Tuesday, Jul 02nd
Last update07:12:28 AM GMT
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Sunday he is directing Virginia State Police to investigate a traffic stop during which two police officers held an Army second lieutenant at gunpoint in the southeast part of the state.
Northam (D) said the incident — in which body-camera footage shows police pepper-spraying, striking and handcuffing Caron Nazario — “is disturbing and angered me.” Nazario, 27, who is Black and Latino, filed a lawsuit this month against Windsor officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker that alleges excessive force due to racial profiling.
“Our Commonwealth has done important work on police reform, but we must keep working to ensure Virginians are safe during interactions with police, the enforcement of laws is fair and equitable, and people are held accountable,” Northam said in a statement.
TVNL Comment: Both police officers should be fired immediately. This incident was another disgraceful abuse of power by police.
U.S. and Iranian officials said Tuesday an initial day of talks in Vienna on returning to the 2015 nuclear deal were "constructive," but the Biden administration cautioned that no immediate breakthroughs were anticipated on one of the new president's top foreign policy goals.
The European-led diplomatic effort featured mediators shuttling between Iranian and American envoys, a far cry from the intensive face-to-face discussions held by U.S. and Iranian diplomats who brokered the original agreement.
The goal now is agreeing on a road map toward lifting U.S. sanctions that were imposed under President Donald Trump and recommitting Tehran to its agreements under the accord, a complicated undertaking with no guarantee of success.
Roger Mudd, the longtime political correspondent and anchor for NBC and CBS who once stumped Sen. Edward Kennedy by simply asking why he wanted to be president, has died. He was 93.
CBS News says Mudd died Tuesday of complications of kidney failure at his home in McLean, Virginia.
During more than 30 years on network television, starting with CBS in 1961, Mudd covered Congress, elections and political conventions and was a frequent anchor and contributor to various specials. His career coincided with the flowering of television news, the pre-cable, pre-Internet days when the big three networks and their powerhouse ranks of reporters were the main source of news for millions of Americans.
Besides work at CBS and NBC, he did stints on PBS’s “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” and the History Channel.
Federal investigators are examining records of communications between members of Congress and the pro-Trump mob that attacked the US Capitol, as the investigation moves closer to exploring whether lawmakers wittingly or unwittingly helped the insurrectionists, according to a US official briefed on the matter.
When Congress released a report this month finding that popular baby foods contain worrisome levels of toxic heavy metals, the reaction was swift.
Scary headlines blared from the New York Times to the Daily Mail, lawsuits were filed within days and throngs of parents, already beleaguered from the stresses of the pandemic, took to social media with the fire of a thousand suns. “You knowingly sell food that hurt babies for profit,” one mom wrote on a baby food company’s Instagram page. “You are MONSTERS.”
But the intense blowback against baby food makers obscured an even larger problem, watchdogs say: Heavy metal contamination is relatively common across the food supply, so infants aren’t the only children vulnerable to possible health effects, and the federal government is doing next to nothing to reduce their exposure.
Reluctance to be vaccinated for Covid-19 is now rife in the US military, with about a third of troops on active duty or in the national guard refusing to be administered the vaccine.
Soldiers have previously been given approved vaccines on a mandatory basis but because the vaccines for the coronavirus have only been given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, members of the military are able to opt out.
Many are choosing to do so, with military officials recently telling Congress that a third of service members have declined the shots, the New York Times reported. At the large Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, acceptance rates for the vaccines are below 50%.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is considering undoing his predecessor’s last-minute decision to elevate the top civilian Pentagon official overseeing special operations matters, signaling his intent to continue rolling back the policies of the Trump administration.
Austin is weighing the move as he reassigns the senior official who most recently held that special operations role in the Trump administration, and looks to replace another official who served under Trump's former Pentagon chief.
The initial policy change on special operations, made in December by former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, put civilian oversight of America’s commandos on par with the civilian leaders of the military branches. The job had been lower down in the Pentagon’s bureaucracy.
The Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene attracted widespread condemnation – from transgender groups, Democrats and her own party – after she hung a transphobic sign outside her office in response to fellow congresswoman Marie Newman raising a transgender pride flag.
The Georgia congresswoman put up the poster – which read “There are TWO genders: Male & Female. Trust The Science!” – after Newman, whose daughter is transgender and whose office is opposite Greene’s, hung the flag on Wednesday following an impassioned debate on the Equality Act, which Greene tried to block.
She has also called the bill “an attack on God’s creation” and refused to refer to Newman’s daughter as female.
Despite Greene’s attempts to delay a vote on the legislation, which would extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ people, it is expected to pass in the House, after which it will move on to the Senate, where it could face a filibuster. Joe Biden has said if it passes he will sign it into law.
TVNL Comment: Greene is an attack on God's creation. Big time.
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