- U.S.The Week
Derek Chauvin set to be sentenced on Friday
Two months after being found guilty of murdering George Floyd, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is set to be sentenced on Friday. Video of Chauvin, 45, kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes during a May 2020 arrest went viral, with protesters around the world demonstrating against Floyd's death and police brutality. In April, Chauvin was found guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
WorldBBCJammu and Kashmir: PM Modi promises elections in Kashmir
Indian PM Narendra Modi has said his government plans to hold elections in Jammu and Kashmir soon. He told regional leaders in Delhi on Thursday that polls could be held after an exercise to redraw the boundaries of assembly seats was carried out. This was the first such meeting since a controversial decision revoked the region's special status in 2019.
PoliticsThe WeekLindsey Graham says he won't be 'extorted by liberal Democrats' over infrastructure deal
Republican senators are already voicing their reasons for opposing the bipartisan infrastructure proposal unveiled on Thursday, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) revealing what would be the "ultimate deal-breaker" for him. A bipartisan group of senators — 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans — spent weeks negotiating with top White House aides, and on Thursday afternoon the White House released details on the proposal: it calls for $973 billion in spending over five years, including $579 billion in new funds not already allocated through other projects. There would be $312 billion going to transportation, $65 billion for broadband, and $55 billion for water infrastructure.
U.S.Fort Worth Star-Telegram911 operator didn’t send Fort Worth officer on call and 3 people died, news report says
An overworked 911 call-taker didn't send a Fort Worth police officer on a June 1 domestic call that ended in a double-murder and suicide, according to a news report. Ex-911 operator Kate Colley told KXAS-TV that the stressed 911 dispatcher received a call from Holly Beverly, who reported that her estranged husband was on his way to her apartment in west Fort Worth to harm her. The operator didn't send an officer because the suspect wasn't actually on the scene yet, Colley told the TV station.
U.S.The WeekAnthony Fauci was hosed down, naked, 'in what looked like a kiddy pool' after being mailed mysterious white powder
Last summer, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci was reportedly sent mail containing white powder that "literally blew up in his face," Politico writes, per a preview of the new book Nightmare Scenario by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. Luckily, chemical testing came back negative for both anthrax and ricin, but not before Fauci was hosed "down to his skivvies in a chemical lab," standing "naked in what looked like a kiddy pool" while his team awaited results, per Politico. Previously reported excerpts of Nightmare Scenario revealed Trump once joked he hoped COVID-19 would "take out" former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and had even proposed the U.S. house COVID-19 patients at Guantanamo Bay.
U.S.Raleigh News and ObserverDurham man arrested for Chapel Hill road rage shooting
The U.S. Marshals Regional Task Force arrested a Durham man Thursday in connection with a road rage incident involving an assault rifle earlier this month on Fordham Boulevard in Chapel Hill. Jose Daniel Rivas-Sanchez, 21, was charged with one felony count of discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle. Investigators with the Chapel Hill Police Department and other regional police and sheriff's office agencies, state law enforcement agencies, and the U.S. Marshals Service are members of the Regional Task Force for the Middle District of North Carolina.
WorldThe TelegraphChina's first Covid case could have been in October 2019, says UK study
The virus that causes Covid-19 could have started spreading in China as early as October 2019, two months before the first case was identified in the central city of Wuhan, a new study showed on Friday. Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal. The most likely date for the virus's emergence was November 17, 2019, and it had probably already spread globally by January 2020, they estimated.
U.S.Washington ExaminerNIH defends deleting COVID-19 genetic data pointing to lab leak origin
The National Institutes of Health defended its decision to delete its record of the genetic sequencing of COVID-19 cases from early in the coronavirus pandemic, apparently done at the request of Chinese researchers. The revelation was revealed by a U.S. virologist who discovered the information was scrubbed from the NIH database. This comes as the United States and its allies seek to determine if the virus sprang from a mysterious lab in Wuhan, China, which stymied an earlier investigation by the World Health Organization dismissing the lab theory.
U.S.The WeekMiami-Dade officials say they've heard 'banging' but no voices from rubble of condo tower, 99 people still missing
Miami-Dade officials said on Thursday afternoon that 102 people have been accounted for after the earlier collapse of a condo tower in Surfside, Florida. At least 99 people are still missing, and rescue teams are working through the rubble of the 12-story building, reports CNN. The tower partially collapsed early Thursday morning, and search crews said they have heard sound coming from the rubble.
U.S.BBCMiami building collapse leaves 99 people unaccounted for
At least one person has died and dozens are missing after the collapse of a 12-storey residential building north of Miami, Florida, officials say. The number of people who have been located now stands at 102, while 99 are still unaccounted for, according to Miami-Dade Mayor Danielle Levine-Cava. It is unclear how many people were in the building at the time.
WorldLA TimesHe tried to commemorate erased history. China detained him, then erased that too
What they're doing is to control every Chinese person's thinking and erase every person's history,” Dong said. They want to write history themselves. To Dong's surprise, two other young people were in the square the morning he arrived: Yuan Shuai, 24, a recent college graduate from Inner Mongolia working at an advertising company in Beijing, and Gao Tianqi, 21, a Beijinger attending university abroad who'd come back for the summer.
U.S.Miami Herald‘Hoping for a miracle’— former Beach elementary PE teacher, wife among Surfside missing
Asleep in her bed at 6 a.m. Thursday, North Miami Beach Commissioner Fortuna Smukler's husband awakened her and told her about the Surfside condo tower collapse. Smukler, who grew up with the three daughters of Myriam Caspi Notkin, 81, and her husband and their stepdad Arnold “Arnie” Notkin, 87, attended grade school in Miami Beach with the girls about 50 years ago. Smukler said when she learned the couple lived in apartment No. 302 in the Champlain Towers South Condo, the Surfside tower at 8777 Collins Ave. that collapsed early Thursday morning, she started losing hope.
WorldBBCCovid: Sydney city centre and Bondi beach to enter lockdown
More than one million people in Sydney's central and eastern suburbs, including Bondi Beach, will be locked down after a jump in Covid cases. The Australian city is battling to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant. Officials reported 17 new cases on Friday, taking the cluster to 65 cases.
PoliticsLA TimesPence says he was 'proud' to follow the Constitution on Jan. 6 to certify Biden's win
Former Vice President Mike Pence laid out his vision for the future of the Republican party in a speech Thursday night, attempting to unite the party's quarreling factions by appealing to both traditional small-government conservatism and populist Trumpism. "I will always be proud to have played a small part on that tragic day when we reconvened the Congress and fulfilled our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States," Pence said in the most extensive comments he has made so far about that day. The address was given at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, which is hosting a series of talks this year by Republican luminaries about the future of their party.
WorldBBCNike chief executive says firm is 'of China and for China'
Mr Donahoe was speaking during a call with Wall Street analysts about Nike's latest earnings report. The comments come after the sportswear giant was recently hit by a backlash over statements about Xinjiang. Cotton ban is self-defeating, China tells H&M Nike, H&M face China fury over Xinjiang cotton Western states sanction China for Uighur 'abuses' Mr Donahoe made the comments during a discussion on Nike's fourth quarter earnings, which showed revenues had doubled to a better-than-expected $12.3bn (£8.8bn) for the three months to the end of March.
U.S.USA TODAYMom of biracial teen seen on video being shocked with Taser by state trooper plans to sue
Kris Rodeman finally got to see her son Wednesday. The mother of the 16-year-old was beside herself with worry, angry and concerned that her son, currently in the Southwest Florida Juvenile Justice Center, is in pain. At issue is the shocking a week ago of her son with a Taser stun gun in the San Carlos Park neighborhood where his girlfriend lives.
PoliticsKansas City Star‘Do you believe in birth control at all?’ Missouri Senate moves closer to floor fight
Missouri lawmakers and advocates spent hours Thursday arguing over abortion and discussing the inner workings of women's reproductive systems in a heated hearing that resembled a remedial sex education course. A key Senate committee debated the merits of restricting Medicaid coverage of birth control and limiting payments to Planned Parenthood as part of a must-pass renewal of a hospital tax that generates $4 billion a year to fund Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income residents. A group of conservative senators are demanding limits on birth control coverage and Planned Parenthood payments be included to win their support, though Medicaid is already prohibited from paying for abortions.
- PoliticsYahoo News Video
Giuliani’s law license suspended in N.Y. state
A New York court has ruled that Rudy Giuliani made false comments about the 2020 election as Donald Trump's personal lawyer and has suspended his law license in New York state, effective immediately.
U.S.The Daily BeastTennessee Cops Say Summer Wells Missing-Child Case Is ‘Outside the Norm’
Tennessee police said Thursday that they are “frustrated” by the lack of clarity in the disappearance of 5-year-old Summer Wells—who was planting flowers in her garden and then just vanished. While every case is different, this one is definitely outside of the norm,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Leslie Earhart said at a briefing on the progress, or lack of it, in the case. Typically in an investigation like this one, we have some idea of where the case is headed and what might have happened within a few days.
PoliticsBusiness InsiderAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams the lack of diversity in an all-white group of lawmakers who drafted a bipartisan infrastructure deal
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the bipartisan group of lawmakers who negotiated an infrastructure deal. President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the group reached a deal. The New York lawmaker called out the group for its lack of diversity.
CelebrityBBCIndia's opinionated feminist and her viral wedding ad
Using the email address posted on the ad, the BBC managed to track down the "opinionated feminist" - Sakshi - and her brother Srijan and her best friend Damyanti, who came up with the idea. All the names are pseudonyms - they don't want their identities revealed since, as Sakshi said, "we are all professionals with steady careers, and (hopefully) promising lives ahead of us" and don't want to attract "bloodthirsty" social media trolls. The ad, Srijan said, was "a small prank we played for Sakshi's 30th birthday".
U.S.USA TODAY'All of us are praying': Search underway after Florida police officer shot in head
A search was ongoing Thursday for the person who shot a police officer in the head Wednesday, leaving him in critical condition and "fighting for his life." Police offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who can help authorities locate the suspect, identified as Othal Wallace, 29. The injured officer, Jayson Raynor, is out of surgery, according to a statement Thursday from the Daytona Beach Police Department.
WorldINSIDERA South African woman's story of giving birth to 10 babies at once was a hoax, government officials say
A South African woman who claimed to give birth to 10 babies at once made the story up, government officials said. None of the hospitals in the Gauteng province of South Africa have any record of decuplets being born. The government said it was determined that 37-year-old Gosiame Sithole was not even pregnant recently.
CelebrityThe Daily BeastJohn McAfee Found Dead in Spanish Prison Cell
John McAfee, the 90s software magnate-turned-globe-trotting fugitive, was found dead on Wednesday afternoon in a Spanish prison cell just hours after a court authorized his extradition to the United States on tax evasion charges. McAfee was 75. “Confirmation has come from our legal team in Spain that John was found dead in his jail cell,” McAfee's lawyer, Nishay K. Sanan, told The Daily Beast.
U.S.Business InsiderA judge expressed skepticism about arguments from Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani, who want Dominion's defamation lawsuits against them dismissed
A federal judge on Thursday weighed whether to dismiss Dominion's defamation lawsuits. Dominion is suing all three Trump allies over election conspiracy theories. A federal judge heard arguments Thursday over whether to allow multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems to proceed against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
“The pandemic has unequivocally proven the public health value of masks. And they should stick around in certain situations.”
“With the steady thrum of anti-mask sentiment in the U.S., it’s highly unlikely that they will continue to be a ubiquitous sight.”
“Wearing masks on airplanes or other modes of transit ... can help keep everyone safe.”
“Just because masks are common in many other nations ... is hardly a reason to emulate the practice.”
“The fact that the flu all but vanished ... is not evidence alone that masks were responsible.”