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Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang charged with damaging $6K ice sculpture at Minnesota Capitol

Current News / News & Features /

Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang was charged with damaging a $6,000 ice sculpture that a veterans organization displayed on the front steps of the State Capitol.

Lang, 30, of Lake Worth, Fla., recorded social media videos of him on Thursday, Feb. 5, kicking down portions of the ice sculpture that spelled out “prosecute ICE” to instead read “pro ...Read more

Chanakarn Laosarakham/Getty Images North America/TNS

Who is Thailand's leader Anutin and how did he seal a clear win?

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Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s pro-royalist party scored a resounding win in Sunday’s election over a progressive group seen as a pre-poll favorite.

His conservative Bhumjaithai Party rode on a wave of nationalism tied to a simmering border clash with neighboring Cambodia and championing the status quo to emerge as the ...Read more

Pima County Sheriff's Department/TNS

Nancy Guthrie ransom note demands $6 million: report

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A purported ransom note in Nancy Guthrie’s apparent kidnapping demanded $6 million, according to a report aired Sunday.

Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her Tucson, Ariz., home on Feb. 1 and has not been seen since. Multiple ransom notes have been sent to local news outlets, and one ...Read more

DREAMSTIME/TNS

California mushroom poisonings are on the rise. Here's what's being done to curb exposure

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David Yturralde arrived at the mushroom talk in Newport Beach recently armed with a pen and paper and a host of questions. The goal, he said, was to demystify those fascinating fungi that popped up on his grass after heavy winter rain.

He's long been interested in the mushrooms that sprout on the front lawn of his San Clemente home, but he's ...Read more

STR/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Takaichi on track for Japan's biggest postwar election victory

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Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is poised for a historic election landslide, positioning her to become the nation’s strongest leader in years in an outcome that may fuel further market volatility.

Her ruling Liberal Democratic Party is on track for the biggest post-war victory for a single-party in a general election in Japan, an ...Read more

Chanakarn Laosarakham/Getty Images North America/TNS

Thailand's royalists set for surprise election victory as progressives concede defeat

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Thailand’s ruling conservative party headed for a convincing election win Sunday night, the first victory this century for a party aligned with the country’s royalist establishment and a clear defeat for an emerging progressive movement.

The Bhumjaithai Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, is set to secure 195 seats ...Read more

An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans. Library of Congress

How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America

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How can maps fight racism and inequality?

The work of the Black Panther Party, a 1960s- and 1970s-era Black political group featured in a new movie and a documentary, helps illustrate how cartography – the practice of making and using maps – can illuminate injustice.

As these films show, the Black Panthers focused on ...Read more

Would flattery from an AI set your heart aflutter? quantic69/iStock via Getty Images

AI ‘companions’ promise to combat loneliness, but history shows the dangers of one-way relationships

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The United States is in the grips of a loneliness epidemic: Since 2018, about half the population has reported that it has experienced loneliness. Loneliness can be as dangerous to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to a 2023 surgeon general’s report.

It is not just individual lives that are at risk. Democracy ...Read more

Michael Reaves/Getty Images North America/TNS

US ski resorts turn to drones to make it snow amid dire drought

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Despite a barren start to Colorado’s ski season, Winter Park Resort opened on Halloween and served up holiday powder.

The ski area’s secret is a contraption a few miles upwind of the chairlifts that looks like a meat smoker strapped to the top of a ladder. When weather conditions are just right, a Winter Park contractor fires up the machine...Read more

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Who were the other men in the Epstein files? This is the FBI's own list

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After the Justice Department shut the door on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files in July 2025, FBI agents worked on drafts of a 21-page presentation of all the evidence the FBI had gathered in the case, including a summary of allegations against 11 men.

There’s no evidence that Epstein, a New York financier who sexually assaulted and ...Read more

John Autey/St. Paul Pioneer Press/TNS

Twin Cities child care centers on edge, parent patrols watch for ICE

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ST. PAUL, Minn. — During a recent public hearing before the St. Paul City Council, Angela Clair recounted hearing a woman screaming as a caravan of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents grabbed her off the sidewalk near the child care center where Clair serves as director.

As a helicopter hovered overhead and legal observers blew ...Read more

Raul Roa/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Why some fear Burbank airport is an accident waiting to happen. 'Everybody has had concerns'

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LOS ANGELES — The airspace over Los Angeles is among the most congested in the world, but the Hollywood Burbank Airport is uniquely situated, creating extremely tight parameters around the midsize airport.

Burbank’s main runway is particularly short, and there is significant, nearby air traffic from the busy Van Nuys Airport — located ...Read more

Eric Adler/Kansas City Star/TNS

'Dead last': KC passes ordinance to overhaul ineffective approach to homelessness

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Anyone who has lived long in Kansas City — a city proud of its fountains, parks, first-rate sports teams and barbecue — could not help but see that it has also become a city with a burgeoning population of people experiencing homelessness.

Huddling downtown against the cold and heat. Raising sprawling, and, in some cases, dangerous ...Read more

United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti/TNS/TNS

Haiti's ruling council leaves behind tainted legacy, as power remains in hand of gangs

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Days before Haiti’s new ruling presidential council assumed power in April 2024, one of its senior members met with a foreign diplomat and declared that the transition government, installed after the ouster of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, would reopen a gang-controlled highway within 100 days.

Nearly 22 months later, as the council prepared to...Read more

Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America/TNS

As NYC frigid temps near zero, Mamdani adds even more warming sites, beds for homeless

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NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani is implementing additional measures across the city to shelter vulnerable New Yorkers amid the brutally cold temperatures this weekend.

The mercury in New York City dove to nearly zero degrees Saturday night. A wind advisory warning of winds of 20 mph to 25 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph, producing dangerously ...Read more

Nancy Lane/Boston Herald/TNS

Massachusetts US Attorney to establish fraud coordinator, modeling Trump move

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BOSTON — U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said she will establish a fraud coordinator for Massachusetts after President Donald Trump’s newly established fraud czar at the White House and as more SNAP and other public benefits fraud schemes are uncovered in the state.

“The fraud coordinator will act as a primary point of contact for benefit fraud ...Read more

Clarens Siffroy/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Haiti's presidential council relinquishes power; prime minister to run country for now

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Haiti closed a vexing chapter in its ongoing political transition on Saturday, doing so in a subdued ceremony marking the end of the turbulent mandate of its nine-member presidential council and leaving the gang-ravaged country in the hands of it single, unelected prime minister and his Cabinet.

During the ceremony marking the end of the ...Read more

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Mayor Johnson's ICE executive order would compromise investigations of immigration agents, state's attorney says

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CHICAGO — In a memo sent to employees on Friday, the policy chief for Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said the city’s “ICE on notice” executive order compromises potential prosecutions of federal agents by politicizing the investigations.

The executive order announced by Mayor Brandon Johnson last Saturday has ...Read more

Cindy Ord/Getty Images North America/TNS

Green Day slams ICE, Trump and Epstein in pre-Super Bowl show

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Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t mince words during a show the band played less than 48 hours before they’re slated to perform at Super Bowl LX.

While playing a Friday night concert in San Francisco, the famously political frontman urged ICE agents to walk off the job, slammed the Trump administration and even changed the lyrics of...Read more

Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS

Minneapolis tells residents to stop building anti-ICE barricades, but they keep popping up

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MINNEAPOLIS — A new grass-roots effort to track and slow down federal agents in the Twin Cities has turned into a game of cat and mouse — organized residents erect makeshift blockades to monitor the vehicles on their streets, and police officers tear them down.

One such blockade, constructed along the busy commercial corridor of Lyndale ...Read more