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The two lawyers said to be the masterminds behind Prenda Law, Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, have been arrested and charged with a multimillion-dollar extortion scheme.

The two lawyers were charged Wednesday with an 18-count indictment (PDF), describing allegations of fraud, perjury, and money laundering perpetrated between 2011 and 2014. The charges were unsealed and announced today and first reported by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Both Hansmeier, 35, and Steele, 45, were arrested earlier today before the indictment was made public.

"The defendants in this case are charged with devising a scheme that casts doubt on the integrity of our profession," said US Attorney Andrew Luger in a statement. "The conduct of these defendants was outrageous—they used deceptive lawsuits and unsuspecting judges to extort millions from vulnerable defendants. Our courts are halls of justice where fairness and the rule of law triumph, and my office will use every available resource to stop corrupt lawyers from abusing our system of justice."

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Nintendo's Classic Mini NES sold a whopping 196,000 units in November in the US, according to an industry tracker.

By comparison, NPD found that Nintendo shifted just 220,000 of the soon-to-be-defunct Wii U console in the US over the six month period from April through to September. UK sales figures have yet to be reported.

Combined with the estimated 261,000 units of the Mini Famicom sold in Japan in just one week (according to the country's industry tracker Media Create), Nintendo's nostalgia boxes are off to a flying start. That will come as as little surprise to anyone that's actually tried to buy a Mini NES or Famicom in stores, with the console remaining largely sold out throughout the US, UK, and Japan.

A northeaster—a common type of storm on the East Coast—causes severe flooding in Virginia. (credit: Virginia Sea Grant)

Extreme precipitation has been increasing throughout the mainland United States due to climate change, and that is not going to stop any time soon. We have a general idea that it should continue to increase by about seven percent for each degree Celsius the climate warms.

Such an increase should lead to much greater danger of flash floods throughout the US. However, it’s difficult to use that to make specific predictions, because the figure—seven percent—is not accurate across the board. It changes with the particular region, moisture level, elevation, and other factors. These variables make it difficult to use current precipitation models, or even past observations, to extrapolate into the future and make exact, local predictions. And, vice versa, it’s also difficult to extract any meaningful information about the global climate from such local data.

In a new study, researchers address this problem by constructing a novel, high-resolution computer simulation of precipitation throughout the contiguous United States and observing how precipitation changes in local areas. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, also compares the modeled results to observations of real precipitation throughout the country.