The unofficial CAL DOGE department, helmed by gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, claims to have dredged up $370M in mismanaged substance abuse education funds that were allegedly "funneled to [the] voter mobilization machine for California Democrats."
Lakers superstar Luka Dončić hosted his 77x.world event in Los Angeles, but the night turned into a memorable reunion when former teammate Dirk Nowitzki surprised him and Austin Reaves joined the celebration, highlighting their elite friendship and on-court chemistry.
Voting was largely peaceful in an election seen as a test of Bangladesh’s democracy after years of political turmoil under autocratic ruler
The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, has claimed a sweeping victory in the country’s first election since a gen-Z uprising toppled the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina.
“This victory was expected. It is not surprising that the people of Bangladesh have placed their trust in a party ... capable of realising the dreams that our youth envisioned during the uprising,” said Salahuddin Ahmed, a leading BNP committee member.
Emails show Kathy Ruemmler had close ties to convicted sexual abuser she called ‘Uncle Jeffrey’
Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, has announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.
Ruemmler said in a statement on Thursday that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026”.
New York City officials raise flag at site of rebellion once again after ‘act of erasure’ by administration
Days after the Trump administration oversaw the removal of a Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument, officials in New York City again raised the flag at the historic site.
A large crowd gathered near the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to see it return to the space where, in 1969, the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement was ignited. Nearly six decades ago, police raided the popular gay bar, and set off an uprising that, as the Library of Congress notes, would “fundamentally change the discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ activism” in the US.
Wine-drunk dad Kris Harrison was able to skirt manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges due to right-leaning "politics" in Collin County, a legal expert said.
US secretary of state says ahead of Munich Security Conference appearance that ‘we live in a new era of geopolitics’; Ukrainian cities pounded in latest attacks. What we know on day 1,451
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said he will have a chance to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy at this week’s Munich Security Conference. A year after the vice-president, JD Vance, stunned assembled dignitaries with a verbal assault on many of the US’s closest allies in Europe, Rubio plans to take a less contentious but philosophically similar approach when he addresses the annual gathering on Saturday, US officials say. Before boarding his flight on Thursday evening, Rubio used reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans. “We’re very tightly linked together with Europe,” he told reporters. But he also made clear it wouldn’t be business as usual, saying: “We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like.”
The war in Ukraine is on the conference’s agenda, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron – who is making the trip to Germany – has said he hopes for a resumption of talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Macron said on Thursday he did not expect to speak with Putin in the coming days, and that European nations first needed to agree what they wanted from Russia. “It’s not a matter of days, there are preparations involved,” he told reporters after EU leaders’ talks.
Russia pounded Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones overnight on Thursday, further battering its energy system and leaving tens of thousands in the capital, Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa without heat, power and water, officials said. In Kyiv alone, about 3,500 apartment buildings were without heating on Thursday after the latest winter attack on Ukraine’s power grid knocked out supplies to nearly 2,600 high-rises, on top of the 1,100 already affected by previous strikes, said mayor Vitali Klitschko. More than 100,000 families were without electricity, according to private energy firm DTEK.
Odesa was hit twice in less than 24 hours. Late on Thursday, the regional governor said a second wave of drone strikes had damaged houses, industrial sites and energy infrastructure and disrupted electricity, heating and water supplies. The attack also sparked a fire that engulfed one of the city’s markets, injuring one person, said the military administration. In the industrial south-eastern city of Dnipro, a combined missile and drone strike wounded four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, the regional governor said. In the north-eastern Kharkiv region bordering Russia, two people were killed and six more wounded in an attack on the railway hub of Lozova, prosecutors said.
Vladyslav Heraskevych has accused the International Olympic Committee of doing Russia’s propaganda for them after he was barred from racing in the Winter Games because he wanted to wear a “helmet of memory” in honour of Ukraine’s war dead, reports Sean Ingle. In one of the most controversial decisions in recent Olympic history, the 27-year-old Ukrainian skeleton racer was informed only minutes before he was due to compete that his accreditation had been rescinded. A wave of support for Heraskevych swept Ukraine over the ban, while Zelenskyy said the IOC’s decision played “into the hands of aggressors”.
Ukraine’s western allies have already pledged around $35bn in military aid to Kyiv this year, the British defence minister, John Healey, said on Thursday. The figure included new commitments by individual countries but also previous promises made by Ukraine’s allies, including €11.5bn ($13.6bn) already announced by Germany, a diplomat at Nato said. “We will step up military assistance to Ukraine,” Healey said after a meeting of Ukraine’s allies. “We will step up pressure on Russia.”
More than 220,000 people in Russia’s Belgorod region were left without electricity after a Ukrainian attack caused an accident at a substation, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday. “Emergency crews are working. Restoration will take at least 4 hours,” he wrote on Telegram.
Another group of Russian and Ukrainian children have been reunited with their families by the US first lady, Melania Trump, the White House said on Thursday, without specifying how many children were reunited or when it took place. It was the third time the first lady had brokered such a repatriation, it said.
LeBron James unveiled the unreleased Nike LeBron NXT Gen “JW” colorway, a collaboration with USC star JuJu Watkins, during the Lakers’ win over the Warriors. Here’s what we know about the surprise sneaker debut.
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