Wednesday, Jan 07th
Last update12:24:57 AM GMT
The leaders of 23 European parliaments are imploring Speaker Mike Johnson to take up and pass additional assistance for Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia.
"We believe that thanks to your personal leadership, the Congress will demonstrate historic bipartisan unity in support of the collective effort to assist Ukraine," they wrote in an open letter. Supporting passage of further aid would "provide Ukraine with the necessary funds to continue its fight," the leaders added.
Canada's 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive ever recorded, with 6,551 fires scorching nearly 71,000 square miles of land from the West Coast to the Atlantic provinces, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. It wasn't just remarkable for its destruction, however, but also for the fact that it never really seemed to end.
It's the middle of the winter, and there are still 149 active wildfires burning across Canada, including 92 in British Columbia, 56 in the western province of Alberta, and one in New Brunswick, according to the CIFFC, which classifies two of the blazes as out of control.
"Zombie fires," also called overwintering fires, burn slowly below the surface during the cold months. Experts say zombie fires have become more common as climate change warms the atmosphere, and they are currently smoldering at an alarming rate in both British Columbia and Alberta.
The health care crisis in Gaza is unthinkably grim, even by the standards of war-ravaged regions. Infectious diseases from chickenpox to cholera are sweeping through the population; crucial medical supplies are blocked at the border; and hospitals are overrun with critically wounded patients.
Four months into Israel’s brutal war on Hamas, the situation looks set to get worse.
Israel is poised to launch an invasion into Rafah, endangering more than a million Palestinians who have sought refuge in the southern city, largely women and children. Hope for a humanitarian respite are fading as U.S.-brokered cease-fire talks broke down in Cairo this week. And the U.S. has frozen funding to the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, further endangering the already tenuous efforts to provide medical aid.
Payments are on the way for thousands of student-loan borrowers who paid a company accused of illegal behavior.
On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that 8,571 student-loan borrowers who were charged by Performance SLC — a California-based debt-relief business — would receive a collective $10.9 million in payments.
In 2020, the CFPB first filed a complaint against Performance over accusations that the company charged borrowers about $9.2 million in "illegal upfront fees," according to the press release. The complaint also claimed that the company violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 by using misleading tactics to get borrowers to sign up for debt-relief services the Education Department offered for free.
A narrowly divided U.S. Senate moved closer to passing a $95.34 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Sunday, showing undiminished bipartisanship despite opposition from Republican hardliners and Donald Trump.
Just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the TBI reported, deputies with the Blount County Sheriff’s Office pulled an SUV over in the city of Maryville on U.S. Route 411.
It was not immediately known why deputies pulled the vehicle over along the two-lane highway about 16 miles south of Knoxville. The shooting scene was about 35 miles north of the Great Smoky Mountains."
This the hardest thing I've ever done," Blount County Sheriff James L. Berrong said through tears during a press conference Thursday night after the shooting.
Berrong, whose held the title of sheriff since 1989, identified the slain deputy as Greg McCowan.
According to a post on the sheriff’s department's Facebook page, McCowan graduated from the police academy in October 2020.
Saturday in another wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have attacked US and international interests in response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Ships and fighter jets on Saturday launched strikes against the Houthis. It followed an air assault in Iraq and Syria on Friday targeting other Iran-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US troops – William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett – in Jordan last weekend.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the military action “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks on international shipping and naval vessels.”
The Supreme Court ruled the U.S. Military Academy at West Point may continue using race as a factor in admissions, leaving intact the slim remains of affirmative action in higher education.
At the end of its last term, the high court in a landmark decision gutted race-conscious admissions policies at universities nationwide, except at military academies.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the conservative legal group behind last year’s blockbuster cases, has since looked to demolish the exception.
In an emergency decision Friday, the justices declined the SFFA’s request to immediately prevent West Point from using race as a factor in its upcoming admissions cycle, as the group’s constitutional challenge continues in a lower court.
Melinda Ledbetter, Brian Wilson’s second wife, died Tuesday morning, Wilson announced on social media. Ledbetter was 77.
“My heart is broken,” the Beach Boys co-founder wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Melinda, my beloved wife of 28 years, passed away this morning. Our five children and I are just in tears. We are lost. Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior. She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career.”
“She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. She was my anchor. She was everything for us. Please say a prayer for her,” he said in another post.
Wilson married Ledbetter in 1995 after they met while she was working at a car dealership. They went on to adopt five children while they were together.
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