Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalSeries of recent DOJ cases show foreign operatives plotting assassinations in U.S.
It sounds like a fanciful script for a Hollywood thriller: foreign government agents plotting assassinations in the United States.
To be sure, there have been suspected state-sponsored killings in the past 20 years that have grabbed international headlines. Former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning with a radioactive isotope in London in 2006 is one example; the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul in 2018 is another.
And just this month, Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion, was found shot dead in southern Spain. The Kremlin declined to comment on the case, but there are suspicions Kuzminov's killing could have been a Russian-ordered assassination.
None of those took place in the United States. But in the past few years, there have been assassination plots aplenty in the U.S. In just the past 18 months, the Justice Department says it has foiled four of them on American soil.
"We face a rising threat from authoritarian regimes who seek to reach beyond their own borders to commit acts of repression, including inside the United States," Matthew Olsen, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, said in 2022 when announcing charges in one of the cases.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/25/1233171784/state-sponsored-assassination-plot-doj
Not like we haven't done our fair share...read on.
How This Woman Caught Hubby Poisoning Her With Abortion Drug
When Catherine Herring’s husband Mason brought her breakfast in bed one day in April 2022, she wanted to believe it was a romantic gesture. The pair had been fighting—they were currently living apart at his request—but were in marriage counseling, hoping to work things out.
She had recently learned that she was pregnant with their third child, and their counselor suggested spending spring break together to process. They had spent the last week snuggled up on the couch, watching movies and saying “I love you,” Herring said. So when the breakfast tray came in, she wanted to assume the best.
But Herring says she sensed something was off. Along with a biscuit, her husband brought her a tall glass of water that he urged her to finish, telling her she needed to hydrate more for the pregnancy. As the minutes went on, he became more and more forceful—almost angry—pushing her to finish the water before he left for the office.
“He starts urging me, like, ‘Chug it, I need to go,’ and he kind of had anger in his voice,” she told The Daily Beast.
“All of a sudden I was like, ‘Something weird is going on,’” she added. “And that’s when I looked down into the cup and saw that the water wasn’t clear.”
What Herring found in that cup would catapult her and her now-estranged husband into the headlines and raise questions about how men and women are treated under Texas abortion laws. But the full story of how she uncovered her husband’s secret—how she collected evidence and mounted a case right under his nose—is even more breathtaking than court documents and previous news coverage suggest.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/catherine-herring-reveals-how-she-caught-husband-mason-poisoning-her-with-abortion-drug?ref=home
Prosecutors dropped the charges of assault to induce abortion charge and assault on a pregnant person; he pleaded guilty to a single count of injury to a child under 15. Unbelievable. Shame on you, TEXASS!
A search warrant reveals additional details about a nonbinary teen's death in Oklahoma
A recently released police search warrant has revealed more details in the case of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary Oklahoma student who died a day after a high school bathroom fight that may have been prompted by bullying over gender identity.
The warrant filed Wednesday in Tulsa County District Court shows that when Benedict’s mother, Sue, called 911 on Feb. 8, the 16-year-old’s eyes had rolled back into their head, their hands were curled and they were struggling to breathe.
Paramedics responding to the family’s house in the Tulsa suburb of Owasso performed CPR and rushed them to the hospital, where they later died.
Benedict was able to walk out of the bathroom after the Feb. 7 fight, but they were taken to the hospital later that day and sent home.
https://apnews.com/article/nonbinary-student-death-nex-owasso-oklahoma-669bdc63e49929dd40da44416d633fab
Sure sounds like a head injury to me, but what do I know? I'm "only" a nurse.
A hospital is suing to move a quadriplegic 18-year-old to a nursing home. She says no
From her hospital bed, Alexis Ratcliff asks a question: "What 18-year-old gets sued?"
Ratcliff is that 18-year-old, sued by the hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C., that wants her to leave.
Ratcliff, a quadriplegic who uses a ventilator, has lived at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist since she was 13. She wants to leave, too. But not to the nursing home the hospital found for her in another state.
She wants to live in a home nearby, close to her family and school.
When she refused to move to the distant nursing home, the hospital sued her for trespass.
The standoff in North Carolina shows the failure of states across the country to adequately address the long-term-care needs of younger people with complex disabilities. This year marks the 25th anniversary of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that found states have an obligation to help people with disabilities — young and old — live, whenever possible, in their own homes and not in institutions like hospitals and nursing homes.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/22/1232463580/teen-hospital-lawsuit-disability-rights
She is an adult, bright, in her right mind, and has even been offered a full college scholarship, but the state won't help her. What's wrong with this picture?
After his wife died, he joined nurses to push for new staffing rules in hospitals
For the past year, police detective Tim Lillard has spent most of his waking hours unofficially investigating his wife's death.
The question was never exactly how Ann Picha-Lillard died on November 19, 2022: from respiratory failure, after an infection put too much strain on her weakened lungs. She was 65.
For Lillard, the question was why.
Lillard had been in the hospital with Ann every day for a month. ICU nurses had told him they were short-staffed, and were constantly rushing from one patient to the next.
Lillard tried to pitch in where he could: brushing Ann's shoulder-length blonde hair or flagging down help when her tracheostomy tube gurgled — a sign of possible respiratory distress.
So the day he walked into the ICU and saw five or six staff all huddled in Ann's room, he knew it was serious. He called their adult kids: it's mom, he told them. Come now.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/22/1231926415/after-his-wife-died-he-joined-nurses-to-push-for-new-staffing-rules-in-hospitals
And because hospitals don't perceive nursing as a service line, but rather a cost center, they think about nursing as: how can we reduce this to the lowest denominator possible? (direct quote from article, and it made me, a nurse, mad as hell, even though I'm retired!)
Indicted Biden accuser had 'extensive' contacts with Russian intel, prosecutors say
An FBI informant charged with lying to investigators about a fictitious bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company has “had contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies,” prosecutors alleged in court documents on Tuesday.
Alexander Smirnov's contacts included a figure prosecutors called "Russian Official 1," whom the the informant allegedly described as "the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official, someone who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country."
Smirnov was indicted last week on charges he lied to the FBI, falsely telling them that executives with now-defunct Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in bribes.
The informant's claims have been a pillar of a months-long effort by congressional Republicans to impeach the president.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/20/hunter-biden-accuser-smirnov-russia-intelligence/72676162007/
Comer, your house of cards is falling down. Fold.
Michigan server who got $10,000 tip says she was fired in ensuing dispute
A Michigan restaurant server who recently received a $10,000 tip on a $32 tab says the establishment has since fired her amid a dispute over how many of her co-workers deserved a share of the remarkably large gratuity.
The story of the tip that Linsey Huff earned while waiting on a table at the Mason Jar Cafe in the western Michigan community of Benton Harbor on 5 February initially went viral on corners of the internet dedicated to uplifting news because it had been left by a patron who wanted to pay tribute to a late friend.
But as an increasing number of Huff’s co-workers sought a cut of the gratuity, the tale devolved into her dismissal from the Mason Jar as well as threats from ownership to sue her because she discussed her firing on social media, her attorney Jennifer McManus told the Guardian on Monday.
McManus remarked that Huff’s ordeal illustrated the disparity of power between those in charge of the US food service industry and the rank-and-file workers they employ.
“The people with the money … control the narrative, and the people that work for them understand that and often have to cower because of that,” said McManus, who added that she was mainly representing Huff in case the cafe followed through on threats to sue her client for damages.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/michigan-server-10000-tip-firing
That last comment is disturbingly TRUE.
Russia adds Republican senator Lindsey Graham to 'terrorists and extremists' list
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, has been added to a list of “terrorists and extremists” kept by Russia’s state financial monitoring agency.
The agency’s list includes more than 12,000 individuals and more than 400 companies, as well as domestic and foreign terrorist entities and Russian political opposition groups, according to the website opensanctions.org.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was reportedly added to the list in October 2022, for supposedly tolerating “Russophobia”. Its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and other Meta employees have been banned from Russia or added to “wanted” lists.
Graham, a South Carolina senator and foreign policy hawk who has long advocated arming Ukraine against Russian invaders, has also been subject to a Russian arrest warrant, for making “Russophobic statements” during a visit to Kyiv.
“It’s difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators,” Dmitry Peskov, the Russian government spokesperson, said at the time. Graham responded to the warrant by telling Reuters: “As usual the Russia propaganda machine is hard at work. It has been a good investment by the United States to help liberate Ukraine from Russian war criminals.” He said he would “wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a badge of honour”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/lindsey-graham-added-russia-terrorists-extremists-list
But...but...how can this be, since he's so firmly attached to His Fraudulency's ass?
Why Was the Bizarre Death of Putin Ally's Son Hushed Up?
The heir of top Putin crony Igor Sechin died suddenly at the age of 35 earlier this month and his death was apparently kept secret from the public.
Ivan Sechin, the son of Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, had been working at the oil giant alongside his father since 2014, and was awarded the For Merit to the Fatherland medal in 2015 by Vladimir Putin for his “many years of conscientious work.” He was 26 at the time.
The younger Sechin’s death was never officially announced; it was only discovered this week after Putin critic Leonid Nevzlin flagged on social media that Ivan Sechin had been added to the national registry of inheritance cases with a date of death on Feb. 5.
The well-connected VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, believed to have links to the security services, reported Tuesday that Ivan Sechin died at a mansion in the Moscow region. Citing his wife, the channel said Sechin had complained of sudden pain in the middle of the night that he believed was in his kidneys. His security detail reportedly called an ambulance after he complained of having trouble breathing and then passed out, but they failed to provide the full address, leading to medics arriving nearly two hours later, at which point Sechin had already passed.
His official cause of death was reportedly determined to be a blood clot. His father is said to have forbidden any kind of official investigation, and instead demanded that Rosneft’s internal security service be probed.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-allys-son-ivan-sechin-drops-dead-at-35
Very curious....
What's the Atlantic diet? A variation on Mediterranean eating shows benefits.
The “Atlantic diet” — what some experts are calling a variation on Mediterranean eating — is getting some buzz after a study found adherents to the diet had a significantly lower risk of chronic health problems.
Both diets stress the importance of eating fresh fruit, vegetables, fish or other seafood, and the use of olive oil, as well as moderate amounts of wine.
The Atlantic diet consists of foods traditionally eaten in northwest Spain and Portugal. It recommends three to four servings a week of both seafood and lean meat, a variety of seasonal vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and olive oil.
One of the main differences between the Atlantic diet and the Mediterranean diet is that the Atlantic version incorporates more brassicas, which is a family of vegetables that includes turnip greens, turnips, kale, cabbage and cauliflower, said Mar Calvo-Malvar, an attending specialist in laboratory medicine at the University Clinical Hospital of Santiago de Compostela in Spain and a principal investigator of the Galiat Study, a clinical trial focused on the Atlantic diet.
https://wapo.st/3UGhx3l
Husband and I have been eating a combo Mediterranean-Atlantic diet (with the occasional foray into Asian) for a couple of years and didn't even know it!
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