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Thousands of beachgoers, sculptors expected to attend 2023 Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival 

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

This year’s Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival got underway Friday, kicking off a weekend where thousands of beachgoers and sculptors are expected to flock to the area. The festival is scheduled to continue through Sunday at Revere Beach, with this year’s theme celebrating 90 years of Kong. 7NEWS on Friday spotted sculptures of a mermaid, a moon, a horse and a massive sculpture of King Kong. This year’s centerpiece sculpture, indeed, depicts an epic battle involving the giant gorilla.“This is amazing,” said event organizer Melineige Beauregard. “You’ve never seen something like this.”Beauregard said the centerpiece will be the biggest the festival has had in its 19-year history, standing 22-feet-tall. “King Kong and T-Rex — I think everyone is very impressed with it,” Beauregard said.Organizers said there are sculptors participating from around the world, including some from Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Latvia, the US and Canada.S...

Chicago rapper G Herbo pleads guilty to fraud conspiracy in Massachusetts federal court

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

Chicago-based drill rapper G Herbo pleaded guilty to participating in a fraud conspiracy that milked $140,000 grand in services from businesses across the country.Herbert “G Herbo” Wright, 25 — who the feds say also goes by the monikers “Herb,” “Lil Herb” and “Herbert Light” — delivers rapid-fire raps about the hard streets of the Chicago South Shore area known as “Terror Town,” but had expensive tastes in is own life, according to the federal indictment leveled against him and five co-defendants.“Mr. Wright used stolen account information as his very own unlimited funding source, using victims’ payment cards to finance an extravagant lifestyle and advance his career,” acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy said in a statement. “Mr. Wright flaunted his lavish spending on social media, in music videos and in industry news.”Wright signed a plea deal on June 5 and pleaded guilty today in federal court in Springfield to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making a...

Fatal crash prompts road closures along I-805, SR-52 connector

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- The ramp from westbound state Route 52 to northbound Interstate 805 is closed due to a fatal traffic collision, according to Caltrans.The incident was reported near Kearny Mesa around 12 p.m. According to law enforcement on scene, the incident involved two separate crashes.First, a sedan and a semi-truck got in a minor fender bender, authorities said. When the driver of the sedan got out to talk to the semi-truck driver, a third vehicle not involved in the initial crash struck them on the roadway.The driver of the sedan was declared dead on scene by medical personnel. No other injuries have been reported in the incident.The right lane along the northbound I-805 south of Governor Drive is also closed as a result of the crash. Currently, at least two lanes are open to traffic on the freeway.A SigAlert has been issued for the area, with traffic reportedly backed up to Exit 21 at Balboa Avenue.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Toronto Mayor Chow apologizes for treatment of asylum seekers, calls for more federal funding

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow apologized to the hundreds of refugees who have been forced to sleep on the sidewalk after arriving in Canada for how they’ve been treated.For the last two weeks, hundreds of asylum seekers have been sheltered at Revivaltime Tabernacle Church and Dominion Church International Toronto, two local churches.The group of more than 200 refugees spent days living on the sidewalk outside a downtown Toronto shelter intake office.The makeshift camp outside 129 Peter Street had some calling it home for four weeks because of a lack of space at city shelters. The asylum seekers sleeping on the sidewalk are all from African nations.Chow toured the Revivaltime Tabernacle Church to see the conditions these asylum seekers have been living in.“The way they’ve been treated on the streets and the lack of dignity that they experience. There are absolutely no excuses whatsoever to be in a new country, lost both physically, spiritually, and materially,” sa...

Brazil’s Indigenous chief fighting to save Amazon urges President Lula to defend people’s rights

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The Amazon’s most famous Indigenous leader called upon Brazil’s president on Friday to defend the rights of Indigenous people. Chief Raoni Metuktire demanded that “invaders” be removed from their territories and that the government stop negotiations on carbon credits that had excluded Indigenous people from the discussions.In a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Raoni demanded a government response to 11 specific requests by Aug. 9, the second and final day of the Amazon summit that Lula and other South American heads of state will attend in the city of Belem.The manifest was handed over to the minister of the Indigenous peoples, Sonia Guajajara, at an event attended by 1,000 members of different ethnic groups in the town of Sao Jose do Xingu in the state of Mato Grosso. Lula in May signed legislation paving the way for a market to trade carbon credits — generated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and whic...

Attorneys preserve the right to invoke insanity plea for man accused of killing 4 people in Maine

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

WEST BATH, Maine (AP) — A man who told police he killed his parents and their friends and shot at motorists on a busy interstate highway might try to show he was insane, based on pleas he entered Friday.The 34-year-old ex-convict Joseph Eaton entered pleas of both not guilty and not criminally responsible, leaving him the option of an insanity defense against charges including four counts of murder.“At this point we are preserving the ability to move forward with the so-called insanity defense. Once we have more forensic information, full discovery, and are able to view the case as a whole, we will then decide how to proceed,” Andrew Wright, one of his attorneys, told The Associated Press before the hearing in West Bath.Law enforcement officials say Eaton confessed to the killings at a property in rural Bowdoin, and to wounding three people while shooting at vehicles on Interstate 295 in Yarmouth. Eaton has been jailed since his arrest on April 18 near the chaotic scene along the hi...

Charges dropped against 7 Oklahoma police officers in 3 separate fatal shootings

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The new prosecutor in Oklahoma’s biggest county announced Friday she’s dropping criminal charges against seven police officers in three separate fatal police shootings from 2020.District Attorney Vicki Behenna’s predecessor, David Prater, had filed criminal charges against police officers in all three cases before he left office, and Behenna hired a use-of-force expert to examine the evidence in each case.“I know how highly charged the topic of law-enforcement use of force is in the current environment,” Behenna said in a statement. “It is critical to evaluate each case independently and make a decision based on facts, not emotion.”Behenna, a Democrat from the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, defeated conservative Republican Kevin Calvey last year to win a four-year term as the top prosecutor in the state’s most populous county. A former federal prosecutor and defense attorney, Behenna is the first woman to hold the post in Oklahoma County.The most hi...

Trump and DeSantis set to address influential Iowans at GOP dinner as candidates face pivotal moment

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

OSKALOOSA, Iowa (AP) — Donald Trump and rival Ron DeSantis are appearing for the first time at the same Iowa presidential campaign event, both addressing a major Republican dinner Friday night as they each face critical moments that could reshape the direction of the race.Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination, is making a rare appearance with the rest of the field at an Iowa Republican Party fundraiser a day after he was charged with additional counts over his retention of classified documents. He is also bracing to be charged soon in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Trump frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls.But Iowa leads off primary voting and, with its caucuses less than six months away, Trump and a dozen other GOP hopefuls are taking advantage of the chance to speak to about 1,200 GOP members and activists at the Lincol...

Senators rebuke Wisconsin congressman who yelled vulgarities at high school-age pages

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A freshman Republican congressman from Wisconsin is refusing to apologize after he yelled and cursed at high school-aged Senate pages during a late night tour of the Capitol this week, eliciting a bipartisan rebuke from Senate leaders. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, speaking in a round of interviews Friday on Wisconsin conservative talk radio, did not refute reports of his actions or back down from what he did.Van Orden used a profanity to describe the pages as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication.“I’m not going to apologize for making sure that anybody — I don’t care who you are and who you’re related to — defiles this House,” Van Orden said on “The Dan O’Donnell Show.” “It’s not going to happen on my watch, man.”Van Orden said he was protecting th...

Man pleads guilty to vehicular homicide in death of Black Lives Matter protester in Seattle

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:14:23 GMT

SEATTLE (AP) — A man who hit two protesters with his car, killing one of them, during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020 in Seattle has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. Dawit Kelete, 30, pleaded guilty on Thursday to vehicular homicide in the death of 24-year-old Summer Taylor, The Seattle Times reported. He also pleaded guilty to vehicular assault and reckless driving charges. Attorneys as part of the plea deal have agreed to recommend a sentence of more than six years in prison and 18 months of probation. Kelete is set to be sentenced in September.On July 4, 2020, the Washington State Patrol said Kelete drove the wrong way onto Interstate 5, around a barricade of parked vehicles, and struck Taylor and Diaz Love. Taylor later died and Love was hospitalized with multiple injuries.Kelete was arrested shortly afterward and told police he was withdrawing from the narcotic pain medication Percocet and struggled with an “untreated addiction,” court documents said.Francisco Du...