The United States Mint is celebrating its 225th anniversary in a very special way. On April 6, the first in a series of commemorative $100 24-Karat gold Lady Liberty coins will be issued, featuring Lady Liberty as an African American woman.
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin, and United States Mint Principal Deputy Director Rhett Jeppson unveiled designs for the 2017 American Liberty 225th Anniversary Gold Coin in the historic Department of the Treasury's Cash Room.

Smithsonian Magazine reports the issuing of the $100 coin is the kickoff to the Mint's 225th anniversary year and is the first in part of a series that will also depict Lady Liberty as Asian-American, Hispanic-American, and Indian-American, "to reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States."

After the president-elect's first press conference since the election this week, it appears the mainstream media is in need of a 'safe space'. As The Hill reports, so-called journalists from the Huffington Post, Slate, CNN, and Univision will gather days before Donald Trump's inauguration to publicly discuss "how the news media can and should proceed to cover" the president-elect.

After this happened...
Slate will host the event next Wednesday, called "Not the New Normal." CNN's Brian Stelter will moderate the panel at New York University. As The Hill details,

The focus of the discussion will include "how journalists and media companies at large can play a bigger role in making sure that fact prevails over fiction in the coming months and years," according to Slate.

Slate's editor in chief Julia Turner and Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg — who hosts "Trumpcast," a podcast dedicated to covering the president-elect — will participate in the panel.

Joining them will be Borja Echevarría, Univision Digital's vice president and editor in chief; Huffington Post editor in chief Lydia Polgreen and New Yorker editor David Remnick.

Most of the panelists were staunchly critical of Trump during the campaign and since Election Day.

Tickets will cost $30, with proceeds benefiting the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Customs and Border Protection agents have been invasively questioning Muslim-Americans at U.S. border crossings about their political and religious beliefs, asking for their social media information, and demanding passwords to open mobile phones, according to a set of complaints filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In one case, a 23-year old American citizen alleges that he was choked by a CBP agent after declining to hand over his phone for inspection while crossing the border back from Canada.

The complaints deal with the cases of nine people who have been stopped at various U.S. border crossings, eight of whom are American citizens, and one Canadian. They were filed to the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Justice.

Police were called to a T-mobile outlet in Palm Springs, Florida on Friday after reports that an SUV had smashed through the front window of the store and the driver had begun assaulting staff members.

A 14-year-old Indian boy has signed a deal to commercially produce anti-landmine drones. The child prodigy, who has already developed a prototype, says the idea came to him after learning in the media about the high army casualties caused by land mines.

The zealous inventor, Harshwardhan Zala, is a tenth-grader from Gujarat state in western India.

Intensely controversial Indian Point nuclear power plant will completely cease operations by 2021, but the move to shutter operations on the facility — located just 25 miles north of New York City — has itself stirred contention.

Legal and environmental battles have raged for years over Indian Point, which supplies nearly one-third of the energy generation for the metropolis and has — in recent times, at least, officially — one of the best track records of any nuclear plant in the U.S.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has for years fought to shut down Indian Point — which he has called a "ticking time bomb" — both for its proximity to a sprawling urban populace and for the plant's disputable safety record. Announcing the coming closure, Cuomo stated this week,

"For 15 years, I have been deeply concerned by the continuing safety violations at Indian Point, especially given its location in the largest and most densely populated metropolitan region in the country. I am proud to have secured this agreement with Entergy to responsibly close the facility 14 years ahead of schedule to protect the safety of all New Yorkers. This administration has been aggressively pursuing and incentivizing the development of clean, reliable energy, and the state is fully prepared to replace the power generated by the plant at a negligible cost to ratepayers."

Wind power will be the governor's primary focus, but that sufficient clean energy infrastructure to replace the two gigawatts of power produced at Indian Point isn't yet in place has brought the eminent shuttering of the nuclear facility into question by both the industry and, surprisingly, even some environmental advocates.

A Houston woman has been traumatized by the District Attorney's office, following her report of being raped by a serial rapist. According to Click2Houston, "Jenny, who is in her 20s, was the star witness in the rape trial of Keith Hendricks after he violently raped and choked her. Hendricks was eventually sentenced to two life sentences for raping women."

But during the trial, Jenny broke down while testifying against Hendricks. Fearing that her star witness would not return to testify, prosecutors decided Jenny, who suffers from bipolar disorder, would need to go to the hospital, and then to jail. Yes, that's right. After a brief stay at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Jenny was "handcuffed, put in the back of a patrol car and taken to jail," according to her attorney Sean Buckley. Adding insult to injury, apparently, not only was the witness raped, forced to testify in front of others about her

Adding insult to injury, apparently, not only was the witness raped, forced to testify in front of others about her trauma but then she was rewarded by being forced to spend nearly a month in jail. A month!

The highly unusual move occurred when prosecutors presented the trial judge with a "witness bond." The judge, Stacey W. Bond, signed the order but cannot comment on the case because the rapist is appealing his conviction. So to paint the picture, at least for around 30 days, both the victim and the perpetrator were locked behind bars. This miscarriage of justice just re-victimized the victim and led to a historic shake-up in the district attorney's office.

A motorcycle group led by a South Carolina chainsaw artist will ride into the nation's capital on Inauguration Day in support of the 45th President of the United States.

Bikers for Trump, a group of motorcycle enthusiasts, will likely be toeing the line with protesters, who are also expected to be at the event.

"The bikers are certainly used to being outnumbered and we are prepared to form a wall of meat," Chris Cox, the founder of the organization, told the FOX Business Network.

However, Cox said he doesn't foresee any problems occurring during the event, especially after the group's experience at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where police successfully maintained order between Trump's supporters and protesters.

"We're anticipating a celebration here. We don't anticipate any problems. We have a strict code of conduct where we don't condone violence. But again in the event that we're needed, you can certainly count on the Bikers for Trump," Cox said.

Young people have half the wealth and earn 20 percent less than Baby Boomers did when they were at the same stage in life, despite being more educated than other generations of young adults, according to a new report.

Analyzing data from the Federal Reserve, the advocacy group Young Invincibles released a reportFriday detailing the "significant generational declines in financial security between the Millennial and Baby Boomer generations."

Three police officers so horrifically beat a man in custody, all of them — a sergeant and two veteran patrolmen — were fired. Now, Police Chief Eric Gillis has released video footage of the brutal attack — and what it shows makes shockingly clear why they lost their jobs.

On June 19, 2016, David Desjardins, Jr., became too inebriated at a bar in the Six Flags New England amusement park; but when a bartender cut him off, he acted belligerently and began arguing. Park security called the police, MassLive reports, who confronted Desjardins and had to use pepper spray several times before they were able to make the arrest.

Agawam Police Officers John P. Moccio and Edward B. Connor, and Sergeant Anthony Grasso, then dealt with Desjardins during the booking process, but claimed in reports the man was drunk and unruly — thus their use of force had been justified. Desjardins was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and assault and battery on a police officer.

"Under the policies and procedures, the use of the force was authorized," said Attorney John Connor, who represents the officers, reports 22News, "They may disagree with that, but that doesn't mean that these officer didn't act in accordance with the policies and their training."

However, video shows Desjardins stripped down to his underwear and seemingly — despite the lack of audio recording — only vaguely disruptive and certainly not deserving of the beating he then receives.

As footage begins, the man sits on a bench in the station and appears to receive a stern talking-to by one officer. Suddenly the officer gestures to another and the pair, along with two others, violently grab Desjardins and force him into a holding cell, containing the typical metal toilet and a concrete slab without any padding.

Desjardins weakly attempts to wriggle free from one officer's grip and is then roughly forced down onto the concrete slab with three of the four officers holding him down — as one of them uses a baton to beat his back. When that seems not to satisfy the officer, he takes a step back and — as the other two lie on top of the drunken man, holding him down — begins pummeling Desjardins' kneecaps and ankles with the baton.