World

In June 2016, television comedy host John Oliver bought nearly $15 million (£11.8 million) in unpaid medical debt for just $60,000 (£47,000) through a debt collection company created for the purpose. Instead of using debt collectors to demand payment from the roughly 9,000 patients linked to the accounts, the producers of HBO’s Last Week Tonight…

There are two things Oscar- and Grammy-winning artist John Legend has always held close to his heart: music and his hometown of Springfield, Ohio. In 2016, that connection took physical form when he donated $500,000 towards the renovation of an auditorium inside The Dome, the former Springfield South High School. The result was the John…

A former legal secretary in Indiana is facing 42 felony charges and three misdemeanour charges after a three-year police investigation into alleged forged court orders, missing legal fees and fake criminal record expungements. According to a probable cause affidavit reported by Region News Source, 37-year-old Heather Ann Textor of Lowell was arrested after clients who…

Swainson’s hawks (All about birds photo) A piece of abandoned farmland in California, once covered with weeds and unwanted grasses, has become home to a rare bird that had not been confirmed nesting in the area for about 30 years. In 2023, conservation workers began restoring 150 acres of land near the Sacramento River. They…

Representative Image (AI-generated) In 2023, scientists relocated 246 endangered black abalone to a protected coastal site in California to help restore a population devastated by disease. Three years later, surveys recorded 302 individuals, compared with 54 before the intervention, while the density in high-quality habitat reached one abalone per square metre. Researchers also discovered juvenile…

In 2017, Nate Taylor found a three-word offer on Craigslist for free Halloween decorations. It took three truck trips to bring everything home. Nearly a decade later, that secondhand collection has become a local attraction that drew an estimated 18,000 visitors last October and led to a legal dispute with city officials in Michigan. Taylor,…

St. Johns County Utilities officials have gathered to celebrate the completion of the State Road 207 Water Reclamation Facility. The $191.8 million project is the largest capital improvement project in the county’s history. Located at 3055 State Road 207 in Elkton, the new plant treats wastewater and turns it into reclaimed water that is not…

Brazilian man Edimar Martins travelled over 1,200 miles to meet his AI-generated girlfriend. (Photo: Instagram) A Brazilian man who sold all his belongings and travelled more than 1,200 miles to meet the woman he hoped to marry was left heartbroken after discovering that his online girlfriend was an artificial intelligence-generated character.Edimar Martins, 49, a bricklayer…

The Texas Supreme Court has agreed to hear a dispute over whether a local government can take private property through eminent domain to build a golf facility that will be leased to a private operator. The case involves a 3.548-acre plot of land in Westworth Village owned by local resident Jim Burgess. In 2021, city…

File photo: US Vice President JD Vance (Picture credit: Reuters) US Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged that his rhetoric was “imperfect” after describing foreign professionals working on H-1B visas as “indentured servants”, clarifying that his criticism was directed at American companies and the visa system rather than the workers themselves.Speaking at a CBS News…