Pope urges Myanmar military to free prisoners
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Pope Francis on Monday urged Myanmar's military leaders to free political prisoners and resume the country's "brusquely interrupted" path to democracy.
Steven Matz held the Kansas City Royals without a hit into the sixth inning, and Jonathan Davis and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. homered to give the Toronto Blue Jays a 5-1 victory in the seven-inning opener of their doubleheader Saturday. Matz (3-0) only allowed a pair of walks before Nicky Lopez's blooper to left with one out in the sixth. Matz gave up Andrew Benintendi's two-out double later in the inning for the only other blemish on an otherwise dominant performance.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said GOP lawmakers who plan on joining the “America First Caucus" should be removed from their committee assignments.
Prince Harry and Prince William walked separately at Prince Philip's funeral, with Peter Phillips separating them, as Buckingham Palace had planned.
Chris Jackson/GettyThe queen has a brooch for every occasion—even the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip. The queen’s mourning clothes, though a stark contrast to her usual pastel ensembles, came accented with a special accessory that paid homage to her partner of 73 years.According to Express, the queen wore her Richmond Brooch on Saturday. It’s one of the largest in her collection, the paper reported, and was a wedding present for her grandmother Queen Mary’s nuptials in 1893. Usually the Queen wears the pin, made of diamonds, with a hanging pear-shaped pearl drop. But that feature was removed for the funeral.The sparkling accessory lit up the queen’s all-black look, and matched her face mask—also black, with white trim around the edges. The monarch sat alone through the funeral, which was pared-down due to the pandemic, like so many others.Prince Harry and Prince William Reunite After Prince Philip’s Funeral, Where the Queen Sat AloneBut the queen was not solitary in her statement jewelry. Kate Middleton also brought her own. Actually, it came from the queen: the Duchess wore a four-strand pearl necklace borrowed from Elizabeth’s collection.Today reports that it was made with pearls gifted from the Japanese government. Princess Diana wore the choker to a dinner in 1982.Kate’s matching pearl-drop earrings, which peeked out from underneath her netted black fascinator, were also from the Queen’s jewelry box. For the somber affair, the Duchess was able to sneak in a dash of glamour with her veil and Roland Mouret dress.One photographer caught Kate right before she exited her vehicle, and she stared straight into the camera’s lens. Such determined, direct eye contact isn’t something the Duchess is known for, but her look set the tone for a dignified, if very different, type of royal funeral.As had been previously reported, the royals did not wear military dress. Following their father and grandfather’s coffin, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, Prince William, and Prince Harry were all seen wearing medals, a compromise reached after an internal debate in the royal family about the appropriate dress for Harry and Andrew.Camilla Parker Bowles wore pearls and a brooch that also dripped with significance. As Hello noted, she showed up in the so-called Bugle brooch, which honored Philip’s tenure as Colonel-in-Chief of The Rifles, an infantry regiment of the British Army.For his final public engagement last year, the Duke of Edinburgh passed on his position to Camilla, who is his daughter-in-law. So it’s a significant and symbolic jewelry choice for the day.Princess Eugenie, a new mother who named her infant son after Philip, wore a netted veil to the ceremony. It was similar to Kate’s, though Eugenie paired hers with an oversized black headband.Unlike the other women, Eugenie did not wear much jewelry, save for a simple pair of earrings. She did, however, wear a rather trendy Gabriela Hearst trench coat, per the Daily Mail.Penny Brabourne, Countess Mountbatten, a close friend of Philip’s and fellow equestrian, was one of the 30 guests who was not a direct family member. (She is married to Philip’s godson, Norton Knatchbull.) She wore a black pillbox hat and fitted suit, along with a crystal fern brooch.Of course Meghan Markle, who is pregnant, was unable to travel from Los Angeles with Prince Harry. She might not have been there in person—the former Duchess reportedly watched from home—but Meghan ensured a part of her was present. Per The Daily Mail, Meghan left a handwritten note on a wreath left at the chapel. The royal family did not speak at the event. Emotions were expressed in other ways. Some of it was literal, like when Sophie, the Countess of Wessex wiped away tears in the chapel. Some of it was more symbolic, like the queen sitting alone while bidding goodbye to her husband. Or William and Harry chatting after the ceremony, two estranged brothers brought together through grief. And much of it was through fashion: small nods to history, and hand-me-downs representing the continuation of longstanding royal tradition. 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.
It was her loneliest journey – but she was not alone. In her darkest day on public duty, the Queen had her loyal lady-in-waiting Lady Susan Hussey by her side. The monarch and Lady Susan, carried in the State Bentley for the short journey from the Sovereign's Entrance of Windsor Castle to the Galilee Porch of St George's Chapel, travelled in companionable silence. In quiet contemplation, the two women faced the cameras and the watching world with dignified calm. The Queen had personally asked Lady Susan to join her for the journey as she prepared to say farewell to her husband of 73 years. One of a close inner circle of ladies-in-waiting, Lady Susan has been by the Queen's side since the birth of Prince Andrew, when she joined the royal household to help answer a flood of letters. Known affectionately as "Number One Head Girl" in an office once likened to the cheery atmosphere of a girls' school common room, she has been described as one of the key trusted figures helping the Queen in her later life.
18-year-old man from Ohio with assault rifle and wearing gas mask taken into custody
There was outrage on social media after Fox News host Sean Hannity described the Chicago police shooting victim Adam Toledo as a "13-year-old man."
The historic family ties that prompted The Queen to invite German royalty Follow live updates from Prince Philip's funeral The Duke of Edinburgh's great niece, whose brother is in Windsor for his funeral on Saturday, has remembered Prince Philip as an "idol" for the younger generation of their family. Speaking from Munich, Princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg said the Duke was a powerful role model to her and his "selflessness, lack of ego and sense of humour" will never be forgotten. Her tribute comes as the Queen prepares to say farewell to her husband of 73 years at Windsor Castle. "To all of us, he was an idol, he was somebody to look up to, we had enormous respect for him and it was always very exciting when he came to visit, and he came often," said Princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. "And this has become clear to me in the week since he's died - the way he lived his life, his motto, which was an unwritten motto for us, this discipline, this selflessness, this lack of ego, but also his sense of humour always underlying all of that.
The View co-host Meghan McCain is notorious both for sharing her "oppressive conservative beliefs on daytime TV" and for her, uh, interesting hairstyles, which has resulted in some onlookers wondering if those two things might be related. "Everyone's convinced Meghan McCain's hair and makeup stylist secretly hates her," Queerty wrote last month, while someone else tweeted that "The View's hair and makeup team expressing their contempt for Meghan McCain every day is hilarious." The Cut at last spoke to said hairstylist, whose name is Carmen Currie and who swears the looks aren't intentional sabotage. "I'm not slapping something on her and being like, 'Take THAT!,'" Currie said. "I'm not telling her what to do all the time, it's not like that at all." McCain recently defended her looks as "just having fun." Read more at The Cut and Vice. More stories from theweek.comThe question that will decide the Chauvin case5 colossally funny cartoons about Biden's infrastructure plan6 gorgeous homes on lakes
The 300-million-year-old shark’s teeth were the first sign that it might be a distinct species. “Great for grasping and crushing prey rather than piercing prey,” said discoverer John-Paul Hodnett, who was a graduate student when he unearthed the first fossils of the shark at a dig east of Albuquerque in 2013. This week, Hodnett and a slew of other researchers published their findings in a bulletin of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science identifying the shark as a separate species.
The former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll published an account accusing Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s.
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COVID-19 "variants of concern" include the coronavirus variant first found in South Africa. These new strains differ from the original in key ways.
When the photo was taken, Jerry Falwell Jr. was the president of an evangelical Christian university that bans sexual content and alcoholic drinks.
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‘Intoxicated’ and ‘uncooperative’ crowd blocked and injured police officers, NC Law Enforcement Division says.
Danish Siddiqui/ReutersIn an apparent effort to secure votes for his party in India’s upcoming state elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has allowed at least 50 million Hindus to take to the Ganga river for a holy dip in a religious festival that has turned into an unprecedented COVID-19 superspreader event.The Kumbh Mela, or the pitcher festival, is a mega Hindu gathering that takes place every 12 years along one of four riverbank pilgrimage sites, where millions of people bathe in the Ganga, also known as the Ganges, hoping to wash away their past sins and achieve salvation from the cycle of life and death. The month-long festival has been linked to at least 2,000 coronavirus infections so far.The celebration involves ascetics draped in marigold flowers and carrying tridents—a principal symbol in Hinduism—leading hordes of ash-covered followers to the riverbanks. Crammed together, the festivalgoers sing, dance, and hug each other after taking dips in the water.Despite the obvious public health hazards, Modi has allowed the festivities to continue uninterrupted. Appearing more concerned with bettering his party’s election odds, the prime minister has even promoted potential superspreader events of his own. With five Indian states heading to the polls through April, his de facto deputy—the home minister of India—has been jumping from one venue to another, addressing thousands of people in election rallies and leading grand road shows.Meanwhile, all across the country, patients are laying outside hospitals and gasping for breath before dying unattended. This month, India’s largest crematoriums ran out of firewood as land space fell short in cemeteries. On Wednesday alone, 200,000 Indians tested positive for the coronavirus. Adding to this, India, long celebrated as the “world’s pharmacy,” is running out of vaccines for its own people. Several states have complained of stock shortage while the country's top vaccine manufacturers, Covishield and Covaxin, have decried a lack of resources.Experts fear the current infection rate triggered by the festival is only the tip of the iceberg. After the festival ends, millions will be returning to different parts of the country, where they risk infecting others. 1232270216 XAVIER GALIANA Dr. SK Jha, the chief medical officer of Haridwar province—home to one of the festival’s riverbank sites—told The Daily Beast that “the cases are rising here every day and we are expecting more infections in coming days at Kumbh Mela. The devotees have come from many parts of India where already cases are surging.”The government had earlier promised several layers of screening to curb the spread as ash-smeared ascetics took over the town, but health authorities eventually pulled back the COVID-19 testing crew, fearing a stampede-like situation.Two months ago, Modi had declared an early pandemic victory: “At the beginning of this pandemic, the whole world was worried about India's situation,” announced Modi in a chest-thumping virtual address. “But today, India's fight against [coronavirus] is inspiring the entire world.”That is clearly no longer the case. Last month, a newly detected variant was searingly downplayed by the government. As cases began to rise again, the government refused to budge on the Kumbh festival, apparently fearing backlash from religious leaders in the Hindu-majority country and securing his Hindu vote bank.Modi’s handling of the superspreader festival has also raised concerns about his government fueling religious fanaticism and Islamophobia. Last year, India’s Muslim community was vilified after 4,300 positive cases were linked to a religious gathering. Members of the community were jailed, tried in the courts, and subjected to a smear campaign run by the pro-government national media.Critics have compared the media coverage of the Muslim event with the Kumbh festival, condemning the government’s apparent double standards and wilful ignorance when it comes to the Hindu festival.Responding to the criticism, the chief minister of Uttarakhand—the state hosting the festival—said: “They [Markaz attendees] were all inside a building and here it is out in the open, near the Ganges. The flow and blessings of Ma Ganga (Mother Ganga) will ensure that coronavirus does not spread. The question does not arise of a comparison… The devotees attending Kumbh are not from outside but our own people.” 1231641382 PRAKASH SINGH Though the current pandemic crisis is focused on the handling of the Kumbh festival celebrations, Modi’s planning and policy implementation has fallen on its face before. Last year, when India had around 525 cases, Modi announced an abrupt total lockdown overnight. The unplanned lockdown sparked an exodus of millions of laborers working in metropolitan cities, returning to their homes in the countryside on foot and spreading the virus that was then only limited to the cities.Still, Modi has managed to champion the game of optics and sell his failures as essential steps and successes to the electorate. Modi’s party has relied on his public messaging to appeal to voters—a tactic focused on political leg-pulling and the flaunting of his largely unmasked “massive” rallies. He is unwavering in his celebration of the crowds that flock to him, and dares not dampen the mood by asking voters to adhere to safety precautions.As other politicians follow suit, the Hindu nationalist leadership appears collectively hell-bent on showcasing an illusion of normalcy and preserving its religious sentiments. Meanwhile, the death count continues to soar as India’s historic health crisis spirals out of control.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.
Phil Colbert was on his way to meet his father for lunch before his shift at an Arizona auto dealership in 2019 when he saw the flashing lights of a sheriff’s patrol car in his mirror. He made sure his hands were on the steering wheel, planted at 10 and 2 as his parents had taught him, and asked why he had been stopped. “You can’t have anything hanging from your rearview mirror,” the La Paz County deputy, wearing a Blue Lives Matter wristband, told him. The officer was referring to the tree-shaped air freshener dangling near the windshield but quickly moved on to other questions: Do you have any marijuana? Do you smoke marijuana? When was the last time you did smoke marijuana? Do you have any cocaine? To Colbert, who is Black, the air freshener seemed nothing more than a pretext for the driving equivalent of a stop-and-frisk. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “At that point, I was like, ‘This dude is coming up with anything. He’s just coming up with anything to talk to me or mess with me,’” said Colbert, 23, who recorded the traffic stop on his cellphone and ultimately was let off with a warning. The air fresheners that dangle from rearview mirrors have been a ubiquitous accessory in cars for decades. But they may be treated as illegal in a majority of states, which have laws prohibiting objects near the windshield that can obstruct motorists’ views. They are part of a suite of low-level offenses, such as tinted windows or broken taillights, that civil rights advocates complain have become common pretexts for traffic stops that too often selectively target people of color. The encounter this week in Minnesota that led to a police officer fatally shooting Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, began when officers initiated a traffic stop and raised the issue of a hanging air freshener, according to Wright’s mother, who talked to her son on the telephone moments before he was shot. Pete Orput, the Washington County attorney, said officers had noticed an expired registration tab on Wright’s license plate and decided to pull his car over. One of the officers later noted the air freshener hanging from the mirror, which was a violation of the law, Orput said. Racial bias in traffic stops has been a focus of researchers and civil rights advocates for years. At Stanford University’s Open Policing Project, researchers analyzing more than 100 million traffic stops around the country found persistent racial disparities, with Black and Hispanic drivers more likely to be stopped and more likely to be searched. Collectively, officers found contraband at a lower rate among those searches than in searches of white drivers. Traffic stops also have the potential to escalate, like the case of Wright, who was shot by a police officer after he got back into his car as the police tried to arrest him for an unrelated warrant. The officer, Kimberly Potter, who had shouted that she was preparing to use her Taser, resigned and was charged with second-degree manslaughter. Paige Fernandez, a policing policy advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union, said low-level infractions such as expired registrations and air fresheners on mirrors should not be handled by armed police officers. “The danger that police traffic stops pose greatly outweighs any benefit of having them engage in that,” Fernandez said. Mayor Mike Elliott of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where Wright was killed, said police officers should not be pulling people over because of an expired registration during the coronavirus pandemic. The prohibitions against objects hanging from rearview mirrors can extend to fuzzy dice, graduation tassels and rosaries. Last year, amid the pandemic, authorities in Maine warned against hanging masks. A woman who answered the phone for the manufacturer of one of the most common hanging air fresheners, Little Trees, said the company would have no comment on the legal debate. The company’s website shows the scented paper trees hanging from a rearview mirror. States have long grappled with how to best handle the obstruction issue. After court data showed more than 1,400 citations in one year for people driving on Maryland highways with windshields obstructed by objects or materials, the state changed its law in 2017. The violation is no longer a primary offense, which would justify a traffic stop, but a secondary offense, which can only be cited after a motorist has been pulled over for something more serious, such as speeding. Virginia has followed suit as part of a broader package of reforms limiting when the police can conduct traffic stops. Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said the group had supported some of the changes, including a prohibition on stopping people for recently expired registrations. When lawmakers changed the law to require that a driver’s view must be “substantially” obstructed by objects to be considered a violation, police agencies did not object. Making windshield obstructions a secondary offense could allow some motorists to continue driving even with substantial obstruction that limits their view. Schrad said that had raised concern that roads could become less safe. Schrad said that when officers stop people for minor violations, they can also discover other issues, including outstanding felony warrants or evidence of other crimes. “The more you limit the ability of a law enforcement officer to intervene in something that would be a violation of the law, you limit their ability to discover other criminal activity,” she said. In places where air fresheners have been treated as a primary offense, the traffic stops have faced legal challenges with various outcomes. On an April evening in 2008, Benjamin Garcia-Garcia was driving a minivan along Interstate 55 near Springfield, Illinois, when a state trooper who had been parked in the median moved onto the freeway and pulled him over. According to court records, the trooper claimed he had seen the pink air freshener hanging from Garcia-Garcia’s mirror and believed it violated the state statute prohibiting objects that could obstruct the driver’s view. The trooper later conceded that he did not stop every car with an air freshener and had not observed any other traffic violations. The trooper issued a written warning, but in the process he also learned that Garcia-Garcia and his passengers were in the country illegally. That triggered a response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that resulted in Garcia-Garcia facing a federal charge of crossing the border illegally. He was imprisoned and deported. Garcia-Garcia challenged the justification for the stop as part of his criminal case, arguing that the trooper could not have seen the air freshener on a vehicle going at highway speeds and that he could not have concluded it was a material obstruction. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument. “The object the trooper observed was small, but given its size and position relative to the driver, a reasonable officer could conclude that it violated the Illinois statute prohibiting material obstructions,” the judges wrote. In a more recent case, on the South Side of Chicago, a police officer reported seeing an air freshener in a vehicle and began following the car, then stopped it for violating a municipal code provision prohibiting windshield obstructions. During the traffic stop, officers found guns in the vehicle and arrested the two men inside, who were Black. The men challenged the legality of the traffic stop, but the same appeals court once again held that the stop was constitutional. But in Connecticut in 2010, after a traffic stop in which a driver had a chain and cross dangling from his rearview mirror, the state Supreme Court sided with the driver, determining that the object was relatively small and that the trooper who initiated the stop did not articulate any concern that the object was blocking the driver’s view. The case of Colbert, the motorist stopped in Arizona in an unincorporated area between Parker and Lake Havasu, became public after he posted video of the traffic stop online. He later got a lawyer, Benjamin Taylor, who said he believed that the deputy engaged in racial profiling. “Even if you are polite, calm, even college-educated, the bottom line is that, at the end of the day, you are still Black,” Taylor said. “That’s all the cop sees and stereotypes.” The Sheriff’s Department later determined that the deputy had no legitimate basis for his repeated questioning of Colbert. The deputy, Eli Max, was fired in part for his handling of the stop. Colbert took steps to pursue a lawsuit but settled with the county before it got that far, Taylor said. Even for those who are ultimately let go with a warning, being pulled over for a rearview mirror infraction can have a lasting effect. In Galesburg, Illinois, Brittany Mixon was a senior in high school when she was pulled over by a police officer in 2003, ostensibly because of the air freshener hanging from her mirror. But when the officer approached the car, she said, his first question was about whether the Toyota Corolla she was driving was hers. “He kept asking me questions like he wanted to trip me up,” said Mixon, who is Black. Even now, at 35, she makes sure not to have anything hanging from her mirror — or from the mirror of a car she is riding in — because she does not want to risk getting pulled over. “If I get in a car with somebody and they have something hanging from their mirror, I’m like, ‘Can you take that down?’” Mixon said. “Being a Black passenger might trigger something in a racist cop, so let’s just remove that altogether from the situation.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
Florida’s Department of Health on Saturday announced 6,323 new confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The suspected gunman who killed at least eight people and wounded several others in Indianapolis before killing himself has been identified by local police as 19-year-old Brandon Hole, a former FedEx employee, a company spokesperson told the AP.The latest: Some of the victims in the deadly attack were identified by local law enforcement on Friday night.Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.At least 100 people were in the FedEx warehouse at the time of the shooting, authorities said Friday. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Craig McCartt told reporters that Hole worked at FedEx through 2020. He did not specify the circumstances of Hole’s departure.Hole had been identified previously in “a couple” of police reports, including one in which law enforcement seized a firearm from him roughly one year ago, McCartt said. Law enforcement has not yet uncovered the shooter's motive. Police Chief Randal Taylor said Friday morning that the warehouse employed a "significant" number of Sikhs, AP reports, and the Sikh Coalition confirmed that members of its community were among those who were injured and killed. President Biden, who was briefed on the shooting by Homeland Security officials Friday, ordered flags at the White House, public buildings and grounds, military posts and embassies to be lowered to half-staff."Gun violence is an epidemic in America. But we should not accept it. We must act," Biden said in a statement, noting the Indianapolis shooting occurred the night before the 14th anniversary of the shooting at Virginia Tech that killed 32 people."Too many Americans are dying every single day from gun violence. It stains our character and pierces the very soul of our nation."The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department held a briefing Friday morning, but offered no new major details.Paul Keenan, the FBI agent in charge of the Indianapolis field office assisting with the investigation, said it would be "too premature" to speculate on the shooter's motive.What happened: "The alleged shooter has taken his own life here at the scene," Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Genae Cook said during a news conference early Friday. “He just appeared to randomly start shooting,” McCartt said at the morning news conference.At least four people were hospitalized, one with critical injuries, and two others were treated at the scene and released, Cook said.The gunman is believed to have been acting alone, and there's no longer an "active threat to the community," she added.What they're saying: FedEx said in a statement Friday that the company was "shocked and saddened" by the shooting and expressed sympathies to "those affected by this senseless act of violence.""Our priority right now is in responding to the situation on the ground and helping our team members and law enforcement," FedEx CEO Frederick Smith said Friday in a second statement. "We have a team onsite in Indianapolis to provide support, and we are making counselors available."The big picture: This is the latest in a string of deadly mass shootings to hit the U.S. since March, reinvigorating the political debate in Washington over gun control.Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details.More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free