Biden to designate 1908 Springfield race riot site as national monument

Teresa Haley, a consultant, activist and former president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP, reacts as she speaks, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, in Springfield, Ill, at right is Sontae Massey, cousin of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old black woman who was shot by a sheriff's deputy in her home after she called 911 for help. (AP)
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Updated 15 August 2024
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Biden to designate 1908 Springfield race riot site as national monument

  • The designation by Biden doesn’t create a marker, although a memorial for the centennial stands in downtown’s Union Square Park

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois: President Joe Biden is set to sign a proclamation Friday to designate a national monument at the Springfield, Illinois, site of the 1908 race riot, which later fueled the formation of the NAACP.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday that the ceremony will be held Friday in the Oval Office and will feature civil rights leaders and community leaders from Springfield, President Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.
The ceremony comes just 5 1/2 weeks after the shooting death of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by a white sheriff’s deputy in her Springfield home after she called 911 for help. Massey’s family members and supporters gathered Wednesday for a news conference in a continuing quest to see that justice is done in prosecuting the deputy, Sean Grayson, who is charged with first-degree murder in her death.
“People are starting to take notice because it is an untold story,” Teresa Haley, former president of the Springfield NAACP, said of the riot. “It’s a deep, dark, dirty secret that Springfield is scared of.”.
“It’s tragic. It’s unfortunate that it comes on the heels of Sonya Massey, but let’s say her name — Sonya Massey — and if it takes the president, the vice president and everyone else to recognize that and make this happen, it’s about time,” continued Haley, who founded of Visions 1908, a civil rights, social and economic justice and educational advocacy group
The designation by Biden doesn’t create a marker, although a memorial for the centennial stands in downtown’s Union Square Park. But Haley has been pushing a large, reflective, walk-through memorial on the site of the foundations of five of the original homes burned in the riots that were unearthed during railroad work in 2014. That project awaits funding.
In August 1908, mobs of white residents tore through Illinois’ capital city under the pretext of meting out judgment against two Black men — one jailed on a sexual assault charge involving a white woman, and the other jailed in the separate murder of a white man.
After authorities secretly moved the prisoners from the jail and sent them to another lockup miles away, the mob took out their anger on the city’s Black population. Over the next few days, two innocent Black men were hanged, dozens of homes and businesses in Springfield’s majority-Black neighborhoods were burned to the ground, and families were forced to flee.
The National Guard was called in to restore order. White rioters were charged, but later acquitted for their roles in the lynching and destruction.
At least eight white people were killed in the violence and more than 100 were injured, mostly by members of the state’s militia or each other, according to news articles from that period. It’s not known how many Black people were injured and killed.
Fed-up civil rights leaders met in New York and chose the centennial of Lincoln’s birthday, Feb. 12, 1909, to form the NAACP, whose original board included scholar W.E.B. DuBois.
Sontae Massey, who was very close to his cousin Sonya Massey, said the family is descended from William Donegan, an 84-year-old cobbler, married to a white woman, who was lynched the first night of the riot. Now, the current generation is dealing with the tragic loss of another family member.
“It’s ironic that we are now at the very foundation of what this family has stood for for hundreds of years. We will continue to make change across America. This is just the beginning,” Massey said. “It’s appropriate. We have been the catalysts of change since 1908. We’re continuing the tradition.”
The Springfield attack came more than a decade before at least 25 documented attacks by white people against Black people during the summer of 1919, later called “Red Summer ” for the bloodshed.
Two years later, a white mob looted and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood district, killing as many as 300 Black residents. Biden traveled to Tulsa in 2021 to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre.
Jean-Pierre called the Springfield riot a “horrific attack by a white mob on a Black community” and said that civil rights leaders have worked to highlight what occurred “to spark national action on civil rights.” She promised that the White House would provide further details ahead of the official announcement on Friday.
In 2020, the site of the riot near downtown Springfield was added to the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network, a collection of places and programs that outline the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Federal grants are available for the sites.
“While the 1908 Springfield race riot demonstrates our nation’s deep history of racial violence, it also sparked the creation of the NAACP — reflecting the strength and resilience of Black Americans in the tireless fight for civil rights,” said US Rep. Nikki Budzinski, whose office said she urged Biden to designate the monument. “Today’s announcement is a critical step forward to honor those who were killed in the 1908 attack and acknowledge the impact this tragedy had.”


German president urges unity after ‘dark shadow’ of Christmas market attack

Updated 24 December 2024
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German president urges unity after ‘dark shadow’ of Christmas market attack

  • Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong”

BERLIN: Germany’s president said Tuesday that a deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market had cast a “dark shadow” over this year’s celebrations but urged the nation not to be driven apart by extremists.
In his traditional Christmas address, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sought to issue a message of healing four days after the brutal attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg killed five people and left over 200 wounded.
“A dark shadow hangs over this Christmas,” said the head of state, pointing to the “pain, horror and bewilderment over what happened in Magdeburg just a few days before Christmas.”
He made a call for national unity as a debate about security and immigration is flaring again: “Hatred and violence must not have the final word. Let’s not allow ourselves to be driven apart. Let’s stand together.”
His words came a day after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) held what it called a memorial rally for the victims in Magdeburg, where one speaker demanded that Germany “must close the borders.”
Nearby an anti-extremist initiative was held under the motto “Don’t Give Hate a Chance.”
Steinmeier recognized that there was a “great deal of dissatisfaction about politics” in Germany but insisted that “our democracy is and remains strong.”
A Saudi doctor, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, 50, was arrested Friday at the scene of the attack in which a rented SUV plowed at high speed through the crowd of revellers, bringing death and chaos to the festive event.
His motive still remains unclear, days after Germany’s deadliest attack in years.
Abdulmohsen has in his many online posts voiced strongly anti-Islam views, anger at German authorities and support for far-right conspiracy narratives on the “Islamization” of Europe.
News outlet Der Spiegel reported he wrote on social media platform X in May that he expected to die “this year” and was seeking “justice” at any cost.
Investigators found his will in the BMW that he used in the attack, the outlet said — he stated that everything he owned was to go to the German Red Cross, and it contained no political messages.
Die Welt daily, citing unnamed security sources, said that Abdulmohsen had been treated for a mental illness in the past, thought this was not immediately confirmed by authorities.
The attack has fueled an already bitter debate on migration and security in Germany, two months before national elections and with the far-right AfD party riding high in opinion polls.
The government is facing mounting questions about possible errors and missed warnings about Abdulmohsen, who was arrested next to the battered BMW sports utility vehicle.
Saudi Arabia said it had repeatedly warned Germany about its citizen, who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status 10 years later.
A source close to the Saudi government told AFP that the kingdom had sought his extradition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has pledged to fully investigate whether there were security lapses before the attack.
The Saudi suspect has been remanded in custody in a top-security facility on five counts of murder and 205 of attempted murder, prosecutors said, but not so far on terrorism-related charges.
German Christmas markets have been specially secured since a jihadist attacker rammed a truck through a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, killing 13 people.
The Magdeburg event too had been shielded by barricades, but the attacker managed to exploit a five-meter gap when he steered the car into the site and then raced into the unsuspecting crowd.
Steinmeier offered his condolences for relatives of those injured and killed “in such a terrible way” — when the attack killed a nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45 to 75.
“You are not alone in your pain,” he told the hundreds of affected families. “The people throughout our country feel for you and mourn with you.”


Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons

Updated 24 December 2024
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Legendary drug lord Fabio Ochoa is deported to Colombia after spending two decades in US prisons

  • Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade

BOGOTÁ, Colombia: One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cartel has been deported back to the South American country, after serving 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the United States.
Fabio Ochoa arrived in Bogota’s El Dorado airport on a deportation flight on Monday, wearing a grey sweatshirt and carrying his personal belongings in a plastic bag.
After stepping out of the plane, the former cartel boss was met by immigration officials in bullet proof vests. There were no police on site to detain him — an indication he may not have any pending cases in Colombian courts.
In a brief statement, Colombia’s national immigration agency said Ochoa should be able to enter Colombia “without any problems,” once he is cleared by immigration officers who will check for any outstanding cases against the former drug trafficker.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to US authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires.
Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar. Escobar died in a shootout with authorities in Medellin in 1993.
Ochoa was first indicted in the US for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Barry Seal, an American pilot who flew cocaine flights for the Medellin cartel, but became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Along with his two older brothers, Juan David and Jorge Luis, Ochoa turned himself in to Colombian authorities in the early 1990s under a deal in which they avoided being extradited to the US
The three brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested again three years later for drug trafficking and was extradited to the US in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy.
He was the only suspect in that group who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and a 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
Ochoa’s name has faded from popular memory as Mexican drug traffickers take center stage in the global drug trade.
But the former member of the Medellin cartel was recently depicted in the Netflix series Griselda, where he first fights the plucky businesswoman Griselda Blanco for control of Miami’s cocaine market, and then makes an alliance with the drug trafficker, played by Sofia Vergara.
Ochoa is also depicted in the Netflix series Narcos, as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family that is into ranching and horse breeding and cuts a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant US attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that the former mafia boss will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press earlier this month.


Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says

Updated 24 December 2024
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Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says

  • “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said

WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington after developing a fever.
The 78-year-old was admitted in the “afternoon for testing and observation,” Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.
“He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Urena said.
Clinton, a Democrat who served two terms as president from January 1993 until January 2001, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this summer and campaigned ahead of November’s election for the unsuccessful White House bid of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

 


Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck

Updated 24 December 2024
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Greek lawyers call for further investigation into 2023 deadly shipwreck

  • “The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them

ATHENS: Greek lawyers representing the survivors and victims of a deadly 2023 shipwreck said on Monday a naval court needed to examine more evidence after a preliminary investigation failed to shed light on the case.
Hundreds died on June 14, 2023, when an overcrowded fishing trawler, monitored by the Greek coast guard for several hours, capsized and sank in international waters off the southwestern Greek coastal town of Pylos.
A local naval court, which opened a criminal investigation last year, has concluded a preliminary investigation and referred the case to a chief prosecutor, the lawyers said on Monday, adding they had reviewed the evidence examined by the court so far.
“The case file contains serious gaps and omissions,” they said in a statement, adding that the captain and the crew of the coast guard vessel monitoring the migrant ship had been summoned by the court, but not the coast guard officials supervising them.
Evidence, including the record of communications between the officials involved in the operation, was not included in the case file, they added.
“The absence of any investigation into the responsibilities of the competent search and rescue bodies and the leadership of the Greek coast guard is deafening,” they said.
The chief prosecutor will decide if and how the probe will progress.
Under Greek law, prosecutors are not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations.
The vessel, which had set off from Libya, was carrying up to 700 Pakistani, Syrian and Egyptian migrants bound for Italy. Only 104 people were rescued and 82 bodies found.
Greece’s coast guard has denied any role in the sinking, which was one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea.

 


Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120

Updated 23 December 2024
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Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120

  • The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population

MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.

The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.

The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.

Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.

Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.

“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.

Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”

Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.

The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.

“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,

“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.

The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.

Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.