12 Jun 2024

Multiple people reported shot in northern Illinois in a ‘mass casualty incident,’ authorities say

by | posted in: Society | 0

DIXON, Ill. — Multiple people have been reported shot Wednesday in northern Illinois in what authorities are calling a “mass casualty incident.”

Ambulances and two medical helicopters were called to the scene in the Lost Lake community near Dixon, where there also was a massive police presence, according to a post on the Winnebago Boone & Ogle County Fire/Ems Incidents Facebook page.

A spokesperson at Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital in Dixon said three people were taken to the hospital’s emergency department.

A person answering the phone at the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department would not comment when reached by The Associated Press. The department’s website said a news conference would be held at 3:30 p.m.

Aerial video by local media Wednesday afternoon showed law enforcement and personal cars parked on the side of unpaved roads throughout the neighborhood and officials occasionally gathering in small groups but little ongoing activity. Yellow police tape blocked at least one driveway and an Ogle County sheriff’s mobile command center was parked at the end of the drive.

Lost Lake’s property owner’s association describes the area as a “country style community” with about 700 owners in an unincorporated area close to the cities of Dixon, Franklin Grove and Oregon, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Chicago.

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12 Jun 2024

Past COVID infections may help protect against certain colds. Could it lead to better vaccines?

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By LAURA UNGAR (AP Science Writer)

If you’ve been sick with COVID-19, you may have some protection against certain versions of the common cold.

A new study suggests previous COVID-19 infections lower the risk of getting colds caused by milder coronavirus cousins, which could provide a key to broader COVID-19 vaccines.

“We think there’s going to be a future outbreak of a coronavirus,” said Dr. Manish Sagar, senior author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “Vaccines potentially could be improved if we could replicate some of the immune responses that are provided by natural infection.”

The study looked at COVID-19 PCR tests from more than 4,900 people who sought medical care between November 2020 and October 2021. After controlling for things like age, gender and preexisting conditions, Sagar said he and his colleagues found people previously infected with COVID-19 had about a 50% lower chance of having a symptomatic coronavirus-caused common cold compared with people were were, at the time, fully vaccinated and hadn’t yet gotten COVID-19.

Several viruses cause colds; coronaviruses are thought to be responsible for about 1 in 5 colds.

Researchers linked the protection against coronavirus-caused colds to virus-killing cell responses for two specific viral proteins. These proteins aren’t used in most vaccines now, but researchers propose adding them in the future.

“Our studies would suggest that these may be novel strategies for better vaccines that not only tackle the current coronaviruses, but any potential future one that may emerge,” said Sagar of Boston Medical Center.

Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas who was not involved in the study, said the findings shouldn’t be seen as a knock against current vaccines, which target the “spike” protein studding the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

These vaccines, he said, are “still your best defense against severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death.”

But he added: “If we can find targets that cross-protect among multiple viruses, we can either add those to specific vaccines or start to use those as vaccine targets that would give us broader-based immunity from a single vaccination. And that would be really cool.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

12 Jun 2024

Oklahoma Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit of last Tulsa Race Massacre survivors seeking reparations

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By SEAN MURPHY (The Associated Press)

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history.

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

The suit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to make recompense for the destruction by a white mob of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood. In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — the white mob, including some people hastily deputized by authorities, looted and burned the district, which was referred to as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are both now over 100 years old, sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.” A third plaintiff, Hughes Van Ellis, died last year at ag 102.

12 Jun 2024

Biden plan to brand Trump a felon is hobbled by son’s conviction

by | posted in: Politics | 0

Hadriana Lowenkron | (TNS) Bloomberg News

Hunter Biden, like Donald Trump, is now a convicted felon — a personal and political blow to his father, President Joe Biden, that complicates his 2024 campaign for reelection.

The younger Biden is the first child of a sitting U.S. president convicted of a felony. He was found guilty of violating federal laws for illegally buying a gun during a period he was taking crack cocaine. Jurors delivered their verdict after deliberating for three hours, capping a one-week trial in a prosecution brought by his father’s own Justice Department.

That outcome, and another trial for Hunter — on tax charges starting in September, just two months before voters head to the polls — threaten to hang over Biden’s campaign, posing a painful messaging test in his race against Trump. The president has assailed Trump as a “convicted felon,” to capitalize on the first former U.S. president found guilty of a felony for falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.

“I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” Biden said in a statement moments after Hunter’s verdict. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery.”

Biden, who has said he would not pardon his son, said he would “respect the judicial process” as Hunter considers an appeal, adding that he and the first lady, Jill Biden, “will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

How the conviction impacts the president’s campaign against Trump, whom he has cast as a threat to the rule of law, as well as the effect on voter perceptions of both candidates remain unclear. What is certain is Hunter Biden and Trump’s cases are poised to run on parallel tracks during the campaign as they face sentencing and potential appeals, another twist to an already close race.

Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, acknowledged the difficult situation facing the president.

“He did promise us a return to normalcy and it’s not normal for presidents to comment on trials like this in such a way,” Belt said, ahead of the verdict. “He really wants to avoid the perception of partiality.”

The political challenge posed by the conviction was almost immediately apparent. The verdict came in just hours before the president was poised to deliver remarks on his administration’s steps to ratchet up scrutiny on gun purchases at an Everytown for Gun Safety event. (Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, helped found and is a current supporter of Everytown for Gun Safety.)

Republican Scrutiny

A planned deal between Hunter and prosecutors that would have avoided jail time fell apart last year. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed a special counsel, David Weiss, who would indict Hunter Biden on the gun and tax charges. Hunter’s lawyers have accused Weiss of caving to political pressure from Republicans who cast the initial plea agreement as a sweetheart deal for the president’s son.

Trump nominated Weiss to serve as the U.S. attorney for Delaware and was kept on by Biden. He was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 to manage the cases against Hunter Biden.

Republicans have long tried to connect Hunter’s troubles and business dealings to his father, without evidence or success. House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into the president, an effort that is all but dead. No evidence has turned up showing the president benefited from his son’s misdeeds.

Democratic strategist Basil Smikle said Republicans “may seize on a guilty verdict and continue to find ways to connect the president to the actions of his son, even though it’s been clear that the president hasn’t been involved such that it would impact his presidency.”

Cornell Belcher, another Democratic strategist, predicted Americans would be able to separate the son’s troubles from his father.

“They’re not going to hold the president accountable for something that his child was accused of, just the way they would not want to be held accountable for something that their child is accused of,” Belcher said.

Trump’s campaign in a statement called Hunter’s trial “a distraction from the real crimes” of the president and repeated unsubstantiated claims of corruption.

Trump Impact

Trump, who faces three additional criminal indictments, though the trials are unlikely to happen before the election, has assailed his prosecutions as politically motivated and orchestrated by the president, without evidence. A day after Trump’s conviction, Biden spoke from the White House, criticizing the Republican as “dangerous” and “irresponsible” for saying the hush-money trial was rigged.

Some political strategists predicted Biden could use Trump’s guilty verdict to appeal to independents and undecided voters. John Malcolm, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, suggested that approach would be undermined by a guilty verdict for Hunter.

“That’s going to blunt the sting of the Trump conviction, although how much I don’t know,” he said.

A conviction secured by the DOJ against the president’s own son could also help Democrats undercut Trump’s claims the agency is targeting him politically, but linking the cases that way pose its own risks to Biden.

Smikle, the Democratic strategist, called Biden “very careful about drawing a line between what’s personal and what’s governmental.” He said the president can speak about Hunter best from “the perspective of a father who cares deeply about his son without necessarily bringing it to the campaign.”

But he also saw little impact on Biden or Trump supporters.

“If you’re going to vote for Joe Biden, this is not going to deter you,” Smikle said. “If you’re going to vote for Donald Trump, this will give you more reason to vote for Donald Trump.”

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