Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will step down from his post on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, he announced Monday. close dialog Stream live CNBC TV from around the world. START FREE TRIAL Invest Like A Pro The announcement means that the FCC could reach a Democratic majority sooner than it would otherwise be able to. Pai’s term was slated to expire in June 2021, though Biden will be able to choose a Democrat to chair the commission once in office. Commissioners must be confirmed by the Senate. Pai’s decision to step down could have significant implications on net neutrality, an issue that helped define his term as chairman. In 2017, Pai voted with his fellow Republican commissioners to remove rules that prohibited internet providers from blocking or slowing traffic to particular sites and offering higher speed “lanes” at higher prices. Many major internet providers have not yet taken advantage of that rule change, however.

Indiana’s attorney general submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that it should reverse a federal appeals court’s ruling that allowed both members of same-sex couples in Indiana to be listed as parents on the birth certificates of their children. The petition from Attorney General Curtis Hill follows a January decision by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed a decision by judges in Indiana’s federal southern district court who found that Indiana laws limiting who can be called the parent of a child were unconstitutional. Hill filed also filed a request in June asking the court to review the appellate court’s decision.

This Trump supporter was not waiting to exhale. Lending a whole new meaning to the term “heavy breather,” a man was arrested Sunday for exhaling onto women at Trump’s Virginia golf course.

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Studios has set an end date for The Expanse. The popular sci-fi drama has received an early renewal for Season 6, which will be its last. Not returning for the final season is original cast member Cas Anvar, who faced a slew of sexual misconduct allegations during the summer. The rest of the cast, led by Steven Strait, and longtime Expanse showrunner Naren Shankar will be back. The Season 6 renewal comes three weeks before the December 16 Season 5 debut on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories. I hear Season 6 tentatively is slated to begin production Janusary 20, with the target start date subject to change amid fluid pandemic conditions. The Alcon-produced The Expanse, based on James S.A. Corey’s best-selling novels, originally was picked up by Syfy, where it aired for three seasons. Following its cancellation in 2018, the show’s army of passionate fans launched a massive Save Our Show campaign, which helped seal the deal at Amazon. The space drama’s fourth season was released globally as an Amazon Original Series in December 2019.

President Donald Trump is threatening to veto legislation to fund the military as one of his final acts in office unless a widely supported, bipartisan provision to rename military bases honoring Confederate military leaders is removed, according to White House, defense and congressional sources. Since the Nov. 3 election, Trump has privately told Republican lawmakers that he won't back down from his position during the campaign that he would veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act if it includes an amendment to rename the bases. A senior administration official confirmed Trump's conversations with Republicans and his veto threat. "He's said that," the official said.

The suit is one of two cases filed in federal courts last week by Sidney Powell, an outspoken Texas attorney.

Canada announced Saturday a ban on exporting certain medicines that are or may soon be in short supply, a measure in response to a US plan to import drugs from its northern neighbor. The plan promoted by outgoing US President Donald Trump aimed at allowing pharmacists and wholesalers to import certain prescription drugs in bulk from Canada takes effect on Monday.

“I found your baby,” Michelle Durden recalls the police officer saying after her son went missing. “He’s alive. And he’s in jail.”

Vast systems, from automated supply chains to high-frequency trading, now undergird our daily lives—and we’re losing control of all of them

Well, I gotta be honest: My son is running my Twitter account, and I don’t know what he’s posting.

Argentine police have searched the house and office of Diego Maradona's doctor, as authorities investigate the death of the soccer great. Maradona died Wednesday at the age of 60 in a house in the town of Tigre, Argentina. Police have since seized documents and cell phones from Dr. Leopoldo Luque, according to Argentina's Telam news agency, as a part of a wrongful death investigation carried out by prosecutor John Broyard. Luque, who treated Maradona, told local media that he maintained his innocence and will cooperate with authorities.

On r/Tendies, my favorite subreddit, users roleplay as a community of morbidly obese thirtysomething manchildren called “goodboys” who live in their mothers’ basements and nurture an all-consuming passion for chicken tenders, which they call “tendies.”

Every time you think you have a grasp of how preposterous the Trump team’s election lawsuits are, another one comes out, dumber and more conspiracy-filled than the last. The Pennsylvania monstrosity that was submitted by Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and the Four Seasons Total Litigation supporting cast was terrible. It made, according to a federal appeals court ruling, “vague and conclusory” allegations about alleged misconduct, tried to get the court to do things that would violate the U.S. Constitution, and had, in the court’s words, “no merit.” Their case was such complete nonsense that two courts and four judges decided it was too dumb to fix. You want that to be the bottom. You want the lawsuit that the president’s legal team lost, twice, for literally every reason it’s possible to lose the case to be the most preposterous election lawsuit we’re going to see this year. You go to bed Wednesday night hoping that it was.

As the pandemic makes an already terrible housing crisis worse, a new version of house-sitting signals a broken real-estate market.

Their date is based partly on their depictions of now-extinct ice age animals, such as the mastodon, a prehistoric relative of the elephant that hasn’t roamed South America for at least 12,000 years. There are also images of the palaeolama, an extinct camelid, as well as giant sloths and ice age horses.

Many saw the rallies as a sign of big enthusiasm for Trump, but the data suggest the visits did not produce the desired impact for the president.

The pedestrian death rate per 100,000 was three times higher east of 82nd Avenue than it was west of 82nd.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that he would reopen public elementary schools, abruptly shifting policy in the face of widespread criticism that officials were placing more of a priority on economic activities like indoor dining than the well-being of New York City’s children. Mr. de Blasio said that middle and high schools would remain closed, but he also signaled that he would overhaul how the city manages schools during the pandemic, which has forced millions of children in the United States out of schools and is widely perceived to have done significant damage to their education and mental health.

The Twelve Tribes believe that in order for Jesus’ second coming to occur, they must raise 144,000 perfect male virgins, who will be killed around the year 2070. This is founder Gene Spriggs’ interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Revelations, which depicts the battle of Armageddon.

Efforts to reintroduce the comparatively small and harmless lynx, for example – seen by some as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of bringing back wolves – remain extremely controversial, while beavers “unofficially” released into Scotland’s Tayside 15 years ago, where they continue to thrive, are a major source of contention