HellsBelle

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.”

As homelessness has reached crisis levels, more cities are clearing tents and encampments in operations commonly called sweeps. Since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June allowed cities to punish people for sleeping outside, even if there’s no shelter available, some have made their encampment policies more punitive and increased the frequency of sweeps.

Some cities have programs to store what they take, sometimes created in response to lawsuits. In theory, these storage programs are supposed to protect people’s property rights and make it easy to get their possessions back.

In reality, they rarely accomplish either objective, according to a ProPublica investigation of the policies in regions with the largest homeless populations.

Destiny Funk said people pretending to work for Manitoba Hydro attempted to lure her into making a deposit on a Bitcoin machine by using a lot of personal information and elaborate theatrics to make everything seem "very realistic."

On Monday afternoon, the 26-year-old received a call by someone claiming to be a Hydro technician, telling her they had a work order to cut her power within the hour due to unpaid bills.

Funk said the person had her name and address, and that it all seemed very legitimate.

Marion Willis, founder and director of the organization, told CBC News that over the last two weeks, nine encampments have been dismantled, helping at least a dozen people to pack their belongings and relocate into shelter spaces and other forms of housing.

"There's no safety, there's no hope at the encampments, and that just elevates the chance that a person will succumb to a fentanyl overdose or violence," she said.

"We have noticed that the shelter system is completely full, that's why it's so important that we have an emergency response, but even more important we have a housing response," Blaikie Whitecloud from Siloam Mission said.

"We're not going to emergency shelter our way out of homelessness."

In 2022, New York City’s jails commissioner, Louis Molina, issued a dire warning to local lawmakers: fentanyl was pouring into Rikers Island through the mail, he said, spurring an overdose crisis among the jail’s detainees and putting guards at risk.

As evidence of the insidious threat, Molina passed around a child’s drawing of a reindeer, one of hundreds of seized items he said had been “literally soaked in the drug and mailed to people in custody.”

But that claim was based on faulty drug-testing kits with a stunning 85% false positive rate, according to a report released Wednesday by the city’s Department of Investigation. The report found the city vastly overstated the prevalence of fentanyl sent by mail to detainees.

When investigators retested 71 pieces of mail initially flagged by field tests as containing fentanyl, only 10 actually showed traces of the drug. The drawing of a reindeer highlighted by Molina was fentanyl-free.

A woman told police that she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a detailed investigative report made public late Wednesday.

Hegseth, a Fox News personality and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said.

News of the allegations surfaced last week when local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he had spoken at a Republican women’s event in Monterey.

Sarah McBride, the first out transgender member of Congress who won her election just weeks ago, posted a statement on social media, several hours before Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.

In the post, which features a photo of McBride in a bathroom, McBride says “Here, I am using a women’s restroom in North Carolina that I’m technically barred from being in.”

The statement continues:

They say I’m a pervert They say I’m a man dressed as a woman. They say I’m a threat to their children. They say I’m confused, They say l’m dangerous

We’re all just people trying to pee in peace.

After two years of Pierre Poilievre as their leader, many Conservative MPs say they are much less free now than they were before his arrival.

The man who promised during his leadership run to make Canada "the freest country in the world" maintains tight control over the actions of his caucus members.

Normally loquacious Conservatives close up like oysters and dare not speak without their leader's approval. MPs are watched by Conservative staffers both inside and outside Parliament. Elected representatives are publicly called to order for deviating from the party line.

"Everybody is being watched. What we say, what we do, who we talk to. We're told not to fraternize with MPs from the other parties. And that's not normal," a Conservative source said.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper has been appointed the new chairman of the board of AIMCo, the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, the Alberta government said Wednesday.

"We're incredibly fortunate that Mr. Harper has agreed to take on this leadership role with AIMCo," Premier Danielle Smith said in a news release.

"Our ambitious goal of building the Heritage Savings Trust Fund to more than $250 billion in the next 25 years requires strong governance oversight, which he will provide."

The Pentagon was publicly dismissive of Trump’s pledge to employ the military to conduct mass deportations. “The Department does not comment on hypotheticals or speculate on what may occur,” a Defense Department spokesperson told The Intercept.

Behind the scenes, officials were exasperated. “It’s absolutely insane,” said one Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press on the matter. “I never thought I’d see the day when this was a ‘serious’ — put that in scare quotes — policy.” He said that the legal and logistical hurdles would be immense, and the proposal was “unrealistic and unserious.”

Another Defense Department official in a different office, who was also not authorized to speak with the press, had almost exactly the same reaction. “It’s insanity,” he said of Trump’s announcement.

In the five and a half years since the Chicago Police Department agreed to extensive oversight from a federal judge, there have been bursts of activity to address the brutality and civil rights violations that led to the agreement.

Court hearings: more than a hundred. Meetings: hundreds. Money: hundreds of millions in Chicago taxpayer dollars allocated to making the court-ordered reforms, known as a consent decree, a reality.

Chicago police haven’t crafted a system for officers to work with residents to address threats to public safety.

They haven’t completed a mandatory study of where officers are assigned throughout the city and whether changes would help thwart crime.

And they have failed to move forward with a plan to alert police brass about which officers have been accused of misconduct more than once and might need counseling, retraining or discipline.

Apple will ask a federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice's case accusing the iPhone maker of unlawfully dominating the smartphone market, in the latest Big Tech antitrust showdown.

U.S. District Judge Julien Neals in Newark, New Jersey, is scheduled to hear arguments from lawyers for Apple, and from prosecutors who say the company locks users in and keeps competition out by limiting interoperability between the iPhone and third-party apps and devices.

Apple has moved to dismiss the case, saying its limitations on developers' access to its technology were reasonable, and that forcing it to share technology with competitors would chill innovation.