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James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday that the OceanGates’ Titan submersible that imploded underwater did so because it was not constructed out of the proper materials.Cameron, who is considered an expert at diving and submersibles, made the remarks during interviews with ABC News and The New York Times after officials announced that they had located the debris of the vessel on the ocean floor and the five passengers on board had all died.

According to Republican governor candidate Kari Lake’s legal team, 42.5% of examined ballots in Maricopa County for the 2022 governor’s race were illegitimate. Lake’s trial began on Wednesday were she is attempting to prove that wide scale fraud took place in Maricopa County on election day. The Lake War Room tweeted on Wednesday that 48 of the 113 ballots that were reviewed during examination were “19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper,” “This one-inch discrepancy cause chaos on Election day. Causing the mass rejection of these votes as they were attempted to be read through the tabulators,” the Kari Lake War...

The Department of Labor announced Thursday that 1,000 people have been charged for receiving $45.6 billion of fraudulent unemployment insurance (UI) payments since March 2020. The pandemic overwhelmed state offices responsible for distributing benefits, with 57 million people filing initial UI claims within five months of March 2020, the DOL-OIG reported. Fraudsters were successfully able to take advantage of the chaos, filing for claims in multiple states, using fraudulent emails and using the Social Security Numbers (SSN) of dead people and federal prisoners.. Federal and state governments together paid out roughly $794 in unemployment benefits between March 2020 and July...

More than $87 billion in unemployment benefits funded by the federal government was likely siphoned from the system during the Covid-19 pandemic, much of it due to fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report. Congress authorized many new programs in the pandemic’s early days to support millions of workers who’d lost their jobs. Those programs, which ended on Labor Day this year, raised weekly benefits, extended the duration of aid and expanded the pool of jobless Americans eligible for payments. The federal government issued $872 billion in total benefits as of Sept. 30, according to an estimate from...

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on Sunday defended former President Donald Trump after the FBI seized documents from the former commander-in-chief’s Mar-a-Lago home. Dershowitz emphasized on Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz” that he voted against Trump twice and was “looking forward” to doing it again but said the FBI engaged in an “improper search” to obtain documents.

WASHINGTON — The chairman and CEO of investment titan Goldman Sachs acknowledged Wednesday that his company had engaged in "improper" behavior when it made financial bets against $40 billion in securities backed by risky U.S. home loans that it was selling to investors as safe products. Lloyd Blankfein made the shocking acknowledgement before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission , a 10-member panel that Congress created to look into the causes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. During that inaugural hearing, the CEOs of the nation's most prominent banks acknowledged serious flaws in their models and business practices...

WASHINGTON – More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year. In all, about 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday. Saying the overall error rate was similar in 2008, officials attributed the $26 billion jump to some changes in how to define improper spending as well as an increase in overall spending due to...

Law professor claims improper punishment CHICAGO, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- A law school professor in Chicago is suing for $1 million over what he calls an improper punishment over comments he made comparing black and Jewish students. John Gorby, who is neither Jewish nor African-American, opined to a Jewish student after a class at John Marshall Law School that religious training may help explain why Jews pass the bar exam at higher rates than blacks, who tend to come from religions that "emphasize an emotional and spiritual religious experience rather than discussion and debate about the meaning of scriptural language,"...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) on Thursday denied any connection between special projects he gained for his state and a Washington lobbyist whose wife works in Specter's office. The Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker's statement was in response to a USA Today report published Thursday which said Specter had succeeded 13 times over the past four years in securing $48.7 million worth of defense projects for six clients represented by a lobbying firm co-founded by Michael Herson. Herson is the husband of Vicki Siegel Herson, Specter's legislative assistant for appropriations. "Ms. Siegel's husband did not lobby my office....

Just three days after starting his new job at Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., shock jock Howard Stern is now able to sell the roughly $200 million in Sirius stock that he received as part of his five-year deal with the company. Sirius' contract with Stern runs through 2010, but the company disclosed last week that it was giving Stern and his agent 34.4 million shares of stock right away because it had already reached certain undisclosed targets for subscriber growth under the deal it signed with Stern in late 2004. On Wednesday, the company made another regulatory filing saying that...

Louisiana investigates improper cremations Disposal of Katrina victims at issue By Maurice Possley and John McCormick, Tribune staff reporters. Maurice Possley reported from Baton Rouge and John McCormick from Chicago Published October 30, 2005 BATON ROUGE, La. -- As hundreds of Louisiana families wait to claim the bodies of loved ones still lying anonymously in crowded morgues, the state medical examiner is investigating at least one parish coroner for allegedly disposing of Hurricane Katrina victims improperly. "We have been informed that there have been cremations of evacuees, either identified or unidentified, without the consent of the next of kin and...

In a vote that was scarcely noticed at the time but today is drawing scrutiny from federal investigators, the City Council quietly approved extraordinary retirement benefits for three politically powerful individuals – the presidents of the police union, the firefighters union and the white-collar workers union. All three are current or former city employees and vested in the municipal pension system. Under this highly irregular arrangement, the union chiefs were allowed to add their union salaries to their city salaries in calculating their retirement benefits, thus substantially boosting their taxpayer-financed pensions. This unique perk, extended exclusively to the three incumbent...

"Indecent Exposure" John Kerry political cartoon.  June 9, 2004... Kerry photo-ops Reagan casket Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry showed up at the Reagan Library on Tuesday afternoon to view the deceased former president’s casket, setting off a firestorm of reaction. ·        At issue: The need for a Kerry visit to the Reagan Library in California. As reported by Rush Limbaugh, a Kerry spokesperson had already announced Kerry would attend the State Funeral for Reagan on Friday in Washington, D.C.·        At issue: The photographer accompanying Kerry into the Reagan Library. Clear guidelines (handed out to everyone prior to entering...

SALEM - A flier the School Department sent home to parents about the new Salem Academy Charter School was "entirely inappropriate" and had claims that were untrue, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education. Several top state education officials reviewed the flier, which was printed by the Salem Public Schools and warned parents about signing up for the new public charter school that will open here in September. "It is not illegal to (send out the flier), but it is improper and entirely inappropriate," said Heidi Perlman, a state education spokeswoman who conferred with the department's general counsel, Rhoda Schneider....

MARYLAND STATE Sen. Mike Miller's attempts to contact judges about a redistricting plan pending before the state Court of Appeals were grossly improper, as were similar contacts made by three other Democratic lawmakers. All should have -- must have -- known better. Senate President Miller is a lawyer; he and the other three -- Sens. Ida Ruben of Montgomery and Ulysses Currie of Prince George's and Del. Ruth M. Kirk of Baltimore -- have been around awhile.