Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalMaker of Sinema's viral 'f--- off' ring donating profits to group fighting to raise minimum wage
Source: The Hill
Aris Folley 5 hrs ago
A business that has come out as the maker of the "F--- Off" ring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) was recently seen sporting in a viral photo said it will be donating all profits from sales of the accessory to a group fighting to raise minimum wage.
In pair of messages posted to Instagram this week, Yellow Owl Workshop said it appreciated the recent attention the senator brought to the ring and said it wanted to put its money "towards an organization that is fighting to protect workers and build systemic change."
"At Yellow Owl we create fun stuff to express yourself but we are dead serious about social justice. We fully support at least a $15 minimum wage because EQUITY and DIGNITY LOOK GOOD on EVERYONE," the business wrote in the posts.
As a result, the business said it will be donating all profits from sales of the ring "for the rest of the month" to National Employment Law Project, which fights to raise the federal minimum wage.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/maker-of-sinemas-viral-f-off-ring-donating-profits-to-group-fighting-to-raise-minimum-wage/ar-BB1fTO5O?li=BBnb7Kz
Utah governor defends support for NBA minority scholarship
April 21, 2021
Updated: April 21, 2021 11:31 a.m.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The governor of Utah has defended his position to support a minority scholarship program sponsored by the Utah Jazz despite criticism from some who have called the program racist.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox was asked last week on a radio show about an initiative started under new Jazz owner Ryan Smith for the team to offer a four-year scholarship to an underrepresented or minority student for each of the team's wins this season, FOX13 reported Monday.
FOX13 reported that the unidentified caller asked Cox what he would do to stop the team from acting “in this racist manner?”
Cox told the caller that he did not think the program was racist and later reinforced his comments in a Twitter post saying, “if you’re outraged by a private individual trying to help disadvantaged minority kids go to college, then I’m definitely not your guy.”
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Utah-governor-defends-support-for-NBA-minority-16117566.php
McCloskeys want grand jury to take a new look at their case
JIM SALTER,
Associated Press
April 21, 2021
Updated: April 21, 2021 2:30 p.m.
A St. Louis husband and wife facing criminal charges for waving guns at racial injustice protesters last summer have told a judge they are concerned about Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s handling of their case and asked that it be sent back to the grand jury.
“Due to the bias of Kim Gardner’s office, we believe the grand jury process was tainted and should be reviewed and revisited,” Joel Schwartz, the attorney for Mark and Patricia McCloskey, said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
A hearing on the motion to remand is scheduled for April 30. A message left with Gardner’s office wasn’t immediately returned.
Demonstrators were marching to the home of then-Mayor Lyda Krewson on June 28, amid nationwide protests that followed George Floyd ’s death in Minneapolis. They ventured onto the private street that includes the McCloskey mansion. The couple said protesters broke down an iron gate and ignored a “No Trespassing” sign. They said they felt threatened.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/McCloskeys-want-grand-jury-to-take-a-new-look-at-16118299.php
Tyrannosaurs may have hunted in packs like wolves, new research has found
Paleontologists say a mass grave in Utah shows the dinosaurs may not have always been solitary predators as previously thought
Associated Press
Mon 19 Apr 2021 18.45 EDT
Tyrannosaur dinosaurs may not have been solitary predators as long envisioned but more like social carnivores such as wolves, new research announced on Monday has found.
Paleontologists developed the theory while studying a mass tyrannosaur death site found seven years ago in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, one of two monuments that the Biden administration is considering restoring to their full size after former president Donald Trump shrank them.
Using geochemical analysis of the bones and rock, a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas determined that the dinosaurs died and were buried in the same place and were not the result of fossils washing in from multiple areas.
Kristi Curry Rogers, a biology professor at Macalester College, said this research is a “good start” but more evidence would be needed before determining that the tyrannosaurs were living in a social group.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/19/tyrannosaurs-may-have-hunted-in-packs-like-wolves-new-research-has-found
One of Earth's nearest stars may be a dark matter factory
By Adam Mann - Live Science Contributor 16 hours ago
A hunt for hypothetical axions streaming from Betelgeuse turns up empty but helps physicists set constraints on their properties.
A visual illustration of Betelgeuse's mysterious dimming. A new study suggests it could be a good candidate for finding axions. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Wheatley (STScI))
Deep in its searing hot belly, the giant red star Betelgeuse could be producing tons of hypothetical dark matter particles called axions that, if they exist, would give off a telltale signal. A recent search for such a tantalizing emission has turned up empty, but helps physicists place new limits on the putative axion’s properties.
Appearing as a bright red dot in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse is a well-studied star. It is cosmologically close, being only 520 light-years from Earth, and made headlines last year when it started mysteriously dimming, leading some researchers to believe it could be preparing to explode as a supernova.
Because it is such a large and hot star, Betelgeuse might also be a perfect place to find axions, scientists say. These conjectured particles could have perhaps a millionth or even a billionth the mass of an electron and are ideal candidates to make up dark matter, the mysterious substance vastly outweighing ordinary matter in the universe but whose nature is still largely undetermined.
As dark matter, axions shouldn’t interact much with luminous particles, but according to some theories, there is a small probability that photons, or light particles, could convert back and forth into axions in the presence of a strong magnetic field, Mengjiao Xiao, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, told Live Science.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/axions-coming-from-betelgeuse.html
Gladiator arena from Roman era unearthed in Turkey
By Laura Geggel - Editor 16 hours ago
Spectators likely bet on the arena's wild animals fights and gladiator battles.
An aerial view shows the Roman-era arena poking out of a hilly area in Mastaura, Turkey. (Image credit: Courtesy of Assoc. Prof. Mehmet Umut Tuncer/Aydın Provincial Director of Culture and Tourism)
Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered the remains of a "magnificent" Roman-era arena, where up to 20,000 spectators likely cheered and jeered as they watched gladiator matches and wild animal fights, the excavators said.
The 1,800-year-old arena was discovered on the rolling hills of the ancient city of Mastaura, in Turkey's western Aydın Province. Its large central area, where "bloody shows" once took place, has since filled with earth and vegetation over the centuries.
"Most of the amphitheater is under the ground," and the part that is visible is largely covered by "shrubs and wild trees," Mehmet Umut Tuncer, the Aydın Culture and Tourism provincial director and project survey leader Sedat Akkurnaz, an archaeologist at Adnan Menderes University in Turkey, told Live Science in a translated email.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/roman-era-arena-discovered-in-turkey.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=OAP_Newsletter&utm_content=OAP_Newsletter+&utm_term=3403514&m_i=lq4A_eE8kzJiFF2l6Ohd4jOINm0X7hvgyz7%2BSzubi986jgDYhKiEWJLOgbZjS5dHnH_knNHq3gZklBm6OTXusWfzCaaArBuCD6nk_lUll8
Democrats block Republican bid to censure Maxine Waters over Chauvin remarks
Congresswoman defiant as Republicans condemn her comments in support of protesters
Alexandra Villarreal and Joan E Greve
Tue 20 Apr 2021 20.48 EDT
Maxine Waters remained defiant as Democrats successfully blocked a long-shot attempt by Republicans to censure and expel the veteran congresswoman over comments on the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, which the judge said could provide grounds for appeal.
“I am not worried that they’re going to continue to distort what I say,” Waters, 82, told the Grio. “This is who they are and this is how they act. And I’m not going to be bullied by them.”
Republicans had unleashed fiery criticism against Waters after the California Democrat pledged on Saturday that protesters would become “more confrontational” if Chauvin were acquitted.
House Democrats on Tuesday voted down a resolution from the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to censure Waters over her comments, just hours before Chauvin was convicted of George Floyd’s murder.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/20/maxine-waters-republicans-derek-chauvin-remarks
(My bolding.)
Police killing hundreds in Rio de Janeiro despite court ban on favela raids
The Brazilian state has seen nearly 800 police-caused deaths in nine months, with poor city communities raided almost daily
Sun 18 Apr 2021 07.00 EDT
Nearly 800 people were killed by police in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro in the past nine months, as raids remain a terrifying routine for favela families – despite a supreme court ruling to halt incursions during the coronavirus pandemic.
New figures show that between June 2020 and March 2021, 797 people were killed in Rio state, 85% in the city of Rio and surrounding metropolitan region.
The court ruled to suspend police raids in Brazilian favelas in June 2020, amid public outcry following the death of 14-year-old João Pedro Matos Pinto, who was shot in the back during a police incursion.
Between June and September, police raids plummeted 64% compared with the average for the same period in previous years, according to a report by Geni, a research group at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF).
But incursions resumed in October, one month after the acting governor, Cláudio Castro, took office and rapidly doubled to 38 in October, compared with the previous month. In the following nine months, the communities of Greater Rio saw an average of nearly one raid every day, the report showed.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/18/police-kill-hundreds-rio-de-janeiro-favela-raids-court-ban
Governor of Rio Janeiro
Cláudio Castro
Cláudio Castro
Big improvement Cláudio Castro
Mobs Rioted in Washington 173 Years Ago Monday to Defend Slaveholders
April 19, 2021
The violence on April 18-19, 1848, which targeted the abolitionist press, followed one of the largest attempted escapes from slavery in U.S. history, Michael David Cohen recounts.
An abolitionist lithograph of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Capitol in the background.
(Library of Congress)
By Michael David Cohen
American University
The summer of 2020 was not the first time America saw protests and violence over the treatment of African Americans.
Long before the demonstrations over Black Lives Matter, long before the marches of the civil rights era, strife over racism convulsed the nation’s capital. But those riots in Washington, D.C., were led by proslavery mobs.
In the spring of 1848, conspirators orchestrated one of the largest escapes from slavery in U.S. history. In doing so, they sparked a crisis that entangled advocates for slavery’s abolition, white supremacists, the press and even the president.
Daniel Bell, a free Black man in Washington, wanted to liberate his enslaved wife, children and grandchildren. Citing a promise of freedom from their onetime owner, he tried but failed to do so through the courts. So he started planning an escape. A lawyer he consulted knew of others eager to flee lives of bondage. He and Bell decided to help them all.
More:
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/19/mobs-rioted-in-washington-173-years-ago-monday-to-defend-slaveholders/
CIA Assassination Plot Targeted Cuba's Raul Castro
As Castro Retires on 60th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, National Security Archive Posts Declassified Top Secret CIA Cables, Reports from 1960
Agency Officials Willing to Pay Over $10,000 For ‘Fatal Accident’
Another Assassination Plot against Fidel Castro Was Part of Bay of Pigs Invasion Strategy
Washington D.C., April 16, 2021 – In the earliest known CIA assassination plot against leaders of the Cuban revolution, high agency officials offered the pilot of a plane carrying Raul Castro from Prague to Havana “payment after successful completion of ten thousand dollars” to “incur risks in arranging accident” during the flight, according to formally TOP SECRET documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The pilot, who the CIA had earlier recruited as an intelligence asset in Cuba, “asked for assurance that in event of his [own] death the U.S. would see that his two sons were given a college education.” “This assurance was given,” his CIA handler in Havana, William J. Murray, reported.
According to TOP SECRET cables between the CIA headquarters and the CIA Havana station, and debriefings Murray later provided on "questionable activities," the plot quickly evolved after the Cuban pilot, Jose Raul Martinez, advised Murray that he had been selected to fly a chartered Cubana Airlines plane to Prague to pick up Raul Castro and other high-ranking Cuban leaders on July 21, 1960. When Murray informed his superiors at Langley headquarters, as he later told the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA, “headquarters cabled back that it was considering the possibility of a fatal accident and asked whether the pilot would be interested.”
The cable, classified “TOP SECRET RYBAT OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE” and signed by CIA Deputy Director of Plans Tracy Barnes, and J.C. King, the head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, informed Murray that “possible removal of top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQS” and asked if the pilot had “motivation sufficient to incur risks of arranging accident during return trip” from Prague. To provide sufficient motivation, Barnes and King offered $10,000, or “a reasonable demand in excess of that” as well as to arrange rescue facilities for the pilot after the “accident” took place.
Murray discussed the proposal with Martinez in a car as the pilot drove to the Havana airport to fly to Prague. “Subj willing to take calculated risk but limited to foll[owing] possibilities which can pass as accidental: A. engine burnout on take off to delay or harass trip. B. Vague possibility water ditching approx. 3 hours out from Cuba,” Murray reported to Langley after the meeting. “Subj rules out engine failure in flight due [to] imminent danger [of] fire and lack of opportunity to save any passengers or crew … Doubts ability perform real accident without endangering lives of all on board.”
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2021-04-16/documents-cia-assassination-plot-targeted-raul-castro?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=aa22d9b9-405a-4c7a-b50d-d63d7e05a1b8
Profile Information
Member since: 2002Number of posts: 160,515