U.S.Associated PressFeds put first Black inmate to death since execution restart
A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration's resumption of federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause. Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. After robbing and locking Todd and Stacie Bagley in the trunk of their car, the then-19-year-old Vialva shot them in the head and burned their bodies in the car.
PoliticsThe WeekGOP Sen. Cory Gardner stayed mum on meatpacking coronavirus outbreaks as he received industry donations
Early in the pandemic, meatpacking factories' close quarters became home to massive COVID-19 outbreaks throughout the country. An outbreak at the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado led to at least 291 confirmed cases and six deaths — the biggest localized outbreak in the state. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) explicitly called for an investigation at the facility, as did a JBS employee union, which called out Gardner for failing to provide promised coronavirus tests for workers.
PoliticsBusiness InsiderThe USPS claimed it can't restore some mail sorting machines because it 'dismantled' them
The US Postal Service claimed in a court filing Wednesday that it has already taken apart high-speed mail sorting machines and therefore can't put them back into service. The USPS claimed it was "not possible" to restore machines it had "dismantled" for parts, only those that had merely been "disconnected." A federal judge issued an injunction last week requiring the USPS to reverse those and other changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, calling them an "an intentional effort" by Trump and DeJoy "to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections."
PoliticsUSA TODAY OpinionDemocrats, not Republicans, are hypocrites on filling SCOTUS seat
In 2016, President Obama appointed Merrick Garland to fill the seat left vacant by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that “Article II, Section II of the Constitution grants the Senate the right to withhold its consent, as it deems necessary” and that tradition holds that when a Supreme Court vacancy exists in an election year when there is a president of one party and a Senate controlled by the other, the nomination should wait until after the election. 11 Republican Senators, in a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, wrote in February of 2016 that you have to go back to 1888 “in order to find an election year nominee who was nominated and confirmed under divided government, as we have now.”
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Protesters threaten to ‘knock out’ diners in Florida amid unrest
Peter Kirsanow, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, reacts on 'Fox & Friends.
WorldReutersKosovo war crimes court arrests guerrilla veterans' leader, lawyer says
European Union police on Friday arrested the head of Kosovo's war veterans group and he was being flown to a war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands to face as yet unspecified charges, his lawyer said on Friday. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, mandated to investigate and prosecute suspects in war crimes committed during Kosovo's 1998-99 guerrilla uprising against Serbian rule, declined to comment on the reported arrest. Witnesses said Hysni Gucati, head of Kosovo's War Veterans Association, was handcuffed and bundled into an EU police car by masked officers in the tiny Balkan country's capital Pristina.
WorldLA TimesA nightmare comes true for 12 Hong Kongers arrested at sea, now in Chinese detention
Word came on Aug. 26: The Chinese coast guard had stopped a boat reportedly headed toward Taiwan and taken 12 Hong Kongers on board into detention. “He is trapped in another hell,” said the girlfriend, who spoke on condition of using only her first name, Alice, and withholding her boyfriend's name for fear of retribution under a new national security law recently imposed on Hong Kong to silence dissent as China tightens its hold on the former British colony. A month has passed since the “Hong Kong 12,” as they have been nicknamed in the city, were detained for alleged illegal border crossing in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, just over an hour's drive from Hong Kong but a world away in terms of legal protections.
WorldReuters'Smoke with freedom': Mexicans get high in marijuana garden outside Senate
A cannabis 'garden' sprouting next to Mexico's Senate building has become a smoker's paradise, with Mexican stoners lighting up joints without fear of arrest. The cannabis seeds sowed in a plaza by Mexico's Senate by pro-marijuana activists in February have mushroomed into strikingly large plants, and become symbolic of a drive to legalize marijuana in a nation riven by drugs-related violence. "Being able to smoke here (in the garden) in freedom is very important to me," said Marco Flores, a barista sitting on a bench overlooking the Congress building.
U.S.Associated Press3 accused of creating 'man cave' under Grand Central station
Three railroad workers have been suspended for turning a storage room under New York's Grand Central Terminal into an unauthorized “man cave” with a television, a refrigerator, a microwave and a futon couch, officials said Thursday. A Metropolitan Transportation Authority investigation found that managers at Metro-North Railroad were unaware of the hideaway beneath Track 114. "Many a New Yorker has fantasized about kicking back with a cold beer in a prime piece of Manhattan real estate — especially one this close to good transportation,” MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny said in a news release.
U.S.INSIDER2 Black Lives Matter demonstrators are facing life in prison. Experts say the 'deeply disturbing' potential sentences are an 'unprecedented' form of government overreach.
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman are facing life in prison after officials said they lit a police van on fire with a Molotov cocktail at a Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn in May. Experts told Insider that the charges are "unprecedented" and "deeply disturbing." Early on the morning of May 30, New York police officers arrested two lawyers during a Black Lives Matter protest.
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Hungarian PM Orban against new EU migration pact over hosting asylum seekers
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday rejected a new migration plan by the European Union's executive, saying it would force Hungary to welcome aslyum seekers, but he welcomed some other elements of the proposal. Speaking in a Reuters interview a day after discussing migration in Brussels with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Orban said the devil was in the detail of the proposal over how to handle arrivals in the bloc, an issue that has long divided the EU. "There are some goods news and there are some problems that are still not solved," he said, speaking in an elegant, art-deco hotel in Brussels, where the EU's executive arm on Wednesday presented what it dubbed a "balanced" blueprint on migration.
U.S.The Daily BeastShocking Video Shows Seattle Cop Rolling Bike Over Fallen Breonna Taylor Protester’s Head and Neck
The Seattle Police Department is investigating after a video showed one of its cops rolling a bike over the head and neck of a fallen protester at Wednesday night's Breonna Taylor demonstrations. Protests erupted in the city in response to officers in Louisville, Kentucky not being charged for fatally shooting the 26-year-old Black woman. The SPD confirmed in a statement that 13 people were arrested at the Seattle demonstrations and complained that multiple officers had been injured, including one who was struck in the head with a baseball bat.
PoliticsAssociated PressNew Mexico Democrats hold up Trump judicial appointments
New Mexico's Democratic senators have placed the judicial confirmations for two U.S. District Court vacancies on hold until after the Nov. 3 election. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall interrupted the vetting of two possible lifetime appointments in response to a White House news conference — prior to the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sept. 18 — in which Trump invoked the president's authority over hundreds of recent and future federal judicial appointments as a rallying cry to political supporters.
LifestyleUSA TODAYMeet Magawa, the 'hero rat' awarded a bravery medal for detecting dozens of landmines
A rat is being honored with one of the highest awards in the animal world after he has potentially saved numerous lives for clearing landmines from fields in Cambodia. Magawa, an African Giant Pouched Rat, was awarded a gold medal from the PDSA, a British veterinary charity, for his work over the past seven years leading to the detection of 39 landmines and 28 unexploded items and clearing more than 20 soccer fields in the process. The rat is the most successful in the history of APOPO, a charity organization that has trained him and other rodents since the 1990s to detect landmines.
HealthLA TimesBiden is slightly healthier, study says, but both presidential candidates may be 'super-agers'
The presidential candidates and their supporters will likely keep belittling the other guy as a doddering old fool, but a group of geriatric experts say in a new paper that both President Trump and challenger Joe Biden appear to have the physical and cognitive tools to make it through four years in the White House. In fact, the two candidates' relative good health and other advantages — parental longevity, access to top-notch healthcare and abstinence from smoking and drinking — suggest both men are likely to become long-living “super-agers,” who thrive well into their 80s, or beyond, according to a draft report written by three medical doctors and four researchers with expertise in public health, survival analysis and statistics. Three of the authors of the paper — Stuart Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dr. Bradley Willcox, director of research in the Department of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Hawaii's medical school; and UCLA Professor Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, an authority on the demographics of aging — wrote previously about how presidents tend to outlive average Americans.
WorldAssociated PressWith spy series 'Tehran,' Israelis reach out to an enemy
Things are not as they seem in the new Apple TV+ series “Tehran” — as it should be in a spy thriller. The series opens with a commercial flight from Jordan to India that's suddenly diverted to Iran. As audacious as the premise, “Tehran” is equally bold: an Israeli production that offers viewers a sympathetic view of Iran — one of Israel's greatest foes — without anyone from the production setting foot in the Islamic Republic.
PoliticsThe Daily BeastInside Louisiana GOP’s ‘Crash and Burn’ Push to Strip Governor’s Powers
The state of Louisiana has already suffered through a pair of devastating surges during the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats in the conservative state of Louisiana are bracing for Republicans to attempt to drain Gov. John Bel Edwards' emergency powers during a special legislative session set to start Monday night, as the executive authority of statewide leaders in a time of crisis continues to be a point of friction across party lines. To Senate Minority Leader Troy Carter “there's a potential for a kamikaze flight,” where some lawmakers are “willing to explode and blow the whole state up for frivolous politics.”
U.S.Business InsiderForget rooftop pools and private yoga rooms — the most important new luxury home amenity is a state-of-the-art air filtration system
Real estate agents in California have seen a surge of requests from clients for homes that come with high-quality air filtration, reports The Los Angeles Times' Sean Dean. California has been battling historic wildfires that have severely worsened air quality. The country also continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic, and as people are spending more time in their homes, the wealthy want to ensure that the air inside is as clean as it can be.
BusinessBBCPMC Bank collapse: 'We lost our money and then our son'
When India's Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank (PMC) went under in 2019, nearly a million depositors were cut off from their life's savings. On 20 September, 2019, Raunak Modi deposited all his money - and that of his family's - in an account they held in PMC bank. The money he deposited in PMC bank also included a large amount he got after selling his house in Mumbai.
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Pakistan Hindus rally in Islamabad over India migrant deaths
Pakistan's minority Hindus rallied late on Thursday in Islamabad, briefly clashing with the police, to protest the deaths of 11 members of a Hindu migrant family who died in India last month under mysterious circumstances. Since then, the dead migrants' relatives have held small rallies in Pakistan's southern Sindh province but this was the first time they had taken their demonstration to the country's capital, vowing to stage a sit-in near the Indian Embassy. The protesters accuse India's secret service of poisoning the 11 Hindus, who were found dead at a farmhouse in India's Jodhpur district in Rajasthan state.
PoliticsMiami HeraldMcConnell, Graham, others in GOP break from Trump to vow peaceful transition of power
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent GOP lawmakers have broken from President Donald Trump's comments about transition of power if he loses the November election. Well, we're going to have to see what happens,” Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked whether he'd commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses on Election Day. Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly.
BusinessReutersDelta Hellas oil tanker loading crude at Libya's Hariga terminal - sources
The Delta Hellas oil tanker is currently loading its crude cargo from storage tanks at Libya's Hariga oil terminal, according to a shipping source and an engineer at the port. The tanker, chartered by the trading arm of China's Sinopec, Unipec, has the capacity to load 1 million barrels of crude. A second tanker, the Marlin Shikoku, also chartered by Unipec, is expected to dock at the port this evening, the two sources said.
HealthThe IndependentTrump advisor diagnosed with head cancer following leave of absence
Michael Caputo, the top spokesman at the Department of Health and Human Services who recently took temporary leave from his position after he accused the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of sedition, has been diagnosed with cancer, a spokesperson has said. The spokesperson for Mr Caputo, David DiPietro, a Republican state assemblyman in western New York, said in a statement on Thursday that doctors had diagnosed the official with a metastatic head and neck cancer or "squamous cell carcinoma” that originated in his throat, reports said.
WorldAssociated PressThe Latest: Abbas asks for launch of 'genuine peace process'
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an international conference early next year to “launch a genuine peace process” while criticizing the recent decision of two Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel. In an address before the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Abbas seemed to acknowledge the growing international weariness with the decades-old conflict, saying “I wonder what more I can say after all I've said on countless occasions.” The Palestinians have rejected President Donald Trump's proposal to end the conflict that overwhelmingly favors Israel, and have officially cut off contacts with both the U.S. and Israel.
U.S.Miami HeraldFalling highway sign crushes passing pickup truck, kills driver, Ohio police say
A driver was killed in Ohio Thursday morning after a highway sign tumbled and crushed his truck, police say. A dump truck was leaving an interstate construction site in Cleveland when it struck a highway sign on westbound I-480, WEWS reported. The dump truck's bed was raised, which caused it to hit the sign, according to Cleveland.com.
“Enfranchising 16-year-olds would be good for them and good for our democracy.”
“At 16, most kids have little awareness of politics, civics, or American history.”
“Voting is habit forming...which underscores the importance of having as stable an environment as possible for the youngest voters.”
“Keeping the voting age at 18 is not a slap at 16-year-olds. It is recognition that an informed electorate is the best kind.”
“When young people’s participation lags badly, issues important to them receive short shrift in the public discourse.”