Some 900 tonnes of lithium batteries were on fire at a battery recycling plant in southern France, authorities said on Sunday, sending a cloud of thick black smoke into the sky above the site.
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Some 900 tonnes of lithium batteries were on fire at a battery recycling plant in southern France, authorities said on Sunday, sending a cloud of thick black smoke into the sky above the site.
Lawmakers summoned the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs' loan program, John Bell, to Capitol Hill this week and asked him to explain how the VA is going to fix a debacle that's left many vets in danger of losing their homes.
His answer: They don't know yet.
"We are looking for a solution to be able to help 40,000 borrowers stave off foreclosure," Bell told them.
It's Russia's first major battlefield win since last May and a boost for Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of next month's presidential elections.
Ukraine's newly appointed military chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement that he decided to withdraw units from the embattled town to "avoid encirclement [by Russian troops] and preserve the lives and health of servicemen."
President Biden acknowledged the significance of Avdiivka's fall in a call to Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. A readout of the call from the White House said Ukraine's military "was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka after Ukrainian soldiers had to ration ammunition due to dwindling supplies as a result of congressional inaction, resulting in Russia's first notable gains in months."
A heavy rainstorm system dubbed an “atmospheric river” is set to hit Southern California on Monday, the third such extreme weather event this month.
Almost the entirety of the Southern California coast, from the Mexican border to Oxnard, is under a flash flood warning Sunday in preparation for the storm, with another band of heavy rain that could also cause flash flooding near Monterey and the Central Valley, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast.
Two police officers and a medical first responder were fatally shot early Sunday while responding to a domestic abuse call in Burnsville, Minnesota, authorities said.
Brian Peters, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association Executive Director, confirmed the deaths, saying the law enforcement community was "heartbroken."
"We’re just devastated at the horrific loss," he said in a statement. "These heroes leave behind loved ones and a community who will forever remember their bravery and dedication to keeping Minnesotans safe."
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, citing local law enforcement officials, said a third police officer was wounded. The medical responder was shot while trying to help an officer, the Star said. A law enforcement source told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that police were called to a residence on a domestic incident when the gunfire erupted.
More...Last month, Richard Haass, the former longtime head of the Council on Foreign Relations, approached top officials in the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with an audacious plan for changing the politics around the Israel-Hamas war.
Haass believed that Joe Biden needed to separate himself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose military campaign was hurting U.S. credibility abroad and the president’s popularity at home. And he proposed that Biden do so by going to Israel to deliver a speech — possibly to the Knesset, the nation’s parliament — where he’d lay out his vision directly to the Israeli people.
Haass, who previously worked in the State Departments for both Bush administrations, had come to the idea after growing increasingly dismayed by Israel’s defiance of Washington’s warnings that its bombardment of Gaza was causing widespread civilian casualties and threatened to destabilize the Middle East. And he first floated it from his perch as a panelist on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the cable news show Biden closely watches.
Department of Justice (DOJ) is set to give $500,000 worth of forfeited Russian funds to Ukraine as the embattled country tries to fend off the Kremlin’s invasion.
The U.S. will transfer nearly half of a million dollars in confiscated Russian funds to Estonia, which will be then transferred to Ukraine, according to a Saturday DOJ press release. Estonia is receiving the funds first, since “under current authorities, the facts of this case do not allow for a direct transfer to Ukraine.”
The funds were forfeited by the U.S. “following the breakup of an illegal procurement network attempting to import into Russia a high-precision, U.S.-origin machine tool with uses in the defense and nuclear proliferation sectors.”
Yale University issued a formal apology on Friday over its past connections to slavery.
The Ivy League school became the latest institution to apologize for its connections to slavery after spending years researching the subject.
“Today, on behalf of Yale University, we recognize our university’s historical role in and associations with slavery, as well as the labor, the experiences, and the contributions of enslaved people to our university’s history, and we apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery,” the school said in a statement.
In the Friday release, the university also announced the release of the “Yale and Slavery: A History,” written by the school’s Pulitzer-prize-winning professor David W. Blight, with the Yale and Slavery Research Project. The school also shared a range of initiatives and actions it would pursue based on the findings of the school’s project.
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