Last Thursday, an employee at a Philadelphia Starbucks called the police on two black men who were waiting for the arrival of a business partner without having ordered anything at the counter. When police arrived, the men were arrested for trespassing. A bystander caught the encounter on video, which showed the men resigned to their fate as other white patrons protested the arrest, and the incident went viral.

Starbucks is now in full-on damage-control mode, with plans to shut down its stores ...

A proposal to weaken protections against aquatic invaders in the Great Lakes and across the country failed in a procedural vote in the Senate Wednesday, despite pressure from shipping industry interests that argued for the repeal of regulations it sees as burdensome.

An otherwise routine Coast Guard reauthorization bill that includes the weakening of those regulations fell short by four votes in a key procedural tally, 56-42, as most Great Lakes senators stood firm against allowing the bill to ...

It took just three months for Denholm Spurr’s life to plummet, for the newly graduated straight-A student to find himself exchanging sex for somewhere to live. He did not know what he would lose, that what awaited him was a succession of men who would drug and abuse him, that he would be infected with HIV, and, on several occasions, raped.

Sometimes the men – some of the landlords – had no need to use force. “I didn’t have the strength to say no,” he said. “I became what I felt ...

A push for freer alcohol trade within Canada fell flat at the country’s highest court, in a ruling that offers little new clarity on the jurisdictional questions now plaguing a major pipeline project.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously Thursday that it would allow an appeal by provincial prosecutors in the high-profile case of Gerard Comeau, a retired steelworker from New Brunswick whose fight to buy cheaper beer in a neighboring province caught national attention.

China’s war on pollution is at risk of reaching a “stalemate”, with poor weather conditions undermining the country’s efforts to reduce smog, an environment ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

Air pollution rose by more than a quarter in parts of northern China in March, and the region has been hit by another bout of smog in the second half of April, which the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has blamed on weak air circulation.

Michigan woman says her grandson has endured racist bullying at a high school that’s surrounded this week by pickup trucks waving Confederate flags.

The demonstration in Auburn, which is more than 95 percent white, began Tuesday with six trucks but swelled Wednesday to dozens of pickups bearing Confederate flags and Gadsden flags associated with the tea party movement, reported MLive.

A few counter-protesters showed up with rainbow flags as a show of support for LGBT rights, and Bay County ...

“Do you know what you signed up for today?” a fraternity member says in the video as he stands in front of a young man kneeling on the floor.

The young man on his knees then proceeds to make sexually explicit gestures as laughter erupts around him. Asked to recite “the oath,” he says: “f??? black people” and uses a racial slur to describe a person of Hispanic descent.

“I solemnly swear,” he says, repeating after the standing fraternity member, “to always have hatred in my ...

ust months after the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein and the rise of the current #MeToo movement, once-powerful men are already thinking about their comebacks.

Matt Lauer is “testing the waters,” according to Page Six, “by coming out of hiding from his Hamptons home.” Mario Batali is reportedly thinking of starting a new company. Garrison Keillor is touring again, and wants to bring back his radio shows.

Not because he's clearly dead in this picture but because Model Alliance, an organization working to improve labor issues in the fashion industry, has issued a blistering statement against Karl Lagerfeld for an interview in which he called models “stupid,” “toxic,” and “sordid creatures.”...Is this Karl Lagerfeld being the cantankerous, musty ghoul that he has been his entire adult life? Sure. But it’s also the kind of behavior that is wearing thin. As the Boston Globe reported in ...

The British government refused to assist a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by the UK telecoms giant Lycamobile – citing the fact that the company is the “biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party” and gives money to a trust founded by Prince Charles.

French prosecutors launched a major probe into the firm and arrested 19 people accused of using its accounts to launder money from organised criminal networks two years ago, after BuzzFeed News ...

Ms. Roiphe’s essay had a similarly troubled pre-publication history inside the Manhattan offices of Harper’s. The idea began, Mr. Marcus said, with the publisher, who suggested that the magazine “run a contrarian piece on #MeToo movement.” The editor countered that he was uncomfortable with such an assignment, because of the magazine’s “longtime reputation as a gentleman’s smoking club.”

“I expressed my opposition in the beginning, but I was overruled by the publisher,” Mr. ...

-Thank you so much for agreeing to a call. I apologize that I’m calling late, I’ve just had a jam-packed morning.

-Please. Stop apologizing. It doesn’t matter when you call me if I can talk to you. I never cared about that. In other words, you’re being excessively polite. Catering to an imaginary desire that I never had in my life. I’m happy if people call me at any time if the conversation is a useful one.

Of course sometimes I can’t talk or they can’t reach me, which is ...

John Collins told the Syracuse Post-Standard that he was standing outside his farmhouse in Rome, NY, when he heard yelling inside and came upon a group of at least seven armed men who had his employee, Marcial de Leon Aguilar, pinned up against the window.

When the men finally identified themselves as ICE officers, Collins demanded to see a warrant to arrest Aguilar. When they weren’t able to produce one, Collins ordered them to leave his farm. They put Aguilar in handcuffs anyway as his ...

Big news in the typically moribund world of the newspaper funny pages this week, as fans old and new descend into shockingly heated arguments about pseudonymous writer and artist Olivia Jaimes, and her recent takeover of long-running comic strip Nancy...It’s actually funny, which is not something people go around saying very often about octogenarian comic page strips...nothing riles up a comic page audience like the dreaded specter of change. Thus, the first week of Jaimes’ tenure on the ...

Eric Holder was the first black attorney general of the United States, serving under its first black president, Barack Obama. Holder left office in 2013, but he hasn’t left public life. And for a second act, he’s considering politics and a bid to serve as the second black occupant of the White House.

During a Tuesday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Holder said he was considering a run in 2020. “Yes, I’m thinking about it, but I’ve not made any determinations,” he said. At Al ...

Expressing concerns over the album title, leading national retail chain Walmart has refused to carry STRYPER's upcoming 10th studio LP, "God Damn Evil". Several Christian retail chains have also objected to the title and declined to carry "God Damn Evil" in their stores.

"We're disappointed," says STRYPER frontman Michael Sweet. "STRYPER has always been about making people think outside the box.

In Germany’s hugely popular hip-hop music scene, one of the biggest albums of the past year was from two trash-talking rappers who rhymed about their prowess in bed and in the weight room and about violently dominating their opponents.

The album has racked up sales, but has also attracted a different sort of attention. In one song, the pair boast about how their bodies are “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners.” In another, they vow to “make another Holocaust, show up with a ...

What the hell has happened to Trump Country? That vast imaginary region of hate-fueled, white-trash Donald Trump dittoheads – a joint creation of hillbilly-bashing memoirist J.D. Vance, The New York Times, and coastal liberals who need somebody to blame – has been behaving very strangely of late. Kansans electing progressives and raising taxes? Yep. Teachers in West Virginia walking out for two weeks in the first mass strike that America has seen in eons? Uh-huh. Republican governors in ...

When you send thousands of FOIA requests, you are bound to get some very weird responses from time to time. Recently, we here at MuckRock had one of our most bizarre gets yet - Washington State Fusion Center’s accidental release of records on the effects of remote mind control.

As part of my ongoing project looking at fusion centers’ investigations into Antifa and various white supremacist groups, I filed a request with the WSFC. I got back many standard documents in response, including ...

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson on Wednesday ruled Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was in contempt of court for failing to comply with her orders in a lawsuit over the state’s voter registration law.

Robinson ordered Kobach to pay for attorney fees for litigating the contempt motion, with additional remedies to be determined later.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys complained Kobach routinely defied a temporary injunction issued by Robinson in 2016 to block enforcement of ...