President Joe Biden has revoked a trio of executive orders issued by former President Donald Trump that sought to punish vandalism of statues and to build a new National Garden of American Heroes.
A July 2020 order envisioned a National Garden of American Heroes that “should be located on a site of natural beauty that enables visitors to enjoy nature, walk among the statues, and be inspired to learn about great figures of America’s history.”
A follow-up Trump order in January specified that the statue garden would honor, among other notables, Kobe Bryant, Julia Child, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Alex Trebek.
Biden’s decision was announced in a Friday afternoon email nearly a year after nationwide anti-police brutality protests resulted in widespread damage to monuments, especially those honoring slaveholders. Keep reading…
Servers for Darkside were taken down by unknown actors Friday, a week after the cyber extortionist forced the shutdown of a large US oil pipeline in a ransomware scam, a US cyber security firm said.
Recorded Future, the security firm, said in a post that the allegedly Russia-based Darkside had admitted in a web post that it lost access to certain servers used for its web blog and for payments.
Accessed via TOR on the dark web, the Darkside site address showed a notice saying it could not be found.
Recorded Future threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets said he found a Russian language comment on a ransomware website ostensibly from “Darksupp”, described as the operator of Darkside.
Fresh violence erupted Thursday evening in several Jewish-Arab cities, a night after some of the worst internal unrest in years, as intense fighting also continued between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip.
Two civilians and a policeman were reported to have been shot by Arab assailants in Lod and Ramle.
In Jaffa, a 19-year-old soldier was in serious condition after being beaten, and was suffering from a skull fracture and a cerebral hemorrhage, Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv said, after he drove himself there.
In Lod, a central city with Jewish and Arab populations that has become an epicenter of the ethnic violence gripping the country, a Jewish paramedic was lightly wounded after being shot. Reports later said a second Jewish man was shot in the city, after an overnight curfew took effect at 8 p.m. for a second night in a row.
Insisting “we’re not there yet,” Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday that New Jersey will still require all people — vaccinated or not — to wear masks indoors in public to protect against the coronavirus, even after federal health officials released updated guidance that says masks are no longer needed for fully vaccinated Americans in most circumstances.
But those who are fully vaccinated in the Garden State no longer need to wear a mask outside, Murphy said. Those who aren’t vaccinated still need to wear masks when in “close proximity” to others, he said.
Murphy also stressed that this is a temporary situation, saying mask orders could change in the coming weeks.
House Republicans voted Friday to make Rep. Elise Stefanik their conference chair, days after ousting Rep. Liz Cheney over her opposition to former President Donald Trump’s continued influence in the party and her denouncements of his “big lie” that the 2020 election was rigged.
Republicans convened around 8:30 a.m. ET at the Congressional Visitors Center, the same room where they expelled Cheney from the No. 3-ranking position by a voice vote two days earlier.
The vote for Stefanik was conducted by secret ballot. The final tally was 134-46.
Why don’t they form a commission to find out how Joe Biden got 80 million votes but can’t get more than half a million viewers on his state of the union address?
Congress is moving closer to forming a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with a bipartisan agreement emerging in a key House committee.
The deal would create a 10-person body, with five commissioners, including the chairperson, picked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
The other half of the commission members would be selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The panel would explore still-murky details, including whether there was any planning to disrupt certification of President Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. A report would be due by the end of this year.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) announced the plan with top committee Republican Rep. John Katko (R-NY). A bill to create the commission is being introduced Friday, with a likely House floor vote next week.
GAZA/JERUSALEM, May 14 (Reuters) – Israel pummelled Gaza with artillery fire and air strikes on Friday as it targeted Palestinian militant tunnels to try to stop persistent rocket attacks on Israeli towns.
The 40-minute, pre-dawn offensive killed 13 Palestinians, including a mother and her three children whose bodies were pulled from the rubble of their home, health officials in Gaza said.
The Israeli operation included 160 aircraft as well as tanks and artillery firing from outside the Gaza Strip, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said.
Palestinian rocket barrages against southern Israel swiftly followed on the fifth day of the most serious fighting between Israel and Gaza militants since 2014.
Egypt was leading international efforts to secure a ceasefire and ensure the conflict does not spread. Security sources said neither side appeared amenable so far but a Palestinian official said negotiations intensified on Friday.
EXCLUSIVE: HBO has scrapped this week’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher after the comedian tested positive for Covid-19. Maher, who is vaccinated and asymptomatic, tested positive during the premium cable network’s weekly PCR testing ahead of the show.
It is a blow for the late-night show, which was set to entertain astrophysicist and StarTalk podcaster Neil deGrasse Tyson as the top-of-show interview guest, and World War Z author Max Brooks and Hardcore History podcast host Dan Carlin as panelists.
The CDC’s updated face mask guidance is likely to prompt vaccine-hesitant Americans to get a Covid shot, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday.
“This is going to provide a pretty strong incentive for a lot people who might’ve been on the fence about getting vaccinated to go out and get vaccinated,” the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box.”
In most indoor and outdoor settings now, fully vaccinated people do not need to wear a face covering or keep 6 feet of social distance from other individuals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Masks still need to be worn at businesses that require them, the CDC said, as well as on airplanes and public transportation.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for an ethics inquiry into a Republican for a “verbal assault” on another lawmaker.
In the halls of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly accused New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of supporting “terrorist” groups.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez later said her antagonist was the kind of person she used to throw out of bars.
Both lawmakers are lightning rods for criticism on the right and left.
Mrs Greene last month challenged Ms Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, to debate the latter’s proposed climate legislation, the Green New Deal.
A division of Toshiba said on Friday that its European business has been hit by a cyberattack, according to a Reuters report.
Toshiba Tec France said in a statement seen by Reuters that it was hacked on the evening of May 4. by DarkSide, the same group the U.S. FBI blamed for the Colonial Pipeline attack.
The Toshiba unit, which sells self-checkout technology and point-of-sale systems to retailers, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Toshiba Tec reportedly said that a “minimal” amount of work data was stolen in a ransomware attack. No leaks of the data have been detected so far and protective measures were put in place after the cyber-attack, the company said.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that’s designed to block access to a computer system the victims pay the hackers a sum of money. It is not known if Toshiba Tec France has paid a ransom to the hackers.
The Jesuit priest who presided over the inaugural Mass for then President-elect Joe Biden resigned as president of Santa Clara University in California this week after an investigation found he had behaved in a manner “inconsistent with established Jesuit protocols and boundaries.”
John Sobrato, the chairman of the university’s board of trustees, confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Rev. Kevin O’Brien had offered his resignation Sunday and the board had accepted it the following day.
