A 44-year-old woman in the United States has been left with horrific injuries after being attacked by a cluster of highly venomous spiders. According to the New York Post, Jessica Rogue was cleaning out a shed outside her home in Atlanta when she encountered several brown recluse spiders. Less than 24 hours later, she was rushed to the hospital as her face, arms and throat swelled up and she was covered in rashes. 

A bite of a brown recluse spider can cause necrotic (rotting) skin lesions and lead to serious reactions or even death in some. In Ms Rogue’s case, the brown recluse spiders bit her in multiple places. As per Post, She suffered horrific injuries, with her face swollen and her skin feeling “on fire”. 

“I was just in there sweeping, I immediately felt something on my face next to my eye. I felt I got bit,” Ms Rogue said. “There were spiders on me. Where I was, it was a really messy web, and I was trying to clean that up,” she continued. 

According to her GoFundMe page, the 44-year-old suffered numbness and loss of mobility in her hand and foot too. And she said she is “really worried” about her eye. “My eye is, I’m having a lot of pain. I just don’t know what’s going to happen with my eye,” she told the local news outlet while wearing an eyepatch.

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A GoFundMe to help Ms Rogue with medical costs has collected $8,097. “She has numbness and loss of mobility in her hand and foot (still unsure if it’s temporary or permanent yet) and her skin is on fire,” fundraiser organiser Morgan Underwood wrote. “She’s unable to work and has three beautiful daughters,” the page read. 

In an update, Ms Underwood added that Ms Rogue is out of hospital and recovering. “The swelling on her face has gone down a great deal,” it is “now covered in an itchy, painful rash,” the page read. “Her arms, neck and chest are also covered in an itchy, painful rash, and the areas where she was bitten are blistered up, so we’re keeping an eye on that,” the update said.

Notably, the brown recluse spider is the most common and widespread of the brown spiders, but it is usually found only in the South and Central United States. It is a small species that can grow up to 0.5 inches long. Its bite, however, can pack a powerful venomous punch. 

An elementary school teacher in the United States is under investigation for allegedly filming sexually explicit videos of herself inside her classroom and school bathroom. Citing local media reports, the New York Post reported that the woman, who resigned in February for undisclosed reasons, was a music teacher at Gray Elementary in Lamar Consolidated Independent School District (LCISD) in Texas. For now, the teacher, whose name hasn’t been disclosed, has not been charged with a crime. But the school district has opened an investigation after community activists called out her behaviour at a press conference. 

The school said it wasn’t aware of the videos until Wednesday when the censored clips of the teacher began to surface online. In one of the videos which appears to be from inside the classroom, the teacher was seen flashing her breasts and buttocks to a camera, the Post reported. Another video also allegedly showed her stripping down similarly in a school bathroom. 

“It was a poor judgment on my part. I would never do it again,” the teacher told a local media outlet in an interview. She claimed she shot the videos on a Sunday when she had stopped by the school to pick something up or in a bathroom when nobody was on campus. She also said that she only shared the clip with her former boyfriend, with whom she recently had a nasty breakup. 

The teacher has filed a police report for possible revenge porn, according to the outlet. “I’ve never sent this out to thousands of men. Like, I’m not that type of person,” she said, adding, “This was just a relationship, a private matter, and he released it.”

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Meanwhile, the school opened an investigation into the matter after local community activists called out her behaviour. Speaking at a press conference this week, one activist described the video in vivid detail, saying the clip shows her “stripping down naked, bending over and showing you everything on the video and all you could see was cellulite and pubic hair.”

“This woman obviously had lost her damn mind. She needs psychotropic medication. She pulls out her breasts and she’s juggling them – looks like she’s about to fall over. Then she bends over and pulls down her panties,” the activist added. He also said that the teacher should never be allowed around children again. 

The Lamar Consolidated Independent School District said it was the teacher’s first year with the district. 

A driver died on May 4, 2024, after crashing a vehicle into a gate at the White House, authorities said. File
| Photo Credit: AP

A driver died after crashing a car into the exterior gate of the White House late on May 4, the U.S. Secret Service said.

“Shortly before 10:30 p.m. a vehicle travelling at a high speed collided with an outer perimeter gate on the White House complex,” the service said in a statement on social media platform X, adding there was “no threat” to the White House itself.

Officers arriving at the scene “attempted to render aid to the driver who was discovered deceased,” the statement said.

The Secret Service, along with the police and fire departments of the District of Columbia, have launched an investigation into the fatal crash, according to Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

He added there was “no threat or public safety implications”.

In January, authorities detained another person who crashed a vehicle into the exterior gate of the same complex.

The White House has seen a string of high-profile trespassing incidents in recent years, prompting the construction of a higher, tougher metal fence around the iconic mansion’s perimeter in 2020.

U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, fourth left, and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, third left, walk at the Kerem Shalom border crossing in Kerem Shalom, Israel on May 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Hamas on May 1 to accept a “very strong” ceasefire-for-hostages offer as he vowed to put a priority on families seeking to reunite with loved ones.

In rare scenes for the top U.S. diplomat, who has faced furore at home and abroad over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its campaign against Hamas, Mr. Blinken was greeted outside his Tel Aviv hotel by Israelis waving U.S. flags and chanting, “Thank you, Biden! Thank you, Blinken!”

Mr. Blinken, who also met privately with hostage families, told them that freeing the hostages seized by militants on October 7 was “at the heart of everything we’re trying to do”.

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“There is a very strong proposal on the table right now. Hamas needs to say yes, and needs to get this done,” Mr. Blinken told the protesters, many of whom chanted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the war.

“We will not rest until everyone — men, women, soldier, civilian, young, old — is back home,” he said.

Following a meeting with Mr. Blinken, Israel’s Opposition leader Yair Lapid insisted that Mr. Netanyahu “does not have any political excuse not to move to a deal for the release of the hostages”.

“He has a majority in the nation, he has a majority in the Knesset, and if needed, I’ll make sure he has a majority in the government,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

Various members of Netanyahu’s coalition government, including those from the far-right, have criticised the negotiations, throwing doubt on the government’s unity.

Ceasefire ‘now’

In Jerusalem on Wednesday, Mr. Blinken spoke at length with Mr. Netanyahu, who despite calls for a ceasefire has been vowing to go ahead with an offensive in Rafah — the city in southern Gaza where around 1.5 million Palestinians have taken shelter — regardless of U.S. opposition or the fate of hostage negotiations.

In that discussion, Mr. Blinken reiterated the U.S. opposition to a Rafah incursion, a U.S. official said.

Speaking earlier with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Mr. Blinken said the United States was “determined to get a ceasefire that brings the hostages home — and to get it now”.

“And the only reason that that wouldn’t be achieved is because of Hamas,” Mr. Blinken said.

Mr. Herzog told Mr. Blinken: “We yearn for the immediate return of the hostages. It is and should be the top priority of the international community.”

Hamas is set to respond to an offer in which Israel would temporarily halt its offensive in Gaza and free Palestinian prisoners in return for hostages seized on October 7.

During his visit, Mr. Blinken is also pressing efforts to increase aid into the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned of impending famine due to severe shortages of food.

He will later Wednesday make stops including in Ashdod, a port near Gaza that was recently reopened by Israel for aid.

“We also have to be focused on people who are suffering in this crossfire of Hamas’s making,” Mr. Blinken said to Mr. Herzog.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blinken saw off a Jordanian aid convoy that was heading to the newly reopened Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza.

A 15-year-old girl in California whose father was believed to have kidnapped her in September 2022 was fatally shot by police officers as she followed their command and didn’t appear to be wearing tactical gear, as previously claimed by cops, a new footage shows. According to The Guardian, Savannah Graziano was abducted by her father, Anthony John Graziano, after he allegedly killed his wife and Savannah’s mother on September 27, 2022. An Amber Alert was issued for the 15-year-old after the homicide was discovered. When the deputies found Mr Graziano’s truck, a car chase and a shootout followed, resulting in the deaths of Savannah and her father. 

At the time, police claimed that it was unclear whether the 15-year-old was shot by deputies or her father. They also said that deputies didn’t realise it was her when she got out of the vehicle, and they refused to release the footage of the shooting. 

This incident sparked a national concern, with people questioning how officers wound up killing the unarmed teenage girl they were tasked to rescue. Now, nearly two years after the incident, the department disclosed a dozen video files to the independent journalist Joey Scott. The video, which has also surfaced on social media, shows the deputies shooting at Savannah as she followed their instructions to move towards them. 

As per The Guardian, the clip suggests that police officers shot her after two other cops remarked that it was the girl who exited. It also makes it clear that the deputies and not her father fatally shot the 15-year-old. 

The California Department of Justice is now investigating the case under a law requiring inquiries into police killing of unarmed people. 

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Notably, the search for the 15-year-old started on September 26, 2022, when her father allegedly shot and killed his estranged wife and Savannah’s mother. He reportedly also shot at a father and his child outside a school in nearby Fontana. 

Speaking to the outlet, CJ Wyatt, Savannah’s uncle, said he understood it was a confusing and chaotic situation for officers to manage, but that his niece should not have been shot: “There needs to be better training so that unarmed people aren’t killed. Hopefully this video can be used for training – something has to be done differently. She didn’t have to die”. 

Mr Wyatt also said blame ultimately lay with Savannah’s father, who he described as “abusive and manipulative”. As her parents were separating in the weeks prior, the 15-year-old had been living in her father’s truck. “She was a really sweet girl at her core, and she didn’t deserve this,” he added. 

A 32-year-old woman in the United States has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to the murder of her 16-month-old daughter, who prosecutors say was left home alone for 10 days while her mother vacationed. According to Fox News, the woman, identified as Kristel Candelario, pleaded guilty last month to one count of aggravated murder and one count of endangering children. She committed the “ultimate betrayal” by abandoning her daughter Jailyn without food or water last summer so she could vacation in Detroit and Puerto Rico, a judge told her on Monday.  

“Just as you didn’t let Jailyn out of her confinement, so too you should spend the rest of your life in a cell without freedom,” County Common Pleas Court Judge Brendan Sheehan told the mother. “The only difference will be, the prison will at least feed you and give you liquid that you denied her,” the judge added. 

According to the prosecutors, last year in June, Candelario left her daughter “alone and unattended” at her home in Cleveland and did not return until 10 days later. “Upon returning, Candelario found Jailyn unresponsive and called the police. The Cleveland Division of Police and the Cleveland Division of Fire responded to the scene and Jailyn was pronounced deceased,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, as per Fox News. 

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“An investigation conducted by CPD’s Homicide Unit revealed that Candelario left her child alone and unattended from June 6 to June 16 to vacation in Detroit, Michigan, and in Puerto Rico. Jailyn was extremely dehydrated at the time of death,” the office added. 

“Jailyn was discovered in a Pack-N-Play pen on a liner soiled with urine and feces with soiled blankets,” the statement read. 

The mother, on the other hand, claims to have struggled with depression and other mental health issues. When given a chance to speak, she said that she has prayed daily for forgiveness. “There’s so much pain that I have in regards to the loss of my baby, Jailyn,” she said in court. “I’m extremely hurt about everything that happened. I am not trying to justify my actions, but nobody knew how much I was suffering and what I was going through,” she said. “God and my daughter have forgiven me,” she claimed.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks at a press briefing at the White House in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Joe Biden is doing everything he can to improve the H1B visa process, ‘green card’ backlog and other issues related to the country’s legal immigration system, the White House has said.

The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

“One of the steps, if we look at the H1B visa process, we have taken action to improve that and the process and backlog for lawful permanent residents (green card) who are eligible to become U.S. citizens,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference on Wednesday.

She was responding to questions about the feeling among a section of Indian Americans that the President is not putting as much effort on addressing the woes of legal immigrants as he is doing for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Biden heads to the southern border with Mexico in Texas on Thursday.

“Just last month, for example, as a part of our efforts to strengthen the integrity of our immigration system and reduce potential for fraud, the DHS published a final rule relating to H1B visa,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

“So, the changes promote fairer and more equitable outcomes and, so, we will continue our work to improve the system within our authorities and that has certainly been a priority,” she said and added that the administration takes that “very seriously” and is continuing to do everything that it can to improve the visa process.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced the launch of myUSCIS organisational accounts that will allow multiple people within an organisation, as well as their legal representatives, to collaborate on and prepare H1B registrations, H-1B petitions and any associated Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service.

A new organisational account is required to participate in the H1B Electronic Registration Process starting in March 2024, the USCIS said. 

“We are working expeditiously to address any technical issues that may arise for legal representatives whose accounts migrated when they logged into their online account on or after February 14, 2024, including impacts on cases other than H1B filings,” it said.

The initial registration period for FY 2025 H1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 6, and run through noon Eastern on March 22.

During this period, prospective petitioners and their representatives, if applicable, must use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated registration fee for each beneficiary, its media alert said.   

Starting with the FY 2025 initial registration period, USCIS will require registrants to provide valid passport information or valid travel document information for each beneficiary.

The passport or travel document provided must be the one the beneficiary, if or when abroad, intends to use to enter the US if issued an H1B visa. Each beneficiary must only be registered under one passport or travel document.

“In March, we will launch online filing of Form I-129 and associated Form I-907 for non-cap H1B petitions. On April 1, USCIS will begin accepting online filing for H1B cap petitions and associated Forms I-907 for petitioners whose registrations have been selected,” the federal agency said.

To help guide organisations and legal representatives through the new process, the USCIS had launched the Tech Talks sessions in February 2024. During these sessions, individuals can ask questions about the organisational accounts and online filing of Form I-129 for H1B petitions.

The USCIS encourages all individuals involved in the H1B registration and petition filing process to attend these sessions. Additional information and dates are available on the Upcoming National Engagements page, it said.

The mother of a missing 3-year-old boy and her boyfriend have been charged with child neglect, nearly a week after the child was last seen. According to Fox59, authorities in Wisconsin, US, are still searching for the little boy after he was sent to be with his mother’s boyfriend as a form of punishment. The boy, identified as Elijah Vue, was last seen on February 20 in the city of Twi Rivers while he was being watched by Jesse Vang, a man who was in a relationship with the boy’s mother, Katrina Baur. 

According to Fox59, Mr Vang, 39, told cops that he noticed that the 3-year-old was gone when he woke up from a nap at his home. He also said that he has been trying to help Elijah’s mother correct the little boy’s “bad behaviours”. 

Separately, Ms Baur, 31, said that her son has been in the care of Mr Vang for about a week. She added that Mr Vang is the “enforcer of rules” in the relationship, which is why she sent her son to stay with him. 

Citing the complaint, the outlet reported that some of the examples of the discipline included praying, saying he was sorry, and going over the rule the 3-year-old was supposed to be memorising. Ms Baur also told authorities she wanted Mr Vang to teach Elijah by example how to “be a man”. 

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Mr Vang also told a detective that the toddler was mostly bottle-fed and was not potty-trained. He said Elijah was not allowed to play with the one toy he had while staying at his home from February 12 to February 20 because he was in “time out”. 

According to CNN, the evening before Elijah was last seen, Mr Vang had three 12-ounce beers and a muscle relaxant as a sleep aid. The following morning, Mr Vang took his son to a bus stop and then gave Elijah cereal without milk for breakfast. Mr Vang also said that the toddler did not have his diaper changed that morning and was told to stand and pray at the foot of Mr Vang’s bed. 

On Monday, Ms Baur was formally charged with one felony county of party-to-a-crime of child neglect and two misdemeanour counts of resisting or obstructing an officer. Mr Vang, on the other hand, was formally charged with one felony count of party-to-a-crime child neglect. 

A US-based welding company tried to pay a subcontractor a five-figure settlement in loose coins – a gesture that was later rebuked by a judge. According to CBS News, JMF Enterprises was ordered to pay subcontractor Fired Up Fabrication $23,500 in 2022 over an alleged breach of contract. The wielding company initially paid this amount in change weighing 3 tons. However, in a recent ruling, the court said that the welding firm acted “maliciously and in bad faith” when it paid the settlement in an unconventional way. 

According to CBS News, Judge Joseph Findley on Monday ordered JMF Enterprise and its owner John Frank to pay the subcontractor by a more conventional method like a cheque. The court ordered the Northern Colorado company to pay Fired Up Fabrication’s attorneys fees and costs as well. In the ruling, Judge Findley also noted that JMF’s coin stunt only delayed the case being closed, and was intended to annoy and harass Fired Up Frabrication. 

The case stems from a 2022 lawsuit filed against JMF over an alleged breach of contract. According to PEOPLE, Fired Up Fabrication was hired as a subcontractor to do welding work on an apartment building. The subcontractor alleged that JMF made only partial payments for the job, despite their repeated requests to receive the agreed-upon amount in full. 

Over the summer, the two firms then agreed to settle, with JMF paying its subcontractor $23,500. However, in August, the welding company sent a flatbed truck loaded with a specially constructed box jammed with coins that weighed nearly 6,500 pounds. The box was filled with loose quarters, nickels, and pennies, the outlet reported. 

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Fired Up Fabrication’s attorney, Danielle Beem called this stunt a “pretty and grand waste of time” and said that the coin delivery was a “symbolic middle finger”. Ms Beem also called the attempted coin delivery a “major F-U”. 

JMF’s lawyers, on the other hand, claimed that the coins “constituted a tender of the settlement funds, and therefore, JMF has complied with the terms of the agreement. The settlement agreement did not outline any specific form for the payment”. Lawyers for the company also added that they had no intention of harassing the subcontractor. 

However, Judge Findley appeared to agree with Fired Up Frabrication’s lawyers. He noted, “The defendants apparently obtained the coins in various denominations in neatly organized boxes but then took the extra step of removing the coins from the boxes and dumping them loosely and randomly into the large metal container. The court finds that the defendants acted maliciously and in bad faith.”

The judge has now given JMF 14 days to pay Fired Up Fabrication using a certified bank cheque or some other standard manner of payment. 

Photo for representational purpose
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

A heavily armed man killed himself rather than carry out an apparent plan to shoot up a mountaintop amusement park in Colorado, U.S.A, his body discovered in a bathroom next to words scrawled on the wall, “I am not a killer,” authorities said Monday.

Diego Barajas Medina, 20, was found dead in a women’s bathroom at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park by a maintenance crew on Saturday morning, before the park opened to the public. He died of a self-inflected gunshot wound, Garfield County Coroner Robert Glassmire said.

Medina apparently entered the park while it was closed, armed with an AR-style rifle, a semi-automatic handgun and explosives and was wearing body armour and tactical clothing, similar to what a police SWAT team member might wear, authorities said.

A message saying, “I am not a killer, I just want to get into the caves,” was written on a wall of the bathroom where Medina’s body was found lying on the floor, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario said. Nearby was a handgun and explosive devices, some real and some fake, he said. The AR-style rifle was on a counter nearby along with a duty belt holding several ammunition magazines.

Vallario could not say for certain that Medina wrote the message.

There were no prior indications, either at home or school, suggesting he was planning an attack, Vallario said. But the sheriff noted that investigators have not conducted any in-depth interviews yet. The FBI will help review Medina’s phone records and social media postings as part of the investigation, he said.

“Given the preparation, given the amount of weapons and ordinance he had it almost seemed very highly likely he intended to use those against the community. He chose not to,” Vallario said.

Multiple improvised explosive devices were found in the vehicle used by Medina, police said. Authorities searched the rest of the park for other explosives but suggested no others were found.

Medina’s body was removed Sunday after the scene was deemed safe, according to the coroner.

The park likely would have been crowded on a fall weekend during hunting season when people go to the mountains to see the changing autumn colors, Vallario said. Given the park’s isolated location, which visitors take a gondola to normally, it would have been difficult to get any wounded to the hospital, he said.

Medina was from the nearby town of Carbondale, where he lived with his mother and brother, Vallario said. In a list of high school graduates published in a local newspaper in 2021, Medina said he planned to work for a year after graduation before attending Colorado Mountain College, a community college with several locations in western Colorado.

A search of his room by law enforcement found nothing to indicate explosives or bomb-making, and he had no known criminal history or prior encounters with police, the sheriff said.

The weapons found on Medina were ghost guns, which do not have serial numbers and therefore cannot be traced. His clothing had patches and emblems that gave the appearance of Medina being associated with law enforcement.

Some of the suspected explosives turned out to be fakes — including several that looked like hand grenades — but others were real, the sheriff said. However, there was no evidence to suggest that explosive devices had been placed elsewhere inside the park, he said.

Investigators believe Medina drove up to the park on a service road.

The park, which is surrounded by state-owned public land, is on a mountain above the Colorado River in western Colorado. Its attractions include cave tours, an alpine coaster and a pendulum swing ride perched on the edge of a cliff that sends riders over the river canyon.

No employees or visitors were on scene when Medina entered the park, according to a statement issued Monday by Glenwood Caverns, and his body was found outside of restricted areas where rides are located.

“This very sad and tragic incident reminds us how much our Glenwood Springs community means to us,” Glenwood Caverns General Manager Nancy Heard said in the statement.