HellsBelle

The Nigerian authorities have dropped treason and other charges against dozens of protesters, including more than 30 children, who were arrested in August after taking part in anti-government demonstrations.

President Bola Tinubu had already called for the release of all the minors - some as young as 14 - after footage of four of them collapsing in court on Friday, apparently due to malnourishment, sparked outrage.

He also said the police and other officials involved in the arrests and subsequent legal processes should be investigated.

U.S. judges have denied requests from the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from sending lawyers to their states on Election Day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws.

Both states are among the 27 that the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) said it would send staff out to monitor at voting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.

Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the DOJ early on Tuesday to confirm that "no observers" would be present in polling locations in Texas but denied issuing the restraining order the state had requested.

"The Court cannot issue a temporary restraining order without further clarification on the distinction between 'monitoring' and 'observing' on the eve of a consequential election," Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, said in the ruling.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had earlier said that sending monitors "infringes on States' constitutional authority to run free and fair elections."

When Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-promised, next-generation $25,000 electric vehicle, the automaker’s stock plunged. Chief Executive Elon Musk rushed to respond on X, his social-media network.

“Reuters is lying,” he posted, without elaborating. Tesla’s stock recovered some of its losses.

Six months later, Musk appears to have backed into an admission that Tesla dropped its plans for a human-driven $25,000 car. He said in an Oct. 23 earnings call that building the affordable EV would be "pointless” unless the car was fully autonomous.

Customers with Canada's three biggest telecom providers — Rogers, Bell and Telus — say they're frustrated by contracts that lock them into agreements but allow the companies to increase prices at the same time.

In hundreds of emails to Go Public, customers say they're fed up with unexpected increases to their monthly internet, TV and home phone bills during their contracts.

They started writing after CBC News reported the story of Cathy Cooper, a Rogers Communications customer in Sidney, B.C., who was caught off guard when the company jacked up the monthly price of renting TV boxes by $7 apiece ($12 each for newer customers).

A powerful US oil and gas industry lobby group has drawn up detailed plans to kill off penalties for emitting methane, a potent planet-heating gas that’s increasing at the fastest rate in decades, with this effort led by a major donor to Donald Trump whose company has just been fined for methane pollution.

Leaked internal documents from the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), a group of 30 oil and gas producers, outline a push to repeal a fee levied on methane emissions should the former US president win this week’s election and Republicans gain control of Congress.

The plan, coming as scientists warn that methane emissions are rising at a rate that imperils a livable climate, is being spearheaded by an AXPC board that includes the chief executive of Hilcorp, a Texas-based firm whose founder Jeff Hildebrand has, along with his wife, Melinda, been a leading donor to Trump’s election campaign, holding multiple fundraisers for the former president.

At the time of writing, the death toll has risen to 214. Battered cars and other debris are piled up in the streets, large swaths of Valencia remain underwater, and Spain is in mourning. On Sunday, anger erupted as the king and queen of Spain were pelted with mud and other objects by protesters. Why were so many lives lost in a flood that was well forecasted in a wealthy country?

From the global north’s vantage point, the climate crisis, caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has long been seen as a distant threat, affecting poor people in the global south. This misconception has perpetuated a false sense of security.

Scientists have long known that heating the climate with fossil fuel emissions will result in the intensification of floods, storms, heatwaves, drought and wildfires. However, it was not until 2004 that the first attribution study formally linked a weather event – the devastating 2003 European heatwave – to our changing climate. Despite the evidence, people have been hesitant to connect extreme weather with the climate crisis.

While Democratic strategists debate whether or not their attack ads labeling Donald Trump a fascist have been effective, experts and academics told the Guardian his campaign and the Republican party he now heads have clear autocratic sympathies and political qualities that are firmly in line with fascism movements historically.

Put together, that makes any Trump victory this week and his return to the White House for a second presidential term a clear threat to US democracy, they added.

“There couldn’t be a more obvious example of a fascist social and political movement about to take power,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor whose new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, looks at the global playbook of fascists through the lens of America and beyond.

He surely would reject any such comparison but, in a recent interview, Justin Trudeau briefly sounded just a little bit like Richard Nixon.

"The problem is right now that there is a silent majority that is a little bit silent, and maybe wondering whether it's actually a minority. And you got a lot of good, thoughtful people saying, you know, 'I don't have anything personal against the leader, but everyone seems to hate him because I see all these flags and therefore, you know, he must be on his way out or he must be unpopular,'" Trudeau told Village Media.

While Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, didn't coin the phrase, he did popularize the notion of a "silent majority" in a televised address about the war in Vietnam in 1969. Those words conjured up an image of a mass of voters who could not be heard over the din of the protesters and activists clamouring for political and social change.

A 5.48 metre (18 ft) Australian crocodile that held the world record as the largest crocodile in captivity has died, a wildlife sanctuary said on Saturday. He was thought to be more than 110 years old.

Cassius, weighing in at more than one ton, had been in declining health since Oct. 15, Marineland Melanesia Crocodile Habitat said on Facebook.

"He was very old and believed to be living beyond the years of a wild Croc," according to a post by the organisation, based on Green Island near the Queensland tourist town of Cairns.

The FBI is investigating the death of a Black man in Alabama, who was found hanging in an abandoned house, following a request from a local sheriff amid fears among community members who accuse local law enforcement of longstanding, unchecked misconduct.

Sheriff’s deputies found Dennoriss Richardson, 39, in September in a rural part of Colbert County, miles away from his home in Sheffield, a city of approximately 10,000 people near the Tennessee River.

The Colbert County Sheriff’s Office ruled Richardson’s death a suicide. But Richardson’s wife, Leigh Richardson, has said that is not true, explaining her husband did not leave a note and had no connection to the house where he was found.

Instead, the 40-year-old fears her husband’s death was related to a lawsuit he filed against the local police department in February. Dennoriss Richardson, who coached kids in baseball and football, had alleged he was assaulted, denied medical attention, sprayed with tear gas and shocked with a Taser while in jail.

The trailer for Squid Game 2, airing on Dec 26, just dropped.

It looks awesome.