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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — John Thrasher, a former Florida State University president and longtime state legislator, died on Friday. He was 81.Thrasher, who served as speaker of the Florida House and as a member of the Florida Senate, died Friday morning in Orlando, his family said in a statement. He had been battling cancer, according to a social media post last month from his former lobbying firm.“John lived a remarkable life — and he made a big difference in the lives of so many in our state,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a statement.Thrasher, a Republican, was a member…

MASSAPEQUA, N.Y. (AP) — New York is discriminating against a school district that refuses to get rid of its Native American chief mascot and could face a Justice Department investigation or risk losing federal funding, President Donald Trump’s top education official said Friday.U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, on a visit to Massapequa High School on Long Island, said an investigation by her agency has determined that state education officials violated Title VI of the federal civil rights law by banning the use of Native American mascots and logos statewide.The department’s civil rights office found the state ban is discriminatory…

The United States pardon system has been developing a bad name in recent months. It is an area where Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives the president essentially boundless authority: “The President shall … have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Normally, though, aware of the controversial nature of unilaterally declaring that someone facing criminal charges should be freed, the president exercises this authority in the waning days of a term – there are 10 weeks after a November presidential election and the new president’s…

Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, “Atmosphere: A Love Story,” set against NASA’s robust 1980s shuttle program, where she felt stuck. She went, where she often goes, to her husband to talk it through.“I said, ‘I can’t write this book. I don’t know enough about the space shuttle. I don’t know what happens when the payload bay doors won’t shut and you have to get back within a certain amount of revs, but they can’t land at White Sands. They have to land at Cape Kennedy.’ And he’s like, ‘Just listen to yourself. You know so…

Michigan is sitting on a motherlode of potash and Ted Pagano is using $1.3 billion in government funds to mine it and grab market share away from Canada and Russia. The eureka moment came in 2012, when professor emeritus William Harrison of the University of Western Michigan invited Ted Pagano, then a 35-year-old freelance geologist, to his 27,000-square-foot geological repository in Kalamazoo. A rock nerd’s heaven, the warehouse’s heavy-duty shelves feature crates of minerals from across the state. But Pagano was there to see something specific: the 80 pallets of rock cores donated in 2008 by the Mosaic Company, a…

Hailey Bieber founded Rhode (her middle name) in 2022 with husband-and-wife duo Lauren and Michael D. Ratner.Tim Tadder for Forbes Model, social media star and beauty entrepreneur Hailey Bieber made headlines on Wednesday when publicly traded e.l.f. Beauty announced it will pay up to $1 billion to buy her makeup and skincare brand Rhode. Despite some reports indicating otherwise, the 28-year-old Bieber, who is married to singer Justin Bieber, almost certainly won’t become a billionaire from the deal, which is structured to pay out $600 million in cash and $200 million in e.l.f. Beauty stock, with a potential $200 million…

Snack food maker Mondelez International is suing the Aldi supermarket chain, alleging the packaging for Aldi’s store-brand cookies and crackers “blatantly copies” Mondelez products like Chips Ahoy, Wheat Thins and Oreos.In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Illinois, Chicago-based Mondelez said Aldi’s packaging was “likely to deceive and confuse customers” and threatened to irreparably harm Mondelez and its brands. The company is seeking monetary damages and a court order that would stop Aldi from selling products that infringe on its trademarks.A message seeking comment was left Thursday with Aldi.In the lawsuit, Mondelez displayed side-by-side photos of multiple products. Aldi’s Thin…

Former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for role in 1MDB scandal.Malaysia’s Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani has called a two-year prison sentence for a former Goldman Sachs banker implicated in the multibillion-dollar 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal too lenient. On Thursday, New York judge Margo Brodie sentenced German-born banker Tim Leissner, a former chairman for Goldman Sachs in Southeast Asia, to two years in prison for his role in the scandal. Leissner, who previously pleaded guilty to US bribery and money laundering counts, faced a maximum sentence of 25 years.…

Warsaw, Poland – The streets of Warsaw were awash with red-and-white flags last Sunday as two presidential hopefuls and their supporters marched through the capital for one last time before Poland takes to polls on Sunday, June 1, in the second round of voting for the country’s next president. Rafał Trzaskowski from the centre-right Civic Platform of the governing Civic Coalition and Karol Nawrocki, an independent candidate supported by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ran Poland between 2015 and 2023, are the two remaining contenders in the election. In the first round of polls on May 18,…

Republicans in the United States Congress are pushing for an increase in taxes on US universities, under a new bill that narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last Thursday. The bill’s supporters argue that a provision relating to higher educational institutions is crafted to target “woke” universities. Universities have taken a hit from US President Donald Trump’s executive orders and decisions aimed at changing education and immigration in the country, alongside cracking down on pro-Palestine protests that took place on US college campuses last year. The new tax plans aim to increase taxes on what US universities earn from…