Ex-Milwaukee Police Chief on FBI investigating Nashville explosion
Former Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn provides insight on ‘America’s News HQ.’
As of Dec. 24, President Trump has issued clemency in the form of pardons or commutations to more than 90 people, from relatively obscure white-collar or non-violent drug offenders to the famous (conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza; Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and the infamous (four security contractors with the Blackwater firm who murdered more than a dozen civilians in Iraq).
Police believe the act was intentional
Four people have been arrested in connection with the 2018 crash of a helicopter that killed a central Mexican governor and her husband — who had preceded her as governor — authorities said Friday. The Agusta 109 helicopter crashed in flames 10 minutes after takeoff on Dec. 24 that year while carrying newly installed Puebla Gov. Martha Erika Alonso and her husband, former Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle, as well as three other people. The Puebla state prosecutor's office said the four suspects worked for a Rotor Flight Services, a company “related to the functioning of the aircraft,” It said the suspects were accused of culpable homicide, damage to another's property and false testimony.
Royal Caribbean, the world's largest cruise company, is trying to prevent victims of the 2019 New Zealand volcanic eruption from suing in the US. Passengers from the Royal Caribbean ship Ovation of the Seas took a trip to White Island, a popular tourist site, last December, when a volcano suddenly erupted, killing 27 visitors and injuring 25 more. Ivy and Paul Reed, from the US state of Maryland, who suffered burns as a result of the eruption, and Australians Marie and Stephanie Browitt, who lost family members because of the eruption, filed separate lawsuits against Royal Caribbean claiming that the cruise line did not properly explain the dangers of visiting White Island. Peter Gordon, a lawyer for the Browitt family, told the Australian Broadcasting Company that Royal Caribbean should have known that the volcano could erupt before allowing its passengers to visit White Island.
President Trump has issued 65 pardons and commutations since Tuesday, and more are expected in the coming days. According to multiple sources, his son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, played a key role in managing the avalanche of requests.
Federal investigators have identified a person of interest in connection with the explosion that rocked downtown Nashville on Christmas Day and were searching a home associated with that person, law enforcement officials said.
DUBAI (Reuters) -At least 10 climbers have died and several more are missing in mountains north of Iran's capital Tehran after heavy snowfall, state media reported on Saturday, and the seven crew members of a ship are also missing after storms in the Gulf. Heavy snow and winds in several parts of Iran in the past few days have closed many roads and disrupted transport. Several climbers remain unaccounted for since Friday when two deaths were reported, while the number reported as missing has increased as concerned families contact the authorities, state television said.
President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday released a statement criticizing President Trump for refusing to sign the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress earlier this week.Biden warned "this abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences," noting that millions of Americans will lose enhanced unemployment benefits (which are set to expire Saturday), small businesses will go longer without federal aid, and eviction moratoriums will end next week unless Trump decides to sign the bill.> Biden calls Trump not yet signing the covid relief bill an “abdication of responsibility.” He says Trump should sign it and again argues for “more action that we’ll need to take early in the new year to revive the economy and contain the pandemic.” pic.twitter.com/OsqFNRtWEc> > — Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) December 26, 2020It's unclear whether Trump will relent, though he continued to criticize the package because it designates just $600 for stimulus checks for individuals. Democratic lawmakers seem to be on board with his call to push that figure up to $2,000 per person, but the GOP appears hesitant. Biden didn't address stimulus checks specifically in his latest statement, but he said that while Trump signing the current bill is "critical," it's a "first step and down payment on more action that we'll need to take" after he steps into the Oval Office.More stories from theweek.com Joe Biden's anti-revolution takes shape 7 scathing cartoons about Russia's massive cyberattack The Christmas of 1918
Colorado State Patrol estimated Lindsey Ward's blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit at the time of the crash.
Several people were injured in a shooting in Berlin in the early hours of Saturday, German emergency services said. Unidentified assailants fled the scene following the shooting in the Kreuzberg district of the German capital, according to police, who said four people were hospitalised with serious injuries. “Emergency medical services, including three emergency doctors and a head emergency doctor cared for three seriously injured people and transported them to hospitals for further treatment,” the Berlin fire service said in a tweet, without providing further detail. A manhunt was underway, according to state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, with armed police deployed to the area to search for shooters while a police helicopter circled overhead. The outlet reported that an injured man was pulled from a canal after jumping in to try to escape the shooting. Police also searched the nearby Mockernbrucke subway station. A photographer for German press agency DPA said the incident occurred near the offices of the centre-left Social Democratic Party. "The motive is not yet known,"a police spokesperson told DPA. "We also do not yet know how many people were involved."
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -The new variant of coronavirus linked to a rapid rise in infections in Britain has been detected in Sweden after a traveller from the United Kingdom became ill and tested positive, the Swedish Health Agency said on Saturday. Health Agency official Sara Byfors told a news conference the traveller had been isolating and that no further positive cases had so far been detected. The unidentified traveller was staying in Sormland, south of Stockholm, according to Signe Makitalo, a regional infection control doctor.
Widespread communications outages continued to affect large areas of Tennessee on Saturday after a recreational vehicle exploded early Christmas morning in downtown Nashville.
Health officials in Thailand said Saturday that two new clusters of coronavirus cases have been found that appear to be linked to a major outbreak discovered a week earlier among migrant workers in an industrial province near Bangkok. The new cases were found in 19 members of a motorcycling club who held a holiday gathering on Lanta island in the southern province of Krabi, and in nine people who were in a gambling den in the eastern province of Rayong, said the Disease Control Department. The first of the motorcyclists to be diagnosed with the virus had come from Samut Sakhon province, where the outbreak among migrant workers occurred.
Israel was reported to have launched air strikes against military targets in Syria last night, after war planes flew low over Lebanon, terrifying local residents. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted a military source blaming Israeli “aggression” for launching a “barrage of missiles” from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli towards Masyaf, in Syria’s Hama province. The source claimed that most of the missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defences, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said that a warehouse and missile factories had been destroyed, with “at least” six casualties. Explosions were reported after midnight in the area around Masyaf, north-west of Homs, which is a significant military area for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, containing a military academy and scientific research centre believed to have been used to create chemical weapons. The Israeli military said it would not comment on reports in foreign media, but it has allegedly launched dozens of attacks against Iranian militias and other targets in Syria in recent years, with jets regularly crossing over Lebanese air space. Witnesses said that the Christmas Eve flights were louder than usual, however, frightening residents of Beirut who are still traumatised by the August 4 explosion at the city’s port that killed more than 200 people. The catastrophic blast, which destroyed large areas of the city, was caused after a huge store of ammonium nitrate was ignited by a fire. Tamara Qiblawi, a CNN producer based in the Lebanese capital, shared a video apparently showing “illegal overflights” of four Israeli jets. “You very often hear them here but very rarely do you see them,” she added. “These were exceptionally low altitude. Houses shook. Cats freaked out. Chills down people’s spines.” Quoting “reliable sources”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the “Israeli strikes targeted military posts of regime forces and Iranian militias”. Syrian activists observed ambulances rushing to the scene of the explosions and the dead were all foreign paramilitaries loyal to President Assad, it added. One attack also targeted the research centre, where ground-attack missiles are developed and stored, and which has been hit several times by Israeli strikes in recent years, the Observatory said. The most recent attack in June, killed nine people, including four Syrians. The United States military has previously claimed that sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent, was being developed at the centre, which the Syrian authorities have denied. According to the SANA report, air defences hit “most” missiles before they reached their target. “Our air defences intercepted an Israeli attack on the Masyaf area,” it said.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Mainland China recorded 20 new COVID-19 cases on Dec. 25, compared with 14 cases the previous day, the country's health authority said on Saturday. The National Health Commission said in its daily bulletin that 12 of the new cases were imported. The new Beijing cases were from its Shunyi district, which has entered a "wartime state" requiring all residents to undergo testing, the state-owned China Daily reported on Saturday.
A team of French investigators will come to Beirut next month to participate in interrogating former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, a Lebanese justice ministry official said Saturday. Former auto executive Ghosn, who is a Lebanese, Brazilian and French national, fled Japan in a dramatic escape that drew headlines last year, arriving in Lebanon on Dec. 30, 2019. In addition to his trial in Japan, the 66-year-old businessman is facing a number of legal challenges in France, including tax evasion and alleged money laundering, fraud and misuse of company assets while at the helm of the Renault-Nissan alliance.
“What took you guys so long to find me?” the suspect asked Connecticut authorities who found him after he ran into the woods following the alleged attack.
Archaeologists excavating a snack bar in the ruins of Italy’s Pompeii have uncovered “exceptional” frescoes, and obscene graffiti likely directed at the establishment’s seventh century owner. The volcanic ash which buried the town during the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD79 has preserved an intimate historical record of the Roman town 14 miles southeast of Naples, and the lives of its 13,000 inhabitants. One of these inhabitants was called Nicias and was likely a freed slave from Greece, according to excavators who recently uncovered an inscription insulting the man. “NICIA CINAEDE CACATOR” reads the scrawled graffiti on a fresco of a chained dog painted onto the bar of the Thermopolium of Regio V, a cheap street food eatery. “An inverted s****er” is how archaeologists rendered the slur, though the adjective carries a homosexual connotation from its derivation from the ancient Greek term for catamite.
- Our $740 defense bill is a gift to China, Russia & Big Tech. It fails to terminate the internationally dangerous Section 230, won’t allow us to bring our troops back home (where they belong), renames & destroys our forts & National Monuments, & makes 5G almost impossible! - I will not stand by and watch this travesty of a bill happen without reigning in Big Tech.
BIHAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Hundreds of migrants were stranded Saturday in a squalid, burnt-out tent camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country and winter temperatures suddenly dropped. Migrants at the Lipa camp in northwest Bosnia wrapped themselves in blankets and sleeping bags to protect against the biting winds in the region, which borders European Union member Croatia. A fire earlier this week destroyed much of the camp near the town of Bihac that already was harshly criticized by international officials and aid groups as being inadequate for housing refugees and migrants.