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(Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department next week will meet with lawyers for families of victims of two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019, as the government decides whether to move ahead with a criminal case, according to correspondence Reuters reviewed. The meeting, set for Tuesday afternoon, comes ahead of an April 24 gathering scheduled for the victims' families themselves to confer with Justice Department officials. "As we have ... done previously, we think it would be productive to hold a lawyers-only meeting approximately two weeks before the conferral," said Glenn Leon, the...

WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) – As millions of Americans head to their local gas station or store to purchase a new pack of Marlboro’s or Newport’s, they may soon see that their favorite type of cigarettes are no longer available for purchase. According to an announcement made by the Food & Drug Administration back in 2022, the agency had begun planning to “propose product standards to prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and prohibit all characterizing flavors (other than tobacco) in cigars,” due to “menthol being a flavor additive with a minty taste and aroma that reduces the irritation...

Non-Binary Dude Goes on Blind Date It Ends As Expected 🤣 Don't watch while eating.

Home to the world’s largest elephant population, Botswana has already gifted 8,000 of the animals to Angola and offered another 500 to Mozambique. For the second time this year, Botswana has threatened to send thousands of elephants to Europe. In March, the southern African nation warned it would fill one of London’s parks with the animals. Now, the president has said his country will send 20,000 elephants to Germany. The warnings have been sparked by a diplomatic row as the UK and Germany mull the idea of stricter limits on the import of hunting trophies amid concerns over poaching. Why...

Explanation: In dark evening skies over June Lake, northern hemisphere, planet Earth, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks stood just above the western horizon on March 30. Its twisted turbulent ion tail and diffuse greenish coma are captured in this two degree wide telescopic field of view along with bright yellowish star Hamal also known as Alpha Arietis. Now Pons-Brooks has moved out of the northern night though, approaching perihelion on April 21. On April 8 you might still spot the comet in daytime skies. But to do it, you will have to stand in the path of totality and look away from the...

In a riveting Dr. Phil primetime episode, Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas’s cofounder, charged that there is “lots of hatred” against Jews in Islamic culture, insisting that “the vast majority” of Palestinians support Hamas, that October 7 was “an attempt for ethnic cleansing” and part of a “holy war,” and that without Israel as a common enemy, the Palestinians “would kill each other.” He also mocked pro-Palestinian activists for “giving Hamas cover,” saying the terror group would “massacre them with no mercy” while accusing them of supporting “the enemy of civilization,” and insisting they belong in a “mental asylum.”...

Party machinery, underway since 2021, will make it easier for the “next Trump” to emerge. But what will actually propel such a figure into the White House is the transformation of the GOP base. The increasingly reactionary views of grassroots Republicans virtually guarantee that the movement will maintain its dominant influence on the party for the foreseeable future. A yard sign I saw in rural Pennsylvania during the 2020 presidential campaign tells the story. Planted in front of a house was a homemade poster with the words “RONALD REAGAN IS A LOSER.” President Reagan’s face was crossed out with an...

A harrowing history: 50 years since the 1974 Super Outbreak 50 years ago today, the South and part of the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys were devastated by one of the most significant weather events in U.S. history. Infamously known as the 1974 Super Outbreak, which lasted from April 3-4, 1974, the Outbreak was the first on record to produce more than 100 tornadoes in a 24-hour period. The onslaught resulted in the loss of 335 lives and $600 million in damages. The Super Outbreak wrought havoc across 13 states, producing the second-largest outbreak of tornadoes on record, including seven EF-5...

A former transgender person who has detransitioned crashed Disney’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday by calling into the public line and accusing the studio of pressuring young girls into undergoing sex-change procedures. “Disney has become the Ursula that is stealing the voices of thousands of little Ariel’s,” Chloe Cole told CEO Bob Iger. Chloe Cole, who transitioned into a “boy” at the age of 16 by undergoing surgery and hormone treatment, said her body as been “irreversibly damaged.” Cole is part of the group Do No Harm, which opposes transgender procedures for minors. Since detransitioning, she has become a vocal opponent...

A former Massachusetts city councilor who fled the country to evade child pornography charges is suspected of appearing in Russian propaganda, according to reports. Wilmer Puello-Mota, 27, a former Massachusetts National Guardsman, appears to have been spotted in Russian propaganda videos supporting the war in Ukraine on Telegram and Russian media outlets, the Daily Beast reported. In a video posted online earlier this week the man, identified as only 'Wil' and described as a 'former American soldier', approaches a Russian military recruitment office and delivers a speech about his pride in joining Russia's 'special military operation' and helping Russia to...

The video is 28 minutes long and doesn't really start until the 5 minute mark so you can just go to that point. From the transcript...... Shalom everyone Shalom everyone this is Amir Tsarfati I'm live From Galilee from Israel and these are breaking news in regards to uh what is Israel bracing towards tomorrow as tomorrow is Friday the last Friday of the Ramadan. And apparently it is also a convergence of other things in light of the very successful operation of the IDF in Damascus in which some of the most senior Iranian revolutionary guards uh officers generals...

TOKYO ROVE SPEAKS: "Every one of those sons of bitches who did that, we ought to find them, try them, and send them to jail.”

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon denied former President Donald Trump’s request to dismiss the documents case in a ruling on Thursday. Trump’s team had argued that the Presidential Records Act takes priority over the Espionage Act when it came to highly classified documents he took to Mar-a-Lago after he left office, but Cannon rejected the request to dismiss the case on those grounds, writing in the filing, “The Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss.” Cannon also defended herself against attacks from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who had harshly criticized a request she gave both...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 NEW: Shorter Judge Cannon. GFY Jack Smith 1:58 PM · Apr 4, 2024 Court order in link.

Police believe an attempted carjacking in the parking lot of Murray fitness center led to the shootings of both the victim and the man accused of trying to take her car. About 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, Murray police were called to the EOS Fitness parking lot, 5550 S. 900 East, on a report of shots fired. "When officers arrived they learned that it was an attempted carjacking where the victim and suspect both received gunshot wounds," police said in a prepared statement. A woman in her 20s was shot in the abdomen and taken to a local hospital in critical condition....

Richard Dawkins, champion of atheism, mourns Christianity’s declineDespite repeated warnings, Dawkins assumed the traditions that formed his cultural identity were silly and unnecessary things that could be discarded without much consequence. Whoops.In a recent appearance, the notorious atheist Richard Dawkins lamented the lost influence of Christianity, going so far as to declare himself a “cultural Christian.”While achieving a level of notoriety for his work in the field of biology, Dawkins became best known for his vocal opposition to religion in general and Christianity in particular. Now that public Christianity has been purged from his native Britain, the biologist is surprised...

Russia and NATO are now in "direct confrontation", the Kremlin said as the U.S.-led alliance marked its 75th anniversary on Thursday. NATO's successive waves of eastern enlargement are a fixation of President Vladimir Putin, who went to war in Ukraine two years ago with the stated aim of preventing the alliance from coming closer to Russia's borders. Instead, the war has galvanised NATO, which has expanded again with the entry of Finland and Sweden. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "In fact, relations have now slipped to the level of direct confrontation." NATO was "already involved in the conflict surrounding...

The first human case of avian influenza in Texas this week has prompted Congress to gather information about the risks to public health and agriculture. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a bipartisan briefing with congressional agriculture staff about the person infected after exposure to infected dairy cattle, according to a congressional aide. And members of Congress plan to schedule a meeting with the Agriculture Department, which announced last month that “there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health.” The human case of bird...

President Trump’s lawyer John Eastman was officially disbarred this week after a judge ruled he should have his law license stripped for challenging the 2020 election. Eastman on Thursday asked a California judge to pause the disbarment ruling, citing massive legal fees. Trump 2020 election lawyer John Eastman faced disbarment in California for ‘undermining democracy’ by trying to ‘overturn the presidential election.’ The January 6 Committee sent the feds after John Eastman because he dared to take action against the Democrats and their massive election fraud operation in 2020.

The University of Texas at Austin has sent layoff notices to an estimated 60 staff members who previously worked in diversity, equity and inclusion roles, according to the Texas NAACP and the Texas Conference of American Association of University Professors. The staffing cuts come as the university works to comply with the state’s anti-DEI law, or SB17, that bans public colleges and universities from maintaining DEI offices, holding mandatory DEI training, and having departments focused on “promoting differential treatment” based on race, sex or ethnicity. In a statement released Wednesday, the Texas NAACP and AAUP said impacted staff members were...