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Grand jury indicts accused gunman in Buffalo mass shooting
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The white 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was charged Wednesday by a grand jury with domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder.
Payton Gendron, who has been in custody since the May 14 shooting, is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Erie County Court.
The 25-count indictment also contains charges of murder and attempted murder as a hate crime and weapons possession.
Gendron had previously been charged with a single count of first-degree murder in the shooting, which also injured three people. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors told a judge May 20 the grand jury had voted to indict Gendron but did not disclose charges, saying proceedings were ongoing.
The domestic terrorism charge accuses Gendron of killing “because of the perceived race and/or color” of his victims.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the domestic terrorism hate crime law in August 2019, in the wake of a mass shooting targeting Mexicans at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. The measure, dubbed the “Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act” after an attack at a rabbi’s home in Munsey, New York, was signed into law on April 3, 2020, and took effect Nov. 1, 2020.
The charge, Domestic Acts of Terrorism Motivated by Hate in the First Degree, is punishable with a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
Murder charges were filed for each of the victims, who ranged in age from 32 to 86 and included eight shoppers, the store security guard and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries.
Hurricane deaths: Hurricane Agatha left at least 11 people dead and 33 missing in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, where it set off flooding and landslides, Gov. Alejandro Murat said Wednesday.
More than 40,000 people in the state have been affected, primarily along the coast and in the mountains just beyond, Murat said.
Agatha was the strongest hurricane since records have been kept to come ashore in May in the eastern Pacific.
It made landfall Monday afternoon on a sparsely populated stretch of small beach towns and fishing villages as a strong Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.
Bill Cosby case: Bill Cosby again faced sex abuse allegations as attorneys gave opening statements Wednesday in a civil trial that’s one of the last remaining legal claims against the comedian.
Lawyers for Judy Huth, 64, outlined evidence they say bolsters their against Cosby, who is accused of forcing Huth to perform a sex act at the Playboy Mansion in 1975 when she was 16. The case will hinge on the testimony of Huth, photos and other archival exhibits to place the incident in time.
Cosby’s attorneys, who say no sexual abuse happened, are likely to emphasize that the burden of proving the nearly 50-year-old case lies with the plaintiffs. They have acknowledged that Cosby took Huth to the Playboy Mansion, as a photo from the visit shows, but say they believe she was not a minor when it happened.
The trial is one of the last cases Cosby, 85, faces after a Pennsylvania appeals court threw out his criminal sexual assault conviction and freed him from prison last year.
Several other lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct were settled by his insurer against his will.
US-Taiwan talks: The Biden administration said Wednesday that it would pursue negotiations to strengthen trade and technology ties with Taiwan, a move that is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and one that is likely to rankle Beijing.
The announcement follows the administration’s efforts to build an Asia-Pacific economic bloc, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, that includes 13 countries and excludes Taiwan.
China claims the island, a self-governing democracy that is critical to global technology supply chains, as an incontestable part of its territory.
While Taiwan expressed interest in becoming a full member of the Indo-Pacific framework, that prospect was deemed too controversial by many participating countries.
The talks with Taiwan will cover many of the same issues as the framework, from digital trade to reducing red tape for importers and exporters.
U.S. officials said the talks, the first of which will be held in Washington at the end of June, would focus on a variety of issues, including opening up trade in agriculture and aligning technological standards.
Meta move: Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, is stepping down, according to a post Wednesday on her Facebook page. Sandberg has served as chief operating officer at the social media giant for 14 years. She joined from Google in 2008, four years before Facebook went public.
“When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page.
Sandberg has led Facebook — now Meta’s — advertising business and was responsible for nurturing it from its infancy into an over $100 billion-a-year powerhouse.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his own Facebook post that he doesn’t plan to replace Sandberg in the company’s existing structure. Javier Olivan will serve as Meta’s new COO.
Hunter Biden’s ex-wife: Kathleen Buhle, the ex-wife of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, says she has “total control over my life now,” five years after her divorce, as she opens up about her marriage in a new memoir.
Buhle describes her ex-husband’s drug addiction, her response to his infidelity, including an affair with her widowed sister-inlaw, and her challenges integrating into the Biden family. Excerpts of “If We Break” were published Wednesday by People magazine.
In the book, Buhle describes the pain she felt watching Hunter spiral into addiction, even as he denied it, and how “it became my own addiction” to document it.
She writes that the couple separated not long after Beau Biden’s 2015 death from brain cancer, when Buhle found a crack pipe in their ashtray.
Buhle said she found out about Hunter Biden’s affair with Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, in Nov. 2016.
She says her daughters discovered the relationship when searching through texts on Hunter’s phone.
While Hunter’s finances are under investigation by the Justice Department, Buhle told People that “I couldn’t be of any help,” adding, “I kept my head so deeply buried in the sand on our finances.”