Severe thunderstorms bring hail and structural damage, with tornadoes hitting cities including Kalamazoo and Battle Creek
Tornadoes that hit Michigan on Tuesday evening ripped the roof off a FedEx building in Portage, partially collapsing the structure and trapping 50 people inside, Kalamazoo county authorities said. Elsewhere in the state, thousands of residents are without power and face a deluge of hail and tornado warnings amid severe thunderstorms.
“TAKE COVER NOW,” the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids warned in a post directed at Portage residents on their Facebook page.
A FedEx driver dropped off boxes containing .30 caliber M1 rifles at Chester High School.
The guns sat inside the school over the weekend before the driver returned to collect them.
The error was caused by the school having an address similar to the intended recipient’s.
A FedEx driver mistakenly left boxes containing a half-dozen military-style rifles at a public high school outside Philadelphia last Friday, according to police and school officials.
The guns, identified as .30 caliber M1 rifles, sat inside the Chester High School loading dock over the weekend, staff believing the unopened boxes to contain textbooks, CBS News reported.
The driver returned on Monday to collect the packages.
A new vaccine could be effective against coronaviruses which have yet to emerge, with hopes it could be used to battle future pandemics, research suggests.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and Caltech in the US are developing a novel approach called “proactive vaccinology”, which aims to train the body’s immune system to recognise several different coronaviruses.
The vaccine used antigens – a substance that triggers an immune response in the body – found in eight different coronaviruses, including those circulating in bats. This trains the immune system to go after the parts of the antigens that are shared across the viruses and other similar ones, including those not included in the vaccine.
The vaccine, for instance, does not include the Sars-CoV-1 virus, which led to the 2003 SARs outbreak, but can produce an immune response to it.
The New York Times has released a trove of raw government data on the unaccompanied alien children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. Among over 10,000 pages of information is data on the number of children who crossed the border into America without an adult and then were handed over to someone other than a family member.
From January 2015 through May 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released tens of thousands of minors who crossed the border illegally to sponsors who weren’t an immediate or distant relative, raising concerns about human trafficking and forced labor.
“More children are crossing the border on their own than ever before, and thousands are ending up doing dangerous, illegal jobs,” New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier wrote on X in a thread sharing the numbers with the public.
The Times sued the government to gain access to the records, which reveal more than 550,000 minors crossed the border illegally between 2015, halfway through Barack Obama’s second term as president, through May 2023, about two years and four months into Joe Biden’s presidency. From 2017 through 2020, Donald Trump was president.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The Iraqi Ministry of Interior began purchasing medium-range weapons from citizens after opening 697 registration offices in Baghdad and the rest of the Iraqi governorates.
The Interior Ministry announced earlier that it allocated one billion Iraqi dinars (more than $763,000) for each governorate to complete the purchasing process, according to Alsabah Daily, the official newspaper in Iraq.
The secretary of the committee tasked with weapon control, Brigadier General Mansour Ali Sultan, said in November that 70 percent of a database related to arms possessed by individuals has been completed.
“The Iraqi law allows every citizen who is 25 years old or older to possess weapons,” Sultan explained.
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Campus protests by pro-Palestinian activists spread across Europe on Tuesday as some called for a break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza, while schools increasingly faced the question under debate in the U.S.: Allow or intervene?
German police broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University. Protesters occupied a university building in Amsterdam hours after police detained 169 people at a different campus location. Two remained in custody on suspicion of committing public violence.
Elsewhere in Europe, some student camps have been allowed to stay in places like the lawns of Cambridge. In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
In Berlin, protesters put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around them. Most covered their faces with medical masks and draped keffiyeh scarves around their heads, shouting slogans such as “Viva, viva Palestina.”
A new study finds abortion restrictions may be associated with increased rates of intimate partner homicide among reproductive-aged women and girls.
Notably, the study looks at the period before the US supreme court overturned the national right to abortion in 2022, when states could restrict – but not outlaw – abortion. Fourteen states have since banned the procedure.
As a result, the dynamics identified in the research may in fact be significantly exacerbated, even if they are not yet reflected in the data.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak to the press at his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, U.S. May 7, 2024.
A judge Tuesday denied a request by Donald Trump‘s lawyers to declare a mistrial in response to testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels.
“I don’t believe we’re at the point where a mistrial is warranted,” Judge Juan Merchan ruled from the bench in the former president’s New York criminal hush money trial.
The judge did, however, grant a bid by Trump’s attorneys to strike some testimony from the record.
Defense lawyers sought to scrap the historic trial after Daniels testified about the night she says she had sex with the then-married former president.
“The only reason the government asked these questions, aside from pure embarrassment, is to inflame this jury,” attorney Todd Blanche told Merchan.
A knife attack at a hospital in southwestern China on Tuesday killed two people and injured 21 others, authorities said.
No motive was given for the attack at Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital in Yunnan province. The suspect is a male from a village in the same county, a Zhenxiong police statement said. The injured were being treated, it said.
A witness told Red Star News, an online outlet, that he had narrowly escaped the attack and that a doctor or doctors were among the injured. Video from the witness showed people who were bleeding and had fallen to the ground, and one older person trying to help another, the Red Star social media post said.
Earlier media reports said 23 people had been injured, but the police statement said the total was 21. A video posted online by Guizhou Province Television showed a man being taken away by police.
Anti-Israel protesters at the University of Chicago claim that the university has agreed to an initial set of demands put forth by anti-Israel protesters who have set up an encampment at the school, but a statement put out by the school casts doubt on that claim.
In a joint post on Instagram, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, US Palestinian Community Network, and UChicago United for Palestine said the college has agreed to one item in order to start negotiations with the camp.
“As a precondition for meeting with administration, the power of our encampment forced the University to establish a Gaza Scholars at Risk Initiative, which will bring 8 at-risk Palestinian scholars to work and study at UChicago,” the groups’ statement said but added, “We’re appalled to have to pull the University’s teeth for them to protect not only academic freedom but individual human lives.”
The headline of this story originally stated that protesters had been pepper-sprayed, which has not been confirmed. Video shows people rinsing the eyes out of at least one person, but, if they were hit with pepper-spray, it’s not clear why. — Ed.
After arrests earlier in the morning, a large crowd of protesters gathered near UC San Diego’s Price Center on Monday, where a bus with barred windows that is operated by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department had been brought on campus, likely to transport those whom had been taken into custody.
At least one person was spotted using a water bottle to rinse out another protester’s eyes.
The large crowd, while not surrounding the bus, certainly impeded its departure after several of those in attendance began banging on the sides of the coach.
Columbia University has cancelled its main graduation after weeks of protests on campus over the Israel-Gaza war.
The Ivy League school said it was ditching the 15 May commencement in favour of smaller celebrations to focus on “keeping them safe”.
The New York City university said it had arrived at the decision after consultations with student leaders.
Colleges across the US are bracing for disruptions at graduations amid pro-Palestinian protests.
Columbia University said in a statement on Monday: “Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families.
“They are eager to cross the stage to applause and family pride and hear from their school’s invited guest speakers.
WTF?! As awful as ransomware attacks are, perpetrators have found a way of making them even worse: psychologically attacking victims to make them hand over their money. One of these methods involves calling company executives from phone numbers belonging to their children.
Speaking at a Google Security Threat Intelligence Panel at this year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco (via The Reg), Charles Carmakal, CTO of Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said, “We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM swap the phones of children of executives, and start making phone calls to executives, from the phone numbers of their children.”
Carmakal noted the psychological dilemma of seeing an incoming phone call from your child only to answer and hear a stranger’s voice. “Sometimes, it’s caller ID spoofing. Other times, we see demonstrated SIM swapping family members,” he said.
Two weeks after his return to the public eye, King Charles III is said to be “very good” amid his cancer battle.
British politician Penny Mordaunt, a minister in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, said during a Tuesday appearance on GB News that the 75-year-old monarch is happy to get back to work.
“He’s very good. And I know that he would have been so pleased to get back to public duties. He would have missed it tremendously,” the speaker of the House of Commons said, sharing details from her weekly meetings with Charles in her role as Privy Council Lord President.
SURREY, British Columbia — Two of the three men charged in the slaying of Canadian Sikh separatist leader Singh Nijjar in June made a brief first court appearance on Tuesday morning.
The killing of the prominent activist became the center of a diplomatic spat after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement
Canadian police said Friday they arrested the three Indian nationals in Edmonton, Alberta for shooting and killing the 45-year-old in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple over which he presided in the city of Surrey.
Kamalpreet Singh, 22, Karan Brar, 22, and Karanpreet Singh, 28, have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Chinese scientists have engineered a virus with parts ofEbolain a lab that killed a group of hamsters.
A team of researchers at Hebei Medical University used a contagious disease of livestock and added a protein found in Ebola, which allows the virus to infect cells and spread throughout the human body.
The group of hamsters that received the lethal injection ‘developed severe systemic diseases similar to those observed in human Ebola patients,’ including multi-organ failure,’ the study shared.
Disney’s unpopularity among conservatives has made it one of the least liked Hollywood studios, according to a new poll.
Research commissioned by the news website Puck found that Disney’s unfavourability rating, while low in absolute terms, was among the highest of 29 major American companies at 21 per cent.
That was largely driven by Republicans and independents, of whom 30 per cent and 26 per cent respectively said they had a negative opinion of the company. By contrast, only 8 per cent of Democrats said the same.
The negative polling comes after a series of political fights for the House of Mouse, which many conservative activists and politicians have painted as a bastion of “wokeness” in corporate America.
Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, who worked to expand early voting in the Bluegrass State and has spoken out against election denialism in his own party, has been chosen to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year.
In its announcement Monday, the JFK Library Foundation said Adams was recognized “for expanding voting rights and standing up for free and fair elections despite party opposition and death threats from election deniers.”
Hamas informed Arab mediators that it would approve a Qatari-Egyptian cease-fire proposal, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement Monday. There has been no response yet from Israel, which earlier in the day ordered about 100,000 civilians in parts of Rafah to evacuate “immediately” to a humanitarian zone. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Monday, President Biden reiterated his opposition to a ground invasion of Rafah and provided an update on negotiations in Doha, according to a White House readout of the conversation.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health released an infographic on April 24 through social media site Telegram indicating that it lacked identifying data for more than 10,000 of the 34,183 so-called martyrs who had been killed in the 200 days following Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Despite growing concerns over the Ministry of Health’s figures, the Biden administration continues to cite the ministry’s data with no reference to its origin. In October, President Biden claimed that he had “no confidence” in Ministry of Health figures. In his March, State of the Union address, Biden shared the ministry’s data with a global audience without referencing its origin, noting that “more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas.”
David Adesnik, senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the incompleteness of data entries for 10,152 victims in an earlier April 21 data set should be “a flashing red light” for onlookers who have previously trusted ministry calculations of the death toll in Gaza.
The pro-Hamas encampment at George Washington University in DC has been in full, hideous swing for days. City officials refused to allow the police to help the school clear the encampment, despite an explicit request from GW to do so, citing bad ‘optics.’ Since then, the mob overran officers and barricades to expand their “encampment,” completely covered a Washington statue with Palestinian garb and other desecrations, booed and jeered when an American flag was unfurled overlooking their terrorism-supporting ‘protest,’ then projected a ‘Genocide Joe’ message over the flag. What patriotic frat boys on various campuses seem to instinctively understand is that these people aren’t just anti-Israel; they overwhelmingly hate America, too. That’s what drives so much of the dirtbag left. These people despise Western civilization, and they’re deeply radical at heart….
What might DC officials think of these “optics”? They generally coddle criminals, so it’s unclear if they’re offended by any of this. Meanwhile, scenes at MIT:
NEW: PRO-TERROR MIT PROTESTORS CHANT ‘DEATH TO ZIONISTS’ IN ARABIC
Two days ago, the @AP live-streamed antisemitic protests at the MIT pro-Hamas encampment.
In this clip, the Arabic chant says (twice) “Min el-maiyeh lel mayieh, almawt lilsahayina”.
They’re literally chanting for death, in English and Arabic, on US soil. I’ll leave you with thoughts from the leader of the University of Florida, who has handled this correctly from the start:
DC Metropolitan Police Department said that it would not help clear the Gaza camp set up by students and activists at George Washington University (GWU).
Metropolitan Police Department Chief of Police Pamela Smith said on Thursday, “I think here in the District of Columbia, we allow people the opportunity to have freedom of speech, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. There has been no violence, no violent behavior, no confrontations,” according to The Hill.
“If the behavior changes, then our procedures and our process might change.”
Former President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election is putting GOP lawmakers in a tough spot, especially Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who are running to become next Senate GOP leader and have pledged to work closely with Trump.
Both senators, allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is in the mix to be Trump’s running mate, repeatedly refused to say Sunday he would accept the results of this year’s election.
Now, other Senate Republicans will face the same question, including Thune and Cornyn, who will have to balance their past positions on Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud with their ambitions to replace McConnell.
“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelation of classes and graduation – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said. “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.”
Cancellation of inaugural crewed space mission comes as Boeing is under fire over safety record at its aviation arm.
Boeing has called off the inaugural crewed flight CST-100 Starliner space capsule after engineers detected an issue with a rocket valve.
The decision to call off the launch on Monday came two hours before the scheduled liftoff and about an hour after two NASA astronauts had strapped into the spacecraft.
The postponement, blamed on a problem with a valve in the Atlas V rocket, was announced during a live NASA webcast.