In what is a perceived legal blow for prosecutors, the jury was hung and the judge declared a mistrial in the trial of Baltimore police officer William Porter in the case of Freddie Gray’s death after sustaining injuries while in custody.
Porter was charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office in the April 19th death of Gray, who died a week after his neck was broken during a ride in the back of a police van. Gray’s death and the subsequent unrest in Baltimore brought to the fore long simmering tensions in Baltimore and across the nation over socioeconomic disparity and the relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve.
Prosecutors considered Porter’s case key to help strengthening the case against van driver Caesar Goodson, Jr. It was also seen as a signal of how the trials of the other five officers could go.
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An undated image of Freddie Gray provided by the family’s attorney via WBAL
The weather’s been positively toasty across much of the east coast over the past several days, especially for a December. In New York, Sunday temperatures shattered a 30-year-old record, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And the month has been chock-full of 60-plus days.
So what’s going on? Is this a climate change thing, or a welcome boon from the ongoing El Nino tropical weather event? The answer actually lies with a buzzword from 2014’s equally extreme temperatures: the polar vortex.
Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, said last week the band of cold air surrounding the arctic — called the “Arctic Oscillation” — is particularly tight right now. During the polar vortex, pressure changes in that band of air caused it to slow and slip down towards America, bringing with it a wave of Arctic air that led to well below zero temperatures.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
After two weeks of tense talks, word-wrangling and marathon overnight meetings, diplomats in Paris agreed to a global climate change accord on Saturday evening — a day after the summit’s scheduled conclusion.
Leaders and experts cheered the historic agreement that emerged from the 21st Conference of the Parties, or COP21, calling it ambitious and realistic, and a crucial step in protecting the Earth for future generations.
“The decisive deal for the planet is here,” French President François Hollande told delegates Saturday morning, shortly before releasing the final draft. Outside, thousands of protesters had begun filling Paris streets in an appeal for a strong climate pact.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Republican officials and leading figures in the party’s establishment are preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as businessman Donald Trump continues to sit atop the polls in the GOP presidential race.
More than 20 of them convened Monday near the Capitol for a dinner held by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and the prospect of Trump nearing next year’s nominating convention in Cleveland with a significant number of delegates dominated the discussion, according to five people familiar with the meeting.
Weighing in on that scenario as Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) listened, several longtime Republican power brokers argued that if the controversial billionaire storms through the primaries, the party’s establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight in which the GOP’s mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative, the people said.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
There are now more low-income and high-income Americans combined than there are people in the middle class, a study released Wednesday found.
According to a Pew Research Center report, there were 120.8 million adults living in middle-income households and 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined in early 2015, marking the first time in the center’s four decades of tracking this data that the size of the latter groups has transcended that of the first.
The study defines middle income as adults earning two-thirds to double the national median, which translates today to somewhere between $42,000 and $126,000 a year for a three-person household.
Officials say two male Afghan nationals being trained at an Air Force base in Georgia have gone missing.
In a news release issued Tuesday night, base officials said the two students didn’t report on Monday to “their regular maintenance training” with the 81st Fighter Squadron at Moody Air Force base, located near Valdosta, about 230 miles south of Atlanta.
The release notes that the two men have been at Moody since February 2015 and “were screened prior to their arrival in the United States more than a year ago.”
An 81st Fighter Squadron pilot starts the engine in an A-29 Super Tucano Jan. 8, 2015, at Moody Air Force Base, Ga. Afghan student pilots have been training on these aircrafts since earlier this year.
The double-amputee Olympian now faces at least 15 years in jail — a new sentence will be handed down at a later date.
Judge Aubrey Ledwaba set bail at 10,000 rand ($688) Tuesday after defense lawyer Barry Roux told the court in Pretoria that the athlete agreed to remain on house arrest but with “stricter provisions.”
Pistorius’ bail is a fraction of the $113,000 bail he paid when he first appeared in court for the fatal shooting.
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Oscar Pistorius leaves the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, South Africa, after he was granted bail on Tuesday. SYDNEY SESHIBEDI / Reuters
Cattle in the U.S. are now the fattest they’ve ever been, signaling an end to the seven-year run of record beef prices just as losses begin to mount for American feedlot owners.
Tom Fanning, who manages a feedlot herd of 30,000 in Buffalo, Oklahoma, says he loses $100 to $300 on each animal he sells to slaughtering plants, even though they are bigger and produce more meat than ever. Its worse for other producers. On average, industry losses began in December and ballooned to $420 a head this month, the Livestock Marketing Information Center estimates.
Cattle futures have plunged 23 percent from an all-time high a year ago as the U.S. herd began a long-awaited expansion and consumers switched to cheaper chicken and pork. That’s squeezed feedlot owners who buy year-old steers and raise them on a diet of mostly corn for more than four months. To ease the pain, operators like Fanning are taking advantage of ample, low- cost grain supplies by holding cattle for almost a month longer than normal, which means the animals get bigger and generate more revenue.
Despite last Friday’s shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, women’s reproductive rights faced a new threat Thursday when the U.S. Senate moved forward with its decision to end all of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.
Though Democrats advocated for retaining the funding, Republicans took the party-line vote at 54-46; the move is part of the Republican Party’s continued attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The White House has stated that President Barack Obama will veto the ruling.
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U.S. Senate moved forward with its decision to end all of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding
Americans were exposed to the terror of mass gun violence again on Wednesday, this time at a social services center in San Bernardino, California. The initial reports revealed a distressingly familiar pattern: A heavily armed active shooter or shooters, at least 14 people dead and more injured, harrowing images of law enforcement and first responders rushing to get the area under control, and stunned people — some of them wounded and bleeding — streaming out of the facility.
It seems like we’ve seen this time and time again. But mass shootings occur even more frequently than many people realize, because most of them don’t make the national news.
Over on Reddit, the Guns Are Cool community has compiled a list of every U.S. mass shooting this year. According to their count, Wednesday’s burst of violence was the 355th this year.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Cattle
U.S. Senate moved forward with its decision to end all of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding
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James' World 2 