News

Engadget reports: Since 2012, Yelp has caught nearly 5,000 businesses engaging in shady tactics, like paying customers for favorable ratings or hiring people to write phony reviews. Now, the company has a new tool to help people — and maybe the feds — track businesses that have tried to manipulate their standing on the review platform. Yelp is releasing a …

The Texas Tribune reports: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin teased a potential third-party presidential run, threatening to throw the 2024 race into question by campaigning as an independent, while speaking at the closing remarks for the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival. Manchin also didn’t deny plans to run for reelection as a Democratic senator for West Virginia. Tribune co-founder Evan Smith attempted …

The Associated Press reports: Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, on Saturday made a surprise appearance at the Plains Peanut Festival in their Georgia hometown, the Carter Center wrote in a social media post on X. The former president is 98 and has been in home hospice care since February. He turns 99 on Oct. 4. The former …

The New York Times reports: A brown-and-white capsule that spent the last seven years swooping through the solar system — and sojourning at an asteroid — has finally come home. And it has brought a cosmic souvenir: a cache of space rock that scientists are hungry to get their hands on. On Sunday morning, those scientists waited eagerly as the …

USA Today reports: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan says she hopes colleagues will adopt an ethics “code of conduct,” while a new report details a relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and conservative political activists. New ethics rules would “go far in persuading other people that we were adhering to the highest standards of conduct,” Kagan said during a Friday speech …

The Weather Channel reports: Tropical Storm Ophelia has formed off the Southeast U.S. coast, and it will spread heavy rain, strong wind gusts, high surf, and coastal flooding up the Eastern Seaboard into the weekend. O​phelia became the 16th storm of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, including an unnamed subtropical storm in mid-January. The National Hurricane Center has issued a …

The Associated Press reports: A military pilot whose advanced fighter jet went temporarily missing over the weekend is heard repeatedly requesting an ambulance in a perplexing 911 call from the South Carolina home where he had parachuted to safety. The four-minute recording captures the bizarre circumstances for the three unidentified people involved: a North Charleston resident calmly explaining that a …

ProPublica reports: On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising …

The New York Daily News reports: Google is being sued by the family of a North Carolina man who drowned after he drove off a collapsed bridge while following outdated directions from the Maps app. Philip Paxson was driving home from his daughter’s birthday party on Sept. 30, 2022 when his car plunged into Snow Creek in Hickory — about …

ABC News reports: An asteroid NASA’s been tracking for nearly 25 years could impact Earth in the future, a new report reveals. First discovered in 1999, Bennu, the near-Earth asteroid, could possibly drift into the planet’s orbit and could hit the planet by September 2182, according to the OSIRIS-REx science team. Bennu passes near Earth every six years and has …

NBC News reports: Ray Epps, a Jan. 6 participant whose removal from the FBI’s Capitol Violence webpage sparked conspiracy theories that he was a federal informant, was charged in connection with the Capitol attack on Tuesday. Epps is charged with one misdemeanor count, disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds. He was charged by information, which suggests that he plans …

The Charleston Post & Courier reports: The hunt for a missing Marine Corps fighter jet ended with wreckage found in a rural expanse of farmland and swamp on Sept. 18 after a massive search across South Carolina for the elusive $90 million plane. An amalgam of military, law enforcement and civilian searchers scoured a sprawling expanse from the Lowcountry to …

Axios reports: The U.S. Marine Corps is asking for the public’s help in locating an F-35B Lightning II jet after the pilot ejected during a “mishap.” Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina said Sunday that “emergency response teams are still trying to locate the F-35,” worth upwards of $80 million. The pilot was in stable condition after being taken to …

The New York Times reports: A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, “above all Poles and Jews,” were being killed in furnaces every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland. Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler was …

The Portland Press Herald reports: President Biden has approved an emergency declaration request in Maine ahead of Hurricane Lee’s expected impacts on the state. Gov. Janet Mills declared a state of emergency Thursday in anticipation of the storm and asked Biden to issue the Presidential Emergency Disaster Declaration, which would allow the state to access federal resources and personnel to …

Axios reports: Hurricane Lee may pass perilously close to Maine and over the Canadian Maritimes this weekend, and it will swipe eastern Massachusetts on Friday night and Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said. Computer model runs, fed with data from hurricane hunter aircraft, depict the storm moving in a generally northward motion, then hooking closer to the U.S. coast as …

The Anchorage Daily News reports: U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s husband, Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr., died early Wednesday morning after a plane crash in Alaska, according to a statement from her office. Mary Peltola is returning home to be with their family, according to the statement. The only aviation fatality in Alaska reported Wednesday involved a Piper PA-18-150 Super Cub that …

The Weather Channel reports: L​ee is a large and powerful hurricane and will begin to track northward midweek. Its exact track will determine where Lee’s rain, wind and coastal flooding impacts will be felt, potentially including in Bermuda, parts of New England and Atlantic Canada. R​egardless of Hurricane Lee’s exact track, rip currents and high surf will spread from the …

The Associated Press reports: Kroger and Albertsons will sell more than 400 stores and other assets for about $1.9 billion, seeking to clear a path for a merger with antitrust regulators reviewing a deal that would unify two of the nation’s largest grocery chains. The 413 stores are being sold to to C&S Wholesale Grocers. The grocery chains say they …

Changing America reports: Is it safe to use a COVID-19 test that is past the expiration? The answer, it turns out, depends on what brand of test you have. The FDA has extended that date for a number of different at-home COVID-19 tests. The expiration date for multiple lots of BinaxNow COVID-19 antigen tests that were sold at CVS, for …