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Trump asks top Georgia court to toss election prosecutor

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

By Kate Brumback | Associated PressATLANTA — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are asking Georgia’s highest court to prevent the district attorney who has been investigating his actions in the wake of the 2020 election from prosecuting him and to throw out a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry.Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested that she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.Trump’s Georgia legal team on Friday filed similar petitions in the Georgia Supreme Court and Fulton County Superior Court naming Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, as respondents. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. McBurney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment....

NY architect charged with three deaths linked to serial killer

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

By Michael Balsamo and Jake Offenhartz | Associated PressRIVERHEAD, NY — A Long Island architect has been charged with murder in the deaths of three of the 11 victims in a long-unsolved string of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders.Rex Heuermann, 59, has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found. He is charged with first and second degree murder in connection with the deaths of three victims, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Authorities say he is also the “prime suspect” in another killing.Heuermann was taken into custody in Massapequa late Thursday, near where investigators were seen searching his home Friday. He is expected to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state court in Riverhead.A message seeking comment was left with his lawyer. Voice and email messages were left at Heuermann’s Manhattan office and at possible numbers for his home and family Friday.Suffolk County prosecutors are asking that Heuermann be hel...

New Orleans legend Chief Adjuah returns to Bay Area for Stanford Jazz Fest

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

As the scion of an illustrious clan at the center of Black New Orleans culture, Chief Adjuah knows first-hand that it’s never too early to start passing on the tradition.The award-winning trumpeter, composer and bandleader who started his career as Christian Scott is back in the Bay Area with a band powered by 24-year-old Elé Howell, the latest step in a relationship that started when the drummer was in the first grade.They’ve stayed in close contact over the years, and Adjuah started featuring Howell at his Stretch Music Festivals after the drummer moved to New York to study at Manhattan School of Music in 2016.“I’m just floored at what he’s been able to put together, the languages of drumming he’s developed,” said Adjuah, 40.The son of Bay Area tenor sax master Richard Howell, Elé first encountered Adjuah as a 6-year-old who was spending so much time at Yoshi’s that he knew the door codes to get back stage.“I’d run around and bug everybody,” he recalled. “But Christian was super c...

Berkeley Thai restaurateurs bring new restaurant to their Richmond neighborhood

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

Anukool Manonuek is one of two brothers originally from Thailand who is behind the new Prajam Thai restaurant in Richmond. (Courtesy Anukool Manonuek.) The goal of the two brothers behind Richmond’s newest Thai restaurant —  for it to become a regular hangout spot in the community — is embedded in the restaurant’s name.Their new spot, called Prajam, translates in Thai to “usually” or “often.” They want it to be their neighborhood’s go-to Thai eatery, a place where people feel comfortable hanging out, according to co-owner Anukool Manonuek.Since immigrating to the U.S., Manonuek and his brother, Christopher Sacheia, have worked in the Thai restaurant industry in Berkeley. From the northern Thailand region of Chiang Mai, Sacheia came to the U.S. about 20 years ago, starting Chris Thai, which has since closed, and Berkeley Thai House.The brothers bought a home in Richmond about five years ago and wanted to open a restaurant clo...

Reparations are proposed for Black Californians. What about Indigenous people?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

Tyrone Beason | (TNS) Los Angeles TimesLOS ANGELES — For Angela Mooney D’Arcy and other Indigenous Californians, a spirit of racial trauma hangs over some of the richest and most storied stretches of the Golden State.California —like all of the Americas — is built on a stolen world, D’Arcy says.The glamorous ocean-view houses of Malibu sit where the Chumash fished, hunted, played and performed rituals.Every home run at Dodger Stadium soars over the ancestral grounds of “the people of the willow houses,” as the Tongva were known.The luxury subdivisions, country clubs and surfing havens of Orange County occupy the heartland of the Acjachemen people — including D’Arcy’s ancestors — who believe their creator placed them at the edge of the Pacific at the dawn of time.While countering repeated attempts to render them invisible, D’Arcy says, Indigenous people also felt a moral duty to look after the welfare of others within their reach. It’s ...

Two more FCI Dublin correctional officers charged in burgeoning sexual abuse scandal

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

DUBLIN — Two more correctional officers at Dublin’s scandal-ridden federal women’s prison have pleaded guilty to sexually abusing about a dozen inmates and then trying to cover it up.Nakie Nunley, 48, and Andrew Jones, 35, admitted to repeatedly having sex with women at Federal Correctional Institution Dublin throughout 2020 and 2021, and then lying to investigators about it, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Friday.Their cases add to a burgeoning “rape club” scandal at the prison — bringing to eight the number of prison employees who have either been indicted or convicted of abusing women at the facility. The abuse appears to have happened at nearly every level of the prison, from rank-and-file officers up to senior leadership.In March, the prison’s former warden, Ray J. Garcia, was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing inmates and showing them pictures of his penis. When approa...

Map: Pika Fire closes Yosemite trails; smoke reaches hazardous level

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

A wildfire burning near Yosemite Valley has prompted closure of some trails and caused poor air quality, park officials said.The Pika Fire, started by lightning on June 29, had burned 50 acres near North Dome as of Thursday, July 13, the National Park Service said.The map above shows the trail and forest closures that were announced Tuesday, July 11, including parts of the Yosemite Falls, Snow Creek and North Dome trails.Yosemite National Park is warning of smoky conditions. Early Friday, July 14, the Air Quality Index at Yosemite Village exceeded 300, considered hazardous, because of high levels of particulate matter.Yosemite Valley and other low-elevation areas of the park are expected to reach temperatures of more than 100 degrees this weekend. The park is urging caution near rivers and creeks, which are running unusually high and cold during the melting of the winter’s deep snowpack.Tioga Road (Highway 120) remains closed, as snow is still being cleared. There is no estima...

Employee who set teen on fire at Michigan convenience store sentenced

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

By Kara Berg | The Detroit NewsBefore the man who lit him on fire last year was sentenced, the now-18-year-old Riverview, Michigan man told the court he prayed no one, including his attacker, had to experience the pain he went through in the past 13 months.Mazin Shaya. (Riverview Police Department) Mazin Shaya, an employee at Victor’s Market in Riverview, lit the teen on fire when he came into the party store during his lunch break at Riverview Community High School in June 2022. Police said witnesses indicated the boy’s backpack was leaking and soaked in lighter fluid and Shaya wanted to see if the fluid was flammable. He held the lighter near the teen and lit it, igniting his shirt.“I remember few things of the incident,” the teen said Friday during Shaya’s sentencing hearing. “Mazin said the burn only looked like a sunburn. … It was as if I was in front of evil itself.”Shaya was sentenced to two years of probation, the first 63 days ...

All lanes back open after injury crash on 680 in Danville

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

(KRON) -- All lanes are back open on northbound Interstate 680 in Danville following an injury crash north of Sycamore Valley Road, according to the California Highway Patrol. Motorists were earlier advised to expect delays and use alternate routes. These Bay Area cities could hit 100 degrees this weekend An image from a Caltrans camera showed traffic backed up on the freeway as a result of the crash.Earlier, it had been reported that all lanes were blocked as a resulted of the crash. There is no estimated time for the roadway to reopen.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Effort to recall Alameda County District Attorney Price ramps up

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:48:00 GMT

(KRON) -- Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is facing a recall effort organized by critics who assert she's letting too many violent criminals off the hook. Price was elected on a platform pledging to reform the District Attorney's Office with progressive criminal justice reforms. A pillar of her restorative justice policies includes the theory that lengthy prison sentences do not create safer communities. "If putting people away for 75 years made our county more safe, then we’d be the safest county, and the safest country, in the world," Price previously told KRON4. This week a committee called "Save Alameda For Everyone (SAFE): Recall DA Price" filed campaign finance paperwork with the county elections office in an effort to launch a recall. "DA Price is the People’s DA. She remains undeterred by this undemocratic effort and will continue to focus on enacting the reforms county voters mandated. The people handily elected her to implement criminal justice reform and mak...