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What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain
Lawyer News |
2024/11/04 06:16
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In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were shattered.
A week later, authorities have recovered 218 bodies — with 213 of them in the eastern Valencia region. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.
In many of the 69 devastated localities, mostly located in the southern outskirts of Valencia city, people still face shortages of basic goods. Water is back to running through pipes but authorities say it is only for cleaning and not fit for drinking. Lines form at impromptu emergency kitchens and food relief stands in streets still covered with mud and debris.
Thousands of volunteers are helping soldiers and police reinforcements with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the mire and the countless wrecked cars. At least 46,000 insurance claims for totaled vehicles had been filed, according to Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo.
The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed away or trapped in underground garages, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.
The frustration over the crisis management boiled over on Sunday when a crowd in hard-hit Paiporta hurled mud and other objects at Spain’s royals, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional officials when they made their first visit to the epicenter of the flood damage.
The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo canal, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.
In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.
Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn’t get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.
When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.
Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.
Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.
And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.
The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.
“Climate change kills, and now, unfortunately, we are seeing it firsthand,” Sánchez said Tuesday after announcing a 10.6-billion-euro relief package for 78 municipalities. |
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Kenya’s deputy president pleads not guilty in impeachment process
Lawyer News |
2024/10/22 07:50
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Kenya’s deputy president, who faces impeachment, pleaded not guilty in a senate hearing Wednesday to all allegations including corruption, inciting ethnic divisions and support for anti-government protests that saw demonstrators storm the country’s parliament.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has called the allegations politically motivated, could be the first sitting deputy president impeached in Kenya.
The case highlights the friction between him and President William Ruto — something that Ruto once vowed to avoid after his past troubled relationship as deputy to Kenya’s previous president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Gachagua has said he believes the impeachment process has Ruto’s blessing, and has asked legislators to make their decision “without intimidation and coercion.”
The tensions risk introducing more uncertainty for investors and others in East Africa’s commercial hub. Court rulings this week allowed the parliament and senate to proceed with the impeachment debate, despite concerns over irregularities raised by the deputy president’s lawyers.
The impeachment motion was approved in parliament last week and forwarded to the senate. Gachagua’s legal team will have Wednesday and Thursday to cross-examine witnesses, and the senate will vote Thursday evening.
Under the Kenyan Constitution, the removal from office is automatic if approved by both chambers, though Gachagua can challenge the action in court — something he has said he would do.
Kenya’s president has yet to publicly comment on the impeachment process. Early in his presidency, he said he wouldn’t publicly humiliate his deputy.
Ruto, who came to office claiming to represent Kenya’s poorest citizens, has faced widespread criticism for his efforts to raise taxes in an effort to find ways to pay off foreign creditors. But the public opposition led him to shake up his cabinet and back off certain proposals. |
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New rules regarding election certification in Georgia to get test in court
Lawyer News |
2024/09/30 07:41
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Two controversial new rules passed by Georgia’s State Election Board concerning the certification of vote tallies are set to face their first test in court this week.
The Republican majority on the State Election Board — made up of three members praised by former President Donald Trump praised by name at a recent rally — voted to approve the rules last month. Democrats filed a legal challenge and argue the rules could be used “to upend the statutorily required process for certifying election results in Georgia.”
A bench trial, meaning there is a judge but no jury, is set to begin Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
One of the rules provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”
A series of recent appointments means Trump-endorsed Republicans have had a 3-2 majority on the State Election Board since May. That majority has passed several new rules over the past two months that have caused worry among Democrats and others who believe Trump and his allies may use them to cause confusion and cast doubt on the results if he loses this crucial swing state to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.
Another rule the board passed more recently requires that poll workers count the number of paper ballots — not votes — by hand on election night after voting ends. A separate lawsuit filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker initially challenged the two certification rules but was amended last week to also challenge the ballot counting rule and some others that the board passed.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an association of county election officials had cautioned the state board against passing new rules so close to the election. They argued it could cause confusion among poll workers and voters and undermine public trust in the voting process.
The challenge to the certification rules filed by Democratic groups and others asks the judge to confirm that election superintendents — a multi-person election board in most counties — have a duty to certify an election by the deadline provided in the law and have no discretion to withhold or delay certification. They ask that it should be declared invalid if the judge believes either of the rules allows such discretion.
Lawyers for the State Election Board argue the Democrats are asking the judge to “declare what is already enshrined in Georgia law,” that county certification is mandatory and must occur by 5 p.m. the Monday after the election, or the next day if Monday is a holiday, as it is this year. They also argue the challenge is barred by the principle of sovereign immunity and seeks relief that isn’t appropriate under the law.
The challenge was filed by the state and national Democratic parties, as well as county election board members from counties in metro Atlanta, most chosen by the local Democratic Party, as well voters who support Democrats and two Democratic state lawmakers running for reelection. It was filed against the State Election Board, and the state and national Republican parties joined the fight on the board’s side.
The Democrats concede in their challenge that the two rules “could be read not to conflict with Georgia statutes” but they argue “that is not what the drafters of those rules intended.”
“According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or render it wholly optional,” they wrote in a court filing.
They also note that numerous county election officials around the state have already sought to block or delay certification in recent elections and “the new rules hand those officials new tools to do so again in November.”
State lawyers argue that since the argument against the rules is based on the alleged intent of the people who presented them or the way some officials could interpret them, rather than on the text of the rules themselves, the challenge should be thrown out. |
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs jailed by judge after sex trafficking indictment
Lawyer News |
2024/09/17 06:34
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Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail Tuesday to await trial in a federal sex trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and shocking acts of violence.
The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The indictment against him lists allegations that go back to 2008.
He’s accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.
“Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after expressionlessly listening to the allegations with his uncuffed hands folded in his lap.
After U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky declined to grant him bail, Combs took a long swig from a water bottle, then was led out of court, turning toward family members in the audience as he went.
“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said after court. He plans to appeal the bail decision.
The Bad Boy Records founder is accused of sexually abusing and using physical force toward women and getting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all. Prosecutors say he also tried to bribe and intimidate witnesses and victims to keep them quiet.
“Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court.
Agnifilo acknowledged Combs was “not a perfect person,” saying he’d used drugs and had been in “toxic relationships” but was getting treatment and therapy.
“The evidence in this case is extremely problematic,” the attorney told the court.
He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He didn’t name the woman, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“Is it sex trafficking? Not if everybody wants to be there,” Agnifilo said, arguing that authorities were intruding on his client’s private life.
Prosecutors said in court papers that they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses and expect the number to grow. They said they would use financial, travel and billing records, electronic data and communications and videos of the “Freak Offs” to prove their case.
Combs was arrested Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.
A conviction on every charge would require at least 15 years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence.
The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to intimidate and lure women into his orbit, “often under the pretense of a romantic relationship,” according to the indictment.
It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in the “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged and recorded, creating dozens of videos. He ensured their participation by procuring and providing drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and using intimidation and violence, according to the indictment. It said his employees facilitated “Freak Offs” by taking care of tasks like travel and hotel arrangements and stocking them with such supplies as drugs and baby oil.
The events could last for days, and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover from the exertion and drug use, the indictment said.
During the searches of Combs’ homes earlier this year, law enforcement seized narcotics, videos of the performances and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, according to prosecutors. They said agents also seized firearms and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers in his bedroom closet in Miami.
Combs’ lawyer said his client didn’t own the guns, noting that he employs a security company.
The indictment says Combs choked, shoved, hit and kicked people, causing injuries that often took days or weeks to heal. His employees and associates sometimes kept victims from leaving or tracked down those who tried, the indictment said.
It alleges that Combs used explicit recordings as “collateral” to ensure the women’s continued obedience and silence. He also exerted control over victims by promising career opportunities, providing and threatening to withhold financial support, dictating how they looked, monitoring their health records and controlling where they lived, according to the indictment. |
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Protesters storm Mexico’s Senate after ruling party wins votes for court overhaul
Lawyer News |
2024/09/11 08:22
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Hundreds of protesters broke into Mexico’s Senate on Tuesday as lawmakers weighed a contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, forcing the body to take a temporary recess for the safety of the senators.
The shut down came just hours after Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, wrangled the votes it needed to jam through the proposal after one member of an opposition party flipped to support it.
That move and other political maneuvering ahead of a vote on the plan championed by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador fueled even more outrage after weeks of protests by judicial employees and law students.
Critics and observers say the plan, in which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.
Some protesters entered the Senate chambers in an effort to block the vote after they said lawmakers were not listening to their demands. Protesters broke through the door of the Senate chamber pushing aggressively, using pipes and chains. At least one person fainted after protesters broke in.
“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs against the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside the court roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.
Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said that people like him working in the courts “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.
“They have decided to sell out the nation, and sell out for political capital they were offered, we felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”
Despite unrest in recent weeks, the plan sailed through the lower chamber of Congress last week, and was passed onto the Senate, where López Obrador’s Morena party lacked the necessary supermajority to approve it. In recent weeks, it was able to peel off two senators from an opposition party, but came into this week still missing one more.
It was unclear where that vote would come from because the country’s opposition vehemently opposes the plan. But over the weekend, observers began to speculate that a senator from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, would support Morena as he refused to answer calls from his party leadership.
On Tuesday, Yunes Márquez announced he would take leave due to health issues and be replaced by his father, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, a former governor of Veracruz said he would vote for the plan. He said he knew the plan was “not the best” but said more laws down the line could improve it.
“Mexico is not going to be destroyed for approving this reform, nor will the reform automatically change the reality of a justice system that is calling out for fundamental change,” Yunes Linares said.
Yunes Linares strolled into the Senate chambers and was met with applause and chants of “hero!” by Morena senators and screams of “traitor!” from his own party. One PAN senator, Lilly Téllez, even threw dozens of coins at Yunes Linares, calling him a ”traitor who sold out his country” for his own benefit. A Senate vote was expected Wednesday.
The national head of PAN, Marko Cortés, claimed that it “is evident” that there was an “impunity pact” between the Yuneses and the government so he would vote in favor of the overhaul. Cortés was referring to a July arrest order for Sen. Yunes Márquez, for alleged falsification of documents and fraud related to his candidacy.
Yunes had challenged it and got a temporary suspension, calling it a political persecution by the governing Morena party, the same party his father now appears ready to support.
His father, Yunes Linares, dodged questions from the media about how he would vote but accused Cortés of “lynching” him and claimed it was “absolutely false” that he has been coerced to vote for the overhaul. He was flanked by two Morena senators as he spoke.
A Yunes vote in favor would allow the ruling party to clear the biggest hurdle in making the proposal law. If it passes the Senate, it will have to be ratified by the legislatures of 17 of Mexico’s 32 states, but the governing party is believed to have the necessary support.
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A man who attacked a Nevada judge in court pleads guilty but mentally ill
Lawyer News |
2024/09/06 08:20
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A man whose courtroom attack on a judge in Las Vegas was recorded on video has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and other charges.
Deobra Delone Redden ended his trial Thursday after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus testified that she feared for her life when Redden vaulted over her bench and desk and landed on her. The attack happened Jan. 3 as Holthus was about to deliver Redden’s sentence in a separate felony attempted battery case.
Redden’s defense attorney, Carl Arnold, said in a statement Friday that the plea “reflects a delicate balance between accepting responsibility for a regrettable incident and recognizing the impact of Mr. Redden’s untreated mental illness at the time.”
Arnold told jurors who began hearing evidence on Tuesday that Redden had not taken prescribed medication to control his diagnosed schizophrenia. Holthus testified that she felt “defenseless” during the attack and that court officials and attorneys who came to her aid saved her life, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Law clerk Michael Lasso told the jury he saw Holthus’ head hit the floor and Redden grab her hair. “I absolutely thought, ‘He’s going to kill her,’” Lasso testified. He said he wrestled Redden away, punched him to try to subdue him and saw Redden hitting a corrections officer who also intervened.
An armed courtroom marshal suffered a bleeding gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder, according to court officials and witnesses. Holthus was not hospitalized and returned to work after treatment for her injuries. A prosecutor for more than 27 years, she was elected to the state court bench in 2018.
Redden, 31, is already serving prison time for other felony battery convictions. Prosecutor John Giordani said Friday he could face up to 86 years for his pleas to eight felonies, which also included battery of a protected person age 60 or older resulting in substantial bodily harm, intimidating a public officer and battery by a prisoner.
Clark County District Court Judge Susan Johnson ruled that Redden was competent and capable of entering his plea, the Review-Journal reported. Sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 7.
Arnold said in his statement that he will ask Johnson to order mental health treatment for his client behind bars.
Giordani said Redden told three correctional staff members after the attack that he tried to kill Holthus.
“While he clearly has past mental issues, he made a choice that day and failed to control his homicidal impulses,” the prosecutor said. |
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Trial begins over Texas ‘Trump Train’ highway confrontation
Lawyer News |
2024/09/01 08:18
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A federal trial is set to begin Monday over claims that supporters of former President Donald Trump threatened and harassed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas four years ago, disrupting the campaign on the last day of early voting.
The civil trial over the so-called “Trump Train” comes as Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race into the final two months of their head-to-head fight for the White House in November.
Democrats on the bus said they feared for their lives as Trump supporters in dozens of trucks and cars nearly caused collisions, harassing their convoy for more than 90 minutes, hitting a Biden-Harris campaign staffer’s car and forcing the bus driver to repeatedly swerve for safety.
“For at least 90 minutes, defendants terrorized and menaced the driver and passengers,” the lawsuit alleges. “They played a madcap game of highway ‘chicken’ coming within three to four inches of the bus. They tried to run the bus off the road.”
The highway confrontation prompted an FBI investigation, which led then-President Trump to declare that in his opinion, “these patriots did nothing wrong.” Among those suing is former Texas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor Wendy Davis, who was on the bus that day. Davis rose to prominence in 2013 with her 13-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the state Capitol. The other three plaintiffs are a campaign volunteer, staffer and the bus driver.
The lawsuit names six defendants, accusing them of violating the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law to stop political violence and intimidation tactics.
The same law was used in part to indict Trump on federal election interference charges over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Enacted by Congress during the Reconstruction Era, the law was created to protect Black men’s right to vote by prohibiting political violence.
Videos of the confrontation on Oct. 30, 2020, that were shared on social media, including some recorded by the Trump supporters, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. The Trump supporters at times boxed in the bus, slowed it down, kept it from exiting the highway and repeatedly forced the bus driver to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, the lawsuit says.
On the two previous days, Biden-Harris supporters were subjected to death threats, with some Trump supporters displaying weapons, according to the lawsuit. These threats in combination with the highway confrontation led Democrats to cancel an event later in the day.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, alleges the defendants were members of local groups near San Antonio that coordinated the confrontation.
Francisco Canseco, an attorney for three of the defendants, said his clients acted lawfully and did not infringe on the free speech rights of those on the bus. “It’s more of a constitutional issue,” Canseco said. “It’s more of who has the greater right to speak behind their candidate.”
Judge Robert Pitman, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, is set to preside over Monday’s trial. He denied the defendants’ pretrial motion for a summary judgment in their favor, ruling last month that the KKK Act prohibits the physical intimidation of people traveling to political rallies, even when racial bias isn’t a factor.
While one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, argued his group had a First Amendment right to demonstrate support for their candidate, the judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”
“Just as the First Amendment does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light, it does not protect Defendants from allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving,” Pitman wrote.
A prior lawsuit filed over the “Trump Train” alleged the San Marcos Police Department violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by failing to send a police escort after multiple 911 calls were made and a bus rider said his life was threatened. It accused officers of privately laughing and joking about the emergency calls. San Marcos settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $175,000 and a requirement that law enforcement get training on responding to political violence. |
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