A GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $160,000 in just one week for an 18-year-old who was recently held captive and assaulted by four people in Chicago. A widely circulated Facebook Live video — which has since been removed — appeared to show the young man being tied up, beaten, cut, and verbally assaulted with anti-white slurs by a group of young African-American men and women. Last week, police arrested and charged four suspects with hate crimes, as well as counts of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery.
For Cubans trekking through Latin America to the United States, the sudden decision by President Barack Obama to end a longstanding policy giving them automatic entry has come as a cold, hard punch to the gut. "Obama has screwed all Cubans," Yadiel Cruz, a 33-year-old Cuban man in a Panama shelter, told AFP bitterly. The long route from South America, through Central America and into Mexico to the US border is a migration pipeline that can take years for Cubans to complete, with pit stops to earn money along the way.
A GOP congressman reported Friday that a painting stirring controversy on Capitol Hill will be taken down Tuesday after the agency responsible for maintaining the Capitol complex determined it violated rules for a student arts competition. The painting depicts Ferguson, Missouri, with a pig in a police uniform aiming a gun at a protester. The painting was among hundreds completed by high school students that are featured in a tunnel leading to the Capitol.
The bizarre story unfolded Thursday after Trooper Edward Andersson was dispatched to the scene of a 911 call in which a driver said he'd been shot at from the median of Interstate 10. While en route to the area where the call was placed near Tonopah, the 27-year veteran of the Department of Public Safety came upon a car that had overturned, causing a woman to be ejected from the vehicle and killed. While he placed road flares around the scene, Andersson was shot by a suspect who then physically attacked him.
The first real test of President-elect Donald Trump’s NATO and Russia policy could take place in Poland, where American tanks are rumbling into position as part of a new Pentagon strategy of reassuring nervous Eastern European allies in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia. Heavy equipment and the first of what will be about 4,000 U.S. troops arrived on Thursday, where they’ll set down in western Poland, while another deployment, set for April, will settle in eastern Poland near the “Suwalki Gap,” a pocket that sits between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. FP has lots more on this critical patch of land here.
Researchers in Australia finally caught on camera what they were looking for: a new species of seadragon in its natural habitat. Footage released this week in Marine Biodiversity Records shows the elusive "Ruby Seadragon" in the waters off Australia'
Free access to Tesla’s increasingly expansive network of Superchargers has long been an important and ancillary perk to owning a Tesla. In addition to providing Tesla owners with free juice for long road-trips, Tesla Superchargers also helped alleviate longstanding concerns about ‘range anxiety’. As Tesla has grown more popular over the years, the number of Tesla vehicles on the road has absolutely exploded.
The Latest on the search for wreckage of corporate jet that crashed into Lake Erie. Officials say they have recovered more human remains in their search for wreckage of a corporate jet carrying six people that crashed in Lake Erie two weeks ago. Searchers on Thursday found more debris believed to be from the plane.
Refugees and migrants in Europe are dying this winter and governments must do more to help, the U.N. warned on Friday. Cecile Poutilly, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency UNCHR, said five had died so far in a unusual cold front settling in on southeastern Europe. The EU spent 198 million euro in 2016 on emergency support for Greece to help tens of thousands of refugees and migrants, according to the EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Department.
The mother of the children killed was injured in the blaze, along with three of her nine children, authorities said. The fire had engulfed the house by the time firefighters arrived on the scene at about 12:30 a.m. EST and its third floor collapsed onto the second floor shortly afterwards, Baltimore Fire Department spokesman Chief Roman Clark said. The five children confirmed killed included a baby, a toddler and 3-year-old twin girls, according to fire officials.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will agree to be extradited to the United States if President Barack Obama grants clemency to the former US soldier Chelsea Manning, jailed for leaking documents, the company said on Thursday. "If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ (US Department of Justice) case," WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter. Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.
Nigeria should consider giving asylum to The Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh as a way of ending the political crisis in his country, lawmakers said on Thursday. A motion passed in the lower chamber House of Representatives gave members' backing to regional efforts to resolve the dispute, sparked by Jammeh's refusal to accept election results. The MPs said "the clock is ticking fast" for The Gambia and there was a need to step up diplomacy, as the possibility of violence and mass displacement threatened West African stability.
As Orlando police remain embroiled in a manhunt for a suspect wanted for the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend and an officer in Orlando, a man took to the streets to show support for that alleged cop killer, donning a sign celebrating the death of police outside a Florida sheriff’s office. The man, identified in reports as Ian McGuire, 26, was seen outside the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, located about three hours southwest of Orlando, wearing a sign that read: "2 cops dead in Orlando.
China has a range of economic, diplomatic and military options to retaliate if the U.S. and South Korea proceed with deployment of an advanced missile defense system, experts said Friday, as Beijing remained vague in its threats against the plan. Such steps could raise the stakes for Washington and Seoul in a controversial deployment that China regards as a major security threat, while complicating matters for South Korea as it faces domestic political divisions and significant public opposition. China's official Xinhua News Agency said Beijing and Moscow agreed to take "further countermeasures" in response to the plan during security talks between the two countries in Moscow on Thursday.
The Force is strong with this adorable newly-discovered gibbon species. Thanks to some Star Wars-loving scientists, the new species in southwest China has been named in honor of our favorite hero from a galaxy far far away, Luke Skywalker. Following the announcement, the Skywalker hoolock gibbon — aka "Simian Skywalker," "Jungle Jedi" and of course, the scientific name, Hoolock tianxing — was warmly and appropriately welcomed by proud actor Mark Hamill, who portrayed Skywalker in the classic films.
The Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL are two of the hottest smartphones on the planet right now. Protecting your Pixel or Pixel XL doesn’t have to mean ruining the look or hiding the phones under a bunch of ugly plastic, however.
In a story Jan. 11 about a tornado in Northern California, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the tornado was south of Sacramento. It was actually north of Sacramento. LOS ANGELES (AP) — The latest storm to wallop Northern California whipped up a small tornado that downed trees and fences near Sacramento.
Chris Smith works as a firefighter and as a paramedic in two different towns to support his wife and their children. A year and a half ago, we posted some questions, starting with this one. What is the American dream? So many of you remembered it as
The stars fill the night sky over the eerily quiet streets of rebel-held Idlib, Syria, but the calm might not last much longer — now that Syrian government forces have recaptured Aleppo in a crushing offensive, they are likely to turn their attentions
The Golden State Warriors are renowned for their ability to identify personnel who will help their organization. This goes from the front office to coaches to players, as Golden State’s ability to bring talent on board is second to none (save for the Spurs) in the NBA. It is a strange scenario, one that could have been avoided if the Warriors read up on Suhr’s unsavory tenure as the city’s police chief.
US President Barack Obama has admitted that the transition period leading to Donald Trump's inauguration has been "unusual" and warned that the CEO's "improvisational" style might not translate well to the presidency. In excerpts of an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" released on Friday, Obama laid bare some of the tensions between the 44th and the soon-to-be 45th president. "It's unusual," Obama said in the interview, to air in full on Sunday.
Federal and local authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, announced Friday that they had recovered a kidnapping victim abducted from her mother's hospital room as a newborn 18 years ago, the Florida Times-Union reported. They've also arrested a suspect. Kamiyah Mobley was eight hours old when she was taken from her 16-year-old mom's recovery room at the University Medical Center, now known as U.F. Health Jacksonville, in 1998 by a woman dressed as a nurse. The case received significant local and national media attention as a distraught Shanara Mobley attempted to locate her missing child.
Escorted by police motorcycles and amid the wail of bagpipes, the hearse carrying the body of Detective Steven McDonald arrived Friday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the funeral of the officer known for forgiving a teenage gunman who left him paralyzed. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill joined scores of police officers watched as the hearse pulled up in front of the Manhattan church. McDonald, 59, who suffered a heart attack last week, died at a Long Island hospital on Tuesday.
The Obama administration has agreed to provide disability benefits to military veterans exposed to contaminated drinking water while at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to an official notice published on Thursday. Veterans, former reservists and former National Guard members who served for at least 30 days at the U.S. Marine Corps Base from 1953 to 1987 and have been diagnosed with one of eight diseases are eligible, according to the document published in the Federal Register, the government's official journal. The additional payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs would start in March and go to veterans who developed adult leukemia, aplastic anemia, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Parkinson's disease, the notice said.
Fans around the country are showering Bubbles, an elderly horse, with goodies off his Amazon wish list after he escaped a slaughterhouse by blending in with miniature donkeys headed for a shelter. From liver treats to dog toys to cleaning supplies, followers of Bubbles' story have been flooding Becky's Hope Horse Rescue in Frisco, Texas, with gifts for the horse. "Never has a donkey been more surprised and humbled by such an outpouring of kindness from humans all over the world," a post on the horse's Facebook wrote.