Native Americans and environmental activists voiced their alarm over President Donald Trump's decision to advance work on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Both projects were reluctantly halted by the Obama administration after many protests.

Keystone XL was intended to speed up the flow of oil from Canada's Alberta tar sands to US refineries, but in November 2015 President Barack Obama declined to approve it, calling it politically controversial.

A social media post went viral after the owner of a knitting shop in Franklin, Tennessee banned shoppers from buying yarn for any project "relating to the recent women's movement," and instructing them "to go elsewhere."

"The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable. That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting," Elizabeth Poe, the owner of the yarn store, wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. "I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrongs will never, ever make it right."

As a Christian, Poe has a duty to promote "values of mutual respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity," she said, but the woman's movement is "counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community and nation."

"I do pray for these women. May God work out His love in their hearts and continue to heal and unite Americans," wrote Poe.

An Ohio father and son facing multiple charges of rape, endangering children and kidnapping have told a court they'll use the bible to defend their case as it's "the only law book that truly matters."

Timothy and Esten Ciboro, who are representing themselves, explained to the judge that they intend to "use God's holy word to ask questions, questions that we believe are absolutely vital to our case," according to the Toledo Blade.

"There's a great deal of strategy in Scripture and I use those strategies in everything I do," Esten Ciboro, 28, told the judge, adding that "it's a vital part of everything I do."

While the court in Toledo, Ohio, accepted the pair may reference the Bible in their defense, the judge refused the use of it for questioning witnesses as it "is not a law book in a court of law."

Russian two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva took to social media to expressed her thoughts on ongoing doping scandal around Russian sport and the way informants choosing to act trying to solve the issues.

Dear friends and colleagues! I would like to express my point of view on the recently appeared doping story video from another informant. I have a question: why don't the informants contact investigating authorities instead of filming material on a hidden camera and then selling it? Why don't they go to the Ministry of sports or anti-doping agency to declare the violations? Why are ALL athletes accused again with no evidence? All around the world the facts of anti-doping violations by certain athletes and their staff are considered as their own personal responsibility. In my opinion, in order to declare "state support of doping", it is necessary to define what the word "state" means: is it the president and his subordinates or is it any citizen of the Russian Federation?!

I AM, BY ALL MEANS, AGAINST DOPING, against those people who violate anti-doping rules, but also I am against those, who with no evidence and reasons it brings together the guilty and the innocent athletes making him/herself a fighter for justice and blaming everybody around, question the existence of clean sports and clean athletes in Russia. And what is typical is that our country and our clean athletes are denigrated exactly by those sportsmen who failed in sports. I declare that clean sport was, is and will be in Russia, and my career is its confirmation. We with my coach had never thought of violations, unlike many western athletes we had never turned to therapeutic exceptions, as even this was considered to be dishonest to our rivals. For us, our health and our reputation are more important than "dirty medals". In our country, there is a huge number of honest professional athletes who will tell about their cleanness themselves. Unfortunately, those sportsmen who have no relation to doping, are suffering because of people who failed in sports, violated anti-doping rules and wanted to earn money in such way.

Now retired from professional sport, Isinbayeva is obviously referring to the latest documentary on alleged state-sponsored doping in Russia, aired by German TV channel ARD, in which a little-known Russian track and field athlete named Andrey Dmitriev accused coach Vladimir Kazarin of secretly working despite being suspended, while claiming most Russian athletes still use performance-enhancing drugs.

Chuck Palahniuk thinks Trump supporters were inspired by his line: "You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."

Fight Club writer Chuck Palahniuk says he coined the term "snowflake" long before Trump supporters began using it.

Fox News contributors and Donald Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway have been using the term referring to Trump protesters, but the author says the phrase started with him.

"It does come from Fight Club," he told the Evening Standard. "There is a line, 'You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.'"

A Miami man killed by police alongside Interstate 95 posed no threat and "can be seen crawling away" on surveillance video as he was fatally shot, his family's lawyers said Tuesday evening.

Lawyers for the widow of Junior Prosper, who was shot to death in September 2015, said they will file a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday — and unveil a video they say shows he was killed unjustly.

It was more than a year ago that Prosper, a Yellow Cab taxi driver, crashed his car into a light-pole near an on-ramp at Northwest 119th Street in Miami-Dade County.

At the time, Miami-Dade Police said Prosper, for some unknown reason, ran up onto the interstate. A Miami-Dade police officer chased him on foot, to the side of the interstate, and a confrontation ensued. The department said the officer tried unsuccessfully to use a Taser stun gun on Propser, who bit the officer's finger to the bone and forced him to fire.

The shooting and investigation brought Monday morning rush-hour traffic to a halt for hours as detectives shut down Interstate 95 in North Miami-Dade.

The Scottish National Party has welcomed a High Court ruling that will force the Brexit-triggering Article 50 to pass through parliament, as its foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond told RT they plan to challenge the government on every aspect of the deal.

"It's a massive defeat for the government," the former SNP leader said, speaking from the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

Accusing the ruling Tory party of trying to act "like thieves in the night" by attempting to circumvent parliament in triggering the Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which will officially kick-start Brexit negotiations with Brussels, Salmond expressed confidence that his party would be able to shape the terms of the UK's exit.

Let's hope you were able to get in all your binge watching before the new year, as online streaming entertainment may very well be the next thing that we enjoy slapped with a tax.

Many cities across the country have found that taxes from utilities have taken a hit with the rise in the number of people who have decided to "cut the cord" from cable companies. During the second quarter of 2016 alone, over 812,000 people cancelled their paid television subscriptions and switched to various streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and SlingTV, which only require internet access.

As that telecom tax revenue continues to fall off, cities across the country are losing approximately $50 dollars (much more in larger cities) per cable subscriber in tax. Accordingly, lawmakers have discovered a brand new source of revenue in digital entertainment.

It's called the "Netflix tax," and it is beginning to be included as part of different cities' amusement, sales, and, in some cases, even utilities tax. In 2015, Chicago was the first major city to enact a 9 percent "cloud tax" on digital entertainment services. The tax was already in effect for things like tickets for sports events and movies. Now, it also covers the streaming of online entertainment, like video games and Netflix-type services. The city estimates that the new digital entertainment tax will be worth $12 million dollars per year in additional tax revenue.

Three surveillance video clips have been released of the police pursuit of unarmed Kajuan Raye, who was fatally shot by an officer during a November chase. The footage does not indicate Raye pointed an object at the officer, as police have claimed.

The footage shows that a Chicago Police Department SUV pulled up to a street corner where Raye, a black man, was reportedly waiting for a bus in the Englewood neighborhood of the city. Raye then sprinted down the street to flee police, with an officer, presumably Sergeant John Poulos, the white officer who shot Raye, in pursuit.

None of the clips, all from different angles of the chase, show that Raye had a weapon, nor do they indicate that the 19-year-old turned around and pointed an object at the chasing officer during the pursuit, as Poulos has claimed to justify his use of deadly force. The clips also do not show the moment that Poulos shot Raye.


The surveillance video clips were released late Monday by Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). Officers were responding to a report of a battery in progress, according to police, at around 11:00pm on November 23.


Raye "matched the description of the offender," Chicago PD Superintendent Eddie Johnson said after the fatal shooting. Though the Chicago PD said Raye twice "turned and pointed" a weapon at Poulos during the chase, no weapon was uncovered near the scene of the shooting. An autopsy found that Raye was shot in the back, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.


Poulos' claim that Raye had a gun is "simply ridiculous,"according to Michael Oppenheimer, an attorney for Raye's family, which sued Poulos in December for "unjustified and excessive use of force."

Nearly three quarters of all Americans agree with President Donald Trump's charge that a group of elitists in Washington has grown wealthy at the expense of the United States, a Rasmussen national poll reported.

"Seventy-two percent of likely US voters agree with this statement," Rasmussen said in a release on Tuesday. The survey found that only 17 percent of the US public disagreed with Trump's claim while 11 percent were not sure.

Trump in his inaugural address delivered on Friday charged the Washington, DC political establishment with profiting for many years at the expense of ordinary Americans, pledging to end the practice immediately, the release explained.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was carried out on Sunday by Rasmussen Reports, the company said.