There are traditionally two ways to make a leather jacket. One involves a cow, and takes years. Another involves synthetic fabric, and requires plastic. But there’s a third option: thick sheets of woven fungus, grown over a couple of weeks on anything from sawdust to agricultural waste.

Hours before federal police cleared peaceful protesters near the White House on June 1, a whistleblower got an email asking to find a device that would make protesters' skin feel like it was burning.

A new report shows that a $50 trillion redistribution of income to benefit the richest has made America less healthy, resilient, and secure

A Berkeley man is facing felony charges this week in connection with attacks Monday night on customers at two Southside Berkeley eateries, a pizza shop and a boba teahouse, authorities report. Video of the teahouse attack has gone viral on Twitter, and had been viewed more than 160,000 times as of publication time. A Twitter user named angelique posted the teashop surveillance video Monday night, writing, “oh ya know just wanted to get boba with my bf and my friends and we fucking got attacked and my friends got set on fire. no big deal.” In a later post, she urged people not to rush to judgment about the reason for the attack, writing: “please stop bringing race & hate into this. what the man did was fucked up but we also don’t know what happened beforehand and what caused him to attack us like that.”

55% of U.S. adults now express at least some support for the Black Lives Matter movement, down from 67% in June.

Jamie R. Grosshans, the last-minute choice of Gov. Ron DeSantis to the Florida Supreme Court, is an anti-abortion defender who has been active in a number of Christian legal groups, including a powerful national organization whose mission is to “spread the Gospel by transforming the legal system.” Alliance Defending Freedom is considered a hate group by the SPLC.

Portland’s new district attorney said he wouldn’t prosecute most protesters. Police kept arresting them anyway.

Katie Stewart was on her way home from a vacation in early August when her phone reconnected to cell service and she realized something was wrong. As the communications director for Scott Wiener, a California state senator, Stewart manages her boss’s Instagram account, a task that usually involves responding to a handful of messages each day. But while Stewart had been out of cellphone range, a bill authored by Wiener had become the target of a misinformation and harassment campaign by activists who oppose coronavirus public health measures and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. “FUCKING FILTH. BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF,” read one representative message that accused Wiener of “creating a law to allow pedophiles to be charged on a lesser degree”. Others fantasized about dragging Wiener’s body behind a car until he died, accused him of worshipping “Moloch”, or declared an intention to find and kill him. One meme posted on Instagram featured an image of Wiener photoshopped to enlarge his nose and add sidelocks, a yarmulke and a Jewish prayer shawl. Over the next month, Stewart and Wiener were left to confront a constant digital onslaught of death threats, homophobia, antisemitism and baseless allegations of pedophilia. “I didn’t know what QAnon was a month ago, and it’s totally changed my life,” Stewart said in an interview.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not return a request for comment. One-time QAnon supporter Lauren Witzke won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday, campaigning on a pledge to institute a decade-long moratorium on all immigration and beating a rival candidate endorsed by the state GOP by nearly 14 percentage points. Witzke’s win marks the second time a fan of the dangerous pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory has won a GOP Senate nomination this cycle, although Witzke said in January that she no longer promotes QAnon. But while Witzke has been photographed wearing a QAnon T-shirt and has repeatedly posted QAnon hashtags on social media, even as she now claims not to believe in the theory, her connections to the right’s darkest internet fringes go far beyond QAnon. And she’s not particularly inclined to hide them either. With her victory still just hours old, the newest Republican Senate nominee publicly thanked a white nationalist leader who marched in the “Unite the Right” rally and has questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. “Thank you, Nick!” Witzke tweeted in response to a tweet from Nick Fuentes, a Charlottesville participant who has become the face of the far-right angry, young white nationalist fringe.

On Aug. 7, Black activist Ragina Gray was tackled by Portland police at a protest and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and interfering with an officer. That same day, conservative Portland activist Andy Ngo shared Gray's name and mug shot on Twitter. "Gray, 30, is charged with interfering with an officer, resisting arrest and more," Ngo wrote on Twitter. "She was arrested at the violent antifa protest in Portland and quickly bailed out. Gray is frequently photographed with kids at protests and rants about white terrorism." The photo was retweeted by 475 people. Twelve nights later, on Aug. 19, a man showed up on the doorstep of Gray's mother's eastside home. "He was sweaty and nervous looking, and he asked for Ragina by name," says Lucinda Fisher, Gray's mom. "He mentioned [Gray's] son, and I noticed he had a gun in his hand." Fisher slammed the door and called the police.

Maree Elliott admitted feeling a bit despondent as she poked around the leaf litter in the Barrington Tops National Park north of Newcastle four years ago. Ms Elliott, a scientific illustrator, had been looking for a native fungi to draw for her work, but despite hours of searching the 65-year-old retiree was having no luck. What she stumbled on instead would rewrite scientific literature. "I got a big stick and I was playing around with the leaf litter, and this lovely pink thing surfaced," she said. "I didn't know what it was, it certainly wasn't a mushroom or a truffle. It was just a very small, pinky-creamy thing, it was like a half-opened flower bud." Ms Elliott said an ecologist in her party "got all excited", and immediately identified her unusual find as a form of underground orchid — an extremely rare plant that never naturally pokes its head up above the leaf litter.

"While the NFL runs propaganda about how they care about Black Life, they are still actively blackballing Eric Reid for fighting for the Black community," Kaepernick said. Colin Kaepernick called the NFL's social justice initiatives "propaganda" during the league's opening weekend on Sunday. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who remains unsigned, first led the kneeling protests during the national anthem in 2016 to bring attention to police brutality and racial injustice. Amid renewed Black Lives Matter protests, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted in June that the league was "wrong" in taking so long to acknowledge the message behind the kneeling protests. Since then, the NFL has taken largely symbolic steps like allowing racial justice messages in end zones and on helmets and T-shirts. Kaepernick apparently does not believe the NFL is sincere about its advocacy and accused the league of "blackballing" free agent safety Eric Reid.

The content - including footage of a monkey that appears to be trying to eat the phone - has been widely shared on social media since Zackrydz Rodzi posted it on Twitter. The student said he thought his phone had been stolen while he was sleeping. But it remained unclear exactly how the mobile went missing. It was also not possible to verify the circumstances in which the photos and videos ended up on his phone.

She was just storming the New York comedy scene when the pandemic sent her packing back to Ohio. Now, her stable of kooky, clueless Midwestern characters are connecting with fans online in surprisingly personal ways.

Paleontologists say the fossilised animal sperm, found inside a tiny ostracod, could be 100 million years old.

Attorney General William Barr and other top government officials have frequently blamed Antifa activists for the violence stemming from recent demonstrations in the wake George Floyd's death; however, in NPR's review of court documents of 51 individuals facing federal charges related to protests, none is alleged to have links to the Antifa movement.

Steven Carrillo reportedly scrawled the word "boog" in blood on the hood of a car before being apprehended.

Internet giant investigates abuse claims by foreign workers in its German warehouses

As he talked, Sledge’s jovial tone faded away. “Everywhere I looked, all I could see was blood and tamales,” he said, before he continued to explain how that tragic night changed his life.

It’s meant to be a counterpoint for Republican Voters Against Trump. But so far, it’s mainly just copying the text from its website.