Group items tagged

This time, it was 10 people dead at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo. Only a few days before, she had interviewed a survivor of the rampage at Atlanta-area massage parlors. In 2019, Ms. Keilar reported on the back-to-back shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. In 2018, she spoke with relatives of students killed in the shooting in Parkland, Fla.

“I just was having this awful feeling of déjà vu,” Ms. Keilar said in an interview, as she recalled the emotional broadcast, which was widely shared on social media. “If you’re covering this all the time, it’s possible to become numb. Because it becomes somehow unremarkable. This thing that is completely unacceptable, and should be extraordinary, becomes unremarkable.”

Journalists who have reported on multiple mass shootings say these moments are borne of sadness, frustration, and, for some, a feeling of futility in the face of a bleak kind of repetition. There is now a well-developed playbook that network correspondents and newspaper writers, including many New York Times reporters, turn to as they travel to yet another afflicted town. Talk to those who knew the victims and the gunman; attend vigils and funerals; gather information from the police and the courts. Balance necessary reporting on the attack with the potential that too much attention could be seen as glorifying the attacker.

Cuomo allegations test Democrats’ commitment to #MeToo

Andrew Cuomo suffered a major blow on Sunday in his attempt to stay as governor of New York in the face of allegations of sexual harassment and workplace bullying

The majority leader of the state senate and the speaker of the assembly, two of the most powerful Democrats in New York, said it was time for Cuomo to go.

Two FBI agents are dead and at least three others are wounded after a raid on a home in Sunrise, Fla., turned violent early Tuesday.

President Biden offered his condolences to the agents' loved ones. "Every family dreads the possibly of receiving that call," he said. "My heart aches for the families."

State Sen. Lauren Book, who is based in Broward County, where the raid occurred, and is also a survivor of child sexual abuse, echoed Wray's words. Alfin and Schwartzenberger were heroes who were "working to keep children safe from sexual abuse and online exploitation — scourges amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic," Book said in a statement to NPR.

I promise that if you or someone you love has survived Covid-19, I rejoice for you.Likewise, if you or a loved one are among the fortunate who have received the vaccine that can protect the body from this devastating disease, I am truly happy about that. My father, Gary D. Respers Sr., was not so fortunate.

Two days before the viewing for my father at a local funeral home, the governor of Maryland, my home state and where my parents have always lived, announced that 40% of Marylanders ages 65 and older had received Covid-19 vaccines.My folks were not among that number.

Mom and I had frantically searched for appointments for her and dad. They fell ill right after her doctor's office had scheduled her to receive her first dose and we were continuing our search for dad. "We were so close to getting them vaccinated," I sobbed after the hospital called to inform me my father didn't make it.

Advocates for reform contend that a key reason for the impunity is the military chain of command, the rigid organizational structure that gives commanders authority over their subordinates. This arrangement also extends to the handling of sexual assault. The rules give commanders a key role in the prosecution of such cases involving service members under their authority.

Despite promises from military leaders that they could be trusted to solve the problem themselves, in the last decade reports of assault have doubled, while the conviction rate has halved. The pending bill would remove the prosecution of sexual assault cases from the chain of command. The legislation enjoys broad, bipartisan support with more than 60 co-sponsors, including Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, a combat veteran and survivor of sexual assault, who participated in the video above.

But even though Senator Ernst’s recent decision to throw her weight behind the bill has given the effort new impetus, the legislation’s chances of passage are uncertain amid stiff resistance from some key senators. Last week, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, and the ranking member, Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, blocked the bill from a vote in the Senate — where it surely would have passed given its broad support.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring to the floor a vote on a bipartisan bill that would overhaul the way the US military responds to sexual assault cases.

The legislation, which was introduced last month by a bipartisan group of senators, would make significant changes to how sexual assault cases are handled, moving the decision-making power on whether to bring felony-level charges from the chain of command

The bill, which was originally introduced by Gillibrand, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa and others, would also take preventatives measures, including increasing training for all members of the military from ROTC to enlisted officers, as well as criminal investigators and military prosecutors, so they have the tools they need to work on sexual assault and domestic violence cases.

The riots that engulfed Tulsa a hundred years ago killed hundreds and destroyed scores of businesses in the then thriving neighborhood known as Black Wall Street.

Today, Stradford's great grandson is a well known Black investor in the modern Wall Street, and he remembers the emotional – and financial – impact the riots had on his family.

"Over time, we think it would have compounded to over $100 million,"

The president, who has made racial equity and justice central themes of his administration, was in Tulsa, Okla., to commemorate a painful part of the country’s history.

Mr. Biden, who has made racial equity and justice central themes of his presidency, was in Tulsa to shed light on a painful part of the country’s history. He recalled in detail the horror that occurred from May 31 to June 1, 1921, when angry whites descended on Greenwood, killing as many as 300 people and destroying more than 1,250 homes.

The president’s visit was also intended to highlight steps his administration is taking to close the wealth gap between Black and white people in the United States, even as activists criticized him for not doing enough to correct historical wrongs and put the disadvantaged on equal footing.

A coalition of Israeli political parties announced Wednesday night they had agreed ​to a deal to form a new government, paving the way for the exit of Israel's longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, notified Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he had managed to cobble together a coalition less than an hour before the midnight deadline.

In a statement, Lapid said the "government will work to serve all the citizens of Israel including those who aren't members of it, will respect those who oppose it, and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society."

Crews searching an excavation site at Oaklawn Cemetery for the remains of those killed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre found five coffins on Thursday afternoon.This brings the total amount of coffins found at the "mass grave feature" to 20 thus far, according to the city of Tulsa.

An eight-member team from the Tampa, Florida, office of Cardno Inc., an environmental and infrastructure company, is expected to be at Oaklawn Cemetery up to six to eight weeks completing the exhumation process.

Though ground-penetrating radar identified 12 coffins, a funeral home ledger suggests there may be 18 bodies in the area. The excavation team is preparing for the possibility of finding as many as 30.

While there haven't been any federal or state executions since Biden took office, about 2,500 men and women sit on death row in federal and state prisons across the country -- and advocates say that, in the absence of an executive order from the White House, a state can at any moment schedule executions or the Justice Department can decide to calendar a federal inmate's death date.

a promise to pass legislation eliminating the death penalty on the federal level and to "incentivize states to follow the federal government's example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole."

The President has not directly addressed the death penalty since taking office -- though White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in March that Biden continues to have "grave concerns" about the practice.

“The Blumstein family, consisting of Mr. B, age 43, his wife, same age, and their two children, ages 6½ and 2½ arrived in the United States on 12/21/50,” begins the social worker’s minutely detailed account of my grandparents’, and my father’s, first weeks as refugees in the United States.

My father was born stateless in Uzbekistan in 1945, as World War II was winding down. His Polish-born Jewish parents had spent years in flight — first to Russia in 1939, when Hitler invaded their home country, only to be deported via cattle cars into forced labor in Siberia. My father’s older brother perished of diphtheria during the war. Postwar, my grandparents boarded trains west, but at the Polish border heard the news that nearby villagers had murdered Jews who returned and gave up on their plan to reclaim their home.

“Misrepresentation in visa and citizenship applications is a matter of U.S. immigration law, and few if any of the normal due process rights accorded to defendants in criminal trials apply,” my father wrote in his memoir, “Lies That Matter,” which will be published next month. “And so deportations to the U.S.S.R. followed by a firing squad were seen as not really ‘punitive,’ as if lives were not at stake.” To my father this was not justice: The immigration system did not take into consideration whether the punishment fit the crime. He left O.S.I. after 18 months.

He survived Covid-19, but his lungs were ravaged. After months of deep sedation, he is delirious, his muscles atrophied. And this 61-year-old still cannot breathe on his own.

his doctors and family will tell him that his lungs are never going to recover, and that this machine is a bridge that will help keep him alive until he can receive a transplant. If it turns out that he is not a transplant candidate — if he cannot build up enough strength, or if he develops a catastrophic new infection or organ failure — the machine will eventually be turned off. And he will die.

He is not alone.

President Biden visited former President Jimmy Carter, an old friend, as he traveled to Georgia on Thursday to pitch his $4 trillion economic agenda.

A day after using his first address to Congress to urge swift passage of his plans to spend heavily on infrastructure, child care, paid leave and other efforts meant to bolster economic competitiveness, Mr. Biden held a drive-in car rally in Duluth, Ga., for his 100th day in office.

The president promoted the $1.9 trillion economic aid bill he signed into law in March and pitched the two-part plan for longer-term investments in the economy that he has rolled out over the past two weeks.

"There's a shortage of coronavirus tests. Nobody's getting tested! So the government's numbers for our district are totally wrong," he told NPR on a crackly phone line from his village. "If you're able to get tested, results come after five days."

This village's ordeal is not atypical. Across India, there are shortages of testing kits, hospital beds, medical oxygen and antiviral drugs as a severe second wave of the pandemic crushes the health infrastructure. The country has been breaking world records daily for new cases. On Friday, India's Health Ministry confirmed 386,453 infections – more than any country on any day since the pandemic began.

Part of the reason for the huge numbers is India's size: a population of nearly 1.4 billion. The rate of known coronavirus infections per capita is still less than the United States endured at its peak.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was asked by the president on Tuesday to try to form a new coalition government, offering a possible path for him to remain in office even as he stands trial on corruption charges.

While the country remains split along the traditional fault lines of secular and religious, right-wing and left-wing and Jewish and Arab, the main rupture has increasingly come to revolve around the polarizing figure of Mr. Netanyahu himself.

A political survivor and Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has spent the last 12 years in office. But after four inconclusive elections in two years, he and his allies have failed to win enough support to ensure a parliamentary majority that could decisively end the country’s political deadlock.

Early in the 20th century, it was not uncommon for children to suffer the agonies of infectious diseases or witness family members who did. Children got terribly sick and died at home. Their survivors — including some of our grandparents and great-grandparents — were intimately acquainted with the sights, sounds and smells of dying and with the deaths of siblings or their own small children.

Americans born after the mid-20th century belong to the vaccine-spoiled generations. Most probably don’t know what diphtheria is or that it was a leading cause of childhood death in the United States before immunizations became widespread. Nor can they imagine being parents helplessly watching their small child cough to death from this bacterial infection.

New vaccines were almost always accompanied by reports of risks and side effects, and sometimes there were terrible accidents, at least one involving tens of thousands of people made ill by a vaccine that was supposed to protect them.

The Trump administration early Wednesday morning executed Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, whose death marked the first federal execution of a woman in nearly 70 years.

Ms. Montgomery, 52, was sentenced to death for murdering a pregnant woman in 2004 and abducting the unborn child, whom she claimed as her own

In pleas to spare her life, Ms. Montgomery’s supporters argued that a history of trauma and sexual abuse that marred her life contributed to the circumstances that led to the crime.

As a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol last week clamoring to overturn the result of November’s presidential election, photographs captured a man in the crowd wearing a shirt emblazoned with “Camp Auschwitz,” a reference to the Nazi concentration camp.

The presence of anti-Semitic symbols and sentiment at the Capitol riot raised alarms among Jewish Americans and experts who track discrimination and see it as part of an ongoing, disturbing trend.

The insurrection was “not so much a tipping point” for anti-Semitism but rather “the latest explicit example of how (it) is part of what animates the narratives of extremists in this country,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Kendi now has four books at or near the top of the best-seller lists, including Stamped from the Beginning, which is a history of American racism that won the National Book Award in 2016, and two books on racism for younger readers. Racism is Kendi’s thing. His newest, How to Be an Antiracist, reappeared at the top of the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list this summer

Boston University announced it would offer Kendi, 38, the most prestigious tenured chair at its disposal, making him only the second holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities.

The chair has been vacant since the death of the novelist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel four years ago.