Texas gunman in Walmart shooting gets 90 consecutive life sentences and may still face death penalty
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty.
Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases.
Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the sentence was read. U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado and receive treatment and counseling for a severe mental health condition.
Crusius still faces a separate trial in a Texas court that could end with him getting the death penalty for carrying out one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.
As Crusius was led from the courtroom, the son of one of the victims shouted from the gallery.
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The US will provide cluster bombs to Ukraine and defends the delivery of the controversial weapon
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move the administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully.
The decision comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Lithuania, where Biden is likely to face questions from allies on why the U.S. would send a weapon into Ukraine that more than two-thirds of alliance members have banned because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties.
“It took me a while to be convinced to do it,” said Biden in a CNN interview. He added that he ultimately took the Defense Department's recommendation to provide the munitions and discussed the matter with allies and with lawmakers on the Hill. He said "the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition” and the cluster bombs will provide a temporary fix to help stop Russian tanks.
The move was met with divided reactions from Congress, as some Democrats criticized the plan while some Republicans backed it. It was hailed on Twitter by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who thanked Biden for “a timely, broad and much-needed defense aid package” that will “bring Ukraine closer to victory over the enemy, and democracy to victory over dictatorship.”
The munitions — which are bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets — are seen by the U.S. as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian front lines. U.S. leaders debated the thorny issue for months, before Biden made the final decision this week.
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For the third time this week, Earth sets an unofficial heat record. What’s behind those big numbers?
Earth's average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record and what one prominent scientist says could be the hottest in 120,000 years.
But it's also a record with some legitimate scientific questions and caveats, so much so that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has distanced itself from it. It's grabbed global attention, even as the number — 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degrees Celsius) — doesn't look that hot because it averages temperatures from around the globe.
Still, scientists say the daily drumbeat of records — official or not — is a symptom of a larger problem where the precise digits aren't as important as what's causing them.
“Records grab attention, but we need to make sure to connect them with the things that actually matter,” climate scientist Friederike Otto of the Imperial College of London said in an email. “So I don't think it's crucial how ‘official’ the numbers are, what matters is that they are huge and dangerous and wouldn't have happened without climate change.”
Thursday's planetary average surpassed the 62.9-degree mark (17.18-degree mark) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. Until Monday, no day had passed the 17-degree Celsius mark (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the tool's 44 years of records.
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Leslie Van Houten, follower of cult leader Charles Manson, is one big step closer to freedom
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s governor announced Friday that he won’t ask the state Supreme Court to block parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, paving the way for her release after serving 53 years in prison for two infamous murders.
In a brief statement, the governor’s office said it was unlikely that the state's high court would consider an appeal of a lower court ruling that Van Houten should be released.
Newsom is disappointed, the statement said.
“More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal killings, the victims’ families still feel the impact,” the statement said.
Van Houten, now in her 70s, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other followers in the 1969 killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary.
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Video shows Britney Spears inadvertently hit herself in the face in encounter with Victor Wembanyama
LAS VEGAS (AP) — No charges will be filed following a brief investigation of the altercation involving pop star Britney Spears, San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama and a member of the player’s security team, Las Vegas police said Friday after determining she inadvertently “hit herself in the face.”
Spears said she was struck by a security guard as she tried to approach Wembanyama near a restaurant in a Las Vegas casino complex on Wednesday night. Wembanyama said a person, who he later found out was Spears, grabbed him from behind.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Spears had actually struck herself when someone pushed her hand off Wembanyama as she reached up to tap the No. 1 overall pick.
In its investigation, which is now over, police determined that the security guard did not willfully or unlawfully use force or violence against Spears. No arrests were made and no one was cited, the report said.
In the report, police said surveillance footage of the event “showed Britney going to tap the Spurs player on the shoulder. When she touched the player (redacted) pushes her hand off of the player without looking which causes Britney’s hand to hit herself in the face.”
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An Afghan man who spent years helping US forces in Afghanistan is shot and killed in Washington
WASHINGTON (AP) — At 31 years old, Nasrat Ahmad Yar had spent most of his adult life working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan before escaping to America in search of a better life for his wife and four children.
He found work as a ride-share driver and even managed to send money back to Afghanistan to help family and friends. He liked to play volleyball with friends in the Washington suburb where many Afghans who fled their country now live. At 6 feet 5 inches, he had a powerful serve.
On Monday night, worried about making rent, he went out driving and was shot and killed in Washington. No suspects have been arrested, but surveillance video captured the sound of a single gunshot and four boys or young men were seen running away. Police have offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
“He was so generous. He was so nice. He was always trying to help the people,” said Rahim Amini, a fellow Afghan immigrant and longtime friend. He said Ahmad Yar always reminded him, “Don’t forget the people left behind.”
Jeramie Malone, an American who came to know Ahmed Yar through her volunteer work with a veteran-founded organization bringing former Afghan interpreters to safety, also was struck by his generosity.
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Dutch premier resigns because of deadlock on thorny issue of migration, paving way for new elections
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government collapsed Friday because of irreconcilable differences within the four-party coalition about how to rein in migration, a divisive issue that has split nations across Europe.
The resignation of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the longest-serving premier of the nation, means the country will face a general election later this year. Rutte and his government will remain in office in a caretaker capacity until a new ruling coalition is chosen.
“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Rutte told reporters in The Hague. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable. That is why I will immediately … offer the resignation of the entire Cabinet to the king in writing”
Opposition lawmakers wasted no time in calling for fresh elections even before Rutte formally confirmed his resignation.
Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, tweeted, “Quick elections now.” Across the political spectrum, Green Left leader Jesse Klaver also called for elections and told Dutch broadcaster NOS: “This country needs a change of direction.”
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Trump blasts DeSantis in Iowa, says GOP rival 'despises' the state's ethanol
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Campaigning in Iowa, former President Donald Trump attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an enemy of corn-based ethanol in his largest campaign event in the leadoff caucus state in nearly four months.
Trump, appearing Friday in Council Bluffs in the western part of the state, criticized his top 2024 Republican presidential rival for voting as a member of Congress to oppose the federal mandate for the fuel additive that Iowa leads the nation in producing.
Trump declared himself “the most pro-farmer president that you’ve ever had” at the event, which was aimed at promoting his administration’s agricultural record and touting his oversight of clawbacks of regulations on farmers. “I fought for Iowa ethanol like no president in history," he said.
On a rainy Friday, Trump spoke to more than 1,000 Iowans and Nebraskans packed into the event hall inside Mid-America Center, with hundreds more huddled under umbrellas in line outside the arena.
As a congressman from Florida, DeSantis co-sponsored a bill in 2017 that would have immediately ended the renewable fuel standard, a position consistent with fiscal conservatives who see such mandates as government overreach.
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Capitol rioter linked to Proud Boys gets 5 years in prison for pepper-spraying police
A Florida man prosecutors say is affiliated with the Proud Boys extremist group was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray as they tried to defend the U.S. Capitol against supporters of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.
Barry Ramey, an aircraft mechanic who was convicted of assault and other crimes in federal court in Washington, D.C., also tried to intimidate an FBI agent investigating him before his arrest. Ramey anonymously called the agent and recited the agent's home address over the phone, prosecutors say.
Ramey has been locked up since his April 2022 arrest. His attorney wrote in court documents that Ramey “has understood the gravity of his actions and is ready for a change with support standing by to help him through it.”
There was no immediate response Friday to an email sent to his attorney seeking comment.
Prosecutors say Ramey joined a large group of Proud Boys on the morning of Jan. 6 before heading toward the Capitol, where lawmakers were meeting to certify President Joe Biden's election victory over Trump. As another rioter charged a police line, Ramey lifted his arm and began spraying, hitting two officers, according to prosecutors.
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France's small towns are reeling from the spread of rioting. 'Now it's affecting the countryside'
PARIS (AP) — After a pleasant evening of wine-tasting — joyfully billed “Grapes and Friends!” — with a hundred or so people and oysters, charcuteries and cheeses, the mayor of the picturesque French town of Quissac was on his way home.
Then his phone rang: Urban unrest that was engulfing France after the deadly police shooting of a teenager on Paris' outskirts, hundreds of kilometers (miles) and a world away to the north, had careened into Quissac's tranquility, too.
In a quick hit-and-run, a small group of people — seemingly no more than four, the mayor says — bombarded the local gendarmes' barracks on Quai de la Gare road with powerful fireworks, denting its metal shutters and setting fire to a cypress tree. In the grander scheme of things, it wasn't much compared to orgies of destruction, arson, looting and rioting unleashed on multitudes of other communities across France in six nights of mayhem. Still, for the town of 3,300 people in the Gard region of southern France, it was a first.
Quissac's unsettling experience last Friday night — and those of other out-of-the-way towns and villages also hit by unrest to varying degrees — set France's latest nationwide spasm of rioting apart from previous cycles of violence that have flared periodically in every decade since the 1980s.
Although typically referred to in France as “les violences urbaines” — urban violence — the unrest this time was no longer contained to blue-collar towns and cities' disadvantaged housing projects, places where anger at social and racial inequalities has festered.
The Associated Press
