An Alameda COVID-19 testing site is appointment only on Friday after massive demand for tests forced its closure after its first day in operation. Emily Turner reports. (7/24/20)
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed agreement with President Trump’s plan to deploy federal police to the city during a Wednesday evening phone call with the president, according to the mayor’s office. Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to send 200 officers to Chicago, which recorded an abnormally high number of shootings over the past two months, to quell the surging. The unrest in Chicago differs in kind from that in Portland, Ore., which has seen continuous rioting and destruction of city and federal property over the same period.
However, Judge Lee said that the materials police sought were critical for their investigation into the alleged theft of police guns and suspected arson to police vehicles, thus removing the protections of the shield law, the paper reported. Seattle Police Department issued a subpoena on June 16 to The Seattle Times newspaper, as well as local TV stations KIRO 7, KING 5, KOMO 4 and KCPQ 13, asking for all footage and pictures — published and unpublished — taken at a protest on May 30. Karen Ducey/Getty Images Seattle Times Executive Editor Michele Matassa Flores told the court that she believes “it puts our independence, and even our staff’s physical safety, at risk,” the paper reported.
Two of the British ISIS terrorists dubbed the “Beatles” further incriminated themselves in the mistreatment of Western hostages in Syria, including Americans Kayla Mueller and James Foley, in interviews obtained exclusively by NBC News. In the interviews, the two men, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, for the first time admitted their involvement in the captivity of Kayla, an aid worker who was tortured and sexually abused before her death in 2015. Kotey said, “She was in a room by herself that no one would go in.”
“More people are gonna die,” Rebekah Jones wrote to her mother and sisters on Facebook. It was April 26, a warm spring Sunday in Tallahassee, Fla., and she was just finishing work at the Florida Department of Health, where she was managing the state’s much-praised coronavirus dashboard, which she had also created. The exchange marked the beginning of an exceptionally turbulent period for Jones, who was demonized by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a rogue employee while also being celebrated by his detractors as a brave truth teller willing to stand up to political power.
Bai Xuefei/Xinhua/Getty Qantas retired its final Boeing 747 aircraft on Wednesday after the coronavirus pandemic rendered the aircraft and its long-range capabilities useless and accelerated its departure from Qantas by months. Boeing 747s have been part of the Qantas fleet for nearly five decades with the Australian flag carrier and an early adopter and ardent supporter of the type. The final aircraft departed from Sydney en route to Los Angeles in preparation for storage in the Mojave Desert but left behind a special message in the sky before leaving Australian airspace.
Army officials at Fort Hood on Tuesday released the name of another soldier from the post who died after he was found unresponsive last week near a lake. Mejhor Morta, 26, of Pensacola, Florida, is one of at least four Fort Hood soldiers whose bodies were found near the post this year. Fort Hood officials said in a statement Tuesday that the soldier was found Friday in the vicinity of Stillhouse Lake, about 20 miles from Killeen in Bell County.
Rudy Giuliani has once again posted misinformation about Rep. Ilhan Omar on social media, sharing a meme that falsely claimed the congresswoman was seen at a terrorist training camp. The president’s personal lawyer tweeted a debunked meme that included a photo of a woman holding a gun, along with a caption that falsely claimed the woman was Ms Omar (D—Mn). The meme spread across far-right corners of the web last year, despite the photo having been taken three years before the Somali-American congresswoman was born.
An Afghan girl has been hailed on social media for her “heroism” after fighting back against Taliban militants who reportedly killed her parents. The girl took the family’s AK-47 assault rifle, shot dead two of the gunmen and wounded several others, local officials in Ghor province said. Officials say the Taliban attacked as her father supports the government.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a new chicken farm being built in a county south of capital Pyongyang and called for improvements to what he described as an outdated poultry industry, state media said Thursday. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency didn’t say exactly when Kim made the trip to the construction site in Hwangju. The report didn’t mention any comments by Kim about U.S.-led international sanctions over his nuclear weapons program, which have increased pressure on the North’s broken economy.
New York Times reporter Julian Barnes implied on Tuesday that some intelligence officials believe that the Kremlin is fanning corruption allegations against Joe Biden’s son Hunter in order to “obscure” Russia’s ongoing election interference attempts. During an MSNBC interview, host Nicole Wallace referred to Russian disinformation campaigns that she said appear to have “infected” the House Intelligence Committee, asking Barnes, “What access to any information or briefings do Democrats really have? Russia uses these disinformation campaigns to deflect from what they did in 2016,” Barnes, who reports on national security for the Times, responded.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images A Miami Black Lives Matter protest organizer is facing felony charges after he was accused of stealing flags from a car during a “Cubans for Trump” caravan. Jonathan Gartrelle is being charged with two felonies; strong-arm robbery and escape, as well as misdemeanor counts of resisting an officer without violence and obstructing a public street, according to the Miami Herald. Gartelle told the Miami Herald that the charges were “overblown,” adding, “Their goal is to have me in jail for two weeks, get beaten up by some officers, and distract from the movement.”
It’s been one year since 50-year-old high school teacher Susan Morrissey Ledyard was murdered, and her family tells Dateline they feel they are no closer to finding out what happened. “We’re utterly bewildered that we’ve reached the one-year mark without any answers,” Susan’s sister, Meg Morrissey Heinicke said. A week before the one-year anniversary of Susan’s murder, the Delaware State Police issued a press release seeking assistance from the public and urging anyone with information about the 2019 case to come forward.
Amid the ongoing cultural reckoning over Confederate statues, the Sierra Club announced on Wednesday that it will consider renaming or pulling down monuments dedicated to its founder, the iconic conservationist John Muir. Muir, who was known as “the father of our national parks” and a “wilderness prophet,” founded the Sierra Club in 1892. “As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also take this moment to reexamine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy,” Brune wrote.
The shipyard presiding over the renovations on the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard when it caught fire July 12 was awarded a $10 million contract modification for their efforts with firefighting and follow-on cleanup. The contract with General Dynamics NASSCO San Diego was among those announced Wednesday in the U.S. Defense Department’s daily roundup. The fire, which broke out July 12, began in the lower vehicle storage area amidships and damaged 11 of the Bonhomme Richard’s 14 decks, according to a letter to all Navy flag officers and master chiefs obtained by Defense News.
A Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant died after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier this month in California, following an employee training at the airline’s headquarters. Hawaiian Airlines President & CEO Peter Ingram told employees in an internal memo distributed on Tuesday that Jeff Kurtzman, a senior Los Angeles-based flight attendant, died this week. He had been a part of the airline since 1986, “and over the past three decades had become well known to his in-flight colleagues for his passion for discovering new places, people and cultures; his terrific sense of humor and knack for easy conversation; and his caring heart,” Ingram wrote in the memo, obtained by USA TODAY.
A Texas county is forming a committee to decide which coronavirus patients are most likely to die and send them home to their families. Starr County Memorial Hospital is overrun with coronavirus cases, and hospitals elsewhere in Texas and in nearby states are also full, officials say. The county’s health authority said the “situation is desperate,” and that “there is nowhere to put these patients.”
Mexico’s communications and transportation minister said on Thursday he was resigning because he disagreed with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s decision to hand control of ports to the navy as the government seeks to curb drug trafficking. Anxious to stop chemicals used to make narcotics entering the country, Lopez Obrador wants the navy to oversee ports and customs facilities, a decision that the outgoing minister, Javier Jimenez Espriu, was not in agreement with. “We had a dispute that happens between free men,” Lopez Obrador said in a video announcing Jimenez Espriu’s exit.
The Republican coronavirus relief bill includes no local aid, smaller unemployment benefits and $20 billion for farmers.
An F-15 fighter jet flew near an Iranian passenger airliner over Syria Thursday, U.S. military officials said, in an attempt to identify whether the aircraft posed a threat to coalition troops on the ground, according to an official statement from Operation Inherent Resolve headquarters. “The visual inspection occurred to ensure the safety of coalition personnel at At Tanf garrison. Once the F-15 pilot identified the aircraft as a Mahan Air passenger plane, the F-15 safely opened distance from the aircraft,” the statement, from U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Bill Urban, said.
Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, told US attorneys that there was no categorical exception for children under five under the then-active Trump Administration child separation policy for immigrants caught crossing the border illegally. The discussion occurred in 2018 on a conference call meant to clarify the “zero-tolerance” implementation of the Trump Administration’s policy. A source told the Guardian that the call shocked some of the border-state prosecutors involved because it meant that children under five could be separated from their families.