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Nine Dead as Mayhem Grips Ukrainian Capital - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ukraine.html history politics policy crisis culture economics ukraine
shared by julia rhodes on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Mayhem gripped the center of the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday evening as riot police officers tried to drive two armored personnel carriers through stone-reinforced barriers in Independence Square, the focal point of more than two months of protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
  • In the course of wild day of parries and thrusts by the protesters and the police, the authorities in Kiev reported nine people killed, including two police officers. It was the bloodiest day of violence since President Yanukovych spurned a trade deal with Europe in November and set of protests that began peacefully but have since involved occasional spasms of deadly violence.
  • A phalanx of riot police officers, backed by a water cannon, pushed through protesters’ barricades near the Ukraina Hotel and fired tear gas as they advanced toward the center of the square. People covered in blood staggered to a medical center set up in the protest encampment.
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  • The police advance followed hours of street battles that destroyed hopes of an early political settlement, stirred in recent days by an amnesty deal. The resumption of violence underscored the volatility of a political crisis that has not only aroused fear of civil war in Ukraine but has also dragged Russia and the West into a geopolitical struggle redolent of the Cold War.
  • News agencies quoted antigovernment activists as saying three protesters had been killed, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties. Olga Bogomolets, a doctor, told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that three activists had died at a medical unit in the Officers’ House on Kriposniy Lane. She said that they had died from gunshot wounds to the head and heart and that tens of other people had suffered injuries.
  • Protesters reported that the police were using live ammunition, but this could not be confirmed. Cartridges scattered on the street suggested that most, if not all, of the firing from police lines involved rubber bullets.
  • “Kiev stand up! Kiev stand up!,” screamed a speaker on a stage in the square that, since late November, has been occupied by protesters.
  • “Extremists from opposition have crossed the line” and bought chaos to the center of Kiev, said the statement. “We warn hot irresponsible heads of the opposition — the government has forces to restore order.”
  • The 6 p.m. deadline passed with no sign of a push into Independence Square by Ukraine’s feared anti-riot force, known as Berkut. With the night sky darkened further by clouds of black smoke from burning rubber tires, police officers hammered their shields for several minutes as if Roman centurions preparing for battle. But they did not move forward.
  • “There should have been a resolution,” he said. “But they did not even put it up for a vote.”
  • The Russian aid signaled confidence from the Kremlin that important votes in Parliament expected this week to amend the Constitution and form a new cabinet will go in Russia’s favor. It also highlighted the absence of any clear promise of financial aid from the European Union or the United States, which have supported the opposition in Ukraine.
  • Mr. Yanukovych negotiated a $15 billion loan with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in December, and Ukraine received a first segment of this soon afterward when Russia purchased Ukrainian bonds worth $3 billion. But Russia suspended further payments last month after violent clashes broke out in Kiev and the pro-Russian prime minister resigned.Germany, which on Monday hosted a visit to Berlin by two of President Yanuvoych’s most ardent opponents, called for all sides to seek a peaceful solution to the explosive political confrontation.
  • “We call on the Foreign States and International Organizations to be objective and unbiased in assessing the internal developments in Ukraine,” the statement said. “We also expect that they will strongly condemn the unlawful activities of the radical forces.”
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Shooting of Boston Terror Suspect Highlights Concerns Over Reach of ISIS - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...beheading-authorities-say.html
shared by sgardner35 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Investigators had been watching Usaamah Abdullah Rahim long enough to know about his avid interest in Islamic State militants, but when they overheard him talking on a cellphone about beheading Massachusetts police officers, they moved in, leading to a confrontation Tuesday morning outside a CVS here that left Mr. Rahim dead, and once again raised alarms about the influence of foreign extremists on homegrown radicals.
  • Mr. Rahim was a religious mentor to his nephew David Wright, who was also known as Dawud Wright, Mr. Rivero said.
  • the case has also renewed concerns in Washington about the long reach of the Islamic State and other radical groups that have seized on Internet recruitment.
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  • He added that Mr. Rahim had been under investigation because he was “communicating with and spreading ISIS propaganda online.”
  • , F.B.I. agents said Mr. Rahim, 26, had been under surveillance since at least late May, when he bought three knives on Amazon.com.
  • Mr. Rahim was focused on a “planned victim in another state” who was not identified. But in a subsequent conversation on June 2, Mr. Rahim called Mr. Wright and told him he was going to “go after” the “boys in blue,” a reference to police officers.
  • officials described as a lengthy terrorism investigation, with several law enforcement agencies looking into an alleged murder plot that involved at least two other people, including a relative of Mr. Rahim’s who was charged Wednesday with conspiracy.
  • On Tuesday, an F.B.I. agent and a police officver approached Mr. Rahim around 7 a.m. on Tuesday outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, a middle-class Boston neighborhood. Officials said that after the law enforcement officials identified themselves, Mr. Rahim confronted them with a large military-style knife.
  • After the shooting Tuesday, Mr. Rahim was taken to a hospital, where he died.
  • Mr. Wright as a tall, quiet man who weighed as much as 400 pounds.
  • Mr. Rahim’s relatives had initially argued that he was shot in the back, insisting that the shooting was unjustified.
  • “They were dressed in Army camouflage and carrying a battering ram,” said Jim Brennan, 48, a bricklayer, who lives across the street. He said the officers had carried out several small brown paper bags labeled “evidence,” but he could not tell what was in them. He said they did not carry out any large items, such as a computer
  • sgardner35 on 04 Jun 15
     
    Relates to history and TOK because I found it interesting on the different conclusions the eye witnesses came to after the man with the knife was shot. His close friends thought it was unjustified because he was shot in the back even though he pulled a knife on officers 
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Zephyr Teachout on Sheldon Silver, Corruption and New York Politics - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ion-and-new-york-politics.html corruption campaign political politics
shared by Javier E on 26 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • fighting the kind of corruption that plagues not only New York State but the whole nation isn’t just about getting cuffs on the right guy. As with the recent conviction of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for receiving improper gifts and loans, a fixation on plain graft misses the more pernicious poison that has entered our system.
  • Corruption exists when institutions and officials charged with serving the public serve their own ends. Under current law, campaign contributions are illegal if there is an explicit quid pro quo, and legal if there isn’t. But legal campaign contributions can be as bad as bribes in creating obligations. The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy.
  • The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can’t even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day. When you spend a lifetime serving campaign donors, it may seem easy to serve them when they come with an outright bribe, because it doesn’t seem that different.
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  • The former governor of New York David A. Paterson, for example, said that he had trouble understanding where the criminality lay in the allegation that Mr. Silver accepted payments from law firms for referrals, including referrals by a doctor to whom Mr. Silver funneled state health research funds. Mr. Paterson said, “in the legal profession, people refer business all the time. And theoretically, as a speaker, you could do that as well.”
  • In our private financing system, candidates are trained to respond to campaign cash and serve donors’ interests. Politicians are expected to spend half their time talking to funders and to keep them happy. Given this context, it’s not hard to see how a bribery charge can feel like a technical argument instead of a moral one.
  • We should take this moment to pursue fundamental reform. We must reconstitute what it means to run for office and to serve in office. We need to ban outside income for elected officials. Transparency alone is not enough; it doesn’t solve the problem of creating outside dependencies. New York lawmakers can’t carry water for two masters when in office.
  • We should reject the private financing of campaigns as the only model. We need to provide enough public funding for campaigns so that anyone with a broad base of support can run for office, and respond effectively to attacks, without becoming dependent on private patrons. Running for office shouldn’t be a job defined by permanent begging at the feet of the wealthiest donors in the country.
  • Corruption is about greed and private interests put ahead of the public good. Whether influence is bought through a bribe, outside spending, outside income or campaign contributions, the public suffers in the same way.
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Hollywood Is Giving Up on Comedy - John McDuling - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...373914 comedy hollywood movie international profit
shared by Cecilia Ergueta on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • While fewer Americans are going to the movies, it is a totally different story in many other parts of the world, where cinema is booming. Non-U.S. moviegoers accounted for about 70% of global box office receipts last year (which hit $35.9 billion) compared to about 63% in 2007.
  • Emerging economies are responsible for most of that growth, and there is plenty of room for more, because there are significantly fewer cinema screens per capita and lower ticket prices
  • But the emerging world enthusiasm for Hollywood films does not extend to comedies, or at least not relative to its love of action movies and animated films.
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  • U.S. comedies account for only 10% of box office spending, compared to 25% in the U.S.
  • Hollywood action films are 44% of the box office in China (the latest Transformers release has broken just about every box office record in the country) as against 36% in the U.S.
  • Comedy is the least profitable genre for the studios.
  • And the ruthless profit machine that is Hollywood is responding. Fox in particular has scaled back its comedy output significantly (from 44% of releases in 2010, to just 8% this year). Disney is not releasing any comedies this year,
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Obama's Fifth Year Job Approval Ratings Among Most Polarized - 0 views

www.gallup.com/...l-ratings-among-polarized.aspx obama polarization division partisan presidency history statistics survey approval US politics
shared by Javier E on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Obama's fifth year in office ranks as the fourth-most polarized presidential year in Gallup's records, which date back to the Eisenhower presidency. In fact, all five of Obama's years in office rank among the 10-most polarized, with his fourth year edging out George W. Bush's fourth year in office for the top overall spot.
  • Four of Bush's years in office rank among the 10-most politically polarized in terms of presidential job approval.
  • Each year since 2004, the average party gap in presidential job approval has been 60 percentage points or greater. The only other two years with that degree of polarization were Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's re-election years.
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  • Apart from Nixon, whose fifth year was marred by the Watergate scandal, most presidents got similarly high ratings from their party's supporters in their fifth year, ranging from 82% for Obama to 88% for Reagan. The differences in polarization are attributable to the ratings presidents received from supporters of the opposition party. Bush and Obama had approval ratings of 14% and 11% from Democrats and Republicans during their fifth year in office
  • Reagan, Clinton, and Eisenhower received approval ratings of at least 30% from the opposition party during the fifth year of their administrations.
  • There have always been party differences in presidential ratings, but these have become more extreme in recent decades, averaging 34 points before Reagan's presidency and 58 points after. This is due more to presidents receiving comparatively lower approval ratings from the opposition party than it is from extremely high support from their own party, though both are factors.
  • Obama's highly polarized ratings, then, may have as much to do with the era in which he is governing as they do with his actions as president. Both Obama and Bush made overtures toward bringing politically divided Americans together, but the evidence suggests neither succeeded.
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What To Make Of Ferguson? Ctd « The Dish - 0 views

dish.andrewsullivan.com/...what-to-make-of-ferguson-ctd race racism police brutality polarization
shared by Javier E on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • How can you say Wilson had “no need” to shoot Brown that many times? The reason law enforcement went to high-capacity handguns and dumped the six shooters is because of the ability of people to withstand multiple gunshot wounds and continue fighting (or shooting.) The catalyst for this approach was the 1986 Miami shooting in which to FBI officers were killed AFTER they had shot two bank robbers multiple times. The robbers eventually died of their wounds, but in the meantime, they kept firing and killed the agents. Officer Wilson adhered to his training: shoot until the suspect is on the ground.
  • Mike Brown is to the Left what Benghazi is to the Right. Preconceptions are everything. Facts don’t matter. Logic doesn’t matter. There’s a narrative of racist-white-cop-kills-harmless-black-kid, and no matter what uncomfortable fact intrudes, like that so many “witnesses” admitted they didn’t actually see what they told the media they saw, the narrative must go on. Because racism.
  • Balko’s article makes clear that this is not an environment where the police are protecting and serving but instead harassing and self-serving. I am in no way justifying assailing a police officer (or anyone for that matter), verbally or physically, but you are not a young Black man living in what is still ostensibly the South and facing harassment for just being. I challenge you to invite Black males to tell you their stories of police harassment. How many times they have been detained, cuffed, kicked and threatened with death because they fit a profile, looked suspicious or were just somewhere some cop didn’t think they belonged? Yes, this is in America.
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  • I agree entirely that this should have gone to trial and realize that, statistically, nearly everything reviewed by a grand jury does. I agree that the fact Wilson will never even face charges is a mark of shame on the legal system. But I don’t get the sense that the people who are furious about this, whatever their race, are clamoring for a trial they’ll never see; it seems to me they’re clamoring for a conviction they feel they’ve been cheated out of.
  • Maybe lethal force wasn’t necessary, but science has proven that Brown turned and moved back toward Wilson (at least 20 feet) and was not shot from behind. There was undeniably an altercation at/inside the police cruiser. Does the fact that one man is alive and one is dead skew the way those facts are interpreted? Absolutely. But there exist certain physical certainties that strongly suggest this was not cold-blooded murder.
  • there is an interminable, sometimes slight, sometimes massive burden that comes with Blackness that you seem wholly oblivious to. That 12 year old that was shot in Cleveland was sitting on a swing playing with a fake gun. Two things happened due purely to his Blackness: police were called and he was murdered. Full stop. The Black man shot in the stairwell of his building in NYC for just existing while Black because a cop got scared. And that’s just since Monday.
  • Clive Bundy assails and threatens federal officers and gets invited on Fox News. Eric Frein plans and carries out an attack on state trooper barracks, killing one and seriously wounding another – again brought in alive. Ted Nugent scares the shit out of me with his racism, misogyny, anti-government and gun-humping ways, but yet he’s a hero to many White people and no one seems to have shot him yet either. White people have feared, reviled and vilified Blackness since they first laid eyes upon us. The codification and justification of our enslavement, disenfranchisement and murder is beyond primordial; it is part and parcel of what has made America and the Western world. Ferguson is just another eruption in this racist legacy and reality.
  • on of your readers claimed that, at most, Brown was guilty of petit theft, which is a misdemeanor. This is incorrect. Brown not only stole from the convenience store, he assaulted the business owner who tried to stop him from stealing. This assault escalated Brown’s theft to a strong-arm robbery, which is a second-degree felony in the State of Missouri. And it was Brown’s commission of this felony that began the chain of events that led to his death. He had nobody but himself to blame for that – not Officer Wilson, not the prosecutor, and not racism.
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When Hospitals Buy Doctors' Offices, and Patient Fees Soar - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ould-even-out-doctors-pay.html medical medicare fee hospital policy funding
shared by Javier E on 08 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Medicare, the government health insurance program for those 65 and over or the disabled, pays one price to independent doctors and another to doctors who work for large health systems — even if they are performing the exact same service in the exact same place.
  • This week, the Obama administration recommended a change to eliminate much of that gap. Despite expected protests from hospitals and doctors, the idea has a chance of being adopted because it would yield huge savings for Medicare and patients.
  • The heart doctors are a great example. In 2009, the federal government cut back on what it paid to cardiologists in private practice who offered certain tests to their patients. Medicare determined that the tests, which made up about 30 percent of a typical cardiologist’s revenue, cost more than was justified, and there was evidence that some doctors were overusing them. Suddenly, Medicare paid about a third less than it had before.But the government didn’t cut what it paid cardiologists who worked for a hospital and provided the same test. It actually paid those doctors more, because the payment systems were completely separate. In general, Medicare assumes that hospital care is by definition more expensive to provide than office-based care.
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  • Cardiologists are not the only doctors who have been migrating toward hospital practice. In the last few years, there have been increases in the number of doctors working for hospitals across the specialties. And spreads between fees for office services exist in an array of medical services, down to the basic office visit. The president's proposal would apply to all doctors working in off-campus, hospital-owned practices.
  • Like Medicare, most private insurers pay higher prices to hospitals than to independent doctors.Private insurers tend to copy many of Medicare’s payment policies. And, in general, large hospital groups tend to have more negotiating clout with insurers, meaning they can bargain for higher prices than smaller practices.
  • Hospitals don’t like the idea. Nearly all the money would come out of their pockets, and they argue that running a medical practice really does cost more for hospitals than it does for independent physician practices. Hospitals have to stay open at all hours, run emergency rooms and comply with an array of regulatory requirements that physician-owned practices don't need to worry about.
  • The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee, a group of experts that advises Congress, thinks that the pay differences should be narrowed, but only for a select set of medical services in which it’s really clear that there’s no difference between the care offered by a hospital and a physician office.
  • The pay differences, of course, are not the only reason that more doctors are going to work for hospitals. There are generational trends: Younger doctors are less interested in entrepreneurship and more interested in predictable hours and salary. And another Medicare program is trying to create financial incentives for health systems to manage patients’ entire health care experience, which many hospitals find easier to do if they employ the doctors.
  • in contrast to a lot of things in the president’s budget, it’s hard to dismiss this proposal as mere wishful thinking. Congress is often looking for places to save money in the Medicare budget, in part because it must find money every year to keep all doctors’ pay from declining precipitously — the result of a misguided payment formula passed in the 1990s.
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The Man Who Shot a Philadelphia Cop Last Night Says He Was Inspired by ISIS | VICE | Un... - 0 views

www.vice.com/...t-says-he-was-inspired-by-isis
shared by proudsa on 09 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A 30-year-old man who fired 11 shots at a Philadelphia cop late Thursday before being shot and arrested says he did it for the Islamic State, police said Friday.
  • But whereas the gunman in that case was apparently enraged by police killings of people of color, the shooter in Philly is allegedly claiming a more divine form of inspiration, as the New York Times reports:
  • The suspect, 30-year-old Edward Archer, reportedly used a stolen police handgun and hit Officer Jesse Hartnett three times in the left arm before the officer, who had been sitting in his car, chased him on foot and shot him from behind.
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  • "This is absolutely one of the scariest things I've ever seen," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr., who took the reins this week, said after watching a video of the shooting. "This guy tried to execute the police officer. The police officer had no idea he was coming. It's amazing he's alive."
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Opinion | Politician Cyrus Habib Leaves Office to Join the Jesuits - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cyrus-habib-jesuit.html politician role model
shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Try the parable of the blind man who gave up political glory for Jesus Christ.He quickly climbed the rungs of power, became the lieutenant governor of the state of Washington at 35 and had reason to believe that he’d be governor someday, maybe even before he turned 40.
  • At the age of 8, he lost his sight: A rare cancer forced the removal of both of his retinas. He spent the next decades proving to the world — and to himself — that he could nonetheless accomplish just about anything that he set his mind to.
  • He attended Columbia University. He won a Rhodes scholarship. He graduated from Yale Law. “From Braille to Yale” was how he often described his journey. It made for a great political speech.
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  • “I was in talks with a top literary agent in New York about a book deal, and it was all predicated on my biography, my identity,” he told me recently. He could feel himself being sucked into “a celebrity culture” in American politics that had nothing to do with public service. He could feel himself being swallowed by pride.
  • “How many ways,” he said “can you be called a rising star?”
  • He decided not to find out. Last month Habib, now 38, announced that instead of being on the ballot in November for a second term as lieutenant governor, he would soon leave office to become a Roman Catholic priest.
  • He is entering the Jesuit religious order, whose intensive, extensive ordination process typically takes about 10 years and involves vows of poverty and obedience as well as chastity.
  • But the more frequently that was mentioned, the more awkwardly it sat with him. His friend Lee Goldberg, who went to Columbia with him, told me that Habib watched other politicians race to the television cameras and meticulously plot their careers and was increasingly turned off.
  • Habib worried that if he moved into the governor’s office, he might be too intoxicated by power to let it go. Stepping down now, he told me, is like “giving your car keys to someone before you start drinking.”
  • “We’re not completely in control,” he told me during a series of long telephone conversations over the past two weeks. “Look at what we’re going through now. Something that you can’t even see with the naked eye is ravaging us.”
  • If anything, that bolsters his resolve to take a sledgehammer to the old fortifications of his ego. “That can-do, can-overcome mentality is fantastic and can get you far,” he said. “But if hardened into an ideology of its own, it can crowd God out, because it makes you into a kind of god and says: ‘I’m not a contingent creature. I’m completely independent.’”
  • Habib devoured popular fiction, serious literature and history, reading in Braille or listening to recordings. “Books allowed me to see — through the eyes of the author, the eyes of the narrator,” he said.
  • he and his admirers assumed there’d be even higher offices down the road.
  • And he committed to this course just as political gossips speculated about a heady promotion for him. He was a lock for re-election, as is the state’s governor, Jay Inslee. But in one scenario, a Joe Biden presidency could lead to a high-level administration position for Inslee, who would then have to step down. His lieutenant governor would immediately take his place.
  • Habib said that federal lawmakers increasingly seemed to be interested in posturing, not problem-solving, which involves compromise. “You have to face the political reality you’re in and not just present a competing utopia,” he said.
  • Although he hadn’t been particularly religious as a child or in college, he was subsequently drawn to Catholic teaching and faith, and one of his spiritual advisers in the church recommended that he read “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” by the Rev. James Martin, a nationally renowned Jesuit priest and best-selling author. Habib did — and it pointed him toward what he thought might be a more satisfying, impactful way of helping people in need.
  • What about the surrender of his autonomy to the order’s directives? Wouldn’t his world become smaller?
  • “I don’t see it as a shrinking of my world,” he said. “I see it as a shrinking of my self. When the focus is not as much on my brand, my messaging, my re-election, my fund-raising process, my legislative agenda, you create more space for God to operate on you.”
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Top Ethics Officer Challenges Trump Over Secret Waivers for Ex-Lobbyists - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-waivers-for-ex-lobbyists.html
shared by izzerios on 01 May 17 - No Cached
  • federal government’s top ethics officer is challenging the Trump administration’s issuance of secret waivers that allow former lobbyists to handle matters they recently worked on
  • latest sign of rising tension between Mr. Shaub and the Trump White House. Mr. Shaub has tried several times to use his limited powers to force Mr. Trump to broadly honor federal ethics rules
  • Office of Government Ethics — a tiny operation that has just 71 employees but that supervises an ethics program covering 2.7 million civilian executive branch workers — has maintained a low profile
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  • Created in 1978 after the Watergate scandal
  • pressing Mr. Trump for more information on former lobbyists or employees of corporations working in the president’s administration.
  • Mr. Shaub asked every executive branch agency — including the White House — to give him, by June 1, a copy of any waivers issued to political employees allowing them to ignore any part of the executive branch’s ethics policies
  • waivers are typically issued when the administration wants to allow a new political employee to work on an issue
  • For example, Ernest J. Moniz, the energy secretary in the Obama administration, was allowed to work on matters that involved General Electric, even though Mr. Moniz, as a nuclear physicist, had served on a General Electric advisory board
  • Mr. Trump eliminated a prohibition imposed by President Barack Obama in 2009 on the hiring of staff members who in the previous two years had lobbied the agency they now wanted to work for
  • Mr. Trump has chosen to keep the waivers secret
  • The combined result — eliminating the ban on hiring former lobbyists and keeping secret any waivers granted to new hires — means the public has no way of knowing if Mr. Trump’s staff members are complying with the rules
  • Michael Catanzaro, who until recently worked as a lobbyist for companies like Devon Energy and for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers association, is now in charge of White House environmental policy
  • “However, in the meantime we would like to reiterate our position that the White House and the White House Ethics Office are fully compliant with ethical obligations set forth in the standards of conduct,”
  • He has quietly escalated his battle with the White House
  • Mr. Shaub called Mr. Trump’s steps “wholly inadequate,” even though Mr. Shaub did not have the power to order Mr. Trump to take additional steps.
  • Stefan C. Passantino, the top White House ethics lawyer, argued that Mr. Shaub does not have jurisdiction over the White House staff at all because the White House is not formally a federal agency.
  • But he may not be able to force the White House to provide similar information, even if Democrats in Congress join in urging the White House to respond to the request, which is likely.
  • “the American people deserve a full accounting of all waivers and recusals to better understand who is running the government and whether the administration is adhering to its promise to be open, transparent, and accountable.”
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Boulder Shooting: The Victims And Their Stories : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ictims-of-the-boulder-shooting
shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A gunman shot and killed 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on Monday afternoon.The victims ranged from age 20 to 65. Some of them were shopping at the store; some worked there. One was a police officer who arrived to help.
  • Boulder police Officer Eric Talley is being mourned as a brave officer as well as a husband, a brother and father to seven children.
  • Talley served a number of roles in his work for the police department and in support of the local community, Herold said. Talley reportedly held a master's degree in computer science, but he switched careers around age 40.
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  • In 2013, Talley and two other officers drew a crowd – and eventually, a round of applause – when they rescued ducklings that had been swept out of a creek and into a caged drainage ditch. It was Talley who waded into the water to coax the ducklings to a spot where his colleagues could scoop them up.
  • "I am heartbroken to announce that my Dad, my hero, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the King Soopers shooting in my hometown of Boulder, CO," she wrote on Twitter. "I'm so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer."
  • Teri Leiker was a dedicated King Soopers employee who had worked at the store for more than 30 years, her friend Lexi Knutson wrote in an Instagram tribute, calling her "the most selfless, innocent, amazing person I have had the honor of meeting." Knutson said the two met in 2017 through the University of Colorado Boulder chapter of Best Buddies, a program that aims to create one-on-one friendships between students and members of the community with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
  • Rikki Olds worked as a front-end manager at the King Soopers grocery store, according to The Denver Post. Her Facebook page identifies her as a graduate of Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colo., and a student at Front Range Community College, which has multiple campuses in Colorado.
  • United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 7, which represents grocery store employees including those at King Soopers, confirmed that Olds was a worker at the store and a former union member. It also confirmed that "a few" of its members were working during the shooting, and, citing the ongoing investigation, said it would share more details as they become available.
  • Lynn Murray, a retired photo editor, was at the grocery store working as an Instacart shopper when she was killed.Before moving to Colorado, Murray lived in New York City and worked for magazines, including Glamour, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan, according to The Denver Post. She grew up in Mentor, Ohio, and attended Ohio University.
  • Tralona "Lonna" Bartkowiak was a founder with her sister of Umba, a clothing and art store in downtown Boulder.
  • Suzanne Fountain was an actress who had performed with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts' theater company.
  • She was also a house manager at eTown Hall, a music venue and community center that produces a radio show.
  • Denny Stong's Facebook profile describes him as a resident of Boulder and an employee of King Soopers since 2018. "I can't stay home. I am a Grocery Store Worker," his profile picture says.A fundraiser for Stong's family said he was "a kind soul with a funny sense of humor and unique interests," and said that he had risked his life to protect others during the attack.
  • Jody Waters had an eye for style and design, which she channeled into a career in fashion. Her friend and business colleague Stephanie Boyle said Waters would help her set up booths at local events for her leather accessories business, and gave her advice on stores with which to collaborate.
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Justices to consider appointments clause challenge to administrative patent judges - SC... - 0 views

www.scotusblog.com/...o-administrative-patent-judges Politics SCOTUS policy US
shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The primary issue is whether the administrative patent judges of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were unconstitutionally appointed in violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause.
  • The answer turns on whether they are “principal officers” of the United States. If they are, the secondary issue is what to do about it. All three parties were unhappy with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision and each petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari.
  • In the AIA, Congress created a new adjudicatory regime in which almost anyone could attack the validity of an issued patent. The AIA also created a board of administrative judges — the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — empowered to issue what the AIA termed final decisions on the validity of a challenged patent.
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  • But unlike Article III judges, and unlike the heads of executive branch agencies and other top officials who are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, the patent judges are appointed by the head of a department (the secretary of commerce) “in consultation with” the head of their agency (the director of the USPTO).
  • The Supreme Court agreed to consider two questions: (1) whether administrative patent judges are principal officers who must be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, or instead inferior officers whose appointment Congress has permissibly vested in a department head; and (2) if they are principal officers, whether the Federal Circuit properly cured the appointments clause defect by severing the application of statutory tenure protection to those judges.
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Manhattan Prosecutors Advance Probe Into Trump's Seven Springs Estate - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ven-springs-estate-11615333894 wsj Trump estate Culture
shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Manhattan prosecutors are intensifying their investigation into Donald Trump’s businesses, taking aim at a Westchester County, N.Y., estate that the former president unsuccessfully tried to develop, according to people familiar with the matter.
  • the Manhattan district attorney’s office has issued new subpoenas and requested recordings of local government meetings related to the Trump Organization’s failed attempt to create a luxury subdivision at Seven Springs, a 213-acre property that the former president bought for $7.5 million in 1995.
  • Inflating assets to help secure loans or other financial benefits can be a state criminal offense, legal experts said.
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  • The scrutiny of Seven Springs is part of a broader criminal probe into Mr. Trump, his company and its officers that also includes financial dealings at properties such as Mr. Trump’s flagship Trump Tower in Manhattan, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported. Outside of New York, prosecutors are also examining a loan for the Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, people familiar with the matter said, which CNN reported earlier.
  • The information that prosecutors have requested centers on a yearslong effort to gain the necessary local approvals to build a subdivision of luxury homes after Mr. Trump’s original plan of building a golf course at Seven Springs fell through in the early 2000s. The subdivision effort dates to at least 2004 and continued through 2013, according to planning and zoning board documents.
  • Mr. Trump valued the property at $291 million in 2012, according to what he called his “statement of financial condition,” a collection of financial information compiled but not audited by his accountants. Mr. Trump valued the property at between $25 million and $50 million on financial-disclosure paperwork filed when he was president.
  • The office also has hired FTI Consulting Inc. to do forensic-accounting work on the case, people familiar with the matter said. An FTI spokesman declined to comment.
  • The district attorney’s office also requested recordings of planning-board meetings in Bedford, N.Y., one of three towns on which the Seven Springs estate sits, people familiar with the matter said. Messrs. Mastromonaco and Martabano appeared before the board with Mr. Trump’s son, Eric Trump, in 2012 and 2013, meeting minutes show.
  • The final appraisal, sent to Mr. Trump in 2016, values the property at $56.5 million and the conservation easement portion at $21.1 million. Seven Springs LLC, which is part of the Trump Organization, claimed a $21.1 million tax deduction for the easement in tax year 2015, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office has said in court.
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'Chaotic' Virginia Beach Shootings Leave 2 Dead, At Least 8 Others Wounded : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...aotic-virginia-beach-shootings
shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Two people are dead and at least eight others were wounded after multiple shootings near the oceanfront in Virginia Beach, Va., on Friday night.
  • Police officials say officers were on patrol in the city's resort area when they heard multiple gunshots at 11:22 p.m., according to a statement on Saturday. When they arrived to the scene, they found several victims suffering from gunshot wounds.
  • One woman died at the scene and at least eight people were transported to hospitals for their injuries. Authorities said the injuries ranged from "serious to life-threatening."
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  • One Virginia Beach police officer was also taken to a hospital for "minor injuries." The department's homicide unit is investigating what happened, but police say there are no suspects as of yet.
  • Authorities said an officer-involved shooting also took place on Saturday — just a few blocks from the shooting near the waterfront.
  • Department officials said a male suspect in this shooting died at the scene. Authorities said they believe the second shooting was related to the first, but did not provide details on how they are connected. The officer involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, which police called standard procedure.
  • In addition to the shootings, a police officer was struck by a car and taken to the hospital with none life-threatening injuries.
  • The shootings in Virginia Beach follow mass shootings in the Atlanta area and in Boulder, Colo., this month, in which 18 people were killed in total. The Virginia Beach community also experienced a mass shooting in 2019, when a man killed 12 people and injured several others at a municipal building.
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Georgia Lawmaker Arrested As Governor Approves New Elections Law : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...igns-law-overhauling-elections
shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon, a Black woman, continued knocking on Kemp's office door after Georgia State Patrol troopers instructed her to stop.She said later she was arrested for "fighting voter suppression." A law signed by Kemp on Thursday includes new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters' access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state.
  • It has been heavily criticized as a bill that would end up disenfranchising Black voters. It's also seen as Republicans' rebuke of the November and January elections in which the state's Black voters led the election of two Democrats to the Senate.
  • Cannon is facing a charge of obstructing law enforcement officers by use of threats or violence and she faces a second charge of disrupting general assembly sessions or other meetings of members.
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  • Georgia State Patrol spokesman Lt. W. Mark Riley told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Cannon "was advised that she was disturbing what was going on inside and if she did not stop, she would be placed under arrest." Cannon's arrest warrant alleges that she "stomped" on an officer's foot three times as she was being apprehended and escorted out of the property, the AJC reported.
  • Several videos posted online show arresting officers were told repeatedly that Cannon is a state lawmaker.As she is being pulled away, Cannon identifies herself as a Georgia state lawmaker and demands to know why she is being arrested.
  • Other officers then arrive to block onlookers from interfering. They eventually bring a shouting Cannon backwards outside and into the back of a Georgia State Capitol patrol car.Cannon is 5 foot 2, according to her arrest record. Her arrest by several larger, white law enforcement officers and the image of her being brought through the Capitol prompted widespread condemnation on social media overnight. And her arrest prompted comparisons to civil rights and police brutality protests from this summer as well as those of the 1960s
  • Georgia's Constitution says lawmakers "shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly" except for treason, felony or breach of the peace.Cannon was charged and brought to a local jail. By 11 p.m. she had been released, according to her attorney Gerald A. Griggs, who spoke to a group of reporters and supporters outside the jail.
  • Griggs told the crowd that Cannon sustained bruising from her arrest. He was joined outside the jail by Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who visited Cannon in jail. He told the group that he is also Cannon's pastor.
  • The senator questioned what made Cannon's actions "so dangerous" that warranted her arrest.
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How Emergent BioSolutions Put an 'Extraordinary Burden' on the U.S.'s Troubled Stockpil... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tions-anthrax-coronavirus.html government pandemic preparation
shared by Javier E on 07 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Government purchases for the Strategic National Stockpile, the country’s emergency medical reserve where such equipment is kept, have largely been driven by the demands and financial interests of a handful of biotech firms that have specialized in products that address terrorist threats rather than infectious disease.
  • “Today, I think, we would not allow anthrax to take up half the budget for a guaranteed supply of vaccines,” he said, adding, “Surely after such a calamity as the last year, we should take a fresh look at stockpiles and manufacturing and preparing for the next pandemic.”
  • Under normal circumstances, Emergent’s relationship with the federal stockpile would be of little public interest — an obscure contractor in an obscure corner of the federal bureaucracy applying the standard tools of Washington, like well-connected lobbyists and campaign contributions, to create a business heavily dependent on taxpayer dollars.
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  • Security concerns, moreover, keep most information about stockpile purchases under wraps. Details about the contracts and inventory are rarely made public, and even the storage locations are secret.
  • Former Emergent employees, government contractors, members of Congress, biodefense experts and current and former officials from agencies that oversee the stockpile described a deeply dysfunctional system that contributed to the shocking shortages last year.
  • Purchases are supposed to be based on careful assessments by government officials of how best to save lives, but many have also been influenced by Emergent’s bottom line
  • The stockpile has long been the company’s biggest and most reliable customer for its anthrax vaccines, which expire and need to be replaced every few years.
  • In the two decades since the repository was created, Emergent’s aggressive tactics, broad political connections and penchant for undercutting competitors have given it remarkable sway over the government’s purchasing decisions related to the vaccines
  • While national security officials still consider anthrax a threat, it has not received specific mention since 2012 in the intelligence community’s annual public assessment of dangers facing the country, a report that has repeatedly warned of pandemics.
  • Emergent bought the license for the country’s only approved anthrax vaccine in 1998 from the State of Michigan. Over time, the price per dose the government agreed to pay Emergent increased nearly sixfold, accounting for inflation, contributing to record revenues last year that topped $1.5 billion
  • The company, whose board is stocked with former federal officials, has deployed a lobbying budget more typical of some big pharmaceutical companies
  • Competing efforts to develop a better and cheaper anthrax vaccine, for example, collapsed after Emergent outmaneuvered its rivals, the documents and interviews show.
  • preparations for an outbreak like Covid-19 almost always took a back seat to Emergent’s anthrax vaccines
  • the government approved a plan in 2015 to buy tens of millions of N95 respirators — lifesaving equipment for medical workers that has been in short supply because of Covid-19 — but the masks repeatedly lost out in the competition for funding over the years leading up to the pandemic
  • After Dr. Frieden and others in the Obama administration tried but failed to lessen Emergent’s dominance over stockpile purchases, the company’s fortunes rose under Mr. Trump, who appointed a former Emergent consultant with a background in bioterrorism to run the office that now oversees the stockpile
  • “If I could spend less on anthrax replenishment, I could buy more N95s,” Dr. Kadlec said in an interview shortly after leaving office. “I could buy more ventilators. I could buy more of other things that quite frankly I didn’t have the money to buy.”
  • And now, as some members of Congress push for larger reserves of ventilators, masks and other equipment needed in a pandemic, a trade group led in part by a top Emergent lobbyist has warned that the purchases could endanger companies focused on threats like anthrax and smallpox by drawing down limited funds.
  • Last year, as the pandemic raced across the country, the government paid Emergent $626 million for products that included vaccines to fight an entirely different threat: a terrorist attack using anthrax.
  • “I think it’s pretty clear that the benefit of the vaccine is marginal,” he said in an interview
  • “They’re very vicious in their behavior toward anybody they perceive as having a different point of view,” said Dr. Tara O’Toole, a former Homeland Security official who says she ran afoul of Emergent in 2010 after telling Congress that the nation needed a newer and better anthrax vaccine.
  • That year, the company that would become Emergent — then known as BioPort — paid Michigan $25 million to buy the license for a government-developed anthrax vaccine and an aging manufacturing plant.
  • The company opened its doors with one product, called BioThrax, and one customer, the Defense Department, which required the vaccine for service members.
  • Emergent’s anthrax vaccine was not the government’s first choice. It was more than 30 years old and plagued by manufacturing challenges and complaints about side effects. Officials instead backed a company named VaxGen, which was developing a vaccine using newer technology licensed from the military.
  • Emergent’s successful campaign against VaxGen — deploying a battalion of lobbyists, publicly attacking its rival and warning that it might cease production of its own vaccine if the government didn’t buy it — established its formidable reputation. By 2006, VaxGen had lost its contract and the government had turned to Emergent to supply BioThrax.
  • “They were totally feared by everybody,” Dr. Philip Russell, a top health official in the administration of President George W. Bush, said in an interview. He said that he clashed with Emergent when he backed VaxGen, and that his reputation came under attack, which was documented by The Times in 2006. (Dr. Russell died this January.)
  • the group of federal officials who make decisions about the stockpile and other emergency preparations — known as the Phemce, for the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise — ordered up a study. It found in 2010 that the government could not afford to devote so much of its budget to a single threat.
  • Instead, the review concluded, the government should invest more in products with multiple applications, like diagnostic tests, ventilators, reusable respirator masks and “plug and play” platforms that can rapidly develop vaccines for a range of outbreaks.
  • from 2010 through 2018, the anthrax vaccine consumed more than 40 percent of the stockpile’s budget, which averaged $560 million during those years.
  • Emergent and the government have withheld details of the stockpile contracts, including how much the company has charged for each dose of BioThrax, but executives have shared some of the missing information with investors.
  • The company in 1998 agreed to charge the government an average of about $3.35 per dose, documents show. By 2010, the price had risen to about $28, according to financial disclosures and statements by Emergent executives, and now it is about $30
  • Over the past 15 years, the company recorded a gross profit margin of about 75 percent for the vaccine, in an arrangement that one Emergent vice president called a “monopoly.”
  • Emergent’s rise is the stuff of lore in biodefense circles — a tale of savvy dealings, fortuitous timing and tough, competitive tactics.
  • One afternoon in October 2010, Wall Street investors gathered at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan for a presentation by Mr. Burrows. He shared with them a secret number: 75 million.That was how many BioThrax doses the government had committed to stockpiling, and it was the backbone of Emergent’s thriving business. In pursuit of that goal, the government had already spent more than $900 million, and it continued to buy virtually every dose Emergent could produce. It had even awarded the company more than $100 million to expand its Michigan factory.
  • “The best approach toward anthrax is antimicrobial therapy,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, told Congress as early as 2007.
  • In an analysis published in 2007, the firm determined that giving antibiotics immediately after a large outdoor anthrax attack was likely to reduce serious illnesses by more than 80 percent. Administering the vaccine would then cut serious illnesses only by an additional 4 percent.
  • Dr. Ali S. Khan, who ran the C.D.C. office managing the stockpile until 2014, said bluntly: “We overpaid.”
  • “A bunch of people, including myself, were sitting in a room and asking what kind of attack might happen,” said Dr. Kenneth Bernard, a top biodefense adviser to Mr. Bush, recalling a meeting in the months after the 2001 attacks.
  • “And somebody said, ‘Well, I can’t imagine anyone attacking more than three cities at once,’” he said. “So we took the population of a major U.S. city and multiplied by three.”
  • A team of Homeland Security and health officials began doing just that in 2013. The group determined, in a previously undisclosed analysis, that the government could stockpile less BioThrax and still be prepared for a range of plausible attacks, according to two people involved in the assessment. Separately, government researchers concluded that two doses of BioThrax provided virtually the same protection as three.
  • the National Intelligence Council, which helped draft the assessments during Mr. Obama’s second term, said in an interview that the idea of a three-city attack affecting 25 million people was “straining credulity.”
  • “If you talk to the head of the House Intelligence Committee,” Don Elsey, Emergent’s chief financial officer, told investors in 2011, “and you say, ‘What are you most worried about?’ he’ll say, ‘Let me see: Number one, anthrax; number two, anthrax; number three, anthrax.’”
  • Emergent’s sales strategy was to address that fear by promising the federal government peace of mind with its vaccine.
  • “There’s a political element involved,” Mr. Burrows, the company’s vice president of investor relations, said at an industry conference in 2016. “I don’t have a marketing expense. I have lobbying expense.”
  • Since 2010, the company has spent an average of $3 million a year on lobbying — far outspending similarly sized biotech firms, and roughly matching the outlays of two pharmaceutical companies with annual revenues at least 17 times greater, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb
  • In 2015, as stockpile managers questioned the large purchases of BioThrax, the spending topped $4 million
  • “They were pouring it on — how poor they were and how this was going to ruin the company, and they’d have to close down factories, and America was going to be left without anthrax vaccine,”
  • “Their revolving door is moving at 60 miles per hour,” said former Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri who had questioned spending on the vaccine while in the Senate. “There is really a lot of incestuousness because it’s such a specialized field.”
  • Ms. DeLorenzo, the Emergent spokeswoman, said the lobbying was necessary because government investment “in biodefense and other public health threats has not been as strongly prioritized as it should be.”
  • Over the past 10 years, Emergent’s political action committee has spread almost $1.4 million in campaign contributions among members of both partie
  • The move followed a yearslong pattern of retaining a bipartisan lobbying corps of former agency officials, staff members and congressmen, including Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, Tom Latham of Iowa and Jim Saxton of New Jersey.
  • “You have people coming and saying, ‘There’s no market for this — nobody’s going to produce this unless you buy enough of it to keep the production line open,’” he said. “It’s an absolutely appropriate argument to make.”
  • Emergent’s campaign proved effective. Despite the 2015 recommendation by the stockpile managers, Senate overseers made clear they opposed the reduction, and the government went ahead and bought $300 million worth of BioThrax.
  • Emergent executives, meanwhile, warned that there could be job losses at the factory in Lansing, Mich. — the capital of a swing state at the center of a contentious presidential campaign between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton.
  • Because Emergent was the sole manufacturer of a product deemed critical to national security, the company has played what one former executive described to The Times as “the we’re-going-to-go-bankrupt card.”
  • Dr. Hatchett said the idea gave him pause. But, he explained in an interview, “if there’s only one partner that can provide a product and only one customer for that product, the customer needs the partner to survive.”
  • Just a year later, Emergent spent about $200 million in cash, and made other financial commitments, to acquire Sanofi’s smallpox vaccine and GlaxoSmithKline’s anthrax treatment, two products with established pipelines to the stockpile. The purchases expanded Emergent’s hold over the reserve.
  • Ms. DeLorenzo said the acquisitions did not suggest the company was better off than it had claimed, but Dr. Bright said he and others involved in the bailout felt used.
  • a plan five years earlier to create an emergency supply of N95 respirators was simply not funded. A team of experts had proposed buying tens of millions of the masks to fill the gap during an outbreak until domestic manufacturing could ramp up, according to five officials involved in the assessment, which has not been previously disclosed.
  • By the time the novel coronavirus emerged, the stockpile had only 12 million of the respirators. The stockpile has since set a goal of amassing 300 million.
  • Dr. Kadlec, the Trump administration official overseeing the stockpile, said he used the previous administration’s mask recommendation to raise alarms as early as 2018.
  • Dr. Annie De Groot, chief executive of the small vaccine company EpiVax, spoke about the need to break Emergent’s lock on research dollars at a biodefense forum in 2015.
  • “Politicians want to look like they’ve addressed the problem,” she said. “But we need to actually listen to the scientists.”
  • Over the last five years, Emergent has received nearly a half-billion dollars in federal research and development funding, the company said in its financial disclosures.
  • “We know ahead of time when funding opportunities are going to come out,” Barbara Solow, a senior vice president, told investors in 2017. “When we talk to the government, we know how to speak the government’s language around contracting.”
  • The company used federal money to make improvements to BioThrax, and also found a way to earn government money from a competing anthrax vaccine it had excoriated. After the demise of VaxGen in 2006, Emergent bought the company’s unfinished vaccine and in 2010 persuaded the federal government to continue paying for research on it
  • By the time the research contract was canceled in 2016, Emergent had collected about $85 million, records show. The company then shelved the vaccine. “If the U.S. government withdraws funding, we re-evaluate whether there is any business case for continuing,” Ms. DeLorenzo said.
  • For more than 30 years, the government had been encouraging the development of a BioThrax replacement. In 2002, the Institute of Medicine had concluded that an alternative based on more modern technology was “urgently needed.” By 2019, there were three leading candidates, including one made by Emergent, known as AV7909.
  • Emergent’s candidate was hardly the breakthrough the government was seeking, former health officials said. AV7909 was essentially an enhanced version of BioThrax. The competitors were using more modern technology that could produce doses more rapidly and consistently, and were promising significant cost savings for the stockpile.
  • To qualify for emergency authorization, a vaccine must be at an advanced stage of development with no approved alternatives. Emergent acknowledged in its financial disclosures that there was “considerable uncertainty” whether the new vaccine met those requirements.
  • The election of Mr. Trump as president was good news for Emergent.
  • Dr. Lurie, the senior health official in the Obama administration who had tried to scale back BioThrax purchases, was out. Mr. Trump’s pick to replace her was Dr. Kadlec, a career Air Force physician and top biodefense official in the Bush administration who was fixated on bioterrorism threats, especially anthrax, current and former officials said
  • Soon after entering the Trump administration in 2017, Dr. Kadlec took a series of actions that he characterized as streamlining a cumbersome bureaucracy but that had the effect of benefiting Emergent.
  • He assumed greater control of purchasing decisions, diminishing the authority of the Phemce, the oversight group that had proposed buying less BioThrax. And in 2018, he backed a decision to move control of the stockpile to his office in the Department of Health and Human Services and away from the C.D.C., which is based in Atlanta and prides itself on being insulated from the influence of lobbyists.
  • Dr. Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, was strongly opposed. The move, he said, “had almost as an explicit goal to give the lobbyists more say in what got purchased.”
  • That July, the government made the announcement Emergent had been banking on, committing to buying millions of doses. Separately, it said it would stop funding Emergent’s competitors.
  • The decision to side with Emergent did not surprise Dr. Khan, the former C.D.C. official overseeing the stockpile.“Again and again, we seem unable to move past an old technology that’s bankrupting the stockpile,” he said.
  • Last month, as the death toll from Covid-19 neared a half-million, Mr. Kramer, the company’s chief executive, told analysts there had been no “evidence of a slowdown or a delay or a deprioritization,” and echoed a statement he had made in April when asked whether the pandemic might interrupt Emergent’s sales to the stockpile.“It’s pretty much business as usual,” he said then.
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Police Officer Is Arrested Over London Woman's Disappearance - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rah-everard-disappearance.html Politics US Police
shared by saberal on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A police officer is being held on suspicion of murder in connection with the disappearance of a woman who went missing last week as she was on her way home in South London, the police said on Wednesday.
  • Ms. Dick said the police couldn’t confirm the identity of the remains, adding that it could take “considerable time.”
  • hundreds of officers have been involved in the investigation, the police said, searching more than 750 houses in South London, a woodland area and a property in Kent, and urging witnesses to come forward. The arrest was the most significant development in the case, the police said, but the discovery of the remains made chances to find the 33-year-old woman alive slimmer.
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  • The officer remained in custody on Wednesday on suspicion of murder, and for a separate allegation of indecent exposure, according to the police, and the woman also remained in custody.
  • Another woman, Jess Jones, wrote on the platform, “When people are no longer safe walking home through residential streets of South London isn’t it time for lockdown to end??”
  • Although city officials have acknowledged that “too many women feel unsafe when traveling, working or going out at night,”
  • “I speak on behalf of all my colleagues when I say that we are utterly appalled at this dreadful, dreadful news,” Ms. Dick said, adding that the news that a police officer had been arrested had sent “shock waves and anger through the public and through the Met.”
  • London has nearly 700,000 CCTV cameras, according to one estimate, and throughout the week the Metropolitan Police have urged residents to check their private security systems.
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Opinion | The Blue Wall of Silence Is Starting to Crack - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hicago-virginia-blue-wall.html opinion US BLM
shared by aleija on 16 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • “I’m actively serving this country, and this is how you’re going to treat me?” Lieutenant Nazario told the officers. Race is the only explanation for this loathsome assault.
  • Cops protect the state. They also are the state. We revere them for the first part. We fear them for the second. But even as we condemn another round of horrific and excessive state violence directed at Black Americans, there’s actually a ray of hope on the police reform blotter.
  • The blue wall may be starting to crack. It was broken in the Derek Chauvin trial.
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  • It’s no small thing that several Minneapolis police officers, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, took the stand against Mr. Chauvin in his trial over the death of George Floyd. Fourteen officers in the same department signed an open letter last year saying Mr. Chauvin “failed as a human and stripped George Floyd of his dignity and life.”
  • Three generations of police officers protected the accused in uniform.
  • Among the victims were several people of color. “Two African-American men are dead,” said the city’s police chief, Carmen Best, at the time, “at a place where they claim to be working for Black Lives Matter.”
  • We need every cop to wear a body camera. We need to curb the power of police unions, the biggest protectors of the blue wall. And we need officers of all stripes to back the words of those 14 in Minneapolis. They said, “This is not who we are.” Now prove it.
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Activists seek political power months after the murder of George Floyd - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Carter was one of many activists protesting in the wake of Floyd's murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police. And now a year later, Floyd's death is a big part of the reason why many activists are running for local office across the country.
  • Carter decided to run for mayor in Sandy Springs, Georgia, after he said he grew emotionally exhausted from attending what felt like unending protests for Black people killed during police encounters and other racists attacks.
  • Videos capturing the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot and killed while running in a Georgia neighborhood, and George Floyd gave him something to point out the inequalities Carter knew, but perhaps others hadn't seen.
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  • For Carter, it's about more than just social justice movements. He believes his city's leadership, especially the executive office, should reflect the population.
  • For Carter and other activists-turned-political candidates, making the decision to run felt like an actionable step after a year of such frustration and anger.
  • Tate took on criminal justice reform years before protests for Floyd took over streets across the country.
  • He created a name for himself while leading marches and protests following the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.
  • LaTonya Tate is not new to the fight to make the justice system more just. As a Black woman in the South and part of a family with a history of activism, it has been ever-present. And as a retired parole officer, she knows a good deal about the justice system and its failures.
  • She believes she can lead desperately needed and uncomfortable conversations if she is elected to the city council in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Ossé is running for a seat on the city council representing his district in Brooklyn, New York. If elected, he would become one of the youngest, and one of the first self-described queer city council members in New York City.
  • Tate is advocating for community policing. She believes in reallocating funds from police to invest in the community with mental health training, health care, education, youth programs and social services.
  • Francois Alexandre believes that a community policing role is crucial for accountability. It's what he'd like to change when it comes to law enforcement in his district in Miami if he wins a seat on the Miami City Commission.
  • Charlotte, North Carolina City Council member Braxton Winston knows the path these activists are taking well. He was the subject of an iconic photo depicting the tension between police and protesters after an officer shot and killed Keith Scott, a Black Charlotte resident in 2016.
  • Winston's gained victories to defund chemical agents for crowd control, which he says led to a broader conversation about the overall role of government in ensuring public safety. He says he has learned that support and political will are essential and in ways he is not set up to succeed.
  • The Black Voters Matter organization, which aims to increase power in the black community through voter outreach and advocacy, says efforts are underway to engage black voters and to build voting power.
  • In June, the organization plans to launch a bus campaign to engage Black voters while commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides movement, bus tours taken by civil rights activists in the '60s to fight segregation in the South.
  • Carter hopes this can be a moment where the country looks deep into its soul and reckons with its past.
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Alleged US Capitol rioter who heckled police for 'protecting pedophiles' served jail ti... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • A Trump supporter accused of storming the US Capitol and heckling police officers for "protecting pedophiles" previously served jail time after being convicted in the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl, according to court records reviewed by CNN and lawyers involved in the cases.
  • Federal prosecutors say Sean McHugh of Auburn, California, fought with police as they fended off the massive mob of Trump supporters outside the Capitol on January 6. During the scuffle, McHugh was recorded by police body-worn cameras heckling the officers with a megaphone
  • McHugh was convicted in 2010 on a state charge of unlawful sex with a minor, according to California court records reviewed by CNN and lawyers involved in McHugh's cases. McHugh was sentenced to 240 days in jail -- though he served less -- and got four years of probation.
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  • McHugh has been charged with eight federal crimes tied to the Capitol insurrection, including trespassing charges and the more serious counts of obstructing congressional proceedings and assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon. He hasn't yet entered a plea in court.
  • There was DNA evidence that connected McHugh to the girl, former prosecutor Todd Kuhnen told CNN. The victim was 14 years old and McHugh was 23 when the crime occurred, Kuhnen said. The victim also alleged that she was intoxicated when the incident occurred.
  • He has been in jail since his May 27 arrest, a federal judge in the Eastern District of California ruled Tuesday that he should be detained before trial because he poses a threat to the public. His lawyers said in a court filing Thursday that they'll try again to secure his release.
  • At the time of the riot, McHugh was on probation for misdemeanor convictions for driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license, according to federal court documents.
  • McHugh has a long rap sheet of misdemeanor convictions, including multiple DUIs and trespassing offenses, according to Negin and a CNN review of California state court records. He is one of many rioters with criminal records, and he is one of a few rioters who were on probation or parole for other unrelated crimes when they went to the Capitol on January 6.
  • This undercuts recent false claims from some Republicans, who have whitewashed the violent attack and claimed that the rioters were well-meaning patriotic Americans with clean records. Republicans pushed this lie at a recent House hearing about Capitol security failures. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar complained that "the FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records" and claimed "law-abiding citizens" were being targeted.
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