| Insane or evil? Trial fills in details of Colorado movie gunman Holmes Posted: 01 May 2015 01:19 PM PDT  By Keith Coffman and Daniel Wallis CENTENNIAL, Colo. (Reuters) - Harrowing accounts from survivors dominated the first week of Colorado's movie theater massacre trial, but amid the tears a much more detailed picture emerged of gunman James Holmes, his personal life, and his deadly plan. Prosecutors seeking the death penalty for the 27-year-old former neuroscience graduate student, and his public defenders, have filled in many of the gaps left when a judge sealed much of the key evidence in the 2012 mass shooting case. Both sides painted starkly different pictures of Holmes in Arapahoe County District Court in the Denver suburb of Centennial. In his opening statement, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler depicted Holmes as a craven killer of superior intellect who planned and carried out the massacre because of his "longstanding hatred of mankind." Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder after killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in the Denver suburb of Aurora on July 20, 2012. In court, Brauchler revealed that two court-appointed forensic psychiatrists had deemed that Holmes was sane at the time.
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| Pacquiao the people's choice as wagering heads toward records Posted: 01 May 2015 11:59 AM PDT |
| NY jury finds ex-Goldman programer Aleynikov guilty of code theft Posted: 01 May 2015 09:47 AM PDT  A jury on Friday convicted a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc programer of stealing the investment bank's high-frequency trading code. The jury said it had reached a split decision, finding Sergey Aleynikov guilty on only one count of stealing "secret scientific material" from Goldman. They were unable to reach a verdict on another similar count and acquitted Aleynikov on a count of unlawful duplication. Aleynikov's lawyer, Kevin Marino, said earlier that his client faced between 1-1/2 years and 4 years if found guilty on any of the three counts.
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| Ex-Christie ally pleads guilty in traffic jam case Posted: 01 May 2015 09:14 AM PDT  A former ally of Gov. Chris Christie pleaded guilty Friday to helping to engineer traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and concocting a cover-up along with two other officials with close ties to Christie.
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| New York jury deliberations in Etan Patz murder case in 13th day Posted: 01 May 2015 07:50 AM PDT  By Natasja Sheriff NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jury deliberations resumed for a 13th day on Friday in the trial of a former deli worker who confessed to the 1979 killing of Etan Patz, a New York City boy whose picture was among the first to appear on milk cartons in a U.S. campaign to locate missing children. The panel has been struggling to decide kidnapping and murder charges against Pedro Hernandez, 54, in the death of 6-year-old Patz. After telling Justice Maxwell Wiley at state Supreme Court in Manhattan that it was deadlocked on Wednesday, the jury has been returning to court on his orders to continue trying to reach a verdict. Patz's 1979 disappearance from his Soho neighborhood in Manhattan brought national attention to the issue of abducted children and changed the way the United States responds to reports of missing kids.
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| Details of Freddie Gray’s death trickle out as public awaits answers Posted: 01 May 2015 07:19 AM PDT  Freddie Gray's head was reportedly mortally injured when he slammed into the back of a Baltimore police van during his arrest.
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| Obama administration says to provide $20 million for police body cameras Posted: 01 May 2015 05:08 AM PDT  By Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will provide $20 million in grants to local police departments to help buy body cameras for officers, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday. The grants represent the first portion to be approved by Congress of a $75 million, three-year body camera funding program requested in December by President Barack Obama. Demand for the cameras, which clip onto officers' uniforms to record interactions with citizens, has risen amid a series of deadly altercations between police and unarmed black men, followed by protests in several American cities. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said last week that she would launch a body-camera pilot program after a black man died from a spinal injury while in police custody.
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| On Clinton's age, Republican rivals imply -- but never say -- she's old Posted: 01 May 2015 03:13 AM PDT  By James Oliphant WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Her campaign barely three weeks old, Hillary Clinton already has been attacked by Republicans on everything from donations to her family's charitable foundation, to her tenure as secretary of state and her ties to Wall Street. If elected in November 2016, Clinton would be, at 69, the second-oldest person to take the presidential oath for the first time, behind only Ronald Reagan, who turned 70 weeks after being sworn into office in 1981. Questions of health and fitness for the presidency dogged two former candidates of a similar age, Bob Dole in the 1996 election and John McCain in 2008, each of whom was 71 at this point in the race. "I do think age is an issue in a presidential campaign," said Steve Schmidt, who was McCain's campaign manager. "There is a thin line between seasoned and decrepit." But several Republican campaigns that seem best positioned to exploit it don't want to touch the issue - at least directly. That's a shift from just a few months ago, when presidential hopefuls Senator Rand Paul, 52, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, 47, explicitly referenced Clinton's age as a possible disqualifier, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likened her to a cast member of the hit TV show "The Golden Girls," which featured four older women living together.
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| Life crawling back to normal in Nepal's quake-hit capital Posted: 01 May 2015 02:58 AM PDT  KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Life was slowly edging back toward normal in Nepal's quake-hit capital Friday as residents packed up tents and moved indoors, farmers delivered fresh produce and lines disappeared at gasoline stations. Fresh croissants even emerged from a popular bakery and were quickly snapped up.
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| The real story of Carly Fiorina's record as a CEO Posted: 30 Apr 2015 08:22 PM PDT |
| After Baltimore, what hope for change? Posted: 30 Apr 2015 07:50 PM PDT |
| Baltimore officials ask for patience in probe of black man's death Posted: 30 Apr 2015 07:18 PM PDT  By Scott Malone and Ian Simpson BALTIMORE (Reuters) - As protesters marched in several cities, Baltimore officials asked for patience on Thursday while prosecutors decide whether to charge six officers involved in the arrest of a black man who later died of injuries he sustained while in custody. The office of Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney, will include the internal report as part of its own investigation into the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered spinal injuries sometime between his April 12 arrest for carrying a switchblade knife and his arrival at a police station. A few hundred protesters marched through Baltimore in a noisy but peaceful march on Thursday, joined by NBA star Carmelo Anthony and other celebrities, ahead of a 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) curfew that city officials said would continue through the weekend. "I'm hoping that we will get justice," said Janai Peters, 22, who works at an area hospital.
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| New York mayor refutes allegations that police adopting tougher strategy for protests Posted: 30 Apr 2015 05:40 PM PDT  By Hilary Russ NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Mayor Bill de Blasio denied that the city had toughened its policing strategy in response to the riots in Baltimore after some lawmakers accused the city's police force of overly aggressive tactics in its handling of protests on Wednesday night. During a series of marches across Manhattan to protest the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who suffered severe spinal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, there were 143 arrests, mainly for obstructing traffic.
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| Republican amendment fight threatens Iran bill in Senate Posted: 30 Apr 2015 05:16 PM PDT  By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dispute among Republican senators over changes to an Iran nuclear review bill on Thursday threatened the measure's chances of being passed by the U.S. Congress, leaving Senate leaders scrambling for a way to advance the legislation. Two Republican senators, Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, used an unorthodox procedural move to try to force the Senate to vote on their amendments to a bill authored by another Republican senator, Bob Corker, that would give Congress the right to review an international nuclear agreement with Iran.
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| State Department turns over more documents to U.S. House panel Posted: 30 Apr 2015 02:52 PM PDT A House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, has received 4,000 pages of documents from the State Department's official inquiry into the attack, its chairman said on Thursday. The documents are from the State Department's "Accountability Review Board" (ARB) investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012 attack that took the lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who heads the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement it was the first time the proceedings of a State ARB had been turned over to Congress. Republicans say the State Department failed to protect diplomatic personnel at the time, when Hillary Clinton - now the presumptive Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 presidential race - was secretary of state. |
