Manufacturing giant 3M will pay $6 billion to settle hundreds of thousands of claims brought by military veterans and service members who said its earplugs caused hearing loss during their service.
The deal announced Tuesday resolves one of the largest mass torts in U.S. history. More than 300,000 claims were submitted on behalf of plaintiffs who alleged the earplugs could loosen in the ear, reducing their effectiveness and leaving the user vulnerable to hearing loss or tinnitus, which is a continuous ringing or buzzing sound in the ears.
“This historic agreement represents a tremendous victory for the thousands of men and women who bravely served our country and returned home with life-altering hearing injuries,” attorneys for the plaintiffs said in a joint statement.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation saw a staggering 75 percent drop in annual profits in the 2023 financial year, with the business now looking to generative artificial intelligence (AI) to slash costs.
The conglomerate—which owns media outlets around the world, including U.S. publications like the New York Post and Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal—recorded $187 million in net profit for the year, a steep drop from last year’s tally of $760 million. Declines in both print and digital advertising revenue were clocked at News Corp Australia, while print ads were also down at the company’s U.K. news arm.

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud will not agree to freeze all judicial reform legislation until 2025 as demanded by the head of the opposition, the party said this afternoon.
“The only possible solution and the only thing that will enable a return to dialogue is a legislation freeze,” opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party told lawmakers in the Knesset today.
Under Lapid’s proposal, the government could still pass judicial reform laws during the next 18 months, but only with a two-thirds majority. Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition has a majority of 64 out of 120 seats in parliament.

During a groundbreaking House Oversight subcommittee hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), a former Air Force officer and intelligence official, David Grusch, made stunning revelations. Grusch, who was a national reconnaissance officer representative for the Pentagon’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force, claimed that the government is concealing captured UFOs. When asked if the government has possession of such vehicles, Grusch emphatically replied, “Absolutely.”

The acting head of Ukraine’s Security Service has admitted the agency was behind a huge explosion on a key bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea last year.
In televised comments on Wednesday, Vasily Malyuk said the SBU was involved in “many different special operations,” some of which can be disclosed only “after victory.”
But he went on to say that the “destruction of the Crimean Bridge on October 8 of last year” was “one of our achievements.” Malyuk then demonstrated a new T-shirt mocking the bridge explosion that showed it engulfed in flames, along with the caption “Who will burn the bridges if not us? SBU.”
A Russian judge was reportedly one of four people killed in the bridge bombing.

Israel’s parliamentary Constitution Committee moved a key clause of the judicial reform forward on Wednesday evening, one that would limit the Israeli judiciary’s ability to overrule government decisions based on a “reasonableness standard.”
Earlier this year, this clause forced Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to dismiss a minister, Arie Deri, due to previous convictions of tax fraud and a promise he made to the courts not to reenter politics, after the Supreme Court intervened using the reasonableness standard.

WATCH:

No suspects? No way —Dan Bongino isn’t buying it.
Former Secret Serice agent and one-time Fox News host Dan Bongino was asked about the cocaine found in the West Wing of the White House and the failed investigation that followed; “they know exactly who it was,” Bongino says of the Biden Administration.
Bongino also says his former colleagues in the USSS are “furious” it went down this way.

KYIV, Ukraine – Ukraine attacked the Crimean Bridge, a key link from Russia to the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula, killing two people and disrupting vehicle traffic early Monday, Russian and Ukrainian officials said. A railroad line over the bridge – which is a vital artery for Russian troops and military supplies – escaped damage and quickly resumed service.


Vice President Kamala Harris created a stir on Friday when she seemingly called for the reduction of the US population as a means to combat climate change. However, the White House clarified that she actually meant to say "reduce pollution." The incident occurred during her speech at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she emphasized the importance of establishing a clean energy economy.