Author: rpnadmin

A federal appeals court allowed to stand Texas’ law giving the state independent power to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, with the judges saying the groups who challenged it lacked legal standing to bring the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said they were not ruling on the legality of the state’s law at this time. But they erased an injunction that had been put in place to block it from taking effect, saying that ruling was based on a faulty understanding of standing, which is the need to prove an injury that can be corrected by a…

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A former funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies faces sentencing Friday for corpse abuse in a case that prompted Colorado officials to clamp down on an industry plagued by repeated scandal and notoriously lax oversight. A plea agreement calls for Carie Hallford to receive from 25 to 35 years in prison. Her ex-husband was sentenced to 40 years on corpse abuse charges at a February hearing in which he was called a “monster” by relatives of those whose bodies were left to rot. Carie Hallford was the public face of…

NAHUNTA, Ga. — Two large wildfires burning in drought-stricken southeast Georgia have destroyed more than 120 homes and are threatening nearly 1,000 more, Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday. Kemp told reporters after touring the fire area that state officials believe the wildfires have burned more homes than any other in Georgia’s history. The fire in rural Brantley County has burned 87 homes since it began Friday, fanned by gusty winds into pine woods that are dry as tinder. Kemp said officials believe the fire was sparked by a balloon that landed on a live power line. Spread across more than…

Iowa, a deep-red state for decades that voted for President Trump in three consecutive elections, may be on the verge of choosing a Democratic governor, flipping a Republican Senate seat and capturing two GOP House seats. Hawkeye State voters, it seems, have grown more and more frustrated with tariffs, the war in Iran and the high cost of living. The state’s top Republicans scoffed at the threat of Iowa turning blue, but poll numbers show the party’s dominance there could come to an end in November, and Democrats are energized. “Iowa is in play. We’re gonna win this governor’s race,…

Powerful tornadoes ripped through north-central Oklahoma late Thursday, injuring at least 10 people, flattening dozens of homes and forcing Vance Air Force Base to close as damage assessments continued Friday morning. A large, slow-moving tornado tracked through Enid, a city of about 50,000 people roughly 65 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, Thursday evening, triggering a rare tornado emergency — the National Weather Service’s most urgent category of tornado warning. The twister remained on the ground for approximately 40 minutes, with the hardest-hit areas including the Gray Ridge Estates neighborhood on the south side of the city, where more than 40…

A “rat birth control” program spearheaded by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to painlessly reduce the city’s notorious vermin infestation will launch in Adams Morgan next month. Inspectors working in three-week cycles will place “non-lethal rodent fertility control bait” with a tracking powder around popular night spots, where rodents eat food waste tossed into alleyway trash bins behind restaurants and homes. Officials plan to expand the program into Chinatown and Barracks Row if this first round proves successful. “It is non-lethal but sterilizes rodents, reducing future reproduction,” D.C. Health told The Washington Times in a statement this week. D.C. Health officials…

WASHINGTON — A U.S. soldier has been charged with using inside information to win $400,000 in an online betting market on Venezuelan President Maduro’s capture, federal officials announced Thursday. Gannon Ken Van Dyk was part of the work to capture Maduro in January and used his access to classified information to make money on the prediction market site Polymarket, the federal prosecutor’s office in New York said. Van Dyk was a senior enlisted soldier who was part of the special forces community and stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, according to the indictment, but it offers little other…

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires. The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled. Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees. The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about…

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies’ exploitation of U.S. artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the U.S. in the AI race. In a Thursday memo, Michael Kratsios, the president’s chief science and technology adviser, accused foreign entities “principally based in China” of engaging in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to “distill,” or extract capabilities from, leading AI systems made in the U.S. and “exploiting American expertise and innovation.” The administration, Kratsios wrote, will work with American AI companies to identify such activities, build defenses…

A senior Army Green Beret used his inside knowledge of clandestine operations to make more than $400,000 by betting on the timing of Operation Absolute Resolve, the Jan. 3 mission to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday. Federal prosecutors said Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., and was part of the team that planned and executed the mission. He is accused of using his access to classified military information to make wagers on its outcome with Polymarket, a prediction marketplace. In 2025, Polymarket began offering betting contracts related…