The Full Belmonte, 8/21/2022
“The Supreme Court on Friday sided with Black voters who challenged Georgia’s system of electing members to the state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates public utilities in the state.” Read more at CNN
Trump pushes for un-redacted affidavit’s release, despite the risks
“Former President Trump is pushing for the full, unredacted release of the affidavit that led to the search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago estate, a move that carries risks for both Trump and the Justice Department.
‘Pres. Trump has made his view clear that the American people should be permitted to see the unredacted affidavit related to the raid and break-in of his home,’ Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for the former president, said Thursday after Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said he may be willing to unseal portions of the document.
Reinhart ordered Justice Department officials to suggest redactions to the document by next Thursday….
The rhetoric from Trump and his camp follows a similar playbook, experts say, in which the former president demands the release of potentially sensitive information.
If the government and judge decline to release the full, unredacted document, it allows Trump and his allies to claim federal law enforcement is hiding something, further fueling distrust among Trump supporters.” Read more at The Hill
Louisiana woman faces ‘horrifically cruel’ abortion choice over fetus missing skull
Nancy Davis, denied abortion in home state despite fetus being diagnosed with fatal skull condition, forced to travel for procedure
“A pregnant Louisiana woman faced with either carrying a skull-less fetus to term – for the baby to likely die within hours – or traveling several states away to obtain an abortion has hired a prominent civil rights attorney as she weighs how to move forward.
Nancy Davis, 36, has retained lawyer Ben Crump as she becomes the latest to embody the gut-wrenching decisions some women are being forced to make after the US supreme court’s decision in June to strip away nationwide abortion rights, according to a statement from the attorney’s office.
Davis’s home state is among those that have outlawed abortion with very few exceptions. Davis, from Baton Rouge, said publicly that she tried to have her pregnancy aborted after a 10-week ultrasound revealed that her fetus was missing the top of its skull – a condition known as acrania, which kills babies within minutes or hours of birth.” Read more at The Guardian
“Liz Cheney wants to make sure Donald Trump is never president again — one step at a time. The Wyoming congresswoman lost her bid for reelection this week, but that hasn’t stopped her from plowing ahead with her mission to derail Trump’s political ambitions. The plan includes a new PAC and a possible 2024 run. Here’s a closer look at her three-prong approach.” Read more at NPR
Democrats grapple with possibility of Cheney 2024 bid
“Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) strong signal that she may run for president has Democrats talking about what a pro-democracy, anti-Trump conservative candidate could do to President Biden’s political future.
Cheney, who lost the same House bid she easily won last time, delivered an impassioned concession speech about the dangers of reelecting the former Republican president in 2024. The next morning, she previewed her own possible prospects in a televised interview that added to the speculation that she may seek a White House term herself….
For Cheney, former President Trump and his strain of MAGA culture, as well as his defiance of the nation’s basic principles, is something she will do “whatever it takes” to stop, she told the network. For Democrats, however, her insistence offers something else: a big unknown to what’s already expected to be an unpredictable election cycle.” Read more at The Hill
Richard Vogel/AP
“The U.S. monkeypox vaccine strategy is, well, full of uncertainty. From the jump, a series of missteps left the U.S. with a serious vaccine shortage. Now, as the virus case count soars to over 14,000, the Biden administration is relying on an untested strategy to stretch limited supply: administering a fifth of the normal dose. That’s created a host of worrying hurdles.” Read more at NPR
“Part of a human foot, inside a shoe, found floating in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park this week appears to be related to a death from July, the National Park Service said Friday.
An employee of the Wyoming park found the foot Tuesday in Abyss Pool, part of the West Thumb Geyser Basin in the southern part of the park.
Officials said they believe that the discovery is connected to a July 31 death there and that there was no foul play. The park service declined to provide additional information about the ongoing investigation.
The basin and its parking lot were temporarily closed to visitors after the foot was found, but they have reopened.
The fatality joins more than 20 other deaths in the hot springs of Yellowstone since 1890. Before July, the most recent death was in 2016, when a 23-year-old man walked off a boardwalk and fell into Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest thermal region in the park. In 2000, a person died after falling into a hot spring in Lower Geyser Basin.
Yellowstone is this town’s golden ticket. Climate change risks that.
There also have been at least eight people injured in the past six years, including a 3-year-old child who in 2020 ran off a trail, slipped and fell into a thermal feature. Last year, a woman was burned from her shoulders to her feet after she entered Maiden’s Grave Spring to rescue her dog, who had jumped in.” Read more at Washington Post
“Wendy’s restaurants have been associated with an E. coli outbreakreported in four states, with 37 people infected and 10 hospitalized, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.” Read more at CNN
“Some 27 ships loaded with grain have left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports since August 1 under an export deal brokered by the UN and Turkey, which has laid “the groundwork for a permanent peace environment,” Turkey’s Defense Minister said in a speech on Saturday.” Read more at CNN
Destroyed Russian armored vehicles were paraded yesterday in Kyiv.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, including a drone assault yesterday, appeared on Russian social media, putting domestic pressure on the Kremlin.” Read more at New York Times
Daughter of Putin ally Alexander Dugin killed in car bomb in Moscow
Russian hawks without evidence blame Kyiv for death of Darya Dugina and demand Kremlin response
“The daughter of an ultranationalist Russian ideologue and ally of Vladimir Putin has been killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow.
Darya Dugina, whose father is the Russian political commentator Alexander Dugin, died when the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving was ripped apart by a powerful explosion about 12 miles (20km) west of the capital near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy at about 9.30pm local time (1930 BST), according to investigators.
Prominent Russian hawks without evidence quickly blamed Kyiv for the attack, calling it an assassination attempt and demanding the Kremlin respond by targeting government officials in Kyiv. ‘Decision-making centres!! Decision-making centres!!!’ wrote Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state-funded RT television station, reposting a call to bomb the headquarters of the Ukrainian SBU intelligence agency.
If the car bombing is tied to the war it would mark the first time since February that the violence unleashed on Ukraine has reached the Russian capital, touching the family of a Kremlin ally near one of Moscow’s most exclusive districts.
Kyiv strongly denied the allegations. U’kraine has absolutely nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like Russia, or a terrorist one at that,’ Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in remarks broadcast on television.
The blast occurred near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy just outside Moscow at 9pm local time (1900 BST) on Saturday night, according to investigators, shortly after Dugina left the ‘Tradition’ cultural festival at an estate where her father had given a lecture. The two were expected to leave together but instead got in different cars, a friend said.
Five minutes later a bomb exploded in the car Dugina was driving, killing her immediately.
Witnesses said debris was thrown all over the road as the car was engulfed in flames before crashing into a fence.
Investigators believed the bombing was ‘premeditated and of a contract nature,’ said Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the investigative committee, the main federal investigating authority in Russia.” Read more at The Guardian
“MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somali authorities on Sunday ended a deadly attack in which 21 people were killed and dozens more wounded when gunmen stormed a hotel in the capital.
It took Somali forces more than 30 hours to contain the fighters who had stormed Mogadishu’s Hayat Hotel on Friday evening in an assault that started with loud explosions.
The siege ended around midnight, police commissioner Abdi Hassan Hijar told reporters. ‘During the attack, the security forces rescued many civilians trapped in the hotel, including women and children,’ he said.
Health Minister Dr. Ali Haji Adam reported 21 deaths and 117 people wounded, with at least 15 in critical condition. He noted that some victims may not have been brought to hospitals.
Police are yet to give a detailed explanation of how the attack unfolded and it remains unclear how many gunmen entered the hotel.
Ismail Abdi, the hotel’s manager, told The Associated Press early Sunday that security forces were still working to clear the area. No more gunfire could be heard after 9 a.m. local time. Onlookers gathered outside the gates of the badly damaged hotel on Sunday morning, surveying the scene.” Read more at AP News
“MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s former attorney general was arrested Friday in connection with the violent abduction and likely massacre of 43 students in 2014, a significant breakthrough in one of the most notorious atrocities in modern Mexican history.
He is the first high-level official to be detained in connection to the case, and the authorities said Friday that they had also issued more than 80 arrest warrants related to it, including for military officers, police officers and cartel members.
It was not immediately clear if any of those warrants had led to other arrests, but their sudden announcement came just a day after the Mexican government said an official inquiry had found the disappearance of the students to be a ‘crime of the state’ involving every layer of government.
‘It’s a very big deal,’ said Tyler Mattiace, an Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It shows a willingness and an interest in investigating and prosecuting not only the enforced disappearance of the students, but also the cover-up that happened afterward.”
The arrest of the former attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, outside his home in Mexico City on Friday afternoon sent shock waves across the country. The Mexican prosecutor’s office said he was charged with ‘forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice’ in the case of the students, young men from a teachers’ college in the rural town of Ayotzinapa.
Mr. Murillo oversaw a wide-ranging cover-up of the event, which included testimony obtained through torture, according to the United Nations. A report on the disappearances that Mr. Murillo released in January 2015, calling it the ‘historical truth,’ has been widely discredited by independent experts, and the attorney general resigned shortly after amid criticism of his handling of the case.
His arrest is likely to be seen as a significant win for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who rose to the presidency on a wave of discontent with the previous administration, vowing to tackle corruption and bring those responsible for the students’ disappearance to justice.” Read more at New York Times
Gary Busey charged with sexual offenses at New Jersey convention
Police say charges for US actor, 78, include criminal sexual contact at Monster Mania horror film convention last weekend
“Actor Gary Busey is facing charges of sexual misconduct and harassment stemming from his behavior at a fan convention in New Jersey, police said on Saturday.
Police in Cherry Hill, a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, charged the 78-year-old Busey with two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact, one of attempted criminalses at the annual horror film-focused Monster Mania convention at the Doubletree Hotel from 12 to 14 August in Cherry Hill, police added.
Busey, who lives in Malibu, California, was scheduled as a featured guest for all three days of the event.” Read more at The Guardian
Getty Images
“The idea of ‘quiet quitting’ is sweeping TikTok. It may be impacting your workplace. The phrase refers to the choice to do only your assigned work — and nothing more. But some experts say it’s actually a misnomer for simply setting healthy office boundaries and refusing to be exploited for free extra labor.” Read more at NPR
“Orcas are ambushing sailboats near European coasts. Scientists are perplexed. The killer whales have saddled up to boats and rammed hulls, sending steering wheels spinning. Then they break off, leaving rudders destroyed or, in two of the worst-known encounters, sinking the vessels altogether. It might just be a game the animals are playing.” Read more at NPR
Endangered sea turtles found on Louisiana islands for first time in 75 years
Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, world’s smallest sea turtle species, discovered in Chandeleur Islands off coast of New Orleans
“For the first time in 75 years, hatchlings of the world’s smallest sea turtle species have been discovered on the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of New Orleans.
Wildlife experts at the Breton national wildlife refuge have documented more than 53 turtle crawls and two live hatchlings that were navigating towards the sea, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority announced in a press statement this week.
The news was particularly uplifting for environmentalists because the hatchlings were Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, an endangered species that also happens to be the world’s smallest sea turtle. The turtles are predominantly found in the Gulf, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” Read more at The Guardian
“A ‘de-extinction’ company wants to genetically resurrect the Tasmanian tiger, a dog-like marsupial that went extinct in 1936. Should they?” Read more at NPR