Proving that love is blind, and sometimes kooky, a bodybuilder from Kazakhstan has tied the knot with his dearly beloved — a sex doll he dated for eight months before proposing a year ago.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will decide whether the city should ban smoking tobacco and cannabis in apartment buildings.

The Biden presidency will also feature awful narcissistic people, but the flavor will be different so it will seem like a change.

The comics are now regarded as “illegal pornography,” following fears of child porn being brought into the country. Australian authorities are reportedly cracking down on the importation of hentai from Japan, signalling the latest measures in the nation’s increasingly hardline stance on the sexually explicit comics. Japanese adult retailer J-List—which specialises in the sale of sex toys, anime, cosplay, figurines and manga—posted a statement to their website earlier this month claiming that Australia’s Border Force (ABF) and customs had started blocking all their adult products from entering the country. This includes pornographic hentai, Japanese porn videos, sexually suggestive figurines of anime characters, onaholes—that is, an artificial vaginas designed for masturbation—and any other product marked with a “+18” symbol. As a result, J-List has been advised to stop shipping to the country. “DHL Japan called us last week, informing us that Australian customs have started rejecting packages containing any adult product,” the company wrote in their statement. “They then advised us to stop sending adult products to the country. Following that, current Australian orders with adult items in them were returned to us this week.”

Several prominent Republican senators indicated Neera Tanden could face an "uphill battle" when she seeks confirmation.

This weekend is one of the planet’s busiest shopping sprees, with an estimated £66bn to be spent in the UK alone over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, much of it online. Yet as shoppers click and wait to collect, there is a crisis at sea among the people whose work brings us these goods. It is no exaggeration to say that without shipping the global marketplace would collapse. It is responsible for the movement of 90% of all global trade. Even in normal circumstances, more than a million seafarers labour daily on the vessels that make up the world cargo fleet, their work barely noticed by consumers. As Covid-19 has ravaged the world, they have helped keep the global economy functioning, unseen. As Guardian Seascape has repeatedly reported, however, nearly 400,000 of these seafarers are trapped by the crew change crisis. Most have not been designated key workers during the pandemic, and have remained effectively imprisoned on board their vessels – unable to change crews at ports, and therefore unable to return to their homes and loved ones. The silence on the plight of these stranded seafarers is widespread: from the governments that have decided shipping crew are not essential workers, to the major retailers that profit from tremendous sales. This failure takes on renewed importance now, as new vaccines against Covid-19 are developed and the conversation turns to who should be inoculated first. The International Maritime Organisation, the UN body for shipping and seafarers, has failed to get countries to uphold standards of care and repatriation for seafarers. They are, in effect, lost at sea.

Ivory Coast and Ghana are cancelling all cocoa sustainability schemes that U.S.-based Hershey runs in their countries, accusing the chocolatemaker of trying to avoid paying a cocoa premium aimed at combating farmer poverty.

"When you have a family to feed, kids to pay school fees for, rents to pay, a loan to pay and your work is too much and exploitative, what happens?" a driver said. Uber slashed its fares — and Munala's income. It also introduced new categories of cars, allowing smaller cars. And more people started to take the smaller cars because they were cheaper and more fuel-efficient. That adversely affected the drivers who were already saddled with the larger, four-door cars with more powerful engines that Uber had previously required. More and more drivers flooded the platform, changing the basic earning premise that had prompted people like Munala to take out loans to become drivers. And car maintenance is costly. Fuel prices are high. Instead of owning an asset, Munala is saddled with growing debt

For-profit virtual charter schools have been dogged by complaints of low student performance, fraud and waste. Still, many are seeing a pandemic-induced enrollment surge.

Denmark plans to dig up thousands of dead mink culled to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, after the animals started to rise out of their mass graves. Hundreds of dead mink emerged from their burial sites, according to Danish state broadcaster TV2. It is believed the gas used to kill them caused the carcasses to swell and resurface, prompting Danish media to dub them "zombie mink." Earlier this month, Denmark ordered all farmed mink to be culled after finding that 12 people had been infected by a mutated strain of the virus that causes Covid-19, which passed from humans to mink and back to humans.

The head of the Republican Party in Texas' largest county has resigned after less than four months on the job. Keith Nielsen, chairman of the GOP in Harris County, home to Houston, submitted a letter of resignation and the party's secretary, Josh Flynn, said he received it Monday morning. It was unclear why Nielsen was stepping down, and the letter was not immediately available. Nielsen was engulfed in controversy before he even became chairman. He won the job in March, but as he prepared to take office this summer, he faced widespread condemnation for posting a Facebook graphic juxtaposing a Martin Luther King Jr. quote with a banana, which could be read as an allusion to equating Black people with monkeys, a well-worn racist trope. He initially said he would forfeit the job but reneged, taking office in early August. Nielsen's resignation is effective immediately, according to Rolando Garcia, a member of the party's advisory board. The county party's executive committee will pick Nielsen's successor.

An oncology nurse at Salem Health has been placed on administrative leave after posting a video on social media showing disregard for COVID-19 restrictions.  In the video, uploaded Friday to TikTok, the nurse, identified by hospital officials as Ashley Grames, says she doesn't wear a mask in public outside of work, continues to travel and allows her children to have playdates.  Grames' original post, on her account @loveiskind05, has been taken down, but a "duet" recorded by another user includes the original footage. The video shows the nurse mocking her coworkers' response to her lack of COVID-19 precautions through a lip-dub of Dr. Seuss's Grinch from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." User @loveiskind05's account has been deleted from TikTok.  The video has gone viral, sparking controversy and swift outcry from concerned members of the community.  

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.”