International

President Biden commutes death sentences of 37 federal inmates

Published

4 hours ago

December 23, 2024

US President Joe Biden

President Biden commutes death sentences of 37 federal inmates

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the death sentences of 37 out of 40 federal inmates, replacing their sentences with life imprisonment without parole.

This decision comes amid heightened calls from death penalty opponents urging the president to act before leaving office.

The commutation reflects Biden’s stance on the federal death penalty, which has been under a moratorium throughout his presidency.

The action also stands in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s tenure, during which a record number of federal executions were carried out.

The decision leaves only a few individuals, primarily those convicted of heinous acts motivated by hate or terrorism, still facing federal death sentences.

With less than a month remaining in his term, Biden’s decision has been widely regarded as a step towards reforming the federal justice system and addressing longstanding controversies surrounding capital punishment.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said in a statement.

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“I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” he said.

The three inmates who will remain on federal death row include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist who in 2015 shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers during a 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also remain on death row.

Those commuted included nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four for murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience…I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added.

– Trump death penalty expansion –

Biden campaigned for the White House as an opponent of the death penalty, and the Justice Department issued a moratorium on its use at the federal level after he became president.

During his reelection campaign, Trump spoke frequently of expanding the use of capital punishment to include migrants who kill American citizens and drug and human traffickers.

There had been no federal inmates put to death in the United States since 2003 until Trump resumed federal executions in July 2020.

He oversaw 13 by lethal injection during his final six months in power, more than any US leader in 120 years.

The last federal execution — which was carried out by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana — took place on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump left office.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others — Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee — have moratoriums in place.

In 2024, there have been 25 executions in the United States, all at the state level.

President Biden commutes death sentences of 37 federal inmates

(AFP)

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Private plane crash in Brazil kills pilot, his family

International

Private plane crash in Brazil kills pilot, his family

Published

11 hours ago

December 23, 2024

Trends Admin

Private plane crash in Brazil kills pilot, his family

Ten members of a family have died after a private plane crashed into the city of Gramado in southern Brazil.

Brazilian businessman Luiz Claudio Galeazzi, who was piloting the plane, was killed in the crash alongside his wife, three daughters and other family members, a statement from his company said.

The small plane reportedly hit the chimney of a building, as well as a house and a shop as it fell.

Local authorities say 17 people on the ground were injured in the accident, including two in a serious condition

Mr Galeazzi, 61, was taking his family on a trip to Jundiaí, in the São Paulo state, according to reports in Brazilian media.

All 10 victims of the crash were members of Mr Galeazzi’s family, Rio Grande do Sul state governor Eduardo Leite told a press conference. He added that the plane had taken off in unfavourable weather conditions.

The plane reportedly flew for 3km (1.8 miles) before falling into the urban area of the city just minutes after take-off on Sunday morning.

“At the time, it was revving up. You could see that it was accelerating a lot,” an eyewitness, Nadia Hansen, told Reuters news agency.

“Then there was a bang as it hit the building and then it passed close to my house and then it fell, and I thought it had dropped in front of the house,” she said.

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Pictures from the scene show emergency workers attending to the smoking wreckage among debris from badly damaged buildings.

Mr Galeazzi was the chief executive of Galeazzi & Associados, a corporate restructuring and crisis management firm based in São Paulo.

The company issued a statement on LinkedIn, paying tribute to the 61-year-old.

“Luiz Galeazzi will be eternally remembered for his dedication to his family and for his remarkable career as the leader of Galeazzi & Associados,” the statement said.

“We also sympathize with all those affected by the accident in the region,” it said, adding that it would co-operate with investigations into the accident.

The plane crashed near the centre of Gramado, hitting a house, a furniture store and a hotel, according to Brazilian media.

State governor Mr Leite said the cause of the accident was being investigated by the Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Center (Cenipa).

“The entire state is mobilized here to provide the necessary assistance,” he told reporters at the scene.

Gramado is a popular tourist destination, known for hosting events during the festive period.

The region was severely hit in May this year by unprecedented flooding, which claimed dozens of lives and displaced around 150,000 people from their homes.

Private plane crash in Brazil kills pilot, his family

BBC

International

Trump promises to end transgender madness

Published

12 hours ago

December 23, 2024

Trends Admin

President-elect Donald Trump

Trump promises to end transgender madness

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday pledged to “stop the transgender lunacy” on day one of his presidency, as Republicans — set to control both chambers of Congress and the White House — continue their push against LGBTQ rights.

“I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools,” the president-elect said at an event for young conservatives in Phoenix, Arizona.

He also vowed to “keep men out of women’s sports,” adding that “it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

Speaking to the AmericaFest conference in a border state he easily carried in the November election, Trump further promised immediate measures against “migrant crime,” vowed to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and doubled down on his talk of restoring US control of the Panama Canal.

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Transgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as Democratic- and Republican-controlled states have moved in opposite directions on policy such as medical treatment and what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries.

Last week, when the US Congress approved its annual defense budget, it included a provision to block funding of some gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members.

In his speech Sunday, which amounted to something of a victory lap, Trump made expansive promises for his second term — and drew a dark picture of the four years preceding it, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the latter of whom he defeated in the 2024 election.

“On January 20, the United States will turn the page forever on four long, horrible years of failure, incompetence, national decline, and we will inaugurate a new era of peace, prosperity and national greatness,” Trump said, referring to his swearing-in.

– ‘Golden age’ –

“I will end the war in Ukraine. I will stop the chaos in the Middle East, and I will prevent, I promise, World War III.”

He added: “The golden age of America is upon us.”

The president-elect has yet to explain publicly how he plans to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine, or to bring peace to the Middle East.

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But in the sort of bellicose language he sometimes used even against US allies in the past, Trump said Sunday that Panamanian authorities “haven’t treated us fairly” in their operation of the Panama Canal.

He had said earlier that fees for use of the canal — construction of which was begun by France and completed by the United States — are “ridiculous.”

And he added Sunday that if the principles behind the 1970s treaty that gave Panama full control of the canal are not followed, “then we will demand” that it be returned to the United States “in full, quickly and without question.”

Thousands of ships transit the key Central American waterway every year, making it critical to US and international commerce.

The president-elect, who regularly blames migrants from Latin America for America’s drug problems, renewed his vow to immediately begin “the largest deportation operation in American history” upon taking office, and later went further, saying he would “immediately designate the (drug) cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.”

“This criminal network operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported and destroyed,” Trump said.

During his first term in 2019, after the killing in Mexico of nine American citizens from a Mormon community, Trump vowed to apply the terrorist designation to Mexican cartels.

But he relented following a plea from then-Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Trump promises to end transgender madness

International

Syria new leader says all weapons to come under state control

Published

13 hours ago

December 23, 2024

Trends Admin

Syria new leader says all weapons to come under state control

ANKARA: Turkiye’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, Ankara’s foreign ministry said.

A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.

No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.

Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders, who ousted Syria’s strongman Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive.

Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad’s fall.

Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.

Turkiye has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.

Besides supporting various militant groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.

However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the militants’ victory in Syria constituted an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Turkiye.

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International sanctions on Damascus must be lifted “as soon as possible” to allow Syria to get back on its feet and refugees to return home, Fidan said.

“The sanctions imposed on the previous regime need to be lifted as soon as possible,” he said, adding: “The international community needs to mobilize to help Syria get back on its feet and for the displaced people to return.”

During a joint press conference, Al-Sharaa said that all weapons in the country would come under state control including those held by Kurdish-led forces.

Armed “factions will begin to announce their dissolution and enter” the army, Sharaa said during a press conference with Fidan, adding “we will absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control, whether from the revolutionary factions or the factions present in the SDF area,” referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Syria alone was responsible for overthrowing Bashar Assad, Fidan also said.

“This victory belongs to you and no one else. Thanks to your sacrifices, Syria has seized a historic opportunity,” he said. Turkiye has repeatedly dismissed claims it had any hand in the lightning 12-day rebel offensive that ended with Assad’s overthrow on December 8.