June 10, 2021

black driver terminated until UBER shown the video by news program: "you are black and I am white"

Cincinnati man charged with racial abuse of Uber driver, whom he threatened with slurs and violence

CINCINNATI — A Cincinnati man has been charged with ethnic intimidation, criminal damaging and disorderly conduct after an Uber driver accused him of a racist assault.

Michael Winterman, who has also been banned from Uber, was “highly intoxicated” when he entered driver Abdelkadre Khamis Ahmat’s vehicle on May 28, according to Cincinnati police. Near the end of the ride, Ahmat’s GPS failed and he asked Winterman for verbal directions to his destination.

Instead of providing them, Winterman called 911 before threatening Ahmat — a Black man who came to the United States from Chad — with violence and racial slurs.

"I hope to hell you get shot," Winterman slurs in Ahmat's recording of the interaction.

At one point, Winterman exited the vehicle and began to vandalize it.

Ahmat stepped outside and attempted to stop him. Winterman punched him, fell to the ground and smeared his own blood on the window of the car.

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/muslim-advocacy-group-calls-on-hamilton-county-to-prosecute-man-who-allegedly-attacked-uber-driver


https://www.fox19.com/2021/06/10/arrested-uber-passenger-accused-racist-attack-driver/

https://twitter.com/CincyPD/status/1402392496529764355

June 10, 2021

Michael Avenatti's sentencing hearing.. lawyers trying to save him from 11 to 14 year sentence

Lawyers: Avenatti shamed, merits leniency for Nike extortion

Michael Avenatti should spend no more than six months behind bars after a jury concluded he tried to extort $25 million from sportswear giant Nike, his lawyers told a judge Wednesday, saying the once high-flying California attorney faces constant ridicule after his “cataclysmic fall.”

In a sentencing memorandum in Manhattan federal court, the lawyers wrote that Avenatti had suffered enough from a three-month stint in prison when his bail was revoked last year and from public ridicule. Sentencing is scheduled for June 30.

Probation Department calculated federal sentencing guidelines to call for a sentence of 11 to 14 years in prison, Avenatti’s lawyers noted. The lawyers said no more than six months in prison and a year of home confinement was appropriate.

They said Nike and a man who ran a youth basketball league in Los Angeles he once represented as he negotiated with Nike had not lost money from the crime, and a recurrence was impossible since Avenatti will never practice law again.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-health-coronavirus-pandemic-sports-aa49e1e3119df1204f060e1ba2b9024a

June 10, 2021

nice pics from today's Prez UK visit... no one pouting, no one slapping away husband's hands

no one shoving past other leaders.









https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9672497/White-House-rows-claims-Biden-rebuked-Johnson-inflaming-tensions-Northern-Ireland.html

June 10, 2021

GOPer gets to pen this stupid sexist racist article: "Racism isn't the problem, black culture is"

Letter to the editor: Racism isn't the problem, black culture is
Jun 8, 2021

For a number of years we have heard an awful lot about racism, there will always be people with racist inclinations, but America is definitely not a racist country. Barack Obama won the presidency with nearly 70 million votes in 2008 and won again in 2016, with a significant margin.

We have well over a million illegals in this country who are awaiting, or already avoided, an asylum hearing and they represent well over 200 countries. People have always endeavored to get into, not out of, America. It is true that white household income is significantly higher than Black household income, $76,057 to $45,438. However, Asian households earn far more than whites at $98,174; Hispanic households earn $45,438 and Native Americans only $40,315. I believe these differences can be explained not by race but by the differences in the specific cultures.

We have known for some time that single-parent households are a highly significant indicator of poverty. In 2010, 72% of Black households were single parent households. Those figures for the other races were Native American 66%, Hispanic 54%, white 29% and Asian 17%. While many women do a heroic job, I believe single-parent households are a determining indicator of how much a family will earn.

Alvin Ellis Jr.

Former Republican Montana state senator

Red Lodge

https://billingsgazette.com/opinion/letters/letter-to-the-editor-racism-isnt-the-problem-black-culture-is/article_7fc24f65-ed74-54c2-843e-8cf2995441a3.html

June 10, 2021

Trump got an owie

Looks thinner too

https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1402775440822054912?s=09

June 9, 2021

Screams Rise From Rome's Streets as Crows Attack

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/world/europe/rome-crows-attacks.html
Emerging From One Plague, Some Romans Face Another: Attacking Crows
Rome’s residents are venturing outdoors, only to face an annual threat of violence from the skies as crows protect their young.

https://twitter.com/TGEUR24/status/1399267092159995914

The crows are at their most protective during the month or so a new brood is in the nest. It takes 30 to 40 days for the fledglings to leave the nest, and during that time crows are known for heightened aggression.

Francesca Manzia, who runs the Italian League for Bird Protection’s rescue center in Rome, said that crows are typically quite brave and attack animals much bigger than they are.

“Hawks, eagles, even elephants if they were there,” she said.

She added that a few simple human adjustments could help create more harmony between the species.

Humans would be advised to not carry black bags or wear black hats, she said, because the crows might think they have taken or harmed their brethren. Black umbrellas, she added, are also a bad idea.




Screams Rise From Rome's Streets as Crows Attack
Pedestrians carry umbrellas or sticks, or stay inside

Strolling through the streets of Rome takes on an added element of danger every spring, when carrion crows guarding their chicks swoop down to attack passing humans, regarding them as a danger. Humans return the sentiment. The crows "are everywhere," one woman said after being attacked by a pair before she sent them flying away. "You must know how to protect yourself."

Crows are especially aggressive during the month or so before fledglings leave the nest, the New York Times reports. People pull jackets over their heads to protect themselves, or carry umbrellas or sticks. It doesn't always work. "We hear people screaming from our office," an accountant said. Conservationists said they've gotten calls from angry people saying that more effort is put into protecting birds than humans.

The conservationists put some of the blame on human behavior. There's plenty of mice and trash in Rome for the crows to snack on. Some people feed the birds, which is the wrong message. They also play down the threat to people, saying at most they receive a few scratches. But that's not what a woman who helped an older victim saw.

"Blood gushed out of her head. Her T-shirt was soaked," she said. The only advice offered pedestrians it to not carry black bags or umbrellas or wear a black hat, which could appear to crows to be another crow under threat. Some people run to their cars or change their routes. Dubai has a similar problem, and similar screams from the streets, per Esquire. "It's terrifying," a stylist there said. "I've been scared to leave the office all day."

https://www.newser.com/story/307184/screams-rise-from-romes-streets-as-crows-attack.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_world_login

June 9, 2021

father pulls up trailer and dumps 80,000 in pennies on lawn as final child support payment

What mom and daughter did with 80,000 penny child support payment
A mother and daughter turned a negative into a positive after donating 80,000 pennies left on their front lawn by the father as the final child support payment. CNN affiliate WTVR reports

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/06/09/mother-and-daughter-donate-80000-pennies-child-support-pkg-vpx.wtvr

support' pennies dumped outside home

After Avery Sanford's father dumped 80,000 pennies in her front lawn for her final child support payment, she and her mother decided to donate the money to those in need.


https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/mother-daughter-donate-thousands-of-dumped-pennies-to-domestic-abuse-center
RICHMOND, Va. -- One Richmond family got a shocking delivery last month when 80,000 pennies were dumped on their front lawn. Now, they're using the money to help those in need.

"I just turned 18. When I was in the middle of class, my dad came by. He had rented a trailer," Avery Sanford, a Deep Run High School senior, said. "He pulled up in front of the house and turned the trailer on so it dumped out all the pennies on the grass and my mom came out and was like, 'What are you dumping in my yard?' She didn't know who it was until he shouted, 'It's your final child support payment."

The act had an impact on the teenager.



"It's not just my mom he's trying to embarrass, it's also me and my sister and it's upsetting that he didn't consider that before he did that," Sanford said.

Once the pennies were picked up, Sanford and her mom decided to turn a bad situation into a positive one.

Every penny of Avery's last child support payment will be donated to Safe Harbor, a domestic abuse center.

June 9, 2021

FBI opened the safety boxes at a business, Trying to confiscate (steal) the contents found in 369

FBI wants to keep fortune in cash, gold, jewels from Beverly Hills raid. Is it abuse of power?


When FBI agents asked for permission to rip hundreds of safe deposit boxes from the walls of a Beverly Hills business and haul them away, U.S. Magistrate Steve Kim set some strict limits on the raid.

The business, U.S. Private Vaults, had been charged in a sealed indictment with conspiring to sell drugs and launder money. Its customers had not.

So the FBI could seize the boxes themselves, Kim decided, but had to return what was inside to the owners.

“This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes,” Kim’s March 17 seizure warrant declared.


Yet the FBI is now trying to confiscate $86 million in cash and millions of dollars more in jewelry and other valuables that agents found in 369 of the boxes.

Prosecutors claim the forfeiture is justified because the unnamed box holders were engaged in criminal activity. They have disclosed no evidence to support the allegation.

Box holders and their lawyers denounced the ploy as a brazen abuse of forfeiture laws, saying prosecutors and the FBI were trampling on the rights of people who thought they’d found a safe place to stash confidential documents, heirlooms, gold, rare coins and cash.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-09/fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-boxes-forfeiture-cash-jewelry

Among those ensnared in the government’s dragnet was Joseph Ruiz, who lost his life savings in the raid: $57,000 in cash. An unemployed food service worker who lives near Crenshaw Boulevard and the 10 Freeway, Ruiz, 47, distrusts banks and sees world affairs as deeply unstable, so he kept his money at U.S. Private Vaults.

He obtained the money in two legal settlements, one for a spinal injury in a car accident and another for chronic housing code violations in his apartment building, Ruiz said.

June 9, 2021

Russian Sailors on Icebreaker Rescues Samoyed Puppy Stranded on Iceberg

A dog has been rescued by sailors after wandering through the Arctic for more than a week, according to Russian state media.

The crew of a Russian icebreaker ship came across the Samoyed deep in the ice fields near the village of Mys Kamenny in northern Russia, state channel Russia 1 reported.

Yegor Agapov, the captain of the Alexander Sannikov icebreaker, told the network the dog approached the side of the vessel as it traversed the sparse and freezing landscape toward an oil terminal in the Gulf of Ob.

Video footage showed the white dog, named Aika, wagging her tail and walking gingerly on the jagged ice before the crew lowered a ladder for her to climb.

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They took the dog to the nearby village and located the owners, who said Aika had run away during a walk around the village and would probbaly not had survived without the intervention of the crew.

"The dog didn't go anywhere without us, we have no idea how she got there," said owner Svetlana Chereshneva, a resident of Mys Kamenny.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/europe/russia-arctic-dog-rescued-scli-intl/index.html

June 9, 2021

For Asian Americans Wary of Attacks, Reopening Is Not an Option

For Asian Americans Wary of Attacks, Reopening Is Not an Option
Facing a wave of animosity, many Asian Americans remain afraid of public places even as the coronavirus pandemic recedes.


Millions of Americans may be leaping into a summer of newly unmasked normalcy. But inside Mandy Lin’s apartment in Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood, the lockdown drags on.

Her 9-year-old son is struggling through the last lessons of fourth grade on a laptop while many of his classmates are back in school. His grandmother stays inside all day. For exercise, Ms. Lin’s family paces their building’s parking lot or ventures to a nearby park.

But it is not Covid-19 keeping the family from rejoining a bustling world of restaurants, schools and public spaces.

“It’s not safe to be outside,” Ms. Lin, 43, said. “There has just been unending violence and harassment.”

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Mr. Le has returned to much of his prepandemic life, but said he is still anxious about getting back on a plane since the day in March 2020 when a woman at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport spit on him and said, “Go back to where you came from.”

“It was a feeling of helplessness like I’d never felt before,” Mr. Le said. “That’s something I can’t shake. It made me feel like I was a cancer or something radioactive.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/us/asian-american-attacks.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage