Over the weekend, a Russian mercenary group key to its war on Ukraine briefly took over a Russian military command center and began marching on Moscow to unseat the country's defense minister. The Wagner Group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, ordered his troops to stand down Saturday night, but their challenge has raised questions — and hopes in Ukraine and the U.S. — about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing some of his grip after 16 months into a war that has not gone as planned. Vladimir Putin: Strong man for how long, man?
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Wagner Group mercenaries occupied Rostov-on-Don, Russia. (AP Photo, File) |
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Shootings over the weekend in Michigan, Kansas City and Houston killed at least six people and wounded 20 others. The sites included a street party, a gathering in a parking lot and an altercation outside a business. There have been at least 325 mass shootings in the U.S. this year as of Sunday, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and the country is on its fastest pace for mass killings by guns since 2006, according to an Associated Press database. |
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Advocates and opponents of abortion rights each demonstrated Saturday on the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. Since the decision, 14 states have passed near-total bans on the healthcare procedure. Two in three OB-GYNs told the Kaiser Family Foundation that they now have less power to help people in pregnancy-related emergencies. |
Abortion rights demonstrators outside the Supreme Court on Saturday. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough) |
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Will you get up to $20,000 of your federal student loan balance forgiven? The end of the Supreme Court's term this week means we'll know by Friday night. Republicans challenging the Biden administration's program are hopeful the conservative supermajority will kill it. Meanwhile, in a separate case, virtually all observers expect justices to end race-based affirmative action in college admissions. |
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The Coast Guard has mapped the site of last week's implosion of the Titan submersible and is investigating its cause with the help of the U.S. transportation safety regulator and peer organizations in the U.K., France and Canada. Meanwhile, some observers are wondering that if billionaires can afford high-risk trips to space or the ocean floor, can't they also afford to pay for rescue missions? |
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FESTIVITIES: LGBTQ+ revelers celebrated Pride month with parades and parties from New York and Chicago to San Francisco and Seattle over the weekend — even as new laws targeting their rights proliferate in many states. |
Everyone loves a Pride parade in San Francisco on Sunday. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) |
STARBUCKS PROTEST: Workers at 150 Starbucks locations will go on strike this week in part to protest the removal of Pride month decorations in some cafes. Starbucks denies changing its policy of visibly supporting LGBTQ+ people in the face of anti-gay and anti-trans harassment. RAINBOW WASHING: Owin Pierson, an LGBTQ+ and mental health advocate, explained how some brands engage in "rainbow washing" with superficial displays of support for queer people during Pride month. "We're looking for allyship all year round," he said. |
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Hikers discovered human remains in the wilderness area where actor Julian Sands disappeared five months ago. The body was found near 10,000-foot Mount Baldy in Southern California and transported to a coroner's office for identification this week. |
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About 7.5 million "Baby Shark" bath toys have been recalled because their hard plastic fins caused at least 12 cuts or puncture wounds when children fell or sat on them. Newer versions of the toy have silicone fins. |
(Consumer Product Safety Commission via AP) |
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The 2023 BET Awards staged a show brimming with spectacular performances during a rousing celebration of 50 years of hip-hop. Sunday's event offered up tributes to the genre's earliest voices, late legends and new talent, while Busta Rhymes was given the night's biggest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award. |
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It's been 25 years since the premiere of Will & Grace, a sitcom that has been credited with helping Americans ease out of their prejudices against gay people. The Paley Center for Media is celebrating the groundbreaking show with an exhibit that gives fans a chance to explore the set, costumes and props — including the bedazzled telephone and Will and Grace's couch — through July 9. How is it the 25th anniversary? 1998 could not have been more than 10 or 12 years ago. |
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Few people have the kind disposable income that makes possible the phrase, "Yeah, maybe I will buy that triceratops skull." But if you divide ownership of the fossil into 800 shares, that opens it up to a few more people. That's the idea behind the Rally Museum, which has a showroom full of fancy stuff — think tiny old Porsches and 1990s Chicago Bulls championship rings — that you can get a piece of, if not the whole thing. |
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i feel like this whole orca uprising thing is kind of our bad for naming them killer whales. a real "if you build it they will come" scenario. —@meg_it_happen
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