The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against Walgreens, accusing the 124-year-old pharmacy chain of dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions over a period of several years. ... Read full Story
President-elect Donald Trump will take charge of a federal government that will reach its self-imposed debt limit of $36 trillion dollars a day after he is sworn in on Monday. ... Read full Story
TikTok plans to cease operations in the United States on Sunday unless President Joe Biden intervenes before he leaves office one day later. ... Read full Story
President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration plans to immediately order a series of deportation raids targeting illegal immigrants, according to multiple reports Saturday. ... Read full Story
Dangerously cold weather will put much of the United States into a deep freeze over the weekend as temperatures are expected to plunge by up to 40 degrees behind an Arctic airmass. ... Read full Story
Sotheby's Visions of America exhibition opened in New York on Friday, once again featuring a selection of American art, objects and innovation, including a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence. ... Read full Story
Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted on Friday was chosen by his boss, Gov. Mike DeWine, to fill out the remainder of Vice President-elect JD Vance's term in the U.S. Senate. ... Read full Story
The Department of Agriculture said Friday it has tapped $129 million in emergency funding to battle a worsening incursion of exotic, invasive fruit flies from Mexico and Guatemala. ... Read full Story
The United States and Canada on Friday officially endorsed an effort by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of indigenous tribes to compete in lacrosse under its own flag at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. ... Read full Story
A drug interception this week at the Brownsville and Matamoros International Bridge resulted in officers finding $158,145 worth of heroin in a single enforcement action. ... Read full Story
Michael Whatley was re-elected to lead the Republican National Committee on Friday as its chair after leading the GOP to the presidency and control of both chambers of Congress. ... Read full Story
American officials on Friday slapped a Chinese company and a man affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security with sanctions for their roles in cyber attacks in December. ... Read full Story
The first week of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks concluded Friday with Department of Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem. ... Read full Story
President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration next week is expected to be moved indoors because of cold weather, according to multiple reports Friday. ... Read full Story
The Supreme Court on Friday voted unanimously to leave in place a law that would ban TikTok from U.S. app stores unless it s Chinese parent company divests from the platform. ... Read full Story
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is expected to meet with President-elect Donald Trump on Friday about challenges facing the nation's largest city in the face of his own legal woes. ... Read full Story
President Joe Biden announced on Friday that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug crimes who he believed were serving disproportionately long sentences. ... Read full Story
The man who crashed a rented truck into barriers protecting the White House in an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government and replace it with a Nazi dictatorship has been sentenced to eight years in prison. ... Read full Story
The United States has sanctioned the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, accusing Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of destabilizing the war-torn Northeast African nation and undermining peace efforts. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 18, 2025 is:
minuscule \MIN-uh-skyool\ adjective
Something described as minuscule is very small. Minuscule can also mean "written in, or in the size or style of, lowercase letters," in which case it can be contrasted with majuscular.
// The number of bugs in the latest version of the video game is minuscule compared to the number that surfaced in the beta version.
// The ancient manuscripts on display are all in minuscule script.
"Resembling a stout field mouse, B. brevicauda is a tiny burrowing mammal with inconspicuous ears and minuscule eyes well hidden behind a long narrow snout." — Bill Schutt, Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans, 2024
Did you know?
Minuscule comes from the Latin adjective minusculus ("somewhat smaller" or "fairly small"), which in turn pairs the base of minus ("smaller") with -culus, a diminutive suffix (that is, one indicating small size). The minuscule spelling is consistent with the word’s etymology, but that didn’t stop English speakers from adopting the variant spelling miniscule, likely because they associated it with the combining form mini- and such words as minimal and minimum. Usage commentators generally consider the miniscule spelling an error, but it is widely used in reputable and carefully edited publications, and is accepted as a legitimate variant in some dictionaries. (Our own dictionary identifies miniscule as a "disputed spelling variant.")