AROUND THE NATION AND WORLD
NEW YORK White House names new director of CDC
Dr. Mandy Cohen, a former North Carolina official, will be the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House announced Friday.
Unlike the last two people to serve as head of the nation’s top federal public health agency, Cohen has experience running a government agency: She was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 until last year. Before that, she held healthrelated jobs at two federal agencies.
“Dr. Cohen is one of the nation’s top physicians and health leaders with experience leading large and complex organizations, and a proven track-record protecting Americans’ health and safety,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
She succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 54, who last month announced she was leaving at the end of June. Cohen’s starting date has not been announced. Her appointment does not require Senate confirmation.
WASHINGTON First Muslim woman on federal bench
Nusrat Chowdhury, a civil rights lawyer, has been confirmed by the Senate as the first Muslim female federal judge in U.S. history.
She will assume her lifetime appointment in Brooklyn federal court in New York after a 50-49 vote Thursday along party lines.
The confirmation drew praise from the American Civil Liberties Union, where she is the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to that post, she served from 2008 to 2020 at the national ACLU office, including seven years as deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recommended her, said she makes history as the first Bangladeshi American as well as the first Muslim American woman to be a federal judge.
OHIO Family of man killed by officers sues
The eight police officers who shot Jayland Walker last summer used excessive force when they fired 94 bullets at him during a foot chase and participated in a “culture of violence and racism” within Akron’s police department, according to a lawsuit filed in Ohio federal court Friday.
Months after a grand jury declined to indict the unnamed officers in the death of Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, his family is seeking at least $45 million in damages from the officers, the city of Akron and city officials, according to a press release.
During a routine traffic stop on June 27, police officers fatally shot Walker after he fired a single bullet from his car, then ran from the officers, according to a state investigation. He left the gun in his still-moving car.
His death gained national attention and roiled yet another city amid heightened tensions with police.
The officers fired nearly 100 bullets at Walker in less than seven seconds when he refused to put up his hands and appeared to reach into his waistband, believing him to be armed and a “deadly threat,” the state investigation said.
Police officers violated Walker’s rights to freedom from excessive force under the fourth amendment when they shot him in a hail of gunfire even though Walker was unarmed, according to the lawsuit.
TENNESSEE 6 shot to death in house set ablaze
Six people, including three children, were found dead in a Tennessee home where police responded to a shooting and arrived to find the residence ablaze, authorities said.
A seventh person, who suffered gunshot wounds and was found alive at the home in Sequatchie on Thursday night after firefighters extinguished the flames, was hospitalized in Chattanooga, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
It appeared to be domestic situation that turned into a murder-suicide, Marion County Sheriff Bo Burnette told WTVC-TV.
The person authorities think is responsible is among the deceased, the bureau said.
JAPAN Parliament increases age of consent to 16
Japan’s parliament on Friday raised the age of sexual consent to 16 from 13, a limit that had remained unchanged for more than a century and was among the world’s lowest, amid calls for greater protection of children and women.
The revision was part of a revamping of laws related to sex crimes. Separately, Parliament passed a new law on Friday to increase awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, which activists criticized for not guaranteeing equal rights for sexual minorities.
Reforms providing greater protection for victims of sexual crimes and stricter punishment of assailants have come slowly in a country where the legislative and judicial branches have long been dominated by men.
Japan in 2017 revised its criminal code on sexual crimes for the first time in 110 years. A series of acquittals in cases of sexual abuse and growing instances of sexual images taken of girls and women without their consent have triggered public outrage, prompting the new revisions.
Under the changes enacted Friday, sexual intercourse with someone below age 16 is considered rape.
ROME Pope in good humor as he leaves hospital
Pope Francis was discharged Friday from the Rome hospital where he underwent abdominal surgery to repair a hernia and remove scarring from previous operations, with his surgeon saying the pontiff was “better than before” his nine-day hospitalization.
Francis, 86, left through Gemelli Polyclinic’s main exit in a wheelchair, smiling and waving and saying “thanks” to a crowd of well-wishers. He stood up to get into the small Vatican car awaiting him. In the brief distance before reached the white Fiat 500, reporters thrust microphones toward his face.
The pope seemed to bat the mics away, good-naturedly. “Still alive,” Francis quipped when asked how he was doing.