Empire star indicted for fake police report
CHICAGO — A grand jury in Chicago indicted Empire actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts related to making a false report he was attacked by two men who shouted racial and homophobic slurs.
The Cook County grand jury indictment filed Thursday says he made a false report about an offence.
Smollett told police in late January he was attacked in downtown Chicago while getting food at 2 a.m. The actor said two men shouted at him, wrapped a rope around his neck and poured an “unknown substance” on him.
Trump pays respects to 23 tornado victims
BEAUREGARD, Ala. — Head bowed, President Donald Trump paid respects Friday to the 23 people killed when a powerful tornado roared through a rural town, observing a moment of silence before white wooden crosses that stood in remembrance of each victim.
Trump and his wife, Melania, held hands as they paused in front of each of the markers erected near a church serving as a makeshift disaster relief centre for survivors of Sunday’s twister.
Earlier, the president stood on a hill overlooking a debris field and surveyed mangled trees and other wreckage.
Manning jailed for refusing to testify
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who served years in prison for leaking one of the largest troves of classified documents in U.S. history, was sent to jail Friday for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton ordered Manning to jail for civil contempt of court after a brief hearing in federal court in Alexandria in which Manning confirmed she has no intention of testifying. She told the judge she “will accept whatever you bring upon me.”
Manning has said she objects to the secrecy of the grand jury process and already revealed everything she knows at her court-martial.
Court denies trial in ‘Serial’ murder case
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland’s highest court denied a new trial Friday for a man whose murder conviction was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.
In a 4-3 opinion, the Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that Adnan Syed’s legal counsel was deficient in failing to investigate an alibi witness, but it disagreed the deficiency prejudiced the case. The court said Syed waived his ineffective counsel claim.
Syed is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2000 of strangling 17year-old Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a Baltimore park.
Tents, foxholes left behind by IS in Syria
AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria — Abandoned tents, vehicles and foxholes to hide from airstrikes are all that are left from evacuated parts of the Islamic State group’s last territory in Syria.
An exclusive video obtained by The Associated Press on Friday showed parts of the tiny pocket of land in the village of Baghouz vacated recently by Islamic State group members and their families.
The area has been under attack since September by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces who in recent weeks have advanced on the town from three sides, besieging it.
Amazon wants out of labour protections
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Many Amazon employees would be exempt from new labour protections in a bill passed by the state Senate after lobbyists for the tech giant pushed to change a key threshold in the rules.
The protections would partially prohibit non-compete clauses — controversial agreements used by tech companies and others to block employees from going to work for competitors or launching rival startups.
Lawmakers say Amazon lobbied to have the income threshold set at a level that would likely exempt many workers in Seattle.
The bill passed Tuesday with a salary threshold of $100,000. Employees above the threshold would be exempted from the protection.
Man learns he’s dying from doctor on video
FREMONT, Calif. — A family is devastated after a relative was told he didn’t have long to live by a doctor appearing on a robot’s video screen.
Ernest Quintana, 78, went Sunday to a hospital ER. Granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm said a nurse told them a doctor would be making his rounds. She says a robot arrived and the doctor appeared on a video screen.
He said her grandfather’s lungs were failing and he didn’t have long to live. He died Tuesday.
—