Special Counsel Appointed For Biden Classified Documents Case: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel to investigate President Biden’s withholding of classified documents after the end of his term as vice president in 2017. Robert Hur, a former federal prosecutor during the Trump administration, was appointed to investigate the circumstances. which resulted in the classified documents being stored in a Washington think tank named after Biden and in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. Hur vowed to investigate the matter “with a fair, impartial and dispassionate trial.”
Consumer Price Index at 6.5%: The US Department of Labor reported that the consumer price index (CPI), a measure of what consumers pay for goods and services, rose 6.5% year-over-year in December. That level is below November’s 7.1% year-on-year increase and below last June’s 9.1% peak. The core CPI, which omits food and energy prices in its measurement, rose 5.7% in December from a year earlier and was down from the 6% reading in November.
Randy Cox sues New Haven for $100 million: Randy Cox, the African-American man who sustained injuries while in New Haven police custody that left him paralyzed from the chest down, is suing the city of New Haven and the five arresting officers who left him incapacitated for $100 million. . The officers involved in Cox’s arrest who refused to give him medical attention after he injured his head in a police van are Oscar Diaz, Betsy Segui, Ronald Pressley, Jocelyn Lavantier and Luis Rivera, who have all been charged. by the State’s Attorney on two counts of misdemeanors. of second-degree recklessness and cruelty to persons, and all five have pleaded not guilty. New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker has indicated that he would prefer a settlement with Cox over a civil lawsuit.
The feds admit that UFO sightings have increased: The Pentagon and federal intelligence agencies released a study acknowledging that sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, have increased over the past two years, with half of new sightings remaining unexplained. The study reported the number of UFO sightings, which were most often made by Air Force and Navy pilots, at 510, with 366 of those reports filed since March 2021. But more than half were confirmed. of the sightings were drones, balloons, or airborne debris, 171 sightings were defined as “uncharacterized and unattributed.”
A rare interaction between Taiwan and NATO: A Taiwanese Air Force official acknowledged a rare interaction between his country’s military and NATO. The Japan Times reported that Lt. Col. Wu Bong-yeng attended a six-month academic program at the NATO Defense College in Rome during 2021, despite the fact that Taiwan has no diplomatic relations with NATO nations and only it has close defense ties to the US. Wu described their attendance as “an academic exchange, not a military one,” though he added that his NATO counterparts “were very curious about Taiwan.” China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has made aggressive efforts to isolate Taiwan globally: Only 14 countries have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and Vatican City is the only European country with diplomatic ties to the island.
