City officials in northern California have voted to audit the troubled police department amid outrage over text messages showing police officers using racist slurs and bragging about making up evidence and beating suspects.
The FBI and the Contra Costa district attorney’s office discovered the shocking messages while investigating officers within the Antioch police department suspected of crimes. Officials have named 17 officers who sent texts, including the president of the Antioch police union, but nearly half the department was included in the messages.
The police chief, Steve Ford, issued a statement last week apologizing and condemning “in the strongest possible terms – the racially abhorrent content and incomprehensible behavior being attributed to members of the Antioch police department in media reports”.
The texts scandal has rocked the city of 115,000 people about 45 miles east of San Francisco. There have been a number of protests in Antioch since the news broke, including from families of victims of police violence who were mentioned in the texts.
‘Boasting’. “The officers’ texts about my baby made me feel like he died all over again,” Kathryn Wade told the East Bay Times. “The boasting and bragging about what you did to people is so heartbreaking. The threats you make on this community, Black and brown [residents], something needs to be done.”
US supreme court delays decision on abortion pill restrictions until Friday
The supreme court yesterday briefly extended an order keeping the abortion drug mifepristone widely available, as the justices weigh a lower court’s decision to impose restrictions that would sharply limit access to the most common method of ending pregnancies.
Justice Samuel Alito issued the order that in effect preserves the status quo until midnight tomorrow. He provided no explanation for the extension delaying the court’s decision, which was initially expected by last night.
The brief order was the latest development in a legal showdown initiated by abortion opponents seeking to revoke a 23-year-old Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the pill.
Earlier this month Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Texas, said the FDA improperly approved the drug in 2000, effectively saying it should be pulled from the market even where abortion remains legal.
The Biden administration appealed to a federal court, where a divided three-judge panel said mifepristone could remain available but imposed several barriers to how the drug is accessed and administered.
What does the pause do? It gives the justices additional time to study arguments and consider the restrictions ordered by the lower court, which include limiting mifepristone use after seven weeks of pregnancy – it is currently approved through 10 weeks – and banning delivery by mail.
Revealed: King Charles’s private fortune estimated at £1.8bn
King Charles III has inherited assets that have propelled his wealth to almost £2bn, according to extensive research and analysis by the Guardian. The monarch’s personal fortune is largely concealed from public scrutiny and it is impossible to know the complete value of his estate.
However, the Guardian has conducted the first comprehensive audit of the king’s assets, from country piles and diamond-encrusted jewels, to paintings by Monet and Dalí, Rolls-Royces, racehorses and rare stamps.
The research throws into sharp relief the Windsor family’s most valuable financial asset: total immunity from inheritance tax. It has probably allowed Charles to receive his mother’s wealth free of any contribution to the public purse.
In a statement the king’s spokesperson said: “While we do not comment on private finances, your figures are a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy.”
Nice work, if you can get it. From official state gifts that have been subsumed into private property, to vast hereditary estates that pay out tens of millions each year, much of the king’s private wealth is derived from his and his family’s public roles as working royals.
Charles also personally owns the freehold for at least 37 commercial properties in the area around his east of England country house, including shops, a post office, social clubs, a medical center and a pub. There is a church, a primary school and a nursery registered to him too.
In other news …
A free climber known as the “French Spiderman” has scaled a 38-story skyscraper in Paris to demonstrate his support for protesters angry about a pension law that will delay the age at which people can retire in France.
Scientists believe they have discovered the mechanism for hair turning grey, which could help develop treatment to alter cells in order to reverse or halt the process. A study suggests stem cells may get stuck as hair ages and lose their ability to mature and maintain hair colour.
Eight healthcare professionals will stand trial over the death of the soccer great Diego Maradona in 2020, a court has ruled. A medical board’s report has concluded that Maradona was in agony for more than 12 hours, did not receive adequate treatment and could still be alive if he had been properly hospitalized.
Frank Ocean has canceled his second performance scheduled for this weekend at Coachella, a week after his first performance – his first live show in six years – left many fans disappointed and confused following a performance that was reportedly planned to take place on an ice rink with 100 skaters.
The head of the police officers’ union in England and Wales has said London’s Metropolitan police is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic, becoming the first leader of a major British policing institution to accept the findings of a devastating report last month.
Don’t miss this: the patients who regret laser eye surgery
Laser eye surgery, which uses lasers to cut in and reshape a patient’s eye, is billed as simple and quick, usually done in under 30 minutes. But Dr Morris Waxler, a retired FDA adviser who voted to approve Lasik in the 1990s, is now one of its biggest critics. He says he regrets his role in bringing the procedure to the public. Last year, the FDA released draft guidance telling doctors that prospective patients should be warned they may be left with double vision, dry eyes, difficulty driving at night, and persistent eye pain.
The American Refractive Surgery Council says the procedure’s complication rate is less than 1% (though 30% of people may see short-term side-effects such as dry eyes). But according to Waxler’s analysis of industry data, the complication rate of Lasik falls between 10% and 30%. One investigation of an FDA database by the reporter Jace Larson found more than 700 complaints of severe pain, described as “worse than childbirth” or as if “their eyeballs would stick to their eyelids almost every night”.
Or this … They cleaned up BP’s oil spill. Now they’re sick – and want justice
Thirteen years ago, a group of Americans in the south of the country helped clean up BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest ever in US waters. They rushed toward the toxic oil to save the place they loved, joining forces with more than 33,000 others to clean up our coastlines. Now, they have active lawsuits against BP, saying the company made them sick. Since the cleanup, thousands have experienced chronic respiratory issues, rashes and diarrhea – a problem known among local people as “BP syndrome” or “Gulf coast syndrome”. Others have developed cancer.
The valor displayed by cleanup workers was comparable to the heroism of first responders during the 9/11 terror attacks, who ran to the World Trade Center to save people and breathed in toxic dust and fumes, said a leading toxicologist. During the 87 days that oil gushed from the seafloor, lower-income workers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida picked up tar balls from beaches, sopped up oil with absorbent booms, decontaminated boats, and burned oil on the water surface. They also rescued wildlife, including oiled birds, sea turtles and dolphins.
Climate check: startup on ‘mission to save planet’s beer’ from climate crisis
The hop plant, whose bright green flowers have been used for hundreds of years to flavour and stabilise beer, is increasingly falling victim to the climate emergency as hotter summers and unpredictable weather decrease yields and quality. But Ekonoke, a Spanish startup that has been exploring indoor crop cultivation for the past four years, thinks it has found a viable and sustainable solution.
The hops it is growing hydroponically in Alcobendas, and in nearby San Sebastián de los Reyes, are not only yielding as much as their outdoor peers – about 1kg for each plant – they are also richer in the essential oils and alpha acids that give a beer its all-important bitter taste and aroma, Sam Jones reports. What is more, Ekonoke’s methods – which remain a closely guarded secret – use 15 times less water than traditional outdoor growing and result in an overall carbon footprint that is 15 times smaller than field growth. And, because the hops are grown indoors under strictly controlled conditions, no pesticides are needed.
Last thing: how a Sudanese paramilitary leader fell out with the army and plunged the country into war
Sudan’s deputy leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), the head of a paramilitary organisation called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), only appeared on the national political scene four years ago. In that short time he has drawn the army, and all of Sudan, into an unprecedented confrontation – in which the army, under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, finds itself at war with a large paramilitary force that it cannot dominate, under a leader that it cannot control, writes Nesrine Malik. How did Hemedti, seemingly overnight, come to capture Sudan’s politics?
Hemedti is an outsider. If he were just a mid-level Sudanese politician, he would stand out; as a national leader, his style and personal background is even more striking. Unlike any other leader or politician the Sudanese have known, he speaks almost entirely in vernacular, and his Arabic is marked by an accent distinctive to the western tribes who live far away from the usual sources of Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum. His unconventional background means he has few allies among Sudan’s political elites and military. But as a politician who also happens to own immensely valuable goldmines and run the largest private army in Africa – with about 70,000 soldiers at his disposal – this has not, at least until now, proved an insurmountable obstacle.
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