Allison Quinn

Getty Images A day after encouraging members of the public to “take matters into their own hands” to deal with peaceful protesters, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is doubling down on his endorsement of mob violence.The Arkansas Republican shared a video on X on Tuesday morning of climate protesters who were blocking a road in France being grabbed and tossed on the side of the road by angry drivers. “How it should be done,” he captioned the video.Cotton was apparently unfazed by backlash he received over comments made a day earlier, when he said protesters who blocked part of the Golden Gate Bridge would’ve been tossed off the bridge if it had happened in Arkansas.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jason Kempin/FilmMagic Conjoined twins who set a world record as the oldest with the rare phenomenon, and who were the first to identify as different genders, have died at the age of 62.Lori and George Schappell died at a hospital in Pennsylvania on April 7, according to their obituary. The craniopagus twins—joined at the head—shared 30 percent of their brains, but led drastically different careers and interests.“Dori had a career as a country singer, performing throughout the United States; and Lori is a trophy-winning bowler,” their obituary notes.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Emanuele Cremaschi/GettyA new slander trial against Amanda Knox began in Italy on Wednesday, almost a decade after her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate was tossed out by the country’s highest court.Despite Italy’s Cassation Court finding in 2015 that Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had not murdered Meredith Kercher in 2007—for which both had spent four years in prison—she has still taken flak over her slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar owner of the murder. Knox has sought to have her slander conviction dropped in light of a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2019 that found her rights had been violated during her interrogation.A retrial for her slander conviction was ordered by Italy’s top court last fall.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersThe Russian government has—without any evidence whatsoever—accused a Ukrainian energy company known for its ties to Hunter Biden of financing terrorist attacks.The Investigative Committee announced the startling claim in a press release Tuesday, accusing Burisma Holdings—where President Biden’s son once worked—of sponsoring terrorist attacks both “inside Russia and beyond its borders.” Although no mention was made of last month’s deadly attack on Crocus City Hall, the news comes after Russian authorities earlier this week claimed the perpetrators of that attack were hired by figures in Ukraine and, rather dubiously, promised payment in Russian rubles.Moscow is also now suggesting that certain unnamed U.S. officials may have been involved in funneling money to Burisma to finance terrorism in Russia, perhaps hoping to spark a few new Hunter Biden-related conspiracy theories ahead of the U.S. presidential election.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ugra-TV / YouTube eA former Massachusetts city councilor who fled to Russia and joined the military there as he was due to stand trial in the U.S. on child pornography charges says he hopes to gain Russian citizenship.That’s according to an interview with a local TV station, in which he was quoted saying it’s “important” to him to obtain citizenship “and the benefits it brings.”“Insurance, pension, and other support measures. I’m grateful for the opportunity,” he was quoted telling Ugra-TV from a military registration office in Khanty-Mansiysk.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Getty Images More than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at least 187 Ukrainian children who were forcibly brought to Russia and made to become new “Russian citizens” are languishing in the country’s orphanage system, where they’ve been forced to undergo “patriotic” training and “tests for aggression,” according to a new report.A joint investigation by the independent Russian-language news outlets Verstka and iStories found a total of 285 children taken from Ukraine’s Donbas region listed in a Russian database. Some of them, however, have since aged out of the system, been (illegally) adopted into Russian families, or in rare cases, returned to their biological families.Several kids from a boarding school in Ukraine’s Donetsk region described being rounded up almost a week before Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.Read more at The Daily Beast.

via Facebook A New Jersey politician is facing calls to step down from his own party after he was accused of falsely claiming to have been a Navy SEAL.Sussex County Commissioner William Hayden, a Republican and fervent Trump supporter who is in his first term, was called out by the Sussex County Republican Committee in a scathing statement last week.“Commissioner Hayden has not been forthright regarding his military service and has demonstrated a lack of integrity in dealings with his supporters and colleagues since his election,” the committee said, accusing him of having “tarnished” the GOP’s reputation.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Klaus Vedfelt/GettyA newly opened bar in Salt Lake City is under scrutiny by state officials after announcing on social media that it would implement a “no Zionists allowed” policy.“As many are, we are horrified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and are even more horrified to see so many Americans ignore and rationalize ethnic cleansing. That is why we are pleased to announce we are banning all zionists forever from our establishments,” the Weathered Waves bar posted on Instagram.“Zionism is hate speech. It is white supremacy and has nothing to do with the beautiful Jewish faith,” the bar said. Its owner, former mayoral candidate Michael Valentine, responded to backlash by stressing that “we are banning zionists, not Jews.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters A 62-year-old German man made himself a human guinea pig during the coronavirus pandemic and got 217 shots of the vaccine in less than three years.The “hypervaccinated” man did not suffer any “adverse events” to his health despite going on the vaccination spree from June 2021 to November 2023, a correspondence published by The Lancet notes.Saying that he “deliberately and for private reasons” embarked on the mission to get an average of one shot every four days, the paper adds that the excess vaccinations also did not result in either a “strong positive or negative effect on the intrinsic quality of adaptive immune responses.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ministry of Defense of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters Ukraine has destroyed the newest patrol ship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the $65 million Sergei Kotov, and left pro-Kremlin war reporters sulking.“As a result of a strike by Magura V5 maritime drones, the Russian Project 22160 ship Sergei Kotov received damage to the stern, starboard and left sides,” Ukrainian military intelligence said in a statement.“The fewer such ships, the fewer anti-aircraft missile systems will be deployed on them, meaning more opportunities for Ukrainian security and defense forces,” spokesman Andriy Yusov told local media, adding that more than 10 ambulances were spotted rushing to help the evacuated crew members. At least seven crew members were killed, Ukrainian authorities said.Read more at The Daily Beast.