Friday, Dec 12th
Last update08:39:16 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, overwhelmingly lost his bid to lead the D.C. Bar Association in a race with record turnout, the organization announced Monday.
Bondi, who is global co-chair of the law firm Paul Hastings’s investigations and white-collar defense practice, earned just 3,490 votes, or 9.1 percent, in the D.C. Bar’s presidential election. His opponent, employment lawyer Diane Seltzer, won 34,982 votes, or 90.9 percent.
A cryptocurrency investor was arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on Saturday morning and charged with kidnapping an Italian man and then beating and torturing him for several weeks, allegedly to extract cryptocurrency passwords.
The 37-year-old crypto investor, John Woeltz, was arrested on Friday after allegedly torturing the man in a swanky home in the upscale Manhattan neighborhood of Soho. The victim reportedly escaped the five-story home on Friday and sought help from the police, who later arrested Woeltz.
Three people were killed and seven others, including two children, were missing after a small boat capsized in choppy waters off the coast of San Diego, California, on Monday.
The fatal disaster appeared to be an apparent migrant smuggling attempt, officials said. Four other people were rescued after the “panga”-style open fishing vessel washed ashore near Torrey Pines state beach were transported to hospital, according to US Coast Guard officials.
A search was ongoing for the seven people who remained unaccounted for, said a Coast Guard spokesperson, chief petty officer Levi Read. He said two children were believed to be among the missing. Of the four rescued from the panga capsizing, one was listed in critical condition when rescued, according to a statement from the city of Encinitas.
A federal judge has stopped Texas A&M’s board from banning drag shows on campus.
Lee H. Rosenthal, who was appointed as a federal judge by former President George H. W. Bush, wrote a Memorandum and Opinion on Monday that any student who finds the “Draggieland” performance “offensive has a simple remedy: don’t go.”
“The Board, and some members of the A&M community, are offended by the Draggieland performance,” Rosenthal wrote. “To ban the performance from taking place on campus because it offends some members of the campus community is precisely what the First Amendment prohibits.”
When 21-year-old Jefferson arrived in the U.S. in December, a case manager from a resettlement agency met him at the airport and took him straight to an apartment. Within a month, the manager also helped him land a job operating a machine that packs lettuce.
Jefferson's new life in America was taking shape. Then suddenly, in late January, his case manager disappeared.
"I was left alone, with no one to provide guidance in this new country," he says, speaking in Spanish because he doesn't yet know much English.
It turned out the case manager had been let go — and their work phone shut down — after the Trump administration froze refugee resettlement.
Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa's deaths at their New Mexico home Wednesday are being described as "suspicious," according to a search warrant released Thursday.
In the filing, Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office Detective Roy Arndt says the couple were found in different rooms in their sprawling Santa Fe home, where the two-time Oscar winner, 95, retreated to for a lowkey life after leaving Hollywood.
Authorities found the actor was in a mudroom near his cane, appearing to have fallen, while wife Arakawa, 64, was found in an open bathroom near a space heater, according to the warrant.
An open prescription bottle and pills were scattered on the nearby countertop, the warrant says. A deputy observed Arakawa with "body decomposition, bloating in her face" and mummification of her hands and feet.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to decide whether a permanent voting ban on people convicted of felonies in Mississippi is cruel and unusual punishment.
The court, in 2023, had also rejected a different challenge to the state’s voting restriction that was based on the fact it was drafted in 1890 as part of a racist effort to disenfranchise Black voters.
Mississippi is one of eleven states that doesn't automatically restore voting rights after convicted felons finish their sentences.
Voting rights experts say Mississippi’s restrictions are among the harshest because the state bans voting by first-time offenders who commit non-violent felonies. And the process for restoring the right is onerous.
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