A driver plowed through pedestrians in New York City's crowded Times Square on Thursday, killing an 18-year-old woman and injuring 22 other people. Police arrested the alleged driver, Richard Rojas, after he fled his maroon Honda and a traffic agent tackled him. Rojas, 26, reportedly has a history of drunken driving arrests. Rojas was charged with murder and 20 counts of attempted murder. The car sped through crowds for three blocks, sparking a panic, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters there was "no indication that this was an act of terrorism." Police reportedly said Rojas told them he had "heard voices," and told them after his arrest, "You were supposed to shoot me! I wanted to kill them."
Source: The New York Times, BBC News Controversial Fox News founder Roger Ailes died Thursday, his wife, Elizabeth Ailes, said in a statement. He was 77. The longtime former head of Fox News was credited for turning the conservative cable news channel into a ratings juggernaut over two decades, before he stepped down in July 2016 after facing a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. "No one did more to change the media landscape than Roger Ailes, but no media executive did more to divide America," said Joe Peyronnin, a former network news executive who worked for Fox before it hired Ailes. Before and after his career at Fox News, Ailes worked as an adviser to Republican presidential candidates from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.
Source: Los Angeles Times, NPR The 22-member board of the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday unanimously voted to fire the influential conservative think tank's president, Jim DeMint, blaming him for what board Chairman Thomas A. Saunders III called "significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation." DeMint, a former South Carolina senator, said the assessment was "puzzling" because the board had praised his work over four years on the job and approved annual performance bonuses for his whole management team. DeMint also said he was proud of the foundation's accomplishments during his tenure, including its work on President Trump's transition team.
Source: The Washington Post A pair of bomb attacks on two Coptic Orthodox churches in Egypt on Sunday killed at least 36 people and injured about 100 more. The churches were celebrating Palm Sunday, one week before Easter. One attack took place near Cairo, killing at least 25 people. The second was in Alexandria and targeted the seat of the Coptic Church's Pope Tawadros, who was not injured. No terrorist group has taken responsibility so far, but Islamic extremists have attacked Egypt's Christian minority in the past. Pope Francis and Grand Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, a leader of Sunni Islam in Egypt, both denounced the attack and expressed their condolences for the victims.
Source: Reuters, The Associated Press A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Joseph C. Meek Jr., a friend of convicted murderer Dylann Roof, to 27 months in prison for misleading authorities who were investigating Roof's racist massacre at a black church. Meek, 22, pleaded guilty last April to misleading FBI agents in interviews shortly after the 2015 shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that left nine churchgoers dead. In a night of drinking and drug use a week before the attack, Roof had told Meek of his plan to kill black people at a church to start a race war. Meek did not report the threat, although he considered it serious enough that he hid Roof's handgun. A tearful Meek had asked for leniency and apologized to the victims' families, saying he was "really sorry a lot of innocent lives were taken."
Source: The New York Times Billionaire banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller died Monday at his home in Pocantico Hills, New York. He was 101. Rockefeller was the world's oldest billionaire, and the last surviving grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He served as Chase Manhattan's president, chairman, and CEO over 35 years at the company, expanding the bank's international presence and having a hand in U.S. foreign policy and financial affairs. He also won a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 for his philanthropy, and gave more than $900 million over his lifetime to numerous causes, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and his alma mater, Harvard University.
Source: The New York Times, Bloomberg Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army leader turned peacemaker, died early Tuesday at a hospital in his hometown of Derry. He was 66. McGuinness was diagnosed with a rare heart disease in December. In 1972, he was the IRA's second-in-command in Derry during the Bloody Sunday killing of 14 civil rights protesters by soldiers, and he was a leader of the paramilitary organization when it was carrying out bombings in the city. Twice imprisoned — once after being caught near an explosives-laden vehicle — he went on to be a key negotiator of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland, and served as deputy first minister of Northern Ireland alongside three Democratic Unionist Party leaders from 2007 to January of this year. Prime Minister Theresa May said she could never condone McGuinness' earlier path, but he "ultimately played a defining role in leading the republican movement away from violence."
Source: BBC News A bus plowed into a crowd of people, mostly musicians, celebrating the festive Rara season in the Haitian city of Gonaives on Sunday, killing 38 people. The bus, carrying passengers from Cap-Haitien on the Caribbean nation's northern coast to the capital city of Port-au-Prince, reportedly struck two people outside Gonaives, killing one instantly, and kept going. It then encountered a Rara band marching slowly down the highway, and plowed through it, then drove through two more bands. The driver fled on foot.
Source: CNN A fire tore through a state-run shelter for teens on the outskirts of Guatemala's capital on Wednesday, killing 22 girls and injuring dozens more. The blaze started when someone set fire to mattresses in a girls' dorm after dozens of teens tried to escape the overcrowded facility, and most of them were captured and locked in their dorms. Distraught parents rushed to two local hospitals, the morgue, and the shelter to plead for information on their children. Many of the victims were badly burned, so it might take DNA tests to identify them. "They only took her from me to burn her," said one mother, whose pregnant 16-year-old daughter arrived at the center nine days ago. "I blame the state for what has happened."
Source: The Associated Press Severe drought has killed 110 people in Somalia in the past 48 hours, Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said Saturday at a meeting of the Somali National Drought Committee. The death toll is specific to the Bay region of the country, but the United Nations estimates that as many as 5 million Somalis — roughly half the country's population — are in need of relief aid as ongoing drought conditions threaten widespread famine. Cholera also "broke out in Goof-guduud, Awdiinle, and Berdale locations in Bay region," said Mohamed Fiqi, a state agriculture minister. "Children, women and old people are among the dead, the death toll increases."
Source: The Associated Press, PM News Nigeria |
About This BlogCertain numerology has a strong connection with occultism. Various numbers from time-to-time appear in news articles, and one has to wonder if there isn't some occult significance behind this story. Archives
May 2021
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