The deaths of nearly 200 people are linked to February’s cold snap and blackouts, a...

A group of retired Philadelphia police officers apologized Friday for a Thursday fund-raising email that blamed George Floyd for his own death and claimed former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on “trial for a murder he did not commit.” The group was launched last year to challenge Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s bid for a second term this year and to support candidates around the country seen as pro-police. Protect Our Police PAC was expected to support Carlos Vega, a former veteran homicide prosecutor, in his Democratic primary challenge against Krasner. But Vega, after reading Thursday’s email, said he didn’t want the group’s backing.

Texas’ highest criminal appeals court said Wednesday it would hear an appeal from a Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for voting while inadvertently ineligible in 2016. The case has attracted national attention because of the severity of the sentence and the woman, Crystal Mason, said she did not know she was ineligible to vote at the time. Many saw the severe sentence as an obvious effort to intimidate Black voters. The case also comes amid an aggressive effort by Texas prosecutors, including attorney general Ken Paxton, to prosecute even election crimes. Mason was serving on supervised release – which is similar to probation – for a federal felony conviction at the time, and Texas prohibits people with felony convictions from voting until they have completed their sentences entirely. Officials overseeing Mason’s supervised release testified at her trial that they never informed her she was ineligible to vote.

Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon, who was arrested last week after attempting to gain access to the office where Gov. Brian Kemp was signing a controversial voting restriction bill into law, said Thursday that her actions were justified.

The formerly disgraced governor of Missouri is attempting a post-MeToo comeback with a Senate bid.

I knew that Big Oil funded Six Degrees. In fact, I started watching it because I’d read it was funded by the American Petroleum Institute and Distribution Contractors Association. Still, watching this unfold on screen, I nearly fell out of my chair.

As time goes on, things get worse for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and his friend, the former Seminole County tax...

Canadian MMA fighter Khetag Pliev began his fight against Devin Goodale on Thursday night with 10 fingers, as almost every fighter begins almost every fight, but he ended it with nine. Fans in attendance for Cage Fury FC 94 in Philadelphia got to witness the first win by TKO – (Detached Finger) in promotion history, […]

“It took a commitment to eat an Oki dog.” Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, Los Angeles punks found refuge and community at a place serving food that people with more refined palates considered outrageous. This is the history of Oki-Dog.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with Facebook in a lawsuit over unsolicited text messages the social-media giant sent to a cellphone number in the company’s database. In an opinion authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in Facebook v. Duguid, the court adopted a narrow reading of a key definition in the federal ban on robocalls and robotexts to cellphones. It held that to qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a device must have the capacity either to store, or to produce, a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator — a type of obsolescent marketing technology. The decision is likely to have major implications for the future of telemarketing. Of most import, it means that the act does not ban the use of now-dominant predictive dialing technology that can call or text targeted customers, including technology that relies on the massive amounts of data now collected on American consumers, so long as an artificial or pre-recorded voice is not used. In so holding, the justices made clear that it’s the job of Congress, not the court, to update statutes in the face of technological change. Enacted in 1991, the TCPA responded to widespread consumer outrage over abusive telemarketing calls. The part of the statute at issue in Duguid bans “using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice” to call or text cellphones, as well as emergency telephone lines, hospital patient rooms, pagers, and phones that charge for incoming calls, among others. The Federal Communications Commission, state attorneys general and private parties are authorized to sue those who don’t comply with the law; the penalty is up to $1,500 per call. Since the passage of the TCPA, despite dramatic changes in telemarketing technology, the definition of automatic telephone dialing system has remained the same: “equipment which has the capacity — (A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.” Noah Duguid sued Facebook under the act because he received several text messages from the company, alerting him that someone had attempted to access his Facebook account from an unknown browser — even though Duguid never had a Facebook account or gave the company his number. Those messages were sent to him using a form of automated technology, but one that did not use a random or sequential number generator. Sotomayor’s opinion for the court followed a strikingly textualist approach, which focused on whether the act bans equipment that does not use a random or sequential number generator. The court’s answer: “It does not.” Facebook had argued that to qualify as a proscribed autodialer, the equipment must use a random or sequential number generator — something its technology does not do. As a matter of syntax, it contended, the clause “using a random or sequential number generator” modifies both verbs, “store” and “produce.” Duguid had argued that a number generator was not necessary on the basis that “using a … number generator” applies only to “produce.” His key argument: It makes no sense to talk about storing numbers using a number generator. Read as Duguid would, the statute would more broadly ban the use of equipment with the capacity “to store … numbers to be called” and to dial them. The court concluded that the most natural reading of the text confirmed Facebook’s view.

Rep. Matt Gaetz's communications director Luke Ball resigned amid a federal investigation into allegations regarding Rep. Gaetz's sexual relationships.

A U.S. Capitol Police officer was killed and another injured after a man drove a car into a security barricade at the Capitol complex on Friday, Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said. The driver, who was not immediately identified, was shot after jumping out of the car with a knife and failing to respond to verbal commands and "lunging" at the officers, Pittman said. The suspect was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead a short time later. Pittman did not identify the slain officer because the officer's next of kin has not yet been notified.

The company signed a contract with an ICE division that plays a key role in deportations.

We spoke with the owners of a boxing club, a yoga studio, and a dance center to see how they're adapting to the loosening restrictions.

A North Carolina judge has dismissed a misdemeanor rioting charge against a 35-year-old Black man whose forcible arrest during a protest against COVID conditions at a local jail last September led to additional arrests as activists reacted in anger and astonishment. The warrant alleged that by trespassing outside the Alamance County Detention Center and refusing the commands of officers, Nicholas Cassette incited "further unruly activity from a crowd of protestors who increasingly became disorderly." Judge Lunsford Long, a visiting judge from neighboring Orange County, said during the trial on Wednesday that he found it difficult to believe that Cassette sought his own arrest. Long also dismissed a charge of second-degree trespassing after hearing testimony that the time elapsed between the initial order to leave the area and when sheriff's deputies took Cassette to the ground was less than 30 seconds, but found him guilty of resisting an officer because he sought to take a different path than the one intended by the officers. The judge called it "another de minimis case of resistance."

How detectives from Scotland Yard, Romania, Germany, and Italy nabbed the so-called Mission: Impossible gang, which pulled off a string of daring warehouse heists.

NFTs have made their way into comics. Did they bring the sewage with them, or was the sewage already there? Artyom is on the frontlines, and he's here to explain! Continue reading → Artyom Trakhanov

Marty Tibbitts was an aviation enthusiast who secretly bankrolled an international cocaine cartel, authorities allege.

Manager says ‘there will likely be impacts in Tampa Bay’ from wastewater releases. A leak continues to threaten disaster at an old phosphate plant in Palmetto, with an engineer telling Manatee County commissioners on Thursday that it’s vital for operators to keep discharging thousands of gallons of wastewater to Tampa Bay every minute. “It is a very critical condition,” said Mike Kelley, an outside engineer who works with the site’s operator, HRK Holdings. “Uncontrolled release is a real possibility at this stage. Getting the water off the stack is imperative.” The site off U.S. 41 contains stacks of phosphogypsum — a material regulated for its radioactivity — and reservoirs of polluted water. The company in charge of the property detected signs of a leak last week. Officials believe the leak could come from a tear in the liner of a roughly 480-million gallon pond filled with a mixture of seawater from an old dredging project, rainwater and a polluted byproduct of the fertilizer industry that can carry phosphorus and nitrogen. State environmental regulators fear the phosphogypsum stacks will collapse, triggering a rush of water and potentially harmful waste. To ease pressure, they are allowing HRK Holdings to discharge wastewater from the pond to nearby Port Manatee. About 25 million gallons had been released as of Thursday morning, according to Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Noah Valenstein. Environmentalists worry nutrients in those discharges will spur harmful algal blooms and fish kills in the bay.

42-year-old Ben Kohlman has been charged over one blaze and tied to two more. He’s not the first flat earther implicated in fires at Masonic lodges.