A woman accused of fleeing to Thailand after killing a Michigan State University student in a hit-and-run crash has been returned to Michigan and is being held on $1 million bail. Investigators believe Tubtim “Sue” Howson struck 22-year-old Benjamin Kable in Oakland County on Jan 1. Howson is a dual U.S. and Taiwanese citizen and left Michigan for Bangkok on Jan. 3. Authorities in Thailand took her into custody there. She was returned to the U.S. in February and held in San Francisco. The Oakland County Sheriff’s office says she was returned to Michigan on Wednesday. She was arraigned Friday on a charge of failing to stop at the scene of an accident and ordered held on bond.
National News
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Transgender woman attacked at Minneapolis rail station
A transgender woman has been brutally assaulted near a light rail station in Minneapolis, suffering a rib fracture, collapsed lung and brain bleed. Police responded Monday morning after receiving a call that a woman was lying on the ground near Lake St. Station. According to criminal complaints, officers are concerned the assault was motivated by anti-transgender bias. A spokesperson for the county attorney’s office says the case is being investigated, and more evidence is needed to determine the motive. Two men were arrested and charged with first-degree aggravated robbery and third-degree assault. A third person has not been identified.
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Louisiana governor apologizes for 1972 deaths of 2 students
Fifty years after two students were shot and killed by a law enforcement officer during a protest at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s governor has signed a formal apology for their unjust killings. The fatal shooting of Leonard Brown and Denver Smith occurred Nov. 16, 1972, after weeks of demonstrations by students protesting poor funding, inadequate services and the disparity of educational opportunities in the state. As a result, then-Gov. Edwin Edwards sent police officers to break up the protests, The Advocate reported. At that time Brown and Smith, both 20, were fatally shot by a still-unidentified officer. No one was ever prosecuted for the killings.
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California sheriff found guilty of corruption
A special civil jury in Northern California has found a former longtime sheriff guilty on all six counts of corruption and willful misconduct in a case involving the issuing of concealed-carry weapons permits in exchange for campaign donations. The Mercury News reports Laurie Smith resigned from her post as sheriff of the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office on Monday when the jury was already deliberating. Her attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case but the judge denied it. Smith had been sheriff of Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, since 1998 when she became the first woman elected sheriff in California. She and her attorney declined to comment Thursday.
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Biden tests positive for COVID-19 after Massachusetts visit
President Biden tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after traveling to Massachusetts to give a speech on climate policy. Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the president is taking antiviral drug Paxlovid and experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The plan, she said, is for Biden to quarantine in […]
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Slain cyclist Moriah Wilson, 25, ‘exceptional in every way’
Moriah Wilson had recently quit her job to become a professional mountain bike and gravel racer. The 25-year-old Vermont native’s life and promising cycling career were cut short May 11 when she was shot to death in Austin. She was in Texas ahead of the 150-mile Gravel Locos race, which she was reportedly favored to win. Her killing has shaken the cycling world and other spheres, with tributes pouring in for the rising star known by “Mo.” Wilson’s former employer Specialized said she had already won 10 events this year. The suspected shooter remains at large.
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Authorities ID boy, 14, killed by deputy at Texas apartment
Authorities say the person fatally shot last week by a sheriff’s deputy at a West Texas apartment complex was a 14-year-old boy. Authorities have not released details about the events leading up to Juan Herrera being shot by a Midland County sheriff’s deputy at 2:20 a.m. on March 3 at a Midland apartment complex. The investigation was turned over to the Texas Rangers. In a release the day of the shooting, the Texas Department of Public Safety said that the person who was shot was taken to a hospital, where he died.
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Fact checkers say YouTube lets its platform be ‘weaponized’
More than 80 fact checking organizations are calling on YouTube to address what they say is rampant misinformation on the platform. A letter to CEO Susan Wojcicki published Wednesday calls the Google-owned platform one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide. The fact checkers say YouTube’s efforts to address the issue have been insufficient. They are all members of the International Fact Checking Network and include Rappler in the Philippines, Africa Check, Science Feedback in France and dozens of others. They said YouTube wrongly frames discussions about disinformation as a false dichotomy of deleting or not deleting content.
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Family sues after loved one’s corpse falls out of casket
A Massachusetts family whose loved one’s casket fell open as it was being lowered into a grave, causing the body to fall out, has sued the funeral home and the cemetery. The Eagle-Tribune reports that the family of Andrew Serrano, a resident of Lawrence who died in March 2019, allege negligence and reckless infliction of emotional distress in the suit filed last week. The suit says during the funeral handled by the Perez Funeral Home at city-owned Bellevue Cemetery in Lawrence in April 2019, the body fell out of the casket in front of distraught relatives. Messages were left with the funeral home and the city.
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Death Valley’s brutal 130 degrees may be record if verified
Death Valley reported a temperature of 130 degrees amid a blistering heat wave. If meteorologists can verify Sunday’s reading it would be the hottest temperature on Earth in more than 89 years. It would be the third hottest on record, behind 134 degrees measured in the same place in 1913. It also would be hottest August temperature recorded on Earth. The World Meteorological Organization is investigating. Scientists say the conditions were ripe for such a record. And it came in a week of wild weather bingo, including a fire tornado and a devastating derecho.
