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Washington The almost two-thirds of federal employees who are still permitted to work from home, eighteen months after the pandemic ended, may be the first targets of Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk's new initiative to improve government efficiency. In downtown Washington, vacant government office space is expensive to maintain and a major source of annoyance for Mayor Muriel Bowser. She told reporters last week that encouraging federal employees to return to downtown Washington is at the top of her agenda and that she had asked to meet with President-elect Donald Trump. One major concern is how to ensure that our federal personnel returns to work, Bowser stated, adding that she hopes to collaborate with the federal government to revitalize our community. The Office of Management and Budge...

NEW DELHI Residents inIndias northern states woke up to another day ofpoor air qualityon Tuesday, as a layer of dense fog shrouded most of the region, andpollution in the capital, Delhi,remained severe. India battles air pollution every winter as cold, heavy air traps dust, emissions and smoke from farm fires started illegally in the adjoining, farming states of Punjab and Haryana. Theair quality index(AQI) touched a peak of 491 in Delhi on Monday, forcing the government to introduce restrictions on vehicle movement and construction activities, and schools to conduct classes online. On Tuesday, Delhi s 24-hour AQI reading was at 488 on a scale of 500, India s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said, and at least five stations in the capital reported an AQI of 500. Visibility dropped ...

After fainting on the job with a low hemoglobin count in early January 2021, Lenna Ray, then 67, went to HCA Florida Citrus Hospital in Inverness, Florida, for care. Ray was moved to a private room in the emergency department where, over the next four hours, Hiram Bonilla, a male nurse, repeatedly sexually assaulted her, court and police records show. He was putting stickers on my chest for an EKG and he said, You got pretty titties, Ray recalled in an interview with NBC News. By the time he finished that statement, he was on me. Hospital video reviewed by NBC News shows Bonilla entered Ray s room 28 times over those four hours, every nine minutes on average. Heavily medicated, Ray told hospital staff what Bonilla had done, but they pooh-poohed her, she testified, with one staffer tell...

A company tied to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones filed Monday to disputethe saleof the Infowars website to the parody site The Onion, calling it improper and unfair. In the morning, First United American Cos., a limited liability company that runs Jones online supplements store, filed an emergency motion to disqualify the winning bid of The Onion s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, to purchase the Infowars media empire and other assets. The filing alleged that the bankruptcy trustee improperly colluded with Connecticut families who wonnearly $1.5 billionin legal judgments against Jones after he called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax. The company running Jones online store had placed a competing bid against The Onion to purchase the estate. In its filing, FUAC said its final...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand Tens of thousands ofNew Zealandersrallied in front of Parliament on Tuesday in one of the country s largest ever protests to oppose a bill, whichopponents say seeks to dilute the rights of Maoriand threatens to set race relations back decades. Massive crowds estimated by the police at 42,000 gathered at Parliament, where the Treaty Principles Bill was introduced earlier this month by legislators who want to reinterpret a 184-year-old treaty signed between the British andIndigenous Maori. While the bill lacks enough support to pass, critics see in it a desire to reverse decades of policies that aimed to empower Maori, who make up around 20% of the 5.3 million population but have higher levels of deprivation and incarceration and worse health outcomes than the broad...

LONDON Britain sKing Richard IIIwas immortalized with the Shakespeare line A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse. Now state-of-the-art technology has revealed what it may have sounded like if he did indeed utter those words just before his death in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth. Unlike the upper-class tones of hismodern successors, the re-created king's voice has a more common and earthy twang as he recites a medieval manuscript in a display that opened Sunday at the Theatre Royal in the U.K s ancient city of York. The project, which is 10 years in the making, was the brainchild of British vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm, who approached a team based at Face Lab at the U.K.'s Liverpool John Moores University and has since enlisted the help of leading specialists across a number of...

Russian PresidentVladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for his country's use of nuclear weaponsTuesday, days afterthe United States allowed Ukraine to strike inside Russia using American missiles. The Kremlin announced that Putin had approved anupdated nuclear doctrinea document that governs how Russia uses its nuclear arsenal including the declaration that Moscow could unleash a nuclear strike if subject to an attack by a non-nuclear country that has the support of a nuclear state. The nuclear doctrine update was required to bring the document in line with the current political situation, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency in comments published early Tuesday. Peskov outlined Moscow's new threat in light of Washington's shift in policy: That the u...

Legendary Chicago Bulls forward Bob Love, one of the first stars the team had, has died at the age of 81 after a battle with cancer. Love spent the bulk of his NBA career with the Bulls, then spent decades as a team ambassador in a variety of roles after his playing career ended. Bob was a true legend and a beloved member of our family,the Bulls said in a statement. Originally selected by Cincinnati in the 1965 NBA Draft, Love was one of the first star players for the Bulls after they entered the league. Love ultimately played nine seasons with the Bulls, averaging 21.3 points and 6.8 rebounds per game in 592 career games with Chicago. He finished in the top-10 in MVP voting on two occasions, and was a three-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA selection. He was the second Bulls player to ev...

HONG KONG AHong Kongcourt sentenced dozens ofleading pro-democracy figuresto up to 10 years in prison Tuesday in thesingle largest trialunder anational security lawthat critics say has been used to all but eliminate political dissent in the Chinese territory. Benny Tai, 60, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong who co-organized an unofficial primary election at the center of the case, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the longest of the 45 sentencesand the longest since the national security law was introduced in 2020. The others ranged from four years and two months to seven years and nine months. The defendants had faced up to life imprisonment under the national security law, which Beijing imposed in response to pro-democracy demonstrations that roiled Hong Kong for...

Paul Teal, a TV and stage actor who appeared on shows including One Tree Hill, died Friday in Raleigh, N.C. He was 35. Teal s death was confirmed by a representative for the actor, with the cause of death revealed as cancer. Emilia Torello, Teal s partner,shared with TMZthat he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in April. The news was first broken by Torello after she shared more about the actor s death online. You were my soulmate, my soon-to-be-husband, my rock, and my future,Torello wrote in a post on Instagram. You were taken too soon, in a battle that you fought bravely without fail. While a part of me died with you, I promise to fight to find joy in life as hard as you fought to live every single day. Teal first appeared on television with his guest role as Josh on ...