Politics

Former Miami-Dade Congressman David Rivera has been charged for a second time with secretly working as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States.

But this time, Rivera is accused of trying to lobby a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of a wealthy Venezuelan businessman who authorities say paid the former U.S. representative $5.5 million while trying to get himself removed from a federal government sanctions list.

Rivera, 59, was charged Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. with failing to register as a foreign agent for Raúl Gorrín, a Caracas TV mogul close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and with laundering lobbying payments through Rivera’s firm, Interamerican Consulting, Inc.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued the operator of Zelle, as well as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo "for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud" at the payment provider, according to a statement on Friday.

CFPB, the government's consumer financial watchdog agency, alleges customers of the top three banks lost more than $870 million over the seven years that Zelle has been in existence due to the banks' failures to protect them.

Among the CFPB allegations are that Zelle and the banks failed to implement proper fraud prevention safeguards, allowing scammers to proliferate, and that banks failed to properly investigate customer complaints about Zelle.

Zelle is operated by a company called Early Warning Services, which is co-owned by seven of the largest banks in the U.S.: Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

Sean O'Brien, the union's president, said in a statement late Wednesday that "if your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed." The Teamsters had given Amazon until December 15 to agree to contract talks.

"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," said O'Brien. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they've pushed workers to the limit and now they're paying the price. This strike is on them."

Remember that one teacher who made going to school fun and inspired you to pursue your passions? Students at a new charter school in Arizona won’t, because they don’t get to have teachers. Instead, the two hours of academic instruction they receive each day—yes, just two hours—will be directed entirely by AI.

By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight. Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.

Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”

In Amite County, about 900 children attend the local public schools — which, as of 2021, were 16% white. More than 600 children attend two private schools — which were 96% white. Other, mostly white students go to a larger segregation academy in a neighboring county.

“It’s staggering,” said Warren Eyster, principal of Amite County High until this school year. “It does create a divide.”

The difference between those figures, 80 percentage points, is one way to understand the segregating effect of private schools — it shows how much more racially isolated students are when they attend these schools.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office cannot continue prosecuting the Georgia election interference case involving President-elect Donald Trump, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled.

However, the court declined to dismiss the case itself. Fulton County prosecutors quickly notified the court that they intend to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

"While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard," the appeals court judges wrote. The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to disqualify Willis.

The results of an ethics investigation into now-former congressman Matt Gaetz will be made public after a secret vote to share the report in the final days of 2024.

Members of the House Ethics Committee voted again earlier this month, reversing a decision to withhold the findings of a long-running probe into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.

The report is expected to be made public as lawmakers prepare to leave Washington for the holidays, CNN reported. Gaetz, 42, responded on X, arguing his actions in his thirties were “not criminal” and he now leads a different life.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday temporarily banned drone flights over 22 areas across New Jersey amid complaints of strange and often bright drones in the night sky.

“At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure,” the FAA said in a statement to CNBC.

The TFRs will last until Jan. 17 and cover large parts of central and northern New Jersey, including Elizabeth, Camden and Jersey City, the second most populous city in the Garden State.

His claims became the basis of an impeachment investigation in Congress which centred around the false claims that the Bidens made millions in bribes from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

But Smirnov admitted he made the story up, and pleaded guilty in Los Angeles on Monday as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

Smirnov, a dual US-Israeli citizen, had been an FBI informant for more than a decade when he made the allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, saying that Joe and Hunter Biden each received $5m from the energy company.

Today, the US Environmental Protection Agency granted a pair of waivers to California, allowing the Golden State to continue regulating vehicle-caused air pollution within its borders. The first is for the California Air Resources Board's Advanced Clean Cars II regulations, which apply to light- and medium-duty vehicles like passenger cars, SUVs, and smaller trucks. The second waiver is for regulations that control the amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) that can be emitted by heavy-duty vehicles as well as off-road vehicles.

The Clean Air Act allows states to apply for a waiver from the EPA to set their own emissions standards in cases where the federal regulations are insufficient to prevent deleterious pollution. The state applied for the latest waivers late in 2023, and after a public comment period and then a review by the agency, the EPA decided to approve them.

Christmas came early in Connecticut as the governor announced nearly 23,000 residents have had all or some of their medical debt wiped clean thanks to a new state initiative.

Gov. Ned Lamont said on Monday his administration partnered with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to negotiate with hospitals and other providers to eliminate large portfolios of "qualifying medical debt" by using public investments as leverage.

The governor's office said there is no application process and requests can't be made, but patients who qualify have an income that is at or below four times the federal poverty level. Or they have medical debt total that is 5% or more of their income.

The FTC’s September 2024 complaint alleges Rytr’s service generated detailed reviews that contained specific, often material details that had no relation to the user’s input, so almost certainly would be false for the users who copied them and published them online. Accordingly, the complaint charges Rytr violated the FTC Act by providing subscribers with the means to generate false and deceptive written content for reviews. It also alleges Rytr engaged in an unfair business practice by offering a service that is likely to pollute the marketplace with a glut of fake reviews.

The final order settling the Commission’s complaint prohibits Rytr from engaging in similar illegal conduct in the future. It also bars the company from advertising, promoting, marketing, or selling any service dedicated to – or promoted as – generating consumer reviews or testimonials.