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Booting is on the rise in New York City.

Drivers who don’t pay up for traffic tickets are more likely to have their cars ensnared than they have been at any point since before the pandemic all but shut down enforcement, according to city data.

New Yorkers' vehicles were immobilized 134,945 times in 2023. That’s more than quadruple the number of boots clamped onto wheels throughout the city in 2020, when only 31,379 vehicles were captured by the devices’ metal fangs.

Drivers who fail to pay $350 or more in parking or traffic camera tickets within 100 days of their issuance are subject to booting.

Many booted vehicles get towed away. If their owners don’t retrieve them, the city can sell them at auction.

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Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., who was expelled from the House of Representatives after being indicted on 23 federal counts including fraud and misusing campaign funds, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to two of the charges.

The Long Island Republican faces a mandatory two-year minimum sentence after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. But Judge Joanna Seybert estimated the term could range from six to eight years behind bars when he is sentenced on Feb. 7, 2025. Santos also agreed to pay nearly $374,000 in restitution.

Santos had faced trial in September on charges including laundering campaign funds to pay for his personal expenses, charging donors' credit cards without their consent, and receiving unemployment benefits while he was employed.

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Donald Trump was privately stewing over Brian Kemp earlier this year — long before he unloaded on him at a rally in Atlanta this month — offended by the Georgia governor’s absence from campaign events and fundraisers and other perceived slights.

“What’s the deal with Brian Kemp?” Trump asked companions on a flight back to Florida from a fundraiser held in the swing state in April, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion granted anonymity to describe a private matter. After all, Trump said, he’d “helped him get elected” in a competitive 2018 primary.

Kemp had skipped the fundraiser and a Georgia rally weeks earlier. And just days before, Kemp’s wife, Marty, had told a local television reporter — in a clip that no longer appears on the news station’s website — that she planned to write in her husband’s name for president, rather than vote for Trump.

Trump asked an aide on the plane to print off a copy of the news report. He called the Georgia first lady’s comments “terrible,” and asked others on the flight, including Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, how he should respond.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/27137940

A mother whose son was having a seizure in his Tennessee apartment said in a federal lawsuit that police and paramedics subjected the 23-year-old to “inhumane acts of violence” instead of treating him, then covered up their use of deadly force.

The death of Austin Hunter Turner was one of more than 1,000 nationally that an investigation led by The Associated Press identified as happening after police officers used physical force or weapons that were supposed to stop, but not kill, people.

The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court, came after AP reporters shared police body-camera video they had unearthed with Turner’s parents, who didn’t know it existed. That footage made the family doubt the official conclusion that a drug overdose killed their son.

Citing the AP’s reporting and many of the details it disclosed, the lawsuit focused on how officers’ own video contradicted the police version of what happened inside Turner’s small apartment in the northeastern Tennessee city of Bristol.

Anthony Williams stepped off his bicycle late Saturday morning and let out a soft groan as he sank into a red folding camp chair on the side of a gravel road. A fine layer of brown dust covered him, from his pink helmet all the way down to his patched, black leggings.

Someone handed him a paper plate with two tortillas filled with peanut butter and honey. He slowly took several bites then paused, too exhausted to notice the honey dripping onto his lap.

“I’m having a really hard time staying awake,” he said.

The 25-year-old St. Paul man had just bicycled 124 miles in roughly nine hours — but he was only halfway to the finish of The Day Across Minnesota, a 242-mile ultra-endurance cycling race known as “The DAMn.”

The goal is pretty straightforward: Push off at midnight from Gary, S.D., a hamlet on Minnesota’s western border, and pedal to Hager City, Wis., just across the Mississippi River from Red Wing, Minn., before midnight strikes again.

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Driving is an essential part of life in most parts of Tennessee. And if you don’t speak English — or a handful of other languages — getting a driver’s license can be difficult. That’s why a coalition of Tennessee-based immigrant rights groups is filing a federal complaint against the state.

The Our State, Our Languages Coalition alleges that the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security and Driver Services Division fail to provide sufficient language access to the driver’s exam, violating civil rights law.

At the core of the coalition’s complaint is guidance which requires agencies that receive federal funds to provide meaningful access to their services. Federal guidance states agencies should provide translation or interpretation if at least 1,000 people or 5% of the population have limited English proficiency. In Tennessee, that would include Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Kurdish, and more, said the coalition.

Tennessee’s written driving test is already offered in Spanish, German, Japanese and Korean. However, most of those language options are linked to auto manufacturers moving to the state. The road test is offered only in English.

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AMNÉVILLE, France (Velo) – Demi Vollering and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift peloton won’t forget the race’s return to its native land in a hurry.

After avoiding a huge pile-up during four days of Benelux road furniture, a left hand bend after a roundabout outside Amnéville led to carnage at the end of stage 5.

A crash 20 riders from the front of a speeding peloton with 6km to go took down fifteen riders in a tangle of bodies and bikes and changed the course of the 2024 race.

Race leader Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx-Protime) and second-placed Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) both hit the deck. Pieterse was up quickly, despite cuts to her hip, knee, elbow, chin and back, only losing 28 seconds come the finish.

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After a doctor suffered a fatal allergic reaction at a Disney World restaurant, Disney is trying to get her widower's wrongful death lawsuit tossed by pointing to the fine print of a Disney+ trial he signed up for years earlier.

Jeffrey Piccolo is representing the estate of his late wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, a doctor at New York's NYU Langone hospital who died of an allergic reaction while visiting the Florida resort in October.

The couple, along with Piccolo's mother, went to dinner on the night of Oct. 5 at Raglan Road Irish Pub, a restaurant located within a shopping and dining complex called Disney Springs.

Tangsuan was "highly allergic" to dairy and nuts, and they chose that particular restaurant in part because of its promises about accommodating patrons with food allergies, according to the lawsuit filed in a Florida circuit court.

The complaint details the family's repeated conversations with their waiter about Tangsuan's allergies. The family allegedly raised the issue upfront, inquired about the safety of specific menu items, had the server confirm with the chef that they could be made allergen-free and asked for confirmation "several more times" after that.

"When the waiter returned with [Tangsuan's] food, some of the items did not have allergen free flags in them and [Tangsuan] and [Piccolo] once again questioned the waiter who, once again, guaranteed the food being delivered to [Tangsuan] was allergen free," the lawsuit reads.

The three of them ate and then went their separate ways: Piccolo brought the leftovers to their room, while his wife and mother headed for the stores. After about 45 minutes, Tangsuan "began having severe difficulty breathing and collapsed to the floor." Bimbo bread is displayed on a shelf at a market in Anaheim, Calif., in 2003. On Tuesday, U.S. federal food safety regulators warned Bimbo Bakeries USA - which includes brands such as Sara Lee, Oroweat, Thomas', Entenmann's and Ball Park buns and rolls - to stop using labels that say its products contain potentially dangerous allergens when they don't.

She self-administered an epi-pen, and an observer called 911. The Piccolos, who had tried calling her multiple times, were eventually told she had been rushed to the hospital. They went to meet her and, after a period of waiting, were told that she had died.

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The days of the perfect-looking yard -- often lawns that guzzle copious amounts of water to stay green -- may soon be gone.

Homeowners are increasingly opting to "re-wilding" their homes, incorporating native plants and decreasing the amount of lawn care to make their properties more sustainable and encourage natural ecosystems to recover, according to Plan It Wild, a New York-based native landscape design company. ...