📌 ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Climate Report, More

Attorney General Pam Bondi called a spate of recent attacks targeting Tesla facilities and vehicles ”domestic terrorism.”

Tesla dealerships in Las Vegas and Kansas City were attacked overnight, with significant damage reported. In Las Vegas, a suspect used Molotov cocktails and spray-painted ”resist” on the front doors of the dealership. The FBI's terrorism task force is investigating, considering it as potential terrorism.

Authorities in Oregon earlier this month said a Tesla dealership was shot multiple times and police in Colorado in February arrested a 40-year-old woman accused of repeatedly vandalizing a Tesla dealership in Loveland.

Bondi stated that the Department of Justice has charged several individuals, with some facing five-year mandatory minimum sentences. Bondi suggested the attacks might be coordinated and part of a conspiracy, targeting those behind the scenes.

Elon Musk condemned the violence on social media, attributing it to ”the left” and describing it as ”extreme domestic terrorism.” Musk's role in DOGE has led to significant political backlash and protests. Tesla stocks have dropped significantly amid the political controversy.

Musk commented: ”Tesla is a peaceful company, we've never done anything harmful, I've never done anything harmful, I've only done productive things. There’s some kind of mental illness thing going on here because it just doesn't make any sense.”

The World Meteorological Organization’s annual State of the Climate report found heat records kept being broken in 2024.

It was likely the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees C above the Earth’s pre-industrial average temperature. In 2024, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit the highest point in the last 800,000 years.

Attribution studies found a link between climate change and disasters such as Hurricane Helene, which left a trail of destruction in the southeastern United States, and the unprecedented flooding in Africa’s arid Sahel region.

The report shows that 2024 was the warmest year since comprehensive global records began 175 years ago. The planet was an estimated 1.55 degrees C (plus or minus 0.13 degrees C) warmer than 1850–1900.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached 427 parts per million last year. Sea level rise has accelerated and is now about 11 centimeters above early 1990s levels, and the oceans are at their highest temperatures on record.

A few extra factors arose in the record-breaking global temperature, the WMO pointed out, such as an El Niño event boosting eastern Pacific Ocean temperatures in the first part of 2024, falling pollution from shipping leading to less cloud over the ocean, and a more active sun.

US births rose slightly last year, but experts don't see it as evidence of reversing a long-term decline.

A little over 3.6 million births were reported for 2024, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — 22,250 more than the final tally of 2023. Overall birth rates rose only for one group of people: Hispanic women.

”I’d be hesitant to read much into the 2023-24 increase, and certainly not as an indication of a reversal of the trend towards lower or declining US fertility,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist who studies family demographics.

US births have been falling for years. They dropped most years after the 2008-09 recession, aside from a 2014 uptick. They also dropped in 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic, then rose for two straight years after that, an increase experts partly attributed to pregnancies put off amid the pandemic.

The average age of mothers at first birth has continued to rise, hitting 27.5 years. It was 21.5 in the early 1970s before beginning a steady climb.

Birth rates have long been falling for teenagers and younger women but were rising for women in their 30s and 40s — a reflection of women pursuing education and careers before trying to start families, experts say.

Social Security Administration receives news of over three million deaths annually. About 10,000 are wrong and need correcting. The SSA said a person wrongly reported as deceased ”can be devastating to the individual, spouse, and dependent children,” as benefits are stopped and restoring them can take time. The SSA head contradicted claims that tens of millions of dead people over the age of 100 were receiving checks. Such individuals do not have a date of death associated with their social security record, but they are not necessarily receiving benefits, Lee Dudek, the Social Security Administration commissioner, said. The clarification came after President Donald Trump's adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, claimed on social media and in press briefings that people as old as 300 years were improperly and routinely getting benefits. In rare cases, people are mistakenly reported to the agency as dead. One instance involved an 82-year-old man who'd been inaccurately declared dead and had his Social Security and Medicare canceled, resulting in a nearly three-week effort to resurrect himself. Deaths are reported to Social Security primarily by states but also by funeral homes, family members, financial institutions, and federal agencies. SSA advises those prematurely declared dead to contact their nearest Social Security office and bring at least one current form of ID.

An 82-year-old North Carolina man was arrested this week after DNA evidence connected him to a 1979 murder case.

Kathryn Donohue, of Arlington, Va., was found dead at her home in Glenarden, Md., on March 3, 1979. Donohue was 31 at the time. Detectives investigated the case as a rape and murder, but a suspect was never identified, the Prince George's County Police Department said. The case remained open for decades.

The department's cold case unit reexamined the case, using a grant to submit the forensic evidence. It was sent to Othram, a forensic laboratory specializing in forensic genetic genealogy and genome sequencing. Its scientists were able to extract DNA and develop a comprehensive genetic profile.

The DNA profile was used to contact potential relatives and led investigators to a suspect police identified as 82-year-old Rodger Zodas Brown. Brown was arrested at his home in North Carolina last week, the Prince George's County Chief of Police Malik Aziz said.

Brown has been charged with first-degree murder, rape and related charges. Aziz said police have not uncovered any connection between Brown and Donohue. Brown lived in Hyattsville, Md., at the time of Donohue's murder, about seven miles from the neighborhood where Donohue lived.

Donohue's family thanked investigators for ”their determination, their compassion, and their relentless pursuit of the truth, which has finally given us a sense of closure that we never thought possible after all this time.”

The Trump administration's drive to dismantle US government-funded news outlets is seen as a blow to Washington's influence.

News organization Voice of America (VOA) grew to become an international media broadcaster, operating in over 40 languages online, on radio and television, spreading US news narratives into countries lacking a free press. VOA began its mission combating Nazi propaganda at the height of World War II.

On Saturday, over 1,300 VOA employees were placed on leave and funding for its sister news services was terminated. The cuts are part of a push by President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk to shrink the federal government and save taxpayers’ money on causes that do not line up with US interests.

The move came after Trump ordered the gutting of the US Agency for Global Media, VOA's parent agency, forcing a termination of grants to outlets under it, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts across Eastern Europe and Russia, and Radio Free Asia.

Rights activists say the multilingual reporters of both VOA and RFA for decades shone light onto abuses by China and other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China's Uyghur Muslims.

Trump's domestic critics call it a strategic blunder in US competition with China, which has poured billions of dollars into pushing Beijing's narrative around the globe. China's Global Times tabloid rejoiced at VOA's closure, calling it a ”lie factory.”

An Ontario woman was reunited with her pet cat 7 years and 4 months after he went missing, thanks to the animal's microchip.

The cat, named Julio, went missing in November 2017, said the Windsor/Essex Humane Society. The shelter said Julio ”somehow managed to avoid getting caught” despite being microchipped and his owner conducting a wide-reaching search that even involved multiple public notices being posted.

Julio turned up at the shelter on the weekend and was scanned for a microchip, which revealed his owner's information. ”I had given up hope,” the cat's owner told shelter officials. ”Hearing that he was alive and found yesterday was unbelievable! I am still in shock.”

She said Julio is settling in nicely back at home. ”He has been so happy to be cuddled and listening to relaxing cat music,” she said. Julio’s rediscovery after such a long period is ”proof that we should never give up hope.”