FlashMobOfOne

WASHINGTON (AP) — Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for access to evidence they say they need to independently investigate three shootings by federal officers, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

The lawsuit claims that the federal government reneged on its promise to cooperate with state investigations after the surge of federal law enforcement in Minneapolis. State officials are seeking a court order demanding that the Trump administration comply.

“We are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told reporters.

The lawsuit marks an escalation in the clash between Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration over the investigations into the high-profile shootings by federal officers that sparked public outcry and protests. The Trump administration has suggested that Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction to investigate, but state officials insist they need to conduct their own probes because they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.

The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″

Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy.

I've never seen labeling like this before. Interesting.

A Louisiana man who resigned as a Roman Catholic deacon after a priest molested his son and then was excommunicated from the church entirely by his local bishop is asking global church leaders to inform him of the fate of his appeal against the prelate’s decision, something that was supposed to be resolved more than a year earlier.

In a letter to the Vatican entity in charge of clerical discipline, a canon – or church – law attorney representing Scott Peyton asserts that his case is “nuanced and requires careful consideration”. “To the extent that the delay reflects such diligence, he is grateful,” said the letter to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), prepared by Dawn Eden Goldstein on 3 February and obtained recently by the Guardian.

Nonetheless, the letter continued, Peyton “wishes that I convey to you that, from his perspective, the unduly long span of time with no communication from your office only compounds the injustices that he and his family have suffered from the church”.

Word of Peyton’s plight earned international news headlines in March 2024, with many outlets characterizing his excommunication as a remarkably harsh consequence that his child’s molester does not appear to have ever faced because the church, in sum, does not consider the abuser’s offense on its own excommunicable.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy was supposed to start the year with a bang, fueled by an unusually large jump in tax refunds from President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation. Yet spiking gas prices are on track to eat up those refunds, leaving most Americans with little extra to spend.

“Next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time,” Trump said in a prime-time speech in December that was intended to address voters’ concerns about the economy and stubbornly high prices.

But that was before the Iran war, which began Feb. 28. Oil and gas prices have soared since then, with the nationwide average price of gas reaching $3.94 Sunday, up more than a dollar from just a month earlier.

An AI agent instructed an engineer to take actions that exposed a large amount of Meta’s sensitive data to some of its employees, in the latest example of AI causing upheaval in a large tech company.

The leak, which Meta confirmed, happened when an employee asked for guidance on an engineering problem on an internal forum. An AI agent responded with a solution, which the employee implemented – causing a large amount of sensitive user and company data to be exposed to its engineers for two hours.

“No user data was mishandled,” a Meta spokesperson said, and they emphasised that a human could also give erroneous advice. The incident, first reported by The Information, triggered a major internal security alert inside Meta, which the company has said is an indication of how seriously it takes data protection.

LONDON (AP) — Lawmakers in the Scottish Parliament will vote Tuesday on whether to make Scotland the first part of the United Kingdom to allow terminally ill adults to end their lives.

Members of the Edinburgh-based legislature have been given a free vote on the assisted dying bill, meaning they can decide according to their consciences, rather than along party lines. That makes it hard to predict the outcome of the decision, expected after 2200GMT.

Scotland is part of the U.K. — alongside England, Wales and Northern Ireland — and has a semi-autonomous government that has authority over many areas of policy, including health.

If the bill became law, people in Scotland with six months or less to live would be able to seek help to end their life. Two doctors would have to confirm the person was terminally ill and had the mental capacity to make the request.

The telephone number immortalized in the enduring Tommy Tutone hit song 867-5309/Jenny has started connecting callers to a cancer support line – as one ad touting the news says it was time that music’s most famous digits “did some good”.

Cancer Support Community (CSC)’s Instagram page announced the campaign with a series of posts on Monday alluding to the song about a guy who nervously ponders calling the phone number of a woman named Jenny, which is scrawled on a bathroom wall.

“The number you and your friends sing at karaoke is now the number for cancer support,” one of the posts said, with the 1980s rock classic blaring in the background.

”It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put food on the table, put gas in the car and pay rent when you are not getting paid,” the letter said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The massive sewage pipe that ruptured and leaked millions of gallons of raw waste into the Potomac River returned to operation Saturday after the completion of emergency repairs.

DC Water, the utility that runs Washington’s water and sewage systems, reported that it had completed testing to determine whether the 72-inch diameter pipe could handle the flow.

The Potomac Interceptor ruptured on Jan. 19, sending 250 million gallons of untreated sewage into the river just north of the nation’s capital over the first five days.

“I genuinely believe now they [the US and Israel] didn’t have a plan. I was still hoping I was wrong, but the Shahran attack changed the way I look at this war right now,” he said. “If the regime is what you want to hit, even if you think these depots were used by the regime, where do you draw the line? What about us, the ordinary Iranians? We rely on this civil infrastructure. Why take away our ability to govern in the future? Who can rebuild utter ruins?”

Amir said he now had constant anxiety about Iran “turning into another Iraq”, a country the US invaded in 2003, promising freedom but delivering a civil war. Israeli leaders have also previously called on Palestinians in Gaza and the Lebanese people to rise up against oppression, only to later kill them in large numbers.

“My heart is so heavy,” said Amir. “I don’t even have tears left. Only anger and more anger. At this regime, and them,” he added, referring to the US and Israel.

The White House insists that the affordability problem Americans like Levie report doesn’t exist. At a rally in Kentucky earlier this week, Donald Trump told the crowd: “Inflation is plummeting, income is rising, the economy is roaring back!”

Though the positive sentiment will be a tough sell for voters in the upcoming midterm elections.

After helping Congress pass huge cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs, Trump is now pushing to remove minimum wage and overtime protections for some workers. And though seven out of 10 Americans said that tariffs have led to higher prices, Trump has only doubled down on more levies.

Far from feeling like the US is in a golden age, workers said rising inflation means their paychecks can’t keep up with prices.