For immigrants, still no word on when they will be reunited
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Two days after President Donald Trump ordered an end to the separation of families at the border, federal authorities Friday cast about for jail space to detain them together, leaving hundreds of parents in the dark on when they would be reunited with their children.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a notice saying it is looking into creating 15,000 beds for use in detaining immigrant families. A day earlier, the Pentagon agreed to provide space for as many as 20,000 migrants on U.S. military bases.
Beyond that, however, there was nothing but frustration and worry for many of the parents separated from their children and placed in detention centres for illegally entering the country over the past several weeks.
Some parents struggled to get in touch with youngsters being held in many cases hundreds of miles away, in places like New York and the Chicago area. Some said they didn’t even know where their children were.
Trump himself took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling “phoney stories of sadness and grief.” He met with parents who had children killed by immigrants in the country illegally to make the point that they are the real victims of weak borders.
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AP Fact Check: Trump’s take on immigrant crime off mark
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump got some crime and immigration statistics right Friday but was off the mark on others in an appearance with those he calls “angel families” — people who lost loved ones at the hands of those living in the country illegally.
A look at how his statements compare with the facts:
TRUMP:
“So here are just a few statistics on the human toll of illegal immigration. According to a 2011 government report, the arrests attached to the criminal alien population included an estimated 25,000 people for homicide, 42,000 for robbery, nearly 70,000 for sex offences, and nearly 15,000 for kidnapping. In Texas alone, within the last seven years, more than a quarter million criminal aliens have been arrested and charged with over 600,000 criminal offences. You don’t hear that.”
THE FACTS:
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First lady’s ‘don’t care’ jacket is a gift to memers online
NEW YORK (AP) — I really don’t care, do u?
Perhaps one day first lady Melania Trump will use her own words to illuminate her fashion “don’t care” message. Until that theoretical moment, we have the memes on one of the digisphere’s most perfect blank canvases: Her green $39 jacket — one so five seasons ago, no less.
Tony European labels have been more Mrs. Trump’s de rigueur, until Thursday’s trip to a Texas centre housing some of the more than 2,300 migrant children sent there after their families entered the U.S. illegally. When the first lady left Washington and returned, it was in the Zara jacket with the message heard ’round the interwebs scrawled graffiti-style in white block letters on the back. (She switched to a different jacket for the visit)
It’s the back, where “I really don’t care, do u?” was placed by the global mass market brand Zara, that has become social media’s playground, from the compassionate to the downright raunchy. Whatever Mrs. Trump may or may not have intended — her spokeswoman declared “it’s a jacket” with “no hidden message” — the outerwear’s doctored image not only spread rapidly among those looking to sound off, but to raise money benefiting children like those the first lady visited.
If Mrs. Trump’s jacket, from Zara’s spring-summer 2016 collection, was some sort of counter-message, or a clear diss of the “fake news media” as her husband tweeted, the memes’ clear winner is a reconfiguring to read, simply: “I really do care, do you?” Other messages shouted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: “Rise up” and “I have no idea what I’m doing.” One was a wordy trope about the wearer’s racial, sexual and immigrant background.
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Cohen’s photo with Tom Arnold fuels Trump tape speculation
LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen retweeted a photo of himself with comedian Tom Arnold, who is working on a TV show to hunt down recordings of the president, fueling speculation Friday that Cohen has secret tapes of Trump and is willing to share them.
Last month, Vice Media announced that Arnold would be featured in a new show called “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes” and would investigate rumoured recordings of the president.
Arnold told NBC News on Friday that he met with Cohen at the Lowes Regency Hotel in Manhattan and they discussed the new show.
“We’ve been on the other side of the table and now we’re on the same side,” Arnold told NBC. “It’s on! I hope he (Trump) sees the picture of me and Michael Cohen and it haunts his dreams.”
Arnold tweeted the photo with Cohen and the caption “I love New York” on Thursday night and Cohen retweeted it without comment.
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Justices adopt digital-age privacy rules to track cellphones
WASHINGTON (AP) — Police generally need a warrant to look at records that reveal where cellphone users have been, the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a big victory for privacy interests in the digital age.
The justices’ 5-4 decision marks a big change in how police may obtain information that phone companies collect from the ubiquitous cellphone towers that allow people to make and receive calls, and transmit data. The information has become an important tool in criminal investigations.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the court’s four liberals, said cellphone location information “is detailed, encyclopedic and effortlessly compiled.” Roberts wrote that “an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements” as they are captured by cellphone towers.
Roberts said the court’s decision is limited to cellphone tracking information and does not affect other business records, including those held by banks. He also wrote that police still can respond to an emergency and obtain records without a warrant.
But the dissenting conservative justices, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, cast doubt on Roberts’ claim that the decision was limited. Each wrote a dissenting opinion and Kennedy said in his that the court’s “new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement” and “keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.”
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Man charged in bike path killings speaks in court of ‘Allah’
NEW YORK (AP) — The man charged with murdering eight people on a New York City bike path and injuring many more spoke out in court Friday over a prosecutor’s objection, invoking “Allah” and defending the Islamic State.
Sayfullo Saipov, 30, raised his hand to speak immediately after U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick set an Oct. 7, 2019 date for the Uzbek immigrant’s trial.
Earlier, he had pleaded not guilty through his lawyer to the latest indictment in the Oct. 31 truck attack near the World Trade Center. A prosecutor said the Justice Department will decide by the end of the summer whether to seek the death penalty against Saipov, who lived in Paterson, New Jersey, before the attack.
Speaking through an interpreter for about 10 minutes, Saipov said the decisions of a U.S. court were unimportant to him. He said he cared about “Allah” and the holy war being waged by the Islamic State.
At the prompting of Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Houle, Broderick interrupted Saipov to read him his rights, including that anything he said in court could be used against him.
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Lawsuits challenge efforts to push abstinence-only on teens
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Several affiliates of Planned Parenthood sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Friday over its efforts to impose an abstinence-only focus on its Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program that has served more than 1 million young people.
The lawsuits were filed in federal courts in New York City and Spokane, Washington, by four different Planned Parenthood affiliates covering New York City and the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska and Washington.
Planned Parenthood says the lawsuits are intended to protect the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program from what they termed ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculums.
“Young people have the right to the information and skills they need to protect their health,” Dawn Laguens said in a press release, vice-president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The Trump-Pence administration is trying to impose their abstinence-only agenda on young people across the country.”
Evidence shows such programs do not work, Laguens said.
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From boat makers to farmers, US-led tariff war inflicts pain
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Florida boat builder absorbs $4 million in lost business and expects more pain. An Ohio pork producer is losing access to a vital export market and fears the damage will last years. A motorcycle shop near Cologne, Germany, wonders if it even has a future.
A brawl that the United States provoked with its closest trading partners is starting to draw blood. On Friday, the European Union began imposing tariffs on $3.4 billion in American goods — from whiskey and motorcycles to peanuts and cranberries — to retaliate for President Donald Trump’s own tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. China, India and Turkey had earlier begun penalizing American products in response to the U.S. tariffs on metals.
“We’re bleeding pretty bad right now,” said Jim Heimerl, a pork producer in Johnstown, Ohio.
Pork producers like Heimerl are already suffering from plunging prices and reduced income since China’s move to impose a 25 per cent tariff on American pork in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
If the trade rift doesn’t worsen, the damage to the overall economy will likely be modest, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. But no one can say that the economic harm will end soon.
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Nearly 400 people used California assisted death law in 2017
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California health officials reported Friday that 374 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in 2017, the first full year after a law made the option legal.
The California Department of Public Health said 577 people received aid-in-dying drugs last year, but not everyone used them. The law allows adults to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs if a doctor has determined they have six months or less to live. They can self-administer the drugs.
Of the 374 who died, about 90 per cent were more than 60 years old, about 95 per cent were insured and about 83 per cent were receiving hospice or similar care. The median age was 74.
The figures are more than double those from the first six months after the law went into effect June 9, 2016. In those early months 191 people received life-ending drugs, while 111 people took them and died.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia ruled in May that the law is unconstitutional because it was adopted illegally when lawmakers passed it during a special Legislative session called to address health issues. An appeals court last week reinstated the End of Life Option Act, but gave opponents until July 2 to file objections.
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Give up after scandals? Television history shows otherwise
NEW YORK (AP) — Say this about TV creators in 2018 — they don’t give up easily.
Three current shows — “Roseanne,” ”Transparent” and “House of Cards” — have been crippled by scandal, but each plans to continue without their disgraced stars.
“The bottom line is fundamentally money,” said Karen Tongson, a professor of English, Gender Studies and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. “These crews, these actors, these shows that have audiences, that have critical acclaim, are pushed to continue for those reasons.”
The reboot of “Roseanne” had an excellent first season in the ratings — it also earned an estimated $45 million in advertising revenue for ABC — when its future was thrown into doubt by a racist tweet by star Roseanne Barr.
On Thursday, ABC said it ordered 10 episodes of a spinoff called “The Conners” after Barr relinquished any creative or financial participation in it, which the network had said was a condition of such a series.
