Author: Sunfire

Mail.com

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A defense lawyer for one of two men suspected of assisting the gunman behind two shooting attacks in Copenhagen says both have been jailed for 10 days.

Anders Rohde says that prosecutors had asked a judge to place them in four weeks of solitary confinement and that the relatively short period of detention suggests the case against the men is “thin.” Rohde was speaking to reporters after a four-hour custody hearing held behind closed doors. His colleague earlier said the men denied accusations that they helped the gunman evade authorities and get rid of a weapon.   Continue reading “2 suspected accomplices of Denmark gunman jailed for 10 days”

Mail.com

CORBIN, Ky. (AP) — Friends and relatives of a 16-year-old boy killed in a shootout with police in Maryland struggled to understand how the faithful churchgoer and high school ROTC student could end up as the suspect in the slaying of his parents and younger sister in Kentucky.

Jason Hendrix was suspected of killing his family execution-style last week before fleeing his small Southern town to the East Coast, authorities said Sunday. Saturday’s shootout led police to search the teen’s home more than 500 miles away in Corbin, Kentucky. There, authorities found the bodies of Kevin and Sarah Hendrix and their daughter, Grace, about age 12, Corbin Police Chief David Campbell said.   Continue reading “Struggle to understand family slaying in small Kentucky town”

Mail.com

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — If his Facebook page is any indication, Craig Hicks doesn’t hate Muslims. An avowed atheist, his online posts instead depict a man who despises religion itself, but nevertheless seems to support an individual’s right to his own beliefs.

“I hate Islam just as much as christianity, but they have the right to worship in this country just as much as any others do,” the man now accused of killing three Muslim college students stated in one 2012 post over the proposed construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York.   Continue reading “Shooting suspect slams religion while defending liberty”

RT

Park operators in the City of Salem, Oregon are posting unique signs alerting people that an owl could swoop down and ruin their day. A barred owl has attacked four people in the park in recent months.

The park had previously posted flyers about the owl attacks, but in a segment on wacky politics in Oregon, the owl attacks became a segment on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on February 5. Maddow suggested the city should post a vivid yellow warning sign using the iconic pedestrian stick figure bent forward at a run. Hovering above – and in fast pursuit – with claws extended like a bird of prey.   Continue reading “Warning signs for attacking, angry owls posted in Oregon”

Mail.com

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Danish police shot and killed a man early Sunday suspected of carrying out shooting attacks at a free speech event and then at a Copenhagen synagogue, killing a Danish documentary filmmaker and a member of the Scandinavian country’s Jewish community. Five police officers were also wounded in the attacks.

“Denmark has been hit by terror,” Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said. “We do not know the motive for the alleged perpetrator’s actions, but we know that there are forces that want to hurt Denmark. They want to rebuke our freedom of speech.”   Continue reading “First Copenhagen shooting victim identified as film maker”

Mail.com

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Times media columnist David Carr died of complications from metastatic lung cancer, according to autopsy results released Saturday.

Julie Bolcer (BOHL-suhr), a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner’s office, said the autopsy shows heart disease also contributed to his death. Carr, 58, collapsed at the newspaper’s headquarters and died on Thursday.   Continue reading “Autopsy shows New York Times writer Carr died of lung cancer”

RT

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf said he will offer the state’s 186 death row inmates temporary reprieves from each scheduled execution, calling the system “error prone, expensive and anything but useful.”

The newly elected governor, who campaigned against the death penalty, said the moratorium will remain in effect until he has reviewed a task force report on capital punishment. The task force review has been ongoing over the past four years, examining a number of questions surrounding the death penalty – including how it is carried, out, whether it’s constitutional and if it reduces crime. In 2012, the task force called on former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett to suspend executions.   Continue reading “Pennsylvania gov. declares moratorium on ‘unjust’ death penalty”

Mail.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Bart Campolo broke with the church almost five years ago, he immediately began to feel something missing.

It wasn’t so much that the pastor’s son no longer believed in God; he’d never been that much of a believer anyway. What he missed, Campolo said, was what the church had represented to him: a place where like-minded people could gather for fellowship, to pursue moral justice, to help one another and to try to live good lives.   Continue reading “US colleges bringing in chaplains to serve the nonbelievers”

Mail.com

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s security service says a shooting at a Copenhagen cafe that left one person dead and three police wounded during a free speech event was likely a terror attack.

The PET agency said in a statement the circumstances surrounding the shooting “indicate that we are talking about a terror attack.”   Continue reading “Denmark: Copenhagen cafe shooting a likely terror attack”

New Jersey News

IRVINGTON — An Essex County Grand Jury has declined to indict three police officers in the fatal 2013 shooting of a city man, Acting County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray announced today.

“This is truly a tragic case but the grand jury has concluded that there is no probable cause to return an indictment,” Murray said in a statement about the decision in the shooting death of 30-year-old Irvington man Abdul Kamal.   Continue reading “Grand Jury declines to indict 3 police officers in fatal shooting of unarmed Irvington man”

Mail.com

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Just hours after Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced his decision to resign, a subpoena arrived in a state office building confirming that federal agents are looking into the influence-peddling scandal that led to the abrupt end of a four-decade political career.

The Democratic governor gave in to mounting pressure Friday, abandoning his office amid suspicions that his live-in fiancée used her relationship with him to land contracts for her green-energy consulting business.   Continue reading “Subpoenas arrive as Oregon governor announces departure”

Mail.com

JERUSALEM (AP) — Rarely has the world had such a front-row seat for a concerted attack by a major air force on an urban area as it did during last summer’s Gaza war. But Israel is far from the only country to have killed civilians during war. The list is long, from Dresden to Japan, from Grozny to Algeria.

The United States has killed civilians in its recent conflicts — in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade, and earlier in Vietnam and Korea as well. Syria’s ongoing civil war has killed an estimated 220,000 people in about four years, nearly half civilians and many of those bombed by their own government. And Israel itself has killed civilians before, including in previous Palestinian campaigns and during wars in Lebanon.   Continue reading “War history is littered with civilian deaths”

Mail.com

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man.

They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel’s summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas. Under the rules of war, homes are considered protected civilian sites unless used for military purposes. Israel says it attacked only legitimate targets, alleging militants used the houses to hide weapons, fighters and command centers. Palestinians say Israel’s warplanes often struck without regard for civilians.   Continue reading “High civilian death toll in Gaza house strikes”

Newsday – by GUS GARCIA-ROBERTS

Even as Nassau County Police Department investigators determined that former officer Anthony DiLeonardo committed four felonies during his 2011 off-duty shooting of an unarmed cabdriver, a special grand jury convened to investigate the incident expired last year with no criminal charges brought, Newsday found.

There were dozens of potential witnesses to the shooting and its aftermath, including medical personnel, civilians and law enforcement officials from both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Newsday recently interviewed seven of the incident’s central figures, or their attorneys, and all said they had not been asked to testify before the grand jury, which was set to expire in January 2014.   Continue reading “Special Suffolk grand jury expires without findings in Nassau cop’s unjustified shooting of cabbie”

Mail.com

PASCO, Wash. (AP) — Officers killed a man accused of hurling rocks in the fourth fatal police shooting since last summer, a death that is shaking this agricultural city of 68,000 in southeastern Washington and drawing criticism from as far away as Mexico.

The killing Tuesday of orchard worker Antonio Zambrano-Montes sparked protests after witnesses said he was running away when he was shot in a busy intersection in Pasco, a city about 215 miles southeast of Seattle.   Continue reading “Mexico condemns deadly police shooting in Washington state”

RT

A dozen states already use drug tests to screen those applying for financial assistance, but another 12 are also considering – and wishing to expand – the costly measure despite its limited results.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) wants to go further and have state House Republicans mandate drug tests for unemployment insurance and a number of other state programs. He also wants permission from the Obama administration to drug test food stamp applicants. However, lawmakers haven’t introduced a bill yet.   Continue reading “Plans to drug test welfare applicants considered in a dozen states”

RT

The House of Representatives easily passed a measure approving the construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, setting up a showdown with President Barack Obama, who has promised to veto the bill.

In a 270-152 vote led primarily by Republicans, the House passed the same bill that the Senate itself approved last month. The pipeline was first proposed in 2008 and would carry oil 1,179 miles from Canada’s tar sands to Nebraska, where it would connect to an existing pipeline and continue traveling south.   Continue reading “House approves Keystone XL pipeline despite veto threat”

Mail.com

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The inflight tantrum dubbed “nut rage” culminated Thursday in a one year prison sentence for Korean Air heiress Cho Hyun-ah, a humiliating rebuke that only partially quelled public outrage at the excesses of South Korea’s business elite.

Cho, the daughter of Korean Air’s chairman, achieved worldwide notoriety after she ordered the chief flight attendant off a Dec. 5 flight, forcing it to return to the gate at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.   Continue reading “Court sentences Korean Air nut rage exec to 1 year in prison”

Mail.com

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Authorities have wanted to nab Hugo Selenski on murder charges ever since they searched his northeastern Pennsylvania yard in 2003 and found the bodies of a missing pharmacist, the pharmacist’s girlfriend, and at least three other sets of human remains.

It took nearly a dozen years and one failed prosecution, but they finally got their man on Wednesday after a jury convicted the 41-year-old career criminal in the strangling deaths of pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett.   Continue reading “Jury convicts Pennsylvania man with bodies in yard”