| IMPORTANT | | Tennessee Terror | Memphis Grinds to a Halt as Shooter Livestreams Random Attacks Ezekiel Kelly, 19, is in police custody after allegedly killing four in seemingly random attacks across the city Wednesday. Three others have been wounded, including an AutoZone worker whose shooting was livestreamed from Kelly’s Facebook account, now removed. Memphis public transport was suspended for much of the hours-long attack and areas of the city were told to stay indoors. “This is no way for us to live, and it is not acceptable,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said early Thursday after the arrest. The attacks follow a week of horror in the city, including the recent abduction and killing of a local teacher. (Sources: WaPo, Commercial Appeal) |
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| | | It’s Over | Second Suspect in Canadian Knife Rampage Dies in Hospital Myles Sanderson, 32, died of self-inflicted wounds shortly after being taken into Royal Canadian Mounted Police custody. Sanderson died four days after a stabbing spree in western Canada killed 10 and left another 18 injured. The body of his accomplice and brother Damien Sanderson was found Monday near the James Smith Cree Nation community, where many of the victims lived. The death will be a relief to a community gripped by fear and tragedy, but questions still linger. “Now that Myles is deceased we may never have an understanding of that motivation,” Saskatchewan RCMP commanding officer Rhonda Blackmore said. (Source: AP, CBC) |
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| | Build the Case | Bannon to Face New York Courts Over Alleged Wall Grift Steve Bannon, a onetime ally of former President Donald Trump, allegedly pocketed $1 million in donations to the We Build the Wall organization. The group solicited donations to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — including from residents of New York — opening him up to charges in the state. The new charges are similar to those in a federal case that ended after Trump pardoned Bannon on his last day in the White House, although that has no jurisdiction over state charges. He’s expected to turn himself in to New York authorities Thursday. Two others involved in the group have been convicted. (Sources: AP, NYT) |
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| | Race Is On | Bolsonaro's Not-So-Independent Day Waves In Election Final Stretch Brazil celebrated 200 years of independence from Portugal on Wednesday, but incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro appeared more interested in securing his own four years ahead, critics say. Few are surprised by the politicization, with the vote just over three weeks away. “We know that we face a struggle between good and evil, an evil that lasted for 14 years in our country, that almost broke our country and that now wants to return to the scene of the crime,” he told celebrators in Brasilia, referring to leftist candidate and former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, whom Bolsonaro is currently trailing. (Sources: DW, Al Jazeera) |
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| | Briefly | Here are some things you should know about today: They’re done. Albania has severed diplomatic ties with Iran, saying a cyberattack on government websites two months ago originated in Tehran. Diplomatic staff have 24 hours to leave the country. (Source: France24) Finally. Australia has passed its first climate change legislation package in a decade with the support of independent senators and some in the opposition. The bill aims to cut emissions 43% by 2030. (Source: The Guardian) Locked down. Residents of Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, expected to be sprung from lockdown Wednesday. Now, all districts but a handful will have to wait amid rising cases. (Source: Reuters) |
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| | INTRIGUING | | Flame Wars | Is Hot Weather Turning You Into a Twitter Hothead? Researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to analyze 4 billion geolocated tweets from across 773 cities in the U.S. between 2014 and 2020. Around 2% of those English-language tweets — around 75 million — were found to be hateful. The results displayed a clear link between the weather and our temperament online. Temperatures above 107 degrees saw an increase of up to 22% in racist, misogynistic and homophobic tweets, while cold weather dipping below 26 degrees saw up to 12% more mean tweets. The influence held across income levels and political and religious views, the Lancet Planetary Health study found. (Source: The Guardian) |
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| | Battle Lines | Amazon CEO Digs In for Long Union Fight Andy Jassy told a tech conference Wednesday there were “very disturbing irregularities” in the April vote in favor of unionizing an Amazon warehouse in New York. The e-commerce giant is battling the result, but has found little leeway with the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the vote and is set to certify the results. An NLRB representative suggested the board reject 20 recommendations made by Amazon, including allegations of harassment. Jassy saw the certification as a foregone conclusion — “it’s unlikely the NLRB is going to [rule] against themselves” — but suggested Amazon would fight on, saying it will “take a long time to play out.” (Source: Vox) |
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| | Power Play | ‘Rings of Power’ Cast Comes Together to Condemn Racist Attacks “Our world has never been all white, fantasy has never been all white, Middle-earth is not all white,” the cast of Amazon Prime’s new The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series said in a statement following months of racist epithets targeting actors of color, who appear in roles from humans to harfoots, precursors to hobbits. For Tolkien fans, this is just the latest in a history of nefarious political uses of beloved stories. Italian fascists held a Hobbit-themed camp in the 1970s, and neo-Nazis seized on the “white mythos” of the films from the early 2000s. (Sources: Variety, The Conversation) |
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| | Hidden Wounds | In an Indonesian Cave, Evidence of 31,000-Year-Old Amputation The remains of a young person believed to have endured a foot amputation were found in a cave in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Though around the age of 20, the person’s left foot was amputated in childhood, pushing back the clock on the first-known instance of the operation, 24,000 years later. The wound healed well post-surgery, leaving clues in the bones for future researchers and reigniting questions about healthcare in our distant past. Still, the team says, the finding has been bittersweet: “This person — a child — experienced so much pain, even if it was 31,000 years ago,” said Dr. Melandri Vlok. (Source: BBC) |
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| | | You’re Fired! | Chelsea Shows Coach Thomas Tuchel the Door The shock move came as Chelsea was downed 1-0 by Croatian side Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League on Tuesday. “Thomas will rightly have a place in Chelsea’s history after winning the Champions League, the Super Cup and Club World Cup in his time here,” the club said in a statement announcing the decision. Chelsea’s losing no time: Brighton manager Graham Potter is tipped to take up the post imminently. He met with Chelsea owner Todd Boehly in London on Wednesday for “positive talks” about the future of the club — and Potter’s place in it. A formal decision is expected Thursday. (Sources: Euronews, SkySports) |
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