Countries already walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine and chaotic U.S. policymaking are facing potentially lasting economic damage.

Many young people want to farm. They just cant afford it.

The shooter opened fire in Constant Hall, a building on the campus in Norfolk, Va. It was not clear what led to the shooting.

After President Trump urged states to recommit themselves to capital punishment, Florida started to put prisoners to death at rates not seen in the states modern history.

Drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have been hailed as miracle treatments. But one in 10 people are what scientists call non-responders.

When this creative couple first walked into their Brooklyn Heights apartment, the original crown moldings were gone, the ceilings had been lowered, and every surface was gray and white but theyve spent years bringing the character back to the brownstone.READ MORE...

2026-03-12T17:26:02Z WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) A sheriff in Michigan says security at a synagogue near Detroit engaged in gunfire with at least one person.WDIV-TV reports that a truck crashed into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, on Thursday.Oakland County Sheriff Sheriff Mike Bouchard says no one is in custody yet.FBI Director Kash Patel said agents are on scene of an apparent vehicle ramming and active shooter situation at the synagogue.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. APs earlier story follows below. Police are responding to reports of an active shooter at a synagogue outside Detroit, where smoke is billowing from the roof. WDIV-TV reports that a truck crashed into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, on Thursday. Footage from the scene shows dozens of police vehicles surrounding the building. FBI Director Kash Patel said agents are on scene of an apparent vehicle ramming and active shooter situation at the synagogue.The Oakland County Sheriffs office said authorities are clearing the building. About a dozen parents sprinted to get their children from an early childhood learning center inside the building after getting approval from police. West Bloomfield School District went on lockdown. Temple Israel calls itself the nations largest Reform synagogue, with 12,000 members. according to its website. It has an early childhood education center and offers educational programs for families and adults. The website says the synagogue is passionate about helping Jewish communities across the globe and that its mission is to create a community building through the lens of Reform Judaism.The Jewish Federation of Detroit advised all Jewish organizations in the area to go into lockout protocol nobody in or out of your building.

The CEO of FireEye Kevin Mandia gives a tour of the cybersecurity company's unused office space in Reston, Va., March 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Nathan Ellgren, file)2026-03-12T17:23:39Z WASHINGTON (AP) Pro-Iranian hackers are targeting sites in the Middle East and starting to stretch into the United States during the war, raising the risk of American defense contractors, power stations and water plants being swept into a wave of digital chaos that could expand if Tehrans allies join the fray.Hackers supporting Iran claimed responsibility for a significant cyberattack Wednesday against U.S. medical device company Stryker. Since the war began Feb. 28, they also have tried to penetrate cameras in Middle Eastern countries to improve Irans missile targeting. They have targeted data centers in the region, as well as industrial facilities in Israel, a school in Saudi Arabia and an airport in Kuwait.Iran has invested heavily in its offensive cyber capabilities while cultivating ties to hacking groups. In recent years, groups working for Tehran have infiltrated the email system of President Donald Trumps campaign, targeted U.S. water plants and tried to breach the networks used by the military and defense contractors. The goal is to wear down the American war effort, drive up the costs of energy, strain cyber resources and cause as much pain as possible for American companies that depend on the defense industry.Something is going to happen because the gloves are off, said Kevin Mandia, founder of the cybersecurity companies Mandiant and Armadin. Who is being targetedPro-Iranian, pro-Palestinian hackers claimed credit for disrupting systems at Stryker, a Michigan-based medical technology company. A group known as Handala said the attack was in retaliation for suspected U.S. strikes that killed Iranian schoolchildren.Like other ideologically motivated hackers, profit is not Handalas goal, according to Ismael Valenzuela, vice president of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf.What distinguishes this group is its clear focus on data destruction rather than financial extortion, he said in an email. Polish authorities are investigating a recent cyberattack on a nuclear research facility that may have ties to Iran, though they acknowledge that another group could be behind the attack and using the Iran war to mask its identity. Going forward, U.S. defense contractors, government vendors and businesses that work with Israel are likely targets, as is critical infrastructure such as hospitals, ports, water plants, power stations and railways.Pro-Iranian hackers openly discuss their plans in Telegram and other online message boards.The datacenters need to be taken out, wrote one user, as uncovered by researchers at U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group. They host the brains of USAs military communication and targeting systems.Cyber operations also gather intelligence for example, Irans effort to hack into cameras in neighboring countries to aid its missile targeting. Infiltrating U.S. networks, meanwhile, would offer view into military planning or supply chains. Going after easy targetsThe strikes on Irans military as well as internet outages may have limited Irans cyberattacks in the short term. But experts say Iranian hackers and their allies will aim for quick victories by targeting the weakest links in American cybersecurity.Often, local water plants or health care facilities lack the funds and know-how to install the latest software patches or take other security steps. That has made them a favorite target, both because of the relative ease of penetrating them and because of the panic these disruptions can cause.This can include denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers try to jam a network so legitimate users cannot use it, and website defacements, which can prevent a company from communicating with customers. Hack-and-leak operations, where hackers threaten to release sensitive stolen material, are another possibility.The attacks are not that sophisticated, according to Shaun Williams, a former FBI and CIA officer who is now a senior director at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. But if a business or government agency has failed to keep up with its cybersecurity, it could pay a steep price, he said.Patch your systems. Ensure your firewalls and security solutions are up to date, Williams said. Remove your stale accounts. All the cyber hygiene that you should be doing, its more critical now than ever. Prepare for disruption. When it comes to cyber, Iran is considered a chaos agentRussia and China present the greatest cyber threats to the U.S., while North Korea is a growing concern. But what Iran has lacked in resources it has made up for in ingenuity, experts say.In recent years, Tehrans digital warriors have impersonated American activists online to covertly encourage protests against Israel on college campuses. They have set up fake news websites and social media accounts primed to spread false and exaggerated claims before big U.S. elections. In 2024, Iranian hackers infiltrated the email system of the Trump campaign and later tried to disseminate files that the hackers said they stole. Hackers linked to Iran also tried to hack into the WhatsApp accounts of both Trump and his then-Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden. The activity prompted the Department of Homeland Security to issue a public warning last year about Iranian cyber threats.Iran and especially the proxies dont care how big or smart you are. This is about making an impact, about creating chaos, said James Turgal, a cybersecurity expert who spent 22 years as an FBI agent and is now a vice president at Optiv, a Denver-based information security firm. Next moves from Russia and ChinaExperts are watching closely to see if Russia, China or hacking groups allied with either country provide hacking assistance to Iran, mounting attacks intended to undermine American operations in Iran and make it harder for the U.S. to sustain its fight.While China has so far taken a cautious approach, there is evidence that pro-Iranian hackers in Russia are already at work. Researchers at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike detected a surge of activity from Russian hackers in support of Tehran since the war began. One group known as Z-Pentest claimed responsibility for disrupting several U.S. networks, including some involved in closed-circuit video cameras.The timing of the attack suggests the hackers were targeting U.S. interests because of the war in Iran, according to Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike.Western organizations should continue to remain on high-alert, Meyers said.

The U.S. Capitol photographed Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)2026-03-12T16:50:18Z WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate passed a broad bill on Thursday to make U.S. housing more accessible and affordable, a rare bipartisan effort in Congress to address a growing national problem.The bill, which passed 89-10, would reduce regulations, regulate corporate investors and expand how housing dollars can be used to build affordable homes and rentals. It will now head back to the House, which passed a similar bill earlier this year. We have a housing shortage all across America, said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who worked with Republicans to win overwhelming support from both parties for the legislation. We need more housing of every kind. More housing for first-time home buyers, more housing for renters, more housing for seniors, more housing for people with disabilities, more rural housing, more urban housing, more, more, and more. The legislation, she said will help drive down prices.Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., led the effort with Warren. He said ahead of the vote that the Senate could do what so many people failed to do in this legislative body for the last few decades, and that is pass consequential legislation that makes it easier to become a homeowner. Roadblocks ahead for the legislation Despite the overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate, Its unclear whether the House will pass the legislation again or if President Donald Trump will sign it. Trump has strongly backed the bill through the bipartisan negotiations, but he has also slowed its momentum with a declaration last weekend that he wont sign any new measures unless Congress passes legislation that would require voters to show proof of citizenship and end most mail-in balloting. The Senate is expected to begin consideration of that bill next week, but it is unlikely to pass as all Democrats oppose it. At the same time, House leaders have indicated that they are unlikely to accept the Senate version of the housing legislation and have suggested they could launch a formal conference process to negotiate a final deal between the chambers a process that could take months. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said ahead of the bills passage on Thursday that conference negotiations are a possibility, but obviously the quickest way to do this would be to pick up the Senate bill and pass it.If the White House wants that to happen, he said, theyll probably have to make that argument to House leadership.Making housing more attainable The bill would give local governments more power on housing issues, allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and lift limits on the number of units in a public housing development that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding that helps rehabilitate properties.Youve got many provisions in this bill that stop treating the U.S. like one single housing market and start giving local leaders the tools they need to fix their unique regional puzzle, said Peter Carroll with Cotality, a company that tracks housing data.The bill aims to make homebuilding easier by streamlining some regulations that require environmental reviews and inspections. It also eliminates a limit on a grant for emergency shelter beds and street homelessness outreach. As many affordable housing developers are leaning on manufactured and modular homes that can be transported to areas that need housing, the legislation also lifts the requirement that they have to be built on a permanent chassis, making them easier to build and design.Housing advocacy and policy groups say they wish the bill went further by investing money in building more housing and assisting renters.This legislation is the product of essentially senators and House members wanting to come up with something that could pass with both Democratic and Republican votes, which means its inherently less ambitious, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at Urban Institute.Corporate investors One of the more contested provisions of the bill would bar institutional investors from buying single-family homes a top priority for Trump. The bill defines such investors as any that directly or indirectly own 350 or more single-family homes. Investors of any size would not be required to sell single-family homes bought before the date that the bill becomes a law.They would still be allowed to buy or build single-family homes if they rent them out, but would be required to sell them to an individual homebuyer after seven years and offer that buyer price concessions and give tenants a 30-day first-look period when the time comes to sell the home. A need for reformThe U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace now going back to 2023 well short of the 5.2-million annual pace thats historically been the norm. They slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier. A sharp run-up in home prices, especially in the early years of this decade, and a chronic shortage of homes nationally worsened by years of below-average home construction have left many aspiring homeowners priced out of the market.Meanwhile, while the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for more than two years, it was still 15.2% higher in January than it was at the start of 2020, according to data from Realtor.com.The trends have ratcheted pressure on lawmakers this year, with midterm elections looming in November, to show theyre working on ways to make homeownership and rental housing costs more affordable.___Kramon reported from Atlanta and Veiga reported from Los Angeles. CHARLOTTE KRAMON Kramon covers government and politics from Atlanta. She is a Report for America corps member. twitter mailto

School children visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Middle Passage exhibit, behind a wooden timber, the artifact at right, from the slave ship, the So Jos-Paquete de Africa, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)2026-03-12T10:16:20Z WASHINGTON (AP) A Smithsonian museum exhibit about the maritime journey that millions of Africans were forced to take across the Atlantic to slavery in the Americas will change later this month, when a remnant from one of the first sunken slave ships ever recovered is taken off display in Washington.The National Museum of African American History and Culture says a timber piece of the slave ship, the So Jos-Paquete de Africa, on display in its Slavery and Freedom exhibit, will soon be prepared for a trip back to its home museum in South Africa. The 33-pound (15-kilogram) timber piece has been prominently displayed seemingly suspended over a dark void, a ballast at its side as part of a loan agreement to the museum since it opened in 2016. The agreement, examined by The Associated Press, was initially five years and then was extended another five in 2021, ending July 1. The ship remnant will be among several items sent back to the Iziko Museums of South Africa later this year. Because of its delicate nature, a special crate has to be built for its transport.Other items from the ship, including the ballasts that served as counterweights for the human cargo, are remaining on display and will be returned to South Africa in two years. A manifest of the cargo on the ship will replace the timber piece.The last day for museum visitors to see the timber piece on display is March 22. A relic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was recovered in 2015The So Jos, a Portuguese vessel bound for Brazil with more than 400 captives from Mozambique, struck a rock and sank in December 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Half of the people aboard perished. Survivors were resold into slavery in the Western Cape, according to the Smithsonian.Recovered in 2015, the ship was identified and studied through the Slave Wrecks Project, an international network of institutions that confirmed it was associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The ship is among the first known wreckage of such a ship that was recovered, in which enslaved Africans died. The So Jos piece is in the lowest public level of the museum and is part of the larger Slavery and Freedom exhibit, which focuses on the slave trade, including the ships and conditions of transport, as well as artifacts, such as shackles. The exhibit addresses the Middle Passage, an especially fraught part of the Atlantic Ocean crossing where many of the captives died. While there is no exact count, the number of people who perished during the journey is in the millions, according to Paul Gardullo, the assistant director of history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.Slavery exhibit changes unrelated to Trump museum reviewThe alteration of the slavery exhibit comes at a time when any changes related to history and the American story at federal parks, museums or other public spaces are being scrutinized. President Donald Trumps administration has focused on putting the U.S. in a good light as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.The displays, exhibits and programming of several Smithsonian museums are under review as part of an executive order signed in March 2025 by the Republican president, titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is one of the institutions named in the order. Michelle Commander, the museums deputy director, told the AP the exhibit change is entirely related to the loan agreement but understood the timing might raise questions. Thats why were being transparent in this moment, because we are aware that there are those kinds of questions, Commander said. But, as weve said, this is really about the conservation needs of that item.As part of the loan, Gardullo said, the South African government has a robust cultural patrimony law that dictates how its artifacts and historical materials are treated and how long they can be loaned out. The wooden materials are more fragile, and they need a little more close care, he said. Extraordinarily powerful Recent visitors to the National Museum of African American History and Culture spoke of the power of the display with the slave ship timber, unaware that it would be altered shortly. Lines wait to enter the darkened gallery, entitled the Middle Passage, where there is a solemnity as people study the dark space where the timber sits next to a ships ballast. The tangible nature of the exhibit takes it out of textbooks and into reality, said Krystina Hernandez, who was there chaperoning her 7-year-old sons schoolmates.Anehtra Reynolds, from northern Virginia, was emotional as she exited the area. She said the presentation, including the artifacts and the darkness of the gallery, gave her a piece of what they felt in terms of their misery.I think there was a sign in there that mentioned there were some slaves who starved themselves to death in hopes that they would, when they died, they would be returned to their land, Reynolds said. Jim Carnes, who was in Washington visiting family from Birmingham, Alabama, said he was familiar with much of the information because he has worked in civil rights education in Birmingham and Montgomery, two places central to the nations civil rights history.The artifacts are extraordinarily powerful, he said, adding that hes left feeling sadness and anger, not just at the conditions of the enslaved people but at the current push by the federal government to deny this ever happened.Jorge Carvajal, who is originally from Colombia but lives with his wife in south Florida, said seeing the exhibit silenced the stereotypes, especially that Black people are unreasonably angry. Empathy is what Im trying to say. This will help people empathize a lot more. I mean, at least you would hope, he said.Commander said the staff at the museum will work to make sure that the exhibit continues to have the same impact with the remaining artifacts and displays.The story does not leave the museum because this timber is going to be returned to its owners, she said. RIVER ZHANG River Zhang is a video journalist based in Washington, D.C. She covers Washington, national politics, and the elections. mailto JACQUELYN MARTIN Martin photographs politics at the White House and Congress and has circumnavigated the globe as a pool photographer covering every Secretary of State since 2010. She is known for her multidisciplinary enterprise feature packages and is fluent in Spanish. twitter instagram

Over the course of a six hour long or so deposition, Justin Fox, a former investment banker turned DOGE bro, refused to define what he believes counts as DEI; admitted he used ChatGPT to scan government contracts for terms such as Black and homosexual but not white or caucasian; and said that one of the grants he helped slash was not for the benefit of humankind before walking that claim back.I watched all of Foxs deposition from start to finish. The terse exchanges, the circular arguments, the pregnant pauses, all of it. The videos, available publicly on YouTube, were released as part of a lawsuit by the Modern Language Association, American Council of Learned Societies, and American Historical Association. They provide fascinating, or perhaps horrifying, insight into the thinking of someone inside DOGE. Even with Foxs inability to answer seemingly easy questions, the responses are still illustrative of the recklessness and hamfisted nature of a group of young, inexperienced people who caused massive damage across the U.S. government, leading to negative consequences outside of it. DOGE as an organization has been linked to 300,000 deaths due to its cuts and multiple significant data breaches. All the while, DOGE did not actually reduce the governments deficit.Before joining DOGE, Fox was an associate at the Los Angeles-based private equity firm Nexus Capital. Now he is a co-founder of a company called Special, with Nate Cavanaugh, another DOGE member. Fox says the company is buying businesses in senior care, adopting technology to pay the nurses and caregivers more, so that the aging population has enough nurses to meet the demand. Before joining DOGE, he had no experience in government nor public grant administration, he says in the deposition.Do you know anything else about DOGE? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.In his time at DOGE, and specifically the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Fox was part of a team that cut hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants they claimed were related to DEI, which included funding for a documentary about violence against women during the Holocaust, for example.A sizable part of the deposition is spent trying to have Fox define what DEI means, or explain his understanding of it. Instead, he defers to the Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing Executive Order, saying DEI is laid out in that EO, but he cannot recall it.But over the course of those many hours, Foxs understanding of DEI does come out, especially when the conversation turns to how exactly Fox surfaced contracts to cut. View this post on Instagram A post shared by 404 Media (@404mediaco)As the New York Times reported, the team used ChatGPT to scan contracts for what it perceived as DEI-related contracts. A prompt Fox used, included in the deposition, reads: From the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with yes or no, followed by a brief explanation. Do not use this initiative, or this description in your response.In the deposition, Fox says no one asked him to use an LLM to scan the contract descriptions, and says he used ChatGPT for what he described as the intermediary step of scanning contract descriptions before reviewing them.In one example about a documentary concerning Black civil rights, Fox says he agreed with ChatGPTs assessment that this was DEI because it focused on a singular race.After a pause, Fox continues his answer and adds it is not for the benefit of humankind. It is focused on this specific group, or a specific race, here being Black.Why would learning about anti-Black violence not be to the benefit of humankind, the plaintiffs attorney asks.Thats not what Im saying, Fox says, before having his response read back to him. The way that I phrased it there wasnt exactly what I meant, he continues. It is focused on a specific subset of race, and therefore it relates to DEI.As the attorney points out, the scanned terms included phrases like Black, homosexual, and LGBTQ+, but did not include white, "caucasian, and heterosexual.Fox says he did not scan for those terms, but he very well could have. View this post on Instagram A post shared by 404 Media (@404mediaco)I didnt, but going back, it would have made sense because, as weve mentioned, theresDEI is a pretty encompassing bucket, he says at point.Fox says the job was to reduce wasteful spending and non-critical spend in the context of the U.S.s two trillion dollar deficiency. When asked if he felt any remorse for those who lost grants, he says, Sorry for those impacted, but there is a bigger problem, and thats ultimatelythe more important piece is reducing the government spend.It is a necessary step in the right direction, Fox says. Growth in government spending, leads to a debt spiral, leads to hyperinflation, leads to every American feeling 10, 12 percent inflation. Its knock-on effects of something that you can address today through non-critical spending cuts, or you can all feel tomorrow.When the attorney then asks if Fox would be surprised to hear if the overall deficit did not go down after DOGEs actions, Fox says no. In his own deposition, Cavanaugh acknowledged the deficit did not go down.I have to believe that the dollars that were saved went to mission critical, non-wasteful spending, and so, again, in the broad macro: an unfortunate circumstance for an individual, but this is an effort for the administration, Fox says. In my opinion, what is certainly not wasteful is food stamps, healthcare, Medicare, Medicaid funding, Fox says. Later he adds when discussing a specific cut grant: those dollars could be getting put to something like food stamps or Medicaid for grandma in a rural county.There is no evidence these funds were directed in that way. The Trump administration has kicked millions of people off of food stamps. It has, just as an example, given ICE tens of billions of more dollars, though.When asked several times if he believes that his $150,000 salary was not wasteful spend, because he was hired to save hundreds of millions of dollars, Fox says yes.After watching hours upon hours of this footage, what stands out to me is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the arrogance. The surefootedness that this was the correct thing to do despite no experience in government. The presumption that they were entitled to use their own uninformed judgement to cut funds to things that they dont personally value but do positively impact others. Even by their own metrics of merit based activity, this campaign was a failure. Fox believes these particular cut contracts did save hundreds of millions of dollars, but the cuts ultimately did not reduce the deficit. Not even close.It makes for strangely captivating viewing, seeing someone part of a team that has caused so much damage coldly explain the flawed thinking behind what they did. The answers are sometimes defensive and coached because theyre in a lawsuit, of course. But taken as a whole they show at least these members of DOGE are essentially unapologetic for what they did.In a statement published last week, American Council of Learned Societies President Joy Connolly said, Our lawsuit reveals this administrations contempt for that principle and for public investment in research for the common good. DOGE employees use of ChatGPT to identify wasteful grants is perhaps the biggest advertisement for the need for humanities education, which builds skills in critical thinking.

Nature, Published online: 12 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00547-3The author of Just F**cking Say It offers tips to boost your confidence as a public speaker.

NFL Players Association representatives are set to vote on a successor to disgraced former leader Lloyd Howell.

No. 20 Miami (Ohio) suffered its first defeat with a shocking 87-83 loss to UMass in its first game of the Mid-American Conference tournament Thursday.

This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agencys late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia.Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trumps claims that that years presidential election was stolen from him.But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal governments investigation.In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the countys 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the countys vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoenas recipient.This material which may have included scans and photos of ballots was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were screwy. County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logans team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didnt respond to a request for comment.)Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed.Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence, said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Arizona secretary of states office.The Department of Justice and White House did not answer questions from ProPublica on experts concerns about the quality of the data and records produced under the subpoena. A spokesperson for the Arizona U.S. attorneys office declined to respond to questions about whether it was involved in the case, saying it was against policy to comment on grand jury subpoenas or proceedings.Petersen, a Republican who helped launch the audit in 2021 and handed over the records to the FBI, didnt say under which courts authority the grand jury subpoena was issued or respond to a question on its basis. Neither Petersen nor a spokesperson for the Arizona Senate gave details on what exactly the FBI collected. The Senate has not released the subpoena.The subpoena is the latest salvo in the Trump administrations unprecedented attempt to reinvestigate purported problems in the 2020 election.The White House has tasked Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to assist Trump in overturning his loss, with helping to lead the criminal inquiry. Olsen helped initiate the Fulton County case, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, according to the supporting affidavit. Its not yet clear whether Olsen or Albus is involved in the Maricopa County investigation.The Arizona audit began in April 2021, after the Senates Republican leadership subpoenaed Maricopa County for scans of all 2.1 million ballots, the countys voter rolls and other voting system data, such as logs showing who accessed the system. The Senate also had material that the Cyber Ninjas shared from the audit, such as sheets used to tally votes and track anomalies as well as data from the countys election management system and ballot tabulators.Cyber Ninjas pulled data from the Dominion Voting Systems machines the county used in 2020, so the FBI presumably has that material. Trump falsely claimed after the election that Dominion voting machines had been hacked, switching votes for him to register as votes for Biden. The Trump administration has been trying to access Dominion machines from other locations since he took office. Fox News and Newsmax settled defamation lawsuits with Dominion after making similar claims, agreeing to pay the company millions.Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who was secretary of state during the 2021 audit, said in an interview with ProPublica that its unclear what has happened to the records in the five years they have been out of the countys hands.I dont think anyone should have confidence in whatever comes out of whatever was turned over to the FBI, Hobbs said.Maricopa Countys 2020 election results have been confirmed repeatedly, both by the countys postelection hand-count and by multiple audits conducted by independent firms commissioned by the county. Courts tossed out several cases filed by lawyers for Trump alleging fraud.The Cyber Ninjas review, which also concluded that Biden won, drew intense criticism from the get-go, both for its methodology and its partisanship.One of the audit managers was Heather Honey, who now holds a key post in the Trump administration as the Department of Homeland Securitys deputy assistant secretary for election integrity. The contractor conducted its review without county or Senate employees present and only allowed in observers from Hobbs office after a court demanded more transparency.The firms workers made errors recounting votes cast in the presidential race, keeping three separate tally sheets for each batch of ballots that often reflected different totals, a secretary of states office report found. They also had black and blue pens out as they took photos of ballots, causing concern among observers about the potential for tampering. The contractor sent data collected from ballot tabulators to a Montana cabin for analysis and wouldnt say how or if it had protected the data from hacking.Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said in an interview that the contractors sloppy procedures would make it unlikely a court would accept the records handed over to the FBI as evidence proving irregularities in the 2020 vote.You can easily poke holes in any of this stuff, Fontes said.Cyber Ninjas sometimes mistook routine aspects of the election process as signs of wrongdoing. It announced that 74,000 more mail-in ballots had been cast in Maricopa County than had been sent out. There was a simple explanation for the discrepancy, however: The ballots hadnt been sent out; theyd been given to the voters by hand at early voting locations.Ken Bennett, a Republican who was the Arizona Senates liaison to the audit and is a former Arizona secretary of state, said in an interview that he thinks the countys original election results were correct.The only evidence I could find of mistakes made by the county were minor errors that had nothing to do with whether or not they came up with the accurate results, Bennett said.The post Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say appeared first on ProPublica.

The billionaire is said to be willing to spend up to $5 million to help Assemblyman Micah Lasher in his bid to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler, bypassing a Kennedy scion, Jack Schlossberg.

President Trump is tempering the political ambitions of Mara Corina Machado, a Nobel laureate, as he deepens ties with her foes in Venezuela.

The case is moot, a federal judge said, because the administration has resumed the flow of more than $200 million in funding that it had temporarily stopped.

The inauguration of Chiles new president, Jos Antonio Kast, is the latest milestone in a broader shift toward conservatism and pro-Trump alignment in the region.

Ahead of the Oscars on Sunday, Food and Film writers and editors recount the moments that filled them most.

It caught hair I didnt even know was there. READ MORE...

President Donald Trump is seen in his limousine, known as "The Beast," for the motorcade to the White House after his arrival on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)2026-03-12T18:37:50Z WASHINGTON (AP) Since starting a war with Iran caused oil and gasoline prices to spike, President Donald Trump has pivoted from a focus on keeping energy prices low to painting high oil prices as a positive.The about-face comes as Trumps team has struggled to offer a clear plan for opening up the critical Strait of Hormuz so that tankers full of oil and natural gas are no longer stranded.The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money, Trump said Thursday on his social media site.It was only last month, in his State of the Union address, that Trump had bragged about gas prices at $2.30 a gallon, a figure that has since soared more than 50% to a national average of $3.60 a gallon, according to AAA.The flip-flop shows Trumps political interests at home are suddenly at odds with his desire to flex Americas muscles on the global stage. It comes at a precarious time for Trumps party, ahead of November midterm elections. Trump has said that high gas prices helped him defeat his predecessor, Joe Biden. But he told reporters on Saturday that he had no worries about the rising costs that could influence voters this year, and create pressure for him to end the conflict prematurely. The investment bank Goldman Sachs on Thursday said that based on its forecasts and historic experience, higher oil prices would cause inflation to be higher, growth to be slower and the unemployment rate to increase by the end of the year. Benchmark oil prices have swung violently with Trumps shifting statements and as most tankers avoid traversing the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, the global crude oil benchmark price jumped to $100 a barrel. The swings in Brent crude oil prices over the past several days are eye-catching and odds are volatility will remain because of the absence of a timeline for when the conflict will deescalate and when the Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively closed, will see traffic begin to recover, analysts at the consultancy Oxford Economics concluded on Wednesday. The president has given a series of contradictory messages about his plans to address this issue. He said in a Monday news conference that the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe well after it was identified as a danger zone, claiming that the presence of the U.S. Navy and insurance for tankers would keep things secure.By Tuesday, he said on Truth Social that Iran would face Military consequences that would be at a level never seen before if it placed mines in the Strait of Hormuz, later stressing that the U.S. military was blowing up Irans mine-laying ships.On Wednesday, Trumps Energy Secretary Chris Wright briefly posted that the U.S. Navy had escorted a tanker through the strait later deleting the false claim.After initially downplaying the need to tap strategic reserves, Trump by Wednesday said the U.S. would join with other countries and release oil to lower prices, with the administration later saying it would draw down 172 million barrels. The coordinated release among countries is unlikely to bring down oil prices, so much as stabilize the market. Such a move will slow rather than stop rising oil prices and offer a temporary salve to the searing burn of rising gasoline prices, said Joe Brusuelas, chief U.S. economist at the consultancy RSM.The White House also said it may waive Jones Act requirements to use U.S.-flagged ships to move goods between U.S. ports, a temporary move that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said could ensure vital energy products and agricultural necessities are flowing freely to U.S. ports.Wright, the energy secretary, took to television on Thursday to acknowledge the conflict was causing a significant disruption in short-term gas prices, but sought to emphasize the long-term benefits of an Iran that no longer poses a threat to the U.S. and Middle Eastern nations.Trump on Wednesday had said the straits are in great shape and said he thought oil companies should use them. But on Thursday, Wright could not provide a timeline on when the U.S. Navy might escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the bottleneck causing the price spike.Itll happen relatively soon, but it cant happen now, Wright told CNBC. Were simply not ready. All of our military assets right now are focused on destroying Irans offensive capabilities.___Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report. JOSH BOAK Boak covers the White House and economic policy for The Associated Press. He joined the AP in 2013. twitter mailto

Nature, Published online: 12 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00598-6Potatoes, coffee and protein are at the centre of some intriguing studies from the past five years.

Nature, Published online: 12 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00782-8Activity levels and daytime sleepiness can be combined into a behavioural clock that predicts whether a fish will have a short life or a long one.

Our experts identify their favorite players to add in the final stretch of the NBA regular season, when lesser-known players often rise up.

Cornerback Kader Kohou is signing with the Kansas City Chiefs, agents David Canter and Ness Mugrabi told ESPN's Marcel Louis-Jacques on Thursday.

Defensive tackle Jonathan Allen and the Bengals have agreed to a two-year, $28 million contract, sources told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler on Thursday.

Two Black female candidates may split Democratic primary voters, and anger is growing at well-funded efforts to widen the divide.

A New Jersey jury found Harris Jacobs guilty of leaving the scene of an accident after he struck a pedestrian with his S.U.V. But jurors would not have the final word.

The Trump administration is putting the weight of the federal government behind his false claims about the 2020 election in order to investigate key swing states ahead of the midterms. Nick Corasaniti, a New York Times reporter focusing on elections, homes in on the states that have become the prime targets and why.

The globally acclaimed restaurant had the power and influence to remake restaurant culture. Instead, it perpetuated the darkest parts of that world.

Rebuffing pressure from President Trump, a legal office says the prime minister should be pardoned only if he resigns, confesses or is convicted.

Who knew dishwashers could be cute?READ MORE...

Even my picky partner approves.READ MORE...

Veteran receiver Mike Evans said he ultimately signed with the 49ers in free agency because "they were one piece away ... and I think I am that piece."

The Commanders have agreed to terms with free agent running back Rachaad White, agent Sunny Shah told ESPN's Adam Schefter on Thursday.

The number of assaults and threats against Jews has increased in recent years, with anxiety growing further since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Visitors are flocking to see a bonanza of wildflowers that has transformed this barren desert.

Before he retired, Maj. Gen. William N. McCasland oversaw a research laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

Residents of Southaven, Miss., have complained about noise and cited concerns about possible pollution from gas turbines that will help xAI train its chatbot.

The lopsided vote to approve the measure was a rare bit of election-year bipartisanship on a major affordability issue, but G.O.P. disputes and President Trumps disinterest have left its fate uncertain.

The post Laker Fans Furious As Bam Adebayo Dies In Even Worse Helicopter Crash appeared first on The Onion.

MILWAUKEEAccusing the actress of a grotesque act that showed profound insensitivity, Kate Hudson found herself under fire Thursday for performing in Wisconsinface for her most recent film,Song Sung Blue.Its so insulting to see someone whos obviously never been anywhere near cheese curds or a Friday night fish fry do this hurtful caricatureof us, said Kenosha resident Paul Wade, adding that a Wisconsin native like Heather Graham or Rachel Brosnahan could easily have been cast in the role without causing offense. Im not saying she wanted to belittle us, but when you see Goldie Hawns daughter wearing a Packers jacket, you cant help but think youre being made fun of. If Wisconsin were better represented in Hollywoodwith more people from Oshkosh and Sheboygan making decisionsthis probably never wouldve happened. Wade conceded, however, that Hudson did do some justice to her portrayal of the Wisconsin tradition of showing up to work after drinking since 7 p.m. the previous night.The post Kate Hudson Under Fire For Doing Wisconsinface In Song Sung Blue appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTONMaintaining that his conduct was well within the guidelines for the solemn occasion, President Trump on Thursday defended his decision to wear a fruit hat while samba dancing during the dignified transfer of soldiers killed in Iran. Theres no reason I cant honor the sacrifice of these brave men and women while wearing a headdress piled high with bananas, oranges, and papayas, said Trump, adding that only a corrupt media desperate to attack him would fault a president for clapping and shimmying in six-inch platform heels as the flag-draped caskets were carried past en route to their final resting place. In fact, the parents of one of the deceased came up to me and said how moved they were to see me hop up on their sons coffin lid and rapidly pulsate my hips for an unforgettable Chica Chica Boom Chic number. They said their son would be proud to see me twirling on his remains, so who cares what other people think? Trump went on to state that his choreography still wasnt perfect but that he would have many more dignified transfers to get it just right.The post Trump Defends Wearing Fruit Hat, Samba Dancing During Dignified Transfer appeared first on The Onion.

Ill never go back.READ MORE...

It belongs in a pricey decor shop. READ MORE...

Its collapsible!READ MORE...

Linebacker Dre Greenlaw is returning to the 49ers, agreeing to terms on a one-year, $7.5 million contract, after leaving last year in free agency, according to NFL Network.

Texas Tech guard Christian Anderson strained a muscle while slipping on the new glass floor at the Big 12 tournament during Iowa State's 75-53 win over the Red Raiders on Thursday.

Team USA manager Mark DeRosa says he's happy his squad has a 'new lease on life' at the World Baseball Classic after prematurely stating his team had reached the quarterfinals.