After bomb threats, historically Black colleges lift warnings
Several historically Black colleges and universities across the U.S. on Tuesday lifted warnings to students and faculty against coming to campus after receiving bomb threats earlier in the day.
After campus and local police swept the campus at Jackson State University in Mississippi and gave an all-clear sign, the school resumed operations Tuesday. Orders were also lifted at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Tougaloo College in Mississippi and Kentucky State University in Frankfort, according to school statements.
“The recent threats to HBCUs across the country are a shameless attempt to dampen our sense of safety and freedom by attacking locations traditionally considered a haven for all pursuing an education in a nurturing environment,” Jackson State University President Thomas Hudson said in a statement on the school’s website.
The latest threats, coming on the first day of Black history month, follow similar incidents that targeted HBCUs earlier this year.
Sarah Vinson, a physician and forensic psychiatrist, said she doesn’t think the threats against the HBCU campuses are a coincidence given the current environment, including global protests decrying anti-Black police violence and systemic racism in 2020.
—Bloomberg News
US commits $25.3 million to replace collapsed bridge
PITTSBURGH —The U.S. Department of Transportation has committed $25.3 million to the replacement of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed Friday into a ravine below it in Frick Park.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation confirmed Tuesday that the money will be made available through the National Highway Performance Program. The funds are directly related to additional funding that became available because of the bipartisan infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed into law in November.
The funding is expected to cover the full cost of replacing the 497-foot Forbes Avenue bridge in Point Breeze without the need for a local match. PennDOT is working with federal and local officials to begin the design of the replacement and cut through red tape to move the project as quickly as possible, but it could take as long as two years before a new bridge opens.
Ten people were hurt, none with life-threatening injuries, and had to be rescued by emergency personnel after the four-lane bridge collapsed about 6:45 a.m. Friday. Seven vehicles, including a Port Authority bus containing two passengers and a driver, dropped into the ravine with the bridge.
The 49-year-old structure had been rated in "poor" condition for at least 10 years before the collapse because of deck and superstructure deterioration.
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Suspect faces hate crime counts after synagogue vandalism
CHICAGO — Hate crime charges were filed Tuesday against a man who allegedly smashed windows and spray-painted swastikas on synagogues and the property of a Jewish girls school over the weekend.
Shahid Hussain 39, of Niles, faces four counts of a hate crime along with multiple charges of criminal damage and defacement, Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference Tuesday. Hussain's bond is set at $250,000, with special conditions that he is not allowed near any institutions affected, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said at the same conference.
Additionally, a member of a separate Jewish congregation was reportedly accosted near their synagogue along the same corridor of Devon on Tuesday, police said.
A 35-year-old man was outside Congregation Bnei Ruven on North Whipple Street on Tuesday morning, when three people in a silver sedan approached, according to a police report. One exited the car and verbally threatened the man, who Brown said was a member of the congregation.
The people in the car drove into a parking lot and damaged the window of another parked vehicle, police said.
—Chicago Tribune
Cosby asks Supreme Court not to reopen sex assault case
Home free after his sexual assault conviction was overturned, Bill Cosby wants to keep it that way.
Lawyers for the actor asked the Supreme Court Monday to reject an appeal from a Pennsylvania prosecutor who wants the higher court to take another look at his criminal sex assault case.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in June to overturn Cosby’s conviction, saying that he was denied a fair trial when Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman ignored a promise made by her predecessor, Bruce Castor, not to charge him if he agreed to testify in a civil suit brought by his alleged victim, Andrea Constand.
Cosby, 84, walked out of jail a free man on June 30 after three years behind bars.
“The Commonwealth fails to identify a single case from any court that conflicts with the Cosby decision,” his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, wrote in a 19-page filing Monday.
“In short, the Commonwealth’s petition offers no compelling reason for this Court to disrupt the state supreme court’s decision which is legally uncontroversial and based on a ‘rare, if not entirely unique’ set of circumstances unlikely to occur again in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or elsewhere.”
Cosby has settled multimillion-dollar agreements with at least eight women over sexual assault allegations, but only Constand’s case led to criminal charges after she accused him of drugging and assaulting her at his home in January 2004.
—New York Daily News
