NEWS

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday banned all US cruises through September after it documented thousands of onboard coronavirus infections as well as “ongoing” outbreaks on ships. The agency’s no-sail order was set to expire on July 24, but troubling COVID-19 data from vessels forced the CDC to issue an extension. “The current scientific evidence suggests that cruise ships pose a greater risk of COVID-19 transmission than other settings,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield wrote in the order, noting that during the outbreak on the Diamond Princess, invested passengers passed the virus to four times as many people as those living in the COVID-19 outbreak epicenter, Wuhan, China. US cruise ships were home to 2,973 coronavirus infecti...

A former Miss Kentucky and one-time West Virginia school teacher will get two years in prison after pleading guilty to sexting with a 15-year-old student, according to a report. Ramsey Bearse, 29, admitted in court that she sent at least four topless photos to the teen on Snapchat in 2018 when she was a teacher at Andrew Jackson Middle School in Cross Lanes in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, WXIX-TV reported. “I didn’t keep any of the photos of him or forward them to anyone else,” the former beauty queen said in Kanawha County Court Tuesday. “But I did receive them and I did compliment him in a way which made it look like I did want them because I was afraid to not appease him. “Since I am an adult and he is just a teenager, it was definitely my fault and I...

That’s one hell of a job advertisement. Twitter had stepped up its search for a new chief information security officer in the weeks prior to the massive bitcoin scam that breached the social network’s system Wednesday, sources told Reuters. The San Francisco-based social media giant has been without a permanent security chief since May 2018, when Michael Coates left the post and was replaced on an interim basis by Joe Camilleri, a former executive at JP Morgan Chase. On Wednesday, hackers — reportedly with help from a Twitter employee who was paid off — took control of accounts belonging to prominent personalities including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and former President Barack Obama. Messages sent out from t...

The Supreme Court on Thursday said Florida can enforce a law that blocks felons from voting if they have court-related debt. The decision impacts nearly a million convicted Florida felons who owe outstanding fines or fees in what’s viewed as a key battleground state for the November presidential election. The high court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — dissented. The decision comes just ahead of the state’s July 20 voter-registration deadline. “This Court’s inaction continues a trend of condoning disenfranchisement,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. “Under this scheme, nearly a million otherwise-eligible citizens cannot vote unless they pay money,” wrote Sotomayor, describing the policy a R

WASHINGTON — Defense leaders, who for weeks have been tied in knots over the incendiary issue of banning the Confederate flag, are weighing a new policy that would bar its display at department facilities without actually mentioning its name, several U.S. officials said Thursday. No final decisions have been made, but officials said the new plan presents a creative way to ban the Confederate flag in a manner that may not raise the ire of President Donald Trump, who has defended people’s rights to display it. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing internal deliberations. Defense Secretary Mark Esper discussed the new plan with senior leaders this week, triggering some bewilderment over the lack of an appetite for a straight-forward ban on divisive symbols. T