February 13, 2022

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner walked into the White House with troubled finances but left w million

https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-white-house-finances-millions-dollars-net-worth-1410281

Donald Trump arrived in the White House so ignorant and unprepared for his new job that senior aides had to explain, among many other things, that Finland is a country. It was that ignorance which created opportunities for his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, to make vast fortunes.

They walked into unpaid jobs at the White House with very troubled finances. They walked out having made at least $172m from outside activities – and possibly as much as $640m. During his last year on his father-in-law’s staff, Jared also set up a holding company in a Caribbean tax haven.

*** LOOOONG ARTICLE****

One year after Trump left the presidency, how they did this still poses serious questions about the intersection of their financial interests and US national security, as I’ve explored for my new book TheUnless there is another Trump presidency, however, the couple are unlikely to ever again enjoy the same kinds of openings for naked money-making. We can see how his administration provided one of Ivanka’s investments: her slice of her father’s Washington hotel. In the first three years of his presidency, it made her $13m, she disclosed in ethics reports.

Ivanka’s last report contained a revealing change, however. She had valued her share of the hotel at between $5m and $25m. But in 2020, she dropped the value to $100,000 to $250,000 – indicating that with her father leaving the White House, the hotel’s value plummeted because no one needed to stay there to pay tribute to Trump.

February 12, 2022

state trooper "accidently" vapes confiscated marijuana in his police cruiser

A disgraced Texas trooper was caught on his police cruiser’s own dashcam vaping confiscated marijuana, according to newly released footage.

The video is from 2019 but only just came to light — after the lawyer repping several drivers who were stopped by the same state trooper near Wichita Falls sought evidence against the officer, the dogged attorney told The Post.

“The public should find it abhorrent any time there’s a breach of public trust,” said Fort Worth lawyer David Sloane. “We place people in a position of trust when they enforce the law.’’

Chad Harden, the now-former trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety, was caught on camera inhaling pot from a vaping pen he’d just taken from a suspect, according to the video.

“I accidentally inhaled THC, as stupidly as that sounds,’’ Harden later admitted to an investigating officer, according to audio of the footage that Sloane posted on YouTube.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/11/dashcam-footage-shows-texas-trooper-vaping-confiscated-marijuana/

February 12, 2022

zoom call ends. fire company begins racist talk not realizing other fire dept still listening

The original call was to discuss the consolidation of services between the Briarcliffe, Goodwill, and Darby Township fire companies.

When county and state officials got off the call, members of the Briarcliffe Fire Company allegedly stayed on and engaged in a discussion that included racial slurs and disparaging remarks about African Americans in the area.

"A bunch of f*cking n*ggers down there," one Briarcliffe firefighter can be heard saying in reference to the all-Black Darby Township Fire Company.
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The firefighters who made the alleged comments didn't know other firefighters were on the line from the Goodwill Fire Company. One of them was Deputy Chief Tim Eichelman.

"Those things they said were very discriminatory in nature, and that's not what we stand for," said Eichelman.

There were other disparaging comments about Black firefighters being lazy.

"They didn't do s___ there," one person said of Darby firefighters.

There was also a discussion of there being too many Black people in the area.

"That's the f---ing problem," one person said. "Blacks are taking over s---."

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That included sharing comments on the call that made fun of Fanta Bility. She is the 8-year-old girl killed by police gunfire.

"Fanta soda, yeah, orange or Fanta grape," one man said on the call while chuckling, even after being told that the girl was shot to death by police.

https://6abc.com/briarcliffe-fire-company-station-75-firefighters-racist-remarks-shutdown/11553165/

https://www.rawstory.com/racism-2656627844/

February 12, 2022

customers now posting signs/ instructing Amazon drivers to dance for the Ring Camera/tik tok

Dance, I Said — Dance! And Leave the Package on the Porch.
The combination of next-day delivery, Ring surveillance footage and TikTok has put a spotlight on Amazon drivers. But it’s also created a new main character: the package itself.




The TikTok video begins with a fish-eye view of a porch. Beyond it lies a sunny footpath, a yard planted with a sapling, a homogeneous subdivision. We are amid the suburban dream, and yet the view is foreboding: We are peering out from a hidden surveillance camera, and a stranger is approaching the house. We watch him execute a slow variation on the electric slide and deposit a package at the door. Then, in the manner of a servant capitulating to the whims of his liege, he curtsies toward the lens. He does this because, as the TikTok user explains by way of an automated robotic voice-over, “I asked my Amazon driver to do a dance before he delivers my package.”

The first time I saw a video like this was in 2019, when an Amazon customer left a gift of snacks on her doorstep, and her Ring video doorbell (also sold by Amazon) captured the driver’s happy dance as he collected the offering. This video and its many imitators seemed like a cynical bid at virality disguised as a selfless act of kindness, but lately the trend has taken an even darker turn. As Gita Jackson reported recently in Vice News, some Amazon customers are now explicitly asking the company’s drivers to deliver a performance along with the package. They are posting signs to their front doors or tapping unusual delivery instructions into the Amazon app in the hopes of capturing a spectacle on their surveillance feeds. One TikTok user sets a driver’s obligatory shimmy to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”; another soundtracks it with “Teach Me How to Dougie.” This time, there are no snacks.

Though forcing another person to dance for you is a classic villain move rooted in the folklore traditions of many cultures, these customers proceed to shamelessly post the evidence to social media. Sometimes the videos are spun into an online sleuthing opportunity, as the TikToker asks viewers to hunt for the dancing driver’s identity. And they represent just a slice of the “Amazon driver approaches the door” genre of internet video, which has become so familiar that a driver’s arrival works as an instant setup for a visual joke. Punch lines have included everything from the driver skipping down a chalked hopscotch grid to getting violently attacked by the customer’s loose dogs. But whether the video is pitched as heartwarming or sadistic, the customer is enlisting the driver into a nonconsensual pageant that doubles as a performance review. As Jackson reported, Amazon drivers who fail to fulfill customer requests risk demerits.



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As the delivery driver has been downgraded in the American psyche, a new beloved character has arisen: the package itself. Now the driver has less status than the box. When a package arrives damaged, it’s an outrage. But when a driver slips on the steps and rolls around in agony, it’s 2.8 million views on TikTok.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/arts/amazon-tiktok-box-delivery.html

February 11, 2022

lack of daily Wordle update leads to rescue of 80 year old

An Illinois woman held hostage in her home was rescued after her daughter noticed she had not sent her Wordle score and alerted local authorities.

The woman, 80-year-old Denyse Holt, told CNN affiliate WBBM that a naked man entered her Lincolnwood home, dragged her around the house, disconnected phone lines, and eventually barricaded her into a bathroom, where she stayed for about 17 hours.

"I didn't think I was going to live," she told the station.

Lincolnwood police officers went to check on the homeowner Sunday night after receiving a call from her concerned daughter who hadn't heard from her, the police department said in a news release. The village of Lincolnwood is about 15 miles northwest of Chicago.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/us/wordle-update-woman-held-hostage/index.html

Police said the suspect likely took his clothes off earlier Sunday during what investigators believe was a mental health crisis, before breaking into the home.

February 11, 2022

A text message that 'all Asian people need to die' has Occidental College in an uproar

In late 2020, an Occidental College student sent a text message to a friend that read: “all asian people need to die.”

She followed with another text saying Asians are “responsible for the pandemic so they need to die for that too.”

A year later, in October or November, the friend reported the text exchange to Occidental officials and her sorority, setting off a controversy that has roiled the small liberal arts college in Eagle Rock, as students question what they see as a delayed and inadequate response from the administration.

On Tuesday, after a crescendo of complaints, Occidental College President Harry J. Elam Jr. said the student who sent the racist texts is no longer enrolled at the school and has “expressed remorse and regret for her actions.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-10/a-text-message-that-all-asian-people-need-to-die-has-occidental-college-in-an-uproar

February 11, 2022

"A person entered our business yesterday and was asked to wear a mask. This was his reaction."

https://twitter.com/TheWienerCircle/status/1491771431083982851

He threw snow at a worker and then fled in a car, police said. He returned and threw a brick through the front door of the restaurant, shattering the glass, according to police and a tweet from the Wiener’s Circle


The restaurant tweeted video of the incident Thursday morning in hopes of identifying the man.

Police said no one was in custody.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/2/9/22926711/wieners-circle-mask-brick

February 10, 2022

"murdered by indifference" photographer falls on busy Paris street, received no help for 9 hours.

Photographer Freezes to Death on Busy Paris Street

A well-known 84-year-old photographer died in the middle of a busy Paris street last week after he fell and was ignored by passersby for over nine hours.

Swiss photographer René Robert reportedly left his home at 9:30 pm on Tuesday, January 18th, for his routine evening walk down a bustling road in central Paris when he fell to the ground and was unable to get up.

Robert then lay in the bitter cold for nine hours while being ignored by those traveling up and down the road before a homeless person noticed the motionless figure on the ground the next morning and called emergency services. By the time paramedics arrived to render aid, it was too late: Robert had already succumbed to the cold and had died from hypothermia.

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Journalist Michel Mompontet, a friend of Roberts, Tweeted that the photographer had been “murdered by indifference.”

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“Unable to get up, he remained nailed to the ground in the cold for 9 hours before a homeless man called [emergency services]. Too late. In hypothermia, he could not be brought back to life. For 9 hours no passerby stopped to see why this gentleman was lying on the sidewalk. Nobody.

https://petapixel.com/2022/01/29/photographer-freezes-to-death-on-busy-paris-street/



Photographer’s Death Casts Harsh Light on the Cold Streets of Paris

PARIS — On a cold night last month, René Robert, an 85-year-old Swiss photographer, fell onto the pavement of a busy Parisian street and remained there for hours — seemingly unassisted, apparently ignored by a stream of passers-by. When a medical team eventually arrived, Mr. Robert was found to be unconscious and died later in the hospital of severe hypothermia.

Many in France were appalled by what appeared to be a blatant lack of compassion in the nation’s capital. But making the episode even more poignant were the identities of those who first found him and called for help — two homeless people all too familiar with the daily indifferences of bystanders.

“They say, ‘I am almost invisible, I feel invisible,’” Christophe Robert, the executive director of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, a housing advocacy organization, said of his conversations with homeless people. “And that really resonated with this incident.”

The two homeless people — a man and a woman — called emergency services after spotting Mr. Robert, who was best known for his black-and-white photography of flamenco’s most famous artists, while walking their dog in the early hours of Jan. 20.

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The exact circumstances of the episode are still unclear, but Mr. Robert was in a state of severe hypothermia when an ambulance finally picked him up, according to the Paris Fire Department. For those close to Mr. Robert, that strongly suggests he spent most of the night sprawled on the busy sidewalk.

https://dnyuz.com/2022/02/09/photographers-death-casts-harsh-light-on-the-cold-streets-of-paris/

https://dnyuz.com/2022/02/09/photographers-death-casts-harsh-light-on-the-cold-streets-of-paris/

February 10, 2022

Hertz had man arrested, he spent 24 hours in jail.. never rented from Hertz

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/colorado-man-says-hertz-had-him-arrested-for-stealing-a-car-despite-never-renting-from-the-company/vi-AATEMzw

February 10, 2022

Bob Saget died from head trauma, family says

Bob Saget died from head trauma, family says

Bob Saget, who was found dead in his Orlando, Florida hotel room last month, died from the result of a head trauma, according to a statement from his family.

"The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma. They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep," the statement said. "No drugs or alcohol were involved."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bob-saget-died-from-head-trauma-family-says/ar-AATFCPq