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Investigators now say the woman who accused three Bellevue officers of rape has a history of making false accusations. Bellevue, WA – Prosecutors have dropped the charges against a now-former police officer who served 49 days in jail because of what investigators now say were fake rape allegations.

Anna Ayers, commissioner of the Ohio University Student Senate Appropriations Commission, was arrested by the OU Police Department on Monday and charged with three counts of making false alarms. Ayers — an OU senior studying journalism, a member of The Post Publishing Board and a previous Post columnist — reported that she received three threatening messages, two in the Student Senate office and one at her residence. An OUPD investigation found that Ayers placed the messages herself prior to reporting them. According to a previous Post report, Student Senate held a meeting to address the threats made to Ayers last...

The UK’s obligations in response to this week’s warnings from the UN over global warming will be controversial and politically fraught, taking the country into “uncharted territory” and testing the political consensus on climate change, the its top climate adviser has warned. The government will have to regulate industry and intervene in the market in ways that will prove controversial in parliament, predicted Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCCP). He said reducing emissions by the amounts needed would “require answers that the market unfettered will not deliver”. Stark said the independence of the CCCP, which...

President Donald Trump cast doubt on a United Nations report that warned that we have just 12 years to curb climate change by suggesting the reports' authors weren't more credible than reports that say the environment is "fabulous." The UN report, which is based on more than 6,000 scientific references from 91 authors across 40 countries, outlines the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Trump, who has previously called climate change a "hoax", was speaking on the White House lawn on Tuesday when he said the report "was given to me." "And I want to...

Let's start with the domestic front of the Russia hoax. Sundance at Conservative Tree House has an excellent post up: "President Trump and DAG Rod Rosenstein - "No Collusion", No Immediate Worries..." The overall theme is one that's dear to Sundance's heart: leverage.-snip- There is now a concrete storyline backed by irrefutable evidence: The FBI allowed itself to take political opposition research created by one party to defeat another in an election, treated it like actionable intelligence, presented it to the court as substantiated, and then used it to justify spying on an adviser for the campaign of that party's...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned aside appeals of a 2017 lower court ruling by its newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, that struck down an environmental rule imposed under former President Barack Obama regulating a potent greenhouse gas linked to climate change. The appeals had been brought by an environmental group and companies that supported the 2015 rule that had limited hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in a variety of products including spray cans and air conditioners. The ruling authored by Kavanaugh was made by a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of...

Scientists say climate change is getting worse and there could be "life-or-death" consequences for our planet in the next 20 years. The new report from the U.N. predicts that at the current warming rate, millions more people will die from extreme heat by the year 2040. So are there practical ways we can help limit the warming? According to New York Times international climate reporter Somini Sengupta, the answer is yes: * Drive less, try to carpool or use public transit instead. * Buy less clothing, as apparel and footwear industries contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, or buy vintage and...

Human beings might have to cope with an increasing amount of venomous bites, stings, and other brush ups with poison due to climate change. That’s according to a new study, coming at the same time that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that negative impacts from a warming world are coming faster than expected. According to a massive new analysis of poisonous or venomous aquatic animals, dangerous species might become increasingly common in new ranges. Species whose ranges might shift polewards due to warmer water include lionfish, sea snakes, crown-of-thorns starfish and a number of...

President Trump on Monday angrily attacked Democrats and the college professor who accused his Supreme Court nominee of a sex assault — calling the allegations “a hoax” and predicting the opposition party would pay a heavy price in the midterms. “I thought the way they behaved was absolutely atrocious. I have never seen anything like it,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Marine One outside the White House, the first leg of a trip to Florida. “I thought that the way they conducted themselves, the way they dealt with a high-level brilliant … going to be a great...

LONDON - Society would have to enact "unprecedented" changes to how it consumes energy, travels and builds to meet a lower global warming target or it risks increases in heat waves, flood-causing storms and the chances of drought in some regions as well as the loss of species, a U.N. report said on Monday. The report is seen as the main scientific guide for government policymakers on how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement during the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December. To contain warming at 1.5C, man-made global net carbon dioxide emissions would need to fall by...

President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party's lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. "The main base of the Democrats have shifted so far left that we’ll end up being Venezuela. This country would end up being Venezuela. I think a lot of Democrats are going to be voting voting Republican on Nov. 6," Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a law enforcement event in Florida. The president seized on the specter raised by...

A stark new report from the global scientific authority on climate change calls on individuals, as well as governments, to take action to avoid disastrous levels of global warming. The IPCC's models emphasize the need for people to change their lifestyle and consumption patterns to more sustainable alternatives, specifically in areas they can control, like modes of transportation, the buildings they inhabit and their dietary preferences. Here's what consumers can do: Transportation: In order to meet the 1.5C goal, the IPCC envisages a future where people travel less, and that generally consumer preferences shift to more sustainable choices like car...

[snip]Last year, as protesters crashed his events in the midst of a House push to repeal former President Barack Obama’s healthcare program, Brat remarked that “women are in my grille no matter where I go.” Those words have followed him ever since.[snip]

President Donald Trump has approved a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy, but it drops the Obama administration’s treatment of climate change as a driver of violent Islamic extremist groups. Asked if the Trump plan identifies climate change as a destabilizing force in the Middle East that fuels extremist groups, national security adviser John Bolton replied: “I don’t think climate change is a cause of international terrorism.” In a December 2016 speech about his administration’s strategy for countering violent extremist groups, President Barack Obama included climate change as an ingredient that helps lead to terrorism. “Long-term corruption has rotted too many nation-states...

The warning signals of climate change that have hit people around the world in the last few months must be heeded by national governments at key meetings later this year, political leaders and policy experts are urging, as the disruption from record-breaking weather continues in many regions. This week, scientists are gathering in South Korea to draw together the last five years of advances in climate science to answer key questions for policymakers. What is expected to emerge will be the strongest warning yet that these unusual occurrences will add up to a pattern that can only be overcome with...

Wind power is booming in the United States. It’s expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation’s electricity. The US Department of Energy expects wind turbine capacity to more than quadruple again by 2050. But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems. Previous studies also pointed out the...

While “Mean Girls Day” is being marked Wednesday in reference to a mention of Oct. 3 in the popular 2004 cult movie, the parents of a former Seneca Valley High School student claim in a federal lawsuit filed this week that their teenage son was terrorized by false accusations made by five “Mean Girls” at the school. Michael J. and Alecia Flood of Zelienople, Butler County, the parents of a teenage boy identified in the lawsuit as T.F., seek unspecified civil damages against the girls’ parents, the school district and Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger’s office. The lawsuit alleges...

BIERE, Switzerland - Cows burp and fart more than they need to, according to a Swiss firm that says it has developed a feed that cuts methane emissions from livestock - helping to combat global warming into the bargain. A single cow produces the equivalent of about three tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, says Agolin, based in Biere, near Lausanne. Co-founder and managing director Kurt Schaller told Reuters its specialist feed can reduce that by 10 percent. "We sell our mixture for around 1 million cows per year... There are 25-28 million cows in the European Union, so it...

Researchers in Massachusetts say under the worst case scenario, climate change could reduce the scallop population by more than 50 percent in just a few decades, which could be bad news for New Bedford’s lucrative fishing port. In 2016, commercial fishermen landed more than $300 million worth of fish at the Port of New Bedford, and 85 percent of that value came from scallops. A new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows as carbon emissions in the atmosphere increase, so does the acidity in the ocean. Jennie Rheuban, lead author of the report, said that could affect how well...

Scientists believe Tangier Island, in the Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay, could vanish within the next 25 years. Two-thirds of Tangier's land mass has disappeared since the time of the Civil War, and in recent years sea-level rise caused by global warming took more acres from the island. Fewer than 500 people remain there. Many of them voted for Donald J. Trump, share his rejection of climate change as the reason for their existential challenge and insist that a seawall around the island would save it from further "wave erosion." The deeply religious islanders have frequently been in the...