nbcnews.com – By Kriti Gandhi and Angie Ling – Some wore homemade hats made from egg boxes, others created headgear from cardboard and coat hangers, and some wore Halloween masks as they sat for their exams.
Their purpose? To prevent cheating.
Professor Mary Joy Mandane-Ortiz, an engineering instructor at the Bicol University College of Engineering in Legazpi City in the Philippines, stumbled across the idea as she was browsing Facebook, she said Tuesday.
latimes.com – By Felicia Alvarez – Jack Laflin likes to recall the time he wriggled into a 9-foot-long, 30-pound blue mermaid tail. He’d spotted similar pieces behind the scenes of the acting gigs he was trying to land, but this was his first attempt to maneuver his way into a silicon tube.
He wondered if using a bit of water would help ease the process — and it did, until the water dried, further constraining his legs and torso. Alone in his apartment and lying on his living room floor, Laflin considered his lack of mobility and thought, “If there’s a fire alarm, I won’t be able to get out of here.”
Laflin had purchased the custom-made piece from Mertailor around the time he was thinking about a career change. “When I first moved to L.A., I was modeling and acting, and I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t like the way the industry viewed me,” said Laflin, who is mixed race. “I was cast either as a thug, a gangster or I was a piece of meat at the nightclub.”
latimes.com – By Jack Dolan – A police chase in Whittier on Saturday went a bit slower than normal: The intoxicated suspect was galloping through town on a horse. The “driver” initially refused to pull over, leading to the unusual pursuit.
“That was our afternoon,” Whittier police posted on their official Instagram account.
The pursuit ended with the DUI suspect in custody and the horse getting lots of love from the cops. The horse was taken into the department’s care after the incident.
Turns out, almost all of the usual traffic rules apply when you’re on city streets, even if your ride is a horse.
express.co.uk – By Rohan Gupta – Arnold Schwarzenegger, 75, has caused some controversy after leaving a quote from the first Terminator film in the Auschwitz guestbook on a is it to the concentration camp. The actor toured the site with the Auschwitz Jewish Foundation.
theomeback.com – By Sean Keeley – We live in strange times when scandals have rocked the world of chess, fishing, and Irish dancing. As for the cheating scandal that has rocked chess to its core, we’ve officially reached the point where players’ bodies are being scanned for potential devices, which includes scans of their backside.
To catch you up, all of this stems from Hans Niemann’s Sept. 4 chess win over Magnus Carlsen at The Sinquefield Cup tournament in St. Louis, which was organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club. After the 19-year-old Niemann won, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament and accused Niemann of cheating, potentially by using a device. That led to a lot of speculation about where that device might have been located and Elon Musk himself got involved by speculating about the usage of vibrating anal beads.
thewrap.com – By Dessi Gomez – MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and podcaster Keith Olbermann called out a since-deleted tweet from The Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) about President Biden’s financial aid and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Scarborough calling it “unfiltered Russian propaganda.”
The tweet specifically referenced financial processes, comparing Biden’s aid to Ukraine with the migration issue at the United States’ southern border.
“Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of 4 Ukranian-occupied territories. Biden and the Dems continue to send Ukraine billions of taxpayer dollars,” CPAC’s original tweet — which was subsequently deleted with no explanation — reads. “Meanwhile, we are under attack at our southern border. When will Democrats put #AmericaFirst and end the gift-giving to Ukraine?”
cnn.com – By Kaitlan Collins – The newest addition to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, Chris Kise, has been sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation less than a month after he was brought on to represent Trump in the matter, two sources familiar with the move tell CNN.
Kise is expected to remain on Trump’s legal team but is not leading the work related to the federal government’s investigation into how the former President handled 11,000 documents seized from his Florida home in August following a lengthy effort by the government to retrieve them. The reason for the shift in Kise’s role remains unclear and he may instead focus his efforts on the other investigations Trump is facing, which range from his business practices to the January 6 insurrection.
The move is notable given Kise, the former solicitor general for Florida, was brought on to the team after a weeks-long search and struggle to find someone willing to take on the case who was also experienced in Florida law. The legal strategy for fighting the Justice Department following the August seizure of over 100 documents marked as classified was also in disarray.
Kise’s hiring came with an unusual price tag of $3 million, paid for by Trump’s outside spending arm. The retainer fee, paid upfront, raised eyebrows among other lawyers on Trump’s team, given the former President has a developed a reputation for not paying his legal fees.
wglt.org – By Ryan Denham – The young electric automaker Rivian has had a lot of firsts. The first truck to drive off the assembly line. The first accident out on the road. And now – the first vasectomy powered by a Rivian.
It happened Thursday in Texas, when a power outage hit Dr. Christopher Yang’s clinic. The Austin urologist had to cancel and reschedule several planned procedures. The vasectomy would have been one of them – until one of the staffers jokingly suggested doing the procedure using Yang’s 4-month-old Rivian R1T pickup truck as a backup power source.
hillreporter.com – By Tara Dublin – Only a few dozen people turned out for a right-wing January 6th “Truth” rally in Washington D.C. on Saturday where controversial MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is currently under an election-related FBI investigation, was the headliner.
Despite promotion on right-wing fringe sites like Gateway Pundit, which described the rally as the “biggest to date,” photos and videos on social media revealed a sparsely attended event, with roughly half as many counter-protesters in attendance as protesters.
Most people in attendance were members of the fringe group the 1776 Restoration Movement, many of whom carried upside-down American flags along with “Let’s Go Brandon” flags and“POW-J6” flags.
Lindell, who appeared on a screen at the rally via Zoom, is at the center of an FBI investigation into a breach of election equipment in Colorado. A district court judge denied Lindell’s request this week for a temporary restraining order to prevent the FBI from searching his phone, which federal agents seized at a Hardee’s drive-through.
Lindell has not yet been charged with a crime, although he is believed to be connected to six people named in a search warrant who allegedly breached the voting machines to prove baseless claims of voter fraud.
chicagotribune.com – By DEE-ANN DURBIN – A top executive at plant-based food company Beyond Meat has been charged with felony battery after a fight outside a college football game in which he was accused of biting a man’s nose.
Doug Ramsey was also charged with making a terroristic threat after the attack Saturday in a parking garage outside a University of Arkansas football game in Fayetteville.
Beyond Meat said Tuesday it has suspended Ramsey indefinitely.
According to a police report, Ramsey was angered when another driver inched in front of him in a traffic lane and made contact with the front passenger wheel on Ramsey’s Ford Bronco SUV.
The police report alleges that Ramsey got out of his vehicle and punched through the back windshield of the other driver’s car. The driver told police he got out of his car and Ramsey pulled him close and began punching him. Ramsey also bit the tip of the other driver’s nose, ripping the flesh, according to the police report.