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What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain
Law Center |
2024/11/03 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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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to stay in jail while appeals court takes up bail fight
Law Center |
2024/10/15 08:56
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A federal appeals court judge has ruled to keep Sean “Diddy” Combs locked up while he makes a third bid for bail in his sex trafficking case, which is slated to go to trial in May.
In a decision filed Friday, Circuit Judge William J. Nardini denied the hip-hop mogul’s immediate release from jail while a three-judge panel weighs his bail request.
Combs’ lawyers appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 30 after two judges rejected his release.
Combs, 54, has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest on charges that he used his “power and prestige” as a music star to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “Freak Offs.”
Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges alleging he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
At a bail hearing three weeks ago, a judge rejected the defense’s $50 million bail proposal that would’ve allowed the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer to be placed under house arrest at his Florida mansion with GPS monitoring and strict limits on visitors.
Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr., who has since recused himself from the case, said that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that Combs is a danger to the community. He said “no condition or set of conditions” could guard against the risk of Combs obstructing the investigation or threatening or harming witnesses.
In their appeal, Combs’ lawyers argued that the judge had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric” and ordered Combs detained for “purely speculative reasons.”
“Indeed, hardly a risk of flight, he is a 54-year-old father of seven, a U.S. citizen, an extraordinarily successful artist, businessman, and philanthropist, and one of the most recognizable people on earth,” the lawyers wrote.
Combs’ lawyers have not asked the new trial judge, Arun Subramanian, to consider releasing him on bail. At a hearing Thursday, as Combs sat alongside his lawyers in a beige jail jumpsuit, Subramanian suggested he would at least be open to taking up the issue.
After setting a May 5 trial date, Subramanian briefly questioned Combs’ lawyers about his treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which has been plagued by violence and dysfunction for years.
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Georgia Supreme Court restores near-ban on abortions while state appeals
Law Center |
2024/10/06 11:41
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The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling striking down the state’s near-ban on abortions while it considers the state’s appeal.
The high court’s order came a week after a judge found that Georgia unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realize they’re pregnant. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under Georgia’s state constitution include the right to make personal healthcare decisions.
The state Supreme Court put McBurney’s ruling on hold at the request of Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, whose office is appealing.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John J. Ellington argued that the case “should not be predetermined in the State’s favor before the appeal is even docketed.”
“The State should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution,” Ellington wrote. “The `status quo’ that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”
Clare Bartlett, executive director of the Georgia Life Alliance, called high court’s decision “appropriate,” fearing that without it, women from other states would begin coming to Georgia for surgical abortions.
“There’s no there’s no right to privacy in the abortion process because there’s another individual involved,” Bartlett said. She added: “It goes back to protecting those who are the most vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”
Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said the state Supreme Court had “sided with anti-abortion extremists.” Her group is among the plaintiffs challenging the state law.
“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Simpson said in a statement. “Denying our community members the lifesaving care they deserve jeopardizes their lives, safety, and health — all for the sake of power and control over our bodies.”
Leaders of carafem, an Atlanta abortion provider that had planned to expand its services after McBurney’s ruling, expressed dismay at the law’s reinstatement.
“Carafem will continue to offer abortion services following the letter of the law,” said Melissa Grant, the provider’s chief operating officer. “But we remain angry and disappointed and hope that eventually people will come back to a more sensible point of view on this issue that aligns with the people who need care.”
Georgia’s law, signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, was one of a wave of restrictive abortion measures that took effect in Republican-controlled states after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion. It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. At around six weeks into a pregnancy, cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in an embryo’s cells that will eventually become the heart.
Georgia has a separate criminal law that makes illegal abortions punishable by up to 10 years in prison for providers, but not for women having abortions. In addition, the 2019 ban puts physicians at risk of losing their medical licenses if they perform unpermitted abortions.
The Georgia Supreme Court’s one-page order Monday exempted one specific provision of the state’s abortion law from being reinstated.
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Supreme Court rebuffs plea to restore multibllliou-dollar student debt plan
Law Center |
2024/08/31 13:38
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.
The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”
The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.
Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.
Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.
But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.
The Justice Department had suggested the Supreme Court could take up the legal fight over the new plan now, as it did with the earlier debt forgiveness plan. But the justices declined to do so.
“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.
“No court has decided on the merits here, but despite all of that borrowers are left in this limbo state where their rights don’t exist for them,” Pierce said.
Eight million people were already enrolled in the SAVE program when it was paused by the lower court, and more than 10 million more people are looking for ways to afford monthly payments, he said.
Sheng Li, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a legal group funded by conservative donors, applauded the order. “There was no basis to lift the injunction because the Department of Education’s newest loan-cancellation program is just as unlawful as the one the Court struck down a year ago,” he said in a statement.
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Hearing in Karen Read case expected to focus on jury deliberations
Law Center |
2024/08/09 11:21
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Defense attorneys for Karen Read are expected to argue Friday that two charges in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend be dismissed, focusing on the jury deliberations that led to a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations. A new trial is set to begin Jan. 27.
In several motions since the mistrial, the defense contends four jurors have said the jury unanimously reached a not guilty verdict on second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident and were deadlocked on the remaining manslaughter charge. Trying her again on those two charges would be unconstitutional double jeopardy, they said.
They also reported that one juror told them “no one thought she hit him on purpose or even thought she hit him on purpose.”
The defense also argues Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning jurors about where they stood on each of the three charges Read faced and without giving lawyers for either side a chance to comment.
Prosecutors described the defense’s request to drop charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident as an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”
But in another motion, prosecutors acknowledged they received a voicemail from someone who identified themselves as a juror and confirmed the jury had reached a unanimous decision on the two charges. Subsequently, they received emails from three individuals who also identified themselves as jurors and wanted to speak to them anonymously.
Prosecutors said they responded by telling the trio that they welcomed discussing the state’s evidence in the case but were “ethically prohibited from inquiring as to the substance of your jury deliberations.” They also said they could not promise confidentiality.
As they push against a retrial, the defense wants the judge to hold a “post-verdict inquiry” and question all 12 jurors if necessary to establish the record they say should have been created before the mistrial was declared, showing jurors “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three charges against her.”
Prosecutors argued the defense was given a chance to respond and, after one note from the jury indicating it was deadlocked, told the court there had been sufficient time and advocated for the jury to be declared deadlocked. Prosecutors wanted deliberations to continue, which they did before a mistrial was declared the following day.
“Contrary to the representation made in the defendant’s motion and supporting affidavits, the defendant advocated for and consented to a mistrial, as she had adequate opportunities to object and instead remained silent which removes any double jeopardy bar to retrial,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, had been out drinking with O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police who was found outside the Canton, Massachusetts, home of another Boston police officer. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense contended O’Keefe was killed inside the home after Read dropped him off and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.” |
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Court filings provide additional details of the US’ first nitrogen gas execution
Law Center |
2024/08/01 21:53
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A corrections officer who helped carry out the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution said in a court document that the inmate had normal blood oxygen levels for longer than he expected before the numbers suddenly plummeted.
Another court document indicated that the nitrogen gas was flowing for at least 10 minutes during the execution. The documents filed last month in ongoing litigation provided additional details of the execution of Kenneth Smith, who was the first person put to death using nitrogen gas.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office maintains the high oxygen readings indicate that Smith held his breath as the nitrogen gas flowed, causing the execution to take longer than expected. But attorneys for another inmate said the state has no proof to back up that claim and is trying to “explain away” an execution that went horribly awry.
As the state of Alabama plans additional nitrogen gas executions, questions and disagreements continue over what happened at the first one. A federal judge on Tuesday will hear arguments in a request to block the state from executing Alan Miller by nitrogen gas in September in what would be the nation’s second nitrogen execution.
Media witnesses to Smith’s execution, including The Associated Press, said that Smith shook on the gurney for several minutes before taking a series of gasping breaths. Alabama had assured a federal judge before the execution that the new execution method would quickly cause unconsciousness and death.
A pulse oximeter showed that Smith had oxygen levels of 97% to 98% for a “period of time that was longer than I had expected,” the corrections captain said in a sworn statement. The corrections captain said he did not observe Smith make any violent or convulsive movements, but he did tense up and raise his body off the gurney. After “he released a deep breath,” the oxygen levels began dropping, the corrections captain said.
“The best explanation of the testimony is that Smith held his breath and lost consciousness when he breathed nitrogen gas — not that the mask did not fit or that the nitrogen was impure,” the Alabama attorney general’s office wrote in a court filing.
Attorneys for Miller responded that the state has no evidence to back up that claim and said it would be impossible for someone to hold their breath for as long as the execution took. Instead, they suggested other problems with the mask accounted for the delay.
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