New York City on Tuesday reached a $175,000 settlement with a Staten Island police officer who said he had been a victim of retaliation for giving traffic tickets to people with connections to the upper echelons of the Police Department.

The officer, Mathew Bianchi, filed a lawsuit against the city last May. The suit said that he had been transferred out of his precinct’s traffic unit after Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, asked that he be punished. Officer Bianchi had issued a ticket to a woman with whom Chief Maddrey was said to be friends, according to the suit.

“This settlement is a vindication for our client, allowing him to close this chapter and continue his service with the N.Y.P.D.,” John Scola, Officer Bianchi’s lawyer, said on Tuesday. “We hope that Officer Bianchi’s courage and this decisive outcome will inspire other officers to come forward as whistle-blowers.”

Ohio state police will conduct daily sweeps of schools in Springfieldafter authorities have been forced to investigate “at least 33” bomb threats that led to evacuations and temporary building closures, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday.

“We want to make sure, as school continues this week in Springfield, that parents have confidence that the school is in fact safe,” the Republican governor said at a press conference.

Each bomb threat has been a hoax without “any validity at all,” DeWine said.

Sean Combs, known as Diddy, was arrested on Monday, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

Diddy's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, issued a statement saying, "We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the U.S. Attorney’s Office."

Long before his bleak final years, when he struggled with mental illness and lived mostly on the streets, Victor Carl Honey joined the Army, serving honorably for nearly a decade. And so, when his heart gave out and he died alone 30 years later, he was entitled to a burial with military honors.

Instead, without his consent or his family’s knowledge, the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office gave his body to a state medical school, where it was frozen, cut into pieces and leased out across the country.

A Swedish medical device maker paid $341 for access to Honey’s severed right leg to train clinicians to harvest veins using its surgical tool. A medical education company spent $900 to send his torso to Pittsburgh so trainees could practice implanting a spine stimulator. And the U.S. Army paid $210 to use a pair of bones from his skull to educate military medical personnel at a hospital near San Antonio.

In the name of scientific advancement, clinical education and fiscal expediency, the bodies of the destitute in the Dallas-Fort Worth region have been routinely collected from hospital beds, nursing homes and homeless encampments and used for training or research without their consent — and often without the approval of any survivors, an NBC News investigation found.

The richest man in the world, who also happens to be a U.S. defense contractor, is being criticized on social media on Sunday after questioning why people aren't trying to assassinate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump over the weekend was tackled by his own Secret Service after an individual was reportedly spotted hiding on the former president's golf course behind a bush with an AK-47. Authorities say they fired at the man, who was later apprehended and is being questioned.

A graphic designer posted a question, "Why they want to kill Donald Trump?" Elon Musk, who owns the social media company that he renamed from Twitter to "X," posted a controversial statement in response.

"And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala," Musk wrote with a "thinking face" emoji.

The comment did not go over well.

Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio has warned students to be on high alert after someone threatened to shoot Haitians on campus, according to officials. All events and activities scheduled for Sunday have been canceled.

An alert sent to students on Saturday night said the college was taking “extreme precautions” after an email threatened a shooting on campus on Sunday, targeting Haitian members of the community.

“All students, faculty and staff should exercise extreme precaution and be alert to all your surroundings,” the university said in the alert. “If you see anything suspicious or have information about the threat, contact Wittenberg Police Division immediately at the emergency line.”

The alert added: “The Springfield Police Division will increase patrols on-campus tomorrow. If you are on or near campus, prepare for additional instructions or a lockdown if we learn more from the ongoing investigation. All activities are canceled on Sunday, Sept. 15.”

Former Bungie chief legal officer Don McGowan credits Sony’s discipline for pushing Bungie to focus on new player acquisition and running Destiny 2 like a business, shedding light on behind-the-scenes changes at the studio.

Destiny 2 has seen a whirlwind of changes recently, and according to former Bungie chief legal officer Don McGowan, much of that is thanks to Sony’s influence.

In a new post on LinkedIn, McGowan didn’t hold back his thoughts, saying that Sony has pushed Bungie to make much-needed adjustments to how it handles its flagship game, Destiny 2.

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board Thursday canceled an upcoming use-of-force training for its enforcement officers, after learning a former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright in 2021 was contracted to lead it.

The agency had contracted with Kim Potter to have her “tell her story” and train its officers on the ramifications of using force, along with ways to avoid it, said spokesperson Brian Smith. The officers are responsible for enforcing liquor, cannabis and tobacco laws at businesses licensed to sell those products.

Potter — who shot Wright, an unarmed Black man, after mistaking her gun for her Taser — served 16 months in prison for second-degree manslaughter before she was released in 2023.

Getting your game noticed is a tricky business when you have to punch through the noise of the more than 10,000 new Steam games releasing each year. Young Horses, the developer of Bugsnax and Octodad, have found itself in an even trickier spot: Thanks to Google, people are expecting a Bugsnax sequel that doesn't exist.

"We are not working on a Bugsnax sequel right now and I need AI bs to stop telling kids we are based on a wiki ideas fanfic," Young Horses co-founder and president Philip Tibitoski tweeted earlier today. It turns out, through the wonders of algorithmic search result curation, Google's featured snippets have been informing people that Bugsnax 2 will be releasing in October 2024, despite the fact that neither Young Horses or any other developer are making it.

Ballerina Michaela Mabinty DePrince, who performed with Beyoncé and was seen by many as a trailblazer, has died at the age of 29.

A spokesperson announced her death on her personal Instagram page and in a statement her family said she was an "unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story".

The cause of death has not been given.

DePrince made a remarkable journey from suffering as an orphan in war-torn Sierra Leone to numerous accolades in the world of international dance.

Her family said her death had been "sudden", adding: "Michaela touched so many lives across the world, including ours."

Tributes have been pouring in, including from others in the ballet community.

SAO PAULO (AP) — A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to social media platform X and satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, both companies controlled by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

The move by Justice Alexandre de Moraes was aimed at collecting funds that are equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines. The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen.

Legal analysts have questioned de Moraes’ prior decision to freeze Starlink’s bank account to pay for cases related to X. While Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio —The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

McEntee's videos always feature the Project 2025 chief of HR sitting down at a table in a restaurant eating while making pithy racist and offensive observations, typically about gender ideology and diversity equity and inclusion, that Trump supporters can't help but enthusiastically devour.

In his latest viral take, McEntee poses a question about abortion access in red states that came up during Tuesday night's presidential debate.

"Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?" he asks. "Don't hold your breath."

McEntee asked, and women answered. Many made video responses to McEntee telling their own stories. One particularly powerful video from Carmen Broesder with account name @geekynerdbitchcarmen was shared by WordClownand AGirlHasNoPresident on Instagram and received nearly five million views

A Coney Island bar owner said he was told his problems with the NYPD could be resolved if he hired and paid the police commissioner’s brother. The bar owner alleged it was a worker in the mayor’s office who allegedly tried to help arrange the deal.

“I felt it was like I got an ultimatum. It’s like either you gonna get with this - or you gonna get shut down,” bar owner Shamel Kelly told NBC New York.

Shamel Kelly said it was associate director Ray Martin of the mayor's Office of Entertainment and Nightlife who first told him he could pay the police commissioner's brother to help get better treatment from the NYPD.

The Springfield City School District closed one middle school and evacuated two elementary schools Friday morning, according to school officials.

Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary students were evacuated from their buildings to a different district location after receiving information from the Springfield Police Division, school district officials said.

The district is in the process of a controlled release to dismiss students to their parents.

Roosevelt Middle School also closed today before the beginning of the school day in relation to unspecified information the district received from the police division. Some parents who were arriving at Roosevelt with their students were turned away, according to reports.

California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.

Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.

The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.

A school district in northeast Florida must put back in libraries three dozen books as part of a settlement reached Thursday with students and parents who sued over what they said was an unlawful decision to limit access to dozens of titles containing LGBTQ+ content.

Under the agreement the School Board of Nassau County must restore access to three dozen titles including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s picture book based on a true story about two male penguins that raised a chick together at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the district, which is about 35 miles (about 60 kilometers) northeast of Jacksonville along the Georgia border.

The suit was one of several challenges to book bans since state lawmakers last year passed, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, legislation making it easier to challenge educational materials that opponents consider pornographic and obscene. Last month six major publishers and several well-known authors filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando arguing that some provisions of the law violate the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors and students.

“You can buy a gaming PC for 120,000 yen.” Japanese people have been seeing an increasing number of advertisements worded this way in the past few days. But what else costs 120,000 yen? A PlayStation 5 Pro, as recently revealed by Sony.

The announcement of the PS5 Pro’s steep price tag has caused significant dissatisfaction both in the US and Europe, where the console will set gamers back $700 and €800 respectively. But much like European gamers, Japanese players are faced with paying even more for the console than people in the US. The 119,980-yen price point is equivalent to over $840, based on recent conversion rates.

To make matters worse, Sony recently hiked the price of standard PS5 console models in Japan. On September 2, the suggested retail price jumped from 66,980 yen (about $463) to 79,980 yen (about $552). Apart from severe backlash across social media, this decision caused the console to sell out all over the country in the days leading up to the price increase and even gave the Xbox a boost in sales.

In a week when Xbox fans were hoping to hear a response from Microsoft to the PS5 Pro, the software giant is making a third round of gaming layoffs instead. 650 employees at Microsoft’s gaming business are being laid off, part of continued cuts at Xbox after Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft cut 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox jobs earlier this year and then shuttered four studios it acquired as part of its $7.5 billion Bethesda acquisition in May. Thankfully, Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks was eventually saved from Microsoft’s shutdown after Krafton, the South Korean publisher behind PUBG: Battlegrounds and The Callisto Protocol, acquired the Japanese studio from Microsoft instead.

The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the video-game publishing division of Megan Ellison’s Annapurna studio, resigned this month following a dispute with its owner, according to people familiar with the situation.

Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary and his team had been negotiating with Ellison, the daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison, to spin off the video-game division as an independent entity, said the people, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to share the information with the press. When Ellison pulled out of the negotiations, Gary and other executives resigned and were followed by around two dozen other staffers.