source: @[email protected]

Summary:

The Senate voted Thursday to strike down a rule capping most bank overdraft fees at $5, a measure adopted late last year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had been expected to save Americans billions of dollars per year.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, was the lone Republican to oppose the resolution, which passed on a nearly party-line vote, 52-48. It will now move to the House, where Representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who leads the Financial Service Committee, introduced a parallel resolution last month.

The rule would have limited the fees banks and credit unions could charge when customers spend more than they have in their accounts, typically $35 per overdraft. The bureau estimated it would save American households $5 billion a year. It was immediately challenged in court by banking trade groups.

Personal opinon:

Call your bank and tell them to turn off overdraft protection now.

A 24-year-old Tifton woman faces criminal charges after experiencing a miscarriage, raising concerns about the application of Georgia’s strict abortion legislation.

What We Know: Selena Maria Chandler-Scott was arrested and charged with concealing the death of another person and abandonment of a dead body following a medical emergency on March 20. According to police reports, emergency services responded to Brookfield Mews Apartments around 6 a.m. Thursday after receiving a call about an unconscious woman who was bleeding. Medical personnel determined she had suffered a miscarriage and transported her to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment.

Police claim a witness reported that Chandler-Scott had placed the fetal remains in a bag and disposed of it in a dumpster outside the apartment complex. Officers later recovered these remains, which were sent for autopsy.

The Autopsy: According to the autopsy, the fetus was 19 weeks old at the time of the miscarriage. There were no signs of trauma and the fetus did not take a breath. The coroner’s office ruled it to be a occurring miscarriage. At 19 weeks, a fetus is about the size of a mango and lungs are just beginning to develop but are not fully developed yet.

In Context: Georgia’s “heartbeat law,” officially the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law also grants personhood status to embryos and fetuses, potentially exposing women who miscarry to criminal charges if authorities believe they contributed to the pregnancy loss or improperly handled fetal remains.

Reproductive rights advocates have warned that such laws could criminalize women experiencing pregnancy complications or miscarriages. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, miscarriages occur in about 10-20% of known pregnancies, with most happening in the first trimester.

What Should Women Who Miscarry Do?: We asked several Tifton Police Department and Tift County officials what women who miscarry should do with the remains of the fetus. So far, only Tift District Attorney Patrick Warren has answered and said typically miscarriages are not handled in this manner.

“There is no applicable case law on this issue as it is generally deemed a medical condition and prosecution is not warranted. Georgia courts have held that once a baby is ‘born alive and has had an independent and separate existence from its mother’ then what happens to the child (injury or death) will be subject to criminal prosecution,” Warren said.

Because the existing workforce keeps getting deported.

The move — along with the CDC’s explanation — is a sign that the nation’s top public health agency may be falling in line under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines.

Since this wasn't apparent the last time I asked... no, I'm actually not a US citizen or green card holder (permanent resident). Just happened to be in this country for a long time due to career reasons.

Ever wondered what you would have done during the rise of Fascism?

You’re doing it right now.

(How do you do those little boxes that you can open for alt text?) Alt Text: A post by @leonard_ritter, showing an image of a roughly humanoid figure with a lot of red dots near the arms and legs, with another image presumably from a video game in which a female looking humanoid is shown, wearing armor that covers arms and legs, but only a bikini-like area near the torso region. The post says "our dwarven engineers came up with a new armor design protecting against the typical injuries sustained by warriors returning from battles in the netherworld".

The alternatives to Intel/AMD/Nvidia, Visa/Mastercard/American Express/Discover and IOS/Android need to be more developed.

It was a simple wedding with only our family who came and some friends of ours.

I’ve never actually been married, and to think it’d be with a beautiful woman who I’ve been friends with and lived next door to for 6 years (now live with).

Summary

Elon Musk announced that his AI startup xAI has merged with his social media platform X in an all-stock deal, valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.

Musk stated the merger will combine AI expertise with X’s broad reach.

xAI, launched less than two years ago, competes with OpenAI and has developed the Grok chatbot, integrated with X.