Author: Press Room

Graham Platner has formally withdrawn his candidacy from the Maine Senate race, according to election officials — triggering the process to name his replacement on the ballot. “The Secretary of State’s Office today confirmed that a formal notice has been received from U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner,” the office said in a statement Friday. “Because the candidate officially withdrew before 5 p.m. of the 2nd Monday in July, … his name will not appear on the ballot, and his political party may replace him.” The notice comes two days after Platner publicly announced he would end his bid, and follows…

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A federal judge sentenced the online leader of a Nihilistic Violent Extremist (NVE) group to 40 years in prison. In addition, he will spend the rest of his life on court-ordered supervision for charges related to child sexual exploitation and racketeering. 19-year-old Alexis Aldair Chavez of San Antonio was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution. According to court documents, Chavez, who used the online profile names Zack and Zack8884, was an administrator and online leader of the “8884” network. The online network is related to a larger violent extremist group that shares common goals, including…

A patriotic Tennessee Incline Railway conductor was fired for his Independence Day message to passengers after an offended tourist reported his comments to the company.  Jack Peterson, the now-fired operator who worked at the 131-year-old attraction taking tourists up to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, told passengers: “To the very, very few Americans in here, Happy Independence Day. To the rest of you, welcome to the greatest country on the face of the planet, and if you disagree, you can leave.”  Passenger Nathan Scherer, who was vacationing with family, filmed Peterson and posted the video to TikTok with the hashtags “racism” and “xenophobia.”…

The members should avoid vexing the US leader in the next two years to avoid breaking the bloc for good, James Stavridis has suggested NATO members should give US President Donald Trump a “timeout” for the rest of his tenure, reducing public exposure and joint endeavors to a bare minimum while working on bolstering their own military capabilities, retired US Navy Admiral and Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has suggested.Stavridis, who often shares his views on international affairs with the media, floated the idea in an opinion piece published by Bloomberg on Friday in the aftermath of the NATO summit…

The European Commission announced Friday that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has breached the EU’s digital regulations due to addictive design elements on Instagram and Facebook that pose risks to user mental health. CNBC reports that the EU has determined that Meta violated the Digital Services Act (DSA) through its failure to adequately address risks associated with design features affecting the physical well-being of users, particularly minors and vulnerable adults. The preliminary findings, released Friday by the European Commission, focus on several features that regulators believe encourage compulsive platform use. The Commission identified specific design elements as addictive, including infinite scroll functionality…

A voluptuous Brazilian model and social media influencer has died after falling from the 27th floor of a Dubai skyscraper. The cause of the fall remains a mystery, and the death of 27-year-old Kauana Bilhar is now the subject of a police investigation, the Daily Mail reported. Bilhar had amassed an impressive online following with her modeling and travel content. According to the British tabloid, authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding her death and have not ruled out the possibility of an accident, suicide, homicide, or “femicide,” a murder classification based on gender. Her mother, Darla Bilhar, confirmed her death this…

The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s live-action remake of Moana (2016) is headed for a box office disaster after Thursday night previews generated just $4.5 million. How bad is that? Oh, it’s bad… Context: Disney’s most recent flop, The Mandalorian and Grogu, had a $12 million Thursday preview. A number of notable flops opened much higher in their Thursday night previews than Moana’s $4.5 million: The Flash — $9 million; Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — $7.2 million; Supergirl did almost twice as much as Moana with $8.2 million. Moana only did a smidge better than Snow White (2025), which…

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz called upon hospitals to join the effort to make their food healthier, stating that “hospitals should be places of healing.” In a video posted to X, Kennedy announced that they were calling for hospitals to “commit to serving healthier minimally processed food” and putting nutrition back “at the center of patient care.” Kennedy also announced that they were calling for hospitals to take the voluntary, Make Hospital Food Healthier Food Pledge. “Today, we’re launching the Make…

His death turned a leader into a martyr, fusing grief, faith, and defiance into a message that the US and Israel fail to grasp The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was never going to simply be the change of a political era for Iran. It became an event in which war, religion, national trauma, revolutionary memory, and the ancient culture of Shia mourning all collided at once.Iran’s supreme leader was killed on February 28, 2026 in a joint US-Israeli strike. The country declared a period of mourning and prepared funeral ceremonies on an extraordinary scale. The farewell stretched across several…

Chemist Omar Yaghi, a 2025 Nobel laureate for helping to develop new types of materials called “metal-organic frameworks,” has reportedly left the United States to become the leader of an AI research center at China’s Tsinghua University. Yaghi, 61, is the son of Palestinian refugees. His family emigrated to the United States from Jordan when he was 15 and he has lived in the U.S. ever since. Yaghi earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and has worked as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2012. He received several…