Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally redirecting $250,000 in campaign for personal use. His wife, Margaret Hunter, pleaded guilty to related charges in June. The congressman has not yet indicated whether he intends to resign from office. In a letter released to the public Thursday, the ethics committee warned Hunter “in the strongest possible terms” that he should refrain from voting due to his plea. The provision cited by the committee does not strictly prohibit voting, but the panel told Hunter that not following their instruction could result in further disciplinary measures from the committee and Congress....

In a multi-part interview with Punchbowl News earlier this month, McCarthy outlined an ambitious economic strategy should his party regain control of Congress this midterm cycle, including reversing a number of tax increases enacted under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act alongside potential reforms to federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare long seen as anathema to Democrats. To get there, McCarthy suggested Republican leadership was willing to use the federal debt ceiling—or a red line on the amount of debt the country can accrue before defaulting—as a bargaining chip to force Democrats to make a deal, harkening back to a similar style of brinkmanship with the federal budget not seen since the height of the Tea Party revolution of 2011....

“Dr. Fauci is one of our country’s most distinguished public servants,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Senate Health Committee, said in a statement. “He has served six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan.” In a call with campaign staffers Monday morning, Trump disparaged the longtime National Institutes of Health official, saying coronavirus experts like Fauci and others are “idiots” and that Fauci has been “a disaster.” The president claimed, without evidence, that had he listened to Fauci from the onset of the pandemic, “we’d have 500,000 deaths… we’d have 700,000, 800,000 deaths....

Kennedy referenced several Hollywood movies during Monday’s Senate hearings, which are in consideration of Barrett’s nomination to become a Supreme Court justice. Fellow committee member and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris immediately preceded Kennedy, accusing Barrett and President Donald Trump of wanting to end the ACA, or “Obamacare,” protections of pre-existing conditions. Kennedy ridiculed Harris and other Democrats’ remarks and said it’s “deeply unfair” Barrett must be called a “religious bigot” and “racist” by his Senate colleagues....

In October, worker’s advocacy groups in North Carolina asked the NCDOL to institute more stringent safety measures against the virus. In September, Governor Roy Cooper announced an executive order that would put additional safety measures in place for North Carolina agricultural workers. After labor officials claimed they would not be able to enforce the new regulations, Cooper’s office chose not to enact the order. In her November letter, Berry said that COVID-19 could not be proven to be a workplace hazard....

“I think the threats are basically grandstanding, especially for an audience of one, meaning the former president. We all know that Kevin McCarthy basically does what the former president wants him to do—in this case, it’s go after Big Tech like Donald Trump did when he was president,” the strategist, Susan Del Percio, said on MSNBC Sunday. “This is all about operating from fear,” she said later in the interview....

Gretzky was 2 years old in 1963 when Howe surpassed Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s record of 544 goals. That Howe’s name stood atop the NHL goal-scoring charts for more than 30 years makes Gretzky’s accomplishment even more amazing. “He scored 85 more points one year than the next guy,” Howe says. “I scored 85 one year and set a record.” MR. HOCKEY: Iconic images | Unmatched legacy | Howe dies at 88...

He admits that. He’s been that way his whole career, getting emotional after big victories or during special moments, just letting the tears flow. He did it after he won his first Sprint Cup race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1994. He did it after he won the Brickyard 400 for the first time and at the NASCAR Cup banquet after he won his first championship. He got choked up after snapping long winless streaks and even after matching Dale Earnhardt with his 76th career victory....

But family stories are dangerous territory for Gore. As is often the case, this one was a little too vivid. The Boston Globe reported on Monday that Gore took his figures not from his family’s records but from a House study on drug prices. Moreover, Aitcheson uses Lodine while Shiloh is given an animal version called Etogesic. Gore struck again the same day the Globe story ran. With a pack of reporters on full embellishment alert, Gore serenaded an audience of Teamsters in Las Vegas with the first line of what he said was a childhood lullaby: “Look for the union label …” If it’s true, then Tipper must have been singing him to sleep, because the song was written in 1975, when he was 27 years old....

Andrew Cuomo said that decisions on how to mitigate against the virus had been devolved to the state’s 700 school districts. He appeared to suggest that prior agreements to tackle infection rates would be adhered to despite there being a “very low rate of positivity in the schools.” When asked by MSNBC if schools in New York City would be closed, Cuomo curtly replied: “Yep,” before going on to say that “New York City set 3 percent as the agreement....

In Tolyatti, a city on the Volga River in western Russia, a local media report said that an individual threw a Molotov cocktail at the main door of a government administration building on Belorusskaya Street. At about 3:44 a.m. local time Thursday, the building’s door and part of its ceiling caught fire, independent Russian-language news outlet MediaZona reported. The area of the fire was 10 square meters, and it was reportedly extinguished within 20 minutes....

“We are here today to protect life. We are here today to defend those who can’t defend themselves,” DeSantis said Thursday morning at a church in Kissimmee, Florida. DeSantis said that the legislation “protects the rights of unborn children starting at 15 weeks.” Prior to the new law, Florida allowed abortions until 24 weeks. Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature approved the 15-week abortion ban last month. The new law does not make exceptions for cases of rape, incest or human trafficking....

Princeton is the first college to formally curb grade inflation, which plagues many schools. When Stuart Rojstaczer, a pro-fessor of environmental science at Duke, collected data on grading practices at 83 colleges, he found that 79 of them had experienced “significant” grade inflation in the past few decades. Grades at selective private schools are especially high. A 2003 Princeton study found that marks of A and A-minus accounted for 44 to 55 percent of grades at the Ivy League colleges, MIT, Stanford and the University of Chicago....

There are dozens of Grammys handed out each year and this year’s ceremony will award 78 prizes to musicians and performers. Not all of them get the spotlight they deserve, but the main categories are often critiqued for their lack of gender diversity. In 2018 the terms #GrammysSoMale was trending online after every single major award was won by a male artist. How has the Recording Academy performed this year when it comes to inclusion?...

Salvatore Anello has appeared in court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a hearing on the case surrounding the death of Chloe Wiegand, who plummeted more than 150 feet after falling through an open window on the Freedom of the Seas vessel while it was docked on July 7. Speaking to ABC News, Anello’s defense attorney Jose Perez said the 50-year-old continues to maintain his innocence and will reject a plea deal....

Set to the song My Girl by the Temptations, @hannahbanana81374, whose first name is Hannah, takes viewers through the day she and her grandma both got their first tattoos. She wrote over the video that her grandmother, or “nana,” wanted to go first and then showed photos of her sitting in the tattoo chair grasping her grandmother’s hand. Both Hannah and her grandmother got tattoos of a hummingbird on their wrist and ankle respectively....

Stuart McKenzie, from Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7, was called to a property in the town of Buderim after a woman’s grandson grabbed the venomous snake by the tail and dragged it outside as it attempted to enter her garage, 9News reported. Arriving at the scene, McKenzie found the snake had moved to under a rock. He said it was a relatively rare sight in the region and expressed shock at its length....

We make small amounts of premium wine, and our lives are dictated by the rhythm of nature and the demands of the living vines. The vines start sprouting tiny green tendrils in March and April, and the baby grapes begin to form in miniature, so perfect that they can be dipped in gold to form jewelry. The grapes swell and ripen in early fall, and when their sugar content is at the right level, they are harvested carefully by hand and crushed in small lots....

The largest saltwater lake in America reached its lowest level in recorded history in November 2022, at 4,188.2 feet. Its water level now stands at 4,188.6 feet, which is 17 feet below the level it should be. This is being caused by an ongoing megadrought that is gripping the southwestern United States. This stretch of drought has been drier than any other recorded in the U.S. in the past 1,200 years....

Rescue personnel were deployed from the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) Plettenberg Bay station on Wednesday shortly after 10 a.m. after an eyewitness report of a shark targeting a person in waters off Natures Valley, a holiday resort along the southern Cape coast. Station commander Marc Rodgers said the victim—Theodore Prinsloo of Wellington—was on a trip with his family at the time, DispatchLive reported. An eyewitness initially claimed to have seen a shark take the fisherman, telling rescue services that only a floatation buoy remained in the sea and there was little sign of the person it had belonged to....