THE CENTER SQUARE—The Drug Enforcement Administration plans to hold a formal hearing next week on its plan to reschedule marijuana at the federal level. The proposal is to move marijuana from a Schedule I drug, along with heroin and LSD, to Schedule III, where it would join ketamine and anabolic steroids. In May, the Department of Justice announced that it had submitted a rule that would ease restrictions on cannabis, but the change falls short of the full legalization or decriminalization sought by some advocates. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland submitted a notice of proposed rulemaking to the Federal Register, kicking off a formal rulemaking process to consider moving marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act. News of the move first broke in late April. A formal hearing is set for 9:30 a.m. ET on Dec. 2 in the North Courtroom at DEA Headquarters, 700 Army Navy Drive, Arlington, Virginia. The preliminary hearing will serve as a procedural day to address legal and logistical issues and discuss future dates for the evidentiary hearing on the merits, according to the DEA. No witness testimony is expected. Marijuana has been an illegal Schedule I drug since 1970, but rescheduling it to be a Schedule III drug could have a limited effect on cannabis consumers, although some cannabis businesses have said the move will allow them to deduct more business expenses, which could result in lower prices, but is not guaranteed. President Joe Biden had previously asked Garland and the secretary of health and human services in 2022 to launch a scientific review of how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Health and Human Services recommended that DEA reschedule marijuana to Schedule III in 2023. For decades, cannabis has been classified as a Schedule I drug, a class defined as drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, LSD, ecstasy, and methaqualone, the hypnotic sedative sold under the brand name Quaalude before it was discontinued in the 1980s. Under the plan, cannabis would be reclassified as a Schedule III drug, defined as drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Other Schedule III drugs include products containing less than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage unit, ketamine, anabolic steroids, and testosterone. This article originally appeared in The Center Square. The post DEA to Consider Loosening Federal Marijuana Restrictions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Jennifer Garner’s nine-year-old Golden Retriever, Birdie, has passed away, as announced by the actress on her Instagram on November 27. The award-winning actress shared the news with an emotional Instagram post. “It is hard to know how to write this— it seems nuts, given the world, to mourn a pet, but since we have shared Birdie with all of you, it only seems fair to let you know of her passing.” she wrote. Garner explains that they brought nine-year-old pooch to the vet on Thursday, because “she wasn’t feeling herself (a renowned foodie, Birdie never missed a meal)”. “We were surprised to learn that, not only was she very ill, she was at the end of her life.”  Garner also shared that Birdie “hanged on” until her person, Garner’s daughter with Ben Affleck, Violet Affleck, came home from college for Thanksgiving. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jennifer Garner (@jennifer.garner) “The vet told us that dogs often hang on until their person comes home from college and we believe Birdie did just that, so that we could pet her soft ears together and thank her for being the world’s best dog,” Garner shares. In her life, Birdie has shared a YouTube show with Garner called “Books with Birdie” because she loved being read to. She also found her way into Garner’s other YouTube show called “Pretend Cooking Show”. Aside from being a YouTuber, Garner and Birdie were featured in WeRateDogs’ YouTube show, ‘WeWalkDogs’, where the actress revealed that the pooch became a therapy dog at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In their episode of ‘WeWalkDogs’, Garner reveled that Birdie was a gift to Violet for her 10th birthday. “My eldest was 2 and decided she needed her own dog, and she talked about it all the time,” the actress reveals. “And I said, ‘When you’re 10, that’s the age that one might get their own dog.’ I thought she’d forget because she was just 2. But now we have Birdie.” Garner wrote, “She lived a happy dog life and is now in the role she was born to play: angel girl.” Garner ended her emotional post for Birdie with, “It’s a gift to love and be loved by such a creature as Birdie the Doggie.” The Instagram post included some of the best moments of Birdie during her life. Moments where she was being read to, sang to, and her admiring a stained glass window in their home with her in it.

New research suggests there could be a way to recreate it using drugs – no virus needed.

We talk a lot in videogames about ownership. It’s that especially fancy kill in Counter-Strike, that perfect character build in Diablo 4, the weird and wacky thing that happened only to you in Fallout. This is what survival games capture so well. Everything is so hard earned and personal - you’ve struggled and strived to make a house, scrounge a meal, or win a battle, and now you can bask in your individual achievements. Combining the RPG world of Kingdom Come Deliverance, the brutal systems of The Forest, and a little of Age of Empires’ resource gathering and building, Medieval Dynasty remains one of the best-loved games of its type on Steam, and now, thanks to a transformative update, it’s even better. Continue reading Steam RPG Medieval Dynasty is The Forest with swords, and now bigger than ever MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Upcoming PC games, Best RPG games

A really cheap laptop with decent gaming specs is pretty hard to find these days, but this gaming laptop deal from Best Buy is certainly worth a look. With a $699.99 price tag, this Lenovo LOQ packs in an Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, along with an AMD Ryzen CPU and 16GB of RAM, to give you a huge $300 saving on the original price. While this isn’t the single best gaming laptop you can buy, this bargain Lenovo machine still has some decent chops for gamers. The main draw is certainly the Nvidia GPU, with the laptop version of the GeForce RTX 4060 having no trouble with most modern games, thanks in part to its support of DLSS 3 frame generatino that can bring a big boost in frame rate. The eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS CPU, meanwhile, provides a solid foundation for most gaming and general purpose computing needs. Continue reading This Nvidia RTX 4060 gaming laptop Black Friday deal is a steal for just $699 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best graphics card, Best gaming PC, Best SSD for gaming

It can often be tough to capture the essence of a pre-existing property in videogame form, but the Mad Max game is one that squarely and repeatedly strikes the nail on the head. It’s a raucous open-world game packed with explosive car battles, high-speed races, and brutal combat encounters. Fantastic at launch nine years ago, it’s still a blast today, boasting an impressive 91% positive rating from nearly 50,000 reviews, and if you missed it at the time the autumn Steam sale is the perfect chance to try it - for less than $2. Continue reading The superb Mad Max open-world game is just $2, and it deserves another chance MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Mad Max system requirements, Survival games, Open-world games

What is coming in Delta Force Season 1? The new free-to-play large-scale multiplayer shooter is looking to take the crown of Battlefield, and with even the most cursory glance at interest after Steam Next Fest, the numbers suggest that Delta Force might be able to pull it off. Ongoing support is key to the success of a game like this, with new seasons and content drops keeping the experience fresh and engaging. The Delta Force release date may be a bit of a mystery right now, but the Delta Force open beta is right around the corner, and that’s where many journeys will begin in earnest. The multiplayer game plans to open its doors with a bang and start its seasonal content drops simultaneously. Here's the latest on when Delta Force Season 1 begins and what you can expect from the seasonal content. Continue reading Delta Force Season 1 breakdown MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Delta Force guns, Delta Force operators, Delta Force loadouts

Thanksgiving Day Meme Madness: What Would Today Be Without Turkey, Stuffing, and Hilarious Memes?

Life in the Zone is never easy, especially if you are trying to make some money to pay for your burned-up apartment back in the Mainland.

The puzzle genre is one of the most varied in gaming, with titles that test everything from reflexes to deduction.