Wrongly convicted, Lamonte Armstrong talks about his life now

Lamonte Armstrong talks with WXII 12's Rob Wu about what it means to be a free man after serving 17 years for a crime he did not commit.

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  • Trump lashes out at 60 Minutes in furious tweets over interview with fired elections official

    Ousted cybersecurity official speaks out for first time since firing, saying president’s fraud claims are without basis

  • Chuck Grassley returns to Senate after COVID-19 infection, calls for 'long overdue relief legislation'

    Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has returned to his Washington office two weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19, his team announced Monday.While Grassley wasn't the first lawmaker to contract the virus, many people were concerned about the diagnosis because the senator is 87. It turned out, however, that he remained asymptomatic throughout the course of his infection and was able to keep working remotely.Still, Grassley didn't let his fortunate situation reshape his stance on the severity of the pandemic. In a statement, he noted that the disease "affects people differently" and "more than a thousand Americans are dying every day and many more are hospitalized." So, Grassley said, he'll "continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing."He also repeated his previous calls for Congress to pass a "long overdue," bipartisan relief bill to "help families, businesses, and communities get through this crisis." Tim O'Donnell> Grassley, 87, is back at the Senate today after testing positive for Covid-19. His office says he was asymptomatic the entire time. pic.twitter.com/qJImIJl8ZC> > -- Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) November 30, 2020More stories from theweek.com Americans are choosing death over deprivation The Electoral College is only getting worse 5 witheringly funny cartoons about Trump's sort-of concession

  • More than 100 civilians dead in 'gruesome' Nigeria attack blamed on Islamic jihadists

    A weekend attack on farm workers in northeast Nigeria blamed on jihadists left at least 110 dead, the UN humanitarian coordinator in the country said on Sunday, the deadliest attack on civilians this year. The attack, in a state gripped by a jihadist insurgency for more than 10 years, took place the same day as long-delayed local elections in the state. "I am outraged and horrified by the gruesome attack against civilians carried out by non-state armed groups in villages near Borno State capital Maiduguri," Edward Kallon said in a statement. "At least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack," he added. Some locals blamed the attack on Boko Haram fighters, but Bulama Bukarti, an analyst with the Tony Blair Institute, said rival group the IS-affiliated Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) were more active in the area. "ISWAP is the likely culprit," he tweeted. Kallon, in his statement, said: "The incident is the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year. "I call for the perpetrators of this heinous and senseless act to be brought to justice," he added. The violence centred on the village of Koshobe near the Borno state capital Maiduguri, with assailants targeting farm workers harvesting rice fields. One pro-government anti-jihadist militia said the assailants tied up the labourers and slit their throats. Kallon said the assailants - "armed men on motorcycles" - also targeted other communities in the area. "Rural communities in Borno State are facing untold hardships," he added, calling for more to be done to protect them and to head off what he said was a looming food crisis there. Borno Governor Babaganan Umara Zulum attended the burial Sunday in the nearby village of Zabarmari of 43 bodies recovered on Saturday, saying the toll could rise after search operations resumed. The victims included dozens of labourers from Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away, who had travelled to the northeast to find work, it said. Six were wounded in the attack and eight remained missing as of Saturday. Kallon, citing "reports that several women may have been kidnapped", called for their immediate release. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack on Saturday, saying: "The entire country has been wounded by these senseless killings." Neither the president's statement nor Sunday's from the UN mentioned either Boko Haram or rival group ISWAP by name. But both groups have been active in Borno State, their attacks having forced the postponement of locations in Borno State, which finally took place Saturday.

  • DC detective killed by wife in murder-suicide, authorities say

    The bodies of Timothy Eugene Francis and Christina Lynn Francis were found in their Maryland home Friday. The bodies of 50-year-old Timothy Eugene Francis and Christina Lynn Francis, 41, were found in their Waldorf, Maryland home on Friday.

  • Jill Biden, Joe's chief protector, to step up as first lady

    “No,” Jill Biden, then clad in a bikini, wrote in Sharpie across her stomach and then marched through a strategy session in which advisers were trying to talk her husband into challenging Republican President George W. Bush. Protecting Joe stands out among Jill Biden's many roles over their 43-year marriage, as her husband's career moved him from the Senate to the presidential campaign trail and the White House as President Barack Obama's vice president. Now, with her husband on the brink of becoming the 46th president, Jill Biden is about to become first lady and put her own stamp on a position that traditionally is viewed as a model of American womanhood — whether that means hewing to old ways or finding new, activist ones, in the manner of Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, for example.

  • GOP Aides Say Party Would Fight Neera Tanden’s Confirmation

    Republicans have indicated that Joe Biden's prospective nomination of Neera Tanden to the Office of Management and Budget would not pass the Senate with a GOP majority.Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton aide and current president of left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, has a history of comments criticizing various Republican senators, whose approval she would need to head OMB."Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R., Ky.] has broken the Senate, he has broken the Supreme Court, and in conjunction with President Donald Trump, he has broken our democracy," Tanden wrote in a statement during the confirmation process for Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Tanden also criticized Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) during the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.> Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed. https://t.co/f6Ewi6OMQR> > -- Drew Brandewie (@DBrandewie) November 30, 2020"Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed," Drew Brandewie, spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, wrote on Twitter on Monday."There’s the sacrifice to the confirmation gods…" commented Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to McConnell.Tanden is the first prospective cabinet nominee to generate considerable resistance among Republicans. Moderate senators Collins, Mitt Romney (R., Utah), and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) have indicated that they will support Biden's cabinet picks as long as they are "mainstream." The nominees so far include Clinton aide Jake Sullivan for national security adviser, and Antony Blinken for secretary of state.Among Democrats, Tanden has drawn criticism for her apparent hostility to the progressive wing of the party. Tanden was an informal adviser to the Clinton campaign in 2016, which held off progressive challenger Bernie Sanders in the primary only to be defeated by Donald Trump in the general election.

  • China sanctions four with U.S. democracy promotion ties over Hong Kong

    China will impose sanctions on four people with links to U.S. democracy promotion efforts, it said on Monday, over what it called interference in the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong, following U.S. strictures on four Chinese individuals. Relations between the two nations have deteriorated to their worst in decades during outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump's four-year term, with disputes simmering over issues from trade and technology to Hong Kong and the coronavirus. China's foreign ministry identified the four as John Knaus, senior director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); Manpreet Anand, a regional director of the National Democratic Institute (NDI); Kelvin Sit, the NDI's program director for Hong Kong and Crystal Rosario, a specialist at the NDI.

  • Switzerland halves new infections without national lockdown as pubs and restaurants stay open

    Switzerland is emerging as a model for how the coronavirus can be contained without a national lockdown, after daily new infections halved since the start of November despite pubs, restaurants, gyms and sports remaining open in much of the country. The figures were hailed as a triumph for the “Swiss special way” by Swiss government doctors last week, and will be seen as evidence that regional tiers can work in the UK. Rather than ordering a general lockdown, Switzerland allowed regions to decide their own measures and only the worst-hit imposed tough restrictions. But critics have charged that the success came at too high a price, after the country experienced some of the highest death rates in Europe. Switzerland has been described as the “new Sweden” after it refused to follow the UK and other countries into a second lockdown this month. The Swiss government imposed only minimal restrictions at a national level, including a limit of ten on private gatherings, an 11pm curfew for restaurants and the compulsory use of facemasks in crowded areas.

  • Man who attacked ex-girlfriend killed by victim's mom and sister with golf club and kitchen knife, California police say

    The women "were well within their right to act in defense of their sister and daughter" and are not expected to face charges, authorities say.

  • Iran newspaper: Strike Haifa if Israel killed scientist

    An opinion piece published Sunday by a hard-line Iranian newspaper urged Iran to attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if Israel carried out the killing of the scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program in the early 2000s. Israel, suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade, has not commented on the brazen slaying of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

  • Trump’s Disgraceful Endgame

    President Trump said the other day that he’d leave office if he loses the vote of the Electoral College on December 14.This is not the kind of assurance presidents of the United States typically need to make, but it was noteworthy given Trump’s disgraceful conduct since losing his bid for reelection to Joe Biden on November 3.Behind in almost all the major polls, Trump stormed within a hair’s breadth in the key battlegrounds of winning reelection, and his unexpectedly robust performance helped put Republicans in a strong position for the post-Trump-presidency era. This is not nothing. But the president can’t stand to admit that he lost and so has insisted since the wee hours of Election Night that he really won -- and won “by a lot.”There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes (some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take weeks to complete their initial count), but make no mistake: The chief driver of the post-election contention of the past several weeks is the petulant refusal of one man to accept the verdict of the American people. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it’s hard to find much that is remotely true in the president’s Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.Flawed and dishonest assertions like this pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States.Elected Republicans have generally taken the attitude that the president should be able to have his day in court. It’s his legal right to file suits, of course, but he shouldn’t pursue meritless litigation in Hail Mary attempts to get millions of votes tossed out. This is exactly what he’s been doing, it’s why reputable GOP lawyers have increasingly steered clear, and it’s why Trump has suffered defeat after defeat in court.In its signature federal suit in Pennsylvania, the Trump team argued that it violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for some Pennsylvania counties to let absentee voters fix or “cure” their ballots if they contained an error while other counties didn’t. It maintained that it was another constitutional violation for Trump election observers not to be allowed in close proximity to the counting of ballots. On this basis, the Trump team sought to disqualify 1.5 million ballots and bar the certification of the Pennsylvania results or have the Pennsylvania General Assembly appoint presidential electors.By the time the suit reached the Third Circuit, it had been whittled down to a relatively minor procedural issue (whether the Trump complaint could be amended a second time in the district court). The Trump team lost on that question, and the unanimous panel of the Third Circuit (in an opinion written by a Trump appointee) made it clear that the other claims lacked merit as well. It noted that the suit contained no evidence that Trump and Biden ballots or observers were treated differently, let alone evidence of fraud. Within reason, it is permissible for counties to have different procedures for handling ballots, and nothing forced some counties to permit voters to cure flawed absentee ballots and others to decline to do so.Not that it mattered. The court pointed out that the suit challenged the procedures to fix absentee ballots in seven Democratic counties, which don’t even come close to having enough cured ballots to change the outcome in the state; the counties might have allowed, at most, 10,000 voters to fix their ballots, and even if every single one of them voted for Biden, that’s still far short of Biden’s 80,000-plus margin in the state.The idea, as the Trump team stalwartly maintains, that the Supreme Court is going to take up this case and issue a game-changing ruling is fantastical. Conservative judges have consistently rejected Trump's flailing legal appeals, and the justices are unlikely to have a different reaction.Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever even thinks of again.Getting defeated in a national election is a blow to the ego of even the most thick-skinned politicians and inevitably engenders personal feelings of bitterness and anger. What America has long expected is that losing candidates swallow those feelings and at least pretend to be gracious. If Trump’s not capable of it, he should at least stop waging war on the outcome.

  • An Oregon cancer nurse was put on leave after boasting on TikTok about ignoring COVID-19 rules

    The Salem Health oncology nurse was not named by the hospital, but local media identified her as Ashley Grames.

  • Thousands flee as Indonesian volcano bursts to life

    Thousands have fled the scene of a rumbling Indonesian volcano that burst to life for the first time in several years, belching a massive column of smoke and ash, the disaster agency said. The evacuation of more than 4,400 residents came as Mount Ili Lewotolok erupted Sunday, spouting a thick tower of debris four kilometres (2.5 miles) into the sky, triggering a flight warning and the closure of a local airport. The crater's last major eruption was in 2017. There were no reports of injuries or damage from the eruption in a remote part of the Southeast Asian archipelago. But authorities advised residents to wear masks to protect themselves from volcanic ash spouting from the crater in East Nusa Tenggara - the southernmost province of Indonesia - and to be alert for possible lava flows.

  • Germany joins nascent European push to shoot down hypersonic missiles

    Nudged by France, Germany has changed its status from an observer nation to a participant country in the so-called TWISTER effort.

  • Mexico's president pledges justice for murdered Frenchman

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised Monday that justice will be done in the case of a French restaurant owner who was found murdered over the the weekend. López Obrador compared the case to last year’s killings of nine U.S. dual-nationals in northern Mexico, claiming “practically all” of whose alleged killers in that attack have been arrested. Authorities said evidence indicates dual French-Mexican citizen Baptiste Jacques Daniel Lormand set out late last week to sell bottles of high-end wine or liquor, accompanied by a Mexican partner.

  • Iran suspects opposition and Israel for death

    Iran began the burial of one of the country's top nuclear scientists in a cemetery in northern Tehran on Monday, with a senior Iranian official saying an opposition group, as well as the Israeli government are both suspects over last week's killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, also told the country's state TV, quote, "This was a very complicated assassination that was carried out remotely with electronic devices." That came after Iranian media also reported on Monday (November 30) that the weapon used in the killing was made in Israel. An unnamed source to the English-language station Press TV claimed fragments from the site where Fakhrizadeh was killed bear the logo and specifications of the Israeli military. In Jerusalem, there was no immediate reply from Israeli officials contacted for comment on the report. Fakhrizadeh was killed when his car was ambushed in a spray of gunfire on a highway near Tehran on Friday. One Iranian outlet attributed it to a machine gun operated by remote control, while another said it was a weapon "controlled by satellite." Israeli's intelligence minister Eli Cohen told a local radio station before this latest Press TV report that he did not know who was responsible.

  • Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple among Companies Lobbying against Uyghur Forced Labor Bill

    Multinational corporations including Nike and Coca-Cola are lobbying to water down legislation that would ban products made with forced labor in China's Xinjiang province, the New York Times reported on Sunday.China has attempted to cement state power over millions of Muslim citizens in Xinjiang, mostly Uyghur Muslims along with Kazakhs and other minorities. The ruling Communist Party has placed Uyghurs in so-called reeducation camps that attempt to erase their attachment to Islam, and has also embarked on a campaign of forced sterilization of Uyghur women.Numerous global supply chains are based in Xinjiang, including for cotton and coal, and China has employed forced Uyghur labor for various factories. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the House 406-3 in September and is currently under consideration in the Senate, would ban imports of good from Xinjiang unless U.S. customs officials could verify that the goods were not produced using forced labor.However, multinational companies are lobbying against the legislation, saying that while they do not support use of forced labor, the bill could have a detrimental impact on their supply chains. Along with Nike and Coca-Cola, tech giant Apple is also pushing to weaken some restrictions, the Washington Post reported last week.Coca-Cola "strictly prohibits any type of forced labor in our supply chain" and employs third-party auditors to enforce the policy, the company said in a statement to the Times. Nike said it "did not lobby against" the legislation but had "constructive discussions" with congressional aides on keeping its supply chain free of forced labor.Pro-business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also joined the lobbying efforts.A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in March of this year concluded that at least 80,000 Uyghurs have been sent away from their homes to labor in factories in other parts of China.

  • Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated by a remote-controlled machine gun placed in the back of another car, the country's media says

    The gun was mounted on a Nissan truck that self-destructed after the hit on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was complete, the semiofficial Fars news agency said.

  • Charles Manson follower has parole blocked by California governor

    Leslie Van Houten has spent nearly five decades in prison since she was arrested for 1969 killing spree.

  • Disgraced couple to be sentenced in Hawaii corruption case

    In the morning, Katherine Kealoha, a former high-ranking Honolulu prosecutor is expected to hear how many years she'll spend in prison. Katherine Kealoha should go to prison for 14 years and her husband should be locked up for about half that time because they abused their positions of trust to commit corrupt acts at the highest levels of law enforcement, U.S. prosecutors said in sentencing recommendations. The corruption included stealing from vulnerable victims — Katherine Kealoha’s own grandmother and uncle — framing the uncle for a crime he didn’t commit, and using members of a secret police unit.