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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon declined to recuse herself from the case of Ryan Routh, who is charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last month. The judge appointed to the federal bench by the alleged victim in Routh's case brushed aside the defendant's concerns about Trump's praise of Cannon and the possibility that he could promote her to even higher office if he's elected next week.

"I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings," Cannon wrote in an order published Tuesday. "I have never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel," added the judge who dismissed Trump's classified documents case in July.

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After the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters heeded his call to join a “wild” protest of his defeat. Following Trump’s lies about a stolen election, hundreds of them stormed the U.S. Capitol under the banners of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other extremist groups and movements.

Many of those far-right networks have dissolved, splintered or receded from public view since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. But the specter of election-related chaos hasn’t vanished with them. Political violence remains a persistent threat heading into the Nov. 5 election, experts warn.

Election officials have been inundated with threats, misinformation and the prospect of ”election denialist ” organizations wreaking havoc. The FBI was investigating on Monday after fires destroyed hundreds of ballots inside drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and in nearby Vancouver, Washington.

Trump has used social media to promote violent conspiracy theories that have become mainstream features of Republican politics. Many, including Trump himself, have tried to recast Capitol rioters as 1776-style patriots and political prisoners. Trump also has vowed to use the military to go after “enemies from within.”

The man who was convicted in the 2022 attack on the husband of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Tuesday following his state trial.

DePape's early morning break-in at the Pelosi home almost exactly two years ago on October 28, 2022 -- just days before the 2022 midterm elections -- sent shockwaves through the United States and was attributed to the predictable effects of increasingly demonizing political rhetoric.

The attack on then-82-year-old Paul Pelosi was captured on police bodycam video after officers responded to his 911 call and found him struggling with DePape, who then bludgeoned Pelosi with a hammer.

The life sentence on state charges is on top of the 30-year sentence DePape received for his federal conviction.

A cardiologist dubbed one of Colorado's "most prolific" rapists wept in court as he was sentenced to 158 years in prison for the series of sex crimeshe committed against at least nine women.

Disgraced cardiologist Stephen Matthews was seen in courtroom photographs with tears streaming down his face after being handed the sentence. He, his lawyers and his parents appealed for leniency in his sentencing but the judge said the world "a darker place" because of the 37-year-old's actions.

He also wept in August after being found guilty of 35 counts of rape. Eleven of his victims came forward to testify against him, and prosecutors believe there may be dozens more.

One branded the man "one of the most prolific serial rapists in the history of the state of Colorado" as others labeled him a "narcissistic monster." His own father also called him a narcissist, describing him as an alcoholic who had displayed such behavior. His mother, however, asked for a lighter sentence, telling District Court Judge Eric Johnson that she believed her son could be rehabilitated, CBS News reported.

Renowned for their intelligence, crows can mimic human speech, use tools and gather for what seem to be funeral rites when a member of their murder, as groups of crows are known, dies or is killed. They can identify and remember faces, even among large crowds.

They also tenaciously hold grudges. When a murder of crows singles out a person as dangerous, its wrath can be alarming, and can be passed along beyond an individual crow’s life span of up to a dozen or so years, creating multigenerational grudges.

Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”

. . .

How long do crows hold a grudge? Dr. Marzluff believes he has now answered the question: around 17 years.

MBFC
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Joke from Tony Hinchcliffe apparently bombed when he told it on Saturday night, a day before New York rally

The podcaster who provoked an angry backlash against Donald Trump’s campaign with a racist joke about Puerto Rico reportedly tested out the gags at a comedy club the night before delivering them at Sunday’s televised rally at Madison Square Garden.

Tony Hinchcliffe, whose 11-minute set has thrown Trump’s team into damage limitation mode a week before the presidential election, made the same quip, calling the territory “a floating island of garbage”, at the Stand club in New York on Saturday, according to NBC.

The joke bombed, drawing just a few awkward chuckles, NBC said, citing one of its own producers and three audience members.

“The demagogues in 1939 used the same tactics that we see today,” says the director of a film about the 1939 Nazi rally.

A huge Maya city has been discovered centuries after it disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico.

Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche.

They uncovered the hidden complex - which they have called Valeriana - using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.

They believe it is second in density only to Calakmul, thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America.

The team discovered three sites in total, in a survey area the size of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, "by accident" when one archaeologist browsed data on the internet.

Ryan Girdusky clashed with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday night.

CNN has banned a conservative commentator from appearing on the network again after he told a Muslim journalist "I hope your beeper doesn't go off," an apparent reference to the spate of exploding pagers in Lebanon that killed members of the Hezbollah militant group last month. 

Ryan Girdusky made the comment during a heated debate with Mehdi Hasan, a prominent British-American broadcaster and an outspoken critic of Israel's war in Gaza, on "CNN Newsnight" with host Abby Phillip. 

The guests were discussing the racist jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, which overshadowed former President Donald Trump's rally at New York's Madison Square Garden on Sunday and continue to make headlines two days later.

As the debate turned fractious, Girdusky and Hasan sparred over whether the latter had been labeled an anti-Semite. "I'm a supporter of the Palestinians, I'm used to it," Hasan said.

Girdusky replied: "Well I hope your beeper doesn't go off."

Center was one of the first US schools for formerly enslaved people, and now preserves Gullah Geechee culture

Earlier this month, the historic Penn Center, a 50-acre site in St Helena Island, South Carolina, that served as one of the nation’s first schools for formerly enslaved people of African descent in the 1860s, joined a Unesco network. It was named one of 22 places around the world that holds significance for its preservation of enslaved people’s history by the Unesco Network of Places of History and Memory.

The network is part of the organization’s Routes of Enslaved Peoples: Resistance, Liberty and Heritage program that was launched in 1994 to recognize the history of slavery and its impact on the world. Over the course of the five-year initiative, the institutions’ staffs will share sustainability practices and create shared activities through the international network.

“The legacy of the transatlantic slave trade still scars our societies. We must remember the places which bear witness to one of humanity’s greatest crimes,” Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general, said in a statement. “Preserving and visiting these places will help us honour the memory of its millions of victims, advance scientific knowledge and educate new generations.”

In the final stretch before Election Day, ballots have been set on fire and damaged in two ballot drop boxes and a Postal Service mailbox in three states. Federal officials have warned that in recent months, some social media users have encouraged sabotage of ballot drop boxes.

Early on Monday morning in Oregon, Portland police responded to a fire they say was started by "an incendiary device" inside a ballot drop box. Oregon's Multnomah County Elections Division said in a statement that three ballots were damaged. "Fire suppressant inside the ballot box protected virtually all ballots," the statement read.

Hours later, another drop box was set on fire in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where officials say "hundreds" of ballots were badly damaged when that box's fire suppression system failed to work.

Investigators had a signed statement from a man who said he had witnessed the shooting. But at trial, he recanted and said he had been coerced by police.

The jury also heard from Detroit police Sgt. Walter Bates, who denied coercing the witness. The jury apparently believed the officer and declared Hill guilty.

But Worthy noted that jurors and Hill’s lawyer didn’t know that Bates was suspended at the time of his testimony. Bates was later convicted in federal court of organizing bank robberies.

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