Viola Ford Fletcher, 110, voted for the vice-president in Oklahoma, CNN reporter says
Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, cast her ballot in Oklahoma on Tuesday at 110 years old for Kamala Harris.
In a photo shared on social media, Fletcher is wearing an “I voted” sticker, and according to CNN journalist Abby Phillip, Fletcher voted for the vice-president, as she had previously said she would.
Continue reading...Internet chatter and Oklahoma arrest of alleged would-be IS attacker indicate terror group’s planning
After the FBI arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma planning an election day shooting on behalf of the Islamic State, the terrorist organization re-entered what has become one of the most chaotic news cycles leading up to a November vote.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City admitted to investigators he and a co-conspirator expected to die as IS martyrs as they opened fire on crowds on election day, according to charging documents.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Littlejohn will be executed for role in 1992 shooting, which would be state’s third execution this year
A man in Oklahoma is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday morning, despite conflicting evidence regarding his guilt.
Emmanuel Littlejohn, 52, will be executed for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery in Oklahoma City. If executed, Littlejohn will be the third inmate put to death by the state this year.
Continue reading...The Oklahoman brought a snowball to the Senate floor in 2015 to prove humans couldn’t change the climate
Republican former senator James Inhofe, a climate denier who once brought a snowball to the chamber floor in a stunt attempting to disprove global warming, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.
Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19. Elected in 1994, his time as the state’s longest-serving senator was notable for his ultra-conservative positions on numerous issues, including calling the climate emergency “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.
Continue reading...Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas saw hundreds injured and homes obliterated as storms move into Georgia and South Carolina
Powerful storms were moving into the eastern half of the US on Monday, after killing at least 21 people, injuring hundreds, obliterating homes, and leaving a path of destruction that spread across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas over the Memorial weekend.
As the weather system moved into Georgia, the Storm Prediction Center issued a severe thunderstorm watch for more than 7 million people in the state and South Carolina. Heavy rain is expected to drench parts of the East Coast, where damage from strong winds is also possible. Intense heat will also hit parts of the south.
Continue reading...Storms began on Saturday night as tornado overturned vehicles and shut down an interstate north of Dallas
A Texas sheriff has said at least five people died after powerful storms tore through a rural community, obliterating homes and leaving thousands of people without power.
The Cooke County sheriff, Ray Sappington, told the Associated Press the victims included three family members who were found in one home near Valley View, a rural community near the border with Oklahoma.
Continue reading...After receiving a word puzzle, Oklahoma police say they’re closer to identifying another victim of murderer Dennis Rader
A newly re-examined word puzzle sent to a Kansas City TV station in 2004 could strengthen leads in a cold-case investigation into the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl in Oklahoma and link it to the convicted serial killer Dennis Rader, nicknamed BTK for “bind, torture, kill”.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Osage county sheriff Eddie Virden said he had received a package from a woman in April containing a crossword puzzle Rader allegedly used to taunt investigators.
Continue reading...Governor issues state of emergency for 12 counties as authorities confirm a four-month-old baby was among the dead in Holdenville
At least four people, including a baby, were killed after a series of tornadoes struck Oklahoma on Saturday, amid a weekend of extreme weather that left dozens injured and a trail of destruction across the midwest.
Local authorities confirmed that a four-month-old infant was among the two people dead in Holdenville – one of the hardest hit towns in Oklahoma, located 80 miles south-east of Oklahoma City – where about 20 tornadoes hit late Saturday, leveling buildings and ripping off roofs. The victims have not been named, but at least four others were injured as the tornado left a path of devastation through the town of around 6,000 people.
Continue reading...Pushback against Oklahoma’s Judd Blevins transcending partisanship, says organizer: ‘It’s a Nazi and not-Nazi thing’
Voters in the north-west Oklahoma city of Enid are being asked to decide whether a councilmember who attended the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 should be removed from his post.
Iraq war veteran Judd Blevins, 42, was elected to Enid’s city council to be the commissioner of its first ward last year. He soon faced an effort by the Enid social justice committee, which claimed Blevins “embraces the same Nazi ideology [the US] defeated almost 80 years ago” during the second world war.
Continue reading...The death of a nonbinary teenager followed a fight in a bathroom at Owasso high school in February
The death of a nonbinary teenager following a fight in a bathroom at Owasso high school in Oklahoma has been ruled a suicide, according to the state’s medical examiner.
In a summary report released on Wednesday, the state’s medical examiner listed 16-year-old Nex Benedict’s probable cause of death as combined toxicity from an antihistamine and an antidepressant.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. A list of prevention resources can be found here. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
Continue reading...Donald Trump looks all but certain of Republican presidential nomination as Nikki Haley rejects suggestions of third-party bid and says she may keep fighting
Over at CNN, Ronald Brownstein has an analysis piece which looks a little at the potential weakness of Donald Trump support away from his core base. Brownstein writes:
[Trump’s] performance so far reflects his success at transforming the Republican Party in his image. He’s reshaped the Republicans into a more blue-collar, populist and pugnacious party, focused more on his volatile blend of resentments against elites and cultural and racial change than the Ronald Reagan-era priorities of smaller government and active global leadership that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has stressed.
But while the primaries have underscored Trump’s grip on the GOP, they have also demonstrated continued vulnerability for him in the areas where he has labored since he first announced his candidacy in 2015 – particularly among the white-collar suburban voters who mostly leaned toward the GOP before his emergence. The early 2024 nominating contests have shown that a substantial minority of Republican-leaning voters remain resistant to Trump’s vision.
Continue reading...All three people on board, including the pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic, were killed on 20 January in western Oklahoma
A dead goose was found in part of the flight control system of a medical helicopter that crashed in western Oklahoma, killing all three people on board, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
While it highlights the goose’s presence on board, the report stops short of specifying a suspected cause of the deadly crash. The report notes that other geese were found in the debris field left by the wreck.
Continue reading...Initial earthquake followed by at least eight smaller ones as residents across state reported feeling shaking
A 5.1 magnitude earthquake shook an area near Oklahoma’s capital late Friday night, followed by smaller quakes during the next several hours, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
The agency said the earthquake struck at 11.24pm and was centered 8kms (5 miles) north-west of Prague, Oklahoma, about 57 miles(92km) east of Oklahoma City.
Continue reading...Lawmaker JJ Humphrey seeks punishments for ‘acts of terrorism’ and defines terrorist as ‘any person who is of Hispanic descent’
An Oklahoma lawmaker is facing backlash for proposing a discriminatory bill that deems people of Hispanic descent as “terrorists”.
The Republican state representative JJ Humphrey introduced the bill, HB 3133, which seeks to combat problems in the state, such as drug and human trafficking, and lay out punishments to those who have committed these “acts of terrorism”.
Continue reading...Glynn Simmons, who served US’s longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder, wins rare ruling
The man who served the US’s longest wrongful imprisonment for a 1974 murder he has always denied committing has now won a rare ruling declaring him to be actually innocent of the crime.
Glynn Simmons’s murder conviction was dismissed in July after a judge in Oklahoma determined that prosecutors withheld some evidence in the case, including a police report that documented how a witness may have identified alternate suspects. The 71-year-old was freed from prison, and state prosecutors later said they would not retry him in the case because there was no longer any physical evidence.
Continue reading...Governor Ron DeSantis scheduled six of the country’s 25 executions this year amid his presidential election bid
The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.
Continue reading...Phillip Dean Hancock killed by lethal injection after Republican governor declines to commute sentence despite recommendation
Oklahoma executed a man on Thursday who claimed he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed two men in Oklahoma City in 2001.
Phillip Dean Hancock, 59, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma state penitentiary and was declared dead at 11.29am. His execution went forward once the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, declined to commute his sentence, despite a clemency recommendation from the state’s pardon and parole board.
Continue reading...Tribe says city has been breaking federal law by continuing to ticket Native Americans within sovereign boundaries
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, arguing that police are continuing to ticket Native American drivers within the tribe’s reservation boundaries, despite a recent federal appeals court ruling they lacked jurisdiction to do so.
The tribe filed the lawsuit in federal court in Tulsa against the city; the mayor, GT Bynum; the chief of police, Wendell Franklin; and the city attorney, Jack Blair.
Continue reading...The Center for Reproductive Rights has taken legal action on behalf of women denied care in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee
Women who say they were denied abortions in medical emergencies have taken legal action in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee, in the latest attempt to challenge abortion bans that, abortion patients and doctors say, prevent people from getting care even when their health is in danger.
The lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee, along with a federal complaint against a hospital in Oklahoma, were filed on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of women in Texas earlier this year. Tuesday’s filings were first reported by the Washington Post.
Continue reading...Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen
Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.
Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.
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