“San Francisco robotaxi company Cruise’s long saga over its car’s 2023 dragging of a knocked-over pedestrian has finally reached an end, with the company admitting to criminal behavior and agreeing to pay a $500,000 penalty. On Thursday, company President Craig Glidden signed a legal agreement with Martha Boersch, who leads the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. In the document, Cruise admits to hiding the immediate aftermath of an Oct. 2, 2023, crash — when the company’s robotaxi dragged a pedestrian it had hit after she was knocked over by another car — from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Glidden, in signing the document, barred Cruise from ever again contradicting that narrative of events. Alongside the agreement, Boersch filed a document accusing Cruise of a felony offense, ‘Falsification of Records in Federal Investigation.'” (11/17/24)
“Rudy Giuliani surrendered a Mercedes-Benz, watches and a ring on Friday to two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for defamation — while still refusing to turn over other property to comply with a $148 million judgment against him. The initial delivery comes as Giuliani is embroiled in a dispute over his legal representation and is trying to keep some items of his personal property. … An attorney for Giuliani, Joseph Cammarata, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that the former New York City mayor hadn’t given items in a storage facility to [the plaintiffs] because a court-imposed restraining order prevented him from doing so. And, Cammarata wrote, certain categories of items the judge ordered Giuliani to turn over to the women are exempt by statute. Cammarata, for example, told the judge that ‘all wearing apparel’ is exempt by law from turnover, which should make a Joe DiMaggio jersey off-limits.” (11/15/24)
“Thousands of climate justice advocates took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand the U.K. government ‘end its reliance on fossil fuels, commit to paying climate reparations, and end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza’. Organizers said more than 60 groups — including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International U.K., Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, and Just Stop Oil — took part in the March for Global Climate Justice. The demonstration took place amid yet another shambolic United Nations Climate Change Conference and as Israeli forces continue a war on Gaza that U.N. experts this week called ‘consistent with the characteristics of genocide.’ More than two dozen associated protests were held in cities and towns across Britain and Ireland, including Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Sheffield.” (11/16/24)
“The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones’s Infowars platform is under review by a U.S. federal bankruptcy judge after Jones and his lawyers complained about how an auction was conducted. The satirical news outlet was announced as the winning bidder on Thursday in an auction that is part of Jones’s personal bankruptcy. … At a hastily called court hearing in Houston on Thursday, Judge Christopher Lopez ordered another hearing to be held next week. He wants to know what happened with the auction and how the bankruptcy trustee chose The Onion over the only other bidder — a company affiliated with a Jones product-selling website.” (11/15/24)
“Volcanoes were erupting on the mysterious far side of the moon billions of years ago just like on the side that we can see, new research confirms. Researchers analyzed lunar soil brought back by China’s Chang’e-6, the first spacecraft to return with a haul of rocks and dirt from the little-explored far side. Two separate teams found fragments of volcanic rock that were about 2.8 billion years old. One piece was even more ancient, dating back to 4.2 billion years. ‘To obtain a sample from this area is really important because it’s an area that otherwise we have no data for,’ said Christopher Hamilton, a planetary volcano expert at the University of Arizona who was not involved with the research.” (11/17/24)
“Japanese Princess Yuriko, the wife of wartime Emperor Hirohito’s brother and the oldest member of the imperial family, has died after her health deteriorated recently, palace officials said. Yuriko died Friday at the age of 101 in a Tokyo hospital, the Imperial Household Agency said. It did not announce the cause of death. Born in 1923 as an aristocrat, Yuriko married at age 18 to Prince Mikasa, the younger brother of Hirohito and the great-uncle of current Emperor Naruhito, months before the start of World War II. … Her death reduces Japan’s rapidly dwindling imperial family to 16 people, including four men, as the country faces the dilemma of how to maintain the royal lineage as conservatives in the governing party insist on retaining male-only succession.” (11/15/24)
“Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition won a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, results showed Friday, as voters repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis. Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation. His decision to immediately call polls and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition taking at least 123 seats in the 225-member assembly and on track to win many more. The coalition had a monumental 62 percent of the vote among the more than three-quarters of ballots counted so far, while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s party was well behind with only 18 percent.” (11/15/24)
“The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in six months last week as layoffs remain at relatively healthy levels. The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claim applications fell by 4,000 to 217,000 for the week of Nov. 9. That’s less than the 225,000 analysts forecast. The four-week average of weekly claims, which evens out some of the weekly ups and downs, fell by 6,250 to 221,000. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs in a given week.” (11/14/24)
“Iran is willing to negotiate with the United Nations atomic watchdog over its compliance with safeguards on its nuclear programme but will not do so ‘under pressure and intimidation,’ the country’s top diplomat says. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi in Tehran on Thursday, describing their interaction as ‘important and straightforward’ in a post on X. … After the meeting, Araghchi – who served as Iran’s chief negotiator in the talks that led to a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers – said his country ‘has never left the negotiation table on its peaceful’ nuclear programme. ‘The ball is in the EU/E3 court,’ Araghchi wrote, referring to the United Kingdom, Germany and France.” (11/14/24)
“There was a very X-Files vibe to a congressional hearing into unidentified anomalous phenomena on Wednesday. Witness testimony included eyebrow-raising claims about the existence of UAPs and alien technology on Earth. The hearing was focused on testimony with little substantive evidence behind some of the more extraordinary claims. The House Oversight Committee joint subcommittee hearing was called ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.’ The hearing aimed ‘to further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the United States government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded.’ The four witnesses were retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former Department of Defense official Luis Elizondo, NASA UAP independent study team member Michael Gold and journalist Michael Shellenberger.” (11/14/24)
