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Randon Sprinkle, the former finance chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, has been hit with federal charges of distribution of child pornography. According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the affiant “completed the extraction” of Sprinkle’s computer “and found two archived files constituting child pornography,” and one of the files referenced “consists of a 16-second video which shows an adult male’s erect penis penetrating the mouth of an infant.” FBI Richmond executed a federal search warrant on October 16, 2025. Internet archives show that Sprinkle formerly served as finance director...

The suspected gunman behind both the deadly shooting spree at Brown University and the killing of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor was already dead for two days before authorities found his body inside a New Hampshire storage facility, officials said Friday. Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown University graduate student, died Tuesday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Police discovered his body Thursday night inside a storage unit in Salem following a nearly weeklong manhunt. Authorities identified Valente as the suspect who opened fire...

The alleged "mastermind" behind Minnesota’s $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scandal tied to the Somali community is accused of wielding extraordinary power through threats and what the government described as "fake claims of racism." Aimee Bock, who founded the Feeding Our Future nonprofit in 2016, used her growing authority to silence dissent, discourage scrutiny from state regulators and cut off operators who refused to comply, prosecutors said. While other defendants splurged on luxury homes, cars and overseas property, prosecutors said, Bock instead controlled the levers of approval and reimbursement that allowed the scheme to flourish.

More than three dozen missing children were rescued from sex traffickers in North Florida after a massive sting. The rescue effort, named Operation Northern Lights, found 43 missing children across 14 counties with more children found in other states, the US Marshals Service announced Thursday. Federal authorities said the youngest victims were one-year-olds and that one of the young victims had been abducted from Florida and located in Louisiana. Nine people were arrested after the staggering operation, which law enforcement said took two weeks to conduct. Additional charges could include human trafficking, child endangerment and custodial interference. The sting turned...

The United States Coast Guard is seizing a sanctioned vessel off the Venezuelan coast, two U.S. officials confirm to NBC News. The operation is in progress. It was first reported by Reuters. The Coast Guard is taking the lead, both officials said. The U.S. military is supporting with helicopters that are dropping off Coast Guard personnel and observing overhead, one of the officials said. This comes after the U.S. interdicted a large, sanctioned oil tanker known as the Skipper off the coast of Venezuela last week. After that operation, the Trump administration sanctioned six more ships believed to be carrying...

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in an interview on CNN that he and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, are also considering whether Bondi should be held in contempt of Congress. "What we found out is the most important documents are missing," Khanna said. "They've had excessive redactions." The documents released Friday make only limited references to President Donald Trump, even though the administration has acknowledged that his name appears in the files. Former President Bill Clinton, by contrast, appears numerous times in the documents. The release included photos of Clinton swimming, as well as images showing him...

In a final message delivered from beyond the grave, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner delivered a stirring plea for “resilience” to a global gathering of Holocaust survivors at Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Thursday. The pre-recorded video, filmed just weeks before he and his wife were fatally slain in their Brentwood home, was an emotional centerpiece of the annual International Holocaust Survivors Night. In his final address, Reiner spoke of his aunt, who was in Auschwitz, and his wife Michele, whose “whole family died there,” with the exception of her mother. Reiner — an outspoken liberal activist — didn’t shy away from...

WESTLAND, Mich. – A suspect has been taken into custody after a Salvation Army bell ringer was shot and killed at a Kroger store in Westland on Thursday, police said. The shooting happened at about 6:10 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, at the Kroger at 36430 Ford Road, according to a release from the Westland Police Department. When officers arrived, they found a Salvation Army bell ringer dead inside the store, with multiple gunshot wounds. Police said the suspect fled the store immediately after the shooting, but investigators identified and arrested the suspect early Friday. The suspect’s identity is...

Upon her departure from the Democratic Party, the Justice Department and FBI considered opening a criminal investigation into the then-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., over alleged campaign finance violations, according to reports. The New York Post reported that emails obtained by the newspaper revealed communications between DOJ’s Criminal Division; a prosecutor in then-Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves’ office; and FBI agents in the bureau’s Washington Field Office that discussed investigating Sinema in February 2024. Sinema left the Democratic Party in 2022 and chose not to seek re-election in 2024. The email exchanges came in response to the Post’s Feb. 1,...

A man in Ohio was charged Thursday after police said he stole several items from a Walmart shopping center and tried to shoot an officer in the head. Canton Police said the officer responded around 1:45 p.m. to the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard NE for suspected shoplifting. The officer was inside the loss prevention office with 21-year-old Shane Newman and 23-year-old Katerina Jeffrey when police said Newman pulled out a handgun. Police said Newman then attempted to shoot the officer, but the gun did not fire. A Walmart protection associate jumped onto Newman before he could try to shoot the...

Immigrants’ rights advocates are sounding the alarm about noise machines placed high above the parking lot on light poles at a Home Depot in Cypress Park. The machines put out a constant high-pitched beeping noise that has day laborers, like Jose De La Torre, who goes there in hopes of finding work, reaching for earplugs to try and block the piercing sounds out. “It’s bad, it’s bad,” De La Torre told KTLA. “It’s annoying. You have to walk away, always use your earplugs. Otherwise, people get headaches.” De La Torre is not alone. Many of the other day laborers who...

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice on Friday released more than 300,000 pages of photos and evidence connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The vast trove includes images showing the disgraced financier and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell socializing with high-profile figures, including former president Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson. One photograph appears to show Clinton in a swimming pool alongside Maxwell and several unidentified, partially clothed women. Clinton broke his silence on Friday to turn the tables on Trump, releasing a statement that declared: 'The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late...

“The FBI will not tolerate any attempt to exploit our nation’s institutions for illegal activity—as we have seen in this case and the three Chinese nationals charged in Michigan in November for allegedly smuggling biological materials into the U.S. on several occasions,” Patel added

Hanaway’s office secured a $24 billion judgement earlier this year against the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party and related entities for “unleashing and worsening the COVID-19 pandemic.” China.” “The complaint argues the defendants’ acts have had ‘negative effects on the soft power’ of Wuhan and have ‘belittled the social evaluation,’ as well as adversely affected the ‘productivity and commercialization of scientific and technological achievements’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the press release states.

Three people were killed and at least five more were injured in a knife attack in Taipei on Friday. A 27-year-old suspect ignited smoke bombs and Molotov cocktails at Taipei's main metro station, then ran to a nearby shopping district station, stabbing multiple people, according to Premier Cho Jung-tai. Cho stated that the suspect fell from a building and later died. The motive is still unknown. The attack took place during Taipei's evening rush hour, in the station that linked to a crowded underground shopping area. Taiwanese President William Lai pledged a rapid investigation. Such attacks are uncommon in Taiwan,...

Washington, D.C. Chief of Police Pam Smith resigned in disgrace on Friday after a scathing report released earlier this week. The House Oversight Committee report revealed that Smith coerced department officials into manipulating crime data across the District. The report claimed that she urged district commanders to “reduce crime statistics by any means necessary." The investigation into Smith uncovered systemic abuse of criminal reporting practices within the department. The Oversight Committee stated that: “Testimony revealed that Chief Smith prioritized lowering publicly reported crime numbers over reducing actual crime, placing intense pressure on district commanders to produce low crime statistics by...

European Union leaders agreed on Friday to provide a massive interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, but they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to use frozen Russian assets to raise the funds. After almost four years of war, the International Monetary Fund estimates that Ukraine will need 137 billion euros ($161 billion) in 2026 and 2027. The government in Kyiv is on the verge of bankruptcy, and desperately needs the money by spring. The plan had been to use some of the 210 billion...

We've spent several hours scanning through datasets of documents released by the Department of Justice. Here's what we've learned so far... "Thank you for believing me, I feel redeemed" That's what Maria Farmer, one of Epstein's earliest accusers, says in a statement to the BBC about her 1996 complaint to the FBI being included in the files today. In that complaint, Farmer said Epstein stole personal photos she took of her 12-year-old and 16-year-old sisters. She believed he sold the photos to potential buyers, and said he threatened to burn her house down if she told anyone about it, the...

California’s immigrant truckers are under direct threat, and the consequences are already landing in Sacramento’s neighborhoods, warehouses and family households. Drivers with spotless records are walking into the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) locations expecting a routine renewal of their commercial driver's license and walking out unemployed — not because they failed a test or violated a law, but because a federal agency quietly rewrote immigration categories and ordered states to enforce the fallout. This is a bureaucratic ambush. A new rule from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is sowing confusion across California’s supply chain and logistics network at...

Brown University and MIT gunman's autopsy reveals how long he had been dead during massive manhunt Brown University and MIT gunman Claudio Neves Valente had been dead for two days before he was found by law enforcement, his autopsy reveals. The body of Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was discovered Thursday evening after a six-day manhunt. Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two students and wounding nine others at Brown, and then two days later killing Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno F G Loureiro.