans is steadily falling, and the swirl of rightwing politics and Christianity is playing a key role

On Jan. 15, a hacker tried to poison a water treatment plant that served parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. It didn't seem hard.

Although Biden has vowed not to hire his own family, some ethics experts are disappointed that he hasn’t done more to shift away from the nepotism and cronyism practiced under Trump.

By now you know that Jeff Bezos is headed to space next month. Space: The Ultimate Mistress™. Now, when I heard about Bezos’s plan to rocket up into the sky, the first thing I thought about was that it would be funny if his spaceship malfunctioned and a breached nitroglycerin line found its way up his anus mid-flight. But the SECOND thing I thought about was that this man, with all his money, was going to experience the civilian dream of escaping the thermosphere, orbiting the Earth at 14,000 mph, and maybe waving hello to the International Space Station along the way. Seemed very cool. I was openly jealous. What I did NOT consider was that Bezos’s little Major Tom voyage would be a goddamn fraud. Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen (good name) gave an outline of Bezos’s itinerary, if it can even be called that, last week: Bezos will float around the cabin of his company’s New Shepard spaceship for just three minutes before he has to strap in to his seat again and fall back to the ground. But wait. There’s less. Three minutes is actually overestimating it: Briefly, for just a minute or two, the New Shepard spaceship should clear the Kármán line — an imaginary boundary 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level, where space begins. NOT EVEN THREE MINUTES. Bezos isn’t even going into orbit because his busted toilet of a spaceship isn’t powerful enough to do that. He’s not going anywhere near the moon. He may not even have to wear a goddamn spacesuit. A majestic overhead view of this crazy little marble we call home? A daring spacewalk to fix the cables on the detachable HAB unit? The breathtaking realization that you exist in a cosmos more expansive than the limits of death itself? Bezos isn’t getting any of that. YOU CALL YOURSELF AN ASTRONAUT, YOU FUCKING LOSER? Look at this flight plan. Fucking look at it! Blue Origin I’d get a better view of Earth from the top of the St. Louis Arch. At least when Felix Baumgartner went to Not Space, he had the common courtesy to skydive back down to the ground. Will Jeffrey Sissyfingers here have the IRON BALLS to do that? No. No he’s gonna sit in his fake rocket, listen to a dramatic fake countdown from fake mission control, and then crack open a Snapple before spending a glorious 12 seconds in fake space. SMALL STEPS FOR A SMALL MAN. Oh sure, Bezos will get to experience zero gravity for those 12 seconds. You know who else got to do that? The cast and crew of Apollo 13 when they went up in the Vomit Comet to shoot that movie’s weightless scenes. And those people got PAID to feel like absolute shit for a brief moment. By contrast Bezos paid … OK well actually the government awarded his Blue Origin company (terrible name, would’ve been better if its name had been Morgan McLaunch-Johnsen) over half a billion dollars in contracts. AND YET THIS MOTHERFUCKER STILL WON’T BE IN SPACE LONGER THAN IT TAKES YOU TO SING “ZIGGY STARDUST” AT KARAOKE NIGHT. Over the past few years, I have been consistently let down by our foremost supervillains. They’re greedy. They’ve warped their own principles to suit their needs. They’re hornier than Lindsey Adler’s dog. But all of their evilest plans are always such a fucking letdown. None of these guys have any pizzazz. No wonder we have to keep watching Joker movies to get the USDA recommended dose of gaudy villainy to help make up the difference. This is bullshit. If I had $200 billion, as Bezos does, I wouldn’t half-ass my space travel. I would fly into REAL space, with all the deadly gamma rays and angry solar flares and whatnot. I would wear a real space suit, complete with a pissbag. I would travel in a spaceship powered by actual fuel and not compost. And then I’d land on the moon, plant a flag with family crest on it in the Sea of Tranquility, cry out I AM KING OF THE MOON, and then point at the Earth before me and laugh maniacally. Then I’d blow up the Earth using my super-powerful moon beam. Then I’d bang all the moon aliens and then travel to the all-diamond planet and STEAL it. Then I’d buy Mars with my diamond planet. Then I drink Martian champagne with all my rowdy Martian buddies: Borx, %-Dawg, Vont The Horrifying, and Eric. That’s what REAL space ballers would do, Jeff Bezos. You pathetic, earthbound hack. If Jeff Bezos ever tells you he went to space, spit on him and then cancel your Prime membership.

INVESTOR SPECIAL! This formerly majestic 5 bed/4 bath/3 car garage home was once the seller’s pride and joy. Now it’s every landlord’s nightmare and needs someone with firm resolve to appreciate its potential. If you dream of owning your own little slice of hell and turning it into a piece of heaven, then look no further! This house is not for the faint of heart but for that special person who can see through the rough diamond to the polished gem inside. As you enter, there are soaring ceilings and an open floor plan with a second-floor overlook. You will also notice there is not one surface of the home that has not been enhanced with black spray paint or a swinging hammer - damage done by an angry departing tenant who didn’t want to pay rent. But don’t let that slow you down. It’s not nearly as daunting as the freezer in the basement that’s full of meat and hasn’t had electricity to it for over a year. So be sure to wear your mask. Not for anyone else’s protection but your own. You may not be able to endure the smell if you don’t. The floorplan is wonderful and open. The main floor has a living room, dining room, kitchen with dining area, family room with fireplace, laundry, and main floor bedroom and bath. There is a walk-out to a back deck – but don’t go out there as the deck is not necessarily attached to the house in the manner you might hope. The upstairs has a catwalk, large master with soaking tub and dual sinks, plus two additional bedrooms and bath – all covered in black spray paint, vulgarities, and other substances which are no longer identifiable. The basement is amazing – or at least it will be once all the debris is cleared out, the floor coverings are replaced, and the obscenities are painted over. The home has AC and a radon mitigation system and sits on a large lot. Oh, and did I mention it’s in the pink of a geological landslide area? Come feast your senses. DO NOT GO ON BACK DECK. DO NOT OPEN FREEZER IN BASEMENT. See agent remarks.