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Exclusive: “There’s my challenge to Elon,” attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. “Make these vehicles so safe that I don’t have to do this anymore.”

A Tesla Cybertruck owner in Texas was unable to escape after rolling it into a ditch last year, experiencing an unthinkable demise as the batteries powering the $100,000 stainless steel SUV burst into flames with such intensity the helpless driver's skeletal system literally disintegrated, his family says.

Michael Sheehan, 47, "burned to death at 5,000°F – a fire so hot his bones experienced thermal fracture," according to a gut-wrenching lawsuit his widow and parents have now filed against the electric auto manufacturer headed up by billionaire Elon Musk.

"He was eight inches shorter in length than he was before he burned," attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. "That's thermal fracture."

Four years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would be the first state to build its own border wall, lawmakers have quietly stopped funding the project, leaving only scattered segments covering a small fraction of the border.

That decision, made in the waning hours of this year’s legislative session, leaves the future of the state wall unclear. Just 8% of the 805 miles the state identified for construction is complete, which has cost taxpayers more than $3 billion to date. The Texas Tribune reported last year that the wall is full of gaps that migrants and smugglers can easily walk around and mostly concentrated on sprawling ranches in rural areas, where illegal border crossings are less likely to occur.

State leaders suggested the federal government could pick up the effort. However, during President Donald Trump’s first term, when wall building was his top priority, his administration completed just 21 miles in Texas — about a third of what the state was able to build over the past four years.

The Tribune reported last year that the state’s wall program would take around 30 years and more than $20 billion to complete.

In early June, lawmakers finalized the state budget, approving $3.4 billion for ongoing border security efforts.

State Sen. Joan Huffman, the state’s lead budget writer, confirmed to The Texas Tribune on Thursday that none of that money will go toward the wall. Instead, the funds will flow largely to the Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard, the agencies tasked with apprehending migrants under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.

A listeria food poisoning outbreak that has killed three people and led to one pregnancy loss is linked to newly recalled heat-and-eat chicken fettucine alfredo products sold at Kroger and Walmart stores, federal health officials said late Tuesday.

The outbreak, which includes at least 17 people in 13 states, began last July, officials said. At least 16 people have been hospitalized.

FreshRealm, a large food producer with sites in California, Georgia and Indiana, is recalling products made before June 17. The recall includes these products, which were sold in the refrigerated sections of retail stores:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/46374992

Applicants will be vetted for “any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.”

UI

The U.S. has approved the world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, maker Gilead Sciences announced Wednesday. It’s the first step in an anticipated global rollout that could protect millions – although it’s unclear how many in the U.S. and abroad will get access to the powerful new option.

While a vaccine to prevent HIV still is needed, some experts say the shot — a drug called lenacapvir — could be the next best thing. It nearly eliminated new infections in two groundbreaking studies of people at high risk, better than daily preventive pills they can forget to take.

“This really has the possibility of ending HIV transmission,” said Greg Millett, public policy director at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.

The agenda for the new committee’s first meeting, posted Wednesday, shows it will be shorter than expected. Discussion of COVID-19 shots will open the session, but the agenda lists no vote on that. Instead, the committee will vote on fall flu vaccinations, on RSV vaccinations for pregnant women and children and on the use of a preservative named thimerosal that’s in a subset of flu shots.

It’s not clear who wrote the agenda. No committee chairperson has been named and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not comment.

Missing from the agenda are some heavily researched vaccine policy proposals the advisers were supposed to consider this month, including shots against HPV and meningococcal bacteria, said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Instead, the committee is talking about subjects “which are settled science,” she said.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, a jolting setback to transgender rights.

The justices’ 6-3 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to Tennessee’s.

In a dissent for the court’s three liberal justices that she summarized aloud in the courtroom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.”

The law also limits parents’ decision-making ability for their children’s health care, she wrote.

The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security ‘s trust funds have moved up as rising health care costs and new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to earlier projected depletion dates, according to an annual report released Wednesday.

The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.

Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.

Nearly six months after Joe Biden left the White House, Senate Republicans are still scrutinizing his presidency, kicking off the first in what’s expected to be a series of congressional hearings this year on his mental fitness in office.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee brought in three witnesses Wednesday — none of whom served in Biden’s administration — to scrutinize his time in office, arguing that Biden, his staff and the media must be held accountable. Democrats boycotted the hearing and criticized Republicans for “arm chair diagnosing” Biden when the committee could be looking into serious matters.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who co-chaired the hearing, said that they will aim to “shine a light on exactly what went on in the White House during Biden’s presidency.”

“It’s pretty incredible that the bear survived and was able to feed itself,” state bear specialist Cody Norton said Wednesday. “The neck was scarred and missing hair, but the bear was in much better condition than we expected it to be.”

The bear first turned up on a trail camera as a cub in 2023 in the northern Lower Peninsula. After that, the Department of Natural Resources was on the lookout for the elusive animal with a hard plastic lid around the neck, Norton said.

The bear appeared again on a camera in late May, still wearing the barrel lid, and the DNR responded by setting a cylindrical trap and safely luring him inside. The bear was anesthetized, and the lid was cut off on June 3. He eventually woke up and rambled away.

The acting chair of the federal agency that enforces workers rights acknowledged Wednesday that transgender workers are protected under civil rights laws but defended her decision to drop lawsuits on their behalf, saying her agency is not independent and must comply with President Donald Trump’s orders.

Andrea Lucas, who was first appointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2020 and elevated to chair in January, spoke at her confirmation hearing at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Her nomination to serve another five-year term as an EEOC commissioner requires Senate confirmation, though whether she stays on as chair will be up to Trump.

Republican senators praised her leadership, especially her commitment to rolling back Biden-era regulations and guidance on gender-identity rights, which Lucas has argued overstepped the EEOC’s authority.

Until now, we only had fragments of these cousins. Now we have face. Studying our evolutionary development and our sister-species is one of my favorite aspects of archeology. We’re constantly developing new information.

Side note: look up the initial presentation of Homo naledi. The leading archeologist did a phenomenal talk a couple of years ago (I think in December). It was really an exciting presentation. But I’m also pretty nerdy.

Iowa deputies extracted nearly 90 children from a Bible study camp last week and placed them in protective custody in response to reports of child abuse and endangerment, a state sheriff's office announced Monday.

Victor Bawi, the son of a minister at the church, said that no camp leaders have been arrested thus far. The family that runs the program denied allegations of child abuse or endangerment, though police are continuing an investigation into human trafficking.