HellsBelle

In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed.

"I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke," Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. "I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes."

She was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself.

A federal judge on Friday rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's request to sanction Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator's probe into his $44 billion takeover of Twitter.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco said sanctions over Musk's Sept. 10 absence were unnecessary, after the world's richest person testified on Oct. 3 and agreed to pay the SEC's $2,923 of travel costs.

"Because the present circumstances forestall any occasion for meaningful relief that the court could grant, the SEC's request is moot," Corley wrote.

The SEC had sought a declaration that Musk violated a May 31 court order to provide testimony.

It said having only to repay travel costs would not deter many other people from ignoring court orders, "much less someone of Musk's extraordinary means."

On October 28, personnel with the JBER – often pronounced, fittingly, as “J-Bear” – Wildlife Conservation Law Enforcement Office responded to reports of a bear in a storage room on base. Upon arriving at the scene, they found the room had been the site of a bruin snackfest, with a mess of open food packaging scattered about, according to a statement from the base.

Images sent to CNN by the base showed open MREs strewn across the floor, though it is unclear what flavors they were. Bears apparently indulged their sweet tooth, too, with an open packet of M&Ms visible in the mess.

In another incident on November 2, JBER personnel responded to a bear inside a motor pool building. Upon arrival at the scene, agents observed a 1-year-old bear sitting inside the driver’s side of a Humvee.

Personnel later opened several exterior doors and “employed tactics to get the bear’s attention” and subsequently drew the bear outside of the building, according to a statement from JBER.

The City of Winnipeg may need to find millions of dollars in next year's budget to cover overspending after its latest financial report shows the forecast deficit for this year has grown.

The city estimates its deficit for this year will be $23.4 million — down from a projected $40-million deficit in June, but an increase of more than $4.2 million from the $19.2-million deficit forecast in the last financial update, delivered in September.

The city has repeatedly drawn from its fiscal stabilization reserve — sometimes referred to as its "rainy day fund" — to balance the budget over the last few years, meaning there is nothing there to help this time.

A decision in the trial of Pat King, a key figure in what became the Freedom Convoy protest that paralyzed downtown Ottawa in early 2022, will be handed down Friday morning.

King faces multiple charges including mischief, intimidation and counselling others to commit crimes. Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland will now decide whether King's actions crossed legal boundaries.

If convicted, King could face significant penalties including up to 10 years in prison.

Frustrated shop owners in Toronto's Yonge and Wellesley area say the city is refusing to pick up mounds of garbage that regularly accumulates in an adjacent laneway because it's private property — even though the laneway's last known owner died more than a century ago.

In an emailed statement to CBC Toronto, city staff said: "The City of Toronto is aware of the litter/debris in the laneway near 6 St. Joseph Street. A complaint about this was received in September and the City has been working through the ownership rights of the laneway as it has been identified as private property."

But Adam Wynne, chair of the Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel, said he's already done the legwork and found there is no longer a legal owner, making the area behind St. Joseph Street an "orphaned laneway."

Wynne said Ontario Land Registry records show the lane last changed hands in 1882, when it was purchased by a William Jones for $9,000. Jones has been dead for at least a hundred years, Wynne said.

U.S. government researchers have found that a widely prescribed asthma drug originally sold by Merck & Co may be linked to serious mental health problems for some patients, according to a scientific presentation reviewed by Reuters.

The researchers found that the drug, sold under the brand name Singulair and generically as montelukast, attaches to multiple brain receptors critical to psychiatric functioning.

But by 2019, thousands of reports of neuropsychiatric episodes, including dozens of suicides, in patients prescribed the drug had piled up on internet forums and in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s tracking system. Such “adverse event” reports do not prove a causal link between a medicine and a side effect, but are used by the FDA to determine whether more study of a drug’s risks are warranted.

OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetize sexually explicit images and videos in a safe online environment. But a Reuters investigation found women who said they had been deceived, drugged, terrorized and sexually enslaved to make money from the site. The findings are based on redacted U.S. police complaints and international court files, lawsuits and interviews with prosecutors, sex-trafficking investigators and women who say they’ve been trafficked.

In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce porn for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.

Generating less attention are cases Reuters identified in the U.S., where some women endured weeks or months of alleged sexual slavery in ordinary-looking homes in quiet communities. The victim sometimes was a fiance or girlfriend, abused to pad the household budget, fund a couple’s retirement or cover children’s expenses, according to accounts in police or court files. Reuters is withholding the names of women who say they have been trafficked.

More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations reported Friday.

Bloodshed in the Middle East has been the single-biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“Before the year is even over, 2024 has become the deadliest on record for humanitarian personnel worldwide,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. He told reporters in Geneva the figure surpassed the previous record of 280 deaths for the whole of last year.

Oil company Phillips 66 has been federally indicted in connection with alleged violations of the Clean Water Act in California, authorities said Thursday.

The Texas-based company is accused of discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater containing excessive amounts of oil and grease, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

The company allegedly dumped the wastewater from its Carson oil refinery into the Los Angeles County sewer system in 2020 and 2021 and did not report the violations, prosecutors said.

In this study, the scientists simulated the process of spaced learning by examining two types of non-brain human cells — one from nerve tissue and one from kidney tissue — in a laboratory setting.

These cells were exposed to varying patterns of chemical signals, akin to the exposure of brain cells to neurotransmitter patterns when we learn new information.

The intriguing part? These non-brain cells also switched on a “memory gene” – the same gene that brain cells activate when they detect information patterns and reorganize their connections to form memories.

ProPublica reported in September on the deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, which the state maternal mortality review committee had determined were preventable. They were the first reported cases of women who died without access to care restricted by a state abortion ban, and they unleashed a torrent of outrage over the fatal consequences of such laws. The women’s stories became a central discussion in the presidential campaign and ballot initiatives involving abortion access in 10 states.

“Confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outside individuals,” Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 8 and addressed to members of the committee. “Even though this disclosure was investigated, the investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information.

“Therefore, effective immediately the current MMRC is disbanded, and all member seats will be filled through a new application process.”