A 44-year-old Florida woman accused of using her mother’s identity to apply for hurricane aid told a Bradenton city employee that she looked so much younger because of botox, the police department said Saturday. Veronica Torres was charged with a third-degree felony count of filing a false public assistance claim after she applied for and received almost $8,000, the Bradenton Police Department said. She used her mother’s ID, name and social security number to file the assistance claim, saying that she was forced to move out of her home due to hurricane damage, police said. When the Torres arrived to pick up the check Thursday a city employee challenged her on her appearance compared to the age in the application. “Her explanation of ‘botox treatments’ failed to convince the emp...

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, commenting at a decisive moment after Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win and Russia’s grinding battlefield gains. However, Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal, and argued it was convenient for Moscow to sit down to talk while continuing to fight. “From our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means,” Zelenskyy said in a Ukrainian radio interview aired on Saturday. Moscow’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said on Thursday that Russia would be open to negotiations on an end to the war if they were initiated by Trump, although he ad...

In the days following the presidential election, a familiar strain of denialism and conspiracy thinking began to emerge in the corners of some social media platforms. On the right, familiar conspiracy theories about voting popularized by President-elect Donald Trump continued to circulate. But similar ideas also took hold among some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and have continued to spread. NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, found that nearly 800 social media accounts and video channels had published false or egregiously misleading claims about the 2024 election starting on Sept. 1, along with over 960 websites and more than 1,200 “partisan sites masquerading as politically neutral local news outlets.” Sam Howard, NewsGuard’s U.S. politics editor, said ...

A North Carolina lawmaker is going viral on TikTok after his office allegedly told a female constituent in an email to “move to China” after she raised concerns about the state’s abortion policy. The constituent, who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns for her safety, told NBC News on Saturday that she sent an email to Republican state Sen. Danny Britt on Nov. 7 to say that her family “desperately wants to expand.” “But because of You, [President-elect Donald] Trump and the republican party and the strict abortion laws in this country we cannot,” she wrote in the email, a copy of which was shared with NBC News. “Thanks for ruining our futures! You all are terrible people.” In response, Britt’s legislative assistant Camille McDougald allegedly told the constituent to ...

The human head that washed ashore in South Florida this week belonged to a missing 19-year-old swimmer, police said Friday. Victor Enrique Castaneda Jr. went missing Saturday near the jetty area at South Pointe Drive, Miami Beach police said. Castaneda was not found after a three-hour search, police said. The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner on Friday confirmed remains found Tuesday near Key Biscayne belonged to Castaneda, police said. Witnesses said that a good Samaritan saw Castaneda and his sister struggling in the water and saved the sister first, a police spokesperson said Saturday. By the time, the good Samaritan went back for Castaneda, he was nowhere to be found, the spokesperson said. A cause and manner of death for Castaneda was not released. The police sp...

Jordan Neeley’s death was a direct result of the chokehold Daniel Penny held him in, a medical examiner testified Friday, rebutting assertions from the defense team that the former Marine did not apply enough pressure to kill the subway rider and that his death could have had some other cause. “It’s my medical opinion that there are no alternative reasonable explanations for Mr. Neely’s death,” the medical examiner, Dr. Cynthia Harris, told jurors. Harris ruled Neely died from “compression of neck (chokehold)” days after his killing. More than a month later, a grand jury indicted Penny on a manslaughter charge. Attorneys for Penny, who is also charged with criminally negligent homicide, have refuted the medical examiner’s findings . In his opening statement, o...

During her murder trial this year, Ashley Benefield offered hours of emotional testimony about the abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her estranged husband — and about what happened in the terrifying moments before she fatally shot Doug Benefield in an act she described as self-defense. But not everyone was convinced by the former ballerina’s apparent tears. The assistant state attorney for Florida’s 12th Judicial District, Suzanne O’Donnell, told “Dateline” that, believing Ashley Benefield was performing — and not actually crying — she asked for the courtroom lights to be turned up. And she had Ashley step down from the witness stand to re-enact moment by moment her account of the fatal shooting of Doug, 58, at her home south of Tampa on Sept. 27, 2020, O’Donn...

When the compliance lawyer Alexandra Wrage was invited onto CNBC’s program “Squawk Box” in 2012 to give an anti-corruption argument on the air, she was surprised. “I remember laughing at the time, saying, ‘Well, is there somebody that you found who’s going to give the pro-corruption argument?’” Whom they brought on was the president of the Trump Organization, four years before he won the presidency of the country the first time. Donald Trump called the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, known as the FCPA, a “horrible law.” Passed in 1977, the FCPA made it a crime for companies with a connection to the U.S. to pay — or even offer to pay — bribes to government officials of other countries. The law was the first of its kind in the world, and a landmark. Most countries have fo...

Newsreaders made news of their own this week, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones lost his infamous Infowars empire, and a wrong answer on “Wheel of Fortune” ended up being a treat for viewers. Test your knowledge of the week in news, and take last week’s quiz here. Note: Thank you for visiting our website! We strive to keep you informed with the latest updates based on expected timelines, although please note that we are not affiliated with any official bodies. Our team is committed to ensuring accuracy and transparency in our reporting, verifying all information before publication. We aim to bring you reliable news, and if you have any questions or concerns about our content, feel free to reach out to us via email. We appreciate your trust and support!

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — In the months leading up to Election Day, political signs and billboards dotted much of the landscape surrounding this town in southwestern Ohio. By that weekend, many were gone. Residents, tired and frustrated after their hometown became a national flashpoint in the election over immigration, were trying to move past the intense scrutiny and refocus on the future. “It is what it is. We have to live with it,” Jean Philistin, a Haitian resident of Springfield, said of Donald Trump’s victory. “The American people, they wanted him and they elected him.” Only a couple of months ago, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, helped perpetuate false rumors about Haitian residents in Springfield eating pets and local wildlife even after city and...