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800 | Title: 2 more arrested in Wendy's fire after Rayshard Brooks shooting
Two more people have been charged with arson in the torching of an Atlanta Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in the wake of the police shooting death of Rayshard Brooks last month, according to reports.
Chisom Kingston, 23, and John Wade, 33, were charged with first-degree arson and booked at the Fulton County Jail Thursday in connection with the June 13 fire that gutted the restaurant where Brooks was shot dead the day before, WSB-TV reported.
Atlanta Fire Rescue announced the busts on Twitter, and credited law enforcement agencies with assisting in tracking down the two men.
Officials had released images of the two men on Twitter on Wednesday.
Last week, Natalie White, identified as Brooks’ girlfriend, was arrested and arraigned on first-degree arson charges in the blaze. White, 29, was later released on a $10,000 bond.
Brooks, 27, was shot in the back by then-Atlanta Police Officer Garrett Rolfe after a scuffle outside the fast-food eatery. Brooks fled the scene with a police Taser when he was shot.
Rolfe was fired hours later and was later charged with felony murder. He was released on a $500,000 bond on Wednesday.
The shooting prompted an outbreak of protests and saw demonstrators converge on Wendy’s and set it on fire.
Authorities said they are still looking for other assailants. | 0 | non |
801 | Title: Man shot into Arkansas pizzeria after getting snubbed on toppings
An Arkansas man fired gunshots through the front window of a pizzeria after arguing with an employee over getting an insufficient amount of toppings on his pizza pie, according to police.
Michael Brown was arrested Monday on multiple felony charges after the violent encounter at Pie Five restaurant in Little Rock.
Pie Five employee Eboni Smith said Brown became upset with her because she wasn’t putting enough toppings on his pizza, according to a Little Rock Police Department report.
She called her manager and handed the phone to Brown, which he proceeded to throw at Smith’s face. Another employee asked him to leave, and he began arguing and went outside to his white van.
He then walked back to the restaurant holding a gun. Brown was locked out of the restaurant, so he shot the glass out of the front door while standing on the patio area. Brown then got in his van and drove away from the restaurant.
Brown later turned himself in and admitted in a police interview that he was upset over the portion size of the food he received. He admitted going into his work van to grab the gun and shooting out the window.
He was arrested and charged with six felony terrorist act counts and a misdemeanor battery rap. No one was injured. | 0 | non |
802 | Title: Michigan white woman arrested for pulling gun on black woman, daughter
A Michigan man and his wife, the white woman who pulled a gun on a black mother and her 15-year-old daughter in a Chipotle parking lot, were arrested Thursday for the caught-on-camera confrontation.
Jillian Wuestenberg, 32, and Eric Wuestenberg, 42, are each facing an assault charge after the woman was recorded pointing a gun at the teen’s mother, Takelia Hill, in the eatery’s parking lot in Lake Orion on Wednesday, the Detroit News reported, citing Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.
The heated confrontation erupted after Jillian allegedly bumped into Hill’s teen daughter, Makayla Green, while exiting the Chipotle in Orio at about 6 p.m.
The alleged bump was not caught on video. The footage picks up after the altercation moved into the parking lot, and begins with Hill and her daughter arguing with the unidentified woman as they demand an apology, the newspaper had reported.
“You’re very racist and ignorant,” the teen says at one point, after the husband in the driver’s seat of the SUV helps Jillian into the passenger seat.
The altercation continues with Jillian telling Hill, “You cannot just walk around calling white people racist.”
“Why would you bump her? Why didn’t you say sorry?” Hill continuously asks the woman in response.
Jillian goes on to say, “White people aren’t racist … I care about you and I’m sorry if you had an incident that has made someone make you feel like that. No one is racist.”
Jillian rolls her window up and the SUV begins backing out of the parking spot.
Hill is seen stepping back as the SUV starts to drive away, before she hits the back window of the vehicle, claiming she thought the driver was going to hit them.
That’s when Jillian jumps back out of the SUV and pulls a gun on Hill and her daughter, and Hill can be heard saying, “She got the gun on me!” as the woman yells, “Get the f–k back!”
Police were called regarding the incident six times, authorities revealed at a Thursday afternoon press conference, according to the report.
One of the calls came from Jillian, who claimed she felt threatened and two women were trying to damage her car.
Other 911 calls were made by Chipotle workers who said they witnessed Jillian brandishing her gun.
Jillian was arrested in the parking lot Wednesday night. Her husband was also carrying a gun and they both had concealed pistol licenses, authorities said Thursday. | 0 | non |
803 | Title: 'Tiger King' star ordered to turn over big cat records to PETA
“Tiger King” star Jeff Lowe has been ordered to release medical records and other documents related to the condition of four lions at the Oklahoma zoo featured in the popular Netflix docu-series.
A Southern Indiana court ruled this week that Lowe has to turn the files over to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal-rights group that has long questioned the conditions of the animals at the facility, the Courier-Journal reported Thursday.
“This ruling tells Jeff Lowe that he can no longer evade the court’s authority and needs to come clean about the ways these lions are suffering in his custody,” PETA attorney Brittany Peet said in a statement. “PETA looks forward to reviewing these records and getting these animals transferred to accredited sanctuaries.”
In a report on insider.com earlier this week, whistle-blower Will Mayo posted photos he said were taken at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma featured in the series, and said he found the animals in “derelict” condition.
“It looked like an abandoned house’s overgrown backyard,” Mayo told the outlet. “None of the paths were particularly clear. I was like, ‘Is there anything even in this cage? Oh yes, there’s a black bear in the corner.”
Lowe and his former business partner Tim Stark have been embroiled in a seven-year legal battle with PETA, which sued the two claiming violations of the Endangered Species Act, Fox News reported.
This week’s court ruling isn’t Lowe’s only legal tangle — he was sued by the state of Oklahoma last month over $50,000 in unpaid back taxes.
The “Tiger King” series tells the story of Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, and his obsession with big cats.
Maldonado-Passage is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire plot targeting animal rights activist Carole Baskin, CEO of the group Big Cat Rescue. | 0 | non |
804 | Title: Felony charges dropped against doomsday mom Lori Vallow
Two of the felony charges against doomsday-obsessed mom Lori Vallow were dismissed Thursday, according to a report.
Vallow, who is being held in Idaho on $1 million bail, still faces misdemeanor charges of resisting and obstructing an officer, solicitation of a crime, and contempt of court, East Idaho News reported.
She was also hit with new felony charges Monday for allegedly concealing, altering, and destroying evidence in the case.
Thursday’s dismissal of the felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of children comes three weeks after investigators discovered the remains of Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and his 17-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan, buried on property belonging to Vallow’s husband, Chad Daybell.
Daybell, 51, pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of concealment of evidence last month.
The couple, part of the doomsday cult Preparing a People, are accused of lying to police and refusing to cooperate with authorities following the disappearance of the two children in September.
Vallow was arrested in Hawaii in February and taken back to Rexburg, Idaho, to face charges after she failed to meet a January deadline to return the children safely, and was hit with the felony desertion charges.
Those charges were the ones dropped Thursday, East Idaho News said. | 0 | non |
805 | Title: Houston hospitals transfer patients out of city amid COVID-19 spike
Houston has become so overwhelmed by new coronavirus cases that its hospitals are reportedly shipping patients to facilities outside the city.
With infections soaring across the state, Harris Health Systems, the operators of Houston’s Ben Taub and LBJ hospitals, have had to transfer 33 of its patients to a network of other care centers over the course of 24 hours Tuesday, ABC News reports.
The transfers include COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients. And at least another 15 patients were slated to be transferred Wednesday, with patients according to the outlet.
“We’re running out of ICU beds,” Bryan McLeod, a spokesman for Harris Health Systems, told ABC News.
Texas has the third-most coronavirus cases in the country as officials there grapple with a dramatic spike in infections and hospitalizations that began in mid-June, after the state started reopening May 1.
The state documented more than 9,300 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, a new record, after setting new daily highs nearly every day since June 16.
More people are also getting severely ill, too, with 7,382 coronavirus-related hospitalizations reported statewide — more than quadruple the number hospitalized at the end of May.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had pushed an aggressive reopening and insisted on carrying ahead with those plans last month as cases started to climb.
Abbott had at first resisted a face mask requirement and had blocked cities from issuing their own mandates when he began reopening the state, arguing that government couldn’t force people to wear masks.
But the governor reversed course Thursday, signing an executive order mandating face coverings must be worn in public settings across most of the state.
“We are now at a point where the virus is spreading so fast, there is little margin for error,” Abbott said.
The order requires “all Texans to wear a face covering over the nose and mouth in public spaces in counties with 20 or more positive COVID-19 cases, with few exceptions.”
Violators of the order can be fined up to $250. Exceptions are made for those with medical conditions or disabilities; people who are exercising outdoors, or anyone participating in a religious service or voting in an election.
Abbott, who has faced harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats over his handling of the virus, last week ordered bars to close again and limited indoor dining to half-capacity of establishments.
“We have the ability to keep businesses open and move our economy forward so that Texans can continue to earn a paycheck, but it requires each of us to do our part to protect one another — and that means wearing a face covering in public spaces,” Abbott said.
If residents follow the rules, “more extreme measures may be avoided,” he added.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
806 | Title: President Trump calls family of teen killed in Seattle 'CHOP' zone
President Trump offered a phone call of support to the family of Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr., a teen killed in Seattle’s “CHOP” zone, the mourning relatives told Fox News Thursday.
Anderson was fatally shot in the early hours of June 20 at the edge of the roughly six-block autonomous zone known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest.
Trump phoned the family for a seven-minute call after watching Anderson’s father, also named Horace Lorenzo, during an emotional appearance on “Hannity” Wednesday night, his friend and family spokesman Andre Taylor, told Fox News.
“We just talked to the president of the United States,” Taylor said. “How are you going to top that?”
Taylor said the president offered condolences and kind words for the family.
“He said he watched ‘Hannity’ last night, and told Horace, ‘Your son is looking down on you and watching over you,’” Taylor recounted. “He was incredibly gracious, and it gave Horace some extra help as he buried his son.”
Anderson Sr. said 10 days had gone by before he heard from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who had called the family on Wednesday before Trump dialed in on his own. The family is still waiting on details around the teen’s death.
The tragedy was followed by a second fatal shooting near the zone on June 29 — when Antonio Mays Jr., 16, was gunned down. Two more victims were injured in the shootings, as well.
The gunfire finally moved Durkan on Wednesday to order police to disband the cop-free space that had formed more than two weeks ago in protest of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
“Enough is enough,” Durkan said Wednesday. “The CHOP has become lawless and brutal. Four shootings — two fatal — robberies, assaults, violence and countless property crimes have occurred in this several block area. ” | 0 | non |
807 | Title: 4th of July heatwave to hammer much of US
A Fourth of July weekend heatwave will put the ‘fire’ in ‘fireworks’ for much of the US, a report said Thursday — with the potential for a “ring of fire” effect to bring storms to parts of the Midwest.
“The first half of July looks to have well-above-normal temperatures, at pretty high probabilities, beginning around the Fourth of July or slightly before,” Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational Prediction Branch at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, told NBC News.
The blast of heat could create a “ring of fire” pattern, in which storms circulating the edges of the heat dome spawn powerful thunderstorms, particularly over the northern Plains, Gottschalk told the network.
“Our models indicate that this is going to be somewhat persistent through the first two weeks of July, and potentially longer,” he said.
The stifling swelter comes as cases of the coronavirus — which attacks the respiratory system — are surging across the US, and continues a run of record temperatures around the globe. | 0 | non |
808 | Title: RNC will have 'sophisticated' coronavirus plan: Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence says the Republican National Convention in Florida next month will have “very sophisticated plans” to prevent spread of the coronavirus.
Pence, visiting Florida on Thursday, spoke as the state reported a surge in new cases — topping 10,000 daily diagnoses for the first time.
“We are excited about coming to Jacksonville,” Pence said at an event with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. “I was in a meeting not long ago when I heard about some very sophisticated plans to make sure it’s a safe and healthy environment.”
Pence leads the White House coronavirus task force and was responding to a question about whether elderly people should avoid the gathering.
The RNC is scheduled to begin on Aug. 24. President Trump ordered the event be moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, after local Democratic officials there indicated they did not want a traditional nominating event.
Pence did not elaborate on the plans for the RNC. When cases surged in March, the White House performed mandatory temperature checks and later tested visitors and journalists who come near Trump or Pence. The temperature checks recently ended.
The vice president’s trip to Florida comes amid a national spike in COVID-19 cases driven by new infections across the South, Arizona and California. In response to the spike, Republican officials increasingly have encouraged mask wearing.
It’s unclear if the RNC will require masks. Many Republican House members still refuse to wear masks, and masks distributed by the Trump campaign at a recent rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, largely were not worn.
Pence stressed that many weeks remain before the RNC.
“Our job right now is to do everything in our power to support the efforts of your governor and the people of Florida to bring these numbers down,” Pence said.
“And we believe we can. And it is July the second, two days before the Fourth of July. We have, we believe, an opportunity in front of us now beginning right now for every one of us to take personal responsibility for the role that we’re playing here.” | 0 | non |
809 | Title: Exclusive | This Epstein accuser is 'ecstatic' over Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest
One of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers is “ecstatic” over Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest, as the British socialite also allegedly sexually abused her and left her with night terrors, the woman told The Post in an exclusive interview.
“When I woke up to the news, I was extremely ecstatic,” the 43-year-old victim, who is one of nine anonymous plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, told The Post.
Epstein’s alleged madame was arrested early Thursday in Bradford, N.H. on a federal indictment accusing her of grooming three underage victims for sex with Epstein in places including his Upper East Side townhouse, New Mexico, Florida and London.
The victim, who is choosing to conceal her identity, said: “I’m so grateful that she has finally been taken into custody and that the authorities have started working on bringing justice for the victims and myself.
“She deserves to be behind bars. I’m very happy and very emotional at the same time. It’s just a roller coaster of emotions.”
The woman added that it is especially meaningful to her because she claims that Maxwell, 58, personally sexually abused her after grooming her for Epstein with the abuse starting when she was 14 and continuing until she was 17 in the mid to late 1990s.
“She participated in the sexual abuse with Epstein. She was involved,” the victim alleged. “She penetrated me with sexual toys, with her fingers. She shaved my private area so that it was in the shape of the heart because she said men thought it was cute.”
Witnesses in Virginia Giuffre’s defamation case against Maxwell testified that Maxwell participated in three-way sex with Epstein and various victims including with Giuffre.
And before that, the victim claims Ghislaine “groomed” her when she was just 14.
“I wanted to be in modeling and that was the carrot dangling in front of me,” the woman said. “And if I wanted to be in modeling … I had to basically work my way to the top and that was doing things for Epstein.”
The woman said she wishes there were even more serious charges mounted against Maxwell.
“In my case, I feel that she should have charges the same as Jeffrey Epstein had. They were co-conspirators. They were side by side,” she said.
Epstein killed himself by hanging in a Lower Manhattan jail cell as he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
“I am extremely excited that she is behind bars,” the victim said. “I’m not going to be overlooked anymore. What happened to me legitimately happened and to many others and we can finally have our voices heard.”
The abuse has had crippling effects on the woman to this day, including night terrors and causing the break-up of one of her three marriages, she said.
“It basically changed the trajectory of my life and it still effects me to this day. The things I had gone through with them, with her, the things that she has done to me,” she said.
“I have night terrors, it affects my marriage, it has affected my relationship with my children because some days I have emotional break-downs where I just can’t be the baseball, soccer mom all the time.
“Where I’m in my bedroom hiding because I’m shutting down and that’s something that I’m obviously working on with with a therapist,” she said adding that she also takes antidepressants and anxiety medications.
But the night terrors have been the worst for her, she said, and contributed to the break-up of her second marriage.
“Waking up in the middle of the night screaming thinking that I’m back in the clutches of Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein,” she described.
“I believe she should be behind bars for the rest of her life,” the victim said of Maxwell. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe or satisfied because obviously I can’t erase that portion of my life. I can only go through it but it’s a difficult process.”
The woman’s lawyer, Jordan Merson, told The Post, “On behalf of the Epstein victims we are thrilled that Ms. Maxwell has been brought to justice and we look forward to seeing her be held accountable for all that she has done.”
Another Epstein accuser, Jennifer Araoz, who has sued Maxwell as well as the 66-year-old hedge-funder’s estate, told The Post the new arrest could help bring other Epstein conspirators to justice.
“I honestly think that this is just the very beginning,” said Araoz, who claims she was raped by Epstein when she was just 15. “There is going to be a lot of culpability and a lot that will come down from her being arrested. It looks good for us survivors for all of us to get some closure finally.”
“I really didn’t think [her arrest] was going to come. I have been searching for her for a very long time,” Araoz said.
Maxwell’s criminal defense attorney, Lawrence Vogelman, declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg | 0 | non |
810 | Title: Gun-wielding St. Louis couple pulled move before in land dispute
The St. Louis couple that exploded into viral infamy when they pulled guns on a crowd of George Floyd protesters has brandished firearms before in defense of what they consider their property.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, 63 and 61 respectively, have been in a long-running legal dispute with the trustees of their private Portland Street community over a small patch of land, according to The St. Louis Post Dispatch.
The McCloskeys, who are both personal injury lawyers, maintain that they own the triangle of land near the home they have owned since 1988, while the trustees contend that it belongs to the neighborhood.
In an affidavit filed in the case, Mark McCloskey wrote that he and his wife have “regularly prohibited all persons, including Portland Place residents, from crossing the Parcel including at least at one point, challenging a resident at gunpoint who refused to heed the McCloskeys’ warnings to stay off such property.”
In that incident — which took place in either 1988 or 1989 according to Albert Watkins, the couple’s attorney — Patricia McCloskey heard a noise at night and saw someone cutting through the disputed stretch.
“She looked down, had a gun and screamed for the person to stay off her property,” Watkins said, noting that the person — a neighbor — is now friends with the couple.
The couple has “touched their weapons” just twice in their time living in the community, Watkins said — the 1980s incident and Sunday, when Mark brandished a rifle and Patricia a handgun to ward off protesters approaching the well-heeled community.
No shots were fired.
Mark McCloskey, who has said that he was in fear of a “storming of the Bastille” and “terrorism,” and his wife are now the subject of a criminal investigation.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
811 | Title: Where in the world was Ghislaine Maxwell?
The reports of Ghislaine Maxwell’s whereabouts have been greatly exaggerated.
The British socialite and accused madame of the late millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been rumored to be living in a submarine, in a Midwest home guarded by Special Forces, and even a three-bedroom home in Teaneck, NJ.
Like a modern version of the popular 1990s computer game, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” Maxwell had been an elusive, globe-trotting target.
She was rumored to be shacking up with modeling mogul Jean-Luc Brunel in Brazil, as far off as New Zealand and Israel, and in March filed a legal claim in the US Virgin Islands for a piece of Epstein’s estate.
Rumors swirled that she popped up in Paris last month, and a photo emerged in August of her reportedly at a Los Angeles fast-food joint following Epstein’s arrest in July on federal sex trafficking charges in New York.
“Ghislaine is like a James Bond character — she is quite a unique person,” fellow socialite Lady Victoria Hervey said in November. “I just don’t believe that anyone is going to find her.”
In fact, federal investigators said Maxwell, 58, spent much of this year in a secluded 156-acre estate in New Hampshire, where she was arrested and hit with federal sex abuse charges on Thursday.
“If you’re looking for a place to hide, boy, you can’t find a better one,” a person close to the real estate deal told NBC News. “It’s a lovely house on a lot of turf and it’s up a driveway that’s a little bit more than a half-mile long. Nobody comes up there to bug you or poke or pry.”
But Maxwell’s immense wealth — more than $20 million, according to federal prosecutors — had her rumored whereabouts all over the world.
Britain’s Mirror said in February that a wild new theory suggested that Maxwell was hiding out in a submarine, reporting that she has a license to pilot “submersible vehicles.”
A friend of the socialite’s told Fox News in January that another rumored hideout — a safe house somewhere in the Midwest, guarded by US Special Forces operatives — was bogus.
“Ghislaine is similar to many people who live on the coasts,” the friend told the outlet. “She views it derisively. It wouldn’t be her first choice of a place to stay. With her British accent and star looks, she would stand out in Iowa. It’s the Midwest, where people know their neighbors.”
Earlier this month, investigators said Maxwell could be laying low in a plush apartment in the more socialite-friendly environs of Paris.
But in the end, the law caught up with her closer to home in New Hampshire. | 0 | non |
812 | Title: Amazon delivery driver quits mid-shift, abandons truck
He didn’t give a truck about his job anymore.
A Michigan Amazon delivery driver quit mid-shift this week — leaving a truck full of packages behind.
“I quit amazon f–k that driving s–t i left the van on 12 mile and Southfield y’all can have that bitch and it’s full of gas wit the keys in the IGNITION,” Derick Lancaster, 22, wrote in a stunning tweet Monday that had racked up more than 26,500 retweets by Thursday afternoon.
Lancaster said he was frustrated with the grueling work and long hours for barely minimum wage, but that he regrets how he handled his rather unconventional resignation, local ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV reported.
“It was immature and irresponsible on my end. At the same time enough is enough,” Lancaster told the station after abandoning his delivery van in a Detroit suburb.
Amazon drivers across the country have long complained of poor working conditions, a ProPublica investigation revealed last year.
The e-commerce giant also drew complaints from factory workers nationwide this year over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lancaster said he would deliver more than 100 packages over the course of a 12-hour shift for about $15.50 an hour. He was constantly under pressure to deliver packages faster, he said.
“It was days I had to deliver 158, 212, and it just kept going up and up,” he said.
Missing his sister’s birthday party was the final straw that primed Lancaster to quit.
“She was real upset with me,” he told the station. “There is no set schedule.”
Since his viral resignation, Lancaster has inspired both admiration and scorn online — viewed as a working-class hero to some and wildly irresponsible to others who criticized him for inviting people to take others’ property.
“I can’t imagine how selfish someone has to be to abandon a van full of other people’s property,” one person on Twitter wrote. “This is not OK.”
But another added, “That’s some funny s–t though. Way to stick it to Jeff Bezos.”
Lancaster has kept his spirits high, joking on Twitter about the press he’s gotten and defending himself against backlash he’s received.
“Why is white people so mad at me?” Lancaster tweeted as he invoked the response to the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in 2015.
“[Y]’all wasn’t mad when that officer was stepping on bro neck, i don’t think y’all was mad when that white n—- shot up the church killing them black people but y’all mad that a n—- quit his job?”
Amazon assured it was “taking appropriate action,” but did not offer any elaboration.
“This does not reflect the high standards we have for delivery partners,” Amazon said in a statement.
“We are taking this matter seriously, and have investigated the matter and are taking appropriate action.” | 0 | non |
813 | Title: Texas Gov. mandates masks in public as COVID-19 cases spike
Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday ordered that residents of counties with more than 20 coronavirus cases have to wear masks when they venture outdoors as cases spike in the Lone Star State.
“Gov. Greg Abbott today issued an Executive Order requiring all Texans to wear a face covering over the nose and mouth in public spaces in counties with 20 or more COVID-19 cases, with few exceptions,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
“Wearing a face covering in public is proven to be one of the most effective ways we have to slow the spread of COVID-19,” Abbott said in the statement, which he repeated on Twitter.
“We have the ability to keep businesses open and move our economy forward so that Texans can continue to earn a paycheck, but it requires each of us to do our part to protect one another — and that means wearing a face covering in public spaces.”
The governor also issued a proclamation empowering mayors to limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer and force people to social distance.
“Likewise, large gatherings are a clear contributor to COVID-19 cases. Restricting the size of groups gatherings will strengthen Texas ability to corral this virus,” the Republican governor continued.
“We all have a responsibility to slow the spread of COVID-19 and keep our communities safe.”
The move came the same day that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned of “an even greater outbreak ahead” and again implored people to wear masks.
And it came a day after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Fauci “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Fox News reported.
“Fauci said today that he’s concerned about states like Texas that skipped over certain things,” Patrick said Wednesday on Fox.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We haven’t skipped over anything. The only thing I’m skipping over is listening to him.”
The mandate also came after Texas reported 8,076 new cases on Wednesday, making it the highest one-day total in the state since the start of the pandemic, KTRK TV reported from Houston.
During a briefing on Wednesday, the city of Houston reported 832 new cases, bringing the total count to 21,123. Four more COVID-19 deaths were also reported. | 0 | non |
814 | Title: Soldiers deployed to stop DC protests had bayonets: report
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has confirmed that some of the active-duty service members mobilized to Washington, DC, last month to respond to civil unrest were issued bayonets.
And Defense Department documents show that some were not trained in riot response before they were deployed to the nation’s capital, according to the Associated Press, which first reported about the bayonets.
Members of the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., and the 3rd US Infantry Regiment, which is based in DC and usually guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, were mobilized last month to respond to massive protests over the police killing of George Floyd and police brutality.
But they were never actually sent to confront the protesters after they arrived in DC, with Attorney General William Barr saying that they’d be used only as a “last resort.”
The soldiers were issued bayonets for their June 2 deployment — but told they were to remain in their scabbards and not attached to their service rifles, Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark A. Milley wrote to two lawmakers in a letter obtained by the AP.
The soldiers were also told no weapons were to enter the capital without clear orders and only after nonlethal options were first reviewed, he said.
Milley said the order to mobilize the troops came from Major Army Gen. Omar Jones, who serves as commander of the military district of Washington.
His letter, dated June 26, was sent to two Democratic Congressmen, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who asked him for an explanation after the AP first reported on the use of bayonets on June 2.
Roughly 700 members of the 82nd Airborne Division were sent to two military bases near the District Capitol Area.
The soldiers were armed with live-rounds, bayonets, and riot gear.
Division paratroopers were sent back to Fort Bragg on June 4, just days after they arrived.
An unclassified military document obtained by the AP showed that some of the soldiers were not prepared to deal with the protesters. Instead, commanders planned to give paratroopers the proper training within 96 hours of their arrival in Washington, the document shows.
While some infantry soldiers are trained in crowd control, especially those preparing for an overseas deployment, they don’t typically undergo training for riot control and domestic civil unrest.
In a letter to Milley on June 22, Krishnamoorthi and Lieu expressed concern that the use of bayonets could escalate any potential violence at the protests.
They drew parallels to the 1970 Kent State shootings in which four students were killed by National Guardsmen.
“The escalation and violence leading up to and following those killings included those same troops meeting peaceful demonstrators with bayonets,” wrote Krishnamoorthi and Lieu.
In his response, Milley stopped short of agreeing to bar service members from deploying to domestic protests with bayonets, saying the decision would depend on circumstances.
In a joint statement to the AP, the lawmakers responded: “While we are grateful for General Milley’s responses to our questions concerning the arming of troops with bayonets for potential deployment against protesters, we were disappointed he was not willing to commit to banning the practice.”
The bayonet news broke at the same time the AP first reported that President Trump ordered military aircraft to fly above demonstrators in a “show of force,” according to two Defense Department officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations publicly.
Show-of-force missions within the US military are designed to intimidate an opposing force and to warn of potential military action if provoked further.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters that the incident involving an Army National Guard medical evacuation helicopter that hovered low over protesters in Washington, D.C., was under investigation.
Milley also found himself embroiled in controversy over the White House’s response to the protesters, especially after he walked in combat fatigues with Trump to St. John’s Church after passing through Lafayette Park, which the military had forcefully cleared of protesters beforehand.
He later apologized and said he “should not have been there.”
With AP | 0 | non |
815 | Title: Feds nab Antifa-linked organizer in attack on DC Andrew Jackson statue
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have arrested a man they are calling an Antifa-affiliated “ringleader” of an effort to pull down the Andrew Jackson statue outside the White House last month.
FBI agents and Park Police officers nabbed Jason Charter at his home Thursday morning in a joint operation between their departments and charged him with destruction of federal property, law enforcement sources told Fox News.
Charter allegedly has ties to Antifa, a far-left extremist group which President Trump wants to designate as a terrorist organization. The feds also accuse Charter of a role in the burning of a statue of Confederate Brigadier General Albert Pike in DC earlier in June.
“They were very organized,” a federal law enforcement official told Fox News.
“Charter was on top of the statue and directing people… they had acid, chisels, straps and a human chain preventing police from getting to the statue,” the official said.
Protesters tried to topple the statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park on June 22 — leading to a fierce clash with officers who used pepper spray to clear demonstrators.
Last week, federal prosecutors arrested another four suspects for in connection with the effort to pull down the monument.
According to the complaint, CCTV footage clearly captured Charter at the scene wearing red ski goggles and a ventilator mask, the report said.
Included in the complaint is a tweet from an account under the name Jason Charter which declared: “Tearing down statues of traitors to the nation is a service to this nation not a crime.”
The suspect was also seen on local TV news footage pouring flammable liquid on a toppled statue of Albert Pike in downtown DC and is alleged to have assaulted someone at another demonstration calling for the removal of a statue honoring Abraham Lincoln in Washington’s Lincoln Park.
Trump last month signed an order promising to crack down and seek 10-year prison terms for protesters who deface or topple controversial statues following civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Floyd’s death has lead to nationwide calls for the renaming of institutions named after Confederate leaders or other famous Americans involved in the slave trade, an issue which the president does not support. | 0 | non |
816 | Title: Twitter removes New York Times photo from Trump tweet
Twitter took down a picture from a posting by President Trump after The New York Times, which owned the rights to the picture, filed a complaint.
The tweet, posted earlier this week, showed a 2015 photo of a stern-looking Trump pointing at the camera.
“In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way,” the caption read.
Twitter removed the image after The Times lodged a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to Axios, which first reported the story
The photo, taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Damon Winter, was replaced with a notice: “This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.”
It marked the second time in two weeks that Twitter removed content from the president’s account citing copyright issues.
Twitter and Facebook both removed a manipulated video tweeted by the president two weeks ago after the parents of toddlers appearing in the video lodged a copyright claim.
The copyright complaint was posted to the Lumen Database, which gathers legal complaints and requests for removal of online material, according to Axios. | 0 | non |
817 | Title: Bird of prey snags shark-like fish in wild video
Eat your heart out, Jaws.
Stunning video footage shows a ruthless bird of prey soaring above a South Carolina beach while clutching a shark-like fish — that’s destined to become dinner.
“Anyone know what type of bird this is and is it holding a shark?” the Twitter account @trackingsharks posted on Thursday, along with the video, which was shot on Myrtle Beach.
Eagle-eyed experts soon determined the ill-fated fish was not actually a shark but rather a ladyfish, a species that can grow up to 3 feet long with sharp teeth and a dorsal fin.
The killer bird was most likely an osprey, David Barrett, a birdwatcher who runs the twitter account Manhattan Bird Alert, told The Post.
Observers called the high-flying footage “the coolest thing on Twitter today” and quipped that the bird deserves a cameo on “the next Sharknado film.”
Another joked, “NEVER LET IT TASTE HUMAN!!!” | 0 | non |
818 | Title: Rep. Andy Biggs calls for coronavirus task force to be disbanded
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A GOP Arizona lawmaker on Thursday called on President Trump to disband his Coronavirus Task Force saying it is holding back the economic recovery.
“As our economy is restored, it is imperative that President Trump is not undermined in his mission to return our economy to greatness. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx continue to contradict many of President Trump’s stated goals and actions for returning to normalcy as we know more about the COVID-19 outbreak,” Rep. Andy Biggs said in a statement, referring to the top epidemiologists on the task force.
“This is causing panic that compromises our economic recovery. We can protect our most vulnerable from the COVID-19 outbreak while still protecting lives and livelihoods of the rest of the population. It’s time for the COVID-19 task force to be disbanded so that President Trump’s message is not mitigated or distorted,” Biggs continued.
The Arizona health department reported 3,333 new coronavirus cases and 37 deaths Thursday morning, Phoenix TV station KTAR reported.
That brings the state’s documented totals to 87,425 COVID-19 cases and 1,757 fatalities.
The single-day pandemic highs were 4,878 cases and 88 deaths, both reported Wednesday, when Vice President Pence visited the Grand Canyon State to discuss the COVID-19 outbreak with Gov. Doug Ducey.
Biggs then went on to tout the jobs report issued Thursday, which showed that the US economy added 4.8 million jobs in June, reducing unemployment to 11.1 percent, down from a peak of 14.7 percent in April.
“After two months of economic nightmares due to COVID-19 and our states’ reactions to the outbreak, the American economy is roaring back as we predicted. The fundamentals of our economy were very strong prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, and the pro-growth foundation that President Trump set over the past 3+ years is paying dividends in one of our nation’s most-uncertain times. Americans trust President Trump and his team to lead our economy back to prosperity because of his track record,“ Biggs asserted.
Biggs has also railed about recommendations that people wear masks to prevent the spread of the pandemic, which has killed more than 128,000 Americans to date, with cases spiking in many states.
“Tyrannical governments have issued mandates that everyone in virtually every place wear masks,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Examiner last month.
“America, and my home state, Arizona, are at a crossroads. We have two roads we can take. One is a return to the path of freedom; the other is totalitarianism. This is not necessarily a partisan issue or even a left/right problem. It is a potential permanent alteration of who we are as a people,” declared Biggs, who is serving his second term in the House, serving Arizona’s 5th congressional district, which sits in eastern Maricopa County.
“Nothing typifies this more fully than the mandates to wear masks that some governors and mayors are imposing on their citizens. That so many in our country are immediately acquiescent in the broad implementation of mandated masks reveals that we may have lost our way, perhaps irretrievably.”
His statement about the task force came the same day that Fauci told the BBC’s Radio 4 that the spike in coronavirus cases in many states were “the worst” the US had seen — and warned of “an even greater outbreak ahead.” | 0 | non |
819 | Title: Fire and explosion damages Iran nuclear enrichment facility
A fire and an explosion struck a centrifuge production plant above Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility early Thursday, analysts said.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sought to downplay the fire, calling it an “incident” that only affected an under-construction “industrial shed,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said but both Kamalvandi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi rushed to the facility, where more than a decade ago the US and Israel used the Stuxnet virus to destroy nuclear centrifuges.
Iran downplayed the incident as evidence mounted that the fire was intentional sabotage. Data collected by a US a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite revealed the blaze started around 2 a.m. Iran time, according to The Associated Press.
Images later released by Iranian state media show a two-story brick building with scorch marks and its roof apparently destroyed. Debris on the ground and a door that looked blown off its hinges suggested an explosion accompanied the blaze.
“There are physical and financial damages and we are investigating to assess,” Kamalvandi told Iranian state television. “Furthermore, there has been no interruption in the work of the enrichment site. Thank God, the site is continuing its work as before.”
The BBC reported that its Persian-language division received a statement from a previously unknown group called “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claiming responsibility for the fire.
The statement said the group represents “underground opposition with Iran’s security apparatus.”
A State Department spokesperson told The Post: “We are monitoring reports of a fire at an Iranian nuclear facility. This incident serves as another reminder of how the Iranian regime continues to prioritize its misguided nuclear program to the detriment of the Iranian people’s needs.”
The Atomic Energy Agency of Iran on Thursday released a photo of the damage and a statement downplaying the “incident.”
Agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said that “one of the technical niches being built in the open space area of the Natanz site was damaged. This incident didn’t cause any human casualty neither inflicted hazard to the complex routine activities.
The spokesman continued, “From the probability of any pollution occurring, also considering the non-status activity position of the complex, there is nothing to be concerned of, and at present, the Organization’s expert teams are present at the site and investigating the matter.”
The theocracy’s rulers insist its nuclear program is only for energy generation, not weapons, but the assertion is widely doubted.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the UN Security Council that Iran was “the world’s most heinous terrorist regime,” in an effort to extend a strict arms embargo expected to expire in October.
In 2018, President Trump withdrew the US from a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran that former President Barack Obama and European allies hoped would prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. Trump said the deal enriched Iran and didn’t do enough to prevent weapon development.
Trump, however, has walked a fine line with Iran, often suggesting a new nuclear deal and inviting the nation’s leaders to call him. Trump is a critic of past presidents’ Mideast wars and called off retaliatory airstrikes after Iran shot down a US drone last year.
In January, Trump ordered an airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, who supported Iran-linked militias across the region. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at US bases.
— with Post wires | 0 | non |
820 | Title: Suspect in Vanessa Guillen disappearance identified
US Army officials on Thursday identified a suspect in the disappearance of missing Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen – as an attorney for the victim’s family claimed that the same perpetrator attacked Guillen with a hammer and dismembered her body with a machete.
The suspect was identified as Specialist Aaron David Robinson, 20, of Illinois who joined the Army in October 2017 as a combat engineer, officials said at a press conference.
Robinson, who fled his post at Fort Hood Tuesday, shot and killed himself as officers moved in to arrest him late Tuesday night in Killeen, Texas, according to officials.
The soldier worked in an adjacent building from where Specialist Guillen worked, said Army Criminal Investigation Command Special Agent Damon Phelps.
Phelps said that at this time there is “no credible information” that Robinson sexually harassed Guillen, despite claims by the Guillen family lawyer.
Officials also said Thursday that there is a second suspect in connection to the case and that suspect is the “estranged wife of a former Fort Hood soldier who is currently in custody at Bell county Jail awaiting charges by civil authorities.”
Phelps said that “because she is a civilian and is in the custody of local authorities” the Army will not release any further information regarding her status.
Guillen, 20, was stationed at Fort Hood when she went missing on April 22.
An Army investigation into her disappearance has led to the recent discovery of human remains in Belton, Texas, but officials say that they have not yet been positively identified.
Meanwhile, Natalie Khawam, an attorney for the Guillen family claimed to the Army Times in a report published Thursday that Guillen was killed by Robinson while she was on duty in the armory room at Fort Hood.
Robinson attacked Guillen with a hammer, Khawam alleges, citing information she says was provided to her by Army Criminal Investigation Command officials.
“This heinous act caused her blood to be splashed all over the armory room,” Khawam said in a statement to the Army Times.
Once Guillen was dead, Robinson then allegedly contacted his married girlfriend “to help him bury her bloody body,” Khawam said, according to the outlet.
“At first they tried to set her on fire, but she wouldn’t burn. Then they dismembered this beautiful US soldier’s body with a machete,” Khawan claimed, adding that “She needs to be brought to justice.” | 0 | non |
821 | Title: Ghislaine Maxwell ordered held without bail in NH court
Ghislaine Maxwell was ordered locked up in New Hampshire on Thursday pending her transfer to face trial in Manhattan for allegedly recruiting underage girls so they could be sexually abused by her ex-lover, infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, 58, waived her right to seek release on bond following her blockbuster arrest earlier in the day, although defense lawyer Lawrence Vogelman said she reserved the right to do so once in New York.
Prosecutors had filed legal papers ahead of the hearing that called the disgraced British socialite an “extreme” flight risk on grounds that she has three passports and $20 million in various bank accounts.
Maxwell didn’t enter a plea to the six felony counts in the indictment against her, which alleges that she schemed with Epstein — a financier who committed suicide following his arrest last year — and lied about it during a sworn deposition in 2016.
Due to the coronavirus crisis, Maxwell appeared via video before Concord federal Magistrate Judge Andrea Johnstone, who said the defendant was “participating from the facility where she’s being held.”
Maxwell spoke in a soft voice to answer about a dozen technical and procedural questions from the judge.
“I can hear you,” Maxwell told the judge near the start of the hearing.
Earlier, Johnstone told her, “In order for me to make eye contact with you, it looks like I’m looking off into the distance and I apologize for that.”
Reporters and other members of the public were permitted to listen in via teleconference, but couldn’t see what was happening.
In addition to waiving her right to seek bond, Maxwell waived her right to challenge her transfer to New York, where she’ll be formally arraigned on her indictment.
It’s unclear when that might happen, a source said, noting the federal Bureau of Prisons is backlogged with sentenced inmates awaiting transfer due to the pandemic — with some already delayed for several weeks.
In the meantime, Maxwell will be held at the Merrimack County Jail in Boscawen, the source said.
Additional reporting by Bruce Golding | 0 | non |
822 | Title: White House briefs 'Gang of 8' on Russia-Taliban bounty intel
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders in the so-called Gang of Eight were tight-lipped Thursday after receiving a classified briefing on the Russia-Taliban bounty intelligence fiasco — but Democrats used the opportunity to bash President Trump anyway.
“I’m not going to say anything about the briefing, but I believe that the president is not close to tough enough on Vladimir Putin,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters after he emerged from the Capitol Hill meeting.
The briefing of the group of eight senior Democratic and Republican members of Congress who receive regular intelligence briefings from the White House comes after the New York Times last week reported that the Kremlin paid Taliban militants bounties to kill US troops in a bid to drive them out of Afghanistan.
The White House has denied allegations from the Times and the Associated Press that Trump was briefed on the matter months ago, arguing the intelligence was deemed not credible and for that reason was never brought to the president or vice president’s attention.
Speaking at a press conference after the briefing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) floated the idea of sanctions against Russia and said the president and Congress should have been briefed on what she called “consequential” intelligence.
“This is of the highest priority, force protection, a threat to our men and women in uniform,” Pelosi said, before claiming that the intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a daily summary of high-level national security issues.
“At the same time as the White House was aware of this threat to the security of our men and women in uniform, the president was still flirting with the idea of having Russia be part of the G8, in total opposition of the members of the G8,” she continued.
Russia and the Taliban have denied the allegations contained in the Times report.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and national security adviser Robert O’Brien have both maintained that rogue intelligence officers looking to damage the Trump administration leaked the information to the Times.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday defended the handling of the intelligence by the nation’s spy agencies and questioned Democrats in Congress who said they were “shocked and appalled” by the allegations.
“The fact that the Russians are engaged in Afghanistan in a way that’s adverse to the United States is nothing new,” Pompeo said.
“So members of Congress are out there today suggesting that they are shocked and appalled by this, they saw the same intelligence that we saw,” he added.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair and ranking member of the House Intel Committee, also left the meeting without saying anything.
In a joint statement after the meeting, Schumer and Pelosi again accused Trump of being “soft” on the Russian president without providing any further details.
“Force protection is a primary purpose of intelligence. It should have the same importance to the commander in chief. Any reports of threats on our troops must be pursued relentlessly,” Pelosi and Schumer said.
“These reports are coming to light in the context of the president being soft on Vladimir Putin when it comes to NATO, the G7, Crimea, Ukraine and the ongoing undermining of the integrity of our elections,” they added.
“Our armed forces would be better served if President Trump spent more time reading his daily briefing and less time planning military parades and defending relics of the Confederacy.” | 0 | non |
823 | Title: How Ghislaine Maxwell forced girls to perform sex acts with Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant and alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell groomed young girls for sex acts with the accused sex-trafficker by befriending them — sometimes with movie and shopping trips, federal prosecutors allege.
The 58-year-old British socialite — who was busted for conspiring with the disgraced financier to sexually abuse minors — would first gain their trust by asking them questions about their lives, schools and families, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in Manhattan federal court.
Then she and Epstein would “spend time building friendships with the minor victims, by say, taking [them] to the movies or shopping,” the court papers said.
“Having developed a rapport with a victim, Maxwell would try to normalize sexual abuse,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors allege she would groom them by discussing sexual topics and becoming unclothed in front of the victims, as well as being present when they were getting undressed.
Maxwell would also be on hand during sex acts involving the girls and the convicted pedophile, the indictment said.
She would allegedly massage Epstein in front of the girls — or would encourage them to give him a massage, which in some cases turned sexual with the victim becoming partially or fully nude, prosecutors said.
Her presence “helped put the victims at ease because an adult woman was present,” prosecutors allege.
The victims were also “made to feel indebted” to the pair because Maxwell would encourage them to accept paid travel or educational opportunities from the hedge funder, the court papers said.
Maxwell was arrested by the FBI in Bradford, New Hampshire, around 8:30 a.m Thursday on charges stemming from her role recruiting minors for Epstein as early as 1994. | 0 | non |
824 | Title: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick vows to stop listening to Dr. Fauci
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said this week that he will stop listening to Dr. Anthony Fauci — who he claimed “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” amid a recent uptick in new coronavirus cases in the Lone Star State.
“Fauci said today that he’s concerned about states like Texas that skipped over certain things,” Patrick said during a Tuesday evening appearance on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We haven’t skipped over anything. The only thing I’m skipping over is listening to him.”
He was referring to comments made by the country’s leading infectious disease specialist earlier in the day during a Senate hearing, in which he suggested that some states reopened too soon.
“We’ve got to make sure that when states start to try and open again, they need to follow the guidelines that have been very carefully laid out, with regard to checkpoints,” Fauci said, according to the Texas Tribune. “What we’ve seen in several states are different iterations of that, perhaps maybe in some going too quickly and skipping over some of the checkpoints.”
The “checkpoints” refer to criteria that states are encouraged to satisfy related to case numbers, testing and hospital capacity, before gradually reopening their economies.
But Patrick declared that Fauci, part of the White House coronavirus task force, “has been wrong every time, on every issue.”
“I don’t need his advice anymore,” Patrick added. “We’ll listen to a lot of science, we’ll listen to a lot of doctors, and [Gov. Greg Abbott], myself and other state leaders will make the decision. No thank you, Dr. Fauci.”
Last week, amid a recent rise in new infections, Abbott ordered bars in the state to close and restaurants to go down to half capacity.
As of Thursday afternoon, Texas had reported 172,486 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and at least 2,503 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. | 0 | non |
825 | Title: Bradford, NH: Facts about where Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested
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Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell was busted Thursday in the tiny town of Bradford, New Hampshire — where she had recently purchased a “gorgeous” $1 million home, according to authorities.
The 58-year-old former British socialite — who was charged with conspiring with the disgraced financier to sexually abuse minors — purchased a home in the bucolic village six months ago, according to law enforcement sources
“She slithered away to a gorgeous property in New Hampshire, continuing to live a life of privilege while her victims continue to live with the trauma inflicted on them years earlier,” FBI Special Agent William Sweeney said at a press conference Thursday.
Investigators had been “keeping tabs” on Maxwell, including at her ultra-private 156-acre country property, “for some time,” Sweeney said.
Maxwell bought the house in the woods of Bradford, which is home to only 1,600 people, in December and had been moving from place to place around the US, according to law enforcement sources.
A detention memo said she had “no other known connections” to the 36-square-mile town, which is about 30 miles outside Concord, the state capital.
The official website of the small town features images of a leafy gravel road and kids playing ice hockey on a frozen lake — a far cry from Maxwell’s tony life with Epstein on the Upper East Side, where she allegedly groomed young girls for sex.
Founded by settlers in 1771, the blink-and-miss-it town’s main strip boasts little more than a pizza shop, a post office and a convenience store.
Locals were stunned that one of the world’s most wanted women had been busted in their backyard.
“Bradford of all places — shocked, seriously shocked — because nothing really happens around here. Nothing. It’s a quiet town,” resident Kristie Dunn told local news station WCAX.
Linda Birons, who also lives in Bradford, added, “It’s a blessing she got caught, and here in our own town, that’s kind of good. Maybe somebody turned her in and stepped up and the guys caught her.” | 0 | non |
826 | Title: Cops laugh as they shoot protesters with rubber bullets: video
Florida cops laughed and celebrated shooting protesters with rubber bullets during a George Floyd rally in May, newly released body camera footage shows.
“Beat it, little f—er,” Detective Zachary Baro, the leader of a Fort Lauderdale Police Department SWAT team unit, can be heard saying in the video, which was obtained by the Miami Herald.
A protester had just tossed a tear gas can back at a line of police officers — prompting them to open fire with the projectiles — when the cops began chuckling and boasting.
“Did you see me f— up those motherf—ers?” one of the officers says.
“I got the one f—er,” another replied amid laughter.
The officers believed Baro’s body camera was off at the time, according to a caught-on-camera conversation. In it, Officer Jamie Chatman asked Baro if his body camera was off, to which he wrongly replied that it was in “stand-by” mode and not recording.
The two officers then started joking about the people they had shot with the rubber bullets.
On Thursday, Fort Lauderdale City Manager Chris Lagerbloom said he was “troubled by what I saw” in the video, according to CBS Miami.
“While I am a huge supporter of the hard work of our police force, I would not want the actions of a few to taint the public’s perception of the dedication and professionalism of the Department as a whole,” Lagerbloom said in a statement.
“I can understand the intensity of the moment captured on body camera footage as the officers were clearly under attack … The language the officers used, and sentiment expressed is not consistent with what the public expects from our police force.”
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department said it is “in the process of conducting an exhaustive review” of the footage.
“Although the language is extreme and offensive to some, our officers were dealing with the chaos of a developing situation,” a statement from the police notes. | 0 | non |
827 | Title: Exclusive | Coronavirus forced feds to delay Ghislaine Maxwell arrest
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Federal authorities knew for months where alleged Jeffrey Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell was hiding out — but couldn’t arrest her in an underage sex-trafficking scheme until Thursday thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Investigators spent months tracking the movements of Maxwell, 58, and knew that she used an LLC to mask her December purchase of a rural hideout in the tiny New Hampshire town of Bradford, where she was nabbed by FBI agents, sources said.
The arrest followed a recent interview with one of Maxwell’s alleged victims in London, sources said.
That meeting had been set for an earlier date, but had to be postponed when the pandemic struck, sources said.
A six-count indictment against Maxwell was filed under seal in Manhattan federal court on Monday, records show, and it was unsealed following her arrest.
The charging document details crimes against three victims under the age of 18, including one — identified only as “Minor Victim-3” — whom Maxwell allegedly “groomed and befriended” in London between 1994 and 1995.
Maxwell “encouraged” the girl to “provide massages to Epstein in London, England, knowing that Epstein intended to sexually abuse Minor Victim-3 during those massages,” the indictment alleges.
Maxwell — daughter of the late, disgraced British press baron Robert Maxwell — owns a townhouse in London’s high-priced Belgravia neighborhood, but hasn’t been seen there in as much as 10 years, according to reports. | 0 | non |
828 | Title: Pompeo: US must avoid Chinese forced labor from Uighur camps
The Trump administration is advising US companies against doing business with Chinese suppliers that use forced labor from Uighur Muslims, a minority ethnic group being forcibly detained in concentration camps in China.
In an advisory issued Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited the Chinese Communist Party ramping up “its campaign of systematic repression of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups that includes widespread arbitrary detention and forced labor.”
“The advisory will make businesses aware of the potential exposure in their supply chains to entities that engage in human rights abuses in Xinjiang — or elsewhere in China — and the associated reputational, economic, and legal risks of such involvement,” Pompeo’s statement continued.
Xinjiang is a province in the Communist country where an estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained since 2016.
These ethnic minorities are held in internment camps and prisons where they are subjected to ideological discipline, forced to denounce their religion and language and physically abused.
CCP officials, however, have long suspected Uyghurs of harboring separatist tendencies because they have their own culture, language and religion.
A recent investigation by the Associated Press found that individuals inside these internment camps and prisons are making sportswear and other apparel for popular US clothing brands.
Federal authorities on Wednesday seized a shipment of weaves and other beauty accessories in New York suspected to be made out of human hair taken from people locked inside a Chinese internment camp.
US Customs and Border Protection officials said 13 tons of hair products worth an estimated $800,000 were in the shipment.
Pompeo’s advisory comes as relations continue to fray between the US and China.
Earlier this week, the nation’s top diplomat announced that the United States would cease exporting US-origin defense equipment to Hong Kong as mainland China continued to tighten its grip on the city.
Citing Beijing’s “decision to eviscerate Hong Kong’s freedoms,” Pompeo said Monday that the US was being forced “to re-evaluate its policies toward the territory.”
With Post wires | 0 | non |
829 | Title: Feds reveal Ghislaine Maxwell's wealth, transient lifestyle
Accused Jeffrey Epstein procuress Ghislaine Maxwell is an “extreme” flight risk who’s been hiding out in a 156-acre property in New Hampshire with more than $20 million in the bank and three passports, according to Manhattan prosecutors who want her to remain locked up without bail.
Details of Maxwell’s cushy, transient lifestyle were laid out in a 10-page detention memo filed Thursday, hours after Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant was busted on federal sex abuse charges.
Maxwell, 58, faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted and has an “extraordinary incentive to flee,” as well as the means and money to do so, prosecutors write.
They say they’ve linked 15 different bank accounts to Maxwell, some with balances of more than $20 million, and that she holds other accounts in foreign countries containing more than $1 million.
Maxwell moved large amounts of cash last year, including $300,000 from one account to another in July — the same month Epstein was indicted on sex trafficking charges, the memo says.
She also pocketed a cool $15 million on a sale of an unidentified residence in New York City in 2016. More than $14 million was transferred into one of her accounts.
Prosecutors allege Maxwell has gone to great lengths to conceal her whereabouts and has been hiding out mostly in New England.
“In particular, the defendant has effectively been in hiding for approximately a year, since an indictment against Epstein was unsealed in July 2019,” they say.
She’s also moved locations at least twice, switched her phone number — registered under the name “G Max” — and email address and ordered packages under a different name, the court papers say.
Maxwell was arrested Thursday morning in the rural town of Bradford, New Hampshire — where she “appears to have been hiding on a 156-acre property acquired in an all-cash purchase in December 2019 (through a carefully anonymized LLC),” the memo says.
Born in France, Maxwell was raised in the United Kingdom and became a naturalized US citizen in 2002 — and currently holds passports in all three countries, giving her more incentive to flee, prosecutors say.
She also allegedly has zero ties to the US.
“She has no children, does not reside with any immediate family members, and does not appear to have any employment that would require her to remain in the United States,” prosecutors write. “Nor does she appear to have any permanent ties to any particular location in the United States.”
In a footnote, prosecutors mention that between 2007 and 2011, more than $20 million was transferred from accounts associated with Epstein to accounts linked to Maxwell. Some of the millions were then transferred back to Epstein accounts.
Maxwell is expected to appear in New Hampshire federal court via video conference Thursday afternoon.
She is accused of grooming young girls between 1994 and 1997 to have sex with Epstein at various locations.
The financier and convicted pedophile, 66, committed suicide in jail following his arrest last year. | 0 | non |
830 | Title: Massachusetts detective fired over anti-cop instagram post
A Massachusetts police detective who posted a photo of her niece at a Black Lives Matter protest — holding a sign that advocated shooting police officers — has been fired, according to a new report.
Rookie Springfield Detective Florissa Fuentes — who had just joined the department last year — was fired last month, weeks after she posted the image to her personal Instagram page while off duty, The Republican reported.
The photo, taken at a protest in Atlanta on May 29 — four days after George Floyd was killed at the hands of police in Minneapolis — shows Fuentes’ niece protesting in Atlanta, holding a sign with the message, “Shoot the F–k Back,” according to the report.
A friend’s sign reads: “Who do we call when the murderer wears the badge?”
Fuentes posted the photo on May 30, quickly setting off a firestorm.
“After I posted it, I started getting calls and texts from co-workers,” Fuentes told the paper. “I was initially confused, but then I realized they thought I was being anti-cop. I wasn’t. I was just supporting my niece’s activism. I had no malicious intent, and I wouldn’t put a target on my own back. I’m out there on the streets every day like everyone else.”
Capt. Trent Duda, head of the Detective Bureau, wrote her up for a “possible” social media violation.
Fuentes removed the post and said she took advice from the Springfield Police Patrolmen’s Association president, Officer Joseph Gentile, to post an apology on the union’s Facebook page.
“To my fellow officers, I recently shared a post that a family member had posted of themselves protesting the recent death of George Floyd,” she wrote, according to the report.
“I did not share this photo with any malicious intent and I should have thought of how others might perceive it. I apologize to all of those who I have offended. I am not anti-cop. I wear my badge proudly and have committed my life and career to being a police officer.”
But that apology was met with even more vitriol, according to the paper.
Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood fired her from the force on June 19.
“That post was hurtful to many of her co-workers,” Clapprood told the outlet, adding that Fuentes was still on probation and the social media post marked her second issue during her time with the department. | 0 | non |
831 | Title: Herman Cain, former GOP candidate, hospitalized with coronavirus
Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to a hospital, according to a report.
Cain, 74, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, is doing well and is not on a ventilator, his staff told Newsmax, the conservative media outlet he joined as a contributor in April.
He hosts the weekend show “Herman Cain’s America” on Newsmax TV.
In 2006, Cain was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, which had spread to his liver, and was given a 30 percent chance of survival, the outlet reported, saying he remains cancer-free.
Cain, who led the pizza company from 1986 to 1996, also served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
In 2011, he announced his candidacy for the White House and advocated a tax reform program he dubbed the “9-9-9” tax plan.
He suspended his run amid sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied.
In April 2019, President Trump planned to nominate Cain to the Federal Reserve Board but later said he would remove his name from consideration. | 0 | non |
832 | Title: Joe Biden maintains double-digit lead over Trump in new poll
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden continues his double-digit lead over President Trump and is now significantly ahead with senior voters, according to a new Monmouth University poll released Thursday.
The former veep has a 12-point lead over Trump nationwide, 53 percent to 41 percent, according to the survey of 733 registered voters taken at the end of June.
Voters over the age of 65 were also far more likely to back Biden, 59 percent to 38 percent, giving him a 21-point lead over the president among seniors as the nation experiences a new daily record in coronavirus infections.
“Trump showed in 2016 that he can thread the needle, but these results suggest the president has even less room for error in 2020,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
“He must convert some of those unlikely supporters if he is to win a second term,” he continued.
The president still leads with white voters without a college degree but faces significant hurdles this election, including the fact that fewer voters have a negative opinion of Biden than they did of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
According to the new poll, Biden’s favorability rating is 10 points higher than Clinton’s was heading into the 2016 election, while a fifth of the voters surveyed said they didn’t have a good opinion of either candidate.
“Trump’s problem is that voters who aren’t enamored with either candidate tend to go for change,” said Murray.
As the two septuagenarians duke it out over who has better cognitive abilities, voters in the survey actually said they felt more confident in Biden’s mental and physical stamina than the president’s, 52 percent to 45 percent.
Biden’s lead has increased in every Monmouth University poll since March and recent polls have also revealed Trump is lagging behind his Democratic opponent in six battleground states as his administration is rocked by both the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest.
Trump allies insist that pollsters have been wrong about Trump before, pointing to the fact that nearly every poll predicted Clinton would win in 2016, and say they will overtake Biden once the two men are allowed to enter into direct combat on the campaign trail.
However, Biden has continued to gain on Trump, leading by 9.3 points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average poll, and there is no indication when the president will be able to start holding large-scale rallies, his preferred method of campaigning, as the virus rages. | 0 | non |
833 | Title: Ghislaine Maxwell: The rise and fall of Epstein’s confidant
Thursday’s arrest of accused Jeffrey Epstein “madam” Ghislaine Maxwell caps a spectacular fall from grace for the once-well-connected British socialite — who spent much of her life clawing her way back into the upper crust from family scandal.
Born in December 1961, she grew up one of seven children of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, who saw himself as the UK’s Joseph P. Kennedy — the head of a family dynasty that would wield international influence in finance and politics, according to the Telegraph.
Ghislaine, his youngest daughter, was considered the “favorite” and would often try to please the cold, demanding patriarch.
“He would interrogate them at the dinner table about history or geopolitics,” one frequent guest at the family’s estate in southern England told the Telegraph.
“He could reduce them to tears if they didn’t know an answer. He could be a cold man and the temperature in the house dropped noticeably when he was there.”
Ghislaine was sent to Marlborough, one of England’s top private schools, and then studied at Oxford University, the outlet reported.
When her father bought the ailing New York Daily News in January 1991, she was dispatched to Manhattan to prepare for the family’s splash into New York society, according to the Sun.
But the same year, the patriarch vanished from the deck of his yacht named for his daughter, the Lady Ghislaine, in the waters off the Canary Islands.
His mysterious death was ruled an accident, though it was widely rumored to be a suicide as he grappled with a media empire in ruins.
His businesses were crushed by debt, and it was revealed that he stole $600 million from his employees’ pension funds to keep his ventures afloat.
Of his brood of children, Ghislaine took the loss of her father the hardest, unable to come to terms with his guilt or possible suicide, sources told The Post in the years after his death.
While grieving in London, she also struggled with the shame brought on her family by the now-tainted legacy of her father.
“There’s a story that the Maxwell name was so detested in London that she had to walk around in a blond wig so people wouldn’t recognize her,” another socialite who mingled with Ghislaine for years told The Post in 2000.
“She was being treated like Marie Antoinette there. She wisely realized she had to make her life in New York where her father was less well-known and people care more about what you can do than who you used to be.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, who had just turned 30, fled across the pond to New York, where her prolific party-planning earned her the nickname “Goodtimes Ghislaine,” the Sun reported.
“She was a huge networker at these bashes, going from famous person to famous person and introducing people who didn’t have a prior connection to each other,” a source, who attended the soirees, told the outlet.
Within a year of her father’s death, she was dating then-Upper East Side financier Jeffrey Epstein, whose famous friends gave her the status of an influential power-broker, as Robert Maxwell had hoped for his children.
“He saved her,” a friend told Vanity Fair in 2011. “When her father died, she was a wreck; inconsolable. And then Jeffrey took her in. She’s never forgotten that — and never will.”
Their relationship didn’t last, but the pair stayed close, regularly photographed together at A-list parties and making trips on Epstein’s jet.
But Epstein’s accusers say Maxwell turned into something else — a “madam” who helped procure and groom underage girls for him.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a woman who claims to have been Epstein’s teenage “sex slave,” alleged that she was recruited by the socialite to give Epstein massages when she was 15.
Giuffre also claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew, a friend of Maxwell’s who denies the allegations.
The baby-faced Giuffre was famously photographed with the Duke of York’s hand on her hip, and Maxwell smiling in the background of the shot.
Giuffre also alleged in court documents that Maxwell “had sex with underage girls virtually every day” and she and Epstein’s “whole lives revolved around sex,” the Telegraph reported.
Many other young women have also claimed Maxwell recruited them into Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring.
Johanna Sjoberg, then 21, claimed she was approached by Maxwell on her college campus about a job to answer phones, and then was later groped by Prince Andrew at Epstein’s New York mansion in 2001.
And another woman, Maria Farmer, has said she met Maxwell at an art show in 1995. She claimed both Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulted her months later.
Ghislaine Maxwell has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
The FBI eventually opened an investigation into Epstein, and by 2008, he had secretly negotiated a plea deal with federal prosecutors on prostitution charges.
Epstein served time in the Palm Beach County jail — but visitor logs never showed Maxwell came to see him, the Telegraph reported.
In recent years, she has retreated from the orbit of the New York social scene.
She quietly sold her Upper East Side townhouse in 2016, putting more distance between herself and Epstein, who owned a mansion a few blocks away, the Telegraph reported.
She remained out of view again when Epstein was arrested again in July 2019 in New York on charges of trafficking dozens of minors between 2002 and 2005 in New York and Florida.
She was rumored to have fled to a secluded Massachusetts mansion in the immediate wake of Epstein’s suicide behind bars.
Her rumored beau at the time, Scott Borgerson, denied that she was staying at his $3 million oceanfront home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, about 25 miles northeast of Boston.
“She’s not here, I have no idea where she is,” Borgerson told The Post at the time. “Nobody wants to be close to this radioactive situation.”
She didn’t publicly surface again until her arrest Thursday in New Hampshire. | 0 | non |
834 | Title: Jeffrey Epstein victims celebrate arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell
Jeffrey Epstein victims breathed a sigh of relief Thursday at the news that the convicted pedophile’s alleged madame Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested.
“For years, I feared Epstein and his ring. Maxwell was the center of that sex trafficking ring. Now that the ring has been taken down, I know that I can’t be hurt anymore,” said Jennifer Araoz, one of the women abused by the late billionaire.
Araoz is suing Epstein’s estate and Maxwell, alleging the hedge fund manager raped her during a massage at his townhouse when she was 15.
“Day after day, I have waited for the news that Maxwell would be arrested and held accountable for her actions,” said Araoz, who never met Maxwell. “Her arrest is a step in that direction, and it truly means that the justice system didn’t forget about us.”
Maxwell, 58, was busted Thursday at her New Hampshire home on a six-count Manhattan federal indictment charging her with grooming young girls for sex.
The British socialite was a one-time girlfriend of Epstein, who hanged himself in his jail cell in August weeks after he was nabbed on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Attorney Brad Edwards, who represents several Epstein victims, said his clients were overjoyed at learning of Maxwell’s arrest.
“I cannot overstate the excitement of my clients that this day has come nor their confidence in and appreciation for the SDNY United States Attorney’s Office,” said Edwards. “But they know there is a big difference between an arrest and a conviction.”
One of Edwards’ clients, Courtney Wild, has alleged she was 14 when Epstein hired her as a masseuse and paid her to lure her underage friends to his Palm Beach, Fla., compound.
Attorney Lisa Bloom, whose firm represents six Epstein accusers, lauded the arrest but said it wasn’t enough.
“Maxwell’s brutal, ruthless behavior caused my client tremendous pain,” she said in a statement. “All others accused of enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s predations must immediately be brought to justice as well.”
Victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s attorney, Sigrid McCawley, celebrated Maxwell’s arrest and called her a “sexual predator who not only engaged in sexual abuse herself but also assisted Jeffrey Epstein for decades in running his sexual trafficking scheme.”
The attorney added, “Today is also a powerful message to all Epstein accomplices that justice will prevail.”
Giuffre has long called for Maxwell’s arrest and once said in a BBC interview that Maxwell “should be rotting in jail for her atrocities.”
The former Epstein sex slave said it was Maxwell who demanded she have sex with Prince Andrew in London in 2001 — one of three times she said she was forced to sleep with the Duke of York.
“Ghislaine tells me that I have to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey — and that just made me sick,” she told the network. | 0 | non |
835 | Title: Trump says Biden as president could cause next Great Depression
President Trump said Thursday that his defeat by Joe Biden could mean a “1929 situation” for the economy — as Biden blamed Trump for mass job losses during the coronavirus pandemic.
The dueling campaign messages followed release of data showing the US economy added 4.8 million jobs in June, reducing unemployment to 11.1 percent, down from a peak of 14.7 percent in April.
Trump said he’s doing an “incredible job” to revive the economy, while his Democratic rival — speaking simultaneously — said Trump’s missteps were the reason for the economic downturn.
At the White House, Trump inspected US-made products before warning assembled businessmen that Democrats could unleash a Great Depression with new taxes and regulations.
“You’ll have a crash like you’ve never seen before if you put the wrong person in office. You’ll see things that you would not have believed are possible.”
If Democrats defeat him, “It will be a terrible, terrible sight. It might even be a 1929 situation,” Trump said, referring to the market plunge that preceded the Great Depression.
If he’s re-elected, Trump said, “You have a chance to have the greatest numbers in history, you’re almost there. We’re almost back to where we were from the standpoint of the stock market, think of that.”
But Biden, giving a speech by video feed, sought to dampen Trump’s victory lap on job numbers, saying the president was the reason tens of millions of people filed for unemployment benefits since March.
“Donald Trump has so badly bungled the response to coronavirus, and now has basically given up on responding at all,” the former vice president said, noting record-high figures for new US infections.
“Many more Americans — millions of them — would still have their job if Donald Trump had done his job,” Biden said. “Many of the jobs that have now come back should never have been lost in the first place. And for everyone whose job hasn’t come back, for everyone who doesn’t own stock, who can’t get the sweetheart loan through connections: Does this feel like a victory?” | 0 | non |
836 | Title: Investigators eyeing Prince Andrew after Ghislaine Maxwell bust
Prince Andrew must really be sweating now.
Investigators who busted accused Jeffrey Epstein procuress Ghislaine Maxwell still want to talk to Prince Andrew, they confirmed Thursday — as lawyers predict his socialite pal could now turn against him.
The charges against British socialite Maxwell, 58, include alleged sex crimes in her London townhouse — where Andrew has separately been accused by an Epstein “sex slave” of sleeping with her when she was 17.
While refusing to discuss the “status” of the UK royal — who famously claimed he cannot sweat — prosecutors made it clear he is still on their radar during the ongoing probe into Epstein’s inner circle.
“We would welcome Prince Andrew coming in to talk with us. We would like to have the benefit of his statement,” the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, said at a press briefing.
“Our doors remain open and we would welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his statement,” Strauss said.
Maxwell had been the close friend who first introduced Andrew to Epstein, and he admitted in a BBC interview last year that he remained in touch with her even as his scandal over his ties to the pedophile blew up.
Now, however, the prince’s longtime friend could be given the motivation to finally turn against him, insiders told The Post.
“I’m sure Ms. Maxwell will make every effort to turn on others to save herself. That includes Prince Andrew,” said Lisa Bloom, who reps six Epstein victims as well as a woman who says she saw Andrew dancing with his accuser in London in 2001.
“Prince Andrew should be very concerned. I’m sure he will not be setting foot in the US,” Bloom said, stressing that Maxwell’s arrest should leave all of Epstein’s inner-circle “shaking in their boots.”
Gloria Allred, who represents 16 Epstein accusers, said the arrest should prove a warning shot to Andrew that “the criminal investigation is serious and that it continues.”
“It is long overdue for Prince Andrew to stop making excuses and to stop playing the victim,” Allred said.
“He should contact the FBI immediately and agree to appear for an interview with them to disclose everything that he knows about Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew’s friend, Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Accuser Virginia Robert Giuffre has repeatedly claimed in interviews that she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times at the behest of both Epstein and Maxwell.
The first time, she claims, was in 2001 in Maxwell’s London townhouse — where a now-notorious photo was taken of them together, with Maxwell smiling behind them.
The prince was ultimately dumped from royal duties after a disastrous interview trying to justify his connections to Epstein even after the moneyman was convicted of having sex with underage girls.
It was during that BBC sit-down that he claimed he had an injury that stopped him from sweating, which allegedly proved Giuffre was lying when she “sweated all over” him — a defense that came back to haunt him Thursday.
“I wonder if Prince Andrew has suddenly discovered he does sweat after all?” one of the UK’s most famous journalists, Piers Morgan, tweeted.
Twitter also exploded with memes showing someone sweating profusely.
“If he wasn’t sweating before he will be now,” @Staceyfacey88 tweeted.
Andrew has vehemently denied the accusations against him, and his lawyers have called the feds’ claims that he was not cooperating a “publicity stunt.”
A source close to Andrew’s legal team insisted to The Post on Thursday that they have continued reaching out to the Department of Justice — and they are the ones being shut down.
“The Duke’s team remains bewildered given that we have twice communicated with the DoJ in the last month, and to-date, we have had no response,” the source said. | 0 | non |
837 | Title: Ghislaine Maxwell may still cooperate in federal probe
Prosecutors on Thursday left open the possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell could cooperate in their investigation — despite indicting her on charges including perjury.
Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said she wasn’t worried that the perjury charges would undermine Maxwell’s ability to potentially testify against others.
“This sometimes happens where there are perjury charges and people can go on from there and become cooperators,” Strauss said at a press conference. “And I’m not concerned about that. In the event that if she even were to become a cooperator, I think we could deal with that.”
Maxwell, 58, was arrested Thursday morning in New Hampshire on charges she groomed underage women to have sex with Epstein in places like his Upper East Side townhouse, Florida, New Mexico and her home in London between 1994 and 1997. The daughter of media titan Robert Maxwell is also accused of partaking in some of the sexual abuse herself.
Strauss also stressed that the investigation into Epstein and Maxwell’s alleged sex trafficking ring remains active — meaning more charges against others could be coming down the pike.
“These charges announced today are the latest results of our investigation into Epstein and the people around him who facilitated his abuse of minor victims,” she said. “That investigation remains ongoing.”
Maxwell is the only person other than Epstein charged in the case.
Epstein, 66, was arrested nearly a year ago on charges he slept with underage girls between 2002 and 2005. He committed suicide while locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, 2019.
“This case against Ghislaine Maxwell is the prequel to the earlier case that we brought against Jeffrey Epstein,” said Strauss.
Maxwell is also charged with two counts of perjury for claiming during a 2016 deposition that she knew nothing about her or her one-time boyfriend’s alleged crimes.
“Maxwell lied because the truth as alleged was almost unspeakable,” said Strauss. “Maxwell enticed minor girls, got them to trust her and then delivered them into the trap she and Epstein had set for them.” | 0 | non |
838 | Title: Fauci warns of 'greater outbreak ahead' for coronavirus in US
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said the spikes in coronavirus cases in many states were “the worst” the US had seen — and warned of “an even greater outbreak ahead.”
“What we have seen over the last several days is a spike in cases that are well beyond the worst spikes that we have seen,” Fauci told the BBC’s Radio 4.
“That is not good news. We’ve got to get that under control, or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The forecast came as the number of new cases of coronavirus in the US hit a record of more than 50,000 on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, which reported that there were now 2,686,480 confirmed cases in the country and more than 128,000 deaths.
Florida shattered records Thursday when it reported over 10,000 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase in the state since the pandemic started.
Florida, with 21 million residents, has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.
To contain the outbreak, the Sunshine State has closed bars and some beaches, but GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted requiring masks in public statewide or reimposing a lockdown.
Outbreaks in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona have seen the US break records and send cases rising at rates not seen since April.
The top epidemiologist on President Trump’s coronavirus task force also blamed much of the recent spikes on young people ignoring social distancing guidelines in states that reopened.
“We need to engender some responsibility in people, particularly in the younger people,” he told the program.
Fauci, who told lawmakers Tuesday that the US could soon see as many as 100,000 new cases a day, if social distancing and mask wearing are not enforced, said other countries did a better job at containing the virus.
“We got hit very badly, worse than any country, in regards to the number of cases and the number of deaths,” he said.
“Between the European Union, the UK and others, how they’ve handled the outbreak, they’ve had big spikes and then it brought it down almost to baseline, or even to baseline in some countries. They will be having additional infections, but at least they got it down to a reasonable baseline. The situation in the United States has been more problematic,” he said.
“We never got things down to baseline where so many countries in Europe and the UK and other countries did — they closed down to the tune of about 97 percent lockdown,” Fauci continued.
“In the United States, even in the most strict lockdown, only about 50 percent of the country was locked down. That allowed the perpetuation of the outbreak that we never did get under very good control.
“The problem we’re facing now is, in an attempt to so-called reopen or open the government and get it back to some form of normality, we’re seeing very disturbing spikes in different individual states in the United States, particularly, most recently, Florida, Arizona, Texas and California, some of which are really big states with high populations,” he said.
Intensive care units in Houston were at 102 percent of capacity on Wednesday, while Arizona’s were at 89 percent of capacity on Thursday.
With Reuters | 0 | non |
839 | Title: Landslide at Myanmar jade mine that kills over 150 people
Dramatic video captured a massive landslide that killed at least 162 people Thursday at a jade mine in northern Myanmar after they were swept up in a “wave of mud” into a lake.
The workers were collecting stones in the Hpakant area of Kachin state, the center of the southeast Asian nation’s jade industry, when they were swept up in the cascade after heavy rain, Reuters reported.
“The jade miners were smothered by a wave of mud,” the Fire Service said, adding that 54 injured people were taken to hospitals and an unknown number of people are feared missing.
“Other bodies are in the mud,” Tar Lin Maung, a local official with the information ministry, told Reuters. “The numbers are going to rise.”
The tragedy was the worst in a series of deadly accidents at such locations in recent years that critics blame on the government’s failure to acts against unsafe conditions.
A London-based environmental watchdog said the accident “is a damning indictment of the government”s failure to curb reckless and irresponsible mining practices in Kachin state’s jade mines.”
“The government should immediately suspend large-scale, illegal and dangerous mining in Hpakant and ensure companies that engage in these practices are no longer able to operate,” Global Witness said in a statement.
“The multibillion-dollar sector is dominated by powerful military-linked companies, armed groups and cronies that have been allowed to operate without effective social and environmental controls for years,” it added.
The military is no longer directly in power in the country, but is still a major force in government and wields authority in remote areas where social activists have complained about neglect of already weak regulations in the jade mining industry.
The most detailed estimate of the industry said it generated about $31 billion in 2014.
By late afternoon rescue workers had recovered 126 bodies, the department said, but more were missing.
Desperate miners were seen racing uphill to escape as the towering pile of black waste slipped into the lake, unleashing a tsunami-like wave of mud.
Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old miner, said he was about to snap a picture of the precarious mound when people began shouting, “Run! Run!”
“Within a minute, all the people at the bottom (of the hill) just disappeared,” he told Reuters by phone. “I feel empty in my heart. I still have goose bumps…There were people stuck in the mud shouting for help but no one could help them.”
Than Hlaing, a member of a local civil group who was helping in the aftermath of the disaster, said told Reuters the victims were freelancers scavenging the waste left by a larger company.
Official sales of jade in the country were worth $750 million in 2016-17, according to data published by the government, but Global Witness documented a $31 billion estimate in a 2015 report.
In November of that year, 113 were killed when a 200-foot-high mountain of earth and waste discarded by several mines collapsed in an accident that was then considered the country’s worst.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
840 | Title: US coronavirus deaths likely 28 percent higher than reported: study
The number of people in the US who died from the coronavirus in March through May was likely about 28 percent higher than the official count due in part to state reporting discrepancies, according to a new study.
The number of deaths from any cause tallied by the National Center for Health Statistics during those three months was 781,000 — 122,300, or almost 19 percent, higher than the historical average for the period, according to the study conducted by Yale University and published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
During the same stretch, the number of deaths officially listed as due to COVID-19 was 95,235, or 28 percent less than that excess number, Reuters reported.
Many early nursing home deaths or those attributed to pneumonia rather than the coronavirus may have contributed to an undercount, media reports have suggested.
“Determining the cause of death on a death certificate is not an exact science,” said Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health and lead author of the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations.
“It is possible that someone who had COVID-19 and that triggered pneumonia might have pneumonia listed as the cause of death. Whereas another jurisdiction might have COVID as the cause,” he added. “The coding for what a person died from can vary a lot from person to person and jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
The report comes as the pandemic continues to spread across the US, where new cases grew by 5 percent or more in at least 40 states, including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma as of Monday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
At least 127,425 have died of the contagion across the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
The researchers said the gap between the reported COVID-19 deaths and the excess deaths varied by states.
“The gap between the official COVID-19 tally and the excess deaths has been shrinking over time and has nearly disappeared in some places, like New York City,” Weinberger said, according to Fox News.
“How reliably the official tolls capture the full burden of excess deaths still varies considerably between states,” he added.
In the Big Apple, the expected number deaths based on statistics from previous years would be 13,000 from March 1 to May 30 — but this time, the number of fatalities recorded was 38,170, the news outlet reported.
“Some states had good concordance between the number of reported coronavirus deaths and the total number. Washington state and Minnesota has almost no gap, but in South Carolina and Texas there is a considerable difference,” Weinberger said.
Reporting discrepancies have decreased considerably recently as diagnostic testing became more available, he said, adding that “things are much better now than they were in March.” | 0 | non |
841 | Title: White woman pulls gun on black woman, daughter in Michigan parking lot
A white woman pulled a gun on a black mother and her 15-year-old daughter during a heated caught-on-camera confrontation Wednesday at a Michigan Chipotle.
Video of the incident in the eatery’s parking lot in Lake Orion shows the woman, in a black T-shirt, point the gun at the mom, Takelia Hill.
“Get away,” the woman warns, as Hill can be heard saying, “She got the gun on me!”
The women begin arguing, as the one with the gun backs up near her SUV, screaming, “Get the f–k back!” at Hill.
The heated confrontation erupted after the woman allegedly bumped into Hill’s teen daughter, Makayla Green, while exiting the Chipotle in Orion Township at about 8 p.m.
“Before I could walk into Chipotle, this woman was coming out and I had moved out the way so she can walk out,” Green told the Detroit News. “She bumped me and I said, ‘Excuse you.’ And then she started cussing me out and saying things like I was invading her personal space.”
Frightened, the teen called her mom over.
“I walked up on the woman yelling at my daughter,” Hill said. “She couldn’t see me because her back was to me, but she was in my daughter’s face.”
The alleged bump was not caught on video. The footage picks up after the altercation moved into the parking lot, and begins with Hill and her daughter arguing with the unidentified woman as they demand an apology.
“You’re very racist and ignorant,” the teen says at one point, after a man in the driver’s seat of the SUV helps the woman into the passenger seat.
The altercation continues with the woman telling Hill, “You cannot just walk around calling white people racist.”
see also
White man accused of pulling gun on black homeowner, using racial slurs
“Why would you bump her? Why didn’t you say sorry?” Hill continuously asks the woman in response.
The woman goes on to say, “White people aren’t racist … I care about you and I’m sorry if you had an incident that has made someone make you feel like that. No one is racist.”
The woman rolls her window up and the SUV begins backing out of the parking spot.
Hill is seen stepping back as the SUV starts to drive away, before she hits the back window of the vehicle, claiming she thought the driver was going to hit them.
That’s when the woman jumps back out of the SUV and pulls a gun on Hill and her daughter, and Hill can be heard saying, “She got the gun on me!” as the woman yells, “Get the f–k back!”
The woman was later arrested by police, according to the Daily Mail.
The Auburn Hills Police Department confirmed the incident happened to the outlet but it is not known if the woman was charged.
The video, which was tweeted by Green, has received more than 7 million views as of Thursday. | 0 | non |
842 | Title: Rep. Jerry Nadler cruises to expected Democratic primary win
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has handily won the Democratic primary for the congressional district he has represented since 1992.
Nadler (D-NY) earned 62 percent of the vote in the heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District, which covers most of the west side of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.
An analysis by the Associated Press of absentee ballots returned as of Wednesday showed that Nadler’s lead was too large for either opponent to overcome.
The 73-year-old lawmaker beat out two primary challengers: Lindsey Boylan, a former adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Jonathan Herzog, a former staffer of Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Both primary opponents criticized Nadler during the campaign for not doing enough for the district itself.
Those critiques failed to take off, and Nadler gained national notoriety as part of the team that helped lead the Democratic case for impeaching President Trump.
Unlike other moderates who faced primary challenges, Nadler earned himself progressive credentials with endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
In her endorsement, the 30-year-old congresswoman described Nadler as someone “respected and admired by progressives.”
Both Warren and AOC endorsed Jamaal Bowman, a 44-year-old former middle school principal who delivered a stinging defeat of incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) late last month.
Nadler also had the backing of the Working Families Party, a major power player in progressive circles. The WFP endorsed Bowman over Engel.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
843 | Title: Ghislaine Maxwell charges announced at press conference
Prosecutors in Manhattan will formally announce the charges against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell on Thursday.
The press conference will be livestreamed on the Facebook page for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Maxwell was arrested Thursday morning on charges she groomed young women to have sex with Epstein beginning in 1994. | 0 | non |
844 | Title: Citing racial bias, San Francisco will end mug shots release
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco police will stop releasing the mug shots of people who have been arrested unless they pose a threat to the public, as part of an effort to stop perpetuating racial stereotypes, the city’s police chief announced Wednesday.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott and outside police experts said they believe the department would be the first in the nation to do so based on concerns about racial bias.
The booking photos taken by police when a person is arrested for a crime are often made public whether or not the person is prosecuted for the alleged crime. That can undermine the presumption of innocence and help perpetuate stereotypes, experts said.
“This is just one small step but we hope this will be something that others might consider doing as well,” Scott said.
Large cities like Los Angeles and New York already have policies against releasing booking photos but make exceptions. For example, the New York Police Department, the nation’s largest, releases information on arrests but doesn’t put out mug shots unless investigators believe that will prompt more witnesses to come forward or aid in finding a suspect. Georgia and New York stopped releasing booking photos in an effort to curtail websites that charge people to remove their picture and booking information.
Jack Glaser, a public policy professor at the University of California Berkeley who researches racial stereotyping and whose work Scott consulted, said data shows Black people who are arrested are more likely to have their cases dismissed by prosecutors.
“That may be just part and parcel of the same issue that police will stop and search Blacks at a lower threshold of suspicion in the first place and so, their arrests are more likely to be unsubstantiated,” Glaser said.
But the mug shots live on.
Numerous websites post the mug shots, regardless of whether anyone was convicted of a crime, then charge a fee to those who want their photo removed. The phenomenon prompted California’s attorney general to charge one of the biggest operators with extortion, money laundering and identity theft.
Scott said that contributes to Americans making an unfair association between people of color and crime. Adopting the new policy is part of an effort to stop spreading negative stereotypes of minorities, something that Scott, who is Black, said he has experienced when not in uniform.
“You walk into a department store and you get followed around and the security is looking at you suspiciously. I’ve experienced that,” Scott said.
In San Francisco, the only exceptions will be if a crime suspect poses a threat or if officers need help locating a suspect or an at-risk person, Scott said. Under the policy, the release of photos or information on a person who is arrested will also require approval from the police department’s public relations team.
Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said not every department that has a policy against releasing mug shots gives a reason. The San Francisco Police Department is the first he is aware of to say it is implementing the policy to stop racial bias, he said.
He said barring the publication of crime suspects’ mug shots on television shows and elsewhere should be part of any meaningful justice reform in the country.
“For a democratic society, we’re very cavalier about people’s rights and the presumption of innocence,” O’Donnell said. “We take people’s freedom away and ruin people’s reputations before anybody’s ever made a decision as to whether or not the person committed the offense.”
Nina Salarno, president of the advocacy group Crime Victims United of California, praised Scott’s effort to address racial bias but expressed concern about how the department will decide which photos to release. She said releasing booking photos can help crime victims come forward.
“The only concern for the victims side of it is how are they categorizing and who is deciding which ones should be released to the public?” Salarno asked. | 0 | non |
845 | Title: 'Jealous' family dog mauls newborn babies to death in Brazil
Two newborn twin sisters in Brazil were mauled to death by their family dog in what relatives described as a possible act of “jealously,” according to a report Thursday.
Elaine Novais had left her prematurely born 1-month-old babies, Anne and Analú, alone briefly while she talked to a neighbor at her home in Piripá on June 23 when the Labrador-foxhound mix struck, according to the Sun.
Novais, 29, heard the infants crying in a bedroom and dragged the canine away from them but the animal had already critically injured both of their abdomens, according to the outlet, which cited a police report.
A neighbor, who worked as a nursing assistant, rushed to help the twins and they were taken to Maria Pedreira Barbosa Municipal Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, according to the report. Novais collapsed with shock and grief after hearing they had perished.
“This has devastated the parents,” neighbor Maria de Jesus said, according to the outlet. “I pray that they don’t fall into a depression but it will be difficult because the children were beautiful, really loved and desperately wanted.”
The dog had lived with Novais and her husband, Regis, for five years and was usually gentle but may have felt “left out” after the twins were born, an unnamed family member said.
“We think that with the arrival of the twins, the animal no longer had the attention and affection of its owners that it had been used to,” an unnamed family member said, according to the outlet.
“This may have caused some kind of jealousy and led what was normally a docile animal to attack the children.”
One of the babies died instantly from the wounds while the other was gravely injured and suffered a cardiac arrest, according to the report. The couple has two dogs but the second one is not believed to have been involved in the attack.
The tragic event comes after Novais and Regis, 32, had tried unsuccessfully to start a family for nine years, according to the report.
Officials in Piripá, a small northern town, expressed sympathy for the heartbroken parents.
“In the face of this immeasurable loss, we express our condolences and sympathy with parents Elaine and Regis, and their friends and family in this moment of sadness and pain,” the town said in a statement. | 0 | non |
846 | Title: Jeffrey Epstein statue left outside Albuquerque's city hall
A statue of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was left outside a New Mexico city hall in a satirical attack on anyone defending racist monuments, according to reports.
“If we don’t have a statue of Epstein, how will people learn?” shouted a man who left the life-size gold statue Wednesday in downtown Albuquerque, KRQE journalist Rachel Knapp tweeted along with a photo.
It was left about 35 miles west of Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, which reportedly had a giant nude portrait of Ghislaine Maxwell, his ex and closest associate who was arrested Thursday.
While having a questionable likeness to the late moneyman, the statue had a plaque with a bio of his time as a teacher and financier.
“He was also a rapist who died in prison,” the plaque said — listing 18 lawsuits that Epstein, 66, was involved in before he hanged himself in a Manhattan lockup last August.
The statue — which was actually a painted mannequin — was quickly removed by city hall staff, KRQE said.
The plaque said it was “generously provided” by the Antlion Entertainment “Art” Collection, which told KRQE it was a jab at anyone defending racist monuments as reminders of dark periods in history.
“We think we need an Epstein statue in every school because otherwise how are students even going to learn they even existed?” one anonymous member of the collective told the station, mimicking arguments used in defense of slavery-era monuments.
“You know those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it, and so if we don’t have statues of Epstein up, how can we prevent predatory behavior,” the artist said.
“Maybe schools can even have statue parks with people like Hitler, and Mao and Lenin just so that we can really remember history.”
Epstein was facing serious sex crime charges when he killed himself, with many accusers saying attacks happened in the New Mexico Ranch, where British socialite Maxwell, 58, was a regular presence. | 0 | non |
847 | Title: Supreme Court to decide if Congress gets full Robert Mueller report
The Supreme Court said Thursday it will decide if Congress can receive redacted parts of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — almost certainly delaying release until after the election.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are seeking access to the full 448-page document and supporting grand jury documents.
Mueller found no proof that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in 2016, but Democrats believe the report may contain important details that aren’t yet public.
The court’s decision blocks release of potentially damaging information until after the election.
Democrats won at the district and appeals court levels. They argue there’s precedent for Congress to access such documents with the impeachment cases against Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
But the Justice Department says it would be a “breach of grand jury secrecy.”
The Justice Department last year offered to give Democrats access to read a less redacted version of the report, but they refused, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
“The department has placed unacceptable limitations on access to that information,” Nadler said at the time. “It would prevent me from speaking with my colleagues with other members of the committee about what I might see. What good is it?”
Redactions may conceal information damaging to both parties. For example, one redaction in the report alleges that Clinton was recorded by Russia engaging in phone sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. | 0 | non |
848 | Title: FSU tells staff they can't care for kids while working remotely
Florida State University has informed its employees that as of Aug. 7 they will no longer be allowed to care for their children while working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports.
“In March 2020, the University communicated a temporary exception to policy which allowed employees to care for children at home while on the Temporary Remote Work agreement,” the FSU administration’s email to staff read, The Lily reported.
“Effective Aug. 7, 2020, the University will return to normal policy and will no longer allow employees to care for children while working remotely,” added the memo, which was sent Friday.
Jenny Root, an assistant professor of special education at FSU who has a 7-month-old daughter and 4-year-old son, told The Lily that she was puzzled by the “bizarre” missive from the school, particularly since her boss had been very supportive as she juggled child care and work.
“My initial thought was, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do with [my kids]?” Root, who has been pumping breast milk, told the outlet.
Her boy’s day care center had opened up for a few weeks, but was shut down again after one of the providers came into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, according to The Lily.
With the contagion spreading across the Sunshine State, Root said she wasn’t sure she’d want to put her kids in day care even if she could.
“None of us are enjoying this,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’m failing at everything I do.” The university, she said, is “acting like they gave us this privilege to watch our children while we worked — when that’s literally what I had to do.”
Renisha Gibbs, FSU’s associate vice president for human resources, told The Lily in a statement: “As FSU looks toward resuming normal campus operations — as conditions allow — we felt a responsibility to provide our employees notice of our intention to return to our standard telecommuting agreement that requires dependent or child-care arrangements while working remotely.”
She added: “If employees do not have day care options or choose not to send their children to school in the fall, they should work with their supervisors to identify a flexible work schedule that allows them to fulfill their work duties and their family responsibilities.”
The university faced a backlash on social media by users who slammed it for the sexist nature of the new policy, since it will almost certainly affect women more than men.
“Even in the most egalitarian-meaning households, the domestic sphere will still fall primarily on women’s shoulders,” Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist who studies gender and families at Washington University in St. Louis, told the outlet.
On Monday, Gibbs sent out a new email that specifies that the telecommuting policy “generally applies to employees whose job duties require them to be on campus full-time during normal business hours … and is intended to create flexible work arrangements that serve both the needs of the employee and their work unit,” WCTV reported.
“We have not typically required employees who are already regularly performing their job remotely, or a combination of on-campus and remote work (e.g. faculty) to enter into a Telecommuting Agreement, nor were those employees required to complete the Temporary Remote Work Agreement at the beginning of the COVID-19 emergency,” she wrote.
“Therefore, the University reverting back to normal policy does not affect their regular work arrangement,” Gibbs added.
“Now that our local public schools are planning to resume in-person instruction next month and local daycare centers are open throughout the county, FSU is also shifting back to normal policy,” the message said, adding that staffers can request “a temporary modification to any on-campus work assignment.”
Some workers said the policy targets only those who don’t have the job security of tenured professors.
“Due, I imagine to the way this has gone viral on social media … a slight retraction was issued today, which actually only compounds the initial problem,” Cathy McClive, a history professor, told The Lily in an email.
“The policy now applies to staff not faculty — so those without tenure are in the most precarious positions,” she added.
Miranda Waggoner, a sociology professor at FSU who is untenured, said the local school district is giving families the option of either virtual or in-person learning.
“Now that cases are surging, many parents might choose a digital learning experience,” Waggoner, who has a 6-year-old son, told The Lily, adding that she hasn’t decided whether to send her son back to school.
But even tenured professors, who won’t be directly affected by the policy, are deeply worried about the message Friday’s email sends about the school’s priorities.
“As a mother, it’s difficult to know that the university really doesn’t understand what it takes to be a mother,” Katrinell Davis, a tenured sociology and African American studies professor, told the outlet.
She said she doubted that any women “working a split shift between work and home” were involved in working on the new policy because they would have called it out as “unrealistic” — something that “works on Mars, but not on planet Earth.” | 0 | non |
849 | Title: LA school police chief resigns after board approves budget cut
The Los Angeles school police chief stepped down from his post this week — just a day after the board approved a 35 budget percent cut to the city’s school police force, according to a new report.
Todd Chamberlain, a 33-year law enforcement veteran who just became the chief of school police in December, stepped down Wednesday, KABC reported.
“After humbly serving my communities, departments and personnel over 35 years in law enforcement, I have been placed in a position that makes my ability to effectively, professionally and safely impact those groups unachievable,” Chamberlain said in a written statement obtained by the outlet.
He explained that he could not “support modifications to my position, the organization and most importantly, the community — students, staff and families — that I believe will be detrimental and potentially life-threatening.”
His resignation follows a split vote by the Los Angeles Unified School District Tuesday to slash the agency’s budget by $25 million in response to weeks of protests calling for a defunding of the police.
Chamberlain took the job after retiring as a commander with the Los Angeles Police Department, according to the report.
It’s unclear who will take his place, but a Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman told the outlet a decision is “forthcoming.”
The school board action also calls for officers to give up their uniforms and patrol off campus, and 65 officers in the 471-employee department will be laid off.
Money saved with the cuts will fund staff to specifically serve the needs of black students, and will also be allocated towards a task force to study campus safety.
Also this week, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted to slash the budget for the city’s police force and reduce staffing to levels reportedly unseen since 2008.
The council voted 12-2 to scale back the number of officers from 10,000 to about 9,757 by next summer — part of a $150 million cut to the LAPD budget.
The decision came in response to a dire financial forecast and the demands from mass protests in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. | 0 | non |
850 | Title: GOP senators propose replacing Columbus Day with Juneteenth
A pair of Republican senators have proposed replacing Columbus Day on the federal government’s list of official holidays with Juneteenth.
Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) made the proposal Wednesday as an amendment to a bill sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) that would recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
Johnson objected to adding another day of holiday pay to the federal calendar, and viewed eliminating Columbus Day as a fair compromise.
“In response to a bipartisan effort to give federal workers another day of paid leave by designating Juneteenth a federal holiday, we have offered a counterproposal that does not put us further in debt,” Johnson said in a statement Wednesday.
“We support celebrating emancipation with a federal holiday, but believe we should eliminate a current holiday in exchange. We chose Columbus Day as a holiday that is lightly celebrated, and least disruptive to Americans’ schedules,” he continued.
Speaking to The Hill, the Wisconsin Republican and major budget hawk said he was open to choosing another holiday to replace with Juneteenth.
“I’m just saying let’s replace it with something. I chose Columbus Day just because it’s probably the most lightly celebrated and less disruptive to anybody’s schedule” to cut from the federal holiday calendar, he said.
Johnson added that he was talking to some of his colleagues about “an alternate bill” he has.
Cornyn offered his bill in mid-June with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and has since put it in the “hotline,” meaning he is working to move the bill to the floor soon and pass it by unanimous consent or voice vote, The Hill reports.
He called Johnson and Lankford’s amendment “problematic,” arguing that cutting out Columbus Day “dilutes the message we’re trying to send, which is one of being respectful and honoring and remembering our history.”
“We’re working through all those things right now, we just don’t have an answer right this second,” added the Texas Republican, who is facing re-election this November.
Juneteenth is one of America’s oldest holidays and is observed each year on June 19 to mark the official end of slavery in the US.
The day, which gets its name from combining “June” and “19th,” has long been celebrated by black Americans as a symbol of their long-awaited emancipation.
Columbus Day celebrates Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer who is credited as the first European to discover the American continent. | 0 | non |
851 | Title: Trump: Economy is 'roaring back' after record jobs report
WASHINGTON — President Trump returned to the White House briefing room on Thursday to celebrate the nation’s falling unemployment rate, describing it as “spectacular news for American workers and American families.”
“Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back. It’s coming back extremely strong,” the president told reporters, promising to “vanquish” the coronavirus which is spiking in Arizona, Florida, California and other states.
The US economy added a record 4.8 million jobs in June, according to the latest jobs report released Thursday morning, reducing unemployment to 11.1 percent, down from a peak of 14.7 percent in April.
More than 20 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic shuttered large swaths of the economy after it began infecting a large number of Americans in late February.
“The crisis is being handled,” Trump said, touting rising consumer confidence, retail sales and his government’s response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
The president repeated his predictions that the economy would come roaring back even as states such as Florida report a record number of new COVID-19 infections and governors have been forced to roll back their reopening plans.
“We have some areas where we’re putting out the flames of the fires and that’s working out well,” Trump said.
“We’re getting rid of the flame,” he added.
Thursday’s announcement came as the US hit a new daily record with 50,000 new COVID-19 infections in a single day. States such as Florida and California are also confronting a tsunami of new cases.
Public health experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci last week warned Congress that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic may lie ahead, predicting that the US could experience up to 100,000 new daily cases.
More than 2.74 million people have been infected and another 130,000 people have died in the US from the virus.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also lauded the jobs numbers as better than expected but told reporters he would remain “concerned until we get everybody back to work.” | 0 | non |
852 | Title: Trump says he will end the 'lawlessness' of statue toppling
President Trump said Thursday that “lawlessness has been allowed to prevail” in the wake of statues toppled across the country — but he won’t allow it to happen anymore, referring to an executive order he signed that metes out prison sentences for such vandalism.
“Lawlessness has been allowed to prevail. We’re not going to let it prevail any longer,” he said in a one-minute video released on his Twitter account.
The video shows images of statues being pulled off their pedestals and others marred by paint and graffiti as part of the nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
“It started off with Confederate statues but then it went to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln – went to people that were abolitionists, people that wanted to stop slavery,” Trump said. “It went to anything because frankly it didn’t matter to them anarchists, agitators, looters, and people aren’t happy.”
Speaking for the “silent majority,” Trump said he won’t allow the statues to be removed.
“I signed an executive order, just a few days ago and since then it’s been very calm, they go to prison for 10 years if they hurt our monuments or our statues,” he said.
The president said he signed the executive order last Friday that authorizes the attorney general to prosecute anyone who “destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property.”
The order also extends to “religious property,” specifying statues of Jesus and any “other religious figure or religious art works.”
He said vandalizing statues or monuments could be punished with a 10-year prison term. | 0 | non |
853 | Title: Harvard grad Claira Janover fired over TikTok 'stab threat' raises money online
The Harvard graduate fired over a TikTok video in which she threatened to “stab” anyone who told her “All Lives Matter” is now trying to raise cash online.
Claira Janover — who tearfully announced Wednesday that she had been fired amid the furor over her “analogous joke” video — updated her offending TikTok to include her Venmo details for donations.
On Instagram, she linked to a GoFundMe account set up by Harvard pals called “The Claira Janover is Incredible Fund.”
“She is now unemployed and at great financial and physical risk,” claimed the page.
By Thursday morning, the appeal had already reached its modest goal of $4,000 with more than 140 people donating in the first few hours.
It also asked for supporters to write to Twitter “asking for the death threats to be taken down” — as well as to accounting firm Deloitte “condemning its decision to fire her.”
Janover went viral by saying she would stab anyone with “the sheer entitled Caucasity” to say “All Lives Matter” — just so she could hold up a paper cut and say, “My cut matters, too.”
She insisted it was clearly an “analogous joke” about racist responses to “Black Lives Matter” — and marveled at the “insane” response.
Fundraising organizer Eric Cheng — who graduated Harvard alongside Janover in May — condemned the “truly disgusting death and rape threats from right-wing trolls” aimed at “one of my best friends.”
“Still, she will continue voicing her beliefs,” he said on Twitter.
Friends previously raised $3,473 for Janover when she lost her mother to cancer in February last year, the site shows.
Despite her defiance against the attacks, Janover had made her Twitter account private Thursday and said on TikTok that she was “gonna be off the grid due to some scarrrryyyy messages.” | 0 | non |
854 | Title: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein associate, arrested
Longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested Thursday on a six-count indictment charging her with grooming young girls for sex.
The British socialite, 58, was arrested by the FBI in New Hampshire around 8:30 a.m., authorities said.
The just-unsealed indictment charges stem from Maxwell’s role “in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein” as early as 1994, court papers say.
“The victims were as young as 14 years old when they were groomed and abused by Maxwell and Epstein, both of whom knew that certain victims were in fact under the age of 18,” the indictment says.
She is specifically accused of grooming three underage victims for sex with Epstein in places including his Upper East Side townhouse, Florida, New Mexico and London.
Maxwell is charged with six counts — conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and two counts of perjury.
Prosecutors also accuse Maxwell — a one-time girlfriend of Epstein’s — of repeatedly lying about her involvement in the financier’s sex trafficking ring during a 2016 deposition.
The US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan is expected to announce the charges at a noon press conference.
Her arrest comes almost a year after Epstein was busted on federal sex trafficking charges on July 6, 2019. He committed suicide in August a day after some 2,000 court documents were unsealed in a related civil case, revealing details of his alleged sex ring.
Prosecutors continued investigating his alleged crimes, leaving open the possibility that his associates could be arrested.
Maxwell went into hiding after the convicted pedophile’s death. Sources told The Post she was arrested in a house in the woods that she bought under an LLC in December. She’s worked to keep her whereabouts secret, hopping from place to place within the US, sources added.
The FBI said Maxwell was busted in Bradford, New Hampshire, a rural town of 1,650 residents.
Maxwell, the daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell who also has an address in London, has long been accused of grooming young girls to have sex with Epstein and his inner circle of powerful pals.
One of the most vocal Epstein victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused Maxwell of recruiting her as a teen in a 2015 defamation suit that has since been settled.
Maxwell allegedly perjured herself during a deposition in Giuffre’s suit by claiming she knew nothing about Epstein having sex with underage girls.
Giuffre claims she was forced to have sex with Epstein and his close friend Prince Andrew.
Maxwell and Andrew have vehemently denied the claims.
Prosecutors said their investigation into Maxwell and Epstein is ongoing — leaving open the possibility that more charges are coming.
Lawyers for Maxwell and others have recently been fighting the potential release of secret court documents related to Giuffre’s suit — including portions of the 2016 deposition about Maxwell’s sex life.
Another alleged victim, Jennifer Araoz, came forward last year claiming she was just 14 when Maxwell befriended her at her performing arts school in Manhattan and convinced her to work as Epstein’s masseuse.
Araoz sued Epstein’s estate and Maxwell, claiming he raped her during a massage session.
Other women have filed similar suits claiming they too were recruited by Maxwell and sexually abused by Epstein. Last week, the alleged victims were greenlit to begin applying for monetary relief through an independently run victim’s compensation fund.
Maxwell is expected to appear in New Hampshire federal court via video Thursday afternoon. Prosecutors have filed a memo asking that she be held without bail, noting her wealth, lack of ties to the US and three passports.
Several victims celebrated the news of Maxwell’s arrest. | 0 | non |
855 | Title: Biden, Democrats outraise Trump, GOP by $10 million in June
Joe Biden’s campaign and Democratic committees raised $10 million more than President Trump and Republicans in June.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and the Democratic National Committee fundraising committees hauled in a total of $141 million in June — a single-month high.
Republicans and the Trump re-election campaign brought in $131 million last month and $266 million in the second quarter.
The Democrats raised $282 million in those three months.
But Trump is expected to have more cash on hand than the Democrats with $300 million at the end of June.
Biden’s campaign hasn’t revealed their cash-on-hand numbers, but Democrats had $122 million at the end of May.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the fundraising totals show voters’ enthusiasm for the president.
“After yet another haul of record-breaking support, the voters are speaking loud and clear — they support President Trump,” McDaniel said. “As Joe Biden remains hidden in his basement, President Trump is leading this country to a Great American Comeback that will reignite our economy, restore law and order, and usher in a new era of strength.”
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon also pitched her candidate to voters.
“It’s clear that voters are looking for steady leadership, experience, empathy, compassion, and character — and they’ll find all of these qualities in Vice President Joe Biden,” she said in a statement to supporters. “This has been our argument since day one of this campaign, and it will be our winning argument in November.”
Biden and Trump benefited from high-profile fundraisers in June.
Trump’s re-election campaign noted that he raised $14 million on his birthday on June 14 due to a fundraising push.
Biden raised $7.6 million during a fundraiser with former President Barack Obama and $6 million with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in June.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
856 | Title: Idaho has highest per capita UFO sightings in the US
Idaho may be known for its potatoes, but it now also has bragging rights for having the highest number of UFO sightings per capita in the nation during the first three months of 2020, according to reports.
Last week, a website that researches satellite internet access for rural communities released a report based on state populations using data from the National UFO Reporting Center, according to the Idaho State Journal.
Residents in the Gem State reported 164 UFO sightings during the past year and a half, according to the study, which came out in advance of World UFO Day, which is Thursday.
By sheer numbers, the title goes to Florida, which reported a whopping 567 sightings — but Idaho’s relatively low population means it had 9.18 sightings per 100,000 people, the Idaho Statesman noted, citing the satelliteinternet.com report.
Tim Tincher, a researcher for the website, said the company wanted to see if satellite internet equipment was being mistaken for UFOs.
“The satellite internet industry has been transforming with the launch of new low-orbit satellite internet services like SpaceX’s Starlink, which promises to bring much faster internet to people all over the US,” Tincher told the Statesman in an email.
“We were curious to see if people were mistaking visible Starlink satellite trains as UFOs in the sky and wanted to take a further look into the data from the National UFO Reporting Center,” he added.
Montana was a close second, with 9.17 sightings per capita, while New Hampshire, Maine and New Mexico — home to Roswell, renowned for an alleged UFO crash in 1947– rounded out the top five spots.
The last sighting in Idaho was in Bonners Ferry on April 18, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
“While out watching Starlink with my wife and two children, we noticed a light that at first we thought was an additional satellite in a different location and direction,” the report said, according to the Statesman.
“We noticed it moved in large distances across the sky in a split second. For example one moment it was in one spot and the next in a totally different, with no trail to be seen,” it continued.
“At one point we witnessed it make a very defined turn, and followed by a second 900-degree turn back to the original area. It appeared as though it were falling from the (sky), but was continuing to move from place to place. It appeared to be a bluish white in color.”
The website also linked to two surveys that show more and more people in the US believe extraterrestrials exist and may even visit our planet.
But they apparently don’t have much interest in Texas.
The Lone Star State reported the fewest per-capita UFO sightings — a mere 1.29 per 100,000 people, according to the report, which found that most sightings are later identified as drones, satellites or weather balloons. | 0 | non |
857 | Title: UK cop under investigation for kicking black man during London arrest
@metpoliceuk @MayorofLondon @AllaboutCroydon @yourcroydon @InsideCroydon @CroydonGuardian would anybody like to explain this?? This was in #croydon – The guy looked terrified and the way the police kick and hit him, I'm not surprised. Please look into this #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/KcePpeh9jZ
— Alex Over (@_AlexOver_) June 27, 2020
A black man in London was allegedly kicked by a police officer as he was pushed to the ground in a caught-on-camera incident that’s now under investigation.
The video shows eight officers trying to restrain the man on a sidewalk, as one of them appears to kick the man in the legs while others tackle him to the ground. Two officers finally detain the man.
The encounter happened on Friday in Croydon in South London, according to My London.
The Metropolitan Police said they’re investigating the incident and that “the actions of each officer seen in the footage will form part of this assessment.”
It’s unclear why the man was being arrested. | 0 | non |
858 | Title: House passes bill sanctioning China over Hong Kong security law
The House of Representatives has approved sanctions on banks doing business with Chinese officials behind the new national security law cracking down on Hong Kong protesters.
Speaking before the measure was passed Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decried Beijing’s efforts to curb Hong Kong’s freedoms.
“Beijing’s so-called ‘national security’ law, passed on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China, signals the death of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle,” the California Democrat said.
“If we do not speak out for human rights and religious freedom in China, we lose all moral authority to speak out any place,” the House speaker continued.
The measure, authored by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), was passed by unanimous consent, a rule that allows legislation in Congress to pass as long as no present members voice objections.
Last week, a similar but not identical piece of legislation passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Changes made in the House will require the bill to return to the Senate for another vote, which is expected on Thursday.
“No one should face life in prison for demonstrating. Now, Hong Kongers are fleeing Hong Kong out of fear for their safety, and we should support their right to do so. We need to impose consequences on the Chinese government for its actions towards #HongKong,” Sherman said in a tweet after the bill’s passage.
In a joint statement released Wednesday evening, Toomey and Van Hollen celebrated the action by the House.
“We are pleased the House moved forward with our legislation, and we intend to secure Senate concurrence, as soon as tomorrow. America must stand with the people of Hong Kong.”
The law has been slammed by many as the Chinese Communist Party’s boldest effort to date to crack down on the territory, which has maintained a semi-autonomous system separate from that of mainland China.
Last year, pro-democracy protests took over Hong Kong for nearly a year and left the former British colony in a tense power struggle with the CCP.
This latest piece of legislation was passed amid warnings and criticism both in Hong Kong and internationally that it would be used to curb opposition voices in the Asian financial hub. | 0 | non |
859 | Title: Seattle sees 525 percent spike in crime thanks to CHOP: Mayor Durkan
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Seattle saw a staggering 525 percent spike in crime as a result of the violence that swept through the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, according to Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Durkan’s emergency order booting protesters from the six-block cop-free zone makes mention of the “narcotics use and violent crime, including rape, robbery, assault, and increased gang activity” within the CHOP since it first emerged in early June.
June 2 to June 30 saw the 525 percent jump in crime compared to the same period last year.
It includes “22 additional incidents, in person-related crime in the area, to include two additional homicides, 6 additional robberies, and 16 additional aggravated assaults (to include 2 additional non-fatal shootings),” Durkan’s order on Tuesday says.
The CHOP crime spree includes the deaths of two black teens, ages 19 and 16, who were fatally shot in separate incidents.
Durkan authorized police to take back the streets, saying conditions in the CHOP “have deteriorated to the point where public health, life, and safety are threatened by activities in and around this area.” | 0 | non |
860 | Title: Hundreds of teens exposed to coronavirus during 'pong fest' in Texas
About 300 teens were exposed to the coronavirus during a recent “pong fest” in Texas, during which several of them were awaiting test results, with some having since been found to be infected, according to reports.
The high school students attended the party near Lakeway in Travis County on June 20 while a number of them had not yet received their COVID-19 test results, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Several later found out they tested positive, according to the paper.
Lakeway Mayor Sandy Cox predicted the mass gathering will lead to more cases in a state hit with record-breaking hospitalizations.
“Unfortunately, our caseload is probably going to increase, and it’s because there was a very large party this past Saturday,” Cox said in a Facebook video.
Everyone who attended the event has been instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days. Additionally, anyone who has come into contact with those who went to the party must isolate themselves for two weeks.
Cox told CNN it was still unclear whether the party led to a high number of cases in the area. The city has had 105 cases, 50 of which are currently active, she added.
Shelly Parks, a spokeswoman with Austin Homeland Security & Emergency Management, told CNN that officials learned about the exposure because health workers are “asking that participation in gatherings be mentioned for contact tracing purposes when people are getting tested.” | 0 | non |
861 | Title: Dad of CHOP shooting victim still has no answers in teen's death
The father of a 19-year-old man who was shot and killed inside Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone last month says he still has no answers in his son’s death.
Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr.’s son of the same name was fatally shot early June 20 near Cal Anderson Park.
“They need to come talk to me and somebody needs to come tell me something, because I still don’t know nothing,” Anderson said during an emotional interview on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“Somebody needs to come to my house and knock on my door and tell me something. I don’t know nothing. All I know is my son got killed up there.”
Anderson’s interview came hours after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan ordered police to take back the streets and clear the CHOP, which had been occupying six blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood since June.
On Monday, Anderson said it was time for the CHOP to go.
His son was one of two black teens killed amid violence that spiraled out of control in the so-called autonomous area. | 0 | non |
862 | Title: CNN reporter Bruna Macedo mugged at knifepoint live on air
Video shows the moment a CNN reporter was mugged at knifepoint during a live broadcast in Brazil.
Bruna Macedo was reporting on rising water levels from heavy rain at Sao Paulo’s Bandeiras Bridge when the suspect is seen in the background crossing the bridge, News.com.au reported.
About two minutes later, while Macedo is speaking with anchor Rafael Colombo, the man appears next to her.
She at first greets the suspect as Colombo continues to talk about the water levels. But he then pulls a knife on the reporter — causing her to step back as the camera cuts to the scene of a wet street.
Macedo handed over two phones during the attack. She wasn’t injured.
“She had a terrible scare but she is fine,” Colombo told Brazilian newspaper Fohla de Sao Pauolo, according to the outlet. | 0 | non |
863 | Title: 3 shot, 1 stabbed in bloody NYC night as shootings surge
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Four men were murdered in the span of less than three hours late Wednesday into early Thursday, continuing the recent run of violence on city streets.
The bloodshed began around 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, when a 39-year-old man was fatally knifed inside an apartment building at the corner of Bradford Street and Belmont Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn, according to cops.
Authorities had not released the victim’s name as of Thursday, pending notification of his family, nor had they identified a motive.
A little more than two hours later and two miles away, Terrence Bazile, 22, was shot in the hip on East 96th Street near Linden Boulevard in Canarsie, police said.
Bazile was rushed to Brookdale Hospital in a private car, but couldn’t be saved.
“By the time I saw my son’s body, they said he has to go in the morgue,” a distraught woman identified as Bazile’s mother could be heard wailing into a phone outside the family home Thursday morning.
A man identified as the victim’s father also publicly mourned the young man’s loss.
“I will never forget this for the rest of my life,” he was heard saying. “It’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be really hard. I’m going to hold this stuff in me for a long time.”
At around 1 a.m., just 20 minutes after Bazile’s slaying, two men were shot inside a car beneath a ramp to the Major Deegan Expressway in The Bronx, according to police.
The men were found slumped over in the vehicle’s two front seats, each with a gunshot wound to the back of the head, police sources said.
One of the men, identified by sources as Richard Dominguez, 30, had a 9mm handgun on him.
The other victim could only be identified as a man in his 30s.
Investigators believe they were shot from outside the car, according to sources, though they couldn’t immediately identify a motive.
Police initially responded to the desolate scene near Sedgwick Avenue and Depot Place for a “crowd condition,” and said that a party may have been going on nearby, though its connection to the slayings — if any — wasn’t immediately clear.
No arrests had been made in any of the cases as of late Thursday.
The four slayings to open July followed a June that logged levels of gun violence not seen in the month in nearly a quarter-century.
The NYPD responded to 205 shootings in June, more than doubling the 89 tallied in June 2019 and reaching a height not recorded in the month since June 1996, according to police sources.
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli and Tina Moore | 0 | non |
864 | Title: New Zealand health minister quits over coronavirus missteps
New Zealand’s embattled health minister — who was twice discovered violating coronavirus lockdown rules — has resigned after previously calling himself an “idiot” for showing poor judgment, according to reports.
David Clark had already been demoted after going mountain biking and taking his family on a beach outing some 15 miles from his Dunedin home, the UK’s Guardian reported.
He has apologized for both incidents, telling Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that he was an “idiot” for the lapse in judgment.
In response, Ardern demoted Clark in the cabinet rankings but held back from axing him, saying his expertise was needed during the public health crisis.
But in the weeks after Clark was demoted, public dislike for him has mounted despite overall praise for the country’s coronavirus response under the leadership of Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, the director-general of health, the news outlet reported.
Last week, Clark refused to take responsibility for multiple failures, including people being released from quarantine without being tested for the virus.
“I take full responsibility for decisions made and taken during my time as minister of health,” he said, according to the BBC.
Ardern accepted Clark’s resignation, saying it was “essential our health leadership has the confidence of the New Zealand public.”
“David has come to the conclusion his presence in the role is creating an unhelpful distraction from the government’s ongoing response to COVID-19 and wider health reforms,” she said.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins will assume the reins of the Health Department until the country’s election in September. | 0 | non |
865 | Title: Teen shot dead in Seattle's CHOP was chased after stealing Jeep
The teenagers shot in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest area earlier this week were being chased after stealing a Jeep at knifepoint — and one sobbed, “I don’t want to die” after the bullets started flying, according to a report.
Antonio Mays Jr., 16, said that he and a 14-year-old boy were being chased and shot at early Monday after they “beat someone up and took” their vehicle at knifepoint, his so-called “street sister,” Ciara Walker, told DailyMail.com.
Walker told the pair to head to the police precinct in the CHOP zone, telling them, “You will be safe there — nothing will happen to you.”
“Next thing I heard the crashing and pop pop pop, and one of them screamed, ‘Ah s–t I’m hit, I don’t wanna die,'” Walker told the Mail. “Then the phone went dead.”
Mays was killed and his younger passenger left in critical condition.
Walker insisted the pair were “not gang members” even though they “hung out with Blood gang members.”
They told her one of the cars that chased them — allegedly firing shots — had “security” written on the side of it.
“They drove into the CHOP zone not to ambush the sleeping protesters but for their own safety,” Walker told the outlet.
“And it ended up costing at least one of them their life.”
The deadly shooting — along with an earlier one that killed a 19-year-old — were central to the zone finally getting shut down this week. | 0 | non |
866 | Title: St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey claims couple's guns kept 'mobsters' away
The St. Louis legal eagle who, along with his wife, confronted Back Lives Matter protesters in their swanky neighborhood insisted that the only thing that kept the “mobsters” at bay was the fact that the couple brandished guns, according to a report.
“I believe in my heart of hearts that the only thing that kept those mobsters, that crowd, away from us is that we were standing there with guns,” Mark McCloskey, 63, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday.
“If I was in the same situation, I’d do it all again,” the lawyer said in an interview at their mansion. “The bottom line was, I was there to protect my family and my house and myself.”
McCloskey and his wife, Patricia, told the outlet that they had prepared for violent activists — leaving fire extinguishers in every first-floor room and a rifle in the living room — after neighborhood homeowner trustees warned them that the protest group was expected to show up.
“We weren’t concerned about it until it got up to the point where the Kingshighway gate was and realized there was no security, no police, nothing to keep them from coming in,” Mark told the paper. “And then they did come in and it was a flood of people.”
He said he saw the demonstrators break a locked pedestrian gate and enter the private Portland Place – though protesters have said they walked through an unlocked gate peacefully, without damaging it, en route to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to demand her resignation.
Mark insisted the safety mechanisms on his AR-15 and his wife’s handgun were on when they confronted the group. He declined to say if either weapon was loaded.
He said one protester called him by name and that another man kept getting closer while “trying to look intimidating.”
“I’m not a mind reader but he gave every impression of being there for assault purposes and to be physically threatening,” Mark said. “It got to the point where I was concerned that I might actually have to shoot.”
Patricia said she called 911 but that cops never showed up. Her husband said he didn’t blame police because they are “underfunded, understaffed, overwhelmed.”
The couple said that while they have heard from supporters, they also have been inundated with threats.
“‘We’re gonna burn your house, this is gonna be my bedroom, my living room and bathroom after you’re dead,’” Mark cited as an example.
Meanwhile, several neighborhood residents signed a letter Wednesday in support of the demonstrators and condemning threats of violence against them, “especially through the brandishing of firearms,” the paper reported.
During the interview, the couple sat in a room with a leopard skin rug and a red fox head mounted on the wall, but Mark insisted he is not a hunter.
“I don’t kill animals but whenever trophy mounts come up for sale, somebody having killed those poor bastards and put them up for auction … I buy them and preserve them,” he told the paper.
The McCloskeys also made light of a meme that has been circulating after their encounter went viral.
“The Hamburglar …,“ Mark joked.
“The Hamburglar was one of the funniest,” interjected his wife, who sparked the meme after wearing a black and white striped shirt that was reminiscent of an outfit worn by the character in a McDonald’s commercial. | 0 | non |
867 | Title: Texas bar owners stage 'Bar Lives Matter' protest
HAPPENING NOW: The “Texas Bars Fight Back” protest is happening outside the Texas Capitol to protest the closing the bars statewide. pic.twitter.com/NPLen0fFmF
— Kacey Bowen (@KaceyonFox7) June 30, 2020
Bar owners in Texas staged a protest in reaction to the state’s order to shut them down for a second time due to the coronavirus, reports said.
Tee Allen Parker, owner of the Machine Shed Bar and Grille, named Tuesday’s event “Bar Lives Matter” in an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality.
Parker, whose establishment is in Kilgore, Texas, roughly two hours south of Dallas, is already suing Texas Gov. Greg Abbot over the bar closures — which he claims are devastating his livelihood and forcing many of his peers into bankruptcy, according to CBS Austin.
“This one individual is picking and choosing winners and losers,” Jared Woodfill, an attorney for Parker, told the outlet. “Gov. Abbott has chosen to sentence bar owners to bankruptcy.”
As a part of its most recent coronavirus order, Texas did not close down or limit capacity at other businesses — like hair salons, tattoo parlors, and nail studios. The order did require restaurants to operate at 50 percent capacity.
“You can’t tell me that my tiny little bar is the problem. He’s the problem,” Parker previously told the Washington Post. “He’s targeting us, and it’s discrimination.”
Parker also organized a “Bar Lives Matter” protest last week at the Machine Shed, and is planning to host another at the state Capitol on Sunday.
Texas has seen a record number of cases since the state’s reopening earlier this year. The state currently has 160,000 confirmed cases and 2,424 deaths from COVID-19. | 0 | non |
868 | Title: Music teacher in semen-tainted flute incident to plead guilty
A California music teacher accused of giving elementary school students woodwind instruments with his semen inside has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to state and federal charges.
John Edward Zeretzke, 61, will make the plea in relation to one federal count of production of child pornography and several state charges of lewd acts with a minor under 14, the Mercury News reported.
Zeretzke is the founder of Flutes Across the World, a nonprofit organization that teaches students how to make their own flutes.
The musician, who lives in Ventura County, has agreed to plead guilty to accusations involving minors dating back to 2015.
In one instance in November 2015, according to court records, Zeretzke sent a 15-year-old girl he met on Facebook over 40 explicit photos of himself.
In August 2017, Zeretzke traveled to the Philippines — where Flutes Across the World has held a music mission — to have sex with a minor, court papers allege.
Zeretzke in March 2019 was indicted by a grand jury for allegedly giving flutes filled with his own semen to five girls from two separate elementary schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties, the report said, citing court papers obtained by the Southern California News Group.
A public defender representing Zeretzke declined a request for comment from the Mercury News. | 0 | non |
869 | Title: Groom may have infected 113 people with coronavirus at wedding
An Indian man who traveled home for his wedding last month may have infected 113 people at the ceremony, a report said.
The 31-year-old man — who died two days after the wedding — traveled to Paliganj from New Delhi for the June 15 celebration attended by more 350 friends and family, according to The Indian Express.
The groom had pleaded with his family to stop the wedding because he was sick — but he was denied.
“Even though he was feeling unwell by June 14 and wanted the wedding deferred, family heads from both sides advised against it, citing huge financial losses if the arrangements had to be canceled,” a relative told the outlet.
Two days after the wedding, the man’s condition became serious and he was rushed to the hospital but died on the way. The family cremated his body, the report said.
A relative said they were less concerned about the virus because “rural areas are almost COVID-free.”
Local authorities are now attempting to prevent the infection from spreading any further.
All close relatives who attended the wedding were tested. The bride was not among those who tested positive. | 0 | non |
870 | Title: Alabama students gamble on who gets sick at 'COVID-19 parties'
Students in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, are reportedly throwing “COVID parties” with their friends and gambling on who will get sick first, according to local officials.
City council member Sonya McKinstry testified Wednesday that a series of previously reported parties were all part of a morbid game that included intentionally inviting COVID-positive students in an attempt to intentionally contract the deadly virus.
“They put money in a pot and they try to get COVID. Whoever gets COVID first gets the pot. It makes no sense,” she said.
City council members did not mention the University of Alabama by name, but the school is the largest college in the city and the flagship school of the state’s university system.
Tuscaloosa City Fire Chief Randy Smith briefed the council on these parties earlier this week, saying that authorities thought students’ intentional gambling on virus transmission “was kind of a rumor at first,” but added, “We did some additional research … not only did the doctors’ offices help confirm it but the state confirmed they also had the same information.”
Despite the news, McKinstry insists the city is taking the public health threat of coronavirus seriously.
“We’re trying to break up any parties that we know of,” she told ABC News.
There have been at least 37,536 recorded coronavirus infections and 926 fatalities in Alabama. | 0 | non |
871 | Title: Cop slugs woman in the face at Miami International Airport, video shows
A Miami cop was caught on camera sucker-punching a woman in the face during an argument on Wednesday night.
The officer could be seen standing next to the woman at Miami International Airport, according to a video of the incident posted to Twitter.
It’s unclear what sparked the dispute, but the video begins as the woman approaches the officer and shouts at him.
“You’re black. You’re acting like you’re white but you’re really black,” the woman can be heard saying to the officer — both of whom are black.
“What are you going to do?” the woman adds.
The officer then cocks his fist and punches the woman as bystanders gasp.
A second cop standing nearby then joins to assist the first officer as they grab the woman and pin her down as they place her under arrest.
The director of the police department, Alfredo Ramirez, announced about 30 minutes after the video was posted that the department has launched an investigation into the officers’ conduct.
“I am shocked and angered by a body cam video that I just saw involving one of our officers. I’ve immediately initiated an investigation and ordered that the involved officers be relieved of duty,” Ramirez said in a tweeted statement.
“Actions such as these undermine the hard work that we have invested in our community and causes my heart to break for our community and for the vast majority of our officers who dedicate their lives to serving our County,” Ramirez went on.
The director said he has also requested State Attorney Kathy Rundle to assist in the investigation into the involved officers, who have not been identified.
“This will not stand, and I assure our community that any officer acting in this vain [sic] will be held to account,” Ramirez said. | 0 | non |
872 | Title: Campaign bus for Jeff Sessions' primary opponent goes up in flames
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A campaign bus belonging to Jeff Sessions’ opponent for Alabama’s Senate seat burst into flames on a highway Wednesday night.
The driver of Tommy Tuberville’s bus escaped injury after the vehicle caught fire heading northbound on Interstate 59, according to the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office.
No other injuries were reported.
Photos posted to the department’s Facebook page show flames roaring from the bus that is pulled over on the grass abutting the highway.
Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach backed by President Trump, will face Sessions July 14 in Alabama’s GOP primary runoff election.
The winner of July’s election will go on to face Democratic incumbent Sen. Doug Jones. | 0 | non |
873 | Title: California man posted COVID-19 warning day before he died
A California man who contracted the coronavirus after attending a party posted a haunting warning on Facebook the day before he died.
Tommy Macias, 51, began to show symptoms a week after attending a party in early June in Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles outside Los Angeles, NBC News reported.
On June 20, he penned the tragic message in which he expressed regret for failing to follow social distancing measures and mask-wearing guidelines and for putting his family at risk.
“Because of my stupidity, I put my mom and sisters’ and my family’s health in jeopardy. This has been a very painful experience,” he wrote.
“This is no joke. If you have to go out wear a mask and practice social distancing.”
Macias, a truck driver, added, “Hopefully with God’s help I’ll be able to survive this.”
An official from the Riverside County Office of Vital Records told NBC News that Macias died from COVID-19 the following day.
Macias had tried to strictly follow the state’s shelter-in-place order between late March and early June because he was at risk with diabetes, Gustavo Lopez, his brother-in-law, told Yahoo News.
But Macias decided to attend the party after Gov. Gavin Newsom signaled he’d be loosening coronavirus restrictions, the outlet reported.
“He was quarantining because he was overweight and had diabetes,” Lopez said.
After the soiree, one of Macias’ friends contacted him to let him know he had tested positive for the coronavirus — and that he knew of his positive diagnosis when he attended the party, Lopez told Yahoo.
But the friend falsely believed that because he didn’t feel any symptoms, he couldn’t transmit the virus to others.
Lopez said he knew of more than a dozen people who contracted COVID-19 after attending the party.
Macias was transported to a local hospital at about 11 a.m. June 2 and placed on a ventilator between roughly 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. before he passed away around 9 p.m., Lopez said.
“He would do anything for everybody,” Lopez told Yahoo. “No questions asked.” | 0 | non |
874 | Title: Los Angeles launches color-coded system for coronavirus threats
We will begin posting the COVID threat level at https://t.co/8biEGuYjcA using the colors red, orange, yellow, and green. Today we’re at orange — the risk of infection remains high and you should stay at home as often as you can and only leave for essential activities. pic.twitter.com/ACACMFGKaj
— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) July 2, 2020
Los Angeles has launched a new color-coded threat system for the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Wednesday.
The system includes green, yellow, orange and red threat levels, with green indicating COVID-19 is mostly contained and there’s low risk of infection, while red flags a high risk and warns people should stay home at all times.
“Information and data on the threat helps us all inform our behavior and guides us to better days,” Garcetti said during a news briefing.
The indicator is currently tipped to orange, warning of an “extremely high risk of infection” with an advisory that residents should only leave their homes for essential activities.
“You should assume everyone around you is infectious,” Garcetti said.
The threat levels are influenced by indicators like positivity rates, hospital capacity, the number of cases and deaths.
The project comes as the city and the state of California grapple with a surging number of coronavirus cases, a trend that has forced Gov. Gavin Newsom to dramatically scale back his state reopening.
Newsom on Sunday ordered all bars in LA and six other counties to close over spikes in cases.
The governor followed up Wednesday with another expanded order to shut down bars, museums, movie theaters and indoor dining across most of the state for three weeks.
“COVID-19 is still circulating in California, and in some parts of the state, growing stronger,” Newsom said in a statement.
Over a two-week period from June 15 to June 29, the state’s confirmed coronavirus cases increased by nearly 45 percent, rising to nearly 250,000.
Hospitalizations during that time period increased 52 percent to 5,077.
California is among many states across the country — including the likes of Florida, Texas and Arizona — experiencing an alarming surge in cases. The US as a whole shattered its record for single-day cases increases multiple times during the last week of June.
The US has by far the most confirmed coronavirus cases in the world, reporting 2.68 million infections as of Wednesday night, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
875 | Title: Epstein 'sex slave' Giuffre, Dershowitz lose in court ruling
Attorneys for alleged Jeffrey Epstein “sex slave” Virginia Roberts Giuffre were ordered Wednesday to destroy evidence from her case against Ghislaine Maxwell — as lawyer Alan Dershowitz was also denied access to the potentially explosive information.
Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska said she was “troubled” to learn during oral arguments last week that Giuffre’s lawyers, from the firm of Cooper & Kirk, had been given sealed records from her since-settled suit against Maxwell, who Giuffre claims recruited her to have sex with Epstein and his pals while she was underage.
The other men allegedly include Dershowitz, whom Giuffre is suing for defamation over his public denials of her accusations, including calling her a “certified, complete, total liar,” and who is counter-suing Giuffre for causing “serious harm … to his reputation, his business and his health.”
“As a practical matter, the Court would be surprised — shocked, even — if Cooper & Kirk was not in some sense ‘using’ the Maxwell discovery in its representation of Ms. Giuffre in her action against Mr. Dershowitz,” the judge wrote.
Preska also rejected claims by Giuffre’s lawyers that they were entitled to the evidence, obtained from her former attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, because they’d been hired to represent her in the Maxwell case.
The 13-page ruling said Cooper & Kirk “has not, from what the Court can tell, been actively working on the case.”
Preska directed the Cooper & Kirk lawyers to destroy the evidence, along with “any material, including work product, derived from” it, and to submit an affidavit afterward.
Preska also rejected a request by Dershowitz for access to “all filings and discovery materials, including third-party discovery” from the Maxwell case, saying that “it is not a targeted strike that Mr. Dershowitz proposes, but a carpet bombing.”
Although both cases are related, she said, “they are not coextensive” because Giuffre’s suit against the famed Harvard law professor “involves a much narrower range of conduct than what was at issue in her action against Ms. Maxwell.”
“The Court is thus skeptical that judicial economy would be served by handing Mr. Dershowitz a mountain of discovery from a separate case that may not even be relevant to his defense or to his counterclaims against Ms. Giuffre,” Preska wrote.
In a footnote, the judge also said that although she didn’t think Dershowitz would be “brazen” enough to release the evidence, she was concerned that he might be tempted “to be more cavalier with the sealed materials” to help defend his reputation.
“As a general matter, Mr. Dershowitz’s battle with Ms. Giuffre has proceeded in very public — and frequently toxic — fashion,” Preska noted.
Neither side returned requests for comment. | 0 | non |
876 | Title: Mary Trump's tell-all can be published, New York court rules
A New York appeals court judge on Wednesday gave the go ahead for Simon & Schuster to publish a controversial new book written by President Trump’s niece.
Judge Alan D. Scheinkman reversed a lower court’s decision from Tuesday that had temporarily blocked Mary Trump’s tell-all memoir — “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” — which is set to be released July 28.
In his decision, the appeals court judge ruled that Simon & Schuster wasn’t bound by a nondisclosure agreement the author signed as part of a dispute over the 1999 will of the president’s father, Fred Trump.
“Unlike Ms. Trump,” Justice Scheinkman wrote, “S&S has not agreed to surrender or relinquish any of its First Amendment rights.”
But Scheinkman declined to rule at this time on whether Mary Trump herself had violated the deal herself.
Both Simon & Schuster and Mary Trump were sued by the president’s brother, Robert Trump, over claims the book violated the confidentiality agreement.
In an affidavit Tuesday, the publisher’s CEO Jonathan Karp said that his company was unaware that the author had signed the agreement — and that it had already printed 75,000 copies of the book and sent them to bookstores and others.
Simon & Schuster hailed the ruling in a statement, saying the book was of “great interest and importance to the national discourse that fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public.”
“As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied.”
With Post wires | 0 | non |
877 | Title: Cali couple nearly swept out to sea during wedding photos
A couple taking wedding photos at a California beach had to be rescued by lifeguards after being swept into the ocean by a crashing wave, a report said.
Footage shot by a witness and obtained by KABC showed the moment the photoshoot at Treasure Island Beach in Laguna Beach turned soggy.
The bride and groom could be seen getting ready to pose for picture while standing atop an oceanside rock when the wave engulfs them.
The footage skips over the couple getting pulled into the water, but picks back up with the bride — in her white dress — being taken back to shore by lifeguards.
Neither the man or woman were seriously injured, the report said. | 0 | non |
878 | Title: Seattle's CHOP full of destruction after cops oust protesters
This is what Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone looks like after police officers stormed in on Wednesday to clear protesters out.
Photos showing the aftermath of the eviction showed city crews using heavy equipment to remove concrete barriers and cart away debris, including plywood signs that read “BLM” and “Still our streets.”
“I was just stunned by the amount of graffiti, garbage and property destruction,” Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said after she walked around the area.
Sanitation workers were spotted scrubbing the pavements in the former protest zone and cleaning graffiti.
Police also strung yellow caution tape from tree to tree warning people not to re-enter.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mayor Jenny Durkan authorized police to remove protesters who are “unlawfully occupying Cal Anderson Park area” — dubbed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP.
More than three dozen people were arrested during the early-morning ouster, charged with failure to disperse, obstruction, assault and unlawful weapon possession.
Durkan said that while she supported cops in making arrests Wednesday, she didn’t think many of those arrested for misdemeanors should be prosecuted.
The dismantling of the CHOP came after two teens were shot and killed in the zone that spanned multiple blocks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
879 | Title: Richmond removes statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson
A massive statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson was removed from a park in Richmond, Virginia, Wednesday.
The sculpture — depicting Jackson on horseback — was taken down by work crews just hours after Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered all Confederate statues be removed from city land.
Stoney said the decree in the onetime capital of the Confederacy is “long overdue.”
“Those statues stood high for over 100 years for a reason, and it was to intimidate and to show black and brown people in this city who was in charge,” the mayor said.
“I think the healing can now begin in the city of Richmond.”
Several hundred people were on site to witness the removal of Jackson’s statue, cheering when work crews lifted the monument from its concrete base using a giant crane.
“This is long overdue,” said Brent Holmes, who is black. “One down, many more to go.”
The Jackson statue is the latest Confederate symbol to be removed in the US since racial injustice and police brutality protests erupted five weeks ago over the police killing of George Floyd.
Richmond resident, Eli Swann, said he’s been protesting since “Day 1” was felt an “overwhelming sense of gratitude” to see Jackson’s statue taken down.
“I’ve been out here since Day 1,” Swann said. “We’ve been seeing the younger people out here, just coming and constantly marching and asking for change. And now finally the change is coming about.”
With Post wires | 0 | non |
880 | Title: Finland scraps pre-Nazi swastika logo from Air Force
Finland’s Air Force unceremoniously dropped its logo used since 1917, which prominently displayed a swastika, it was confirmed Wednesday.
The Air Force Command unit has swapped out its old logo, a golden swastika placed in the middle of a set of wings, with a more generalized insignia featuring a golden eagle on a blue badge, an agency spokesperson confirmed to BBC News Wednesday.
“As unit emblems are worn on uniform, it was considered impractical and unnecessary to continue using the old unit emblem, which had caused misunderstandings from time to time,” the spokesperson said.
The change was first spotted on Twitter Tuesday by Finnish professor Teivo Teivainen of the University of Helsinki. The Air Force had been gradually phasing out swastika emblems for the eagle design over the last few years, he said.
Before being indelibly linked to Nazism and the Holocaust, swastikas were a common design motif worldwide dating back thousands of years, adorning anything from buildings to sports uniforms.
Finland’s Air Force, while an ally of Nazi Germany during WWII, had made use of swastikas on uniforms, planes and in other capacities dating back shortly after its independence in 1917.
The agency told BBC the swastika remains in some Air Force unit flags and decorations, but is no longer prominently used as the badge of the central Air Force Command. | 0 | non |
881 | Title: Catholic priest suspended for comparing BLM activists to 'maggots’
CARMEL, Ind. — A bishop suspended a suburban Indianapolis Catholic priest from public ministry on Wednesday for comparing the Black Lives Matter movement and its organizers to “maggots and parasites” in a recent church bulletin.
Bishop Timothy Doherty, of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, took the action against the Rev. Theodore Rothrock, of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, for comments that the pastor wrote Sunday in the weekly bulletin.
“The only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own,” Rothrock wrote. “They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others. They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace any current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment.”
The diocese expressed “pastoral concern for the affected communities” in a statement posted on its website.
“The suspension offers the Bishop an opportunity for pastoral discernment for the good of the diocese and for the good of Father Rothrock. Various possibilities for his public continuation in priestly ministry are being considered, but he will no longer be assigned as Pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Deacon Bill Reid will serve as Administrator of St. Elizabeth Seton,” the statement said.
Rothrock had been due to take over as pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel next month.
Rothrock issued an apology Tuesday night in a message sent to parishioners and later posted on the church’s website, The Indianapolis Star reported.
“It was not my intention to offend anyone, and I am sorry that my words have caused any hurt to anyone,” Rothrock wrote.
The church must condemn bigotry, which is “a part of the fabric of our society,” he wrote.
“We must also be fully aware that there are those who would distort the Gospel for their own misguided purposes,” Rothrock wrote. “People are afraid, as I pointed out, rather poorly I would admit, that there are those who feed on that fear to promote more fear and division.”
Doherty said Tuesday that Rothrock should issue a clarification of the bulletin comments.
The newly formed Carmel Against Racial Injustice group sought Rothrock’s removal from leadership. The group has said it planned to demonstrate Sunday on the sidewalk surrounding the church. It wasn’t clear Wednesday whether Rothrock’s suspension changed that. The group didn’t immediately reply to a message left Wednesday seeking comment about the suspension. | 0 | non |
882 | Title: Harvard grad Claira Janover lost Deloitte job over TikTok 'stab threat'
The Harvard graduate who said in a TikTok video that she would “stab” anyone who told her “All Lives Matter” revealed in a new pair of recordings that she has lost her job over the perceived threats and ensuing furor.
“Standing up for Black Lives Matter put me in a place online to be seen by millions of people,” a teary Claira Janover said in a new video posted Wednesday afternoon. “The job that I’d worked really hard to get and meant a lot to me has called me and fired me because of everything.”
Janover’s LinkedIn account lists her as an “incoming government and public business service analyst” at Deloitte, a UK-based accounting firm.
During the video, Janover gestured to what appears to be a page from the company’s website, and noted that she was axed “even though they claim to stand against systematic bias, racism and unequal treatment.”
Janover — who graduated from Harvard in May with a degree in government and psychology — went viral after posting a video to the platform railing against people with “the nerve, the sheer entitled Caucasity to say ‘All Lives Matter.’”
Your scare tactics won’t work on me. always and forever, #blacklivesmatter
♬ original sound – cjanover
“I’ma stab you,” the Connecticut native said in the video, zooming in tight on her face.
“I’ma stab you, and while you’re struggling and bleeding out, I’ma show you my paper cut and say, ‘My cut matters, too.'”
Janover, who contended that the message was an analogy rather than a serious threat, has since received a deluge of threats against her own life and safety.
In her new videos, she blamed supporters of President Trump for going after her job.
“Trump supporters took my job away from me,” she said in another new video posted Wednesday. “I have gotten death threats, rape threats, violent threats. It was OK, but now my future’s entirely compromised because Trump supporters have decided to come for my life.”
Through tears, a defiant Janover vowed not to back down.
“I’m too strong for you. I’m too strong for any of you ‘All Lives Matter,’ racist Trump supporters,” she said. “It sucks. But it doesn’t suck as much as systemic racism. And I’m not going to stop using my platform to advocate for it.”
She also took a parting shot at Deloitte.
#deloitte I am on the right side of history. #blacklivesmatter
♬ original sound – cjanover
“I’m sorry, Deloitte, that you can’t see that,” she said. “That you were cowardice [sic] enough to fight somebody who’s going to make an indelible change in the world and is going to have an impact.”
Deloitte did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment. | 0 | non |
883 | Title: Gun background checks soar to all-time high amid national unrest
Background checks for gun sales skyrocketed in June — hitting an all-time monthly high amid the coronavirus pandemic and national anti-police protests, according to a report.
The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System conducted 3.9 million background checks last month — an increase of 70 percent over June 2019 and eclipsing March’s record of 3.7 million checks, the Washington Times reported.
This brings 2020’s tally to 19.2 million background checks in the first six months alone, which amounts to more checks than the first 14 years combined since the bureau began keeping statistics in 1998, the outlet said.
Background checks don’t always equate to gun purchases, however, the figures can be used to provide a rough estimate of weapons that change hands.
But Justin Anderson, marketing director of one of the country’s biggest gun retailers, Hyatt Guns, said he has never seen demand so high.
“I’ve been in this business going on 14 years, and I have never seen this much demand,” Anderson told the Washington Examiner. “There are shortages of nearly every single defensive firearm currently manufactured.”
“Our buyer is working seven days a week trying to keep our store stocked,” Anderson said, adding that new shipments sell out the day they arrive.
Meanwhile, Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, which tracks gun industry data, estimates that 2.4 million guns were sold in June — a 145% increase on June 2019, according to their data. | 0 | non |
884 | Title: Florida sheriff: I'll deputize gun owners if protests are violent
A sheriff in Florida said he’s ready to deputize every gun owner in his county if violent protests erupt.
Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels issued the warning in a three-minute video Wednesday, saying he was ready to enlist the help of civilians if there are any demonstrations his deputies can’t handle alone.
“If we can’t handle you, I’ll exercise the power and authority as the sheriff and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in the county,” Daniels said.
“I’ll deputize them to this one purpose: to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility.”
The sheriff didn’t indicate that any protests are actually planned in his suburban Jacksonville county.
Sporting a white cowboy hat as he stood in front of 18 deputies, Daniels said he would protect peaceful protests — but added that if anyone starts “tearing up Clay County, that is not going to be acceptable.”
“The second you step out from up under the protection of the Constitution,” he continued.
“We’ll be waiting on you and give you everything you want: all the publicity, all the pain, all the glamour and glory for all that five minutes will give you.”
With Post wires | 0 | non |
885 | Title: Los Angeles cuts police spending, reduces force to 2008 levels
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted to slash the budget for the city’s police force and reduce staffing to levels reportedly unseen since 2008.
The vote was a response to a dire financial forecast and the demands from mass protests in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
The Council voted 12-2 to scale back the number of officers from 10,000 to about 9,757 by next summer — part of a $150 million cut to the LAPD budget, The Lost Angeles Times reported.
Councilman Curren Price, the only black member of the Council’s budget committee, supported the cuts and said about $100 million of those savings will be redirected to summer youth jobs and hiring programs to help residents of color.
“This is a step forward, supporting minority communities in ways in which they deserve — with respect, dignity and an even playing field,” Price said.
The vote came a day after the New York City Council moved to cut a billion dollars out of the NYPD’s $6 billion budget, which will lead to a reduction through attrition of 1,163 cops in the 36,000-member force.
Though advocates in LA, as in New York, criticized the city’s budget for not going far enough in reducing police spending at the LAPD, which operates on an overall $3.1 billion budget.
Activists with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles called for the Council to pass a “People’s Budget” that would essentially divest from policing and relocate the funds the housing and other social services.
Los Angeles City Council members responded by looking for other ways to lighten the police footprint in the city, the Times reported.
The body is exploring how the divert more 911 calls away from the police department and toward other city agencies. It’s ordered city staffers to submit a draft for an “unarmed model of crisis response.”
The additional step pleased Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of BLM-Los Angeles.
“Rolling back police functions has the potential to have a far greater impact on advancing the call to defund the police than approving a meager cut of $150 million,” Abdullah told the paper. | 0 | non |
886 | Title: How Seattle CHOP went from socialist summer camp to deadly disaster
When protesters first took over Seattle’s Capitol Hill district last month, supporters pitched it as something of socialist summer camp: movie nights under the stars, free food, a sidewalk library — and no cops.
But the leaderless six-block zone — known as the CHAZ, or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, before it was renamed CHOP for Capitol Hill Occupation Protest — quickly spiraled into violence and chaos, culminating in a pair of shootings that killed two black teens.
On Wednesday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan finally issued an emergency order for police to take back the streets and clear out the protesters who had been camped out for nearly a month.
It was a stunning reversal for Durkan — who originally compared the CHOP to a “block party atmosphere” and suggested the city could be in for a “summer of love.”
The CHOP first emerged June 8 amid the raging nationwide protests over George Floyd, the black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck in late May.
As demonstrations grew more violent in Seattle, cops were told to abandon the East Precinct on June 8 in Capitol Hill, the LGBT-friendly neighborhood with a vibrant nightlife.
Police Chief Carmen Best later made it clear it was not by choice — blasting the city’s leaders for relenting “to severe public pressure.”
“I’m angry about how this all came about,” she fumed.
That night, protesters, led by Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, invaded City Hall before retreating back to the East Precinct. They huddled together on the pavement to watch the 2016 documentary “13th” on a giant screen, with many camping out overnight.
With cops gone from the area, protesters took over — erecting barriers, spray-painting the precinct’s sign to read “Seattle People Department,” setting up a “no-cop co-op” with free food, organizing political discussions and erecting a giant memorial in honor of Floyd and other people of color killed by police in recent years.
But the peace didn’t last.
Some protesters armed themselves and stood guard at the edges of the autonomous zone — including Solomon “Raz” Simone, an assault rifle-toting rapper who some accused of acting as a “warlord” in what was supposed to be a leaderless movement.
There was also in-fighting — Simone clashed with a graffiti artist, in an caught-on-tape fist fight, and videos showed one protester demanding his white counterparts fork over $10 to black demonstrators.
Residents and business owners within the CHOP have also filed lawsuits alleging constitutional rights violations — after police said early on they’d only respond to the area if there was an immediate threat to life or safety.
In recent weeks, the violence turned to tragedy with at least four shootings in or around the CHOP in nine days — including two that left a pair of teens dead.
Lorenzo Anderson, 19, died of his injuries in a shooting on June 20 that also left a 33-year-old man injured.
The slain teen’s father said it was time for CHOP to be shut down.
“This doesn’t look like a protest to me no more,” said Horace Lorenzo Anderson, KIRO7 reported. “That just looks like they just took over and said, ‘We can take over whenever we want to.’”
Another shooting early Monday morning claimed the life of Antonio Mays Jr., 16, who was driving in a Jeep Cherokee that witnesses said crashed into one of CHOP’s concrete barriers.
Marty Jackson, a volunteer medic within CHOP, estimated that the SUV was riddled with 300 bullet holes, claiming the zone’s own security members shot up the car.
A 14-year-old boy was also critically wounded in the shootout.
Video taken the same night and released by local police shows someone prowling the area with a long gun, while others cower behind concrete barricades.
“Now it’s like pretty much an active war zone,” Jackson told radio station KUOW.
Both of those killed in the zone were black, police said.
“Two African American men are dead, at a place where they claim to be working for Black Lives Matter. But they’re gone, they’re dead now,” Best said on Monday.
That same day, Durkan announced plans to finally dismantle CHOP —and issued her vacate order just before 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Police outfitted in riot gear and armed with batons and tactical vehicles arrived on scene, giving protesters eight minutes to clear out.
Cops used bicycles to push protesters back about five feet at a time, while warning them about the possible use of chemical weapons, according to MyNorthwest.
They then began tearing down tents and wooden barricades.
“A lot of chaos, you hear many, many voices,” Debora Killman, who was sleeping in a tent, told KOMO News. “But then I heard on the megaphone it’s either going to be the police or National Guard so that’s when I started saying OK, it’s time to get up.”
Durkan’s Wednesday order directed the police to set up a “security buffer” around the area as they work on taking back the East Precinct.
Police said they’d made 31 arrests on charges including failure to disperse, obstruction, assault, and unlawful weapon possession as of 9:25 a.m. local time.
“As I have said, and I will say again, I support peaceful demonstrations. Black Lives Matter, and I too want to help propel this movement toward meaningful change in our community,” said Best.
“But enough is enough. The CHOP has become lawless and brutal.” | 0 | non |
887 | Title: House Dems pass $1.5T 'green' bill, ignored by GOP Senate
House Democrats on Wednesday passed a $1.5 trillion “green” infrastructure plan that would increase funding to fix US crumbling infrastructure while also adding funding for schools and hospitals.
The measure passed in a largely party-line 233 to 188 vote after the White House issued a veto threat, The Hill reported.
President Trump criticized the bill as “full of wasteful ‘Green New Deal’ initiatives,” and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has zero interest in bringing it to the Senate for a vote.
“Naturally this nonsense is not going anywhere in the Senate,” the Kentucky Republican said Wednesday.
Much of the $500 billion in transportation funding in the so-called Moving Forward Act is linked to environmentally friendly provisions that require states to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and make other efforts to combat climate change.
“We are going to deal with the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States of America here and now, today, this week. We’re starting,” House Transportation Committee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said, the website reported.
“We’re going to need millions of good paying jobs, and these aren’t just construction jobs. They’re design, they’re engineering, they’re small business, they’re manufacturing. There’s a host of people, everybody will be touched by this bill, and the investments will provide returns, many, many times over.”
In addition to highway funding, it earmarks more money for public transit, and includes large tax breaks for renewable energy sources and other clean energy efforts.
Republicans ripped the green measures and the cost of the package.
“The majority believes it’s acceptable to put together a massive bill that’s going to turn our transportation system upside down and add $1.5 trillion dollars in debt,” said Transportation Committee Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-Mo.). | 0 | non |
888 | Title: Navy warns sailors to stop buying LSD on the dark web
Better steer clear of the “high” seas!
The Navy recently released a bizarre warning urging sailors not to buy LSD on the dark web — because it’s dangerous and they’ll likely get caught.
Officials said the often illicit internet marketplace sells users hallucinogenic drugs with “perceived anonymity” — but the feds have ways of catching buyers, according to a message released by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service last Thursday.
“Recent law enforcement reporting has revealed that an increasing number of people are moving to purchasing illicit substances via the dark web because of the perceived anonymity provided by tools like The Onion Router,” the NCIS notice states. “While [it] offers anonymity by obscuring IP addresses, law enforcement use various investigative techniques to identify both purchasers and sellers.”
Plus, drugs sold on the dark web are sometimes cut with harmful chemicals, officials warned.
“Drugs purchased via the dark web are often laced with other substances in dangerous combinations that can lead to death,” the notice says. “Additionally, international, federal, state, and local law enforcement are working collectively, using a variety of techniques to infiltrate marketplaces, identify users, and combat the illicit drug threat.”
The Navy stopped testing sailors for LSD use in 2006 and has no way of knowing if seamen are still dropping acid, according to the military news site taskandpurpose.com.
It wasn’t clear why the military branch felt the need to issue the advisory.
But in May 2018, 14 Air Force officers tasked with safeguarding nuclear missile silos in Wyoming were disciplined for taking acid between shifts, a move some say may have simply been due to boredom.
On the dark web, drugs — ranging from cocaine to diabetes meds — are sold on through specialized browsers, generally using encryption technology to protect the identity of users. | 0 | non |
889 | Title: Kayleigh McEnany says AOC wants to get rid of NYPD entirely
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany ripped AOC on Wednesday after the firebrand leftist congresswoman said a drastic $1 billion cut to the NYPD police budget was not enough — McEnany suggesting she wanted to get rid of cops altogether.
“It’s unacceptable when you have people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really suggesting where the Democratic Party stands today because taking a billion away from the NYPD officers wasn’t enough for her,” McEnany told reporters at Wednesday’s White House briefing.
“She wants to take it all away. She doesn’t want police officers and that’s a really unacceptable proposition,” she continued.
The Bronx Democratic Socialist this week criticized a sweeping reduction to the NYPD budget after Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council on Tuesday night slashed $1 billion from the force’s $6 billion operating budget.
In a statement, AOC said the cuts were a “disingenuous illusion” and called for further defunding as the Big Apple experiences a surge in shootings and violence.
“This is not a victory. The fight to defund policing continues,” she said, referring to the movement to reduce public spending on police and allocating it to initiatives for marginalized communities.
“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools,” she continued.
The “Squad” member is also engaged in a public spat with Hizzoner over the cuts.
McEnany told reporters that Trump stood firmly behind the city’s Finest and noted a recent /YouGov survey which found most Americans did not support the movement to defund police departments.
“We’re at a place where 64 percent of the nation are concerned that the growing criticism of America’s police will lead to a shortage of police officers that will harm all Americans. It’s an untenable principle,” McEnany said.
In an interview with Fox Business Network earlier Wednesday, the Queens-born president described the cuts to the NYPD as “very sad” and lashed at de Blasio without referring to him by name.
“I’m a big fan of New York’s Finest. We call them New York’s Finest, the policemen, and what he’s done to that incredible group of men and women is very sad. It’s very sad,” Trump said.
“I don’t mean just the billion dollars, that’s a big thing, but even before you go long, long before this when they turned around, when they turned their backs, his relationship with the police of New York — and these are incredible people — it’s been very sad to watch, frankly.” | 0 | non |
890 | Title: Coronavirus case in refugee camp at US border raises alarm
HOUSTON — A person has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus in a sprawling refugee camp on the U.S.-Mexico border where an estimated 2,000 people await their immigration court dates, according to a nonprofit group providing medical care at the camp. Coronavirus case in refugee camp at US border raises alarm
Global Response Management said in a statement Tuesday that the positive test came back Monday for one person and negative for three family members. Tests are pending for two other people.
Residents in the camp in Matamoros, Mexico, live in squalid conditions: Most sleep in tents or underneath tarps, and there’s little access to running water. The nonprofit group has long warned that a single case of the coronavirus could spread quickly.
“The presence of COVID-19 in an already vulnerable population exposed to the elements could potentially be catastrophic,” the group said in a statement.
The people living in the camp are mostly awaiting court dates just across the border in Brownsville, Texas, under a Trump administration program known as “Remain in Mexico.” Instituted last year along the border, the “Remain” program has sent tens of thousands of people seeking asylum back to Mexico instead of allowing them to await their court dates in the U.S.
There have been numerous reports of migrants being kidnapped, attacked, or extorted while waiting their court dates. | 0 | non |
891 | Title: Former white supremacist gets swastika tattoo covered up
A former white supremacist from Ohio got a huge swastika tattoo on his chest covered up with a rose in honor of Juneteenth — saying he now proudly supports the Black Lives Matter movement.
Dickie Marcum, a 34-year-old steelworker from Cincinnati, cried tears of joy after inking away the vile symbol and explaining to his daughter, “Daddy doesn’t hate people anymore,” he wrote in a now-viral Facebook post.
“When I came home and my wife saw the cover-up, she started crying and hugged me and kept saying that she’s so proud of me,” he said. “I’m proud of myself, but I still feel shame for ever getting it.”
In a lengthy confession about what led to his racist beliefs, Marcum said he first got the tattoo 13 years ago.
In high school, he was bullied by some black students and later began socializing with people who used racial slurs, solidifying his ignorant world view.
After a black man was convicted of kidnapping and attacking his then-girlfriend in 2007 — an experience that left him “blinded by hate”— he said he got the tattoo.
“When I heard what a black man had [done], I was blinded by hate and immediately shut down and all I could think about was how much I hate ‘them,’” he said. “It’s a really stupid way to think, and I can’t justify how I felt and I’m not going to, I was an idiot and I held onto that tattoo for 10 years as punishment to myself.”
For years he was too embarrassed to go swimming for fear people would see the swastika.
“Because I lived almost 20 years having that mentality, I felt like I deserved the shame that I felt,” he said.
But working in construction alongside folks of different races helped him learn that people are more than their skin color.
Marcum finally went under the needle again last week at Silkworm Tattoo in Hamilton, Ohio, which offered discounts for customers covering up intolerant images in honor of Juneteeth, a holiday celebrating the official end of slavery.
“My daughter doesn’t really know what that [swastika] symbol is, so I explained that the tattoo meant that daddy didn’t like people, and now she knows daddy doesn’t hate people anymore,” he said.
He then showed off his new ink social media, issuing a public apology to “everyone he hurt.”
Now, he feels a “weight” has been lifted — and the responsibility to vocally support minorities.
“I’m absolutely in love with this tattoo and I think a rose was a lovely choice because it represents love and growth, and I think that’s a perfect representation of who I am now,” he said. | 0 | non |
892 | Title: Mexican President Lopez Obrador to make first White House visit
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will meet with President Trump next week during his first official visit to the US, the White House said Wednesday.
Lopez Obrador will visit July 8 to celebrate the new US-Mexico-Canada trade pact coming into effect.
The Mexican leader, in office since 2018, is a veteran of leftist politics and often is compared to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Lopez Obrador plans to fly commercial to DC.
“I look forward to welcoming President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico to the White House on July 8, 2020, to continue our important dialogue on trade, health and other issues central to our regional prosperity and security,” Trump said in a statement.
It will be the second visit by a world leader since the coronavirus pandemic began in March. Polish President Andrzej Duda visited last month.
On Monday, Lopez Obrador brushed off Trump’s past incendiary language about crime linked to Mexican illegal immigrants and his vow to make Mexico pay for his border wall.
“There has been respect from President Donald Trump toward our government,” the Mexican president told reporters. “There has been a relationship of mutual respect; I won’t say more. Even President Trump’s rhetoric toward Mexico has been more respectful than how he expressed himself before, something we are very grateful to him for.”
Although a Mexican leader has not yet visited Trump in the White House, candidate Trump visited Mexico at the invitation of then-President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2016. A televised press conference was relatively sedate and drew few protesters. | 0 | non |
893 | Title: Maya Wiley, ex de Blasio council, considering mayoral run
Maya Wiley, the former top counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the one-time head of the city’s police oversight panel, is considering a run for mayor in 2021.
“It’s very real, it is serious. She’s received a lot of calls and encouragement” to run, a Democratic source close to Wiley told The Post on Wednesday.
Wiley left the mayor’s office in June 2016 to lead the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates complaints against the NYPD, and to become the senior vice president for social justice at the New School.
She stepped down from the CCRB about a year later, saying she wanted to focus her attention on her job at the New School, where she is also a professor of urban policy and management.
Although the state’s Democratic primary is next June, candidates would have to begin raising money soon, unless they’re wealthy and will foot the bill themselves.
And with Democrats representing about 70 percent of registered voters in the Big Apple, winning the primary is essential.
De Blasio is term-limited against running again, but there could be a large field of candidates.
Among those expected to run are Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, City Comptroller Scott Stringer and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
The entry of the civil rights attorney and legal contributor to MSNBC into the mayor’s race could align with a cultural shift following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department in May.
Protests that have spread across the country rally around chants to defund the police amid calls for racial justice and equality.
Wiley, as the head of de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group, recommended in February 2019 that the city should consider transferring school security from the NYPD to the Department of Education.
On Tuesday, she said that the city’s plan to cut $1 billion in spending from the NYPD’s budget didn’t go far enough.
“Demand to cut $1B from #NYPD budget was clear. Today’s deal isn’t a cut. It’s moving the deck chairs around,” Wiley wrote on Twitter.
“We have to stop tinkering and start transforming public safety. It requires school social workers, mental health svcs, housing= problem-solving, not policing human needs,” she said.
A request for comment from Wiley wasn’t immediately returned.
Politico first reported on Wiley’s expected run. | 0 | non |
894 | Title: Public whipping post taken down from outside Delaware courthouse
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A public whipping post that was on display outside of a Delaware courthouse was dismantled Wednesday due to its “traumatic legacy,” according to a report.
The eight-foot-tall post had been used outside the Sussex County Courthouse in Georgetown to lash people for crimes until 1952 before the state became the last to abolish the beatings as punishment, news station WPVI reported.
Crews spent more than an hour excavating the standing post to be stored in a Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs facility, according to the report.
“It is appropriate for an item like this to be preserved in the state’s collections, so that future generations may view it and attempt to understand the full context of its historical significance,” said HCA Director Tim Slavin.
“It’s quite another thing to allow a whipping post to remain in place along a busy public street — a cold, deadpan display that does not adequately account for the traumatic legacy it represents, and that still reverberates among communities of color in our state.”
The group said they will engage historians, educators and leaders of the black community to determine how to display the post in a museum setting with proper context, the outlet reported. | 0 | non |
895 | Title: Iowa becomes first state to permanently legalize to-go alcohol
This will really boost spirits in Iowa!
The Hawkeye State has become the first in the nation to permanently allow bars to sell booze to-go — a popular service that was supposed to be temporary to help watering holes survive the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Monday that she’d signed a bill allowing bars to continue selling alcoholic drinks for take-out and delivery for off-premise consumption.
The bill, which went into effect immediately, was passed last month by wide margins in the state House and Senate, the Des Moines Register reported.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the US praised the state lawmakers for greenlighting the legislation.
“Iowa’s hospitality businesses have suffered greatly due to the harsh financial impacts of COVID-19,” Dale Szyndrowski, who is the vice president of DISCUS state government relations, said in a statement. “Making cocktails to-go permanent provides a much-needed source of stability and revenue for local bars, restaurants and distilleries as they begin to recover.
New York has also temporarily OKed to-go hooch during the crisis. The rule has been given multiple short-term extensions and some lawmakers have proposed extending it several years to help the hospitality industry recover from the pandemic. | 0 | non |
896 | Title: Prague celebrates end of lockdown with immense dinner party
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Prague went off-menu for this celebration.
People in the Czech capital broke bread together around a 1,600-foot table on Tuesday night to give the coronavirus pandemic a “symbolic farewell.”
Residents gathered at the massive table — set up along the famed 14th-century Charles Bridge — after the government eased restrictions on large gatherings.
“The bridge is a good metaphor, different people can gather,” said Ondrej Kobza, who cooked up the event.
Guests were invited to share drinks and food they brought around the table, which was covered in a white cloth and flowers.
The communal meal was “a kind of celebration, to show that we are not afraid, that we go out and we won’t be stuck at home,” Kobza told Reuters.
A country of around 10.7 million, the Czech Republic was among the first to institute strict restrictions designed to curb the outbreak in mid-March.
As of Wednesday, there had been 12,006 cases of the virus and 349 deaths in the nation, much fewer than its European neighbors, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The government permitted mass gatherings of up to 1,000 people last week, and restaurants and bars have been allowed to serve people indoors for a month now.
With Post wires | 0 | non |
897 | Title: Oklahoma police officer fatally shot while on traffic stop
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An Oklahoma police officer died this week — and another is in critical condition — after they were shot multiple times while conducting a traffic stop, according to a new report.
Sgt. Craig Johnson, 45, a 15-year-veteran of the Tulsa Police Department, and Officer Aurash Zarkeshan, a 26-year-old rookie who only began patrol six weeks ago, were shot multiple times during an early Monday traffic stop, the Tulsa World reported.
The suspect, David Ware, 32, refused to get out of the car when the officers told him it would be towed for taxes due to the state, according to a police affidavit filed in district court, obtained by the outlet.
He managed to resist strikes from Johnson’s Taser and pepper spray, before reaching for a gun, as the officers struggled to remove him, according to the court document.
“Ware reaches under his seat and as the officers are pulling him out, he produces a gun and fires three times at each officer,” the affidavit states.
Bullets reportedly struck both officers in the head and torso.
Ware fled in a friend’s getaway SUV, but he was apprehended hours later and charged with two counts of shooting with intent to kill and possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony, the outlet reported.
The Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office upgraded one of the shooting charges to first-degree murder Tuesday, according to the report.
The getaway driver, Matthew Nicholas Hall, 29, was also arrested and charged with being an accessory to a felony.
Johnson underwent surgery, but his condition did not improve, so he was placed on life support to give his family time to say their farewells, police said on Facebook.
He died Tuesday afternoon.
Before Johnson’s passing, Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin awarded him a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in the line of duty.
Franklin called Johnson’s death “a tremendous loss to our department.”
“His sacrifice will not go unremembered,” he said, according to the local report.
Zarkeshan, though still in critical condition, has been responsive to hospital staff, Tulsa Police Department spokesman Jeanne Pierce told CNN early Wednesday. | 0 | non |
898 | Title: Chad Daybell faces felonies over Lori Vallow's missing kids
Chad Daybell, the husband of doomsday-obsessed cult mom Lori Vallow, is facing upgraded charges after the mangled remains of his two stepchildren were found buried in his Idaho backyard, officials said Wednesday.
Daybell was charged with two felony counts of conspiracy to commit destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence late Tuesday, shortly after Vallow appeared in court on the same charges, records show.
Daybell — who’s penned numerous books about the end of the world and even wrote about a past career as a gravedigger — was arrested June 9 on felony charges of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence after police found the remains of seven-year-old Joshua “JJ” Ryan and 16-year-old Tylee Vallow buried in his backyard.
He pleaded not guilty to those charges, which are different to the new counts of conspiracy to commit destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence.
Daybell was set to appear in court on the new felony charges at 1 p.m. Wednesday local time, officials said.
He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 3 and 4 on the previous charges, according to East Idaho News.
Neither Daybell nor Vallow has been charged with causing the children’s deaths. | 0 | non |
899 | Title: Trump says 'masks are good,' urges Americans to wear them
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday declared “masks are good” despite months of resisting wearing one, and encouraged Americans to use them as US coronavirus cases surge.
However, the president stopped short of supporting a nationwide order to make them mandatory in public because there are “many places in the country where people stay very long distance.”
“I’m all for masks. I think masks are good,” Trump told Fox News Business, falling behind senior Republican leaders who this week began urging Americans to wear them as infections hit record highs and health experts predicted the pandemic would rage for months to come.
“If I were in a group of people and I was close, I would. I have. People have seen me wearing one, if I’m in a group of people where we’re not 10 feet away,” the president continued.
“Usually I’m not in that position and everyone’s tested because I’m the president and they get tested before they see me, [but] if I were in a tight situation with people, I would absolutely,” he said.
The president said people “should” wear masks if they “feel good about it” but said he didn’t think face coverings needed to be mandatory in public.
When asked if he would wear a mask in public to set an example for the American people, the president wouldn’t commit but would not rule it out, saying he’d tried one on and fancied how it made him look.
“I’d have no problem. Actually I had a mask on and I said I liked the way I looked. I thought it was OK,” Trump said.
“It was a dark black mask and I thought it looked OK. It looked like the Lone Ranger, but I have no problem with that,” he continued.
Republican leaders, Fox News anchors like Sean Hannity, and even Vice President Mike Pence this week publicly embraced masks after months of partisan divisions over the public health issue.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) condemned the “stigma” surrounding masks after new cases hit record highs, driven by large spikes in states such as Utah, Arizona, Florida and California.
“We must have no stigma, none, about wearing masks when we leave our homes and come near other people,” McConnell tweeted.
“Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves, it is about protecting everyone we encounter.” | 0 | non |
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