California’s beaches are public, but on the sands of Malibu, one billionaire has been accused of stealing a slice of paradise — or at least a few scoops of it — for himself.

A lawsuit filed last week alleges that Mark Attanasio, billionaire businessman and owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, has been using excavators to dig up sand from Broad Beach and carry it back to his house as part of an ongoing construction project.

“This case is about a private property owner using a public beach as their own personal sandbox and the disturbing conversion of a public natural resource (i.e., sand from Broad Beach) for a nearby homeowner’s personal, private use,” the lawsuit says.

The mother and stepfather of Miranda Sipps were arrested for failing to seek medical attention for their daughter for four days, leading to her death.

A 12-year-old Texas girl died Monday after her mother and stepfather failed to seek medical attention for four days following life-threatening injuries, instead attempting to nurse her back to health with smoothies, authorities said.

Miranda Sipps, a cheerleader at Jourdanton Junior High School in Christine, Texas, was found in critical condition when her mother called 911 on Monday evening, according to a statement from the Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office. Christine is a small community about 45 miles south of San Antonio.

Emergency responders met Sipps and her mom on the highway after they had left their home, and rushed the unconscious child to the hospital, officials said. Sipps was pronounced dead in the emergency room shortly after her arrival.

It sounds less than ideal — but as the report notes, Williams and Wilmore's difficulties don't end with their sleeping arrangements.

As with every ISS mission, the Starliner astronauts initially had specific jobs to do on board the station that would have eaten up their eight-day journey. As Time reports, their main priority was checking in on the Boeing capsule and making sure its communications, life support, and other essential functions were in good shape.

With that checklist done and their journey having been extended until possibly February due to Starliner's technical issues, Wilmore and Williams have instead been assisting their fellow crew members with their tasks and experiments, including repairing a urine processing pump.

Beyond that lovely job, Wilmore and Williams were also forced to stretch their clothing rations because there's no laundry on board the ISS. Generally speaking, astronauts pack enough clothes for the length of their journey, and with their trip home having been pushed back repeatedly, the Starliner crew had to make do until a Northrop Grumman resupply mission finally came to deliver them new clothes earlier this month.

Detroit judge who ordered a teenager into jail clothes and handcuffs on a field trip to his courtroom will be off the bench while undergoing “necessary training,” the court’s chief judge said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the girl’s mother said Judge Kenneth King was a “big bully.”

“My daughter is hurt. She is feeling scared,” Latoreya Till told the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit judge who threatened sleepy teen with jail sends message to Black community

It’s bad enough that young Black folks nationally are disproportionately jailed. Now Detroit has a judge who threatened a teen with jail time for falling asleep.

And now we wonder why Black teenagers — and their older peers — don’t trust the court system to deliver justice. We wonder why so many don’t believe law enforcement will deal fairly with them, and why they run from police.

The Black Lives Matter movement is not only about abuse during arrests, but extends to justice in courtrooms throughout America, both the punishment of criminal cops and justice for those unfairly imprisoned alike.

And I’m sure that many Black folks, watching this kangaroo court on YouTube, couldn’t have faith in our justice system.

The "stolen valor" guy is a coward.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

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Trump has publicly rejected Project 2025 as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has sought to tie him to some of the plan’s most extreme proposals. But in private, Vought said that those disavowals were merely “graduate-level politics.”

The negotiations with drugmakers are projected to save older adults $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs when the new prices go into effect in 2026.

The Biden administration said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with drugmakers to lower prices on the 10 costliest prescription drugs under Medicare. 

It's part of the federal government's first-ever drug pricing negotiations, a cost reduction it claims could help ease the financial burden on the estimated 1 in 7 older adults in the U.S. struggling to pay for their medications.

The days of the perfect-looking yard -- often lawns that guzzle copious amounts of water to stay green -- may soon be gone.

Homeowners are increasingly opting to "re-wilding" their homes, incorporating native plants and decreasing the amount of lawn care to make their properties more sustainable and encourage natural ecosystems to recover, according to Plan It Wild, a New York-based native landscape design company.

About 30% of the water an average American family consumes is used for the outdoors, including activities such as watering lawns and gardens, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the West, where water is absorbed almost immediately by the sun or thirsty vegetation, outdoor water usage can increase to an average of 60% for the average family.

As concerns for the environment -- as well as increasing utility bills -- grow, so do homeowners' preferences for how they decorate their yards.

A new lawsuit is claiming hackers have gained access to the personal information of "billions of individuals," including their Social Security numbers, current and past addresses and the names of siblings and parents — personal data that could allow fraudsters to infiltrate financial accounts or take out loans in their names. 

The allegation arose in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Christopher Hofmann, a California resident who claims his identity theft protection service alerted him that his personal information had been leaked to the dark web by the "nationalpublicdata.com" breach. The lawsuit was earlier reported by Bloomberg Law.

The breach allegedly occurred around April 2024, with a hacker group called USDoD exfiltrating the unencrypted personal information of billions of individuals from a company called National Public Data (NPD), a background check company, according to the lawsuit. Earlier this month, a hacker leaked a version of the stolen NPD data for free on a hacking forum, tech site Bleeping Computer reported. 

Montana’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that minors don’t need their parents’ permission to get an abortion in the state – agreeing with a lower court ruling that found the parental consent law violates the privacy clause in the state constitution.

“We conclude that minors, like adults, have a fundamental right to privacy, which includes procreative autonomy and making medical decisions affecting his or her bodily integrity and health in partnership with a chosen health care provider free from governmental interest,” Justice Laurie McKinnon wrote in the unanimous opinion.

The ruling comes as an initiative to ask voters if they want to protect the right to a pre-viability abortion in the state constitution is expected to be on the Montana ballot in November. County officials have verified enough signatures to qualify the issue for the ballot, supporters have said. The Secretary of State’s Office has to certify the general election ballots by Aug. 22.

If you have noticed a sudden accumulation of wrinkles, aches and pains or a general sensation of having grown older almost overnight, there may be a scientific explanation. Research suggests that rather than being a slow and steady process, aging occurs in at least two accelerated bursts.

The study, which tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, detected two major waves of age-related changes at around ages 44 and again at 60. The findings could explain why spikes in certain health issues including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease occur at certain ages.

“We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,” said Prof Michael Snyder, a geneticist and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University and senior author of the study.

“It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s – and that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.”

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Reposting with direct BBC link.

Sweden's public health agency has recorded what it says is the first case of a more dangerous type of mpox outside the African continent.

The person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where there is currently a major outbreak of mpox Clade 1, the agency said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18670077