With a shutdown deadline approaching in less than two days, Donald Trump is against a bipartisan government funding deal. Life expectancy in the United States is at its greatest point since the start of the Covid epidemic. The moon may also be millions of years older than previously believed, according to a recent study.
What to know today is as follows.
Trump opposes funding bill as shutdown deadline inches closer
President-elect Donald Trump chastised a bipartisan government financing bill Tuesday, urging Congress to find a different way ahead, leaving its future uncertain. In the event that Congress does nothing, the government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. As of right now, there is no backup plan.
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Republicans need to be tough and smart. In a joint statement, Trump and JD Vance, the vice president-elect, said. Call the Democrats out if they threaten to shut down the government unless we give them what they want. Disaster relief and assistance to our farmers are being delayed by [President Joe] Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer.
Trump made it apparent that he wanted the legislation to pass under Biden’s leadership by demanding that it include an increase in the debt ceiling, which neither party had even been discussing.
The political fates of Republicans who disregarded Trump’s warnings regarding the package were later imperiled. Trump stated in a post on Truth Social that any Republican who would be so foolish as to do this ought to and will be put forward for primaries.
Trump and Vance’s rejection followed criticism of the plan from businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who head Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. Musk spewed lies, uploaded memes, and repeatedly branded it illegal in a barrage of posts on X. Musk, for instance, stated that a 40% salary increase will be recommended by Congress; however, the maximum possible pay increase for the upcoming year was already established at 3.8%.
The government would remain open until March 14 under the proposed continuing resolution. Among other things, it provides economic support for farmers and disaster relief for regions hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Go here to read the entire story.
More politics news
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Lawyers and pro-democracy advocates are in the early stages of
building a nationwide network of specialists
accountants, employment experts, public relations professionals and even psychologists aimed at defending and protecting people who may be targeted for retribution once Trump takes office, according to multiple people involved in the effort.
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ICE is
dealing with a $230 million budget shortfall
, which could delay Trump s plans for mass deportations.
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Robert F. Kennedy s biggest hurdle to secure his confirmation as secretary of health and human services is convincing Republicans that he doesn t hold extreme views on vaccines. His decades of anti-vaccine rhetoric
could work against him
.
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An $895 million defense spending package, which includes a ban on coverage for gender-affirming care for transgender children of military service members, passed in the Senate and
is now headed to President Biden s desk
.
Gis le Pelicot’s ex-husband and 46 men found guilty of raping her
Dozens of men including the ex-husband of Gis le Pelicot werefound guilty of raping and sexually assaulting herin a historic trial that shocked France.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, who pled guilty to drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over the span of a decade, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Roger Arata, the lead judge in the court in the southern town of Avignon.
According to NBC News’ British broadcasting partner Sky News, 46 additional men were convicted guilty of rape, two of attempted rape, and two of sexual assault in the well-known case. They received penalties ranging from three to eight years, while their ages ranged from 26 to 74.
As her ex-husband’s verdict was delivered, Pelicot watched from the courtroom, where she was flanked by police officers and many other defendants.
The case has incensed France and triggered what some see as the second wave of the #MeToo movement in France. Women said the atmosphere is different this time, despite the country’s history of supporting men.
After a young woman was shot dead in Texas, a medical school harvested her body parts
Aurimar Iturriago Villegas left Venezuela hoping to lift her family out of poverty. But within two months of her arrival in Texas in 2022, she was dead, shot in a road rage incident near Dallas as she sat in the back seat of a car.
Unbeknownst to her family, county officials transferred Aurimar’s body to a nearby medical school, where they dissected it and gave financial amounts to the areas that weren’t harmed by the bullet that hit her head: $900 for her chest and $703 for her legs.
In a Dallas cemetery, Aurimar’s remains were burned and interred in a field with strangers while her mother frantically tried to get her dead daughter sent back to Venezuela, not realizing that her body had been transformed into a commodity for scientific purposes.
Arelis Coromoto Villegas, Aurimar’s mother, didn’t find out her daughter had been used for research until two years after her death, when the names of hundreds of people whose unclaimed bodies were sent to the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth were published by NBC News and Noticias Telemundo as part of a larger investigation into the U.S. body industry.
Speaking in Spanish during an interview from her home in a small hamlet in western Venezuela, Arelis described the situation as extremely unpleasant. She is not a small animal that should be killed or dismembered.
Go here to read the entire story.
Read more from NBC News Dealing the Dead series:
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How did unclaimed bodies end up in the hands of a major biotech company? Boston Scientific s Relievant Medsystems used at least 25 unclaimed bodies for training, including that of a murdered 21-year-old woman whose family was fighting to bring her home. The company said it didn t know.
Read the full story.
Putin says he will ask Assad about the missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice
Vladimir Putin has promised to ask Syria s former president Bashar al-Assad about missing American journalist Austin Tice in response to a question from NBC News Keir Simmonsat his annual end-of-year press conference.
I promise to ask this question, the Russian leader said when asked about U.S. journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in the country 12 years ago.
Assad fled to Russia earlier this month after being ousted by a rapid rebel advance that ended the country s 13-year-long civil war. Even so, despite harboring Assad, Putin said he has yet to catch up with his ally in person.
Follow live updates from his press conference here.
U.S. life expectancy rises by nearly a full year
U.S. life expectancy rose to 78.4 years in 2023, the highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a new CDC report. That s a significant rise nearly a full year from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022.
The biggest change in 2023? The number of Covid deaths, which fell significantly. Whereas the virus was the fourth leading cause of death in 2022, it was the 10th in 2023, the report said. However, that doesn t mean the threat from Covid is gone completely, said Ken Kochanek, a co-author of the report, adding that it s not yet known whether deaths will continue to fall before leveling off at a more predictable annual rate.
The top five causes of death in the U.S. last year were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries (which includes drug overdoses), stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases.Read moreabout the report.
Read All About It
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The two victims
who died in Monday’s shooting
at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin have been named as 42-year-old teacher Erin M. West and 14-year-old student Rubi P. Vergara.
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A person in Louisiana
was hospitalized with bird flu
, marking the country s first severe human infection.
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A mother of newborn twins
was deported after she missed an immigration hearing
while recovering from an emergency C-section, ICE said.
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So-called murder hornets
have been eradicated from the U.S.
, five years after the invasive species was first identified in Washington state.
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The College Football Playoffs are back but with an expanded 12-team bracket.
Here are the games to watch
tomorrow and Saturday.
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Cookie the Ty gingerbread plushie might seem ugly to some, but his big blue eyes and earnest smile
have won him viral fame
and a cult following.
Staff Pick:
A re-melting masked the moon s true age, study suggests
The moon may be more than 100 million years older than most scientists thought. That s the takeaway from a new study that found a dramatic re-melting event early in the moon s history could have masked its true age. The study found thatthe moon is likely 4.51 billion years oldnot 4.35 billion years old, as many scientists previously thought. Though the difference may seem relatively small, nailing down what occurred in those chaotic early days of the solar system is key to understanding how the planets in our celestial neighborhood came to be.Denise Chow,science reporter
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Your nails can get more brittle and grow slower as you age, but a few products can help keep them looking strong.Here s what to get.Plus, here arethe 18 best treatmentsfor dark under-eye circles, as recommended by dermatologists.
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