Category: News Daypop

A suspect remained at large following the still-unsolved murder of a retired dean near the school last week. Officials said that 77-year-old former dean and professor Honoree Fleming was fatally shot on the Delaware & Hudson Rail Trail last week, killed from a gunshot wound to the head.

Detectives said they have been interviewing numerous witnesses and residents in the area, and are looking at surveillance footage from the area in order to try and identify the suspected killer. Witnesses described a white male with short red hair, approximately 5’10”, last seen wearing a dark grey t-shirt and carrying a black backpack. State police have called the suspect “armed and dangerous” and asked homes and businesses near the trail to go over their security cameras in case they have footage of this man.  Authorities believe that the killing of Fleming appears to be random.

Fleming lived in Castleton with her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Powers. Powers said that the rail trail was one of Ms. Fleming’s favorite walks, and that she started on the hike at around 4pm from the pavilion area at the college campus and was walking south towards Poultney, just a few miles from the New York state border. Mr Powers posted online: “Those of you who knew her know that she was beautifully named. I have never known a more sterling heart and soul than hers. She has taken far more than half my own heart and soul with her … There is an area-wide dragnet out for her killer. Police believe that it was random, but all possibilities remain open.” 

Students returned to Vermont State University on Sunday and Monday ahead of the re-start of classes on Tuesday, after classes were not held at the Castleton campus on Thursday due to fall break. Vermont State University said in a statement on social media: “Honoree was a part of the Castleton family and was beloved by faculty, staff, and students. Scores of students benefited from Dr. Fleming’s teachings and research. … This is an unbelievable tragedy for the Castleton campus and for all of Vermont State University. Honoree will be deeply missed.”

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President Biden said on Monday that at least 11 Americans were among those killed in Hamas attack on Israel over the weekend, after the terrorist group launched the worst attack on the Jewish nation in 50 years. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Mike Herzog and Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer also said that American citizens were also among those Hamas took hostage and brought to Gaza. President Biden said U.S. officials “also know that American citizens still remain unaccounted for, and we are working with Israeli officials to obtain more information as to their whereabouts. While we are still working to confirm, we believe it is likely that American citizens may be among those being held by Hamas.

Hamas militants invaded Israeli villages and towns on Sunday in an attack from land, air and sea, with disturbing videos on social media showing militants killing Israeli civilians and soldiers, and taking others, including children and elderly women, hostage and bringing them to Gaza. A Hamas military wing spokesperson said that those who were kidnapped were being held in hideouts around Gaza, including in tunnels.

Israel is now striking back against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after an estimated 700 Israelis have been killed, with more than 2,000 are wounded and 150 are confirmed to have been taken captive by Hamas since Saturday. Gaza health officials report at least 300 Palestinians have been killed with 2,200 injured.

In response to the war, the United States announced it was sending additional military aid to Israel and moving its Ford carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to “bolster regional deterrence efforts.”

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According to Pennsylvania State Police, one person is dead and at least eight others are hurt after a shooting early Sunday morning at Chevy Chase Community Center on North 5th Avenue in White Township. Pennsylvania State Police say the shooting happened around 12:35 a.m. on Sunday during a private party of about 100-150 college-aged students from inside the community center. The event was not sanctioned by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), which is hosting homecoming festivities this weekend. As of press time, nobody is in custody yet, and police are also still trying to determine how many shooters were involved.

When authorities arrived on the scene, people were running from the community center.  Victims were treated at four different hospitals in the region, with some of them are still receiving treatment, while others have since been released. The person who died as a 22-year-old male from Pittsburgh; the eight other victims are identified as: 5 males, 3 females between the ages of 18-23.  Two students from the university were injured.

In a letter sent to students, Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Tom Segar said he understands the violence is “frightening and may cause continued feelings of fear and worry. IUP is a community that cares about one another. Your safety and security is our priority, and we continue to look for ways to improve our processes. Because we are a community, we welcome — we need — your help… We continue to work with community law enforcement to find those responsible for this incident, and we will update you as information becomes confirmed.”

Authorities ask that anyone with information to immediately contact Troop A, Indiana at 724-357-1960. Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers is offering a $10,000 reward for information that solves this case. Anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers can be made by calling 1-800-4PA-TIPS (8477) or by submitting information online.

Governor Josh Shapiro said he was briefed overnight about the shooting in a statement on X, formerly Twitter: “As [State Police] investigate, Lori and I are praying for the victims of this tragedy. We ask anyone with information to reach out to the State Police. Our hearts are with the White Township community.”

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the United States will send multiple military ships and aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support, ordering the deployment of several warships to the Middle East on Sunday following the increase of conflict in Israel. Washington believing Hamas’ deadly attacks may have been motivated to disrupt a potential normalizing of Israel-Saudi Arabia ties.

In a statement, Austin said the United States was sending an armada to the region after the country suffered its bloodiest day in decades on Saturday when Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli towns and fired thousands of rockets at Israel in a surprise attack, killing 350 civilians and leading to retaliatory strikes from Israel that killed at least 313 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Thousands more have been injured or wounded. Austin said he received the go-ahead from President Joe Biden in an effort to deter further bloodshed in the region. Israel battered Palestinians with air strikes in Gaza on Sunday, with hundreds reportedly killed on both sides.

The fleet was being led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, and is being joined by the USS Normandy, a guided missile cruiser, and the guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and the USS Roosevelt. Austin said the U.S. military would also “provide the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions, with the first security assistance will begin moving today and arriving in the coming days. We have also taken steps to augment U.S. Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region. The U.S. maintains ready forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required … My thoughts continue to be with the people of Israel and the many families who have lost loved ones,” he said, without commenting on the violence faced by Palestinian civilians.

The conflict in the Middle East comes after decades of enduring hostilities between Israel and Palestine, which is recognized as a sovereign nation by most countries worldwide and has observer status with the United Nations.

Tensions in the region have surged in recent months as the Israeli military conducted thousands of raids in the Palestinian territory, which led to numerous deadly reprisals against Jewish soldiers and settlers making homes on Palestinian lands.

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The former treasurer for embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., Nancy Marks,  pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge. Marks resigned from Santos’ team in January amid reports of multiple controversies revolving around his campaign finances. Santos pleaded not guilty in May to a 13-count indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.

Federal prosecutors said that Marks allegedly filed the names of false donors to Santos’ congressional campaign, in order to inflate the amount of campaign donations Santos appeared to have amassed so he could qualify for national party support. Prosecutors stated that the names of Marks’ and Santos’ family members were among those falsely reported to have lent his campaign $500,000, despite not having the financial means to do so. Federal prosecutors said Marks told them: “these reports were created to artificially inflate his funds to meet a threshold.”

United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement: “with today’s guilty plea, Marks has admitted that she conspired with a congressional candidate to lie to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of the candidate’s campaign for New York’s Third Congressional District, falsely inflating the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent contributions and loans.” 

Marks has been prominent in Republican politics on Long Island for decades. She was a treasurer for Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful campaign for governor and she worked for several political committees, including God, Guns, Life, Veterans for MAGA and Defend the Constitution. Marks’ attorney, Raymond Perini, said his client does not have a cooperation agreement with the government in place, but “if they subpoena her, she’ll do the right thing.” Marks is scheduled to be sentenced next April.

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A spokesperson for the state of Wisconsin said on Thursday that a man who illegally brought a handgun into the Wisconsin Capitol on Wednesday, with demands to see Gov. Tony Evers, later returned that night with an assault rifle after posting bail.

State Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said that the man approached the governor’s office on the first floor of the Capitol around 2 p.m. Wednesday, shirtless and carrying a holstered handgun. The man was demanding to see the governor, who was not in the building at the time. Warrick said that the man was taken into custody for openly carrying a firearm in the Capitol, which is against the law; weapons can be brought into the Capitol if they are concealed and the person has a valid permit. The man arrested did not have a concealed carry permit.

While the man was booked into the Dane Count Jail and posted bail, he later returned to the outside of the Capitol shortly before 9 p.m. with an assault-style rifle and demanded to see the governor (the building closes to the public at 6 p.m.). Madison police reported Thursday that the man was again taken into productive custody and brought to the hospital.

Warrick said no immediate changes to security in the Capitol or for the governor were planned. The public has free access to the Capitol daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There are no metal detectors.

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More than 75,000 workers at the nation’s largest healthcare nonprofit organization, Kaiser Permanente, went on strike Wednesday at hospitals and medical offices across five states, after negotiations failed to resolve a dispute over staffing. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions says the work stoppage is the largest strike of healthcare workers in U.S. history.  The union coalition said that the three-day strike is a protest against Kaiser executives’ “bad faith bargaining.”

Kaiser serves nearly 13 million patients and operates 39 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia. Hospitals and medical offices in California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Washington are affected by the striking workers, which include vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, medical assistants, pharmacists and hundreds of other positions. Kaiser said it has contingency plans to ensure patients continue to receive care during a strike, and all hospitals and emergency departments will remain open.

Negotiations between Kaiser executives and workers are ongoing, with the unions representing Kaiser workers say they are demanding a resolution to the extreme staffing shortage, in addition to better pay and benefits. Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, said the staffing crisis has led to unsafe working conditions and deteriorating care for patients: “We continue to have front-line health-care workers who are burnt out and stretched to the max and leaving the industry. We have folks getting injured on the job because they’re trying to do too much and see too many people and work too quickly. It’s not a sustainable situation.”

Kaiser Permanente acknowledged the staffing shortages, saying in a statement on Monday that more than 5 million people have left their healthcare jobs due to burnout. Hospitals struggle to retain staff because workers tend to leave the low pay and the high stress of the health-care field when unemployment is low, and the toll from the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the staffing shortage, with many workers leaving the field because they felt not enough was done to protect them from both the virus and antagonism from some members of the community.

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The Biden administration announced a new round of student loan forgiveness, approving $9 billion in debt relief for 125,000 borrowers benefiting from three existing federal relief programs. The President said on Wednesday he pledges to continue to look for ways to deliver debt relief to borrowers despite opposition from Republican conservatives.

The new relief targets segments of the population, including $2.8 billion that will go to 51,000 borrowers who have made loan payments for at least 20 years. Said Biden during a briefing at the White House: “My administration will continue to use every tool at our disposal to help ease the burden of student debt so more Americans can be free to achieve their dreams. It’s good for our economy, it’s good for our country, and it’s going to change their lives.”

The debt cancellation announced Wednesday comes as millions of people with federal student loans are resuming payments on their debt this month after a three-year pause because of the coronavirus pandemic. Another $5.2 billion is being provided to 53,000 people under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and $1.2 billion in debt will be discharged for 22,000 borrowers with permanent disabilities.

The White House said in a statement: “President Biden has long believed that college should be a ticket to the middle class, not a burden that weighs on families. Today’s announcement builds on all that the Biden-Harris Administration has done to make college more affordable and ensure that student loans aren’t a barrier to opportunity for students and families.”

The latest move comes following a Supreme Court decision in June that took tens of thousands of dollars in debt relief off the table. That plan would have forgiven up to $20,000 in individual loan debt for every borrower, but it was rejected after Republican states sued in the nation’s highest court, claiming the move would leave taxpayers responsible to come up with the money. After the high court rejected Biden’s original loan forgiveness program, he vowed to pursue an alternative path to debt relief through the Higher Education Act.

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The judge in former-President Donald Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City issued a partial gag order on Tuesday, after Trump blasted the judge, his top law clerk and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a post on social media. James has accused Trump, his two adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, of fraud, claiming that the Trump organization inflated the values of his real estate properties by more than $2 billion to gain tax benefits and secure favorable loan and insurance terms. James is seeking $250 million in damages, as well as a ban that would keep Trump and his family from doing business in New York.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued the order on the second day of the civil trial, after Trump posted a photo of court clerk Allison Greenfield with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on his Truth Social site on Tuesday morning with the caption “Schumer’s girlfriend.” Trump, who argued that his case should be dismissed because she is “running this case against me,” removed the post several hours later.

Judge Engoron announced Tuesday afternoon: “Consider this a gag order on all parties with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member on my staff. This morning one of the defendants posted on a social media account a disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post about a member of my staff. Although I have since ordered the post deleted and apparently it was, it was also emailed out to millions of other recipients. Personal attacks on my members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” threatening nonspecific “serious sanctions.” The limited gag order bans any emails, posts or public remarks about the judge’s staff.

The former president has criticized Engoron as a “far-left Democrat” and has accused him of political bias, also claiming Engoron is trying to hurt him politically. Trump told reporters Tuesday that the judge is a “Trump-hater” and trying to “interfere with an election and it’s a disgrace.” Trump has also blasted New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling her a “fraud” and saying “she should probably be dismissed also… she used this to run for governor. She failed in her attempt to run for governor. She had virtually no following. She came back and she said, ‘Well, now I will go back to get Trump again.’ And this is what we have. It is a scam and a sham.”

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The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday afternoon to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership position. The House voted 216-210 to oust McCarthy, with eight Republicans joining Democrats to remove him, and seven members absent. It is the first time in U.S. history that a House speaker has been removed in a no-confidence vote.

Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, who was presiding over the chamber, said: “The office of Speaker of the House of the United House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.”  The House is now in recess while members meet to decide how to proceed forward. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, Financial Services Chair and a top McCarthy ally, was then appointed speaker pro tempore. The rules of the 118th Congress state that “in the case of a vacancy in the office of speaker, the next member” named on a list submitted by McCarthy to the clerk of the House in January will become speaker pro tempore in the event of a vacancy. After House Republicans met Tuesday night as a conference to discuss their next steps. McCarthy told his colleagues he would not run for speaker again.

McCarthy can be renominated and reelected as speaker, but that path seems unlikely. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led the effort to remove McCarthy, told reporters after the vote: “Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes of people who maybe don’t even ideologically agree with me on everything. This represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid and that’s what we need to do to get back on track.” Seven Republican in addition to Gaetz voted to oust McCarthy — Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana. For weeks, Gaetz had threatened to call a vote to expel McCarthy if he passed a short-term government funding bill relying on Democratic votes. When McCarthy did just that last weekend to avert a shutdown, Gaetz moved to oust him. Gaetz has consistently opposed McCarthy’s speakership, and was among those who helped draw out the process of electing him speaker to a record 15 rounds of voting. In order to win over far-right Republicans, McCarthy agreed to a condition making it possible for a single member to motion to oust the speaker.

The speaker of the House is also second in line for the presidency, and ousting a sitting speaker by vote in the middle of a congressional term is unprecedented in American history. Democratic leadership members had urged their caucus to vote “yes” on the motion to vacate.

Up until the vote, McCarthy had expressed confidence to reporters that he would prevail: “I’m an optimist because I think there’s no point in being anything else,” McCarthy said.

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