deconstruct

In a pair of Truth Social posts Monday evening, Trump took aim at the electric vehicle industry and President Biden’s push for more electric vehicles. With this opposition to electric vehicles, Trump is likely trying to persuade Michigan voters to support him over Biden, who carried the swing state in 2020.

The Biden administration has pushed to boost electric car sales, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicting that two-thirds of new car sales could be electric by 2032 under a new proposal released by the administration earlier this year. Last week, the Energy Department announced plans to invest $12 billion into converting auto manufacturing facilities into plants for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Trump also took aim at Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, for supporting the Biden administration’s latest investment into electric vehicles.

For one of the biggest moments of his life, Eric Bochene wore a faded white t-shirt and sat in an empty, green-walled conference room, straining to hear the volume from the computer. He grimaced as the virtual conference technology glitched. And he frequently voiced his frustration with his situation.

Bochene pleaded guilty in late August to a federal criminal charge for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack. But he didn't stand in a courtroom. His lawyer wasn't standing next to Bochene. Instead the attorney was on a separate virtual conference connection. And Bochene wasn't permitted to choose his own outfit.

Though he was pleading guilty to only a misdemeanor charge, Bochene was required to appear remotely for his hearing from a holding room in the Broome County jail in Binghamton, NY. He wore his jail outfit, sitting beneath fluorescent lights, because Bochene isn't a typical Jan. 6 defendant.

Bochene is one of a growing number of U.S. Capitol riot defendants who absconded and became fugitives after their arrests or initial court appearances.

The prosecution related to the Jan. 6, 2021 siege is the largest in American history, with approximately 1,100 criminal defendants from nearly every state. Though more than 600 of those defendants have pleaded guilty and dozens more have gone to trial, at least six became – or were — fugitives over the course of this summer. Some are still wanted by the FBI. Eric Bochene was one of them

Home prices weakened month to month, according to Black Knight. While still gaining, which they usually do at this time of year, the gains fell below their 25-year average. This after significantly outdoing their historical averages from February through June. It’s a signal that a slowdown in prices may be underway again.

Behind the cooling off: mortgage rates. They rose sharply last summer and fall, causing prices to drop. They then came down for much of the winter and a bit of the spring, causing home prices to turn higher again. Now rates are back over 7% again, hitting 20-year-plus highs in August.

Add to that, new listings rose from July to August, atypical for that period of the year. Some sellers may be trying to cash in on these historically high prices. Active inventory, however, is about 48% below the levels seen from 2017 to 2019.

“While the uptick in new listings is good news for home shoppers, inventory remains persistently low, even with record-high mortgage rates putting a damper on demand,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com.

The jump in home prices since the start of the Covid pandemic, combined with much higher mortgage rates has crushed affordability.

It now takes roughly 38% of the median household income to make the monthly payment on the median-priced home purchase, according to Black Knight. That makes homeownership the least affordable it’s been since 1984.

If you stroll through the real or virtual aisles of a Japanese store, you might find Kit Kats in flavors like salt lemon, caramel pudding, whole grain biscuit, melon, and milk tea. Good luck finding those at Target or Walmart in the US.

Kit Kat aficionados know that to find the most interesting varieties, you have to shop outside of the US or go to specialty stores that carry imported goods. Why? Because Kit Kat is distributed by different companies in the United States and internationally. In the US, Kit Kat is sold by Hershey. In the rest of the world, Nestlé’s in charge.

Kit Kat is the biggest brand in Nestlé’s global confectionary business, according to Chris O’Donnell, who leads Kit Kat for Nestlé globally. “It’s [a] key priority for us,” he said. “We see huge growth potential [for] Kit Kat.” Hershey’s top brand, on the other hand, is Reese’s.

Nestlé has 13 Kit Kat manufacturing sites across the world, O’Donnell said, and uses different recipes for different areas. When Kit Kat develops new flavors, most of them limited-time offers, it’s looking to appeal to local tastes.

In Japan, seasonal flavors have been especially successful.

Globally, most consumers are interested in “crowd-pleasing flavors,” like caramel, O’Donnell said. But in Japan, they “have a very wide appreciation for a much broader flavor profile.”

In 2000, Nestlé launched a strawberry Kit Kat in the country. It was a hit, and since then, the Japanese team has regularly developed seasonal flavors — like chestnut and sweet potato — in addition to regional flavors, like wasabi and roasted tea, only available in certain areas. These offerings are often bought as travel gifts or souvenirs, creating a market unto itself. Over the past few decades, Kit Kat Japan has launched hundreds of flavors.

Pennsylvania plans to end on Dec. 31 its longstanding contract with the nonprofit Real Alternatives, the first organization in the nation to secure significant state and federal subsidies to support anti-abortion counseling centers. Under the program, Real Alternatives distributed the state and federal funds to dozens of Pennsylvania centers, including Catholic Charities, anti-abortion counseling centers and maternity homes, which provide support and housing for pregnant women.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement his administration would not “continue that pattern” of subsidizing the organization, saying he was steadfast in defending abortion access.

Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars across the U.S. have been sent to such organizations, which are typically religiously affiliated. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion last year, Republican-led states have sent more tax dollars to what are sometimes called “crisis pregnancy centers,” while Democratic-leaning states apply more scrutiny to them.

Henderson police arrested Nikoubin, a Texas-area university student who immigrated to the U.S. from Iran when she was 12, shortly after the stabbing on March 5, 2022, at Sunset Station. Nikoubin and the victim met online on the dating website Plenty of Fish, Henderson police wrote in an arrest report. The duo then agreed to meet at the hotel, booking a room together, police said.

While in the room, the pair began engaging in sexual activity, when Nikoubin put a blindfold on the man police said. Nikoubin then turned off the lights, and several seconds later, cut the man’s neck, documents said.

“While checking in at the hotel lobby, I saw a woman and heard her say, ‘I bet she is gonna slit his throat during sex,’” Nikoubin writes in the book. “I’m sure this didn’t actually happen, but it’s what I was seeing and hearing at the time. Looking back now, I know I was hallucinating.”

Photos shown to a grand jury showed two puncture wounds to the young man’s neck. Nikoubin writes she felt like actress Salma Hayek in the 1996 movie “Dusk Till Dawn.”

“I started to dance like Selma [sic] Hayek from Dusk Till Dawn,” the book said. “I felt powerful. She was so pretty. I felt as though that’s who I was watching. I was transforming into Selma [sic] with the Gravedigger song playing on repeat in my head.”

While speaking to officers at the hotel, Nikoubin said she wanted to get revenge for a drone strike, which killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Soleimani was a popular Iranian military officer and right-hand man to the country’s supreme leader. Former President Donald Trump called for Soleimani’s assassination to kill “the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world” to protect “American diplomats and military personnel” worldwide.

“I was a character in the TV show ‘Homeland’ now,” Nikoubin writes. “I wasn’t in my mind. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think anything was real. It was all a movie. I was Carrie from ‘Homeland.’”

The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.

“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.

The plan drew immediate backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates, raising questions about whether such drone use violated existing laws for police surveillance.

“It’s a troubling announcement and it flies in the face of the POST Act,” said Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to a 2020 city law that requires the NYPD to disclose its surveillance tactics. “Deploying drones in this way is a sci-fi inspired scenario.”

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is acknowledging that he took three trips last year aboard a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

It’s the first time in years that Thomas has reported receiving hospitality from Crow. In a report made public Thursday, the 75-year-old justice said he was complying with new guidelines from the federal judiciary for reporting travel.

The filing comes amid a heightened focus on ethics at the high court that stems from a series of reports revealing that Thomas has for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow, a wealthy businessman and benefactor of conservative causes. Crow also purchased the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni.

Warning: Article has detailed accounts of the shooting

Breanna Gayle Devall Runions, 25, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Evangaline Gunter.

The child’s parents, Adam and Josie Gunter, told ABC affiliate WATE that Evangaline had been in temporary custody at a home in Rockwood, which Runions shared with girlfriend Christina Daniels and another child, a 7-year-old girl.

Before the shooting, Evangaline and the older girl were being punished that morning by Runions for not waking up the women and for eating Daniels’ food without permission, according to the warrant and a statement from Russell Johnson, district attorney general for Tennessee’s 9th Judicial District. Runions struck both girls with a sandal before forcing them to stand in different corners of the women’s bedroom, authorities said the older girl told them.

After the shooting, the women drove Evangaline to a nearby Walmart location to meet an ambulance, Roane County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Boduch told the Roane County News, and the vehicle transported the girl to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Boduch could not immediately be reached by HuffPost.

Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.

Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.

On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.

The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze for about 30 seconds on Wednesday while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.

The incident is similar to an episode McConnell experienced at the US Capitol late last month and is likely to raise additional questions about the fitness of the 81-year-old to lead the Senate Republican caucus.

Wednesday’s episode occurred when a reporter asked the Republican leader if he was planning to run for reelection in 2026. McConnell had to ask him to repeat the question several times, chuckled for a moment, and then paused.

Someone at his side then asked him, “Did you hear the question, senator, running for reelection in 2026?” McConnell did not respond.

Article includes video of the incident.

More than half of U.S. dog owners expressed concerns about vaccinating their dogs, including against rabies, according to a new study published Saturday in the journal Vaccine. The study comes as anti-vaccine sentiments among humans have exploded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pets are now often considered to be a member of the family, and their health-care decisions are weighed with the same gravity. But the consequences of not vaccinating animals can be just as dire as humans. Dogs, for example, are responsible for 99% of rabies cases globally. Rabies, which is often transmitted via a bite, is almost always fatal for animals and people once clinical signs appear. A drop in rabies vaccination could constitute a serious public health threat.

In the new study, the authors surveyed 2,200 people and found 53% had some concern about the safety, efficacy or necessity of canine vaccines. Nearly 40% were concerned that vaccines could cause dogs to develop autism, a theory without any scientific merit.