USA, Maryland, Baltimore, Inner Harbor, skyline from Federal Hill, sunrise. Credit: Walter Bibikow via Getty Images.
Two suspects in an attempted attack on Baltimore's electric grid have been arrested, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Unsealed court documents show that Sarah Clendaniel of Maryland and Brandon Russell of Florida are racist extremists who allegedly wanted to "completely destroy" Baltimore by shutting down its grid.
He started communicating with an FBI informant about the attack in December soon after being released from prison.
“Together, we are using every legal means necessary to keep Marylanders safe and to disrupt hate-fueled violence,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek L. Barron during a press conference on Monday. “When we are united, hate cannot win.”
The arrests come amid a series of attempted attacks on power stations, as well as one successful one in North Carolina that cut power to 45,000 households. So far, no one has been arrested for that attack.
"In the last decade, we have increased our level of investment on grid hardening capital projects, and monitoring and surveillance technologies to work to prevent both physical and cyber-attacks," said Exelon and Baltimore Gas and Electric in a statement. "We remain focused on improving the resiliency of the grid by stocking critical back-up equipment while designing a smarter grid that isolates damage and routes power around it."
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day, it was estimated to stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Gow on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, after learning Gow and his wife have been producing and appearing in pornographic videos. Gow maintains the firing violated his free speech rights.
The U.S. military is now putting independent lawyers in charge of its investigations of sexual assault and other major crimes, what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has called the "most important reform" to the military justice system in recent history.
A decades-old law bans Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs. Now, drugmakers and a wide-ranging bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.
Barring a court order, in March Texas police will start being able to arrest people they suspect have entered the U.S. illegally, but increases in border crossings since a 2021 law authorizing some arrests shows the limits of that approach in the face of desperation that causes people to risk everything and travel thousands of miles to the U.S.
Mexico began clearing tents, both occupied and unoccupied, from the encampment in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, starting Tuesday.
