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5 tampered with absentee ballots in Connecticut’s largest city, authorities say

Five people including prominent Democratic political operatives in Connecticut’s largest city were arrested Friday on allegations of absentee ballot tampering during a 2023 local election, including accusations that led to a court-ordered rerun of a mayoral election and helped fuel skepticism about voting security in the U.S.

The charges generally allege that the defendants in the Bridgeport case illegally possessed absentee ballots of others, were illegally present when voters filled in their ballots and misrepresented absentee ballot rules to voters. Complaints previously filed with state elections enforcement officials said some voters were pressured into picking certain candidates when they filled out their ballots.

Among those arrested were Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee Vice Chairperson Wanda Geter-Pataky, and Bridgeport Democratic City Council Members Alfredo Castillo, Maria Pereira and Jazmarie Melendez, according to the chief state’s attorney’s office. A Stratford woman was also arrested but contact information for her could not be found and it’s unclear if she has an attorney who can speak on her behalf.

Geter-Pataky and Castillo were previously charged with similar absentee ballot crimes connected to the 2019 election.

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Ukraine conflict a NATO ‘proxy war’ – Trump envoy

Russian President Vladimir Putin is right in considering the Ukraine conflict a proxy war against Russia, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg told Fox News in an interview on Sunday.

He said that while he believes the peace process will ultimately succeed, “escalatory issues” remain. Kellogg referred to comments by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who last month indicated that Berlin would be open to supplying Kiev with Taurus cruise missiles.

Kellogg addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s perspective, saying “he considers this a proxy war by NATO. And frankly… in a way it is.”

“The escalatory issues are still there,” Kellogg said. “Chancellor Merz has said: well, I’m going to give the Ukrainians the Taurus missile system.”

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FDA approves Moderna’s new lower-dose COVID-19 vaccine

The U.S. approved a new COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna late Friday but with limits on who can use it — not a replacement for the company’s existing shot, but a second option.

The new vaccine, mNexspike, is a step toward next-generation coronavirus vaccines. It’s made in a way that allows for a lower dose — a fifth of the dose of its current COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax — by refining its immune target.

The approval “adds an important new tool to help protect people at high risk of severe disease from COVID-19,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a statement Saturday.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the new vaccine for use in all adults 65 and older, and for people age 12 to 64 who have a least one health condition that puts them at increased risk from the coronavirus.

That’s the same limit that the FDA set in licensing another COVID-19 vaccine option from competitor Novavax.

Those restrictions are a departure from how the U.S. has handled COVID-19 vaccines until now, reflecting skepticism about vaccines from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Trump officials.

Moderna’s existing vaccine doesn’t face those limits and has long been used for anyone ages 6 months and older. The company said it expected to offer both options this fall.

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Assassination attempt on Putin mentioned by Budanov prepared with US money — Russian MFA

The assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned by chief of the Ukrainian military intelligence service Kirill Budanov was prepared with US money, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“Yesterday one of chiefs of the Kiev regime Buganov openly admitted that the Ukrainian intelligence service prepared assassination attempts on the Russian president. This assassination attempt was again prepared with US money,” she wrote on her Telegram channel.

Instead of financing terrorists from Kiev Washington should have invested those funds in its domestic security, Zakharova said due to the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump.

There was a shooting at a rally of Trump in Pennsylvania late on Saturday. The Republican was wounded. According to recent reports, he is safe, the injury was minor – the bullet pierced his right ear. The shooter was killed by members of the US Secret Service, which is responsible, in particular, for protecting the top officials of the state. The Associated Press reported that authorities were investigating the incident as an assassination attempt on Trump.

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Texas Lawmakers Pass Medical Marijuana Program Expansion Bill, Sending It To The Governor’s Desk

Texas lawmakers have passed a bill to significantly expand the state’s medical marijuana program, sending it to the governor.

Just days after the legislation from Rep. Ken King (R) advanced through the Senate, with amendments that watered down the original House proposal, bicameral negotiators worked out a compromise over the weekend and then each chamber gave final approval on Sunday.

The measure now heads to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to potentially be signed into law.

The final version of the bill—which cleared the House on a 138-1 vote and the Senate by a vote of 31-0—would expand the state’s list of medical cannabis qualifying conditions to include chronic pain, traumatic brain injury (TBI), Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases, while also allowing end-of-life patients in palliative or hospice care to use marijuana.

The measure would additionally allow patients to access a wider range of cannabis product types—including patches, lotions, suppositories, approved inhalers, nebulizers and vaping devices.

And, it would mandate that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) increase the number of medical cannabis business licenses from the current three to 15. It would further allow dispensaries to open satellite locations.

House lawmakers on Friday had rejected the Senate’s changes to the bill, which largely scaled back the scope of the proposed expansion to the medical marijuana program.

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Teen Dies by Suicide After Being Targeted in AI-Generated ‘Sextortion’ Scheme

A 16-year-old Kentucky boy reportedly committed suicide shortly after he was blackmailed with AI-generated nude images, an increasingly common scheme known as “sextortion.”

Elijah Heacock of Glasgow, Kentucky, received a text including an AI-generated nude photo depicting himself and a demand that he pay $3,000 to prevent the image from being sent to family and friends, according to a report by KFDA.

On February 28, shortly after receiving the message, the teen died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Elijah’s parents, John Burnett and Shannon Heacock, told CBS that they didn’t have a solid understanding of the circumstances that led to their son’s death until they found the messages on his phone.

Heacock said she now believes her son was a victim of a sextortion scheme.

“Sextortion is a form of child sexual exploitation where children are threatened or blackmailed, most often with the possibility of sharing with the public a nude or sexual images of them, by a person who demands additional sexual content, sexual activity or money from the child,” the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) explains.

“This crime may happen when a child has shared an image with someone they thought they knew or trusted, but in many cases they are targeted by an individual they met online who obtained a sexual image from the child through deceit, coercion, or some other method,” the NCMEC continued.

“In many cases, the blackmailers may have stolen or taken images of another person and they are communicating through a fake account,” the organization added.

Elijah’s parents said they had never heard of sextortion until law enforcement began investigating their son’s death.

“The people that are after our children are well organized,” Burnett said. “They are well financed, and they are relentless. They don’t need the photos to be real, they can generate whatever they want, and then they use it to blackmail the child.”

NCMEC says sextortion schemes have skyrocketed, revealing the organization has received more than 500,000 reports of sextortion against minors in just the last year.

Since 2021, at least 20 young people have committed suicide as a result of becoming victims of sextortion scams, according to the FBI.

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FBI investigating ‘targeted terror attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, director says

Police said a male suspect was taken into custody on Sunday after an attack that injured multiple people in Boulder, Colorado, in what the FBI director described as a “targeted” act of terror.

While stressing that the information was “very preliminary,” Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said that the man was apprehended following calls to the police dispatch of someone with a weapon who was “setting people on fire.”

Redfearn said he wasn’t in a position to identify the suspect yet, noting that he’d been taken to the hospital. He said there were multiple injuries among the victims, ranging “from very serious to more minor.”

The Boulder attack occurred in the vicinity of a walk to remember the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.

FBI Director Kash Patel, in a statement, described the incident as a targeted terror attack and said agents were on the scene.

Redfearn, however, said it was too early to speculate about a motive.

“We are not calling it a terror attack at this moment,” he said. “This was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in downtown Boulder on Pearl Street and this act was unacceptable,” he said. “I ask that you join me in thinking about the victims, the families of those victims, and everyone involved in this tragedy.”

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Trump Says New Iran Deal Must Allow US To ‘Blow Up Whatever We Want’

President Donald Trump argued that any revived nuclear accord with Iran should permit the United States to destroy the country’s nuclear infrastructure and send inspectors to Iranian facilities at any time.

The president outlined his vision for a new agreement during a White House presser on Wednesday, calling for a “very strong document” that would effectively give Washington carte blanche over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“I want it very strong – where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but [with] nobody getting killed,” he told reporters. “We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.”

He did not elaborate on those remarks, however, leaving it unclear whether Washington had actually pushed for such major concessions at the negotiating table. The Islamic Republic would be unlikely to accept a deal under those terms.

Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, later denounced Trump’s comments in a social media post, suggesting his proposal would cross Tehran’s “red lines.”

“Efforts to reach Iran’s nuclear plants and ‘blow up their facilities’ have been a dream of previous US presidents,” he wrote. “Iran is an independent state with a strong defense structure, a resilient people, and clear red lines. Negotiations are a means to progress and preserve national interests and honor, not submission and surrender.”

During the same news conference on Wednesday, Trump said he had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from military action against Iran amid the ongoing nuclear talks, arguing the move would be “inappropriate” as the two sides were “very close to a solution.” He went on to claim that a new agreement could be reached with Tehran in “a couple weeks,” though his previous assessments have proven overly optimistic.

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Federal Judge Rules Alaska Didn’t Violate Constitution When Restricting Intoxicating Hemp Products

A federal magistrate judge has ruled that the state of Alaska did not violate the U.S. Constitution when it acted to limit intoxicating hemp products in 2023.

In an order published May 23, Magistrate Judge Kyle Reardon granted summary judgment in favor of the state and against the Alaska Industrial Hemp Association, which sued two years ago in an attempt to overturn regulations imposed by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

The court order means intoxicating hemp products, common in many other states, will remain illegal in Alaska unless sold through a licensed marijuana retailer.

“It was rewarding to be part of the process developing the regulations, and I was happy when we successfully defended against the motion for a preliminary injunction in 2023,” said Assistant Attorney General Kevin Higgins, by email. Higgins represented the state in the case.

“I’m not patting myself on the back too hard though,” he said. “The Division of Agriculture was motivated by public safety concerns when it took measured action to regulate an emerging industry. This was an easy case to make, which is probably why the plaintiffs didn’t file an opposition to the motion for summary judgment.”

An attorney representing the plaintiff did not answer a request for comment on Wednesday.

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Russian Arctic region under drone attack – governor

Russia’s Murmansk Region, located mostly north of the Arctic Circle, is being targeted by drones, local governor Andrey Chibis has said.

Air defenses have been intercepting incoming UAVs in the region, Chibis wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

“Enemy drones have attacked the territory of Murmansk Region,” he wrote.

The governor urged the population to remain calm and report all incidents to the authorities.

Also on Sunday, several drones targeted a military installation in Irkutsk Region, central Russia. Local Governor Igor Kobzev said it is the first UAV raid in Siberia.

The attack occurred in the settlement of Sredny, some 150km from Lake Baikal, Kobzev wrote on Telegram. He added that the drones were launched from a tractor-trailer. “The source from where the UAVs came had been blocked,” he said.

Kiev has significantly intensified drone raids into Russia in recent weeks, targeting Moscow and other regions. Russia has responded by launching a series of large-scale missile and UAV strikes against Ukrainian military-related infrastructure.

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