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COVID deniers take vandalism case to Ohio Supreme Court Ohio Capital Journal Article From & Read More ( COVID deniers take vandalism case to Ohio Supreme Court - Ohio Capital Journal )
If you’re looking for a protective case, consider Casetify’s Bounce Case: it’s called that because it’s designed to withstand being dropped. Actually, it’s tested to withstand over 156 drops on all angles and falls from up to 21.3 feet, according to the company. But the protective nature of the case doesn’t mean it’s not fun: Casetify have some lovely unique designs as well as options inspired by Sailor Moon and Harry Potter.
The case includes “Bounce Corners,” which Casetify describes as the result of drop-testing hundreds of smartphones and identifying that a device’s most vulnerable points were located in the four corners. The compression ribs with three air cavities allow for a cushioned contraction and bounce-back in the event of a fall, according to the company. They are constructed from a material called EcoShock that is 40% plant-based and made sustainably, so they have great environmental credentials too.
Available for iPhone 14, 14 Plus, Pro and Pro Max:
Ships to the UK.
MagSafe compatible? Yes.
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PASCAGOULA, Miss. - It’s a 47-year-old murder case that still haunts Pascagoula with thousands of pages of case files detailing the murder of a 16-year-old. WLOX is revisiting the Janie Sanders cold case murder mystery. We’re hoping someone has the clue that will solve it.
“To me, at 11 years old, this scared my mother to death - like oh my god, I can’t believe a child was kidnapped,” Lieutenant Darren Versiga with the Pascagoula Police Department said.
“It could have been me too,” Sander’s friend, Robin Rivera said. “I could have been right there with her is what’s so scary.”
“They don’t even understand what they did to our family,” Sander’s sister, Paula Hill said.
Any child could have been a victim that chilly September day in 1975. Janie Sanders was the unfortunate one.
“Janie was strong-willed, hard headed,” Hill said.
“She was sweet, she loved God, very religious, she trusted everybody - kind of on the naïve side,” Rivera said.
The last hours of her life were spent inside a Colmer Junior High School classroom. When the bell rang at 3 o’clock that afternoon, it was the last time her classmates would see her - besides friends who were walking home from school with her. Robin Rivera was one of those friends and one of the last people to see Janie alive besides her killer.
“We said we’d see each other tomorrow at school, and then I never saw her again,” Rivera said.
Pascagoula police say Janie disappeared at the intersection of Louise and Lanier Streets around 3:30 p.m. A call came in either at 4:05 or 4:20 depending on which report you read, alerting authorities to the body.
“That’s a very short window to rape, stab, and half their blood drain out of their body,” Lieutenant Versiga said.
She was found lifeless and nude, dumped like garbage in a makeshift trash heap off a dirt road across the state line in Grand Bay, Alabama. Coroners discovered her body was drained of so much blood indicating she wasn’t killed here where she was found.
“This is a dirt road - you would tend to stay off of that, especially if it’s raining, which it had been,” Lieutenant Versiga said. “So this was probably an ideal place to dump a body.”
An Alabama game warden was out posting no-trespassing signs when he noticed some suspicious activity.
“He saw fresh tracks come off that road and assumed someone may have been back there hunting - he’s the one who saw the blue El Camino pull off the road, and basically almost go head on with a car,” Lieutenant Versiga said.
When news of an unidentified body found near Mobile was broadcast, Janie’s family and friends were panicking.
“They were going to show her picture on the news and I couldn’t watch it,” Rivera said. “I had to leave the room when the picture came on and then I heard my step sister screaming that it was her.”
“Complete and utter chaos, it broke my mom,” Hill said. “My mom was a new mom. You have a baby, you have teenagers and you get this kind of news. All of us were just kind of shell-shocked.”
Now, the search was on to find her murderer.
”The question for me always was – why would she take a ride from a stranger?” Hill asked. “I can’t see her getting into a total stranger’s car.”
“This could potentially be a serial killer - I don’t think this was his first one and I don’t think it was going to be his last one,” Lieutenant Versiga said.
A napkin with a drop of blood and a pen found at the scene could have most likely cracked this case by now with advanced technology, according to investigators. However, due to misinterpretation of a law surrounding evidence in older cases, those items are gone. Tire tracks eliminated some red herrings in the hunt for a suspect and his vehicle. In order to convict though, a confession is needed.
Janie’s soul rests in peace now, but Versiga and those close to Janie will not rest until they receive peace of mind.
“Every person you know, you just look at their face going could they be the one?” Paula Hill asked. “It makes you not trust people. Even the man I married, when I met him. It took me a while for me to trust him as well because you just never know.”
“I would ask for him to come forward and especially if he’s on his death bed and he just wrote it down and said look, I’m the killer of Janie Sanders,” Lieutenant Versiga said. “Upon his death, it get mailed to me, I am good with that.”
“Please turn yourself in,” Rivera pleaded. “Clear your soul because you are going to burn in hell anyway. It’s been haunting me ever since I was 16 years old. Now I’m 63. You need to come forward and just give everybody some peace.”
If you have any information that could help solve this case, call 228-217-1308.
Copyright 2022 WLOX. All rights reserved.
Article From & Read More ( Cold Case: WLOX revisits the Janie Sanders murder case - WLOX )ISLAMABAD (AP) — A court in Pakistan's capital city on Thursday acquitted the daughter of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after she was sentenced to seven years in prison over charges connected with the purchase of luxury apartments in London.
Maryam Nawaz, the vice president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, said outside the Islamabad High court that she is "thankful to God that justice has been done." The luxury apartments at issue are owned by her brothers.
The court also acquitted her husband, Mohammad Sadar, who had been sentenced to one year in jail on charges of giving false information to investigators in 2018.
Sharif, who had also been sentenced to 10 years in jail in the same case, has been living in self-imposed exile in London since 2019 after authorities released him on bail so that he could travel abroad to seek medical treatment.
Article From & Read More ( Pakistani court acquits ex-PM's daughter in corruption case - Daily Independent )
The Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory (CVMDL) within UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, detected the presence of a foreign pathogen in Connecticut rabbits. The work was a collaboration between CVMDL, the Connecticut Department of Agriculture (CT DoA) and the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)- Foreign Animal Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory (FADDL).
Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus Type 2 (RHDV2) is a highly contagious and often fatal disease found in wild and domestic rabbits. Symptoms of RHDV2 include sudden death and blood-stained noses caused by internal bleeding, as well as fever, being hesitant to eat, and respiratory or nervous signs according to the CT DoA.
While this virus isn’t common, CVMDL has played a central role in the detection of the first appearance of the pathogen in the Connecticut and the New England Region.
The sudden death of 13 rabbits at a home in Hartford County triggered a suspected foreign animal disease investigation. The samples came to the CVMDL, which conducted preliminary testing for the presence of RHDV2.
“We act as that first line of defense to raise an alarm if there is the potential for a contagious pathogen like RHDV2,” says Guillermo Risatti, director of the CVMDL and professor Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science. “We provide this service and work with state and federal partners to ensure the right steps are taken to identify and contain potential threats.”
Samples were sent from CVMDL to the FADDL at Plum Island, where they confirmed the presence of RHDV2.
Risatti says it is important for Connecticut residents to report anything unusual they see in domestic or wild rabbits to the CT DoA or Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP).
“It’s important for the public to be cognizant that this is a foreign disease, that it is a communicable disease, and that is it important to report it” Risatti says.
Part of the CVMDL’s work is educating undergraduate and graduate students. Risatti says this experience was a valuable teaching moment, letting students experience first-hand the official chain of events that finding a potential foreign animal disease initiates.
“Every case that comes in is a learning experience for everybody, from undergraduates to professors,” Risatti says.
In February, the lab also detected the presence of Avian Influenza in the state, and had previously diagnosed the first positive case of SARS-COV-2, the pathogen that causes Covid-19, in a dog in Connecticut. The CVMDL is a part of UConn Extension, which connects residents with UConn’s research expertise through specialized programs and services.
The CVMDL is a USDA National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) member. NAHLN is a network of laboratories that can respond quickly to disease events. In that capacity, the CVMDL serves the State of Connecticut and the USDA-APHIS in the entire New England region. The CVMDL is the only NAHLN laboratory in this region of the country.
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Article From & Read More ( UConn Lab Helps Detect First Case of Foreign Rabbit Disease in Connecticut - UConn Today - University of Connecticut )TOPEKA — As juror Ben Alford listened to Terri Anderson’s sensational story at last month’s high-profile double-murder trial in Topeka, he scribbled a big “WTF” in his notes.
The decision by prosecutors to place Anderson on the stand, even though they knew her story lacked credibility, and their request for a new trial demonstrate their persistence in a 20-year quest to convict Dana Chandler.
Anderson stepped forward near the end of the August trial to tell jurors about the night in 2002 when she heard gunshots in the basement of a duplex a block and a half away from her apartment and saw Chandler flee in the dark. Anderson had never told the story before, and her timeline was all wrong. The view from her apartment didn’t align with her memory. There was no record of her supposed 911 call. Shortly after the killings, she had told police she didn’t hear or see anything of interest on the night in question.
None of the jurors believed Anderson. There was no evidence to place Chandler in the state of Kansas on the day of the shootings. Police had fumbled the investigation.
But the sight of crying family members who attended closing arguments weighed on jurors.
“The most un-PC way of saying it: We felt like we were given a s*** sandwich to eat,” Alford said. “And we were told: ‘Tell us what it tasted like,’ but you can’t say, ‘There’s f***ing s*** in my sandwich.’ ”
In other words, jurors couldn’t agree on whether Chandler was guilty of murdering her ex-husband, Mike Sisco, and his fiancee, Karen Harkness, in 2002.
Prosecutors, in spite of the limited physical evidence in the case, police mistakes and testimony that can’t be taken seriously and resulted in a hung jury, asked for another trial in a court filing last week. A status hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
If Shawnee County District Judge Cheryl Rios grants the request, Chandler will be tried for a third time.
The Kansas Supreme Court threw out Chandler’s conviction from a 2012 trial because former prosecutor Jacqie Spradling lied to the jury about nonexistent evidence. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court disbarred Spradling for her misconduct at the trial.
Somil Trivedi, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who focuses on prosecutorial misconduct, said there are problems with the case that can’t be resolved by conducting another trial with the same evidence.
“If you have had two bites at the apple, including one thrown out for misconduct and one simply because you couldn’t convince the jury, I don’t think there is any justice being served in taking yet another swing at this,” Trivedi said.
Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay didn’t respond to an email asking why he expects a different outcome from a new trial, whether this is the best use of his office’s resources, why it was appropriate to put Anderson on the stand and why one of the prosecutors handling the case walked away on the second day of testimony.
In an interview with WIBW-TV, Kagay said his office would review “anything and everything” before deciding whether to ask for another trial.
“We take a step back, and we take a fresh look at the case,” Kagay said. “We analyze every facet of it, just like we do when we make a charging decision when the case first comes to us.”
Prosecutor Charles Kitt kept telling jurors that science can’t solve this case.
Instead, he proposed, the case is about rage, obsession and jealousy.
“That left a lot to be desired,” Alford said. “It was like, OK, what are we going to have?”
Alford said the most compelling evidence against Chandler were the hate-filled emails she sent to her daughter, which helped convince seven of the 12 jurors that Chandler was guilty. Chandler also had placed numerous phone calls to the victims and showed up uninvited to family gatherings.
But for Alford and another juror, Carrie Kimes, that wasn’t enough to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Chandler had driven from her home in Denver to Topeka and back without being detected.
“They could never put her in Topeka. They couldn’t put her in Kansas. So I couldn’t vote that she was guilty,” Kimes said.
Alford said the incriminating emails had been sent four years before the killings, shortly after a nasty divorce. He expected to see an escalation of rage over time. And what about the tedious drive across eastern Colorado and western Kansas? Alford found it difficult to believe someone could “be filled with constant rage for nine hours without changing your mind, without the good angel popping up on one side saying, ‘Think this is a good idea?’ ”
“To change my mind from not guilty to guilty,” Alford said, “I was looking for something like, ‘I hate him and want him to die.’ Something that actually said, ‘I want this person dead.’ ”
Chandler’s call logs showed she rapidly dialed a lot of people, which deflated the idea that she was obsessed with the victims.
“It just seemed like if she wanted to get a hold of somebody, she wanted to get a hold of them,” Alford said.
Then there was the “calamity of errors” by police, Alford said.
Over and over again, police failed to make or preserve records from their investigation. They botched recordings of conversations with Chandler, or taped over them. They unintentionally destroyed some DNA evidence and left DNA untested. When DNA test results excluded Chandler, police refused to place the results into a database to look for a match. They couldn’t find her fingerprints on shell casings or anything else at the crime scene.
Defense attorney Tom Bath questioned Richard Volle, the lead detective in the case, about how he lied to the jury in 2012 when he claimed Sisco convinced a judge to issue a protection from abuse order against Chandler. The order didn’t exist. Volle, now retired, said he was referring to an application for a restraining order, which was never granted.
Alford said Volle’s confusing testimony damaged his credibility with jurors. They looked through the entire divorce file in search of a protection order of any kind, and found nothing. If it had existed, Alford said, they might have convicted Chandler.
“I think he was probably a good cop — probably didn’t have bad intentions,” Alford said. “He just may not have been that great of a detective.”
Bath also persuaded some of the jurors that police had refused to explore any possibility that someone other than Chandler had killed Sisco and Harkness.
Alternate suspects included two criminals with a lengthy rap sheet and a connection to the daughter of Chandler and Sisco. In the weeks after the killings, the two men had tried to cash checks that were stolen from Sisco.
Kitt, the prosecutor, pointed out that Chandler’s alibi evolved over time. There was irrelevant testimony about wildfires. Chandler bought two five-gallon gas cans shortly before the killings. After the killings, she bought a change of clothes at a Walmart north of Denver.
“Honestly, when the prosecution rested, I think some other jurors felt like: ‘That’s it? Where is it? Where’s anything that proves this happened?” Alford said.
The trial was nearly finished when prosecutors revealed a surprise mystery witness had emerged to testify about what she saw on the night of the killings.
Rios, the judge, paused the trial for three days to give the defense time to investigate Anderson, who had never told her story before.
Anderson lived in an apartment a block and a half away from the duplex where Sisco and Harkness were killed. She said she heard gunshots about 11:30 p.m. and saw someone who looked like Chandler get in a car and leave. Her story quickly unraveled.
Sisco and Harkness were at a casino north of Topeka until 1:30 a.m. on the night in question. Anderson’s description of her view didn’t align with the actual placement of buildings and houses. An investigator hired by the defense suggested that Chandler would have had to scale four 6-foot-tall fences to take the route Anderson described. There was a waxing crescent moon that night, and no streetlights.
Anderson said she called 911 that night, but records show she actually called the next day — to report someone in the laundry room of her apartment.
Topeka police canvassed the neighborhood after the killings. According to the written report by the police officer who questioned Anderson, she said nothing about hearing gunshots or seeing a fleeing suspect.
“We thought it was odd that they put her on the stand,” Kimes said. “But I think it was fair that she was there. She had something to say and they gave it to us to decide whether she was credible or not. We found her to be incredibly not believable.”
During closing arguments, Kitt told the jury it wasn’t up to him to decide whether Anderson was a credible witness. That was the jury’s responsibility.
“It didn’t feel like the prosecution was trying to pull one over on us, but it felt like they may have felt pressured from outside sources to do it,” Alford said. “They also, during their questioning, didn’t seem very pressing on the matter. It was: ‘Tell us your story. OK, thank you.’ ”
Trivedi, the ACLU attorney, previously served briefly as a prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He said prosecutors need to have some leeway in how they present a case, but there should also be “robust oversight by the judge.”
“That is how we get so many wrongful convictions, because we know that human beings are flawed and motivated and biased and all of these things — or just have bad eyesight or had their adrenaline pumping when they were looking at something. And so their memory or their vision was skewed,” Trivedi said. “There’s a million reasons why convicting people based solely on testimony, without corroborating evidence, can be dangerous.”
“Luckily, in this case, the jury didn’t buy it,” he added. “But a better prosecutor might have been able to massage this in a better way.”
He said the case is an example of the need to change the culture for prosecutors, “so that it’s not a win-at-all-costs mindset.”
“Rule No. 1 is you seek justice, not convictions, and I think cases like this are proof that most of the time they view their job as the opposite,” Trivedi said.
Alford had looked forward to the experience of jury duty.
But after three weeks of testimony, as the jury began deliberations, “we were joking around that the $10 a day isn’t going to cover the copay for therapy,” Alford said.
When the other jurors made Alford the foreman, he deployed his data analytics skills.
He passed around a deck of cards. One by one, the 12 jurors drew a red card for guilty or a black card for not guilty and placed them face down in the middle. He shuffled the anonymous votes and revealed the hand. They were split six to six.
In a small conference room with a coffeemaker and the $60 worth of snacks Alford brought from Target, they began to review every witness’s testimony and each piece of evidence. They took notes on a whiteboard. They played back audio recordings. Alford paused along the way to ask if anybody had changed their mind.
At times, the vote swung as far as eight to four in both directions. The jurors grew frustrated.
“Somebody broke a spoon at one point, and it was like, ‘Why did you break a spoon? Was it intentional?’ ” Alford said. “I was going through all the arguments like we were in court.”
Everybody had their own idea of how to interpret “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard for reaching a conviction. On the sixth day of deliberations, they told the judge they had reached an impasse and could not deliver a verdict.
Alford reflected on the experience during an interview a week later.
“We all definitely had sympathy for the kids,” Alford said. “It made the decision difficult because you have a plausible theory, and you can see the kids are really hurt, and you want to bring them closure. You really want to help them. But then we’re also bound by law.”
He predicted a new trial would end with the same result.
“If you played back the exact same case that we heard for 12 other people, I think you would end up with a similar split,” Alford said. “So I don’t know. Unless you can come up with something new that’s fruitful, I don’t believe it’s going to return a verdict.”
Article From & Read More ( Prosecutors persist in Topeka double-murder case despite vexed jurors, flawed testimony, no science - Kansas Reflector )/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/DO2Q5ADBPFMM3PFZHYK4ET7V7I.jpg)
(Reuters) - A Washington, D.C., federal judge on Wednesday dismissed claims by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell that Dominion Voting Systems Inc abused the legal system by bringing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against her.
Dominion sued Powell in January 2021, alleging she falsely claimed the voting machine company rigged the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump. Powell countersued last year, claiming Dominion filed the lawsuit "to punish and make an example" of her.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols threw out Powell's claims in a brief order. He said that filing a lawsuit alone is not an "abuse of process," as Powell asserted.
Powell and her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"We are pleased to see this process moving forward to hold Sidney Powell accountable," a Dominion spokesperson told Reuters.
Nichols last year rejected efforts by Powell and fellow Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell to dismiss Dominion's defamation claims. Each of them is named in separate Dominion lawsuits.
Dominion has also sued Fox News Network and other conservative news outlets, alleging they gave a platform to false statements about its role in the 2020 election. Fox News is fighting the lawsuit and has called the claims "baseless."
Powell is separately facing ethics charges from legal regulators in Texas, who allege that lawsuits she filed seeking to overturn the 2020 election results were "frivolous."
The case is US Dominion Inc v. Powell, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 21-cv-00040.
For Dominion: Thomas Clare of Clare & Locke; and Stephen Shackelford of Susman Godfrey
For Powell: Marc Casarino of Kennedys Law
Read more:
Trump allies including Giuliani lose bid to dismiss Dominion vote machine lawsuits
Fox News parent must face defamation lawsuit over election coverage
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Article From & Read More ( Judge tosses Sidney Powell's counterclaims in Dominion defamation case - Reuters )
(Gloucester Township, NJ) – The Camden County Health Department detected the second probable case of West Nile Virus in a Haddon Township resident. Today, laboratory test results were positive for West Nile Virus (WNV) and have been reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (CCDHHS) and an investigation was initiated.
“Now that summer has come to end and cooler weather has started to set in we aren’t immune from mosquitoes and the diseases they can carry,” said Commissioner Virginia Betteridge, liaison to the Health Department. “The Health Department is continuing to work with the Mosquito Control Commission to ensure that additional spraying and testing will be conducted in the area.”
Symptoms of WNV include, but are not limited to, fever, headache, altered mental status, and other neurologic dysfunctions. WNV is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States, though 4 out of 5 who are infected do not feel symptoms. Only 1 in 50 develop serious illness.
The best way to protect yourself from mosquitoes is to use insect repellent. Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents with one of the active ingredients below. When used as directed, EPA-registered insect repellents are proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
During the summer and fall months the Camden County Mosquito Commission schedules spraying on an as-needed basis based upon the results of their surveillance efforts and input from the public. The simple act of removing standing water from your property can help reduce the pest population in your neighborhood and assist the efforts of the commission.
For more information about West Nile Virus, please visit the CDC’s information webpage here.
For more information, or to report a problem, contact the Camden County Mosquito Commission at (856) 566-2945 or skeeters@camdencounty.com.
:focal(0x0:3000x2000)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/2b915b95854a796af55a3440daa81d76/Paxton%20Trump%20Rally%20JV%20TT%2010.jpg)
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's last-ditch attempt to regain the power of his office to unilaterally prosecute election cases was rejected by the state’s highest criminal court Wednesday.
The Court of Criminal Appeals instead upheld its previous ruling that says that the attorney general must get permission from local county prosecutors to pursue cases on issues like voter fraud. Paxton had been fighting to overturn that ruling as the issue of prosecuting election fraud has become fraught in recent years. Paxton sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has aggressively pursued individual cases of fraud, outraging some voting rights advocates who see the punishments as too harsh for people who made honest mistakes.
Last December, eight of the nine members on the all-GOP court struck down a law that previously allowed Paxton’s office to take on those cases without local consent. The court said the law violated the separation-of-powers clause in the Texas Constitution.
In the aftermath, Paxton, joined by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, led a political push to get the court to reconsider its decision, warning that it would allow cases of fraud to go unpunished. His office filed a motion asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to rehear the case, vacate its previous opinion and affirm an appellate court’s judgment, which was in his favor.
The court’s decision Wednesday came with no explanation, though one judge wrote a concurring opinion.
“I still agree with our original decision handed down in December, when we recognized that the specific powers given to the Attorney General by the Texas Constitution do not include the ability to initiate criminal proceedings—even in cases involving alleged violations of the Election Code,” Judge Scott Walker wrote.
Two judges dissented in the case.
Paxton blasted the decision in a tweet, saying it was time for the Legislature to “right this wrong.”
“The CCA’s shameful decision means local DAs with radical liberal views have the sole power to prosecute election fraud in TX—which they will never do,” Paxton wrote. “The timing is no accident—this is devastating for the integrity of our upcoming elections.”
The court’s decision arrived roughly a month before early voting begins across Texas and months after Paxton and other Texas Republicans pressured the court to reconsider its opinion. In those efforts, Paxton encouraged his supporters to join the blitz, which many did by inundating judges’ phones and inboxes.
The push extended to Conservative Republicans of Texas, a group run by Houston conservative activist Steve Hotze, which sent robocalls urging people to call the judges because “Democrats will steal the elections in November and turn Texas blue” if the decision stood.
Judge Michelle Slaughter, in her Wednesday dissent, noted that “hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals” tried to communicate with the court about the case. Slaughter wrote that judges are not allowed to consider such communications under the Code of Judicial Conduct, and she “certainly” did not, but that she supported a rehearing.
Judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals are selected in partisan elections but are not supposed to take politics into account in their decisions.
Paxton got involved in the case when Jefferson County’s district attorney declined to prosecute Sheriff Zena Stephens over campaign-finance allegations related to the 2016 election. The attorney general’s office obtained an indictment from Chambers County, next to Jefferson County.
In a statement Wednesday, Stephens’ lawyer Chad Dunn celebrated the decision.
“Despite unprecedented pressure on the judiciary by state and national officials, the long standing structure of the Texas Constitution remains. The Rule of Law prevailed,” he wrote. “Our constitution very clearly and deliberately placed the power to charge someone with a crime, in the hands of local elected district and county attorneys. Despite this, recent Texas attorneys general have tried to take this power for themselves, on matters related to elections, abortion and on prosecution against other individual rights. But our constitution reserves all powers not enumerated to the People, and thanks to the judiciary with this ruling, the People retain their rights.”
But the decision Wednesday still may not be the last word. Paxton’s suggestion to address the matter through the Legislature may materialize. State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, has said he would file a bill that would let prosecutors in neighboring counties go after election cases. In his concurring opinion, Walker also suggested lawmakers could address it.
“I share the concerns that citizens have about election law violations. Frankly, I am deeply concerned as well. However, if citizens do not like that the Texas Constitution gave specific powers to the Attorney General and that these powers do not include the power to unilaterally prosecute crimes, the remedy is a constitutional amendment—something the legislature could propose and the citizens could vote to ratify,” he wrote. “The remedy is not for the courts to water down the Texas Constitution from the bench. To do so would be a violation of our judicial oath.”
Article From & Read More ( Texas court confirms the attorney general can't unilaterally prosecute election cases - The Texas Tribune )Lumafield today shared CT scan images of the second-generation AirPods Pro charging case, providing a look at internal changes to the case.
While the basic layout of the case appears to be similar to the original, Lumafield discovered that the newly added "lanyard loop" is internally connected to the Lightning connector, which interfaces with the logic board, leading the company to speculate that the metal insert might double as an antenna for the U1 chip or serve some other additional purpose.
There's a new metal eyelet on the side of the case. Apple says it's for a lanyard, but it seems to serve an additional purpose: it's 4 mm deep and 18 mm long, with a hidden tail that's connected to a metal pad around the Lightning port. Perhaps it's an antenna to support improved "Find My" tracking.
The U1 chip enables Find My support, allowing users to track the location of the charging case in the Find My app on their iPhone or on iCloud.com. The case features a new built-in speaker that can emit a chime to help with finding it.
The new AirPods Pro launched last Friday and are priced at $249 in the United States.
A new charging case for the upcoming second-generation AirPods Pro could feature speaker holes, a microphone, and an opening for a lanyard attachment, according to alleged CAD renders of the case shared by AppleInsider's Andrew O'Hara on Twitter. Alleged CAD of AirPods Pro 2 charging case shared by Andrew O'Hara O'Hara said he could not verify the accuracy of the renders, but they do line up...
Apple this week introduced second-generation AirPods Pro with improved audio quality, longer battery life, up to 2x as much noise cancellation as the original AirPods Pro, a revamped charging case with Find My support and water resistance, a new extra small ear tip option, the ability to swipe up and down on the stem to adjust volume, and more. In addition to these major new features, there...
Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro are now in the hands of customers, and one notable new tidbit that has come to light is that the MagSafe Charging Case can broadcast its charging status to the iOS Battery widget even when the AirPods are in your ears. With other AirPods models, including the first-generation AirPods Pro, users have to place the earbuds in the Charging Case to get a...
With the new second-generation AirPods Pro, users will be able to use their Apple Watch charger to charge the newly redesigned charging case. There are now three ways to charge the new AirPods Pro case, including with a Lightning cable, MagSafe wireless charging, and now with an Apple Watch magnetic charging puck. The original AirPods Pro case cannot be charged with an Apple Watch charger. ...
Customers who personalize their second-generation AirPods Pro charging case with an engraving will now have that engraving reflected directly on iOS as they pair and connect their AirPods Pro. Apple allows customers to personalize their AirPods Pro charging case with a special engraving that can include select emojis and Memojis. Unlike before, starting with the second-generation AirPods...
Apple today announced the second-generation AirPods Pro with an upgraded H2 chip that provides up to twice as much active noise cancellation and more. The new AirPods Pro look similar to the original. A new Touch Control feature on the stem allows users to adjust the volume with a swipe up or down, while the silicone ear tips are now available in a new XS size alongside small, medium, and...
Apple's second-generation AirPods Pro are finally nearing launch, with a release expected later this year. If you are considering upgrading to the new AirPods Pro once they are released, keep reading for a list of five new features to expect. In addition to all-new features, the second-generation AirPods Pro will likely adopt some features added to the standard AirPods last year. H2 Chip ...
Apple's latest AirPods Pro 2 sport the same uniquely Apple design but with more improved and more powerful features under the hood, including better noise canceling, adaptive Transparency, Touch volume controls, and a built-in speaker for the case to help you locate it with Find My. For more flexibility when traveling with second-generation AirPods Pro, Apple has also made its signature...
A YouTuber has put Apple's claims for the durability of the Apple Watch Ultra to the test by putting it up against a drop test, a jar of nails, and repeated hits with a hammer to test the sapphire crystal protecting the display. TechRax, a channel popular for testing the durability of products, first tested the Apple Watch Ultra by dropping it from around four feet high. The Apple Watch...
Upon the release of the second-generation AirPods Pro, the AirPods Max became the oldest current-generation AirPods product still in Apple's lineup. Introducing several new features like Adaptive Transparency and the H2 chip, the second-generation AirPods Pro may provide some of the best indications yet of what to expect from the second-generation AirPods Max. Almost two years later, rumors...
As we approach the end of a busy product release season for Apple with only new iPads and Macs left to be announced over the next month or so, we're also setting our sights on 2023. Apple is rumored to have several major products in the pipeline for next year, including new Macs, a new HomePod, a VR/AR headset, and so much more. Other than new iPhones and Apple Watches, which are expected...
Apple may decide to release its remaining products for 2022, which include updated iPad Pro, Mac mini, and 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, through press releases on its website rather than a digital event, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman said that Apple is currently "likely to release its remaining 2022 products via press releases,...
Apple is gearing up to possibly replace its "Pro Max" iPhone with an all-new "Ultra" iPhone 15 model next year, reliable Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman said today. Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman said that for the iPhone 15, Apple is planning a revamped design alongside USB-C and a potential name change. Apple could replace its "Pro Max" branding, which it started to use...
Customers who personalize their second-generation AirPods Pro charging case with an engraving will now have that engraving reflected directly on iOS as they pair and connect their AirPods Pro. Apple allows customers to personalize their AirPods Pro charging case with a special engraving that can include select emojis and Memojis. Unlike before, starting with the second-generation AirPods...
Today marks exactly two weeks since Apple released iOS 16 to the public. Besides the personalized Lock Screen, major changes in Messages, and new features in Maps, the update has also seen its fair share of bugs, performance problems, battery drain, and more. After major iOS updates, it's normal for some users to report having issues with the new update, but such reports usually subside in...
Apple plans to release new MacBook Pro models in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to supply chain publication DigiTimes. The report does not mention specific models, but it very likely refers to the next-generation 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros given that the 13-inch model was already updated earlier this year. There has been uncertainty surrounding the timing of new 14-inch and...
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and his wife entered new guilty pleas Tuesday in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secrets about nuclear-powered warships, a month after their previous plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines were rejected.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
U.S. District Judge Gina Groh last month rejected the couple’s initial pleas to the same charges, saying the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the case. The couple then immediately withdrew their initial guilty pleas and Groh set trial for January.
The previous sentencing range agreed to by lawyers for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a potential punishment between roughly 12 years and 17 years in prison. Prosecutors said Tuesday that such a sentence would be one of the most significant imposed in modern times under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Prosecutors also sought three years for Diana Toebbe.
Under the latest plea agreement entered Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Trumble, the couple would each face a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $100,000 fine, although prosecutors are asking for a sentence for Diana Toebbe at the lowest end of the guideline range.
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If the court doesn’t accept the latest agreement, the defendants would again have the right to withdraw their guilty pleas.
Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe, 43, abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Diana Toebbe, 46, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations at which memory cards containing the secret information were left behind.
The memory cards were devices concealed in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested after he placed a memory card at a dead drop location in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to previous testimony.
The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions to his supposed contact for how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.
That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering.
The country to which he was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.
Prosecutors said the government has recovered classified information that Jonathan Toebbe had saved on electronic devices along with a “substantial amount” of the cryptocurrency.
During a search of the couple’s home, FBI agents found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go-bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to court testimony last year.
Diana Toebbe’s lawyers at a December 2021 hearing denied prosecution assertions that cited 2019 messages exchanged by the couple in which she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest. Instead, the defense said it was contempt for then-President Donald Trump as the reason behind the couple’s emigration plans.
Article From & Read More ( Navy engineer, wife plead guilty in submarine spy case — again - NavyTimes.com )
U.S. home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, according to a report released Tuesday.
Home prices in July were still higher than they were a year ago, but cooled significantly from June gains. Prices nationally rose 15.8% over July 2021, well below the 18.1% increase in the previous month, according to the report.
The 10-City composite, which tracks prices in major metropolitan areas such as New York and Boston, climbed 14.9% year over year, down from 17.4% in June. The 20-City composite, which adds regions such as the Seattle metro area and greater Detroit, gained 16.1%, down from 18.7% in the previous month. July's year-over-year gains were lower compared with June in each of the cities covered by the index.
"July's report reflects a forceful deceleration," wrote Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI in a release, noting the difference in the annual gains in June and July. The 2.3 percentage point "difference between those two monthly rates of gain is the largest deceleration in the history of the index."
Tampa, Florida, Miami and Dallas saw the highest annual gains among the 20 cities in July, with increases of 31.8%, 31.7% and 24.7%, respectively. Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and San Francisco saw the smallest gains, but were still well above year-ago levels.
Another recent report from the National Association of Realtors showed home prices softening dramatically from June to July. Prices usually fall during that time, due to the strong seasonality of the housing market, but the decline was three times the average decline historically.
The share of homes with price cuts reached about 20% in August, the same as in 2017, according to Realtor.com.
"For homeowners planning to list, today's market is significantly different than the one from even 3 weeks ago," said George Ratiu, senior economist and manager of economic research at Realtor.com.
Home prices are dropping because affordability has weakened dramatically due to fast-rising mortgage rates. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage started this year around 3%, but by June had briefly surpassed 6%. It remained in the high 5% range throughout July and is now edging toward 7%, making the average monthly payment about 70% higher than it was a year ago.
"As the Federal Reserve continues to move interest rates upward, mortgage financing has become more expensive, a process that continues to this day. Given the prospects for a more challenging macroeconomic environment, home prices may well continue to decelerate," Lazzara said.
Steve Case is no stranger to starting up a company. In the early 1990s, he helped to co-found America Online, later renamed AOL, a service that for the first time allowed millions of people access to the the internet. It was a monumental shift for the world, one whose significance sometimes gets lost in today’s ubiquity of iPhones and binge streaming. Case went on to become chairman of AOL Time Warner after a tumultuous merger, but he eventually left Big Media behind and all its attendant cynicism to focus his energies on the optimism of startups — which brings us to his latest project.
Case’s new book, “The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream” (Avid Reader Press), is out today.
The book threads together anecdotes from his visits to more than 40 U.S. cities that have been part of an initiative of the same name, The Rise of the Rest, launched in 2014 by Case’s company Revolution to identify and juice startups outside of Silicon Valley with seed funding from Revolution. Case traveled for years to these cities on a bus or in a recreational vehicle, often with his wife Jean. On each of these multiple bus tours, Case and his team visited five cities in five days and invested at least $500,000 in startups after pitch competitions. The initiative is still ongoing, evolving further into two $150 million seed funds backed by Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Sara Blakely, Tory Burch, Ray Dalio, Henry Kravis and others.
The book’s premise is pretty simple: Shine a light on young companies working to transform cities in between the coasts, places like Chattanooga, Tulsa, York, Pennsylvania, Omaha, Green Bay, and Salt Lake City. Case wants you to know that talent is equally distributed but often opportunity is not. He devotes a chapter to the “Diversity Imperative.”
While Case’s road trips began well before Covid and continued after, the pandemic provides a whole new context for a book like this, one about startups driving local economies when many cities are using the two-year pause to rethink their futures in new ways. And, of course, the new allure of remote working is added into this mix.
Skift caught up with Case recently and, naturally, we wanted to know about what travel executives should take away from his book.
“I think travel executives should recognize that innovation is everywhere. With talent migrating across the country, the increase in remote work, and the growth of robust startup communities outside of Silicon Valley attracting large numbers of young, creative, tech talent, there is an opportunity for travel executives to reach new customers where they are,” Case told Skift.
“Additionally, and I think readers of your publication are clued into this, the travel industry is being disrupted at a rapid clip. Corporations need to be attackers, not defenders, finding ways to adopt new technologies, work with startups and leverage exciting new products and services to stay ahead of the disruption. Hospitality and transportation is an exciting space in which to invest—we are excited about and invested in companies like Mint House, Placemakr, Collective Retreats, and Hermeus to name just a few.”
During one of his trips, Case spent some time with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and writes about him in the book.
“When I mentioned my prediction that there would be dozens of tech hub cities in the United States, not just a few more,” Case writes, “Brian laughed. ‘I had in my head hundreds of cities, maybe, and I”m thinking around the world. So, I think it’s going to be extremely distributed. The place to be will be the internet. You can access it anywhere.'”
Chesky also offered this about how cities will need to compete: “The cities that will win will be the cities that most welcome talent. In a world with more mobility, it’s actually easier (to attract talent.)”
The new wave of distributed workers will help cities attract talent, and startups will find new sources of funding in these cities, whether it is through connections to universities and their hunger for research, or larger, incumbent companies in those places. And venture capital will follow to help create what Case calls “the ecosystem wheel” in those local communities. The spokes of that wheel are startups, investors, universities, government, startup support groups, and the local media.
Case points out that more than 1,400 new VC firms have been created in the past decade outside of traditional hubs in Silicon Valley and New York. Still, more work needs to be done, with 75 percent of VC funding still flowing to New York, California, and Massachusetts.
Case said his goal was to make sure to end the cycle of money flowing to the same kinds of people, in the same places, for the same ideas. He writes about the former winners of the Atlanta pitch competition — Jewel Burks and Jason Crain, the Black co-founders of PartPic, which they created while working for a vehicle repair company. PartPic allowed repair professionals to save loads of time by using a technology to identify key parts using smartphone photos. It was later sold to Amazon.
In his first book, “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future,” published right before Donald Trump was elected president, Case sounded the warning that America could lose its status as the most entrepreneurial nation in the world. The new book builds on that reality by offering hope that the U.S. can stay on top by “practicing the art of the possibility.”
“Just as they helped build America in its first two centuries, entrepreneurs can once again help lead the way,” writes Case.
These days Case can no longer claim the mantle of that boyish visionary who changed the world forever with AOL. He turned 64 this summer. But Case has managed to maintain the same optimism of a kid entrepreneur with a killer idea. Asked what he hopes the larger message of the new book will be, Case admits to sounding a bit aspirational with his answer. Still, he offers that for those feeling left out and left behind, he hopes that the possibility of these new opportunities he was witnessed over the past decade, even in the farthest corners of the U.S., will “help pull together a divided nation.”
DISCLOSURE: Skift President Carolyn Kremins sits on the board of Exclusive Resorts, owned by Case’s company Revolution.
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