The bald eagle is now officially the national bird of the US, after President Joe Biden signed a law on Christmas Eve bestowing the honour upon the white-headed and yellow-beaked bird of prey. The bird has been a national emblem in the US for years, appearing on the Great Seal of the US – used…
An undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia broke down on Wednesday, Finland’s prime minister said, the latest in a series of incidents involving cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The Finnish electricity grid’s head of operations, Arto Pahkin, told the public broadcaster Yle that sabotage could not be ruled out. Finland’s prime…
Fans aren’t loving this year’s Kourtney Kardashian Christmas decorations. Whether she’s just really in the holiday spirit or trying to fill a void in her home, this year’s display is ostentatious. Sometimes, that really works for the Kardashian brand. But Kourt’s followers aren’t just recoiling at some gauche Christmas decor. They’re accusing her of being…
Blind and partially sighted people are being excluded from the benefits of artificial intelligence tools and facing “a new level of discrimination”, the new president of the Royal Society for Blind Children has claimed as he called for better design of everything from video games to AI agents. Tom Pey said existing difficulties for blind…
Suspected Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger could have had more practice than anyone thought before he allegedly killed 4 University of Idaho students … turns out he was under investigation for a home invasion that had many of the markings of the savage murders. The home invasion went down in Pullman, Washington in late 2021, a…
Reuters Many Kyiv residents sheltered in metro stations Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia made a “conscious choice” by launching a major attack on his country’s energy infrastructure on Christmas Day. Ukraine’s air force said it had detected 184 missiles and drones, but many were shot down or missed their targets. It said there were…
The Environmental Protection Agency is launching a formal review of five highly toxic plastic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, the notorious compound at the center of the East Palestine, Ohio, train wreck fire. The move could lead to strong limits or bans on the substances. Vinyl chloride is most commonly used in PVC pipe and packaging…
A court in Turkey has sentenced the owner and architect of a hotel which collapsed in an earthquake in 2023, killing 72 people, to jail. The owner of the Isias Grand, Ahmet Bozkurt, and architect Erdem Yilmaz, were each given 18 years and five months, the official Anadolu news agency reported. Bozkurt’s son, Mehmet Fatih,…
A federal judge ruled on Monday that sections of an Arkansas law, which sought to impose criminal penalties on librarians and booksellers for distributing “harmful” material to children, were unconstitutional. The law, known as the Arkansas Act 372, was signed into law last year by Republican governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It was challenged by a…
US tax authorities have announced that special, $1,400 payments are going out to 1 million taxpayers who did not claim under the 2021 recovery rebate scheme, in what may be a final installment of pandemic-era stimulus checks. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said in an advisory that the disbursements were a “special step” after a…
