Texas attorney general sought data on gender changes to state IDs

Ken Paxton requested the public safety department for the numbers, but it was never given due to accuracy problems

The office of Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton this summer sought data on how many people had changed the gender information on their driver’s licenses, according to a newspaper report published on Wednesday that civil rights attorneys described as worrying.

The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas department of public safety (DPS). The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months”.

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US government sues Arizona over shipping container wall on Mexico border

The complaint claims that the state of Arizona is trespassing on federal lands and says the US is entitled to compensation

The US government sued Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the state on Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.

The complaint filed in the US district court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.

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Suspect in Paul Pelosi attack claimed ‘evil in Washington’ for wanting to harm House speaker

Officer who interviewed David DePape after the attack testified he also wanted to target Hunter Biden, Tom Hanks and Gavin Newsom

The man accused of attacking the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there was “evil in Washington” and he was looking to harm Pelosi because she is second in line for the presidency, a San Francisco police investigator testified on Wednesday.

The suspect, David DePape, broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home on 28 October, seeking to kidnap the speaker – who was out of town – and instead beat her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, authorities said. The violence sent shock waves through the political world.

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Biden says he’s ‘all in’ on Africa’s future at leadership summit – as it happened

President commits to strengthening Africa’s food supplies, tackling climate and partnering to take on rising global power

Back at the House oversight hearing into anti-LGBTQ+ violence, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) says her group has recorded an alarming surge in hate-related killings:

Over the last 10 years, the campaign has tracked over 300 incidents of fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people. In 2022 so far, we’ve recorded the murder of 35 people.

It’s fueled by nearly unfettered access to guns, political extremism and rhetoric that is deliberately devised to make our community less safe, less equal, and less free. Violence has become a lived reality for so many in our community.

We should have societal guilt for taking too long to deal with this problem. We have a moral obligation to pass and enforce laws that can prevent these things from happening again. We owe it to the courageous, young survivors and to the families who lost part of their soul 10 years ago to turn their pain into purpose.

A few months ago, I signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. We’ve reined in so-called ghost guns which have no serial numbers and are harder to trace. We’ve cracked down on gun trafficking and increased resources for violence prevention.

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Examination reveals P-22, LA’s celebrity mountain lion, was probably hit by a car

Wildlife experts assessed the big cat’s health and said he will not be released back into the wild, with euthanization also an option

The famous Hollywood-roaming mountain lion known as P-22 is drastically underweight and was probably struck and injured by a car, wildlife experts who conducted a health examination on the big cat said on Tuesday.

The male cougar, whose killing of a leashed dog has raised concerns about its behavior, probably will not be released back into the wild and could be sent to an animal sanctuary or euthanized, depending on its health, the California department of fish and wildlife said.

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Goldman Sachs bankers brace for hefty cut to bonuses

Bonus pool could be slashed by up to 40%, in possibly the lender’s largest cut to payouts since the financial crisis

Goldman Sachs bankers are reportedly at risk of having their bonus pool slashed by up to 40%, in what could be the lender’s largest cut to payouts since the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank is still in the process of deciding the size of its bonus pools for 2022, but the prospective cut could mean its 3,000 investment bankers endure the most significant drop in variable pay among their peers, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news.

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Republican who urged Trump to declare ‘Marshall’ law only regrets misspelling

Text from Ralph Norman to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, urged president to declare martial law

A Republican who urged the Trump White House to declare martial law to stop Joe Biden taking office has only one regret: that he misspelled “martial”.

The text from Ralph Norman of South Carolina to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, was given to the January 6 committee by Meadows and revealed by Talking Points Memo.

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Ron DeSantis takes huge lead over Donald Trump in Republican poll | First Thing

Florida governor leads embattled ex-president for 2024 race by 23 points. Plus, oldest known pair of jeans sold in auction

Good morning.

In a new poll regarding potential Republican nominees for president in 2024, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, led Donald Trump by 23 points.

What did the poll say about Biden? The poll put Joe Biden, the president, up 47%-40% in a notional rematch with Trump and DeSantis ahead of Biden in a notional match-up, 47%-43%.

Is Biden running? Biden, who is 80, has said he will decide on whether to run again over the Christmas holidays.

What about Mike Pence? The former vice-president said he and his wife, Karen, would also make a decision on whether to mount a run next year, after “prayerful consideration” over the holiday period. “We’ll continue to travel, we’ll continue to listen,” he said.

What else is happening in Ukraine? Here’s what we know on day 294 of the invasion.

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Elon Musk loses title of world’s richest person to Bernard Arnault

Loss of top spot to LVMH chief executive comes after Tesla shares more than halve in value

Elon Musk has lost his crown as the world’s richest person, after further falls in the value of shares in his electric car company Tesla.

Forbes and Bloomberg, which track the wealth of billionaires, reported that Musk had lost the top spot to France’s Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of the luxury group LVMH.

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Dictionary.com announces word of the year: ‘woman’

Portal said searches for the word increased by 1,400% after Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked to define it in her confirmation hearing

The website Dictionary.com has named its word of the year for 2022: woman.

In a statement, the website said: “Our selection of woman … reflects how the intersection of gender, identity and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary.”

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Ron DeSantis leads Donald Trump by 23 points in Republican poll

Florida governor takes enormous lead over embattled ex-president for 2024 race as Mike Pence nears a run of his own

In a new poll regarding potential Republican nominees for president in 2024, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, led Donald Trump by a whopping 23 points.

Republican and Republican-leaning voters dealt the significant blow to the former president’s ego in a survey carried out by USA Today and Suffolk University and released on Tuesday.

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‘Going through torture’: Megan Thee Stallion testifies against Tory Lanez

Rapper takes stand in case against Canadian-born musician, emotionally recounting night when she was shot

Megan Thee Stallion delivered emotional testimony on Tuesday in the trial of Tory Lanez, the fellow musician and former friend who allegedly shot her following a party in Los Angeles.

The Texas-born rapper, whose real name is Megan Pete, shared the most in-depth account yet about the moment that led to the shooting in 2020. She described how the attack left her with constant pain in her feet and said the reliving the incident in the public eye had been “torture”.

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Oregon governor commutes sentences of everyone on death row in state

With less than a month remaining in office, Kate Brown, said she was using her clemency powers to change the term to life in prison

The governor of Oregon, Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she is commuting the sentences of all of the state’s 17 inmates awaiting execution, saying all of their death sentences will be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Brown, who has less than a month remaining in office, said she was using her executive clemency powers to commute the sentences and that her order will take effect on Wednesday.

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African leaders gather in US as Joe Biden aims to reboot rocky relations

President and Antony Blinken woo nations at summit in Washington in hope they will align with west rather than Russia or China

Dozens of African leaders have assembled in Washington for a summit aimed at rebooting US relations on the continent, which have languished in recent years.

The US-Africa summit, the first since 2014, will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since the pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in the region for almost a decade.

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Sam Bankman-Fried: FTX founder charged with defrauding investors

SEC says investigation into other alleged misconduct by former CEO of crypto exchange is ongoing

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of the crypto exchange FTX, has been charged with fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the US and violate the campaign finance laws.

The eight criminal charges filed by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York on Tuesday follow civil charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission charging the 30-year-old former billionaire with defrauding investors in the company.

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Abduction of Lockerbie bomb suspect undermines rule of law, analysts say

Mohammed Abouagela Masud, who has appeared in US court, was seized by notorious Libyan militia from Tripoli home

The abduction of a former Libyan intelligence operative accused of preparing the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 and his transfer into US custody was agreed about three months ago after conversations between US government and Libyan officials, the Guardian has been told.

Mohammed Abouagela Masud appeared briefly in court in Washington DC on Monday, accused of having set the timer for the bomb that destroyed the Boeing 747, killing 270 people in the most deadly terrorist attack to have taken place on British soil.

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US announces fusion energy success ‘that could revolutionize the world’ – live

Breakthrough came after experiment with 192 high-energy lasers, say US energy officials

The energy department’s press conference on the breakthrough in its fusion experiment has wrapped up, but before it concluded, a top official said it could be a long time before the technology becomes commonly used.

“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the experiment was conducted. “This is one igniting capsule one time, and to realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things. You have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute, and you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that.”

Inside that was a small, spherical capsule about half the diameter of a BB. One hundred and ninety two laser beams entered from the two ends of the cylinder and struck the inner wall. They didn’t strike the capsule, they struck the inner wall of this cylinder and deposited energy, and that happened in less time than it takes light to move 10 feet, so it’s kind of fast.

X-rays from the wall impinged on the spherical capsule. Fusion fuel in the capsule got squeezed. Fusion reaction started.

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Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX staff allegedly had ‘Wirefraud’ chat group

Chat group on the platform Signal was reportedly used to send end-to-end encrypted information about FTX and its hedge fund

Sam Bankman-Fried and other members of the inner circle of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX allegedly formed a chat group on the encrypted platform Signal under the name “Wirefraud”.

The Australian Financial Review reported that the Wirefraud chat group was used to send end-to-end encrypted information about FTX and its crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, in the run-up to the implosion of the exchange. According to the newspaper, members of the secret group included Bankman-Fried, his FTX partners Zixiao “Gary” Wang and Nishad Singh, and the CEO of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison.

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US National Weather Services warns of ‘widespread’ winter storm hazards

More than 15 million people under winter advisory while several areas in midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms

More than 15 million people are under a winter advisory as of Tuesday, as several areas in the midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms, Axios reported.

Storm warnings are in effect across a dozen states, including parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota.

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Mike Leach, pioneering Mississippi State coach, dies at age of 61

  • Leach was taken to hospital with health issue on Sunday
  • Coach helped popularize the Air Raid offense in football
  • Was also known for his wide-ranging interests

Mike Leach, the gruff, pioneering and unfiltered college football coach who helped revolutionize the passing game with the Air Raid offense, has died following complications from a heart condition, Mississippi State said on Tuesday. He was 61.

Leach, who was in his third season as head coach at Mississippi State, fell ill on Sunday at his home in Starkville, Mississippi. He was treated at a local hospital before being airlifted to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, about 120 miles away.

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