News they don't want you to know

Thursday January 2, 2024

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NEW YORK, NY - In another horrifying attack in the New York City subway system, a 23-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shoving a commuter onto the tracks just as a train arrived at the 18th Street subway station in the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan.

Kamel Hawkins, 23, was taken into custody Tuesday after allegedly pushing the 45-year-old man at roughly 1:30 p.m. on the southbound No. 1 train platform, the NYPD reported.

Violet Paley, aboard the 1 train when it stopped, told CNN: “All of a sudden there was an abrupt stop and because of everything I’ve been seeing on the news, the first thing that came to my mind was that someone probably got pushed in front of the subway, which is such a dark thought.”

She added that after roughly 10 minutes, a conductor told passengers they had to evacuate the train because there was a man under the subway. She noted, “They pulled him out, and he was laying there, and I saw his hands and fingers move. I was in so much shock that he was alive. It was unbelievable.” Click here to read more.

NAPA, CALIF - The Auberge du Soleil, a five-star hillside hotel and spa with a panoramic view overlooking the vineyards of Napa Valley, appears to be first-rate in all ways but one. While the glamorous resort, an hour’s drive from San Francisco, fills rooms that routinely go for $2,000 a night with A-list celebrities and tech titans, financial records suggest it did not provide much of a return to at least two of its investors – Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul. That changed when it received millions in congressionally authorized COVID-19 relief in 2020 and 2021.

The Auberge du Soleil investment, held for decades by Paul Pelosi, has rarely turned a significant profit, according to Nancy’s financial disclosure forms. In some years, he has recorded a loss or a profit of between $50,000 to $100,000. But the year of the bailout money stands apart. In 2021, Pelosi’s ethics forms show that her family’s income from the resort surged to a range of $1 million to $5 million.

The French Riviera-themed resort may not be most people’s idea of a struggling business in need of a government bailout, yet the Auberge du Soleil – which shuttered briefly at the outset of the pandemic before swiftly rebounding – received about $9 million from a series of special taxpayer-funded emergency relief programs. Click here to read more.

NEW YORK, NY - Americans defaulted on their credit card loans at levels not seen since 2010, the Financial Times reported Monday.

Credit card lenders wrote off $46 billion in seriously delinquent loan balances in the first nine months of 2024, according to a Financial Times report citing industry figures from BankRegData. That is an increase of 50% from the same period in 2023 and the highest level in 14 years.

“High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics, told Financial Times. “Their savings rate right now is zero.”

Americans’ credit card debt climbed to $1.17 trillion during the third quarter of 2024, according to a November report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card delinquencies remained high in the third quarter, with 3.5% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency, according to the New York Fed. Click here to read more.

OLYMPIA, WASH - A collection of state trucking advocacy groups is calling on Gov. Jay Inslee and incoming Gov. Bob Ferguson to put the brakes on implementing new regulations that they warn could severely disrupt operations in Washington and elsewhere.

Washington state is tied to California’s Advanced Clean Trucks program, which directs the trucking industry to transition to zero emissions for medium and heavy-duty trucks. Depending on the class of truck and the year, electric vehicles must make up a certain percentage of sales. For Class 4-8 trucks, for example, half of all sales must be EVs by 2030.

However, in a Dec. 17 letter to Inslee, Ferguson, and several other state governors, the trucking advocates warn that while they’ve sought to reduce carbon emission from both fuels and vehicles, “the damage that our industry will incur by implementing ACT on its current rushed timeline will curtail these critical efforts as clean diesel truck availability will become limited, keeping older, heavier polluting trucks on the road. It will also lead to the inevitable loss in jobs and businesses.” Click here to read more.

LAPORTE COUNTY, Ind. (WNDU/Gray News) - A school bus driver in Indiana is facing charges following a months-long investigation, officials said.

According to the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office, 38-year-old Kayla Pier is charged with operating while intoxicated and neglect of a dependent.

On Sept. 20, Pier was driving a bus with 32 middle and elementary school students when the students reported her driving behaviors and mannerisms.

Administrators removed Pier from the bus and she reportedly resigned from the school corporation later that day.

The LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation in late October after the school corporation received Pier’s toxicology report. An arrest warrant was issued for Pier after the investigation last week. Click here to read more.