Offering yet another lesson in how raising the minimum wage can destroy jobs, particularly for the most poorly compensated workers whom activists had intended to help, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Wal-Mart is deploying robots to carry out mundane tasks like mopping its floors and tracking inventory as it seeks to cut down on labor costs after raising wages last year, while also expanding into new services like grocery delivery.

Wal-Mart, which is the largest employer in the US, said at least 300 stores will introduce machines that scan shelves for out-of-stock products. Meanwhile, so-called "autonomous floor scrubbers" will be deployed in 1,500 stores, and conveyor belts that automatically scan and sort products as they are loaded off of trucks will more than double to 1,200. Another 900 stores will install 16-foot-high towers that will allow customers to pick up their online grocery orders without interacting with humans.

A Maryland man stole a U-Haul van with the intent of using it as a weapon in an ISIS-inspired plot against pedestrians at National Harbor, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Rondell Henry, 28, of Germantown, harbored hatred of non-Muslim people for two years, according to prosecutors.


He walked off his job March 26 with the intent of driving in to pedestrians, prosecutors said. He drove around the D.C. area looking for a vehicle bigger than his to use and followed a leased U-Haul van into a mall garage in Alexandria, Virginia, where he stole it.

The person who rented the van reported seeing a car follow the van off Interstate 395, onto mall property and into the garage, parking a few spaces away, prosecutors said. Police learned that car was registered to Henry.

According to prosecutors, Henry drove the van to Dulles International Airport about 5 a.m. March 27 but didn't find a big enough crowd to satisfy his plot. Instead, he entered the terminal and tried to breach security by attempting to slip in behind a person who had been cleared and by studying a security checkpoint for weaknesses. He thought an attack there would get a lot of attention, prosecutors said.

The usual eye-rolling followed news that US colleges are having to teach stressed-out students "it's OK to fail," blaming everything from millennial entitlement to helicopter parenting - but the blame belongs with the government.

The US government has shown a truly awe-inspiring inability to handle adversity, from its many foreign policy missteps to domestic fiascos. We teach children from an early age that they should all aspire to be President someday, that serving your country is the highest calling, that they can truly "be all that you can be" by joining the military - yet none of our government institutions has demonstrated the ability to handle failure with anything less than the kind of meltdown that would give the most spoiled millennial pause. College kids incapable of dealing with failure are merely emulating these role models.

Weeks after an explosive documentary detailing shocking allegations of child abuse by the late Michael Jackson made instant headlines, holes have appeared in the narrative of the abusers - but the US media has gone silent.

The four-hour-long 'Leaving Neverland' documentary by filmmaker Dan Reed offered detailed accounts of sexual abuse and garnered massive amounts of media attention when it aired across the US and UK in March.

Jackson's two accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, instantly became part of the #MeToo generation and few journalists questioned their stories or probed any further.

Three American service members and a U.S. contractor were killed when their convoy hit a roadside bomb on Monday near the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, the U.S. forces said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The U.S. and NATO Resolute Support mission said the four Americans were killed near the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, while three others were wounded in the explosion. The base in Bagram district is located in northern Parwan province and serves as the main U.S. air facility in the country.

The wounded were evacuated and are receiving medical care, the statement said. It added that in accordance with U.S. Department of Defense policy, the names of service members killed in action were being withheld until after the notification of next of kin.

A group of George Mason University students is demanding that Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh not take a position as a visiting law professor-and some professors are voicing support for them.

"The hiring of Kavanaugh threatens the mental well-being of all survivors on this campus," said one female student during the public comment period of GMU's board meeting last week, according to video footage obtained by The College Fix.

Another student, a survivor of sexual violence, claimed that her mental health had already suffered as a result of the Antonin Scalia Law School's decision to hire Kavanaugh. "It is affecting my mental health knowing that an abuser will be part of our faculty," she said.

In the latest development in the "largest college admissions scam uncovered in U.S. history," on Monday afternoon actress Felicity Huffman and 13 others agreed to plead guilty in the scandal, signaling that prosecutors are aggressively wresting deals from the wealthy parents, according to Bloomberg.

The 14 are among 50 people accused by Boston federal prosecutors of engaging in schemes that involved cheating on college entrance exams and paying $25 million in bribes to secure their children admission at well-known universities. Federal prosecutors announced the deals on Monday afternoon, identifying the parents and a University of Texas men's tennis coach who have negotiated plea bargains.

It's not yet clear what their sentences will be: according to one New York lawyer, Huffman and Lori Loughlin could end up serving time in prison for their alleged involvement in the high-profile college admissions cheating scandal. Last Wednesday, the Full House and Desperate Housewives stars appeared alongside other wealthy parents in U.S. District Court in Boston for the first time since they were charged in March. During their preliminary hearings, they were both read the federal felony charges they face after their arrests in March: conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

Sport often presents us with striking visual examples of how certain aspects of society play out. Whether it be nationalism, leadership, teamwork, competitiveness, or the ability of humans to achieve truly great acts, sport is an embodiment of how these factors interact and display themselves on a world stage. Sport also offers some of the most obvious visual representations of inherent biological sex differences between men and women. Unfortunately, although perhaps not surprisingly, the current desire for equality and inclusion, and the general misunderstandings about biological sex as an evolutionary process has resulted in questions and confusion around the traditional use of sex categories in sport. In some ways this also highlights the difficulties that may be apparent with the erosion of sex categories in other areas of life, such as regarding prisons, changing areas and the issues of equal pay.

As a performance scientist and someone who has worked in elite sport for over a decade, I am interested in the determinants of physical performance and how to manipulate and enhance these variables. Over my years working with athletes, I have become accustomed to observing the differences between the sexes and have extensively studied why these differences exist. It has therefore been baffling to me to see some of the discussions regarding why sex categories in sport exist and how to include trans-athletes. What we must understand is that there is currently a general lack of understanding regarding the potential consequences on elite sport due to ill-informed policy making and the pressures of activist groups. I will therefore attempt to bring some clarity to the topic and also ask some important questions for future consideration.

Let us first briefly look at what sport is. Sport is a multi-billion dollar industry, with intense competition, professionalism and outstanding feats of natural ability. Athletes, coaches and owners do everything they can to get an advantage over their competition and be successful. For many, the pure competition of sport is enough, regardless of earnings and sponsorship. For others it is their career, their life, their dreams. Yet for some it is a mere past-time, a leisure activity and a way to keep fit. None of these are inherently more important than the other, but recent debate over trans inclusion in sport means that we must appreciate what these things mean to the people involved and what is at stake if we get policies wrong.

People have misconceptions of what happened in Iraq, former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein's granddaughter, Hareer Hussein Kamel, told RT. She hopes her new book will set the record straight on of her family.

"I chose to write the book to tell the truth. The history of my country has been largely misrepresented," Kamel said, explaining how she felt "the responsibly to clarify" the way Iraq has been portrayed, as well as addressing the attacks on her own family.

"I decided to tell the story of my family - which people have tried to discredit."

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for nearly 25 years until he was toppled during a US-led invasion in 2003, and later executed. He was accused of numerous human rights violations during his tenure.

There was no collusion but, for the crowded field of candidates hoping to be nominated by Democrats as their runner for 2020, Russia is still a good target to blame or to threaten with. Will using such rhetoric actually help them?

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe ended last month and its conclusions didn't make Russiagaters happy, but some seem to be not quite ready to give up on the 'Russians are coming!' line.

Russians come to OUR social media - and divide America!

While launching his campaign in Ohio, Democrat representative Tim Ryan talked freely about the growing division in US society, which prevents the country from fixing a whole set of "broken systems." But who's to blame? The dreaded "enemies" coming onto social media to set Americans against one another - those pesky Russians.