| Conspiracy-mongering Republican seeking John Lewis seat gets social media boost from Trump Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:47 AM PDT  Besides parroting many of President Trump's talking points, Angela Stanton-King, a Republican congressional candidate, has frequently repeated ideas related to the conspiracy theory QAnon.
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| After fatal great white shark attack in Maine, debate intensifies over culling seals Posted: 07 Aug 2020 07:06 PM PDT  Some business owners and politicians in the Northeast, worried that more shark sightings and beach closures could lead to a downturn in tourism, want the seal population culled, but not everyone thinks that's the answer.
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| Coronavirus: Nine test positive at Georgia school where photo of crowded corridor went viral Posted: 09 Aug 2020 05:52 AM PDT  Nine people have tested positive for Covid-19 at a Georgia high school just days after a photo of a packed hallway went viral.Six students and three staff members who were at North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia last week have tested positive, according to a letter sent to parents on Saturday.
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| Even the Official Motorcycle Brand of the Sturgis Rally Thinks the Mass Gathering Is Too Risky Posted: 08 Aug 2020 02:10 AM PDT  The mass gathering at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally amid the pandemic is too crazy even for the company whose name is all but synonymous with the annual event.The Harley-Davidson company has been associated with the rally in the South Dakota town of Sturgis since its inception decades ago. The big, throbbing Harley "hog" is the rally's official motorcycle. The town's main intersection is Main Street and Harley-Davidson Way.The plaza at the center of Sturgis is the Harley-Davidson Rally Point, and those who assemble there stand on a huge Harley-Davidson Logo.Bill Davidson, grandson of company founder William Davidson, attended the plaza's official opening in 2015, a ceremony that involved a blowtorch and a chain rather than scissors and a ribbon. As that was the 75th anniversary of the rally, the plaza included 75 bricks from Harley-Davidson's hundred-year-old headquarters in Milwaukee, transported to Sturgis by a fleet of motorcycles.The opening ceremonies for the rally have been held at the plaza every year since then, featuring speeches, celebrity appearances, live music and a daredevil motorcycle jump, all accompanied by the rumble of thousands of Harleys. 'Screw COVID': 250,000 Bikers to Defy Common Sense for Nine Days at Sturgis RallyThe company was always a big presence during the nine days that followed. "Usually, we have trucks and staff and products and demos and everything," a company spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Friday. "This year, we aren't doing that." The difference is the pandemic, which makes a mass gathering of any kind dangerous, especially if the turnout is expected to reach 250,000 and the participants largely dismiss such proven precautions as wearing masks and social distancing. The dangers gave pause even to a company that counts on people's willingness to risk being pinballed around without the protection of seat belts or air bags. To have participated in the rally as it had in past years would have meant being party to recklessness of a different order even than riding a motorcycle without a helmet.If you hop on a hog without a helmet, you are endangering only yourself.But if you go about without a mask you are endangering others. This time, the company sent no staff, no truck, no products, held no demos."We made the decision to kind of support it in a different way," a spokesperson said. "This year, we're doing it in a way that supports social distancing."Instead, the company came up with the "Let's Ride Challenge," which invites enthusiasts to embark on various mapped out, "curated" rides, ranging from short to "epic.""More than building machines, Harley-Davidson stands for the timeless pursuit of adventure," Jon Bekefy, General Manager of Brand Marketing, is quoted as saying in a press release. "The Let's Ride Challenge is Harley-Davidson's invitation for all riders in this challenging time to rediscover adventure through socially distanced riding to find freedom for the soul."The breathless hype apparently seeks to convince Harley fans that you can feel the wind in your hair without the risk of getting COVID in your lungs, that freedom does not necessarily mean putting those around you in peril, that you can be adventurous out on the road without joining others in mass madness. The official opening was still held at Harley-Davidson Rally Point with its huge Harley-Davidson logo on Harley-Davidson Way, but there were no company representatives present, much less a descendant of the founder. And Sturgis Mayor Mark Carstensen pared the ceremony to simply reading a boilerplate proclamation. "Over the last decade, we've evolved the opening ceremonies," he noted. "I didn't think we'd evolve to this."The mayor was nearly drowned out by the roar of a passing Harley, a sound that seems to be a big part of their allure. That attraction among hardcore bikers had survived the company's spat with President Trump in 2018 when it said his tariffs were forcing it to move some production overseas. Its absence from Sturgis this year is not likely to cause Harleys to suffer the fate of Japanese bikes, which sound like supercharged sewing machines and have been piled up and burned during past rallies.Carstensen turned the microphone over to Noala Fritz, a Gold Star mother who is accompanying a traveling exhibit called "Remembering Our Fallen," which is occupying part of the plaza during this rally. The exhibit presents photos of all the Americans who died in our two longest wars. "Home of the free because of the brave," Fritz said. "All gave some, these men and women gave their all."She said a few words about her son, Army Lt. Jacob Fritz, who was kidnapped and murdered along with three fellow soldiers in Karbala, Iraq, in 2007. She then spoke of all the fallen whose pictures now travel from state to state. "They all took an oath to defend our country against our enemies, foreign and domestic," she said.None of the fallen could have likely imagined that we would face an unseen enemy at home that has so far killed more Americans than died in all our wars since the start of the conflict in Korea. And if health-care workers are now the ones on the front lines, we all need to be in this desperate fight against COVID-19. The very least we can do is take the simple precautions that have proven effective in diminishing the spread. "Enjoy the rally," the mayor said after Fritz handed back the microphone.He was standing on that Harley-Davidson logo and behind him was an American flag."Be safe," he added. 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.
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| Riot declared as fire burns in Portland police union offices Posted: 09 Aug 2020 11:05 AM PDT  A fire inside a police union building led authorities in Portland, Ore., to declare a riot and turn protesters away from the offices as demonstrations continue in the city after federal agents withdrew more than a week ago.
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| Hong Kong hits back at 'shameless' U.S. sanctions on leader Carrie Lam Posted: 08 Aug 2020 04:29 AM PDT  The Hong Kong government said it was being used as a "pawn" in the U.S.-China relationship.
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| A woman claiming to be from the 'Freedom To Breathe Agency' filmed telling a grocery employee that she could face legal action for making people wear face masks Posted: 09 Aug 2020 04:51 AM PDT  The mask-less woman gave the employee a piece of paper claiming she could go to prison for up to five years for telling customers to wear a face mask.
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| Battleground Tracker: Biden leads in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Posted: 09 Aug 2020 07:30 AM PDT  The vast majority of voters in these two states say things in the U.S. are going badly. They think Joe Biden would do a better job of handling coronavirus by significant margins.
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| French passengers sue Costa Cruises over virus ship ordeal Posted: 09 Aug 2020 05:04 PM PDT  Around 850 French passengers who were onboard a coronavirus-riddled cruise ship that was turned away from numerous ports in March have filed a collective suit in Paris with 180 complaints, including manslaughter, against Costa Cruises, their lawyer said Sunday. The class action, which includes complaints from the families of three passengers who died of COVID-19, accuses the Italy-based cruise giant of negligence and various faults during their trip on the Costa Magica. In the absence of stopovers, the crew encouraged the passengers to use the ship's shops, spas, restaurants and casino without sufficiently putting health measures in place -- or informing them there were suspected infections onboard -- the complainants said in their suit.
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| Israeli military strikes Hamas target in northern Gaza Strip Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:59 PM PDT |
| Three parks and wildlife employees die in helicopter crash during bighorn sheep survey Posted: 09 Aug 2020 11:53 AM PDT  Officials say the pilot survived the crash in south-western Texas and cause of crash is under investigationThree Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) employees have been killed in a helicopter crash while conducting aerial surveys for desert bighorn sheep in the south-western part of the state, according to officials.The crash happened on Saturday in the remote wilderness of Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, which is adjacent to Big Bend National Park, on the Rio Grande that marks the border with Mexico.The victims of the crash were identified as wildlife biologist Dewey Stockbridge, fish and wildlife technician Brandon White, and state wildlife veterinarian Bob Dittmar, according to the TPWD.Officials said the pilot survived the crash and was taken to El Paso, the most westerly city in Texas, on the border with New Mexico, for further treatment, and the patient's condition is currently not public."No words can begin to express the depth of sadness we feel for the loss of our colleagues in this tragic accident," said Carter Smith, TPWD executive director, in a statement.Smith said they were "highly regarded … for the immense passion, dedication, and expertise they brought to their important work in wildlife management and veterinary medicine" and that they were carrying out "their calling to help survey, monitor and protect the bighorns of their beloved west Texas mountains".The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, asked Texans to pray for the families of the victims of the crash, adding as part of a statement that "our hearts ache today".Details of the crash are so far limited and an official investigation by the authorities is underway, according to local media reports.Desert bighorn sheep are carefully studied in the wildlife management area. They were a ubiquitous native animal in previous times and were successfully reintroduced after being hunted out by the 1960s for their meat and to reduce competition with farmed sheep.
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| Beirut police fire tear gas as protesters regroup and two ministers quit Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:59 PM PDT  Lebanese police fired tear gas to try to disperse rock-throwing protesters blocking a road near parliament in Beirut on Sunday in a second day of anti-government demonstrations triggered by last week's devastating explosion. Fire broke out at an entrance to Parliament Square as demonstrators tried to break into a cordoned-off area, TV footage showed. Protesters also broke into the housing and transport ministry offices.
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| Sweden looks to US model to curb deadly gang shootings Posted: 09 Aug 2020 06:33 AM PDT  Police in Stockholm are considering using a strategy against gun violence pioneered in gang-ridden US cities to counter a wave of shootings including an incident in which a 12-year-old girl was killed in crossfire last week. Senior officers from the Swedish capital have visited the southern city of Malmö, which has greatly reduced its shootings by using the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) methods pioneered in the 1990s in US cities. "They reacted very positively," Rolf Landgren, the police commissioner who leads the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) programme in Malmö, said. The shooting of the girl at a petrol station in Stockholm has led to renewed calls for police to clamp down on the gang violence that has resulted in close to 100 shootings in the first four months of this year alone. Police believe she was hit by a bullet fired at two men with links to a known gang. Malmö is on track this year to record its lowest number of shootings in a decade, with only nine registered so far, down from a peak of 65 in 2017. This is in line with results in US cities. A study of GVI in Boston found that it led to a 63 per cent fall in youth homicide. Mr Landgren said it had taken years of deadly violence before Malmö's police began to consider GVI – a method developed by David Kennedy, a criminologist, for Boston during the peak of its gun violence in the Nineties. "We had figures way, way higher than we had ever seen before. We needed to break that spiral," he said. In Malmö, the programme, called Ceasefire, was launched in late 2018. Known or suspected gang members are offered help to leave gang life and warned that if they continue to engage in gun crime, they risk continual police harassment. Suspects are continually targeted using laws that were designed to tackle football hooligans. The bullet-proof car owned by a 30-year-old suspected gang leader was stopped so frequently that he reported the police to Sweden's parliamentary ombudsman for harassment. The man has since been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison, after drugs and weapons were found during a raid. He has appealed the sentence.
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| Canada's last fully intact ice shelf has suddenly collapsed, forming a Manhattan-sized iceberg Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:41 PM PDT  The 4,000-year-old ice shelf fell apart at the end of July as summer temperatures soared, scientists said.
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| Chicago's Montrose Harbor blocked by police, fence after Mayor Lori Lightfoot shuts down large beach party: 'It's being addressed' Posted: 09 Aug 2020 02:07 PM PDT  CHICAGO - For months, memes have appeared to show Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot watching for crowds and threatening to close parts of the city if residents don't abide by orders and closures during the coronavirus pandemic. But on Saturday, Lightfoot herself - not just an edited photo of her, like those used in such memes - apparently had a hand in breaking up a large gathering at Montrose ...
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| National security adviser: 'Almost nothing' left to sanction 'of the Russians' Posted: 09 Aug 2020 10:40 AM PDT  Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan repeatedly pushed National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien on Sunday to say whether President Trump has told Russian President Vladimir Putin "to knock it off" when it comes to U.S. election interference. O'Brien said he doesn't get involved with his boss' conversations with other world leaders, but said the Trump administration remains committed to keeping Moscow out of the picture.Trump, O'Brien said, has been tougher than his predecessors. So much so, he argues, that there's little else Washington can do since they've already "sanctioned the heck out of" individuals, companies, and the government in Russia, kicked Russian spies out of the U.S., and closed down consulates and other diplomatic facilities. "Nevertheless we continue to message the Russians, and President Trump continues to message the Russians: don't get involved our elections," O'Brien said, adding that the warning extends to Beijing and Tehran, as well.> "There's almost nothing we can sanction left of the Russians," @robertcobrien says when pressed if @realdonaldtrump ever told Russia's Vladimir Putin to "knock it off" with threats of election interference in 2020 during their last phone call in July pic.twitter.com/KvGtmsrpgo> > — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 9, 2020Brennan, however, pointed out throughout the interview that intelligence reports indicate that the messaging — and the sanctions — don't seem to have gotten through to the Kremlin, as there's still evidence Russia is working to undermine the electoral process stateside. Foreign policy experts have also suggested current sanction policy doesn't always prove to be a deterrent, since Moscow views them as permanent and therefore has little incentive to change its behavior purely based on those actions.More stories from theweek.com 5 scathing cartoons about Trump's 'it is what it is' COVID response 4 surprising reasons scientists think asymptomatic coronavirus cases are so common QAnon goes mainstream
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| Bolsonaro assails Brazil network blaming him for virus deaths Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:29 PM PDT  President Jair Bolsonaro lashed out Sunday at the "cowardice" of Brazil's most widely viewed TV network for suggesting he bore heavy blame for the nation's more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths. The far-right president accused TV Globo of treating the death milestone as if it were "a World Cup final," saying on Twitter that it had been both "cowardly and disrespectful of the dead." On Saturday night, shortly after the official announcement that the 100,000-death mark had been passed, TV Globo opened its news report with a long editorial highly critical of Bolsonaro's handling of the health crisis.
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| Niger attack: French aid workers among eight killed by gunmen Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:54 PM PDT  The attack happened in a region which draws visitors to the last giraffe herds in West Africa.
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| Lebanon priests recount horror as blast rocked church Posted: 09 Aug 2020 08:22 AM PDT  The video shows Father Rabih Thoumy swinging a chain censer sending smoke into the air when abruptly there is a rumble and then a loud bang as the shockwave from Beirut's devastating explosion slams into the church. There were tears and shock.
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| Wave in eastern Atlantic may develop into a tropical depression this week, forecasters say Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:26 PM PDT  The National Weather Service is monitoring a storm that has the potential to become a tropical depression in the eastern Atlantic this week.
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| Ecuador navy surveils large Chinese fishing fleet near Galapagos Posted: 09 Aug 2020 08:04 AM PDT  Ecuador's navy is conducting surveillance of a large Chinese fishing fleet that is operating near the protected waters of the Galapagos Islands, amid concerns about the environmental impact of fishing in the area of the ecologically sensitive islands. The fishing fleet has since 2017 been arriving in the summer months and fishing just outside the Galapagos territorial waters, drawn by marine species such as the endangered hammerhead shark. Such fishing is not illegal because it takes place in international waters.
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| Man who was given life sentence for $30 marijuana sale to be freed Posted: 09 Aug 2020 06:32 AM PDT  A man in Louisiana serving a life sentence for selling less than a gram of marijuana is due to be released from prison, his lawyer has said.Derek Harris, who is a military veteran, was arrested in 2008 for selling 0.69 grams of marijuana — an amount worth less than $30 (£23) — to an undercover officer who came to his door.
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| A 17-year-old high school student developed an app that records your interaction with police when you're pulled over and immediately shares it to Instagram and Facebook Posted: 09 Aug 2020 05:40 AM PDT  PulledOver is "like a community where you can share videos — you can see how other people are being treated," its creator told Business Insider.
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| Eleven killed in Czech apartment block fire including 5 who fell to their deaths Posted: 08 Aug 2020 07:31 PM PDT  Three children were among 11 people killed in a fire on Saturday at an apartment block in the Czech Republic that police believe was set deliberately. Police said one person was detained in connection with the blaze that saw five people jump to their deaths in the eastern city of Bohumin near the Polish border. Regional police chief Tomas Kuzel told public Czech Television that police suspected arson was the cause and that they had detained one person in the case. "I think we are good when it comes to the culprit," Mr Kuzel said without specifying whether the detained person would be charged with arson. He likened the fire to a case in 2013 when a man caused a gas explosion and fire that killed three children and two other people as well as himself. He reportedly hated his fellow tenants.
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| ‘Like Groundhog Day’: Republicans fret over Trump’s fading fortunes Posted: 08 Aug 2020 04:00 AM PDT  Negotiations for coronavirus relief have fallen apart. Coronavirus deaths continues to rise. Several Trump allies acknowledged that if the election was held today, Trump would likely lose.
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| Kerala plane crash: 'Black boxes' from Air India jet found Posted: 08 Aug 2020 02:34 PM PDT  The Air India plane skidded off the runway and broke apart during bad weather in Kerala state.
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| Masks in class? Many questions as Germans go back to school Posted: 09 Aug 2020 12:46 AM PDT  Masks during class, masks only in the halls, no masks at all. As Germany's 16 states start sending millions of children back to school in the middle of the global coronavirus pandemic, the country's famous sense of "Ordnung," or order, has given way to uncertainty, with a hodgepodge of regional regulations that officials acknowledge may or may not work. "There can't, and never will be 100% certainty," said Torsten Kuehne, the official in charge of schools in Pankow, Berlin's most populous district where 45,000 students go back to school Monday.
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| Despite federal guidance, schools cite privacy laws to withhold info about COVID-19 cases Posted: 09 Aug 2020 04:08 AM PDT  Federal guidance say those laws don't bar disclosure. Schools can publicly share coronavirus case counts as long as they don't identify individuals.
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| Japan's Abe to avoid visit to war-linked shrine on 75th war anniversary: Jiji Posted: 08 Aug 2020 10:59 PM PDT  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will refrain from visiting the Yasukuni shrine for war dead on the 75th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War Two, Jiji news agency said on Sunday, but will make an offering on the emotive day, as he has done in the past. The shrine, dedicated to Japanese who have died during past wars including World War Two, is seen as a potent symbol of the controversy that persists over the conflict's legacy in East Asia. "He will make a ritual offering to the shrine out of his personal expenses as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, as he has done in previous years," sources close to the matter said, according to the report.
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| Trump allows some unemployment pay and defers payroll tax Posted: 09 Aug 2020 08:12 AM PDT  President Trump on Saturday claimed the authority to defer payroll taxes and replace an expired unemployment benefit with a smaller amount after negotiations with Congress on a new COVID-19 rescue package collapsed.
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| She Was Charged With Murder After Her Baby Was Stillborn. Now California’s AG Has Stepped In. Posted: 08 Aug 2020 12:55 PM PDT  For more than nine months, five of them during a global pandemic, a 26-year-old woman named Chelsea Becker has been sitting in Kings County Jail, under a $2 million bail, for giving birth to a stillborn baby.Becker has been there since November, when police arrested her and prosecutors charged her with murder. The District Attorney argued that Becker's methamphetamine addiction had caused the stillbirth, citing a 50-year-old law that civil rights advocates say was never supposed to apply to pregnant women. It has put Becker at the heart of a national debate over criminalizing fetal death. On Friday, however, California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra intervened. In an amicus brief to end the case against Becker, Becerra argued the prosecution's legal interpretation would lead to "absurd—and constitutionally questionable—results.""We believe the law was misapplied and misinterpreted," Becerra said in a statement about the brief. "Our laws in California do not convict women who suffer the loss of their pregnancy, and in our filing today we are making clear that this law has been misused to the detriment of women, children, and families." An American Surrogate Had His Baby. Then Coronavirus Hit.Back in September, Becker, then 25, was eight and a half months pregnant when she thought her water broke, only to discover it was blood. Becker's mother called an ambulance to her home in the San Joaquin Valley, according to The Los Angeles Times. Three hours later, Becker gave birth in Adventist Health Hanford hospital to a boy with no pulse, whom she had planned to name Zachariah.Suspicious that the fetus suffered from drug exposure, hospital employees alerted the Kings County Medical Examiner's Office, which conducted an autopsy. The exam found methamphetamine in the fetus' system, a Times report states, that amounted to more than five times the level thought to be toxic. They ruled the case a homicide. Becker had grown up in Hanford, a working class town in Kings County, that serves as a trading hub in the agrarian San Joaquin Valley. The nearly half Hispanic town recently made headlines when 183 meatpacking workers came down with COVID-19. According to the Census Bureau, 18 percent of residents live below the poverty line. Before the pandemic, county unemployment levels hovered at 7.9 percent—they have since soared to 14.6 percent.Becker told the Times that as a teen, she spent some time living with her father in Minnesota, where she became addicted to methamphetamine. She came home to Hanford at 19, where she had two other children, both of whom were removed from her care. In early November, prosecutors charged Becker with murder, holding the mother on a $5 million bail, later reduced to $2 million. Their case hinged on an amendment, passed in 1970, to the state's murder statute: Penal Code section 187. Earlier that year, the California Supreme Court had overturned the murder conviction of man who had assaulted his pregnant wife, causing the death of their fetus. The code, the court had concluded, only addressed the killing of "a human being," making the man ineligible for a murder charge. In response, the legislature amended the statute to include the "unlawful killing" of a "fetus." That was the language prosecutors seized on to charge Becker with murder."The conduct of the defendant resulted in the death of a fetus, which is a crime in California," said District Attorney Keith Fagundes told The Los Angeles Times. He did not respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment on Saturday.At her arraignment, Becker pleaded not guilty, and later filed a motion calling the code's application to a pregnant woman unconstitutional. The amendment had been made to protect victims of domestic violence, Becker's lawyers argued, not criminalize women who miscarried, had stillbirths, or sought abortions. "Penal Code 187(b)(3) by its own plain terms," they wrote, "precludes the prosecution of a woman for the consensual acts in which she may engage while pregnant." Becker's attorney, Roger Nuttall, and Becerra did not immediately return requests for comment. "Ms. Becker had experienced a stillbirth that the prosecutor claims (without scientific basis) was caused by her methamphetamine use during pregnancy," the National Advocates for Pregnant Women wrote in a statement on Becker's case. "Ms. Becker was charged with this crime despite the fact that §187 does not authorize, nor has it ever been interpreted to authorize prosecution of a woman in relation to her own pregnancy or any outcome of a pregnancy."https://www.facebook.com/NationalAdvocatesforPregnantWomen/photos/a.190808107181/10157715445342182/?type=3&theaterIn the decades since 1970, California prosecutors have tried to charge women for stillbirths, but none has secured a conviction until 2018, when another woman was arrested for the same crime in the same town of Hanford.Like Becker, Adora Perez was in her late 20s and addicted to methamphetamine when she gave birth to a stillborn baby at Adventist Health. Also like Becker, hospital employees alerted the Medical Examiner's Office when the fetus tested positive for the drug, according to reports in The Fresno Bee. Fagundes charged her with murder. Perez, however, took a plea deal. Now 32, she is serving an 11-year sentence in state prison for voluntary manslaughter—the first time in decades that a charge of this kind ended in jail time. The unprecedented charges against Becker and Perez have alarmed pregnancy advocates, medical professionals, drug policy organizations, and civil rights groups across the country. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief in support of Becker. The same day, a coalition of 15 organizations, from the Drug Policy Alliance to California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, filed another."Broadly accepted medical, public health, and scientific evidence supports the Legislature's drafting of the statute to avoid criminalizing women with respect to their pregnancies," the coalition wrote. "Pregnancy and use of controlled substances is a medical and public health issue, not an issue that should be subject to state intervention and control."Attempts to criminalize pregnant women who suffer from addiction have backfired in the past. In 2014, Tennessee passed a wildly controversial bill, attempting to target what they called "fetal assault." The bill allowed prosecutors to bring charges against women with drug addictions, if their fetuses were born still or disabled. It proved so polarizing that it was given a two-year trial phase and then, in 2016, deemed a failure and discontinued. "As a result of the law," the National Advocates for Pregnant Women wrote in a statement, "women steered clear of prenatal care and drug treatment and avoided delivering their babies in hospital settings."Nevertheless in June, the superior court denied Becker's motion to have the case declared unconstitutional. The next month, she filed a writ of prohibition––a motion to stop the court proceedings––arguing that "a woman cannot be prosecuted for murder as a result of her own omissions or actions that might result in pregnancy loss." In his amicus brief on her case, Becerra agreed: "The superior court erred in concluding otherwise." "The Legislature's purpose in adding the killing of a fetus to Penal Code section 187 was not to punish women who do not—or cannot, because of addiction or resources—follow best practices for prenatal health," Becerra wrote. "The courts should not assume that the Legislature intended such a sweeping and invasive change to the criminal law affecting women's lives without clear evidence of that intent. And such evidence is absent here."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.
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| A body was recovered from the wreckage of the New Orleans Hard Rock hotel 10 months after it collapsed Posted: 09 Aug 2020 08:30 AM PDT  The hotel collapsed last October. It killed three construction workers, including 36-year-old Quinnyon Wimberly, whose body was recovered on Saturday.
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| Coronavirus: New Zealand marks 100 days without community spread Posted: 09 Aug 2020 07:54 AM PDT  The prime minister hails the milestone as "significant", but warns against complacency.
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| 7 killed in Mexico's most violent state despite capo arrest Posted: 08 Aug 2020 03:04 PM PDT |
| Rescuers shaken by 'blood and death' of India jet disaster Posted: 07 Aug 2020 11:53 PM PDT  Indian authorities had practised for years for a jet overshooting the "table-top" runway at Kozhikode airport, but local resident Fazal Puthiyakath was not prepared for the "blood and death" of the real thing. The 32-year-old businessman and his neighbours were first on the scene after an Air India Express plane crashed over the runway down a 10-metre (35-foot) bank and broke in two during a fierce storm late Friday, killing 18 people and injuring more than 120. Kozhikode airport in southern India's Kerala state is considered a potential hazard because it has a "table-top" runway with a steep bank at either end.
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| Ireland has a new coronavirus fear: Americans on vacation Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:59 AM PDT  With little to no quarantine enforcement on visitors, some Irish business owners say they have had to take matters into their own hands.
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| Gov. Mike Huckabee weighs in on religious voters, 2020 election Posted: 09 Aug 2020 07:36 AM PDT  Fox News contributor and former Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend.'
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| How Leander Perez’s Vicious Racism Backfired and Saved Jury Trials Posted: 09 Aug 2020 01:56 AM PDT  All Gary Duncan wanted to do was prevent a fight between some Black and white kids. But when the 19-year old African-American lightly touched the arm of a 14-year-old white boy named Herman Landry in what he felt was a paternal, conciliatory gesture, Landry's response was, "My people can put you in jail for that."This was in October 1966, in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, at the height of the civil rights era. Plaquemines was, thanks to the oil and fishing industries, one of the wealthiest rural counties in the country. But it was ruled by Leander Perez, a Democratic political boss and one of the shrewdest, most virulent segregationists in the history of American apartheid. Which is one reason why Duncan, despite his innocent gesture, was arrested on the charge of "Cruelty to Juveniles," and why his case eventually culminated in Duncan v. Louisiana, a Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed the right to a jury trial for any and all serious crimes."The significance of Duncan v. Louisiana is less about the immediate impact of the Court's ruling than about the foundation that ruling laid," says Matthew Van Meter, author of Deep Delta Justice, a new book about the Duncan case and the Plaquemines milieu in which it originated. "Duncan v. Louisiana is the basis of five decades of jurisprudence that protects juries from racial discrimination, ensures that they come to fair decisions, and forces the prosecution to prove every relevant fact to them. These cases are still coming down: just this spring, in Ramos v. Louisiana, the Court overturned the non-unanimous jury systems in Louisiana and Oregon—citing Duncan v. Louisiana as its basis."Duncan's case would never have gotten as far as it did if the Plaquemines authorities hadn't belatedly realized that "Cruelty to Juveniles" only applied to adults with some sort of authority over the alleged victim, usually parents. So they changed the charge to "Simple Battery" which, although classified as a misdemeanor, meant a person could serve two years in prison and did not entitle Duncan to a jury trial under Louisiana law. In fact, all cases other than those in which the maximum penalty was hard labor or death were to be tried by a judge without a jury, and only death penalty cases mandated a 12-person, unanimous jury.Enter Richard Sobol, a New York lawyer who was staff attorney for the New Orleans branch of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC), founded to defend civil rights activists. Sobol agreed to defend Duncan, knowing that his demand for a jury trial would be rejected, and realizing his ultimate audience was the U.S. Supreme Court.In the meantime Perez, who was not only a racist but virulent anti-Semite (Sobol was Jewish), spent his time skimming money from lucrative oil and mineral leases (after his death his sons were sued and forced to return $12 million to the parish), plotting ways to undermine SCOTUS' decision to integrate the public schools, and engaging in vindictive behavior targeting Sobol, whom he arrested for practicing law in Louisiana without a license (Sobol sued, and won in federal court)."To me, Perez was not only vindictive, he had all this power in the Louisiana legislature," says Van Meter. "By the time the events in the book happen, he had been in office for 45 years. The thing about Perez also, segregation and Jim Crow were always about innovation, you had to stay one step ahead of SCOTUS, come up with new and novel ways of maintaining segregation. He was part of this team of lawyers working on ways to keep people apart. And he was pitted against people like Sobol who were trying to out-innovate him."Perez, who at one time built a prison camp for "racial agitators," was heavily involved in moving segregationist legislation through the state legislature, and in voter suppression efforts. He managed to establish segregated "academies" in the parish with tuition funded by public money and was so successful in his voting campaigns that from 1955 to 1960, only five African-Americans managed to register to vote in the parish.Perez also doubled down on his nastiness after SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in Duncan's favor, and Justice Byron White's majority opinion stated that "a right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government." But SCOTUS left open the option for a non-jury trial for "petty offenses." So, after the decision, the Louisiana legislature reduced the penalty for simple battery to six months, which White had defined as a reasonable dividing line between serious and petty crimes. Incensed by SCOTUS' decision, Perez then had Duncan re-arrested for what remained a non-jury offense. Sobol sued, claiming this was pure harassment, and won again. Charges against Duncan were finally dropped, nearly four years after the initial incident.Duncan v. Louisiana was part of what Van Meter refers to as a "criminal procedure revolution" that included Miranda v. Arizona (Miranda warnings) and Gideon v. Wainright (the right to a public defender). But although the ramifications of those two decisions are still alive and well, the Duncan case has been severely undercut by plea bargaining, which now accounts for over 90 percent of all criminal cases. "As more and more laws have been passed, it's entirely up to the prosecutor what to charge you with, and what sentence to ask for," says Van Meter, whose book is being turned into A Crime on the Bayou, a documentary in development at HBO. "What they come to you with is the most serious charge and say if you want to go to trial and take your chances, or right now we can plead you down to whatever. What reasonable person will take their chances on a jury trial? This is an unbelievably important case that just doesn't apply anymore."Still, Van Meter believes that the Duncan case, and its place within the civil rights movement of the '60s, has a lot in common with today's Black Lives Matter protests. "The whole thing about BLM is that it does not have charismatic leadership, and that's a positive resolution. Because Martin Luther King was mostly absent from Louisiana, the movement was local, and highly dangerous. In Plaquemines they were using demonstrations to draw out a response, and then hiring lawyers to take cases to federal court. They were working to orchestrate highly targeted events, and I think that is going on now. "It's this one-two punch using demonstrations in a targeted way to draw out the oppression of the government, and then using lawyers to take this to court. I think there's a way to learn how these movements sustained themselves for years under incredibly harsh conditions. I think there's a lot to be learned how local groups managed to win these big victories over many years despite conditions that are harsher than what we see today."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.
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| Afghanistan to release 400 'hard-core' Taliban prisoners in bid for peace Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:43 PM PDT  The Afghan government agreed on Sunday to release 400 "hard-core" Taliban prisoners, paving the way for peace talks aimed at ending almost two decades of war. Under election-year pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump for a deal allowing him to bring home American troops, the country's grand assembly, or Loya Jirga, on Sunday approved the release. The Taliban militant had demanded the release of the 400, the last batch among 5,000 prisoners to be freed, as a condition to join peace talks.
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| The Trump administration reportedly quashed part of an intelligence report that showed Russia is helping him win the 2020 election Posted: 09 Aug 2020 10:08 AM PDT  Previous reports from the FBI, CIA, and NSA concluded that Russia attempted to help Trump win in 2016, but Trump has denied those reports' accuracy.
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| Maskless woman filmed telling grocery store worked she could be sued for enforcing rules Posted: 09 Aug 2020 10:42 AM PDT  A maskless woman was filmed falsely telling a grocery store worker she could be prosecuted for telling customers to wear masks - insisting that she was from an organization called the 'Freedom to Breathe Agency'.The now-viral video shows the woman claiming she's from the 'agency', which she says protects people's "constitutional rights" and makes sure civil and federal laws are not broken.
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| COVID-19 cases top 5 million in US with odds for highly effective vaccine ‘not great’ Posted: 09 Aug 2020 07:03 AM PDT  The United States leads the world in confirmed cases, followed by Brazil and India.
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| Remains recovered after California Marine tank sinks Posted: 07 Aug 2020 10:12 PM PDT  Authorities on Friday recovered the bodies of nine people killed when a Marine landing craft sank in hundreds of feet of water off the Southern California coast, authorities said. The amphibious vehicle sank in 385 feet (117 meters) of water as it headed back to a Navy ship after completing routine training, the military said. The craft sank less than a mile from San Clemente Island off the coast of San Diego.
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