The last 12 of the 17 Ohio-based missionaries were released by the Haitian that kidnapped them two months ago, ending a saga for the ix men, six women, and five children taken by the 400 Mawozo gang, NBC News reports.

Two of the kidnapped were released in November, and three others were freed earlier this month. The local police authority in Port au Prince announced that the last twelve were found safe.  One Canadian and sixteen Americans were part of the original group, but authorities gave little information on those that were released earlier.

Haiti is in the midst of political and social upheaval.  In July, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and the nation was rocked by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August.

Fox Cable Network lost its latest bid to make a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems disappear, as a Delaware Superior Court judge tossed out its motion to dismiss the case, Variety reports.

The suit by Dominion alleges that Fox knowingly and repeatedly allowed false statements about the company’s voting machines to be aired on its broadcasts over months, and the network’s lies damaged the company’s business prospects.  Fox hosts and guests spent months after the November 2020 election falsely claiming Dominion was owned by foreign interests and intentionally altered the results of the election to ensure the debate of Donald Trump.

“As we have maintained, Fox News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis,” the Fox Corp. unit said. “We remain committed to defending against this baseless lawsuit and its all-out assault on the First Amendment.”

No fans will be allowed in Centre Bell for Thursday’s National Hockey League game between the visiting Philadelphia Flyers against the Montreal Canadiens because of the wave of coronavirus cases impacting Canada, Sportsnet announces.

It’s believed to be the first major sports game with American sports leagues that will be played without a crowd since the season started back in September.  Football, baseball, basketball and hockey leagues invited fans back to the games as vaccinations rose.

“More details will follow in the days to come and as the portrait of this ever-evolving pandemic becomes clearer,” the Canadiens wrote in a statement outlining the announcement. “In the interim we would continue to encourage everyone to get vaccinated, get their booster shots when possible, and be responsible with their social and family gatherings throughout the holidays. We hope that with rigour and a collective effort from all of us, we will be able to come together in a near future in 2022.”

The Republican Party executive committee agreed in August to pay $1.6 million of donor money to Trump’s lawyers representing him in New York State cases that have literally nothing to do with his presidency whatsoever, the Washington Post reports. While the existence of a Republican legal slush fund for Trump’s personal use was previously reported back in November, the amount known back then was $121,000, less than a tenth of what sources have told the Post about on Thursday. The funds are being used to defend Trump against probes of his business practices by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance and NY State AG Letitia James, probes that have heated up quite a bit recently.

In a victory for women’s health advocates, the Food and Drug Administration Thursday announced that it will allow for the permanent ability of people seeking an approved medication to cause an abortion to get the drug by mail, without having to pick up the drug in-person, CNN reports.

The move to make the two-pill treatment easier to obtain appears to be a direct result of the anti-choice members of the Supreme Court likely to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming months.  The FDA had temporarily lifted the requirement that patients pick up the medication at a doctor’s office or pharmacy.

“Covid just gave us this kind of natural experiment to demonstrate that no, in fact, there is no medically justifiable reason to require patients to come into a clinic and pick up a pill that they are going to turn around and take at home,” said Kristen Moore, the director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project.

Wild Singaporean otters are wreaking havoc and attacking humans in the Southeast Asian city state, the Wall Street Journal reports. “So they’ve gone from this nice bunch of things… to these amazingly rabid dogs, like piranhas just on me and I couldn’t get up,” said British expatriate Graham Spencer, who sustained over two dozen bites on his legs when a pack of contentious otters swarmed him on a jogging path. “It was like somebody stapling my buttocks,” said Spencer, adding “If it wasn’t for my friend who was with me, who managed to help me get up, I think I could have been seriously hurt or killed.” Spencer isn’t alone in his story of violent encounters with the aquatic mustelidae and yes this is all seriously in the Wall Street Journal. The little bastards have also been jumping into swimming pools and feasting on expensive Asian carp in ornamental fish ponds.

You’d think that having to refund tens of millions of dollars in fraudulently obtained donations would’ve taught them a lesson, but never let it be said Republicans would put ethics and morals above conning people out of money.

One year after it was revealed that Donald Trump and GOP fundraisers bilked donors out of tens of millions of dollars in improperly obtained funds by having boxes on donation forms pre-checked to double the intended donation and then making it a recurring monthly donation, Trump is back at it with the same scam.

“Mr. President, I want to say, because of you, a lot of Americans have had some great Christmases,” former Arkansas governor, GOP presidential candidate and guy whose stomach staples should have been put on his lips to prevent excessive eating and BS spewing Mike Huckabee claims without noting the families of hundreds of thousands now-dead Americans didn’t have great Christmases thanks to Donald Trump.

After the Huckabee Heap O’ Praise, Trump starts on a string of false claims:

Former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen announced Thursday he would be filing a lawsuit against Former President Trump and Former Attorney General Bill Barr alleging a civil rights violation over Cohen’s imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2018. Cohen did not post the complaint, but says he will allege politically motivated retaliation for publishing his insider book “Disloyal” when he was remanded back into federal prison on July 11th, 2020 after a few months of COVID-19 amnesty early release. Cohen was released to home confinement again on July 24th, 2020. The federal Bureau of Prisons made some excuse that it was some issue over the terms of Cohen’s parole but did not elaborate what exactly the issue was.

DINO Senators Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin are rampaging again, as Sinema shot down any hope of a “filibuster carveout” in order to protect democracy while Manchin keeps dicking around on the exact details of the Build Back Better bill. We here at National Zero normally skip reporting on every time those two prehistoric punk asses open their fanged reptilian mouths to consume all that’s left that is still good and decent that government could do but they won’t, but any excuse to use an image from the gruesome “Dinosaurs Attack!” Topps card series from the 1980s.

The talentless brother of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs took a social media beating after a bar he complained about fired back at the self-absorbed, spoiled Insta-character, calling him a person “with un-earned status and a sense of entitlement.”

According to KXTU Fox 4 in Kansas City, Jackson Mahomes posted a lengthy diatribe on social media complaining that the business and staff at SoT, a small cocktail bar in the city, would not accommodate the NFL QB’s sibling and his large party, who demanded to be let in despite coronavirus restrictions, an already busy bar and having no reservations.  In response, the bar took to Facebook for a scathing indictment of his claimed celebrity and entitlement.

It’s time to have a talk.

Today we are experiencing a lot of activity over social media regarding a recent visit paid to us by an unhappy guest. This person happens to have a lot of followers on social media and therefor [sic] it is something that we cannot ignore.

Voice, reach and influence are power. In our case, and with many businesses that are locally owned, the power of a few social media personalities can make or break that business. This grants these people this certain power to effect our livelihoods.

There are those who have built their influence by being responsible, informed, positive and sincere.

There are also those that have built their followings by being the opposite.

Former Trump 2020 Campaign manager Brad Parscale, who seems to be doing better since being demoted in the final months of the race and then subsequently tackled by cops during a possible suicide attempt, told the Daily Beast on Wednesday that the House January 6th Select Committee has subpoenaed his phone records in its investigation into Trump’s coup attempt and the riot.

“I had nothing to do with Jan. 6,” said Parscale, adding “I have zero to hide.” When asked by a Daily Beast if he would testify to the committee, Parscale didn’t answer. Brad quit the campaign on September 30th, 2020, days after the maybe-suicidal incident and over a month before the election, so it is indeed unclear what information he could provide them with.

Dem hacks just can’t be honest with you.

My e-book on #CRT is FREE. Download it here:https://t.co/0oSXif5Mux pic.twitter.com/W0P2lnLZQR

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 16, 2021

MyPillow assclown Mike Lindell told CNBC he’s spent over $25 million since Election Day 2020 trying to litigate the outcome, and he’ll keep spending until he goes broke. “I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have,” Lindell told CNBC in a Wednesday interview. “I will spend whatever it takes.”

The sum represents half of Lindell’s estimated $50 million net worth, which has taken a hit from MyPillow’s sales declining amid the negative publicity of the mustachioed former crackhead’s failed crusade to overturn the election. Lindell is also facing billions of dollars in defamation lawsuits from election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic over his blatantly false claims that they rigged the 2020 against Trump. So the reality is Lindell’s virtually certain to end up completely broke anyway, so he might as well piss it all away before they can take it from him.

We were also unable to find any similar “fact checks” on Breitbart regarding a similar statement made by Former President Trump when he said “wearing a mask is patriotic” on July 21, 2020. It was however reported as more or less “straight news” by the far-right propaganda website.

Brightline Watch conducted another survey of the electorate and found that only 27% of Republican voters believe Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite dozens of losses in court suffered by Trump campaign lawyers in the aftermath, zero actual evidence of fraud even remotely approaching the scale required to overturn the election – including those CyberNinjas dipshits coming to the same conclusion in Maricopa County, Arizona – and the fact that Trump himself gave up fighting after the Capitol riot. All that and still these assholes think they were cheated.

The MAGA crusade against the largely fictional Critical Race Theory “threat” has spilled over into racist bullying in schools, NBC News reports, detailing horrifying incidents such as a white teen throwing cotton on the floor to a Black classmate and telling the Black student to pick it up. “It’s bad enough we have to deal with racism in the real world. We shouldn’t have to deal with it in school. I’m speaking up for the ones that are too scared to speak up for themselves” said the Black teen, Brooklyn Edwards, at a September public meeting of her Raleigh, North Carolina-area school district’s board about the consequences of their anti-anti-racism bullshit.

“It has made these children and some personnel and administrators at this school feel protected” Brooklyn’s mother, Kaiulani Moses, said to NBC News. Moses said she transferred her daughter to another school after she continued to receive racist threats from white kids over social media.

Recent incidents like this – and lack of action by school administrators – have prompted walkouts from students in over a dozen states, providing some much needed counter-action against the angry, violent, MAGA scumbags that have terrorized school board meetings this year. “White students don’t want to be called oppressors, but students of color don’t want to be oppressed, and that’s what you’re seeing with these protests” said Darren Hutchinson, the John Lewis Chair for Civil Rights and Social Justice at Emory University’s law school. Hutchinson said the schools who let racist bullying slide may be liable under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

“What they’re experiencing is very real. If students are using the N-word and teachers aren’t responding to that, then the teachers are being complicit in racism, and that’s a very important matter to address. It sounds like some of those schools – based on the reports I’ve read – are turning a blind eye to the racial harassment students are experiencing” said Hutchinson.

A new report in the New York Times identifies Congressmen Scott Perry, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Mo Brooks as Mark Meadows’ coup plot between November 2020 and early January, pressuring the Justice Department to declare the election “corrupt” and provide political cover to overturn the election and turning their rage at Mike Pence.

“Melania Trump is pleased to announce the Melania Trump non-fungible token (NFT) platform, which will release NFTs in regular intervals exclusively on MelaniaTrump.com. The first NFT, entitled ‘Melania’s Vision’ will be available to purchase for a limited period between December 16 and December 31, 2021. Mrs. Trump stated, ‘I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavor, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative. Through this new technology-based platform, we will provide children computer science skills, including programming and software development, to thrive after they age out of the foster community.’ ‘Melania’s Vision’ is a breathtaking watercolor art by Marc-Antoine Coulon, and embodies Mrs. Trump’s cobalt blue eyes, providing the collector with an amulet to inspire.”

“The limited-edition piece of digital artwork will be 1 SOL (approximately $150) and includes an audio recording from Mrs. Trump with a message of hope. Mrs. Trump will release NFTs in regular intervals, with a one-of-a-kind auction of historical importance scheduled in January 2022, including three elements: digital artwork, physical artwork, and a physical one-of-a-kind accessory. A portion of the proceeds from the Melania Trump NFT collection will assist children aging out of the foster care system by way of economic empowerment and with expanded access to resources needed to excel in the fields of computer science and technology. The Melania Trump NFT platform utilizes the Solana blockchain protocol; and will accept both the SOL cryptocurrency and credit card payments through MoonPay. Parler is powering the platform” says the announcement. This is one of those things that we have to simply let speak for itself without any comment or analysis.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan is into conspiracies: Both at work, when she brought a conspiracy charge against leftist protestors who fought with Trump fans at a beachside brawl on January 9th, 2021 and a website she launched for her 2018 campaign called ThreatToSanDiego.com accusing George Soros of “backs anti-law enforcement candidates over experienced prosecutors, trying to tip the balance to the criminals”, the Daily Beast reports.