US news

US news

A Chicago man has been charged after allegedly posing as a 17-year-old boy and sexually exploiting a Brookline teen. Joshua Rogers, 30, was arrested in Chicago on Wednesday morning and is charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. In July 2025, Brookline law enforcement were notified of an individual posing as a 17-year-old boy named "John," who was allegedly later identified as Rogers, engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a 14-year-old girl on Snapchat, according to officials.

The Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission pulled Trooper Michael Gagnon's law enforcement certification Tuesday, a week after he was arrested and charged with domestic assault and battery and assault and battery on a child causing injury. The POST Commission suspension order directs Gagnon to surrender his agency-issued credentials and equipment, including his uniform, badge, firearm, cruiser, and Taser. A State Police spokesperson previously said Gagnon has been relieved of duty and suspended without pay.

In a complaint filed on November 25 with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Monitoring Analytics, LLC, an independent market monitor for PJM, requested that the regulator mandate that the energy wholesaler only add large data centers to its system if all customers can be reliably served. "PJM is currently proposing to allow the interconnection of large new data center loads that it cannot serve reliably and that will require load curtailments (black outs) of the data centers or of other customers at times," the complaint read.

"1000% committed"

Gleason leaves behind a wife and three children, and a fundraising effort for the family's needs going forward is underway. Dozens of people -- including Siena players in uniform, school officials and members of the University at Albany athletic community -- lined a hospital hallway Wednesday afternoon to pay tribute to Gleason as he was being wheeled into surgery to donate some of his organs, Siena officials said. The school announced his death a couple hours later.

Before the sun was fully up and long before the rest of his family stirred, William, a 5-year-old boy in Jacksonville, Florida, quietly climbed out of bed and decided his parents deserved a little more sleep. He felt hungry, and rather than wake anyone, the preschooler settled on a plan that made perfect sense to him: he would take himself out for breakfast.

The US dollar was relatively flat today, stabilizing after a second week of declines. Weaker US labour data reinforced expectations of a Fed cut next week. Yesterday's ADP report showed a surprise 32,000 drop in private-sector jobs, signalling that the job market is losing steam and fuelling concerns about the economy. Markets are still pricing close to an 87% probability of a 25 bps rate cut at the December FOMC meeting, in addition to more cuts during 2026.

The price comparison tool within T-Mobile's T-Life app uses AT&T's password-protected software without permission, AT&T told a Texas federal judge on November 30. AT&T is asking for a temporary restraining order. AT&T is accusing T-Mobile of unauthorized scraping of AT&T customer data and says T-Mobile "violates several prohibitions in AT&T's publicly available Terms of Use." It sent a cease-and-desist order to T-Mobile on November 26, but T-Mobile has refused to comply.

The dump truck then veered left into a Nissan Maxima (sideswipe), which was driving next to it, before continuing south across the eastbound lanes of Cactus Rd into and through the residential wall. Fox 10 Scottsdale reported Wednesday that the truck was carrying more than 20 tons of rocks and left a large hole in the residential wall. The homeowner of the assisted living facility described the crash like an explosion, according to Fox 10.

Vanderbilt football will be the best program in the country.

WASHINGTON (AP) The Trump administration is pausing all immigration applications such as requests for green cards for people from 19 countries banned from travel earlier this year, as part of sweeping immigration changes in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard troops. The changes were outlined in a policy memo posted Tuesday on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency tasked with processing and approving all requests for immigration benefits.

A bill introduced on Wednesday by California's Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Juan Vargas would authorize the attorney general to appoint temporary immigration judges that have served on appellate panels, are administrative judges in other agencies, or have 10 years of immigration law experience. Such limits would preclude much of the administration's effort to authorize up to 600 military lawyers to be temporary immigration judges; as part of that move, the White House scrapped the requirement that temporary immigration judges should have immigration law experience.

The word "ideology" has become a fixture in American political rhetoric, invoked by leaders to cast opponents' beliefs as dangerous, stupid or unfounded. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to "defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology," saying he would take "historic action" to reaffirm what he described as a divinely created gender binary. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has similarly criticized "DEI ideologies" in hiring and admissions, arguing instead for merit-based practices.

State lawmakers say the new law is the first of its kind. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed it just days before a federal vaccine panel plans to vote on major changes to America's childhood immunization schedule. Illinois is among several Democratic-led states developing their own systems to assess vaccines, an attempt to address warnings by some public health officials that the Trump administration has politicized vaccine science.

After drilling mechanics, dropbacks and movement throws with passing coach Jose Mohler at the park about 35 miles north of San Diego, the real competition began -- a homegrown version of quarterback HORSE. Their buddies, twins Jayven and Kiran Sandhu, ran routes while the Sayin brothers called their shots, grading each other's 10 throws. The loser picked up the tab at the smoothie shop around the corner before everyone headed home for online high school.

A group of men, one of them from Queens, ran a disturbing online child exploitation ring that targeted kids on Discord and on hyper-popular online games Roblox and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, coercing the youngsters into filming themselves performing sex acts, the feds allege. Queens resident Hector Bermudez, 29, who went by the handle Fiasco, was part of a sick group calling itself Greggy's Cult, according to an indictment unsealed against him and four co-defendants in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday.

Asif Merchant wants EDNY to provide all the spying the FBI did targeting him - or at least the spying that they say matches the calls he made while they were surveilling him. As you'll recall, Merchant is the Pakistani guy that EDNY arrested in July 2024 for allegedly soliciting someone to kill political targets, possibly including Donald Trump. Since then, Merchant has been sitting in prison, under communication restrictions, awaiting trial, which is currently scheduled for February 23, 2026.

His attorney, Richard Ceballos, filed a motion Nov. 24 asking to continue the hearing to Jan. 28, citing "a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship." "The reason for the continuance is that Mr. Huffaker has advised me that he no longer wants me to represent him and has taken affirmative steps to obtain new counsel for his sentencing hearing," Ceballos wrote. "Furthermore, Mr. Huffaker has expressly directed me not to file any sentencing memorandum on his behalf until he has secured new counsel."

Those emails aren't the entirety of the communications between her and Epstein. Epstein's estate is keeping secret 277 additional emails between him and Ruemmler, saying they are protected by attorney-client confidentiality. Many of those emails contain discussions of lawsuits by women who accused Epstein of sexual assault, according to a court filing made public this week. The document, a 500-page list of emails the estate claims are privileged, indicates that Ruemmler gave Epstein legal advice or otherwise acted as his attorney.

Starting Jan. 1, 2026, a $100 per-person fee - charged on top of the typical fee of $35 per vehicle - will apply to entry for foreigners ages 16 and older at 11 of the country's most-visited national parks (see below). A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior confirmed in an email to KQED that the new fees will apply for the amount of time the entry ticket is valid.

In January of this year, Jonathan Evans, president and CEO of Lithium Americas, announced that Thacker Pass, which is located in the caldera, is the largest lithium reserve in the world. The mine planned for that area, which has an 85-year life span, is slated to unfold over several phases, and while no lithium has been pulled from the earth there yet, construction on the mine is well underway. The only lithium mine currently in production in the U.S. is located in Nevada's Esmeralda County.

Carter said Kiffin, announced as LSU's coach Sunday, has said "a lot of things publicly that I'm not sure are totally accurate." Among those is the claim that he only learned early Sunday that he would not be coaching Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff. Carter said Kiffin and his representatives were told several weeks earlier that coaching Ole Miss in the CFP was not possible if Kiffin took another job.

An F-16C fighter jet exploded into a huge fireball after crashing in a desert near Death Valley on Wednesday. The pilot successfully ejected from the plane, which was part of the US Air Force's Air Demonstration Squadron, known as the Thunderbirds. Reports have indicated that the individual sustained only minor injuries and was taken to hospital in nearby Ridgecrest, California, for treatment.