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Georgia Republicans look to reconcile the controversial election law and former President Trump while facing another national political limelight.
‘America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,’ an America First pamphlet says
The tiny Swiss village of Champagne has lost another fight to get its name on the wine it produces, according to a report on Saturday, the latest blow in a long-running legal battle with France over the name.
Jeff Dean/AFP via Getty“Enough is enough.”That’s the message from the grandson of one of the eight FedEx workers slaughtered by a man who was so unstable he had his gun taken away the year before.His grandmother, Amarjeet Kaur Johal, had just picked up her paycheck at the Indianapolis facility when former employee 19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole started shooting.“I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized,” the grandson said in a statement to the Indianapolis Star. “My nani, my family and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough—our community has been through enough trauma.”Johal, 66, was one of four members of the Sikh community who were gunned down in the latest mass shooting.Indianapolis police identified the victims as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Skhon, 48; Karlie Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74. Their stories began trickling out overnight:Weisert was about to celebrate his 50th anniversary with wife Mary Carol, who told WTHR that he was a professional engineer who took a package-handling job at FedEx after retirement. “He wanted to keep working. We had some things we needed to pay off, so he took this job,” she said. Singh had started working at the facility, sorting mail, this week, an in-law, Harjap Singh Dillon, told The New York Times. “He was going to get his first check,” Dillon said. “He didn’t get it.”Hole, the gunman, killed himself.Federal authorities said that the FBI had seized a shotgun from Hole’s home in March 2020 after his mother called authorities to warn them he might try to commit “suicide by cop.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
The Arizona Legislature was debating one of several Republican proposals to overhaul voting when GOP Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita said she'd had enough. “I don’t like to be characterized as supporting discriminatory laws!” she told Democrats, who say the legislation will hurt Latino and Native American voters. Indeed, Democrats are escalating their charges that the Republican push for tighter state voting laws is designed to make it hard for people of color to vote.
Save big on iRobot's Roomba i7+ and i9+ robot vacuums at Wellbots.
SpaceX got good news on Friday, and we're preparing for the Apple spring event on Tuesday
Zimbabwe has begun releasing about 3,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty aimed at easing congestion to reduce the threat of COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded jails. About 400 prisoners were released from Chikurubi prison and other jails in the capital, Harare, on Saturday with more coming from other prisons countrywide. Zimbabwe’s prisons have a capacity of 17,000 prisoners but held about 22,000 before the amnesty declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Pressure mounted Saturday on the two contenders hoping to lead German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right bloc into September's national election to end their power struggle and agree which of them will run to succeed her. Armin Laschet, the leader of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, and Markus Soeder, the head of its smaller Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, have both declared their interest in running for chancellor. Germany’s parliamentary election Sept. 26 will determine who succeeds Merkel, who isn’t seeking a fifth term after nearly 16 years in power.
The U.S. Justice Department made a “wrong and dangerous” argument in seeking to defend former President Donald Trump against a former advice columnist’s claim that he defamed her when he denied her allegation of rape, her lawyers have told a court. During Trump's presidency, the Justice Department sought to make the United States, not him personally, the defendant in E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit — a move that would put U.S. taxpayers on the hook if she got a payout in the case. The Justice Department has argued that the statements he made about Carroll, including that she was “totally lying” to sell a memoir and that “she's not my type," fell within the scope of his job as president.
Chad Coffin has spent the coronavirus pandemic much as he has the previous several decades: on the mudflats of Maine, digging for the clams that draw tourists to seafood shacks around New England. “There just isn’t the clams that there used to be," Coffin said. More New Englanders have dug in the tidal mudflats during the last year, but the clams aren't cooperating.
Liam Scarlett, a star British choreographer whose career was clouded by abuse allegations, has died. Scarlett’s family said Saturday that “it is with great sadness that we announce the tragic, untimely death of our beloved Liam.” Scarlett trained at the Royal Ballet School in London and danced with the company before concentrating on choreography.
'Sell in May and go away,' advises the trading maxim. But with stocks at record highs, one trader at the New York Stock Exchange is recommending a related but different strategy.
More than 566,000 of the deaths have been in the United States, which is now seeing a rise in coronavirus cases despite efforts to get people vaccinated.
In a new interview, BNY Mellon Wealth Management CEO Catherine Keating affirmed the bank's support for inclusive democracy, describing broad access to the polls as "good for the economy."
The Royals have not been able to "say goodbye in the way they'd hope or planned" like millions this year, the Archbishop of Canterbury has lamented. The Most Rev Justin Welby, who will deliver a blessing at the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral, said members of the Royal Family were united in grief with Britons who had lost their loved-ones during the pandemic. He praised the household for sticking to the Covid-19 social restrictions and said this means it "represents all funerals" in the last year - which have been characterised by the "burden" of not being able to have ideal send-offs for relatives. "My first thought when I heard the news was for the family," he said. "This is like every other funeral and distinct from every other funeral. It's like every other funeral because the family is the family is the family. But it's distinct because they're having to bear this loss and sorrow in the glare of goodness knows how many people watching them around the world. "The Royal Family has behaved superbly, they've just kept to the rules. That means that they're going through what between six and eight million other people have gone through in this country alone over the last year - not really being able to say goodbye in the way they'd hoped or planned. And that's an extra burden. "But as people around the world watch them tomorrow, I think they can identify with this and feel that here is a funeral that represents all funerals in a wonderful way." The Archbishop commended the Queen for her poise and stoicism in the face of struggle. "I never fail to be admiring of the way Her Majesty behaves. It's been one of the greatest privileges of this role to get to know her a little bit. "She will be sitting on her own and masked. It would never cross her mind to complain about that. She will reflect and show her normal dignity and composure. "People will make all kinds of judgements looking at her about what she's thinking. We can't do that at any funeral. You never know what people are thinking. "All we know is that this is the Queen who has served us so extraordinarily for nearly 70 years, saying goodbye to the man who in her words has been her strength and stay for all those years." Reflecting on the Duke's life, the Archbishop said he was always struck by his irrepressible energy. "We all know someone who, when they come into a room, somehow they bring a bit of umph into the room," he said. "In my experience, the Duke was one of those people. He was totally incapable of being boring."
New York’s governor gained national attention last spring, and won an International Emmy, for daily, televised news briefings at which he answered barrages of questions from journalists about the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democrat hasn’t had an in-person news conference since December, when he switched to interacting with the media only via telephone and Zoom conference calls, saying it was a needed pandemic safety precaution. To be clear, Cuomo hasn't been ducking questions entirely.
Another community mourns as the U.S. deals with yet another mass shooting, Prince Philip will be laid to rest and more news to start your weekend.
It’s quite likely national marijuana laws will be reformed sometime this year. Fortunes will be made and lost here no doubt. But more importantly, lives won’t be ruined over smoking something that through capricious historical precedents became verboten.
Some prosecutors and law enforcement observers say departments carried out mass arrests as crowd control tactic Police officers make an arrest during a rally calling for justice over the death of George Floyd, in Brooklyn, New York, on 1 June 2020. Brooklyn’s prosecutor dropped 83% of 136 more serious criminal cases, and Manhattan’s prosecutor dropped about 64% of nearly 1,000 cases. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP The vast majority of citations and charges against George Floyd protesters were ultimately dropped, dismissed or otherwise not filed, according to a Guardian analysis of law enforcement records and media reports in a dozen jurisdictions around the nation. But some prosecutors and law enforcement observers charge that departments carried out mass arrests as a crowd control tactic, as a means to silence peaceful protesters, and as a public relations strategy designed to turn the public against demonstrators by making them appear more violent than they were. And what’s more – some of the citing officers never witnessed the protests in the first place. “It sends a message that you might get arrested if you express your views and first amendment rights,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project. “Police absolutely should not be relying on mass arrests to control a crowd or silence people who they disagree with.” In most of a dozen jurisdictions examined, at least 90% of cases were dropped or dismissed. In some cities, like Dallas and Philadelphia, as many as 95% of citations were dropped or not prosecuted. Overpoliced, underprotected is a series focused on police violence in the US following one of the largest-scale uprisings in history. A year on from the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, there are demands both inside the government and from grassroots movements to end the systemic racism and lethal force that has been embedded in police culture for centuries. But with stark differences in approaches to reform and revolution, and the continued power of police unions, achieving sweeping change faces more obstacles than ever. In Houston, about 93% of citations were dropped; in Los Angeles, about 93% of citations were not filed. The prosecutor’s office in San Francisco dismissed all 127 cases related to “peaceful protest-related charges”, though data for more serious citations was not available. Officials did not file charges for nearly all low-level offenses, like disobeying curfews, while they most often pursued cases with strong evidence of more serious crimes, like assault or looting. Still, data shows that a majority of felony charges were also dropped, which some prosecutors said was due to a lack of evidence. The analysis does not include federal charges, and the figures are estimates that will change as the remaining cases play out in court. Police sent citations to a patchwork of agencies and departments in different cities where prosecutors, mayors or city attorneys largely made the call to drop charges. Mayors in every city except Detroit dropped all citations over which they had jurisdiction. The administration of Mayor Mike Duggan, a former prosecutor, pursued a high number of low-level misdemeanor charges or ordinance violations, even though the demonstrations were largely peaceful. But district court judge Larry Williams Jr dismissed more than 100 cases because police refused to provide basic evidence, such as body-cam footage. In most instances, Detroit officers who wrote tickets were not at the protests and didn’t actually witness the alleged crimes, said the National Lawyers Guild attorney Rubina Mustafa. Instead of continuing to attempt to prosecute with shoddy evidence, the city earlier this year dropped nearly 300 more citations, but has still pursued dozens of charges against protest organizers. Among those still facing charges is the Detroit Will Breathe organizer Tristan Taylor, who said the mass arrests across the country are “all about intimidation” of people who vocally oppose police brutality: “It says something about the nature of policing when that’s a uniform tactic.” Officers arrest a protester near the police station in Detroit, Michigan, on 30 May 2020. Photograph: Seth Herald/AFP/Getty Images The mass arrests were also part of a public relations campaign by Duggan and the Detroit police chief, James Craig, to paint the protesters as violent agitators and undermine their messaging, a strategy used by police in cities across the nation, said Tyler Crawford, the National Lawyers Guild director of mass defense. “What they try to do is spin it and say ‘Look at how unlawful protesters are as is evidenced by all of these arrests that we’ve made,’” he said. “Then they hope people have stopped paying attention after six, 10, 12 months when prosecutors say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to drop these charges because these people shouldn’t have been arrested.’” In Dallas, where more than 95% of cases were not filed, police represent an exception. The department dropped about 675 charges stemming from one protest because “the spirit of service to which the Dallas police department is committed would not be exemplified by moving forward with charges,” leadership explained in an August report. Still, it sent nearly 200 charges to the prosecutor’s office, of which about 85% were dropped or had not been filed as of September, though a department spokesperson did not know the outcome of eight cases. In Philadelphia, police sent over 1,700 charges to the city and the office of the district attorney, Larry Krasner. Mayor Jim Kenney and Krasner dropped or are poised to drop about 95% of the charges, including all ordinance violations. Krasner is handling a large portion of the most serious misdemeanors and felonies with a restorative justice program that involves dropping charges upon completion of the program. It includes a mix of meeting with victims, community service and referrals to job and education programs. Only about 80 serious charges have so far been filed. “Police were making arrests as a form of crowd control, so in many instances there were no criminal charges to file,” a Krasner spokesperson, Jane Roh, said. “In other instances, there was simply not enough information to proceed on opening a criminal case.” The number of dropped cases are also relatively high in cities that witnessed more violence. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, more than 90% of cases were dropped by November, though a local Black Lives Matter leader told the Guardian that hundreds of charges that police made since then remain in legal limbo. Portland has also seen recent violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement. Still, only 81% of nearly 1,100 cases have been filed by the Multnomah county prosecutor, Mike Schmidt. Minneapolis state patrol arrest protesters on 7 October 2020. Photograph: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images In New York City, more than 5,000 summonses that police wrote citywide for low-level offenses were dismissed by a summons court, according to the court’s chief clerk. Though the precise percentage is unclear, the National Lawyers Guild attorney Gideon Oliver, who coordinated defense for many of those cited, said the “vast majority”, if not all, of summonses were or will be dismissed. Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s prosecutor dropped 83% of 136 more serious criminal cases, and Manhattan’s prosecutor dropped about 64% of nearly 1,000 cases. The mass arrests overwhelmed already strained criminal justice systems by forcing them to contend with processing thousands of protesters. That resulted in delayed arraignments and kept high numbers of inmates crowded in small New York jails for up to days at a time during the pandemic, Crawford said. “The police response created this whole additional public health crisis that wasn’t something people talked about much, but, in the moment, that was one of the biggest issues we were concerned about,” he said. Moreover, forcing the criminal justice system to process thousands of cases based on flimsy evidence that probably would not result in prosecutions represented an enormous waste of tax dollars and time, observers said. “That’s not what the government should be doing,” Eidelman said. “It points to an excessive use of governmental authority.”
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