Game shows saw some major changes this year, particularly with the departure of Pat Sajak as host of "Wheel of Fortune" after 40 years.
Ryan Seacrest took over permanently, joining Ken Jennings as the new leaders of some of the longest-running shows on television, where contestants have given viewers some wild moments this year, from the risqué to the confusing.
Check out the wildest game show moments of 2024 below, including a viral "Wheel of Fortune" player's explanation for his unexpected answer.
"Wheel of Fortune" contestant Tavaris Williams became an instant viral sensation thanks to his May 23 appearance and his NSFW answer.
During a toss-up puzzle, the puzzle board had the letters for the phrase "_ _ _ _ /I _ /T _ E /B _ _ T!"
Williams quickly buzzed in and confidently said, "Right in the butt."
His answer was met with a brief silence, then audience laughter, followed by a "What?" from fellow contestant Tyra, and a definitive "no" from Sajak as a look of utter surprise crossed Williams' face.
The correct answer was "T H I S / I S / T H E / B E S T !"
WATCH: ‘WHEEL OF FORTUNE’ CONTESTANT EXPLAINS HIS RISQUÉ ANSWER
"I tried to just beat my contestants by buzzing in first and letting my brain catch up," Williams told Fox News Digital of his now infamous TV moment.
"And when my brain was ready to speak, I saw the R, I saw the B, I saw the T. I went for ‘Right in the butt’… And once [host Pat Sajak] said ‘no,’ oh, it was the worst feeling," he continued with a laugh.
After taping, Williams had to keep the moment secret from his family, who were gathered to watch it live.
"My wife's like, ‘I’m married to a meme now,'" he said with a laugh, noting his family was overall very supportive.
Williams did walk away with $9,500, but almost as soon as the moment aired, fans took to social media to have a good laugh about the risqué answer.
WATCH: ‘WHEEL OF FORTUNE’ CONTESTANT HAD TO KEEP VIRAL MOMENT SECRET FROM FAMILY
A "Jeopardy!" contestant earned an unfortunate place in the show’s history when she earned the show’s second-lowest score ever recorded.
Erin Buker, who walked away with a final score of -$7,200, told Fox News Digital that while she had a "pretty cool" time taping the episode, she would describe it as an "out-of-body experience."
"You're looking, you see the clues, but you don't remember what category it is," she explained. "You're reminding yourself to not, you know, make weird faces because you're on live television.… The way they tape it is like it's the live show. They really try to keep it really tight."
And even though she didn’t do as well as she’d hoped, Buker said she'd "love to do it again."
WATCH: 'JEOPARDY!' CONTESTANT ERIN BUKER DESCRIBES WHAT IT WAS LIKE GETTING HISTORIC LOW SCORE
The other contestant that caught viewers’ eyes was Father Steve Jakubowski, a Catholic priest from Michigan who quickly earned a lot of fans online.
"There's a hot priest on Jeopardy rn send help," one person wrote on X.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Jakubowski said that being on "Jeopardy!" was "a great experience."
"Ken and all the producers and team were very kind to me with the novelty of having a Catholic priest on the show," he explained. "I hope it gave a positive impression of my community and the Church. The show airs at 3:30 where I live in Austin, and so we had a watch party at our parish school with our students and their parents – tons of fun to share that with our parish."
Seacrest took over for Sajak as the host of "Wheel of Fortune" this year, and people quickly put the blame at his feet for a contestant’s big loss.
During his second night hosting, contestant Airica spun a $1 million wedge during her turn. The wedge could have been swapped out for the $100,000 wedge in the bonus round, meaning that if she won the game, she could have potentially won the big prize.
Airica solved the first puzzle, and landed on a $1,000 mystery wedge and was given the choice to unveil it or leave it.
"It could be a bankrupt or it could be $10,000," Seacrest explained, and after she decided to risk it, Airica unveiled the bankrupt wedge and Seacrest had to take back the million-dollar wedge.
"Pat would've explained that if she took the risk, she would've lost the million-dollar wedge," a fan wrote on X.
Others defended Seacrest, noting that contestants get a rundown of rules and gameplay ahead of time, or were likely briefed on the rules in a portion cut for time.
Some "Jeopardy!" clues leave contestants completely stumped, as was the case with a couple of pop culture clues this year.
In February, during the Final Jeopardy round of "Jeopardy!'s Champions Wildcard," contestants were taken down by a letter in a Johnny Cash song title.
The clue for the question was, "‘It was kind of a prodding to myself to play it straight,’ said Johnny Cash of this 1956 hit, with the correct answer being "I Walk the Line."
Unfortunately for all the contestants, one letter cost them all points and time on the Champions Wildcard. All three contestants answered "Walk the Line," leaving out the letter "I."
A month later, on an episode of "Jeopardy: Tournament of Champions," competitors Ben Chan, Yogesh Raut and Troy Meyer missed a $400 clue about a Taylor Swift song in the category "Songs of Youth."
The prompt read by Jennings said, "Inspired by her bestie, Tay Tay sang when 'somebody tells you they love you' at this title age 'you're gonna believe them.'"
The correct answer was "Fifteen," the title of Swift's country pop song from her second studio album, 2008's "Fearless." The musician has previously said "Fifteen" was inspired by her high school best friend Abigail Anderson, who experienced a painful breakup with a boyfriend when she and Swift were both 15.
"We're gonna get killed for that," Meyer said with a laugh.
For most, the Christmas season is a time of joy, celebration, and togetherness. But for many women, in addition to the usual hustle and bustle of it all, symptoms of perimenopause and menopause may lead to heightened challenges.
The hormonal fluctuations that occur during these years can intensify stress, disrupt sleep, and trigger mood swings—all while the holiday demands pile on. However, with the right strategies, you can enjoy the season while prioritizing your well-being. Here’s how to make it through with grace and grit.
The holidays often come with pressure to meet everyone else’s expectations. For women in perimenopause, this can lead to burnout. Make self-care a non-negotiable part of your routine. Whether it’s a 15-minute daily meditation, a brisk walk, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of herbal tea, small moments for yourself can help balance your mood and energy levels.
Tip: Maca root, sage, ginkgo biloba and ginseng are natural herbs that may help with the brain fog and mood some women experience hormonal changes.
Holiday traditions are wonderful, but they don’t have to be rigid. If certain rituals feel overwhelming, it’s okay to modify or simplify them. For example, consider a potluck instead of hosting a full dinner or opt for online gift shopping instead of enduring crowded stores. Also, it's OK to say no every now and then. Allow yourself to RSVP "decline" if you aren’t up for it. Sometimes a quiet night at home is exactly what you need.
Tip: Involve family members in creating new, less stressful traditions. This can also be a great way to pass on responsibilities and ease your load.
Exercise is one of the best ways to combat some of the most common perimenopause symptoms, including mood changes, weight gain, body aches and fatigue. Even during the busy holiday season, try to keep up with regular physical activity.
Tip: Make exercise festive! Go for a walk to see holiday lights, do some lunges while watching a holiday movie classic, or dance to some seasonal tunes.
The holidays are synonymous with indulgent foods, but certain foods can make perimenopause symptoms worse, especially sugary treats, caffeine, and alcohol, as these can trigger hot flashes, disrupt sleep, and heighten anxiety.
Perimenopause is a time when your body is going through numerous changes. Because of those changes, your body could use a little bit more of certain nutrients, specifically foods rich in protein, calcium, omega fatty acids and fiber, all of which can help with mood, muscle mass and inflammation.
Tip: Incorporate nutrient-dense foods like salmon, leafy greens, cow’s milk, tofu, and other superfoods that support hormonal health. If you’re hosting, include dishes that align with your dietary needs.
Sleep disturbances are common during perimenopause, and the holiday madness can make matters worse. Without good sleep, physical and mental health suffer. Establish a consistent bedtime routine and create a sleep-friendly environment by keeping your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet.
Pro Tip: Avoid late-night screen time, because the blue light from phones, computers and television can interfere with the body’s natural sleep cycle. Be sure to power down all electronics at least an hour before bed and consider reading a book. If you need extra help falling asleep, passionflower leaf, ashwagandha root, magnolia bark extract, and melatonin are natural herbs that may help.
The holidays don’t have to be a season of stress and overwhelm. By prioritizing your health, setting boundaries, and leaning on your support network, you can not only survive the holiday season, but thrive.
Remember, Christmas time and the holiday season are about joy and connection—and that starts with taking care of you. Intrinsically, as women, we want to do everything and support everyone else, but if we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be there for anyone else.
The American Culture Quiz is a weekly test of our unique national traits, trends, history and people, including current events and the sights and sounds of the United States.
This week's quiz highlights great giftgiving, fine firs, cartoon classics and more. Can you get all eight questions right?
Briana Fitzpatrick grew up in a Christian family and felt a strong connection to a higher power. But it wasn't until this time last year that the young, New York-based artist finally decided to buy her first Bible.
The inspiration came to Fitzpatrick as she was sitting with her father, watching a documentary about "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson.
"He pulled out his Bible and … you could tell he'd had it for decades and decades. It was just held together with duct tape," Fitzpatrick told Fox News Digital. She began to imagine having her own Bible that she could pass down for generations, filled with highlights and notes that her children could read and "see how the Lord spoke to me through it."
Fitzpatrick is among the young, first-time Bible buyers publishers say are fueling a new surge in sales.
Bible sales rose 22% through October compared to the same period last year, according to data released this month by Circana Bookscan. Total U.S. print book sales were only up 1%, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the trend.
"The religion book market has been a bright spot of growth within the total book market since the pandemic," Brenna Connor, an industry analyst with Circana, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Bibles are leading that growth, but other subjects like Christian Life and Biblical Studies are also up, reflecting increased interest for Christian subjects in the U.S."
Print Bible sales hit a five-year low of just under 8.9 million in 2020, according to Circana's data, before beginning to tick upward again. Sales surpassed 13.7 million in the first 10 months of this year, Circana reported.
The increase in Bible sales comes even as polling shows a decline in religiosity across the country.
The share of Americans identifying with a Christian religion hit a low of 68% last year, according to Gallup polling. Half a century ago, 87% of adults in the U.S. identified as Christian, Gallup found. About 28% of American adults are now religiously unaffiliated, according to Pew Research.
"Some people, sure they're not going back to church, but they are reaching out to the Bible," Minnesota-based Bishop Robert Barron told Fox News Digital.
"Let's face it, the Bible has been — certainly for Western civilization, but even all over the world — the main source of meaning, purpose, value," Barron said. "I think people are turning back to the Bible in greater numbers because they're looking for that, and they realize instinctively they're going to find it."
He also speculated that Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson could be adding to the trend, since he has been "talking about the biblical text in a way that people find very compelling." Barron added that he's seeing a notable shift away from the New Atheism of the early 2000s.
"I think in the beginning some people thought, 'Oh, great. Stick it to the man, and I'm against religion.' But when you take that message in, what are you left with? It's a complete nihilism," Barron said, adding that he hasn't been surprised by rising rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, particularly among young people. "That's what happens when you say there's no meaning or purpose."
Publishers similarly suggested the Bible boom could be a natural consequence of a general feeling of anxiety in the world.
"I do think people are hungry for truth, and hungry for purpose and meaning and a sense of direction, especially for the past few years," Fitzpatrick said. "I think a lot of us are like, what is going on? Who do we trust? What do we turn to?'"
Fitzpatrick said having a physical Bible revolutionized her spiritual journey. She has read the Bible every day since making the purchase, and even started attending Bible study groups.
She shared her purchase on social media, and said her followers have been supportive and even inspired to buy their own Bibles — or dust off a long-neglected copy.
"It's so neat to see how God uses social media and stuff, which can sometimes have a really bad rap," she said, adding, "But [He] can use it to shine his love and his light through people."
The Drop is a wearable nutrition tracker powered by innovative Nutri Track technology.
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You will have access to a curated collection of recipes that match your individual preferences and dietary needs. The comprehensive dashboard allows for seamless monitoring of nutrition, workouts, sleep and overall wellness, all consolidated into a single, user-friendly interface. While the official release of the Rex app is scheduled for the second quarter of 2025, early beta testers will be granted privileged access to explore and utilize the app's features before the the general public launch.
The Drop is designed for both functionality and style. It can be worn as a pin or pendant using a magnetic clasp or premium leather band. Weighing just 27.6 grams, it’s lightweight and comfortable enough for all-day wear. Available in three colors — metallic blue, matte black and gold — it’s as sleek as it is practical.
The Drop packs impressive technology into its small frame. Its dual-core 32-bit processor operates at an efficient 240 MHz, providing robust performance for advanced nutrition tracking. The device features comprehensive wireless connectivity, including a complete 2.4GHz Wi-Fi subsystem and Bluetooth 5.0 for seamless data transmission and device integration.
A high-resolution 4K camera serves as the primary sensor for capturing meal images, complemented by an integrated microphone for additional functionality. The memory configuration includes 8MB of PSRAM and Flash storage with an onboard SD card slot supporting up to 32GB of expandable memory, ensuring ample space for data storage and processing.
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This subscription provides access to advanced features and personalized nutrition insights. Early backers will also enjoy the privilege of beta testing, gaining access to The Drop and its features before the general public release. Each backer's package will include The Drop device, a premium leather band, a magnetic pin clasp and a USB-C charging cable. The campaign anticipates shipping the Drop to backers by the fourth quarter of 2025.
With its advanced AI-powered technology and seamless integration with Rex Premium, The Drop eliminates the stress of manual logging while providing accurate insights into your diet. Whether you're looking to optimize your health or develop better eating habits, The Drop offers an effortless solution tailored to modern lifestyles. By supporting its Kickstarter campaign, you'll not only gain access to this cutting-edge device but also join a community dedicated to transforming how we understand and manage our nutrition. With its official release planned for the fourth quarter of 2025, The Drop promises to redefine the future of health technology — one meal at a time.
Would you be willing to try a device like The Drop to simplify your nutrition tracking or do you prefer sticking with traditional methods? What factors influence your decision? Let us know by writing us atCyberguy.com/Contact
For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading toCyberguy.com/Newsletter
A Lyft driver was brutally attacked while giving a ride in Texas, saying a rider slashed his throat, attempted to choke him and stole his car.
Dilaver Berk, 25, has since been released from the hospital, but he remains bedridden and says he is thankful to be alive, according to Fox 4.
The ride-share driver picked up a man for a ride on Monday when he was attacked from behind and had his car stolen, according to Frisco Police.
The suspect, 19-year-old Antwain Williams, was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and evading arrest. He also had an outstanding warrant for allegedly encouraging a child to perform a sex act.
Berk now has stitches across his neck and bandages covering deep gashes to his hands.
Berk told police he picked up Williams while driving for Lyft Monday evening in Frisco, Texas.
When they reached Williams' destination at Legends at Legacy Apartments on 3700 Legacy Drive shortly before 6 p.m., Berk says the suspect attacked him from behind with a knife and then with a cable or wire in an attempt to choke him.
"The rider took a knife to Dilaver's throat and slashed his throat. He did that a couple of times," Berk's friend, Dustin Tovi, told Fox 4.
"Dilaver put his hands right in front of the knife and asked the rider, 'Hey, whatever you want. Leave me alone.' And then he had a wire to put around his neck. And Dilaver reached out as well. And he got a lot of injuries to his fingers and his neck because he was stabbed a couple of times," Tovi continued.
Frisco Police said Williams stole Berk's Toyota Camry and left him in the apartment building's parking lot. A woman nearby assisted Berk and called 911 to report the incident.
Hours later, a patrol officer located the vehicle near Highway 423 and Rockhill. Police attempted to pull the driver over, but he sped away in an effort to evade police.
Police said Williams crashed and attempted to flee on foot but was eventually arrested.
Berk moved from Turkey to Texas last year and sends money to his parents back home.
"He's somebody that works really hard, and it's really sad to see what happened to him," Tovi said. "Nobody deserves that, especially Dilaver, because he works so hard."
Fox News Digital asked hospitality experts for their tips, tricks and hacks to keep spending in check while also keeping holiday spirits high.
Here's what they shared.
Throwing a holiday party doesn't have to be stressful or expensive – and part of the fun is creating your food menus and beverage picks for your guests.
"By keeping your drink options simple and focusing on festive pairings, you can host a fun and memorable event without breaking the bank," Peter Brattander, vice president of food and beverage at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City in New Jersey, told Fox News Digital.
"You want to keep things simple and focus on your guests rather than playing bartender all night."
When planning beverages for entertaining at home, it's all about making thoughtful choices that cater to everyone, Brattander said.
"Limiting your beverage offerings to a few wines, beers and a small selection of spirits is a thoughtful and practical approach to hosting a holiday gathering," he said.
"It keeps the focus on family, connection and the meal rather than making the event a cocktail-centric party."
"By simplifying the drink menu, you reduce stress as a host and can allocate your time and resources to creating a welcoming atmosphere and delicious food."
Plan your beverage menu to pair it with what you're serving.
If you are serving multiple courses, such as appetizers, a main and then a dessert,you should serve the dryer wine first, then an off-dry wine and a sweeter wine last, Sharon Fenchak, head winemaker at Biltmore Winery in Asheville, North Carolina, told Fox News Digital.
She said simplifying selections for a holiday get-together is a good move.
"For a holiday gathering, I say that three wines, dry white, off-dry rosé and medium-bodied red; two beers - a low-alcohol beer and a craft beer like an India Pale Ale or a lager; a clear spirit (such as gin or vodka) and a brown spirit (such as whiskey) should please any crowd," Fenchak told Fox News Digital.
In addition, a batched signature cocktail could be a fun addition to your menu, Fenchak said.
"A pre-made, batched signature cocktail or mocktail is a great idea to make an event feel special while keeping it simple at the same time," Fenchak said.
The philosophy for keeping cocktail selections small is the strategy here.
"I love the idea of keeping things simple yet thoughtful, so start with one or two signature cocktails – something light and refreshing like a margarita is always a good choice," Olivia Pollock, Evite's hosting expert based in Los Angeles, told Fox News Digital.
"Don't forget about designated drivers or those who don't drink. Tasty non-alcoholic punch or mocktail as a welcome drink can make them feel just as included and set an inclusive warm tone for the evening," Brattander told Fox News Digital.
Cider is also a festive addition to your holiday beverage line-up.
When it comes to buying drinks for your party, Pollock said, a little planning can go a long way in keeping things budget-friendly.
"Buying in bulk – like larger bottles or cases of wine, beer and spirits – can save you quite a bit, especially for bigger gatherings," she said.
"Also, keep an eye out for sales and promotions. Many stores offer great discounts, particularly around holidays or seasonal events."
The U.S. Supreme Court issued several major decisions over the course of 2024.
Its rulings include those that have pushed back on the Biden administration's attempted change of Title IX protections for transgender students, reversed a 40-year precedent that had supported what conservatives have condemned as the administrative state in Washington, and considered the constitutionality of Republican-controlled state efforts to curtail what they define as liberal Silicon Valley biases online.
The high court also ruled on presidential immunity at a consequential time for current President-elect Trump during the 2024 election – and sided with a Jan. 6 defendant who fought a federal obstruction charge.
Here are the top cases considered by the justices over the past year.
The Supreme Court on Aug. 16, 2024, kept preliminary injunctions preventing the Biden-Harris administration from implementing a new rule that widened the definition of sex discrimination under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, while litigation over the rule continues.
After the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal denied the administration's request to put a stay on the injunctions, the Department of Education turned to the Supreme Court, arguing that some parts of the rule should be able to take effect. The Supreme Court rejected their request.
"Importantly, all Members of the Court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity," the court's unsigned opinion said, concluding that the Biden administration had not "adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect."
In April, the Department of Education issued the new rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, arguing that expanding the definition of discrimination to include "sexual orientation and gender identity" would protect LGBTQ students. Louisiana led several states in suing the DOE, contending the new rule "violates students' and employees' rights to bodily privacy and safety."
Title IX implemented the long-standing athletics regulation allowing sex-separate teams decades ago, and Republicans contended Biden’s new rule would have significant implications on women- and girls-only spaces and possibly legally back biological males playing in women’s sports. Separate court injunctions blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states.
"I’m grateful that the Supreme Court agreed not to block our injunction against this radical rewrite of Title IX," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement at the time. "Other than the 19th Amendment guaranteeing our right to vote, Title IX has been the most successful law in history at ensuring equal opportunity for women in education at all levels and in collegiate athletics. This fight isn’t over, but I’ll keep fighting to block this radical agenda that eviscerates Title IX."
The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, kept on hold efforts by Texas and Florida to limit how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate content in a ruling that strongly defended the platforms’ free speech rights.
Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the platforms, like newspapers, deserve protection from governments’ intrusion in determining what to include or exclude from their space. "The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world," Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five justices. All nine justices agreed on the overall outcome.
The justices returned the cases to lower courts for further review in broad challenges from trade associations for the companies.
While the details vary, both laws aimed to address long-standing conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right.
The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months following decisions by Facebook and Twitter (now X) to cut then-President Trump off over his posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trade associations representing the companies sued in federal court, claiming that the laws violated the platforms’ speech rights. One federal appeals court struck down Florida’s statute while another upheld the Texas law, but both were on hold pending the outcome at the Supreme Court.
In a statement made when he signed the Florida measure into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would be "protection against the Silicon Valley elites."
When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas law, he said it was needed to protect free speech in what he termed the new public square. Social media platforms "are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely – but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas," Abbott said. "That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas."
NetChoice LLC has sued Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
"The judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded, because neither the Eleventh Circuit nor the Fifth Circuit conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to Florida and Texas laws regulating large internet platforms. NetChoice's decision to litigate these cases as facial challenges comes at a cost," the court wrote. "The Court has made facial challenges hard to win. In the First Amendment context, a plaintiff must show that 'a substantial number of [the law's] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.' So far in these cases, no one has paid much attention to that issue."
The court said its analysis and arguments "focused mainly on how the laws applied to the content-moderation practices that giant social-media platforms use on their best-known services to filter, alter or label their users' posts, i.e., on how the laws applied to the likes of Facebook's News Feed and YouTube's homepage," but the justices said they "did not address the full range of activities the laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the unconstitutional applications."
The Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, ruled that former presidents have substantial protection from prosecution, handing a major victory to Donald Trump, the former president who at the time was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and is now president-elect.
Trump had moved to dismiss his indictment in a 2020 election interference case based on presidential immunity.
The court did not dismiss the case, but the ruling did ensure the 45th president would not face trial in the case before the November 2024 election.
In a 6-3 decision, the court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
"The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive."
Trump, having won the 2024 presidential election, will take office Jan. 20, 2025.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, overruled the 1984 landmark decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
Known as Chevron deference, the 40-year-old decision instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress were too ambiguous. It had been the basis for upholding thousands of regulations by dozens of federal agencies, but has long been a target of conservatives and business groups who argue that it grants too much power to the executive branch, or what some critics call the administrative state.
Roberts, writing for the court, said federal judges must now "exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority."
The ruling does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts wrote.
The reversal makes it so executive branch agencies will likely have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues.
The case came about when Atlantic herring fishermen sued over federal rules requiring them to pay for independent observers to monitor their catch. The fishermen argued that the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act did not authorize officials to create industry-funded monitoring requirements and that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow proper rulemaking procedures.
In two related cases, the fishermen asked the court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. In that case, the court upheld an action by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.
In the decades following the ruling, Chevron has been a bedrock of modern administrative law, requiring judges to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of congressional statutes.
The current Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch have questioned the Chevron decision. Ironically, it was Gorsuch’s mother, former EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, who made the decision that the Supreme Court upheld in 1984.
The Biden administration argued that overturning Chevron would be destabilizing and could bring a "convulsive shock" to the nation’s legal system.
The Supreme Court on June 28, 2024, ruled in favor of a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot who challenged his conviction for a federal obstruction crime.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Joseph Fischer – a former police officer and one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with "obstruction of an official proceeding" in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. His lawyers argued that the federal statute should not apply, and that it had only ever been applied to evidence-tampering cases.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held to a narrower interpretation of a federal statute that imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly "alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding."
The ruling reversed a lower court decision, which the justices said swept too broadly into areas like peaceful but disruptive conduct, and returned the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Justice Department argued that Fischer’s actions were a "deliberate attempt" to stop a joint session of Congress directly from certifying the 2020 election, thus qualifying their use of the statute that criminalizes behavior that "otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do" and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
However, Roberts said the government stretched the law too far.
"January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government – the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement reacting to the ruling.
"The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision," he said.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, Brooke Singman, Brianna Herlihy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jennifer Heath Box shivered on a mat on the floor, her back pressed against another inmate's back, as they desperately tried to stay warm. The air conditioning blew a frigid breeze through the Broward County Jail in south Florida. Guards walked by wearing coats and beanies.
It was Christmas Eve. Her son, a Marine, was leaving on Dec. 27 to spend three years stationed in Okanawa, Japan.
"The fact that it was just so easy to have arrested me just makes you question how many more people [are] out there like this," Box told Fox News Digital, sitting in her Texas home two years after she was arrested and jailed for three nights on someone else's warrant.
Box is now suing the Broward Sheriff's Office, alleging deputies violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure when they failed to do "basic due diligence to confirm whether the person they planned to arrest was actually subject to the arrest warrant."
Box and her husband rushed to the front of the line, eager to get off the cruise ship on Christmas Eve 2022. They had just spent six days at sea with Box's brother, celebrating his second recovery from cancer. Now, Box wanted to get home to celebrate Christmas with her kids, the last time for at least three years the family would all be together before her son left for Okinawa.
But when she scanned her badge to disembark, staff said security needed to meet with Box. Soon, police and Customs and Border Protection surrounded Box and her husband.
"They asked if I was Jennifer Heath," she recalled. Box kept Heath as her middle name after marrying her husband.
She repeatedly asked the law enforcement officers standing around her what was going on. Eventually, they said they had a warrant for her from Harris County, Texas.
"It's for endangering a child," a deputy said.
Box's eyes went wide. Her husband said, "I think y'all have the wrong person."
Police had a warrant for "Jennifer Delcarmen Heath," who was 23 years younger and nearly half a foot shorter than the "Jennifer" who had just gotten off a cruise ship.
According to court filings from July 2022, Jennifer Delcarmen Heath was accused of endangering her children, ages 1 and 3.
Jennifer Heath Box, who was 48 years old at the time, had no minor children. The suspect on the warrant was younger than one of her daughters.
"Endangering a child? What child would I endanger?" Box asked, stunned.
Officers handcuffed her and put her in a sheriff's office SUV, where interior video shows Box continuing to insist there must be some mistake as she was transported to the Broward County Jail.
The booking officer said she didn't see any warrants in the system for Box when she scanned her driver's license, but Deputy Peter Peraza insisted that they book her anyway, according to the lawsuit filed against the sheriff's office, Peraza and other deputies and corrections staff.
Box's attorneys at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm, said Broward County deputies overlooked at least 10 significant discrepancies between Box and the subject of the warrant, including the vast age and height disparities, different Social Security and FBI numbers and contrasting eye, hair and skin colors. The only information that implicated Box was a copy of her DMV photo that had been attached to the warrant.
Box felt humiliated and terrified as she was strip searched, given a prison uniform and placed in a cold, dirty cell, where she said she witnessed continuous screaming and violence in the adjoining men's area.
She woke up Christmas morning after a restless night shivering on the floor next to a stranger and was denied bond because the other "Jennifer" had an extradition warrant, according to the lawsuit. Harris County had up to 30 days to come get her, an officer allegedly told Box.
At home, both Box's brother and her husband were fighting layers of bureaucracy. Officials with Harris County said they needed BSO to send over the warrant and Box's fingerprints for comparison, but BSO refused, according to the suit.
Finally, the evening of Dec. 26, Box was able to file a complaint, asking BSO to compare her fingerprints to those of the suspect.
Box walked out of jail around 10 a.m. on Dec. 27. Her son was boarding his flight.
"They took from me things that I will never get back," Box said. "I'll never get that time back with my kids. I'll never get to have that opportunity to have those memories."
She recalled talking to the officer who escorted her out of the detention center about all the things she had missed out on over the holidays. His demeanor started "completely arrogant," she said, but softened when she told him she didn't get to see her son before he left for the Marine Corps.
"'Things happen,'" Box remembered the officer saying.
That was the closest she ever got to an apology.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office told Fox News Digital in a statement that it "sympathizes with the difficult situation Ms. Jennifer Heath Box was in," but blamed Harris County for the mishap.
"Had it not been for the arrest warrant filed by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Customs and Border Patrol would not have flagged Ms. Box, BSO would not have been notified, and she would not have been arrested," a spokesperson wrote.
The statement added that the "actions of the BSO deputy involved in arresting Ms. Box were reviewed by the Broward Sheriff’s Office Internal Affairs Division, and no employee misconduct was found."
Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain said that while Harris County and CBP also made mistakes in the case, it "does not excuse the behavior of Officer Peraza and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office."
"They had a duty to ensure that the person they were arresting was actually the subject of the warrant--especially in the face of Jennifer's repeated and credible insistence that they had the wrong person."
CBP flagged Box's name to BSO before she left for the cruise, according to her lawyers, giving deputies ample time to confirm her identity "before they decided to arrest the wrong Jennifer."
BSO made similar errors in at least two other mistaken identity arrests, including one in which a man spent five days in jail before police ran his fingerprints and confirmed he was the wrong person, according to the suit.
"Despite this history of jailing innocent people who share a name with someone with an outstanding warrant, Broward County failed to adequately train its officers or implement new policies, practices, or customs ensuring that BSO staff verify the identities of arrestees," the suit alleges.
BSO did not answer Fox's question about whether the department had made any policy changes after Box's arrest.
The suit seeks an admission that the defendants violated Box's constitutional rights, as well as damages.
As Box prepared to decorate her Christmas tree this year, she told Fox News Digital she wants to see more checks and balances put in place so no one else endures what she went through.
"I want to hold those people accountable," she said. "You're messing with people's lives. It's not just [fun and games] or whatever and, ‘I’m gonna put someone behind bars, I'm gonna check off the box, and I'm gonna go home to my family.' You hurt so many people in this situation besides just myself."
A Florida woman was arrested after she allegedly struck a teenager who was crossing the road with her truck, covered her license plate and sped off.
Sarah Wright, 37, was arrested Thursday and charged with leaving the scene of a crash with injuries and driving with a suspended license.
The crash happened shortly before 4 p.m. at the intersection of Gage Avenue and Noah Street in Deltona, Florida, according to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office.
The victim, a 16-year-old boy, was riding his scooter home from Pine Ridge High School when he was struck by a black Chevrolet Silverado as he was using the crosswalk, the sheriff's office said.
The teenager fell to the ground, resulting in a serious laceration to the back of his head as well as an arm injury, but he remained alert and conscious after the incident.
A witness reported that she was checking her mailbox nearby when she heard the crash. She told investigators that the suspect, later identified as Wright, exited her truck after the crash and checked on the boy before she went back to her vehicle and covered her license plate with paper and tape.
But the witness still managed to see the first character of her tag. A neighborhood Ring camera also captured the truck fleeing the scene.
The victim and the witness were also able to provide a detailed description of the suspect.
Officials were then able to locate a suspect vehicle captured on a nearby License Plate Reader camera within minutes.
Wright was found in Flagler County and taken into custody with assistance from Florida Highway Patrol and the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.
While many might turn up their noses to using an animal-based product on the face, natural skincare company Hearth and Homestead in Virginia sold out of its tallow balm product on Black Friday.
Lily Wilmoth, the company's founder and president, spoke with Fox News Digital in an on-camera interview about the skyrocketing demand for beef tallow.
"It’s bigger than ever," she said. "The biggest product for us has always been our tallow-based skincare products."
Wilmoth revealed that her tallow balm is made from 100% grass-fed beef suet, or the fat that encases a cow's kidney, which is sourced from farms across the country.
The fat is harvested, ground into a butter consistency and blended with an herb-infused olive oil before being melted, whipped, cooled and jarred, she said.
"It's not the back fat or other types of fat that you might find on your steak," Wilmoth said. "It's a very specific fat … our ancestors recognized that this fat was special."
"It has a higher amount of nutrients than all the other fats in the animal," she went on. "It's very creamy and white in texture. It doesn't have a weird smell or taste."
This specific fat is where nutrients, including vitamins D and A, are stored, according to Wilmoth.
"Our skin is an organ," Wilmoth said. "That's why it's so important that anything we put on our skin should be something we're really thinking about carefully."
Some moisturizers on the market have a "long list of complex ingredients, preservatives, emulsifiers … fragrances and dyes," which could worsen skin conditions like eczema and acne, she cautioned.
"Tallow balm, which is oil-based, doesn't need preservatives because it doesn't contain water," she said. "It's not going to disrupt the natural skin barrier."
While tallow balm is "not a healing remedy" and each person's skin will react to it differently, Wilmoth noted that many customers say it helps with conditions like acne and psoriasis.
Dr. Brendan Camp, a New York-based dermatologist, agreed that beef tallow is "generally well-tolerated" by most skin types.
He confirmed that beef tallow acts as a moisturizer to help "trap water into the skin" and make it feel "smooth and soft."
"As an emollient, beef tallow fills in cracks and crevices in the skin that contribute to a rough texture," he said to Fox News Digital.
Beef tallow also contains omega-3 fatty acids and various vitamins, Camp noted, which help maintain the health of the skin barrier and protect it from "oxidative stress."
Wilmoth admitted that she "cannot guarantee that every single person is going to see amazing results with tallow," as every person's microbiome is different.
"Depending on your particular skin type, you may find that something else works better for you," she said.
People with oily skin may find beef tallow products to be "too heavy or greasy," Camp cautioned.
"If you have sensitive skin, you may want to consider doing a patch test on the inside of your arm prior to using it more liberally on the skin," he recommended.
For those who opt not to use beef tallow, Camp suggested trying other basic moisturizers that are free of fragrances and dyes and that contain hydrating ingredients like ceramides, glycerin, hyaluronic acid and squalane.
In a video posted to Instagram and shared with Fox News Digital, Dr. Tiina Meder — a cosmetic safety expert, dermatologist and founder of Meder Beauty in London — questioned the hype around tallow balm.
Meder, who grew up in Estonia in the 1970s, shared that her mother applied beef tallow to her face and hands in the cold winters because there weren’t any other options.
"It was the only thing to protect children’s faces and hands from cold burn," she said.
But Meder wondered why people would choose not to take advantage of the variety of creams and moisturizers available today that are "better than beef tallow."
"Beef tallow is not bioidentical," she said. "Beef tallow lipids have very little in common with lipids of the human skin."
Linoleic acid, which is found in human sebum glands, is particularly essential for skin health, Meder noted, as it’s an anti-inflammatory antioxidant and also promotes viscosity — but beef tallow doesn’t contain any.
Meder added that other lipids found in beef tallow can be pro-inflammatory for humans and can "sensitize the skin."
"It is simply not right to apply beef tallow on the skin when you have such a huge choice," she said.
When Jackie Kennedy learned that her husband, Aristotle Onassis, was having an affair with Maria Callas, she did what she knew best – looked the other way.
The claim was made by Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos, Onassis’ longtime personal secretary. Her memoir, "The Onassis Women," takes a deep dive into the love triangle.
Callas, a superstar soprano who died in 1977, is the subject of a new biopic starring Angelina Jolie.
"Onassis never stopped seeing Maria," Moutsatsos, 75, told Fox News Digital. "One week after he got married, he was visiting her many times. I would say three, four times a week. Jackie was very smart, and she realized quickly what was happening."
The former first lady turned to her spouse’s sister, Artemis Onassis, about the shipping magnate’s not-so-secret relationship with the singer.
"I was pretending I didn’t hear anything," Moutsatsos recalled. "But Artemis said to her, ‘Don’t pay attention because here in Greece, that’s what usually happens.’ Onassis was in love with Jackie, but he was also used to meeting and being with Maria."
"Jackie followed Artemis’ advice," she shared. "Onassis and Maria were twin (flames). They couldn’t separate from each other."
According to Biography.com, Callas and Onassis met at a party in 1957. It quickly turned into a lengthy romance. The relationship was tumultuous, and Onassis eventually began eyeing the widowed Kennedy.
Onassis married Kennedy in 1968. According to the outlet, Callas learned of her lover’s plans three weeks before the ceremony.
Kennedy believed that Onassis' money and power could provide her family protection. Her first husband, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, followed by her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy, in 1968.
Moutsatsos said she initially wondered why Kennedy chose to turn a blind eye to Onassis’ infidelity. But then she realized that this was nothing new for the mother of two.
WATCH: NEW MARILYN MONROE PHOTOS TAKEN BY CLOSE FRIEND REVEALED IN BOOK
"Jackie was used to this with her previous husband, the president," said Moutsatsos. "But she also needed to have a strong man next to her. Onassis was the perfect man. He could give her security not only for her but for her children. And Onassis adored her children, John Jr. and Caroline."
"I remember that on [his private island] Skorpios, he would bring them all kinds of animals and toys to make them feel happy," she shared. "And of course, Jackie could also have everything she wanted. He was used to giving her many surprises.
"I remember he would ask me to call a famous jeweler here to bring in the best things, the most expensive things. We would look at these jewels for hours, trying to find only the best ones for her."
"Don’t you think a woman likes that? I would say so," she chuckled.
While the women never met, Callas harbored ill feelings for Onassis’ bride. Moutsatsos claimed Callas and Onassis would often fight over Kennedy.
"Maria was jealous," said Moutsatsos. "She wanted to be with Onassis and have him next to her always, but it was not possible. They were too similar… But Maria was also a very strong character. She was very proud. Jackie was more like a little girl. She was more warm, more feminine."
"Maria never liked this relationship with Jackie," Moutsatsos shared. "Whenever she was sitting on the boat, (the Christina, Onassis’ yacht), she would read the newspapers and see the photos of Onassis with Maria. After that, there would be a war on the boat."
"I remember the first day I met her," she said. "She was coming down the stairs of the house. She was like a queen, a princess. But her behavior was like a little girl. She was very polite with a soft voice. I remember she was very happy because we started speaking in French because Onassis’ sister also spoke French. Jackie spoke French. So we started speaking."
"Jackie was shy all the time," she shared. "Whenever she would call to speak with her husband, she would always ask me if Mr. Onassis was available. It was never ‘I want to speak with my husband.’"
Kennedy’s marriage to Onassis had other issues involving another woman – her daughter-in-law, Christina Onassis.
"Christina and [her brother] Alexander didn’t like her at all," said Moutsatsos. "Jackie was trying to approach them, but they were avoiding meeting her, speaking with her.
"On the day that Jackie and Onassis got married, it was raining all day," said Moutsatsos. "Here in Greece, we believe that if somebody is getting married, and it is raining, that is good luck. But it was not good luck."
Onassis never left his former flame. Moutsatsos said the pair were together until he died in 1975.
"Maria was desperate when Onassis died," she explained. "I remember she was calling me almost every day because she wanted to know how to handle the whole situation. She didn’t want to see Jackie, she didn’t want to see [Onassis’] children. They didn’t like any woman to be next to their father. It wasn’t personal. They just always believed that one day their father would be with their mother again. Maria knew that.
"I helped her get to Skorpios without anybody knowing about it," Moutsatsos claimed. "She didn’t want to live anymore. She thought that her life was useless because, yes, he married Jackie, but she could still be with him. Now he was gone. They were born for each other."
When Onassis passed away, Callas had already withdrawn from public life. Callas was 53 when she suffered a fatal heart attack. Moutsatsos is adamant that the star died from a broken heart.
"There were reports that Maria was taking drugs – that is not true," she said. "What is true is that she was heartbroken."
Moutsatsos stayed in touch with Kennedy, who lived in New York City with her two children following Onassis’ death. She died there in 1994 at age 64.
Today, Moutsatsos is looking to republish her memoir. She’s also in talks with producers to potentially turn the book into a film. Her goal, she said, is to set the record straight.
"This was my family," she said. "And I just want people to know the truth."
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg surprised some observers this week when he announced a first-degree murder charge against Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old Ivy League computer whiz accused of assassinating a health insurance executive in an ambush attack outside a New York City hotel.
Under New York law, which differs in this regard from many other states, second-degree murder is the normal charge for a premeditated slaying. First-degree charges have additional requirements, such as the victim being a police officer or a murder involving torture.
In Mangione's case, prosecutors allege the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was an act of terror, and legal experts tell Fox News Digital that could be a stretch.
"I just don’t see a jury convicting him of the first-degree murder committed in furtherance of terrorism," said Lara Yeretsian, a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney who has been following the case. "The enormous public support could not have been anticipated. In fact, in light of the public support he has, this charge or overfiling could backfire on the prosecution."
The terror charge — and surprise federal stalking charges — prompted pushback from Mangione's defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.
"This is a highly unusual situation we find ourselves in," Friedman Agnifilo told a federal judge in Manhattan Thursday after the Justice Department revealed its own case against Mangione, which she described as contradictory.
"I want to note that the theory of the murder charge in the Manhattan DA case seems to be in conflict with and in opposite to the theory that is here being brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office," she said in court. "There, they talk about terrorism and potentially influencing a group of people. This is stalking an individual. That's what the theory is here. Those are two completely different theories. These seem like different cases."
While the federal charges open the door for the death penalty, which New York doesn't have, they accuse Mangione of stalking, murder and federal firearms offenses with no mention of terrorism.
"This isn’t your typical terrorism case, so I understand why the defense is saying that Bragg is overcharging the case, like he did with [President-elect] Trump and [Daniel] Penny," said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor whose Los Angeles-based private practice is often at odds with insurance companies in court.
"It also supports the argument that Mangione is being treated differently because he killed a CEO instead of an ‘ordinary’ victim."
Linda Kenney Baden, a prominent New York defense attorney who visited the site of Thompson's murder just hours after it took place, said she believes both the state-level terror case and any federal attempt to impose the death penalty would involve overcharging.
"Terrorism to me is such a stretch," she told Fox News Digital. "I think when you try that case, quite frankly, you're gonna say, 'He wasn't trying to create overwhelming terrorism. He was trying to get revenge for what the insurance companies had done to the little person.'"
She said she believes the Justice Department filed federal charges for two reasons.
"One, you have a very important person in terms of how the country runs and corporations," she said, referring to the victim. "And, two, they don't trust Alvin Bragg."
Earlier this month, Bragg's office failed to get a conviction in another case that critics saw as overcharged. After the DA's line prosecutors asked a court to dismiss a manslaughter charge against Marine veteran Daniel Penny, jurors found him not guilty of a lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely.
The homeless man had barged onto a subway car and was screaming death threats when Penny intervened, putting him in a headlock from behind. Neely, who was high on drugs and had schizophrenia and a genetic condition known as sickle cell trait, died.
Kenney Baden also took issue with the way police paraded Mangione out of a Manhattan heliport after his extradition from Pennsylvania, likening it to a dramatic scene from a "Batman" movie.
"Yes, he's killed. Yes, it was awful. Yes, it was an assassination, but is his life worth any more than everybody else?" she asked. "How many murders were there yesterday in New York City? Or the last two weeks in New York City? Do we see that kind of showboating for their killers? I'm sure the family members of the people killed in New York City for the past two weeks aren't happy."
Edward Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Thursday the state murder case would proceed before a federal case. Mangione also faces firearms and fake ID charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested by the Altoona Police Department after a McDonald's worker called 911, recognizing him from a wanted poster during an interstate manhunt.
"Luigi Mangione allegedly conducted the carefully premeditated and targeted execution of Brian Thompson to incite national debates," Assistant FBI Director James Dennehy said Thursday. "This alleged plot demonstrates a cavalier attitude towards humanity – deeming murder an appropriate recourse to satiate personal grievances."
Rare artifacts belonging to an officer in the German Regiment of the Continental Army have been donated to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
A wallet made by Continental Army Lt. Samuel Gerock gives a first-hand account of the battles of Trenton and Princeton as well as lesser-known battles, according to the museum's press release.
The wallet is made from the animal skin drumhead of a drum carried by his regiment detailed with ink inscriptions containing a pocket-sized almanac and wartime papers inside the wallet.
Gerock lived in Baltimore, Maryland, before settling in New Bern, North Carolina, after the war.
"His papers not only showcase new information about the Revolutionary War, but they help to reveal the various ways veterans proved their service afterward in order to receive financial assistance," said Matthew Skic, the museum’s senior curator.
The artifacts were in possession of Gerock’s descendants, and his great-great-great-granddaughter, Nanette Reid Osborne, donated the items in honor of her mother.
"I didn’t know that people would find them interesting, but they do, and I’m just really happy that we were able to donate them to the museum so as many people as possible can see and learn from them," said Osborne, according to the release.
"I've always felt like these objects shouldn't be stuck in a drawer somewhere."
The artifacts are on display at the museum in the second-floor Oneida Indian Nation Atrium.
As drone sightings over New Jersey continue to raise questions, a new tool could bring answers about the source of these flying vehicles — if the government could get it off the ground.
Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began requiring all unmanned aircraft systems to be equipped with Remote ID technology, which makes every equipped drone uniquely identifiable to authorities, like a license plate on a car.
The FAA announced that it would provide a database that could be accessed by local law enforcement, but nearly one year later, local authorities still can't get into it themselves.
"The FAA is working on developing Remote ID data sharing capabilities for law enforcement so they can have access to FAA registration information," the agency said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
According to a report published in June by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the FAA has not yet provided a way for law enforcement agencies to use Remote ID technology to respond to a potential threat or investigate suspicious drone activity.
A representative from New Jersey’s Belleville Police Department confirmed to Fox News Digital that its officers do not have access to the FAA’s Remote ID database as the state is dealing with dozens of reported drone sightings and growing public concern about the government's inability to provide answers.
The East Brunswick Police Department also confirmed to Fox News Digital that it was "unaware of any of the FAA databases available for Remote ID."
The FAA did not respond to questions about whether the Remote ID database is being shared with local authorities for the ongoing investigations in New Jersey.
The GAO’s report reveals that both the FAA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) do not have a concrete timeline for the rollout of Remote ID access for law enforcement, resulting in potential delays when authorities are trying to access real-time data regarding drone activity.
Remote ID acts as a "digital license plate" by using a broadcast signal — similar to those used by manned aircraft — to relay a drone’s registration details, coordinates and altitude. Remote ID is typically built into the software of mainstream consumer drones or physically attached to the craft.
"As long as it has a GPS and Remote ID built into the software and into the system, it can be tracked just like any other aircraft," James McDanolds, program chair at Sonoran Desert Institute’s School of Uncrewed Technology, told Fox News Digital.
Broadcasting the signal over radio waves, instead of the internet, would allow the signal to be accessed in areas with low internet connectivity.
Currently, local authorities must go through an FAA Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) agent to request information regarding an incident, which would then be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. But the FAA has acknowledged an inability to effectively handle local law enforcement's requests to the program for Remote ID data and is requesting funding from the federal government to cover the cost of expanding.
The FAA requested $21.8 billion in funding from the federal government for the upcoming year, according to the administration's 2025 President's Budget Submission. Additionally, the FAA has allotted $15.6 million of the budget for drone-related research and growth.
The FAA wants more money to hire more LEAP special agents whose jobs will focus on investigating drone activity.
The GAO’s report expressed concerns regarding the timeliness of these requests, citing the need for real-time data in potential emergency situations.
The DHS, FBI, FAA and Department of Defense on Monday issued a joint statement addressing the origins of the drones, citing the use of technology to identify the owners.
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones," the statement explains. "We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast."
The FAA began receiving reports of drone activity in mid-November as unidentified aircraft were spotted throughout the Garden State, including Picatinny Arsenal Military Base and Trump National Golf Course Bedminster, resulting in temporary flight restrictions, known as TFRs, being placed over sensitive areas.
Civilians have reported drones of unusual size or build. Some with diameters of 6 feet have been spotted, according to New Jersey state Rep. Dawn Fantasia, who was briefed on the matter last week. However, the federal government has maintained that the drones are accounted for and continue to be used lawfully.
The FAA’s Part 107 rule states that drones are permitted to fly at night and must remain within 400 feet of ground level. Operating a drone without Remote ID can carry criminal penalties of up to $250,000 and a maximum of three years in jail, with civil penalties of up to $27,500.
Within the last few weeks, the FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 drone sightings, with fewer than 100 warranting additional investigation, according to an FBI official.
"To be clear, [authorities] have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage," the DHS and FBI said in a joint statement on Thursday. "While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight the insufficiency of current authorities."
Fox News Digital's Michael Dorgan and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
Bernhard Goetz, then a 37-year-old electronics technician, defended himself from a group of would-be robbers on a New York City subway car Dec. 22, 1984.
Four decades later, another New York straphanger argued self-defense to beat homicide charges in another Big Apple subway vigilante case.
In May 2023, Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran who was studying architecture at a New York college, placed 30-year-old Jordan Neely in a headlock to stop a violent outburst that frightened passengers and involved threats about killing them and going to prison for life.
Jurors found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide earlier this month after prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the most serious charge of manslaughter.
The trials of Goetz and Penny were both highly politicized and scrutinized because of the subjects' races. Goetz and Penny are both White. Neely and the four men Goetz shot are Black. Legal scholars have spent years discussing whether Goetz would have shot White teens under similar circumstances. Penny's defense repeatedly accused prosecutors of trying to unfairly inject racial undertones into a trial that did not involve hate crime charges.
Both cases also reflect deeply held public sentiment that crime was getting out of control in New York City. Goetz had been mugged multiple times in the past, which is why he said he was carrying a handgun. Penny put Neely in a chokehold after a spate of subway incidents involving mentally ill homeless people attacking passengers, telling police, "These guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff."
Violent crime dropped dramatically in New York City in the late 1990s and 2000s, but some crimes, robberies in particular, have risen again after a wave of anti-police rioting in 2020 and left-wing political movement to "defund the police."
Goetz was acquitted on attempted murder charges but spent 8½ months in jail for possessing the handgun he used to defend himself without a license.
The case involved four teens — Darrell Cabey, James Ramseur, Troy Canty and Barry Allen. The first two were armed with sharpened screwdrivers, which they claimed were not weapons but tools to break into coin boxes in arcade games, according to court records.
They got on a Manhattan-bound No. 2 train in the Bronx and surrounded Goetz after he boarded at the 14th Street station in Manhattan and sat down by himself.
Goetz had an unlicensed .38-caliber pistol in his belt loaded with five rounds.
The teens approached Goetz, and without displaying any weapons, Canty told him, "Give me $5."
Rather than being robbed, Goetz pulled out the gun and fired four shots – striking Canty in the chest and Allen in the back. Another round went through Ramseur's arm and into his side. The fourth shot missed Cabey. Goetz waited a moment, then fired his last shot at Cabey, severing his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed.
"I said, 'You seem to be all right, here's another,'" Goetz later told detectives. "If I was a little more under self-control … I would have put the barrel against his forehead and fired."
He added that if he'd been carrying more bullets, he would have kept shooting.
The conductor stopped the train and radioed police. Goetz jumped off the train and fled on foot.
The case sparked a media frenzy, and Goetz surrendered to police in Concord, New Hampshire, nine days later. He told them he'd been illegally carrying a pistol since 1981, when he had been "maimed" during a prior mugging. He also said that, on multiple occasions, he'd warded off other would-be robbers by brandishing the weapon and not firing.
Because of those prior attacks, he said, he knew the teens on the train wanted to rob him based on their behavior and the looks on their faces. Before the case went to trial, at least two of the teens reportedly admitted they were going to rob him, but a court considered those statements hearsay.
Goetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
Cybersecurity has been a major subject of discussion in recent years, with purported Chinese spy balloons floating overhead, a major Appalachian oil pipeline hacked with ransomware and questions about mysterious drones over New Jersey skies.
But one overlooked area of focus in this regard is agriculture, several prominent figures have said — especially with America’s ag states primed to lend their top political leaders to Washington in the new year.
Dakota State University President Jose-Marie Griffiths told Fox News Digital how important the heartland has become geopolitically, with several Dakotans gaining leadership or cabinet roles in the new year — including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., chairing the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity.
"I said quite a lot in the past and in [congressional] testimony about my concerns about agriculture and food production’s critical infrastructure, which came rather late to the cybersecurity critical infrastructure table," Griffiths said.
"People [will] start to realize the agricultural vehicles they're using increasingly are autonomous and connecting to broadband [via] satellite — and other ways that these become vulnerable. And for people who wish to do us harm, they're exploiting vulnerabilities as much as they can."
Residents across the heartland pay much more attention to the threats China and other rivals pose to the U.S. agriculture sector, she said.
With advancements in technology, hackers can now find their way into harvesters, granaries and the nation’s freight-train network, Griffiths and Rounds said separately.
Whether the cash crop is Pennsylvania potatoes, Florida oranges or Dakotan wheat, all are crucial to the U.S. economy and supply chain, and all can be subject to cyberthreats, Griffiths suggested.
Rounds told Fox News Digital he has studied for some time the potential vulnerabilities of the American agriculture sector when it comes to foreign actors and cybersecurity.
"It’s more than just the vehicles and so forth," he said.
"A lot of it has to do with the infrastructure that we rely on. A good example is your water systems; your electrical systems... All of those right now are connected and they all have cyber-points-of-entry.
"And so, we have been, for an extended period of time, looking at threats that could come from overseas by adversaries that would like to infiltrate not only the water supplies, but also the electrical systems… and in some cases, sewer systems."
Rounds said he and other lawmakers have been focused on where malign actors can proverbially "shoot the arrows at us," and figure out who they are and how to stop them.
He said the Chinese firm Huawei had been selling cheap hardware to rural telecom entities and could be able to infiltrate communications systems.
"Once we found out that that was in there… that they could be putting in latent materials that could be activated at a later date, we've gotten most of them pulled out. But that's just one example of the ways in which rural areas can be a way into the rest of our communication systems," he said.
Rounds said drones are becoming increasingly used in agriculture, and they, too, have the danger of being hacked.
Vehicles like harvesters and tractors have also greatly advanced technologically in the near term and face similar challenges.
"A lot of that right now is done with GPS. You get into your tractor, you plug it in and basically it'll drive it for you. We leave people in those tractors, but at some stage of the game, some of those might very well become autonomous as well — and they're subject to cyber-intervention…" he said.
Grain elevators also can be interfered with, which stymies marketing and transportation, and endangers the greater supply chain and the ability for a farmer to sell on the open market, Rounds said.
Asked if he preferred today’s agriculture sector to the era before automation, Rounds said it’s not about what he thinks, but what is going to happen in the future.
"We will have more and more autonomous vehicles being used in farming. And the reason is we don't have the manpower — and we replace it with machinery. The machinery is going to get bigger. It's going to become more sophisticated, and we're going to be expected to do more things with fewer people actually operating them.," he said.
"The supply chain is so critical. We rely on autonomy in many cases for a lot of the delivery of our resources, both to the farmer, but also back out from the farmer in terms of a commodity that he wants to market."
If that new technologically-advanced system malfunctions or is hacked, it will greatly disrupt the ability to provide the raw materials to the people and companies "actually making the bread" and such.
Amit Yoran, CEO of exposure management firm Tenable, recently testified before the House Homeland Security Committee and spoke at length about cyber threats to critical U.S. infrastructure.
Asked about cybersecurity in the agriculture realm, Yoran told Fox News Digital recently that there is "no singular defense paradigm that could effectively be applied across all sectors."
"Some critical infrastructure providers have a high degree of cybersecurity preparedness, strong risk understanding and risk management practices, and very strong security programs. Others are woefully ill-prepared," said Yoran, whose company is based in Howard County, Maryland.
FIRST ON FOX - Aviva Siegel, the wife of American hostage Kieth Siegel and a former hostage herself, is pleading with everyone and anyone involved in the hostage negotiations to get her husband, and the others, freed from Hamas captivity after they have spent more than 440 days in deplorable conditions.
"Hamas released a video of Keith, and I just saw the picture," Aviva told Fox News Digital in an emotional interview in reference to a video Hamas released in April. "He looks terrible. His bones are out, and you can see that he's lost a lot of weight.
"He doesn't look like himself. And I'm just so worried about him, because so [many] days and minutes have passed since that video that we received," she said. "I just don't know what kind of Keith that we're going to get back."
"I'm worried about all the hostages, because the conditions that they are in are the worst conditions that any human being could go through," Aviva said. "I was there. I touched death. I know what it feels being underneath the ground with no oxygen.
"Keith and I were just left there. We were left there to die," she added.
Aviva and her husband of, at the time 42 years, were brutally abducted from their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and held together for 51 days before she was released in the November 2023 hostage exchange after suffering from a stomach infection that left her incredibly ill.
She has since tirelessly fought for Kieth’s release, meeting with top officials in the U.S. and Israel, traveling to the United States nine times in the last year and becoming a prominent advocate for the hostages.
"I just hope that he's with other people from Israel, and if he has them, he's going to be okay," Aviva said. "He’s just the person that will make them feel that they’re together. That's what he did when I was there – he was 100% for me and the hostages that we were with."
"If you get kidnapped, get kidnapped with Keith, because he was outstanding to everybody. He was strong for all of us. And I'm sure that he's keeping strong and keeping his hope to come out," she said.
Aviva recounted their last moments together before they were separated ahead of her release, telling Fox News Digital, "When I left him, I told him to be the strongest – that he needs to be strong for me, and I'll be strong for him."
Top security officials from the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar have been pushing Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire and the return of hostages.
Reports on Thursday suggested that negotiators are pushing for a 42-day cease-fire in which 34 of the at least 50 hostages still assessed to be alive, could be exchanged.
Hamas is also believed to continue to hold at least 38 who were taken hostage and then killed while in captivity, along with at least seven who are believed to have been killed on Oct. 7, 2023 and then taken into Gaza.
Though all the hostages are believed to have been held in deplorable conditions, the children, women – including the female IDF soldiers – the sick and the elderly have reportedly been front listed to be freed first in exchange for Hamas terrorists currently imprisoned.
"I'm keeping my hope and holding on and just waiting – waiting to hug Keith, and waiting for all the families, to get their families back," Aviva said. "We need to get them back."
Aviva said she dreams of the moment that she gets to hug her husband again and watch their grandchildren "jump into his arms."
"We’ll be the happiest people on Earth," she said. "All the hostages, I can't imagine them coming home. It'll be just the happiest moment for all of the families. We need it to happen."
Reports in recent weeks suggest there is an increased sense of optimism in bringing home the hostages, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged some caution when speaking with MSNBC Morning Joe on Thursday when he said, "We are encouraged because this should happen, and it should happen because Hamas is at a point where the cavalry it thought might come to the rescue isn’t coming to the rescue, [Hezbollah's] not coming to the rescue, [Iran's] not coming to the rescue."
"In the absence of that, I think the pressure is on Hamas to finally get to yes," he added. "But look, I think we also have to be very realistic. We’ve had these Lucy and the football moments several times over the last months where we thought we were there, and the football gets pulled away.
"The real question is: Is Hamas capable of making a decision and getting to yes? We’ve been fanning out with every possible partner on this to try to get the necessary pressure exerted on Hamas to say yes," Blinken added.
The media has for decades played a role in influencing how high-profile criminal trials play out, but the public is getting smarter with more access to dissenting voices, according to Marcia Clark, the former Los Angeles prosecutor who spearheaded the massively publicized O.J. Simpson trial.
Clark has written a new book on a forgotten but scandalous 1950s home invasion murder that rocked Los Angeles. Unfortunately for the lead suspect, she said, local newspapers took the prosecution's shaky case at face value and ran with it, convicting her in the public eye before she was put to death after a questionable case and multiple scandals.
Discussing that case and other high-profile proceedings with Fox News Digital, Clark revealed unlikely similarities in the media frenzies surrounding the 1953 murder trial against "Bloody Babs" Barbara Graham, the 1995 Simpson trial she was involved in and this year's trial of Daniel Penny. Penny is a Marine veteran found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide for the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on the New York City subway.
Regardless of the form of coverage a case gets, it can have a big impact on public perception and put a defendant's right to a fair trial at risk.
"Now, people are starting to look back and say, 'Wait a minute, we didn't get the whole story. We didn't get context. All the nuance is missing.' And they're starting to really criticize and also analyze what they're getting and contextualize the stories and wait for the real, the whole story to come out and then tell it when it's true," she told Fox News Digital.
As cable news became the dominant medium in the 1990s, she saw it firsthand as the lead prosecutor in Simpson's trial.
Now, with social media and the ability of any random post to go viral, there are a number of viewpoints accessible to the public. And people have acces to more information to form their own opinions, as seen recently in Daniel Penny's New York City homicide trial, Clark said.
"Initially, there was an outcry in favor of the victim, the homeless man, saying, 'This is a horrible, racist thing, and this was a badge-heavy kind of ex-Marine who went after him needlessly," she told Fox News Digital. "But then it comes out that people who were actually photographing at the time were reporting to the police, in the moment, ‘I was scared to death.’ ‘I thought he was going to kill us.’ ‘I thought there was a real reason to be fearful.’"
That technology puts the power to share information in the hands of everyday Americans, she said.
"People are getting smarter in today's world because we have iPhones and Androids and all of these things that, in the moment, take snapshots of what's going on and give you a broader context," she said. "And that's a very good thing."
At the time of Graham's trial, there was no internet or cable news, and competing newspapers all adopted a similar perspective, Clark said.
In the 1990s, the Simpson trial became known as "the trial of the century." Simpson was one of the most famous people ever to be charged with murder in U.S. history. Rather than surrender to the police as planned, he led them on a slow-speed chase while curled up in the backseat of a friend's white Ford Bronco.
The televised trial stretched on for months and became a part of millions of Americans' daily lives, thanks to extensive cable news coverage. And his prominent, high-priced defense lawyers, including Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian, Shawn Holley, Robert Shapiro and others, were nicknamed the "Dream Team," ultimately convincing jurors of enough reasonable doubt to acquit Simpson in the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
"That was one of the parallels that I didn't expect to find," Clark told Fox News Digital. "In Barbara's case … they didn't have the internet, and yet they had three editions of the newspapers — morning, afternoon, evening."
While newspapers have dramatically declined since the 2000s, she said, they were a major part of public life in the 1950s.
"We've gone digital, but it's not just that," she said. "It's that those newspapers were the sole source of information."
And the 1950s papers ran with prosecutors' story that Graham was "Bloody Babs," Clark said, painting her as the criminal mastermind behind a brutal botched robbery.
Clark delves into the specifics of the case in "Trial By Ambush." The sensational murder of 62-year-old former vaudeville performer Mabel Monahan in her Burbank home inspired an Oscar-winning movie, "I Want to Live!," starring Susan Hayward, but it faded from public memory decades ago.
In reality, Graham's role in the plot was supposed to be to distract Monahan, so her accomplices could steal more than $100,000 in cash they incorrectly believed her ex-son-in-law, Las Vegas casino owner Tutor Scherer, kept in the house.
Graham, who spent most of her life as a low-level hustler, was charged with murder, convicted and sentenced to death.
But while Clark believes Graham spent most of her life as a crook, she said she does not believe Graham pistol-whipped Monahan to death. She notes how prosecutors withheld evidence, the media unfairly crucified Graham, the star witness changed his own story and, with the help of another inmate, investigators entrapped Graham by offering her a fake alibi and then using it against her in court.
"She never told the truth. I don't think she's quite credible," Clark said. "[But] she did not kill Mabel Monahan. Yes, I believe that."
The tactics were legal at the time, she said. But that has changed. Graham's execution happened years before the Supreme Court's Brady v. Maryland decision found that prosecutors would violate a defendant's right to due process if they withheld exculpatory evidence. California also handles felony murder cases, in which a person is killed during the commission of another felony, differently under modern law.
"The whole operation would be highly illegal now," she said. "The whole case would be thrown out. It would be very debatable whether you could resurrect a case from the ashes of that, because it would be easy, I think, for the defense to say, 'Look, they've been poisoned. The jury well has been poisoned by all of this illegally obtained evidence.'"
At the time, many of the underhanded tactics were allowed, like commuting the sentence of an inmate who convinced Graham to offer payment for an alibi from a man who turned out to be an undercover officer.
"There were a lot of things they were able to get away with back then that they couldn't today," Clark said. "But, even so, they pushed the envelope even further and did things they weren't even allowed to do then, for example, burying John True's first recorded statement."
John True was an accomplice turned state's witness who gave conflicting stories to police, a detail withheld from the defense in a "serious violation of due process."
Based on evidence the jury never heard, Clark believes that while Graham was at the crime scene and clearly an accomplice, she wasn't the actual killer. It was True and two other men, Emmett Perkins and Jacko Santo, she believes, who beat and suffocated the victim.
Perkins, Santo and Graham were all executed. True got immunity in exchange for testifying against the others.
"Interestingly, after she was convicted, one of the reporters who had been convinced of her guilt and of her killing Mabel Monahan, went to interview her a number of times and then went and spoke to John True a few times and came to realize that Barbara could not have killed her," Clark said. "Barbara did not do the pistol whipping. John True likely did."
Two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down Sunday over the Red Sea in what appeared to be "friendly fire", the U.S. military said.
The pilots were found alive after they ejected from their aircraft, with one suffering minor injuries.
The incident demonstrates the pervasive dangers in the Red Sea corridor amid ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis, even as U.S. and European military coalitions patrol the area.
The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the time, but U.S. Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was.
The military said the aircraft shot down was a two-seat F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet assigned to the "Red Rippers" of Strike Fighter Squadron 11 out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia.
The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, according to Central Command. On Dec. 15, Central Command said the Truman had entered the Mideast, but did not specify that the carrier and its battle group were in the Red Sea.
"The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18," Central Command said in a statement.
It is unclear how the Gettysburg had mistaked an F/A-18 for an enemy aircraft or missile, particularly since ships in a battle group are linked by radar and radio communication.
Central Command said that warships and aircraft earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Fire from the Houthis has previously forced sailors to make decisions in seconds.
The U.S., since the Truman arrived, has ramped up its airstrikes targeting the Houthis and their missile fire into the Red Sea and the surrounding area. But an American warship group in the region may lead to additional attacks from the rebels.
On Saturday night and into Sunday, U.S. warplanes conducted airstrikes that shook Yemen's capital of Sanaa, which the Houthis have held for a decade. Central Command said the strikes targeted a "missile storage facility" and a "command-and-control facility."
Houthi-controlled media reported strikes in both Sanaa and around the port city of Hodeida, but did not disclose details on any casualties or damage.
The Houthis later acknowledged the aircraft being shot down in the Red Sea.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October of last year, the Houthis have targeted about 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones.
The rebels say that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which began after Hamas' surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, although many of the ships the rebels have attacked have little or no connection to the ongoing war, including some headed for Iran.
The Houthis also have increasingly targeted Israel with drones and missiles, leading to retaliatory airstrikes from Israeli forces.
Another body was found in the popular Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas, where other deceased individuals were found recently.
The latest body found joins the growing mystery after at least 6 additional bodies were found throughout the year in the lake in 2024. On Friday, police were called to investigate reports of a dead person in the water near 1st Street Bridge and the 300 block of Cesar Chavez.
The Austin Police Department (APD) said that they do not suspect foul play as the body showed no signs of trauma, but are investigating the incident.
Despite APD attempting to quell community fears, questions and speculation have run rampant. Police have attributed most of the deaths to accidental drowning due to the lake's proximity to nightclubs and bars.
The most recent body was found on December 1. The victim was recently identified as 73-year-old Thi Lang Nguyen. Austin police said that there is nothing connected to the other deaths this year.
In September, a man was behaving erratically near East Cesar Chavez and Nueces Streets. He then went into the water and did not resurface. He was later pulled out and pronounced dead.
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Back in February, a woman's body was found in the water about 20 feet from the north shore and in April, a fisherman spotted another person floating in the water.
In July, a man was suffering from blunt force trauma on the trail near Rainey Street. The man was pronounced dead a short time later.
In September, a body was found along a trail near the lake off Pleasant Valley Road.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the APD for comment.
Fox News Digital's Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
At least five people were injured, and a suspect was killed, after a man drove his pickup truck through the glass doors of a J.C. Penney in a mall in Texas, police said.
The incident happened on Saturday evening, just days before Christmas, at the Killeen Mall in Killeen, Texas – which is about 70 miles north of Austin.
In a press conference on Saturday evening, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Bryan Washko said that the truck was driven "several hundred yards" through the entrance of the J.C. Penney store.
Startled shoppers were injured as the driver was "actively running people over" and a fifth went to the hospital on their own, Sergeant Washko said. Those injured ranged from 6 to 75 years old, he said.
The incident unfolded as authorities noticed that the suspect, who has not been identified, was seen "driving erratically," and police attempted to pull him over.
Instead of stopping, the driver got off the highway, drove to the parking lot of the Killeen Mall and smashed his car through the doors of the J.C. Penney, Sergeant Washko said.
The man driving the truck was fatally shot by law enforcement, authorities said.
"There were officers from D.P.S., the Killeen Police Department and three other agencies that engaged in gunfire to eliminate this threat to the community," Sergeant Washko said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Killeen Police Department for comment.
The status of Patrick Mahomes' ankle was widely discussed leading up to Saturday's game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans.
While there was some doubt during the week whether the star quarterback would play against the Texans, he was able to fully get through the Chiefs' practice Thursday.
Mahomes was cleared to play and finished Saturday's 27-19 victory over Houston with 260 passing yards.
But the three-time Super Bowl winner turned some heads when he managed to stay on his feet after nearly being tripped and sprinted into the end zone for the first score of the game.
Mahomes was sidelined in the fourth quarter of the Chiefs' Week 15 game against the Cleveland Browns. Backup quarterback Carson Wentz stepped in for Mahomes and finished the 21-7 win over the Browns with 20 passing yards.
Mahomes' 15-yard scramble Saturday marked the longest rushing touchdown of his career. Moments after Mahomes crossed the goal line, broadcaster Noah Eagle wondered, "What bum ankle?"
This was not the first time Mahomes dealt with an ankle injury.
During the 2022 NFL postseason, Mahomes sustained what appeared to be a high ankle sprain in a divisional round playoff game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The win over the Texans improved the Chiefs' record to 14-1. Kansas City had already clinched a playoff berth after winning the AFC West a ninth straight year.
FIRST ON FOX: The Equal Protection Project, founded and led by Cornell professor William Jacobson, has released a deep-dive report on the prevalence of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training at Ivy League universities.
In his comprehensive report, "Poison Ivies: DEI and the Downfall of the Ivy League," Jacobson examines programs the eight Ivy League institutions use and require for students.
"The review of Ivy League practices by our CriticalRace.org project reflects substantial efforts by Ivy League schools to purport to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action, while maintaining work-arounds and DEI practices that continue the obsession with racial identities," Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
In his report, Jacobson shows how Ivy League institutions are sidestepping the June 29, 2023, ruling by the Supreme Court that says race cannot be used in admission decision-making at universities.
"Ivy League universities pretend not to take race into consideration but then provide essay question opportunities for students to talk about their race," he said.
"The Supreme Court affirmative action ruling took place in the context of university admissions, but it's clear that the court's opinion at its core was an Equal Protection Clause ruling that applies in other university contexts."
In his report, Jacobson found that out of the eight Ivy League universities:
Jacobson said he found that while the universities "pretend" not to consider race, in practice, they often do.
"Ivy League universities pretend not to take race into consideration but then provide essay question opportunities for students to talk about their race," he said.
"It's hard to believe that in environments in which DEI is the dominant ideology, taking on a quasi-religious fervor, that race does not enter into admissions decisions in fact, even if there is window-dressing to provide possible legal cover."
The report found that all departments at Brown require a multiyear plan for DEI.
In their orientation programming, students at Columbia undergo their "Inclusion & Belonging" program, which, Jacobson says, "includes concepts such as inclusion, diversity, equity, allyship and bias."
At Cornell, the DoBetterCornell student group is involved in the development of an educational requirement that focuses on themes like systemic racism, bias, colonialism and inequity.
In addition, Jacobson found that, in 2024, the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures was launched to center on anti-Black racism.
All students at Dartmouth University are required to take a culture and identity class.
Harvard has an Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, which also has the Inclusive Teaching Institute, which is dedicated to training faculty and staff to incorporate inclusive teaching.
Princeton, the report notes, requires all employees, student leaders, faculty involved in graduate admission and hiring recruitments to take a culture and difference class and DEI training.
Penn has a cultural diversity course requirement for all undergraduate students as well as a cross-cultural perspective course for all Wharton School students.
In 2022, the Ivy League introduced DEI and environmental, social and governance factors for business (ESGB) majors and concentrations for Wharton students as majors and as undergraduate concentrations.
Jacobson noted that Penn also has a program known as Projects for Progress, which offers up to $100,000 grants for projects focused on topics like systemic racism.
Yale has a stipulation that each school and administrative division should have a five-year plan on DEI, Jacobson reported.
The Equal Protection Project focuses on challenging race-based discrimination. The organization has challenged over 100 scholarships and programs discriminating against White and Asian students at universities across the country.
"To fully achieve the nondiscrimination standards of the Supreme Court ruling, the race-obsessed cultures at the Ivy League schools need to change," Jacobson said. "It will be a long process. The Supreme Court ruling was just the first step."
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Department of Education for comment.
The pope has contracted a cold and will skip his usual outdoor Sunday prayer, instead giving the blessing indoors just days ahead of his Christmas Eve and Day Masses, the Vatican said Saturday.
Chilly weather and the pope’s busy schedule during Christmas week were cited as reasons for the 88-year-old giving the blessing from his residence at the chapel of the Vatican's Santa Marta quarters.
The pope usually addresses the public from the window of St. Peter’s Basilica overlooking St. Peter’s Square on Sundays.
Pope Francis sounded congested on Saturday as he gave his annual Christmas greeting to Vatican bureaucrats.
The octogenarian has suffered from bronchitis before, including last year when he was hospitalized, and he also missed a climate change meeting in Dubai last year because of the flu and lung inflammation.
The pope developed pleurisy in his 20s and was forced to have part of his lungs removed in his native Argentina.
Christmas Eve also marks the beginning of the Vatican’s Holy Year in which around 32 million pilgrims are expected to head to Rome throughout 2025.
The pope will open the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve and On Dec. 26, he will go to Rome’s main prison to inaugurate the start of the Holy Year there.
