Prosecutors in Baltimore say they lack confidence in ‘integrity of the conviction’ for strangling ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999
A court hearing has been set for Monday in Baltimore to consider a request from prosecutors to vacate the 2000 murder conviction of Adnan Syed, whose case was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.
Baltimore circuit judge Melissa Phinn scheduled the hearing for 2pm ET, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Continue reading...DoJ seeks to continue reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home
The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.
The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.
Continue reading...Fury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists
Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs.
The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.
Continue reading...Broadway’s longest-running musical never fully recovered from the pandemic shutdown and will close next February
The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway’s longest-running show, is scheduled to close in February 2023.
The musical – a fixture on Broadway since 1988, weathering recessions, war and cultural shifts – will play its final performance on Broadway on 18 February, a spokesperson said on Friday. The closure will come less than a month after its 35th anniversary. It will conclude with an eye-popping 13,925 performances.
Continue reading...President appears at Detroit auto show, where EVs are this year’s stars – but the road to electrification promises to be a bumpy one
Fresh off signing legislation aimed at propelling the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, Joe Biden was in Detroit last week to reaffirm his support for electrification ahead of the opening of the US’s largest annual car show.
“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified, whether you’re driving along the coast, or on I-75 here in Michigan,” he declared as the first North American International Auto Show since 2019 prepared to open its doors.
Continue reading...In what could be the worst storm in five decades, residents are warned to take action against rising waters that may not recede for hours
Alaska is bracing for what forecasters believe could be its worst storm in decades, as the remnants of a typhoon bring hurricane-force winds and towering waves crashing toward its shores.
The remnants of Typhoon Merbok, now swirling over the Bering Sea, are predicted to deliver devastating levels of flooding and damaging wind gusts beginning Friday night and lasting through the weekend..
Continue reading...Thomas ‘Mykel’ Gordon praised as ‘one incredible individual’ after fighting off assailant outside Florida restaurant
An employee of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Florida is being praised as a hero after he fought off a man trying to steal a car from a woman getting her infant out of the vehicle in a harrowing parking lot confrontation captured on video.
Incredibly, it wasn’t even the first time that 26-year-old Thomas “Mykel” Gordon rushed to save someone in distress near his workplace. Four years earlier, he had reportedly helped rescue two girls after a construction crane fell on their car.
Continue reading...Doris Jagiello went missing after thunderstorms triggered mudslides in the San Bernadino Mountains
A woman has been found dead under a pile of mud, rocks and other debris after flash floods unleashed mudslides that swept through her town in the southern California mountains.
Authorities had been searching for the missing woman for days after thunderstorms and heavy rain triggered mudslides that washed away cars, buried homes and affected 3,000 residents in two remote communities in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Continue reading...‘By the grace of God, I am now cancer-free’, Sanders, 42, formerly Trump’s press secretary, says after successful operation
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Donald Trump White House press secretary turned Republican candidate for Arkansas governor, said on Friday she was “cancer-free” after undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer.
In a statement, Sanders, aged 42, said the cancer was discovered during a check-up this month.
Continue reading...Judge appoints special master to weed out documents under legal privilege rules but DoJ is expected to appeal the decision
Speaking of conservative media, Ramon Antonio Vargas tuned into conservative stalwart Fox News to see what their political coverage looks like ahead of the midterms:
With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.
As a kid, he always knew he wanted to be a doctor (“Fisher Price play kit,” he muses). But it wasn’t until he was an undergraduate at Columbia University that he experienced an epiphany.
He was working on a big display of the AIDS memorial quilt, he says, and was tasked with flying to San Francisco to bring back a “roll of carpet that looked like a body in a shroud.” On the day the exhibit opened for the finished quilt, he watched as men his age — people who should have been enjoying their 20s — walked in, coughing and raging with a disease very likely to kill them.
Continue reading...Ride-hailing company confirms attack after hacker compromises Slack app and messages employees
Uber has been hacked in an attack that appears to have breached the ride-hailing company’s internal systems.
The California-based company confirmed it was responding to a “cybersecurity incident”, after the New York Times reported that a hack had accessed the company’s network and forced it to take several internal communications and engineering systems offline. The hacker claimed to be 18 years old, according to the report.
Continue reading...Challenges from conservative parent groups and others targeted 1,651 different titles, the American Library Association said
Books for children and young adults containing themes of race, gender and sexual identity received an “unprecedented” number of challenges last year, the American Library Association (ALA) has said, reflecting a growing national trend of attempted censorship.
The challenges came from conservative parent groups and others. In some cases, the group says, librarians and elected officials were threatened with violence by members of the Proud Boys and armed activists at school board and library board meetings.
Continue reading...Campaigners hope to harness revulsion at booming rat numbers to expand composting services throughout the city and cut waste
At an August rally on the steps of New York’s city hall, rats were in the crosshairs. “No to rats”, read one poster. “Starve a rat”, read another. On a third, a pink rodent in a crown lounged on a throne of black garbage bags.
The demonstration wasn’t a generalized expression of anti-rat fervor. It was a gathering of sustainable waste activists. They had a proposition: composting could solve an escalating rodent problem that’s spreading across the city. “Our streets and sidewalks will be cleaner”, said New York City council member Carlina Rivera, “They’ll smell better and they’ll provide less food for rats, which is a public health crisis right now.”
Continue reading...Judge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie as special master and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records. Plus, how to survive an empty nest
Good morning.
A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.
What does Dearie have to do? He is tasked with deciding whether any of the documents seized by the FBI during the August search are privileged – either due to attorney-client confidentiality or through a legal principle called executive privilege – and should be off-limits to federal investigators.
Is there a deadline? Yes. Dearie has until 30 November – after the midterms – to finish the review. Trump will be required to pay costs associated with the special master.
How did they die? The exact circumstances of how residents died have yet to be determined. In February and March, Russian troops killed more than 1,400 people in the Kyiv region, including in the suburb of Bucha, during their failed attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainian soldiers are also buried there.
Continue reading...Presence of two adults and two cubs in Cascade mountains detected after federal protections restored earlier this year
The sighting of a new family of gray wolves in Oregon’s Cascade mountains has given wildlife advocates hope that the recovery of the endangered species in the state is gathering pace.
The state’s fish and wildlife department (ODFW) said a group of two adults and two pups was captured by a trail camera in August.
Continue reading...Study says global economy is in steepest slowdown after a post-recession recovery since 1970
The world may be edging toward a global recession as central banks simultaneously raise interest rates to combat persistent inflation, the World Bank has warned.
The three largest economies, – the US, China and the eurozone – have been slowing sharply, and even a “moderate hit to the global economy over the next year could tip it into recession”, the bank said in a study.
Continue reading...Judge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to vet documents and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records
A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.
Florida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort.
Continue reading...The aid is expected to contain munitions including HIMARS ammunition and funding for military education and training
The Biden administration announced a new $600m arms package to help the Ukrainian military battle Russia, as the US rushes more weapons to fuel Kyiv’s successful counteroffensive in the country’s east.
The package will include more of the same types of ammunition and equipment that have helped Ukrainian forces beat back the Russian forces in portions of the east and south.
Continue reading...President also urges Congress to do more to force social media companies to address spread of hate through their platforms
Joe Biden vowed to combat the “venom and violence” of white supremacy in America and decried Donald Trump’s reluctance to condemn the rightwing racism on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which spurred Biden to run against him for the presidency.
The US president also called afresh for Congress to do more to force social media companies to address the spread of hate through their platforms.
Continue reading...Death at Bernstein high school comes as new data shows 200 people dying a day of fentanyl overdoses
A teenage girl at a Hollywood high school died on Tuesday and another was hospitalized, after taking what police believe were counterfeit pills filled with fentanyl.
The incident, which is being investigated as a homicide by Los Angeles police, comes as federal officials announced new national counts of overdose deaths, showing nearly 200 people in the US are dying each day due to overdoses of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
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