Penn State University (PSU) on Thursday announced that all students and staff members will return to campus and begin the semester on time.
Citing mitigation measures that are in currently place, Penn State President Eric Barron pledged to continue in-person learning for students at the university.
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The processing for recovered carjacked vehicles is backed up five to six weeks, the police say. Carjackings are happening across the Twin Cities, spilling out into the suburbs. In Golden Valley, Minnesota they experienced five carjackings in a span of 24 hours last weekend.
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Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R) commented on the recent shift in attitudes from parents towards school boards with the 2022 elections less than one year away. Scott predicts overwhelming support for changes at the local level across Florida, and the country, as a result of months of pushback from parents to school districts imposing mask mandates and pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT).
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A European solar power tech company has chosen Arizona as its first location in the United States.
Switzerland-based mechanical engineering company Meyer Burger Technology AG is establishing a production site for high-performance solar modules in Goodyear, Arizona. Production is expected to be operational by the end of 2022, creating an initial 250 jobs and more than 500 jobs at full capacity.
“I am very pleased to welcome Meyer Burger to our community,” Mayor of Goodyear Joe Pizzillo said in a news release.“The decision to make a large investment in our community shows Goodyear is an excellent location for advanced manufacturing businesses. Our highly skilled workforce, modern infrastructure, and low cost of doing business has created an environment where companies can thrive.”
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Three Georgia laws go into effect at the start of the new year that impact juvenile justice, sales tax on vehicles and medical transactions.
House Bill 63 changes the way the fair market value of a vehicle is estimated. The value of a car will be calculated as the total depreciation, lease amortized amounts and down payments. Fair market value is how much a vehicle is worth for sale. The new bill excludes interest or finance charges in base or down payments.
Senate Bill 80 is aimed at improving medical billing transparency. It requires insurers to disclose their prior authorization policies online. The prior authorization process calls for health care providers to contact the insurer before providing a particular service to ensure it would be covered under a patient’s plan. It adds another layer of health care approval that critics said could prolong care.
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U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) said late last month that he wonders whether certain aspects of inflation haven’t happened by design, as a means of pushing the United States closer to socialism. Burchett said this on the talk show, Over-Caffeinated.
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Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over repeated violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, the company confirmed early Sunday.
Greene’s personal account, @mtgreenee, was no longer active Sunday morning, and it has been labeled with an “account suspended” notice. Greene’s official government account, @RepMTG, is still active.
When reached for comment, Twitter confirmed Greene’s account was suspended, and the company said she committed “repeated” violations of its policy on COVID-19 misinformation.
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More than 20 new laws, passed by the Tennessee General Assembly earlier last year, officially took effect on January 1, impacting many residents throughout the state.
The new laws range in scope from criminal justice reform to protections for college athletes.
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End of the year reviews, along with predictions for the coming year, are a staple around this time. But, as Yogi Berra wisely said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
I took a look at what I wrote last year, and a lot of it held up reasonably well (You can be the judge). I argued that the system and its managers are not doing a great job, the coronavirus crisis exposed their incompetence and malevolence, and that bad economics and crime would be major factors in marring the year ahead. Specifically, “a crisis of authority and legitimacy is emerging from failures in the most fundamental tasks of a society: the provision for basic needs, physical security, and a fair and accepted means of making decisions and picking leaders.”
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Then-President Donald Trump’s team assembled a 10-day pressure campaign in December 2020 hoping to shame governors and state legislators into officially investigating allegations of Election 2020 irregularities, according to memos newly turned over to Congress by former New York Police Commissioner and Trump confidant Bernard Kerik.
The strategy called for “protests” at governors’ mansions and the homes of politicians ranging from secretaries of states to “weak” congressional members in key battleground states, the memos show.
The documents, turned over Friday night under subpoena to the House’s Jan. 6 commission, are remarkable in part because they show the primary focus of the Trump team leading up to the Jan. 6 certification of the 2020 vote – an event that turned violent when pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol – was to get “support for hearings” to probe allegations of voting irregularities Trump’s team had received but not vetted.
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The online class on gender, feminism, and the law was underway when Lisa Keogh, a 29-year-old student and mother of two, introduced a note of unwoke contention into the discussion.
“We were talking about equal rights for women, and I said I don’t believe a trans woman is really a woman,” said Keogh, then attending Abertay University Law School here. “I said that my definition of a woman is someone with a vagina.” Keogh, disagreeing with another point of view expressed in the same meeting, also voiced the apparently retrograde opinion that not all men are rapists.
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A growing body of academic research is chronicling the toll that pandemic lockdowns imposed on children, warning that the mental and social anguish the policies caused outweigh the health protections.
The “overall impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents is likely to be severe,” an Oxford University professor warned in a recent analysis.
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The Navy has made the rare decision to remove two high-ranking officers from their posts – commanders of the littoral combat ship Montgomery – citing a “loss of confidence in their ability to command.”
The announcement Thursday by the military service provided no specific information about why Cmdr. Richard J. Zamberlan, the ship’s skipper, and Cmdr. Phillip Lundberg, the vessel’s executive officer, were relieved of their command.
However, two Navy officials told The New York Times, on the condition of anonymity, that Lundberg and Zamberlan’s removal resulted from their handling of a sexual harassment investigation.
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The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims decreased to 198,000 in the week ending Dec. 25 as employers continue to fight to retain workers amid a tight labor market and growing Omicron coronavirus variant concerns.
The Labor Department figure shows an 8,000 claim decrease compared to the week ending Dec.18, when claims reached a revised level of 206,000. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected claims remain near last week’s reported level of 205,000.
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An Oklahoma bill introduced on Dec. 16 may allow parents to seek the removal of books that they deem inappropriate from school libraries.
The bill, Senate Bill 1142, would give parents a right to ask for the removal of “books that are of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it,” according to the bill’s language.
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Foster’s Outriders, a Christian nonprofit organization, announced Thursday that it would match all donations up to $500,000 given to the ongoing tornado relief effort in the Midwest.
The group, founded by the late Foster Friess in 2018, noted that the recent tornadoes — which swept through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee on Dec. 10 and killed at least 76 people — were among the most devastating in U.S. history in an email sent to donors on Thursday. Photos of the storm’s aftermath in Mayfield, Kentucky, showed massive wreckage with entire blocks of homes wiped out.
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People who drink black coffee might be at a lower risk of developing diseases, such as Parkinson’s, heart diseases, Type 2 diabetes and cancer, according to various studies, CNN reported.
Research also suggests that if you like black coffee, then you’ll also probably like bitter dark chocolate, CNN reported.
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The year is 2022. The place: a New York City so overpopulated that everyone is sleeping and dying on outdoor stairways. All sweating like pigs because of global warming. People have become unwitting cannibals because there is no more food. Elites still dine on delectables, but all that remains for the hoi polloi is the promise of a green wafer allegedly made of plankton, but in reality “It’s PEOPLE!!”
That’s the setting of the over-the-top 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” produced in the wake of Paul Ehrlich’s classic fear porn book The Population Bomb. Time has proven Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation due to population growth to be massively wrong. Ehrlich also lost his famous wager with the economist Julian Simon who predicted a more prosperous world. Still, Malthusian propaganda dies hard because it’s such an effective tool for social engineering.
“Soylent Green” is a random example, chosen because its year 2022 happens to be upon us. Certainly, dates and science used in science fiction have a heavy emphasis on fiction. The “Blade Runner” rebellion of genetically designed replicants was set in 2019. And, of course, Big Brother ruled in George Orwell’s 1984. Though much has come to pass, including genetic engineering and the surveillance state, there’s proof enough that we can’t predict the future with certainty.
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The tandem rise of autonomous driving and virtual reality has the potential to revolutionize modern life. At the same time, however, the technologies could introduce an epidemic of motion sickness.
This disconcerting prospect inspired Behrang Keshavarz, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ryerson University in Canada, and John Golding, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Westminster in the U.K., to review currently available research and, in an article recently published to the journal Current Opinion in Neurology, summarize why motion sickness occurs, who is susceptible, and what can be done about it.
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Ohio County Boards of Elections finalized its post-election audit of the November 2022 general election. According to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the results show a 99.9 percent accuracy rate.
Ohio County Boards of Elections finalized its post-election audit of the November 2022 general election. According to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the general election resulted in several exceptionally close votes and eight races resulted in either a tie or were decided by two votes or fewer.
According to Larose, these tight races once again prove “that every vote matters.”
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As students return from winter break, two South Florida school boards have decided to reinforce mask mandates amid the recent surge in COVID-19 Omicron variant cases.
Given that the two counties account for almost 61% of the new cases – reported by the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) for the week of December 17th through the 23rd – Miami-Dade and Broward County school boards have announced plans to enforce an adult-only mask mandate for employees, volunteers, visitors, vendors, and contractors who are indoors at any District school or facility.
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Senator Bryce Reeves (R-Spotsylvania) is supporting a lawsuit against the City of Charlottesville over the decision to give the Lee statue to a museum that plans to melt it. The lawsuit argues that the city didn’t have a competitive or transparent process to consider offers to take the statue, and additionally argues that melting the statue violates the spirit of state law governing monument removals. According to the lawsuit, the statue has already been delivered to a foundry and broken up, although not yet melted down.
“The City can legally remove, relocate, contextualize or cover the Lee monument, but the General Assembly denied the City authority to alter or destroy it,” the Trevillian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation state in the lawsuit.
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Victor Devon Edwards, 34, of St. Paul traveled to Minneapolis during the Nicollet Mall riot in August 2020 where he was caught on video looting and committing arson. Earlier this week he was sentenced to 100 months behind bars.
The Nicollet riot occurred after online rumors spread that police had killed a black person outside the mall. In reality, a fleeing murder suspect actually killed himself — but this didn’t stop the looters who smashed, grabbed and burned their way through luxury stores and other buildings in what has since been praised in a local outlet as a “mini-rebellion of the alienated dispossessed.”
While the majority of rioters seem to have evaded punishment, one trio has been put under the law enforcement microscope for their roles in the chaos. Edwards is one of these men and was recently convicted and sentenced for causing just over $941,000 of damage to the Target headquarters in addition to looting and burning other buildings.
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Despite reports that some hospitals in the state are “overcrowded,” data from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) and Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) says otherwise.
Many in the media and within the U.S. government’s public health apparatus are panicking as cases of COVID-19’s Omicron variant soar to record levels.
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The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Committee late Tuesday approved new congressional and legislative maps the state will follow for the next 10 years.
The 13-member panel, established by state voters, was formed to curtail gerrymandered districts in the state. The MICRC is made-up of four Republicans, four Democrats and five independents. The committee voted to approve what’s been dubbed the “Chestnut Congressional” map, the “Hickory House” map, and the “Linden Senate” map.”
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The Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel election investigator Michael Gableman filed 70 subpoenas in the Wisconsin election investigation in a surprise move. As reported by The Western Journal, Gableman filed subpoenas for state entities, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), state employees, mayoral staffers, and IT departments.
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Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) will not follow new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for quarantine length after exposure to COVID-19.
The new recommendation is a five-day isolation period, instead of the original 10-day isolation period.
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Hundreds of black women in Atlanta will be the recipients of no-strings-attached monthly checks for the next two years thanks to a nonprofit’s experiment with Universal Basic Income (UBI).
The program will be centered in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr., which reportedly has one of the worst poverty rates in the city.
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The latest General Revenue (GR) report – released last Thursday – from the Florida Department of Revenue shows that revenue collections continue to exceed expectations. The November numbers continues a series of monthly reports of higher-than-projected revenues.
The report comes ahead of the 2022 Florida legislative session which begins in January and is good news for lawmakers, in part, because general revenue plays a critical role in determining the state budget.
In addition, the November jobs report revealed Florida’s job growth was six times faster than the nation
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Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf appointed Leigh Chapman to serve as Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth, replacing Veronica Degraffenreid who accepted a different position in the Wolf administration.
In her position, Chapman will serve as the state’s top elections official.
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Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday expressed confidence the Cole County prosecutor will charge the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for violating a state law protecting computer networks.
Gov. Parson called for the Highway Patrol to investigate the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Oct. 15 after it notified the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education its public-facing website contained Social Security numbers of teachers in its HTML code – visible to anyone using an Internet browser. Parson stated the “hack” might cost Missouri taxpayers as much as $50 million.
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A shooting at the Mall of America in the Twin Cities on New Years Eve injured two. At this point the police are not believed to have a suspect in custody. The mall as well as the nearby Ikea location were in lockdown for a period of time following the incident.
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Contrary to some reports, the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians (VACEP) confirmed Saturday that the state’s hospital emergency departments are not overflowing with COVID-19 positive patients, but rather people seeking COVID-19 tests and people who have other maladies.
“The issue is the high volume of people coming to the [Emergency Departments], many of whom have minor conditions or are showing up for Covid testing (which is limited),” Jeff Kelley of VACEP told The Virginia Star.
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Cleveland’s last homicide in a record-setting 2021 occurred when an off-duty police officer was shot and killed during a carjacking on New Year’s Eve.
“Preliminary investigation indicates that a suspect approached the victim in the parking lot of the apartment building with a gun, a struggle ensued and the victim was shot twice by the suspect,” Cleveland police said in a statement. “The suspect then fled in the victim’s vehicle. The victim was conveyed to Fairview Hospital by Cleveland EMS where he was pronounced deceased.”
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Atlanta Public School (APS) officials announced Saturday that will operate virtually next week for all students and all staff. This, after APS officials said they had reviewed district and community COVID-19 data. They did not elaborate.
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Former President Donald Trump will host his first rally in 2022 in Florence, Arizona, according to a release from his Save America PAC.
The event, which will take place on January 15, will begin Trump’s efforts to boost his endorsed candidates during the 2022 midterm election season in the state he narrowly lost to President Joe Biden.
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Officials with the Metro Nashville Social Services and the Nashville-based Room in the Inn announced Saturday that, after the many impacts of COVID-19, faith-based groups will return to the city’s Cold Weather Shelter Plan. Before COVID-19, Metro Nashville and Room in the Inn officials had relied on more than 200 faith centers to help house the homeless during the winter months. As a result, far fewer homeless people could access shelter when temperatures dropped below 28 degrees. Exactly 60 fair centers coordinated with the city last year.
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A new report shows the unreliability of solar energy while Tennessee continues to pursue it as an alternative to fossil fuels.
“Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that production from solar panels plummets in the winter,” Isaac Orr, a Public Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experience said.
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In June 2020, as the country attempted to recover from deadly and destructive riots after the death of George Floyd, a man from Wisconsin hosted a national conference of self-styled “militia” members in a suburban Columbus, Ohio hotel. Stephen Robeson, founder of the Wisconsin chapter of the Three Percenters, an alleged militia group on the FBI’s naughty list, pestered his contacts across the country to participate in the gathering.
People who attended the conference, including two men later charged with federal crimes related to a plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in 2020, observed that the hotel was crawling with federal agents.
One of the feds at the conference was none other than Stephen Robeson himself.
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Vanderbilt University announced on Thursday that the beginning of the semester will be delayed, due to the rise in positive coronavirus cases.
According to a statement from the university, the new timeline directs students to begin class on January 18. Originally, the semester’s classes began on January 10.
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Take a look at one of your hands, specifically focusing on your index finger (2D) and ring finger (4D). If you’re a man, your index finger is probably slightly shorter than your ring finger. If you’re a woman, they’re probably about the same length. How these two fingers compare might not mean much to you, but some scientists think the ratio between the lengths of these two fingers (2D:4D) can predict your health, personality, musical ability, and even your sexual orientation. Why? Because these researchers think that 2D:4D is a biomarker of exposure to higher levels of testosterone in the womb, and this, they say, can have lasting effects throughout one’s life. One of them even thinks that sports teams should use the ratio as a criterion for selecting players!
Dr. James Smoliga, a Professor of Physiology in the Department of Physical Therapy at High Point University, is not one of those scientists. Reviewing some of the more than 1,400 papers published over the past two decades linking 2D:4D to pretty much anything (reduced risk for video game addiction, sumo wrestling success, artistic ability, penis size, etc.), he grew skeptical that this one physical trait could reveal so much about our lives.
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While COVID-19 cases surged in New York City, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pictured vacationing in Florida, National Review reported.
Ocasio-Cortez was spotted drinking cocktails outside of a restaurant in Miami Beach on Thursday while New York City reported a record high number of COVID-19 cases, National Review reported. Ocasio-Cortez represents New York’s 14th congressional district, which includes parts of the Bronx and Queens.
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ACalifornia man who supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 was sentenced this week to 35 years to life in prison for fatally shooting a woman during an argument about the presidential race.
The incident occurred Jan. 10, 2017, when defendant John Kevin McVoy Jr. was told by a bandmate to “Get the f— out of my house,” after McVoy revealed he had voted for Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, according to Fox News.
McVoy then fired two shots. One hit the bandmate, identified by the Press-Enterprise of Southern California as Victor Garcia, in the head.
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The trial and conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell handed anti-sex trafficking advocates a big victory this week and focused public attention for a short while on a heinous criminal scourge. But in the case’s shadows, a painful reality plays out at America’s southern border, where U.S. Border Patrol agents almost daily encounter bad actors in the illicit sex trades.
The holidays were no exception.
A few days before Christmas, over a 24-hour period, Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents intercepted three human smuggling attempts which resulted in the apprehension of over 70 foreign nationals illegally in the U.S. They also recovered a stolen vehicle, and a methamphetamine seizure north of Laredo, Texas.
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I testified earlier this month at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Chicago on underlying causes of the spikes in gun violence in that city and around the country.
Although Sen. Dick Durbin’s interruptions of my opening statement stole the show in many respects, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the Illinois Democrat also solicited disparaging remarks on the right to keep and bear arms from another witness—Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.
In direct response to one of Durbin’s questions, Brown remarked that armed civilians make police officers’ jobs more difficult, and that he never has seen a lawfully armed civilian make a situation safer.
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Many people have experienced reductions in stress, pain and anxiety and sometimes even euphoria after exercise. What’s behind this so-called “runner’s high”? New research on the neuroscience of exercise may surprise you.
The “runner’s high” has long been attributed to endorphins. These are chemicals produced naturally in the body of humans and other animals after exercise and in response to pain or stress.
However, new research from my lab summarizes nearly two decades of work on this topic. We found that exercise reliably increases levels of the body’s endocannabinoids – which are molecules that work to maintain balance in the brain and body – a process called “homeostasis.” This natural chemical boost may better explain some of the beneficial effects of exercise on brain and body.
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More than half of likely voters expressed their disapproval of Joe Biden’s job as president in a recent Rasmussen poll, particularly with regards to his handling of the issues of crime and immigration, as reported by the New York Post.
According to the Rasmussen survey, 51 percent of voters rated Biden’s performance as “poor” on the issue of crime and law enforcement, with only 31 percent describing him as “good” or “excellent.” On immigration, 54 percent described him as “poor,” with only 27 percent rating him as “good” or “excellent.”
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Chinese scientists reportedly developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program capable of filing criminal charges.
The AI “prosecutor” is given a verbal definition of a case and then decides whether to file charges, according to the South China Morning Post, citing researchers involved in developing the program. The prosecutor files charges with a 97% accuracy rate, and is intended to reduce prosecutors’ workload.
“The system can replace prosecutors in the decision-making process to a certain extent,” said Shi Yong, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ big data and knowledge management laboratory that developed the program.
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A severe childcare shortage is affecting Dodge County in Wisconsin. Some practitioners are telling parents that if they don’t line up child care immediately after finding out they are pregnant, it might not be available when the time comes.
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Hy-Vee shoppers who want to defund the police are upset that the popular Midwestern grocery chain has introduced armed security guards amidst rising crime.
Hy-Vee operates 285 stores in the Midwest, several of which are located in Minneapolis — where the City Council has allocated funds away from the police and into the Health Department to fund “civilian violence interrupters,” per MPR. However, Hy-Vee customers who support such efforts to defund the police are unhappy with how the grocery store has chosen to protect itself amidst a growing trend of mass thefts from big box retailers.
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