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The IRS said Friday that it has recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from high-income Americans who had either failed to file their returns or who hadn't fully paid what they owed. 

The announcement, made jointly with the U.S. Treasury Department, is aimed at highlighting the agency's ramped-up enforcement efforts against tax cheats, which have been funded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. 

That IRS funding has proved controversial, with some Republican lawmakers falsely claiming the money would be used to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to "to audit Walmart shoppers."

Robinson, who is running for governor as a Republican, has publicly backed the current ban in the state, which restricts abortion after 12 weeks.

A Democratic group has released new audio of North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for governor, saying that he wants to get abortion restrictions down to “zero” weeks. 

In the audio, which the group said was recorded on Sept. 3 at a Robinson campaign event in Troy, N.C., a woman asked Robinson about his stance on abortion and why he was supporting North Carolina’s current 12-week ban on the procedure. 

Robinson replied by saying, “That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable. But my faith allows me to live with that, because that’s where the consensus is. Do I want to continue to lower it? You better know it. I would love to get down to six weeks. And I’d like to get down to zero. I would like to push it back as far as we could and eliminate as many abortions as we can.”

Users say harmful content from accounts they do not follow appears even after requests to block it

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The Observer has uncovered seven further groups, with a combined total of almost 200,000 members, openly sharing content that promotes ­eating disorders. All of the groups were ­created after Twitter was bought by the billionaire Elon Musk in 2022 and rebranded as X.

Eating-disorder campaigners said the scale of harmful content ­demonstrates serious failings in moderation by X. Wera Hobhouse MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders, said: “These findings are most concerning … X should be held accountable for allowing this harmful content to be promoted on its platform, which puts many lives at risk.”

The internet has long been a breeding ground for content that promotes eating disorders – sometimes called “pro-ana” – from ­message boards to early social media sites including Tumblr and Pinterest. Both sites banned posts promoting eating disorders and self-harm in 2012 after an outcry over their proliferation.

Debbie said she remembers the pro-ana internet message boards, “but you’d have to search to find them”, she said.

This kind of content is now more accessible than ever and, critics of social media companies argue, is pushed to users by algorithms, which serve people more – and sometimes increasingly extreme – posts.

Also first time for someone with H5 virus to be hospitalized, and CDC says it is studying patient specimen more

A person in Missouri with no known animal contact has tested positive for H5 bird flu, the state’s department of health and senior services said Friday.

It’s the first time a patient in the US outbreak has had no known exposure to sick animals. And it is the first time someone has been hospitalized with bird flu – though it’s not clear yet whether influenza was the reason for hospitalization or it was incidental.

The patient, who has underlying health conditions, was hospitalized on 22 August and tested positive for flu A. Doctors sent a sample to the Missouri state public health laboratory, where it was found to be of the H5 subtype, which is also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza – or bird flu.

US health officials have confirmed a human case of bird flu in a patient that had no immediately known animal exposure.

The patient, in the state of Missouri, was treated in hospital and has since recovered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

It is the 14th human case of bird flu in the US in 2024 and the first without a known occupational exposure to infected animals, according to the CDC.

Ruling, which may be reviewed by appellate court, could strike reproductive rights measure off November ballot

A Missouri judge has ruled that a ballot measure asking voters whether abortion rights should be enshrined in the state constitution is invalid, potentially jeopardizing an election scheduled for November.

In a ruling issued on Friday, Cole county circuit judge Christopher Limbaugh said that the reproductive rights petition – also known as Amendment 3 – led by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom did not comply with state law.

Abortion rights activists are hopeful an appellate court could reverse Limbaugh’s decision, but for now it remains unclear whether voters will be able to decide the issue as scheduled on 5 November, the same day as the presidential election.

Police said an argument between groom James Shirah and groomsman Terry Lewis Taylor Jr. after the wedding allegedly led Shirah to hit Taylor Jr. with an SUV at high speed.

A bride and groom were arrested in Flint, Michigan, last week after the groom allegedly ran over and killed one of his groomsmen hours after the wedding, according to police.

The City of Flint Police Department responded to the 1400 block of E Hamilton Avenue on Aug. 30 for a report of a "pedestrian injury crash," the department said Wednesday in a Facebook post. 

The victim was identified as 29-year-old Terry Lewis Taylor Jr., who was found with severe injuries and taken to a nearby medical center where he later died.

Driver Chris Begley’s death in August underscores a list of alleged heat-related incidents across Texas

Neysa Lambeth was in Florida caring for her ailing father on 23 August 2023 when she received a call from her husband, Chris Begley, who had worked as a UPS driver for 28 years in Texas.

Begley, 57, had collapsed from the heat while delivering packages. Lambeth said a manager picked him up and took him home to recover. He had fallen ill a couple of times from the heat over the previous two years, Lambeth said, and she had picked him up from the UPS service center on those occasions.

“This time I wasn’t home, and so instead of taking him to the hospital or dialling 911, they took him home to an empty house and left him,” said Lambeth.

Children's perception of time is relatively understudied. Learning to see time through their eyes may be fundamental to a happier human experience.

My household is absorbed in debate over when time goes the fastest or slowest.

"Slowest in the car!" yells my son.

"Never!" replies my daughter. "I'm too busy for time to go slow, but maybe on weekends when we are on the sofa watching movies."

There's some consensus too; they both agree that the days after Christmas and their birthdays dawdle by gloomily as it dawns on them they have to wait another 365 days to celebrate once more. Years seem to drag on endlessly at their age.

Nick Pickles gave shocking testimony in Australia last year that didn't get much coverage in the U.S.

Researchers say procedure not yet tested on people could eventually be used to help locate injuries or tumours

Researchers have peered into the brains and bodies of living animals after discovering that a common food dye can make skin, muscle and connective tissues temporarily transparent.

Applying the dye to the belly of a mouse made its liver, intestines and bladder clearly visible through the abdominal skin, while smearing it on the rodent’s scalp allowed scientists to see blood vessels in the animal’s brain.

Treated skin regained its normal colour when the dye was washed off, according to researchers at Stanford University, who believe the procedure opens up a host of applications in humans, from locating injuries and finding veins for drawing blood to monitoring digestive disorders and spotting tumours.

Targeted Victory’s largest client is the Republican National Committee. It’s now fielding inquiries for X about Elon Musk’s standoff with Brazil.

X appears to be working with a well-known Republican consulting group, seemingly to handle the messaging around the social media platform’s suspension in Brazil.

When WIRED emailed X for comment about the rapidly evolving situation in Brazil, a reply came from Michael Abboud, the managing director of the conservative consulting and public relations firm Targeted Victory. According to his LinkedIn, Abboud worked for the State Department in the last year of the Trump administration and as press secretary for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s campaign.