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New York will ban single-use plastic bags in stores starting March 1. The state’s ban, which was passed last year by the state legislature, will impact both grocery and department stores. New York is the third state to introduce a plastic bag ban, joining California and Oregon, as a way to curb the amount of plastic going to landfills. Instead of receiving a plastic bag at the checkout counter, customers will have to provide their own reusable bags or take a paper bag from the store with a five-cent tax. Customers using food stamps will be exempt from the bag...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is publicly shaming Chicago authorities, claiming that they released a Mexican citizen who later sexually assaulted a toddler at a fast food restaurant. Chrstopher Puente, 34, was arrested on Feb. 19 for sexually assaulting a 3-year-old despite ICE's previous request that police continue detaining the previously deported felon. According to a press release on Thursday, Puente had two felony convictions for forced-entry burglary and forgery. Despite his background, Chicago declined ICE's June 2019 request to detain Puente -- raising more concerns about a jurisdiction already under fire for defying ICE. A CBS affiliate reported that...

A man who tested positive for the coronavirus told Fox News on Saturday that people should stop freaking out about the outbreak. "I'm not the one to advise the experts on this, but I personally believe that it's not the scary thing that everyone thinks it is," Mark Jorgenson told "Your World." Jorgenson and his wife were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. Authorities quarantined the ship after a man who exited in Hong Kong had tested positive. According to Jorgenson, his wife initially tested positive and stayed in Japan while he didn't get a positive result...

The porn-actress daughter of director Steven Spielberg was arrested and jailed in Nashville, Tenn. early Saturday on a misdemeanor domestic violence, court records show. Mikaela Spielberg, 23, lately in news after she launched a film career of her own — in skin flicks– was admitted into the Hill Detention Center at 6:33 a.m., online inmate records show. Her $1,000 bail has already been posted, and she will be released at the conclusion of a 12-hour “hold,” which is routine in domestic violence cases, an official with the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office told The Post. “Someone has already posted her bond;...

Dr. Drew Pinsky joins the panel to discuss how the media has created hysteria over the coronavirus outbreak. He breaks down the actual facts about the virus that caused the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue an international health emergency. Dr. Drew Slams Coronavirus Coverage (4 mins)

“Anything that they can use to try to hurt Trump, they will,” Trump Jr. said. “But for them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of sickness.” In response, congressman Garamendi threatened Don Jr. with physical violence on national TV. “He should not be near me when he says that,” Garamendi said during an interview with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson. “Why not?” Jackson asked. “There would be a serious altercation,” the congressman replied. “That is just totally...

Missouri hunters have been credited with donating over 300,000 pounds of venison to local food banks and pantries to help provide a quality protein food source to people in need. The Missouri Department of Conservation and the Conservation Federation of Missouri released a statement thanking everyone involved in the state’s “Share the Harvest” food donation program. In addition to the hunters who participated this year, over 100 meat processors participated, turning the game into tidy and ready-to-use packages of meat. The program was started by hunters in 1992 as a way to alleviate food scarcity in their local communities. “Hunters...

Conservatives mocked Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she cited her high school science fair in a Twitter spat with Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Ocasio-Cortez kicked off the exchange by criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to name Vice President Mike Pence as the head of the Coronavirus task force, saying that he did not believe in science. Cruz quickly responded by asking the freshman congresswoman a series of scientific questions that were at odds with her ideology — including a query about Y chromosomes. Ocasio-Cortez responded with a few insults and her resume — and among the scientific...

With polls trending toward a more favorable view of President Trump among African-American voters, CNN's Angela Rye expressed her dismay. "Shame on you," she exclaimed. "Our people have been voting Democrat since FDR was president. Are you going to turn your back on this long-term bond?" Rye called the record unemployment lows under Trump's policies "crumbs. It might seem great to have a job or own a small business, but do you realize that these options force you to work to earn a living? Democrats are the ones that have abolished having to work for a living for millions of...

Archbishop Viganò Defends Cardinal Zen, Strongly Criticizes Vatican for ‘Wicked’ Agreement – Edward Pentin Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has written an impassioned letter to Cardinal Joseph Zen, strongly criticizing the Vatican for its approach to China and saying it had “done everything and more to deliver the Chinese Martyr Church in the hands of the Enemy.”Referring in particular to what he called “the treacherous and wicked” secret agreement signed by Beijing and the Holy See in 2018 on the appointment of bishops in China, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States said he shared in prayer Cardinal Zen’s suffering.“Your...

"From a constitutional-law perspective, the legislature's decision to establish a duty of neutral conduct with respect to ideological and religious matters for legal trainees must therefore be respected...." — Germany's Federal Constitutional Court.[snip]The case involves a 38-year-old German-Moroccan law student who was born in Frankfurt and customarily wears a headscarf in public. In January 2017, she began legal training in the German state of Hesse, where the law bans any expression of religion in its courtrooms for judges, lawyers and legal trainees.

“A growing number of establishment party officials are reportedly considering Sherrod Brown as a late entry ‘white knight’ with Michelle Obama as a running mate. Other potential candidates … include Kamala Harris … as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to the New York Times’ interview with 93 party officials.” The 93 party officials were super-delegates.

A woman in St. Louis has a frightening tale to tell after she was attacked and the suspect was apparently allowed to walk free. Her name is Alicia Clarke and she was attacked by her neighbor who tackled her, pulled her hair, broke her nose, and stabbed her with a metal rod. This was all over an incident where she lost her phone, used the 'Find My Iphone' to locate it, and confronted the teenage neighbor who responded by attacking her and leaving her a mess.

VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis cancelled official engagements for the third day in a row Saturday as he battled an apparent cold. The 83-year-old pope, who lost part of a lung to a respiratory illness as a young man, has never cancelled so many official audiences or events in his seven-year papacy. Francis is, however, continuing to work from his residence at the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel and is receiving people in private, the Vatican press office said. On Saturday, those private meetings were with the head of the Vatican’s bishops’ office, Francis’ ambassadors to Lebanon and France and...

A top official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Friday challenged Sacramento medical officials who implied they were forced to wait several days before federal authorities tested a symptomatic patient for the coronavirus. The patient, a woman who has been at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento since Feb. 19, was intubated and has been described as severely ill. She was tested on Sunday, Feb. 23. The medical center disclosed on Wednesday that test results were positive. The discovery forced the medical center to order several employees to stay home this week. Those employees as well have...

Skip “1776 Unites” will offer its own K-12 educational materials and scholarly articles to put the history of racism in America in the context of a broader examination of our democratic principles and the institutions that nurtured the abolition of slavery. These provided the foundations for achieving individual freedom, equal rights, and opportunity for all — the promise of America. African-American scholars such as Glenn Loury, Carol Swain, John McWhorter, Jason Hill, and Wilfred Reilly will present stories of resilience and upward mobility, documenting the successes of black Americans — stories that while recognizing America’s failures, also celebrate her promise....

One week ago, ahead of today’s Chinese data release which would for the first time capture the devastation from the coronavirus pandemic, we wrote that “to those who have been following our series of high-frequency, daily indicators of China’s economy, it will probably not come as a surprise that the world’s second biggest economy has ground to a halt, its GDP set to post the first negative print in modern history. To everyone else who is just now catching up, we have some news: it’s going to be bad.” Specifically, we said that ahead of official Chinese economic data which...

A person has died in Washington state of COVID-19, state health officials said Saturday, marking the first such reported death in the United States. State officials issued a terse news release announcing the death, gave no details and scheduled a news conference. Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities after confirming three patients were infected by unknown means. The patients — an older Northern California woman with chronic health conditions, a high school student in Everett, Washington and an employee at a Portland, Oregon-area school — hadn’t recently traveled...

Dogs may be man’s best friend, but let’s not forget that the faithful fetching stick is a dog’s other best friend. So when 59-year-old Andrew Taylor noticed that there was a lack of good sticks at his local park, he decided to take matters into his own hands. The dad from Kaiapoi, New Zealand had been chopping off excess branches from some trees in his yard when he decided to make them into a “Stick Library” for all the local pups. After chopping up the branches into several dozen conveniently-sized pieces, he put them into a hand-crafted box emblazoned with...