HellsBelle

A California CEO is facing a federal assault charge after surveillance footage shows him choking a man for dancing barefoot on a Virgin Voyages cruise ship.

The incident took place on March 31 in international waters on the Resilient Lady cruise ship, according to a federal criminal complaint filed on April 1.

Authorities allege that Kenneth DeGiorgio, the CEO of First American Financial Corp., assaulted a man, identified as M.A. in the complaint, at the On The Rocks bar aboard the ship. The security supervisor reviewed video footage and “determined DeGiorgio was the male shown on the surveillance footage choking the victim,” according to the complaint.

*** This is the 5th candidate dropped by the Cons. The others are Mark McKenzie (Windsor, ON), Stefan Marquis (Laurier/Sainte Marie, PQ), Lourence Singh (Westminster, BC) and Don Patel (Etobicoke, ON).

Simon Payette will no longer be running for the CPC in the Berthier—Maskinongé riding, a spokesperson for the party confirmed in an email.

"This individual's conduct is completely inappropriate, and cannot be excused," states Sam Lilly. "He will not be a candidate."

In one of several social media posts and comments, Payette accused Provost, an advocate for stricter gun laws, for using the tragedy to "grease the palms of anti-gun extremists."

The victims are all middle-aged men now: urban planners, computer scientists, technology salespeople — men with jobs, titles and families of their own.

But long-ago they were all boys — Grade 6 students who had the misfortune to fall under the gaze of a popular elementary school teacher named Brian Meilicke Moore, a predator who dazzled them with ski trips, beer and "games" played in the dark that scarred them for life.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is aiming to cut 20,000 jobs at agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Scientists overseeing cancer research, vaccine and drug approvals, public health and tobacco regulations are also among 10,000 already laid off. Public health experts say the mass firings could have catastrophic impacts for the U.S. and the world.

"Some of the top public health experts in the world just lost their jobs," said former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.

Type A H5N1 influenza has been spreading through animals and some people in the United States. There have been 70 cases in that country since during the past year, according to the World Health Organization, though researchers and studies suggest that’s likely an undercount.

In Mexico, the girl was in serious condition in a hospital in Torreon in the neighboring state of Coahuila, the health ministry said in a statement Friday. It said she had initially been treated with an anti-flu medication.

It was not known how the girl contracted the virus. Investigators were testing wild birds in the vicinity of the girl’s home, the statement said.

The visit, confirmed by a White House official Saturday, comes as Israel is setting up a new security corridor across Gaza to pressure Hamas and Netanyahu’s defense minister has said Israel would seize large areas of the territory and add them to its so-called security zones. Israeli strikes killed more than a dozen people in Gaza on Friday, a day after attacks killed at least 100 Palestinians.

Israel has pledged to escalate the war with Hamas until the militant group returns the hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has imposed a halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid.

“By a preponderance of the evidence,” Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy says in her judgment, the plaintiffs proved liability, damages and attorney’s fees in their complaint against the attorney general’s office.

“Because the Office of the Attorney General violated the Texas Whistleblower Act by firing and otherwise retaliating against the plaintiff for in good faith reporting violations of law by Ken Paxton and OAG, the court hereby renders judgment for plaintiffs,” Mauzy states.

The court found that the former employees were fired in retaliation for reporting allegations that Paxton was his using his office to accept bribes from an Austin real estate developer who employed a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers Farlis Almonte and Ricardo Rodriguez were assigned to immigration inspection booths at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. They were charged after investigators found phone evidence showing they had exchanged messages with human traffickers in Mexico and discovered unexplained cash deposits into their bank accounts, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.

Surveillance video showed at least one instance in which a vehicle with a driver and a passenger stopped at a checkpoint but only the driver was documented as having entered the country, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the officers waved dozens of vehicles carrying people without documents. They said both men were paid thousands for each vehicle they waved through.

Whether the move will boost lumber supplies as Trump envisioned in an executive order last month remains to be seen. Former President Joe Biden’s administration also sought more logging in public forests to combat fires, which are worsening as the world gets hotter, yet U.S. Forest Service timber sales stayed relatively flat under his tenure.

It exempts affected forests from an objection process that allows outside groups, tribes and local governments to challenge logging proposals at the administrative level before they are finalized. It also narrows the number of alternatives federal officials can consider when weighing logging projects.

Detailed vacancy data for all 122 weather field offices show eight offices are missing more than 35% of their staff — including those in Arkansas where tornadoes and torrential rain hit this week — according to statistics crowd-sourced by more than a dozen National Weather Service employees. Experts said vacancy rates of 20% or higher amount to critical understaffing, and 55 of the 122 sites reach that level.

The weather offices issue routine daily forecasts, but also urgent up-to-the-minute warnings during dangerous storm outbreaks such as the tornadoes that killed seven people this week and “catastrophic” flooding that’s continuing through the weekend. The weather service this week has logged at least 75 tornado and 1,277 severe weather preliminary reports.

The Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and run by Elon Musk, has been targeting federal agencies for spending cuts. That includes terminating leases for three dozen offices in the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for enforcing mine safety laws.

The proposals for MSHA are “idiotic,” Stewart said, and would give coal companies “the green light to do as they please.”

Stewart said he’s never supported Trump and never would, but he struggles to explain the loyalty of many West Virginians, including coal miners, to the president. He said Trump had never done anything to help them.

“I can’t wrap my brain around why they can’t see what a con man he is. I just hope someday they’ll wake up. It may already be too late.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York argued in a court filing Friday that a significant sentence was warranted because the New York Republican’s “unparalleled crimes” had “made a mockery” of the country’s election system.

“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” the office wrote.

Prosecutors also argued that Santos had been “unrepentant and defiant” for years, dismissing the prosecution as a “witch hunt” and refusing to resign from Congress as his web of lies was debunked.