Andre McPherson has been coming to the Emanuel AME Church here off and on since 2003. His visit on Thursday night was his first in a couple of years, he said with a hint of guilt, but he felt he owed it to the church leaders and congregation to stop by.
In his more trying days when he was homeless, McPherson said, he often found himself at the doorstep of what’s known as “Mother Emanuel.” The Charleston resident credits the historic African-American church with helping him get off of drugs.
“This church helped me get me life together,” McPherson, 44, said through tears. “It helped me go back to my kids. It helped me get away from a certain street mentality. It helped me have pride.”
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An official at the California Labor Commission has taken an axe to Uber’s claim that its drivers are really independent operators and not employees of the tech company.
In an opinion filed in state court Tuesday — and posted here by TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook — Stephanie Barrett, a deputy labor commissioner, challenged the business model that now undergirds much of the transportation industry as well as the so-called sharing economy. In the case, an Uber driver named Barbara Ann Berwick argued the company owed her money for costs she incurred while driving customers around in the car she owned.
In a normal employment relationship, those costs are borne by the boss, not the worker. But Uber considers Berwick an independent contractor, an increasingly common arrangement that shifts certain business expenses onto those doing the work. By using independent contractors, Uber not only doesn’t have to buy SUVs and gasoline, it doesn’t have to worry about payroll taxes or workers’ compensation costs.
The GOP-controlled House passed legislation Tuesday to cut Amtrak’s budget by $242 million, though lawmakers added new funding for video cameras inside locomotive cabs to record engineers and help investigators get to the bottom of crashes such as last month’s deadly derailment in Philadelphia.
Amtrak announced last month it is going to install the cameras after years of delays. The transportation and housing measure approved by a narrow 216-210 vote contains $9 million approved last week to fund the inward-facing camera initiative in the budget year starting in October.
Amtrak is among many domestic programs whose budgets are cut or frozen by the GOP measures, as automatic spending curbs known as sequestration are again hitting federal agencies after two years of relief. Previous House GOP attempts to cut Amtrak over the years have been reversed, and Tuesday’s transportation measure is but an opening move in a longer chess match with the White House over spending levels for agency operating budgets passed annually by Congress.
A grand jury has indicted a former South Carolina police officer in the April shooting of an unarmed black man, the prosecutor announced on Monday.
Former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager, 33, has been charged with murder in the death of Walter Scott, 50.
“I think the people of the 9th circuit elected me to be accountable to them, and that’s what we intend to do,” Charleston County Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said during a news conference following the announcement of the indictment Monday. “They have to know they have someone prosecuting the case who is accountable to them.”
FIFA, the international soccer governing body, could strip Russia and Qatar of their World Cup hosting rights if evidence comes to light there was corruption in the bidding process, a FIFA official said Sunday.
Domenico Scala, the chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, said that 2018 World Cup host Russia and 2022 World Cup host Qatar could be in trouble if allegations of bribery turn out to be true, Reuters reported.
“If evidence should emerge that the awards to Qatar and Russia only came about thanks to bought votes, then the awards could be invalidated,” Scala told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung Sunday. “This evidence has not yet been brought forth.”
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China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers, American officials said Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been compromised.
“The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the statement said.
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Scientists from the University of California at Irvine may have found a way to restore the youthful flexibility of the still-developing brain. In a study on mice recently published in the journal Neuron, the researchers were able to re-activate a younger neural state in an older brain.
Former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer admitted in 2013 to accepting bribes related to South Africa’s 2010 World Cup bid, according to court filings released Wednesday.
Blazer, who worked with the Department of Justice to single out other FIFA officials in connection to corruption charges, told the Eastern District New York Court that he and others on FIFA’s executive committee agreed to take bribes from South Africa in relation to the country’s World Cup bid.
“Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around 1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup,” he told Judge Raymond J. Dearie.
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Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic that’s making headlines around the world. Today, we speak with investigative journalist Anabel Hernández.
As one of Mexico’s leading investigative journalists, Anabel Hernández has dedicated the past decade to investigating her country’s drug war — one of the most dangerous projects a reporter could ask for. Her 2010 book Los señores del narco, translated into English as Narcoland, detailed the extensive government corruption that allowed Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and his Sinaloa cartel to become one of the most powerful criminal enterprises in the world.
Working in partnership with journalist Steve Fisher at The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism , Hernández has also been at the forefront of one of the leading investigative reports into the case of the missing 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college who were attacked by Mexican police in September.
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Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández is seen during a press conference in Mexico City, Nov. 30, 2010. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)
Divers pulled three people alive from inside an overturned cruise ship and searched for other survivors Tuesday, state media said, giving some small hope amid an apparently massive tragedy with well over 400 people still missing on the Yangtze River.
Fifteen people were brought to safety and at least five people were confirmed dead after the Eastern Star capsized in Hubei Province during a severe storm Monday night with 458 people aboard, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The cruise was from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing, and many of those aboard were elderly.
“Looks like we are in trouble,” tour guide Zhang Hui, 43, recalled telling a colleague. In an interview with Xinhua from his hospital bed, he said rain pounded the ship, seeping into cabins, and that heavy listing sent bottles rolling off tables before the ship suddenly went all the way over.
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Rescue workers stand on the capsized ship, center, on the Yangtze River in central China’s Hubei province Tuesday, June 2, 2015. The small cruise ship sank overnight in China’s Yangtze River during a storm, leaving nearly 450 people missing, state media said Tuesday. (Chinatopix via AP)
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.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández is seen during a press conference in Mexico City, Nov. 30, 2010. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)
Rescue workers stand on the capsized ship, center, on the Yangtze River in central China’s Hubei province Tuesday, June 2, 2015. The small cruise ship sank overnight in China’s Yangtze River during a storm, leaving nearly 450 people missing, state media said Tuesday. (Chinatopix via AP)
James' World 2 