pelespirit

Members of the U.S. Congress learned only through press reports that President Donald Trump's administration had tried - and failed - to have them charged and arrested, and some said on Wednesday they were considering legal action in response.

"This is not a good news story," Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut and Navy veteran, told a news conference. "This is a story about how Donald Trump and his cronies are trying to break our system in order to silence anyone who lawfully speaks out against them."

The Defense Department has locked itself into another decadeslong lease to privatize military barracks — expanding a housing model that has posed significant challenges for military family housing for decades. The move, a Senate lawmaker warns, will limit the Pentagon’s ability to change contract terms and hold private companies accountable for poor living conditions.

Last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed the Pentagon for details on its plan to privatize barracks, starting at Fort Irwin in California. New responses from the Pentagon reveal that DoD has locked in a lease running through 2079 with the Michaels Organization, a private housing developer.

In September, military families who lived at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, filed a lawsuit against the company over hazardous living conditions, including toxic mold and persistent water damage, saying their calls for help were met with “corporate indifference” and alleging the company had a “cartel-like hold on the housing monopoly.” The company has also faced scrutiny for requiring families to sign non-disclosure agreements that prohibit them from discussing their living conditions.

Miami-Dade County, home to one of the nation’s largest foreign-born populations, will soon feel the effects of a new state policy requiring driver’s license tests to be given exclusively in English, eliminating multiple language options, a change that has left many residents navigating a limited transition period for preparation.

People who scheduled appointments for either the written or road test before Feb. 6, the day the new rule took effect, may still take the exam in Spanish, as long as their appointment is scheduled on or before March 31, according to Miami-Dade Tax Collector Dariel Fernández.

Most of the state’s big GOP donors are backing U.S. Sen. John Cornyn through the Super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority, which had raised $18.5 million as of Dec. 31. Cornyn is seeking to fend off challenges from fellow Republicans Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

A Super PAC backing Paxton, known as Lone Star Liberty PAC, has raised $3.9 million from donors not as well known in Texas GOP circles.

And little is known about who is backing Hunt, who is getting support from a dark money group not required disclose its finances. Dark money groups are also helping boost Cornyn and Paxton, and the big contributors behind those efforts are unknown.

On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas is locked in a tight race with Austin state Rep. James Talarico.

A mix of celebrities and well-heeled socialites from Houston and Austin are funding the Super PAC supporting Talarico, Lone Star Rising, which has raised close to $400,000 since launching in September.

Some had crossed into the country from Mexico many months earlier without prior approval from US immigration authorities, then applied for asylum. Though traditionally considered legal under international and US immigration law, the Trump administration had announced that most people who entered this way in the past two years could no longer get asylum and could be arrested in courthouses. The move shocked, confused and angered advocates for immigrants’ rights. It gave the agents license to grab even more people, and to send them to detention and deportation. By late June, when I saw Rodriguez, this was happening routinely.

The judge asked Rodriguez if two of the immigrants who had made the Mexico-to-US crossing were now banned from further pursuing their asylum claims. “It appears that they are,” Rodriguez said in a flat voice.

The administration of President Donald Trump is set this week to overturn an Obama-era scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health, removing the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations.

The move, which the administration formally proposed in July, would mark the Republican administration's most sweeping climate change policy rollback to date, and follows a string of regulatory cuts and other moves intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy.

Martinez’s shooting caused nationwide outrage, particularly after it was revealed that Exum had bragged about shooting Martinez. “Read it,” he wrote in one message after being sent an article about the incident. “5 shots, 7 holes.” He continued: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

The videos released on Tuesday shed further light on why prosecutors dropped charges against Martinez rather than try to bring a case against her to trial.

One of the videos released on Tuesday shows the perspective of a federal agent sitting behind Exum as he drives an SUV in Chicago. As drivers appear to honk at Border Patrol, one of the agents in the vehicle can be heard saying, “do something bitch.” About twenty seconds later, a Border Patrol agent says: “It’s time to get aggressive and get the fuck out because they’re trying to box us in.”

Video in article

The remaining Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein include the revelation that one of the pedophile’s victims was just nine years old and that a senior official in a foreign government was allegedly involved in his sex trafficking network, lawmakers have said.

Democratic congressmen Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie visited the DOJ on Monday to review the remaining files withheld from publication due to their sensitivity via a secure terminal.

As they emerged from the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the trio raised questions about why some of the material had been redacted by government lawyers.

“You read through these files, and you read about 15-year-old girls, 14-year-old girls, 10-year-old girls,” Raskin said.

Les Wexner

(born September 8, 1937) is an American billionaire businessman, the co-founder and chair emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc. (formerly Limited Brands).[4] He has been the principal in Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret and La Senza, amongst other retail corporations.

Salvatore Nurara

According to several reports, Nuara was a member of the New York Police Department and served as a detective. He was previously investigated in connection with an escort service, though the investigation was not directly related to Epstein.

Zurab Mikeladze Writer for engineering paper, otherwise there is no info

Leonic Leonov: Little is known

Nicola Caputo

Nicola Caputo (born 4 March 1966) is an Italian politician. Nicola Caputo was born on 4 March 1966, in Teverola, Caserta province, Italy.[1] From 2014 to 2019, Caputo was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), for Italy's Democratic Party, and part of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.[1] Since 2021, he has served as an alternate member of the Committee of Regions.[2]

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem

Bin Sulayem led DP World's property development subsidiary Nakheel until 2010, becoming a board member in 2020.[11][12] The company was behind the construction of man-made islands in Dubai.[11] He helped establish and headed the DP World subsidiary private equity fund Istithmar World.[13]

He has been non-executive chairman of Virgin Hyperloop since 2018.[14] He is a board member of the Dubai Executive Council and the UAE Federal Tax Authority,[3] as well as the Investment Corporation of Dubai (the emirate's sovereign wealth fund) until 2009.[15]

Bin Sulayem owns hotels on Nakheel's Palm Islands, and a stake in a real estate brokerage company.[16] He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Middlesex University in Dubai in 2008.[17] His son, Ahmed Sultan Bin Sulayem, is the chairman of the government-owned Dubai Multi Commodities Centre.[16]

Days before Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, an investment firm controlled by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to buy almost half of a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family. Under any other president, such an arrangement, which was revealed this past weekend by the Wall Street Journal, would cause a political earthquake in Washington. There would be demands for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of damage control.

This scandal deserves our attention: a half-billion-dollar transaction with a foreign government official, executed in the shadow of Trump’s inauguration, which directly enriched the president and his family. The deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the Trump family and several allies in the fall of 2024 during Trump’s presidential campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful officials in the UAE. Known as the “spy sheikh”, Tahnoon is the brother of the UAE’s president and serves as national security adviser. He also oversees one of the largest investment empires in the world, serving as chair of two Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, which have $1.5tn in assets, and G42, a firm focused on artificial intelligence.

Scientists have created a wearable sensor that attaches to your underwear and tracks your gut bacteria in real time by measuring the hydrogen gas in your flatulence. And no, that’s not a setup for a joke.

Researchers at the University of Maryland developed the device to solve a problem that has plagued microbiome research for years: how to actually monitor what gut bacteria are doing hour by hour, not just which species are living in there. The answer, it turns out, involves a tiny sensor clipped near your bottom that passively records data while you go about your day.