Big Time News Blog: 12/14/19

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Nazi Germany's 'Stealth Fighter' Could Not Stop Hitler From Losing World War II

A sign of things to come.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wholeheartedly embraced the UK Labour Party hours before they suffered a massive defeat

Ocasio-Cortez reposted a campaign video from UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, noting its overlap with her own message. Corbyn then lost, badly.

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Crashed Chile plane had emergency in 2016: Air Force

The Chilean Hercules C-130 plane that crashed on its way to Antarctica, killing all 38 people on board, suffered an emergency three years ago on the same route, the Air Force said Saturday. In a statement, the Chilean Air Force said the plane shown in the footage is the same one that crashed during a crossing of the Drake Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, en route to a Chilean airbase. As it approached the Antarctica base in 2016 "the crew realized that the left main gear of the aircraft did not travel to the down position and secure when activating the landing gear," the statement said.

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Joe Burrow Wins the 2019 Heisman Trophy

By BY BILLY WITZ from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2EgWVGp

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

LSU quarterback Joe Burrow awarded 2019 Heisman Trophy

12/14/19 5:57 PM

New Zealand military team recovers 6 more bodies after White Island volcano eruption, pushing death toll to 14

The volcano's continued venting previously delayed plans by authorities to recover the bodies. Scientists believe another eruption is possible.

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Dems: Postponing impeachment vote was tactical

After a marathon session of debate, the House Judiciary Committee abruptly postponed a historic vote late Thursday on articles of impeachment against President Trump.

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Democrats say they won't cross picket line over union conflict at debate host site

A local union at Loyola Marymount University will picket at the university ahead of Thursday’s debate.

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New Zealand volcano eruption: elite military team recovers six bodies from White Island as divers continue hunt

A team of expert divers will continue looking for the last two missing victims of the White Island eruption on Saturday, after the New Zealand Defence Force and police recovered six bodies from the island on Friday in a high-risk operation. Deputy Commissioner of Police Mike Clement had warned that “a lot will have to go right” for the mission to succeed, and scientists had alerted police to a 50-60 per cent chance of another eruption, but the operation went to plan. On Friday morning Police Commissioner Mike Bush said in a statement that “at least one body is in the water” and divers on the police vessel Deodar were attempting to recover that body. “We're making every effort to locate and recover the two remaining deceased,” Commissioner Bush said.“This has been a harrowing event for the Whakatane community and those family and friends directly impacted by the eruption of White Island [also known as Whakaari] on Monday,” he said. This aerial photo shows White Island after its volcanic eruption in New Zealand Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 Credit: George Novak/New Zealand Herald “The operation today went to plan and we would like to recognise our partners at NZDF who have provided the specialist skills and resources to help us deliver this part of the operation… The operation was not without risk but thanks to sound planning and the skills of the specialist team involved we have recovered the six bodies.” Commissioner Bush said the environment the recovery team faced was “highly unpredictable and challenging”. GNS Science volcanologist Graham Leonard had warned that in addition to the risk of eruption, the mission would face an environment in which it would, at times, be difficult to breathe and see. Pictures of the recovery operation showed pairs of military personnel wearing breathing apparatus scouring the lunar-like landscape as inflatable dinghies and a police launch waited offshore. Six bodies have been successfully recovered from White Island and are now on board HMNZS Wellington Credit: Getty Commissioner Bush said the recovery team “showed absolute courage and commitment to ensure we can offer some closure to the families and friends of those who have lost loved ones”. “Our thoughts are with the families of the deceased and we thank Iwi [the Maori people] and the local community for their support of the victims of this tragedy,” he said. Speaking to reporters after the six bodies were retrieved, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said questions over why people were allowed to visit the active volcano “must be answered, and will be answered”. New Zealand volcano An investigation is being conducted on behalf of the coroner, and an occupational health and safety investigation is also being conducted by WorkSafe, New Zealand’s peak workplace safety organisation. The Prime Minister said the time would come for accountability, but added “we also need to respect the phase we're in now, with families only just getting their loved ones back”. There are now 14 confirmed dead from the tragedy. Twenty-six people remain in hospital receiving intensive medical treatment for severe burns, the majority of whom are in critical condition. The volcano, a popular tourist destination for day-trippers, erupted on Monday, spewing ash, steam and gases over the island. Among the 47 people on the island at the time were Australian, US, German, Chinese, British and Malaysian tourists.

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Democrats say surprise move to postpone impeachment vote was to head off GOP strategy of dragging the vote into the middle of the night

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN he suspected that the GOP wanted the vote to happen in the "thick of night."

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns Iran of 'decisive response' if harm in Iraq

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday warned Iran of a “decisive” response if U.S. interests are harmed in Iraq, after a series of rocket attacks on bases.

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Supreme Court to decide Native American land dispute in Oklahoma

Ten states, from Maine to Texas to Montana, have warned that the boundaries of Native American lands have jurisdictional consequences there as well.

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Fire Breaks Out at New Texas Rangers Stadium

By BY AIMEE ORTIZ from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2YPyMQK

Trump Tells Army-Navy Athletes Relaxed Rules Could Help Them Go Pro

By BY OSKAR GARCIA from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/36Aou9J

Weinstein’s lawyers insist he isn’t using Zimmer frame for sympathy in court after he is seen shopping without it

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers have insisted he is not using a Zimmer frame to win public sympathy, after he was photographed walking without one.The disgraced film producer was filmed hunched over a four-legged walking frame as he slowly pushed himself into a courthouse in New York for a bail hearing on Wednesday.

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The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup was quietly fired after allegedly spending over $75,000 at strip clubs and charging it to a company credit card

Turvo named a new CEO in November named Scott Lang. The company was last valued at $435 million, according to Pitchbook.

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Supporters of Iran-backed Iraqi group protest US sanctions

Hundreds of demonstrators supporting a powerful Iran-backed militia group in Iraq poured into a central Baghdad plaza Saturday, some burning American flags to protest recent U.S. sanctions against key leaders. The protest came as Washington pointed fingers at Iranian proxy groups for a recent spate of rocket attacks against its military bases in Iraq. The protesters burned American and Israeli flags, as well as cardboard cutouts of U.S. President Donald Trump in Firdous Square, a central plaza that is close to where anti-government demonstrators have been camped out since Oct. 1.

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Cholera kills over 27,000 pigs in Indonesia

More than 27,000 pigs have died in a hog-cholera epidemic that has struck Indonesia, with thousands more at risk, an animal welfare official said. Thousands of pigs have died in more than a dozen regencies across North Sumatra over the past three months, and the pace of deaths is increasing, authorities said.

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Challenge to immigration law is tossed on eve of enactment

A law that will allow New Yorkers to get driver’s licenses without having to prove they are in the country legally weathered a second court challenge Friday, days before its enactment. A federal district judge ruled against Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, saying he lacked the legal capacity to bring the lawsuit. Merola, a Republican, had argued that the state law conflicts with federal immigration law.

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A Mobster's Murder, and the Jockeying to Move Up the Hierarchy

NEW YORK -- On a quiet night in March, a mob leader was executed in New York City for the first time since 1985. The body of Francesco Cali, a reputed boss of the Gambino crime family, lay crumpled outside his Staten Island home, pierced by at least six bullets.Hours later, two soldiers in the Gambino family talked on the phone. One of them, Vincent Fiore, said he had just read a "short article" about the "news," according to prosecutors.No tears were shed for their fallen leader. The murder was "a good thing," Fiore, 57, said on the call. The vacuum at the top meant that Andrew Campos, described by authorities as the Gambino captain who ran Fiore's crew, was poised to gain more power.Cali's death was just the beginning of surprises to come for the Gambino family.Last week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Fiore and 11 others in a sprawling racketeering scheme linked to the Gambinos, once the country's preeminent organized crime dynasty. The charges stemmed from a yearslong investigation involving wiretapped calls, physical surveillance and even listening devices installed inside an office where mob associates worked.As part of the case, the government released a court filing that offered an extremely rare glimpse at the reactions inside a Mafia family to the murder of their boss -- a curious mix of mourning and jockeying for power. The case showed that life in the mob can be just as petty as life in a corporate cubicle."Mob guys are the biggest gossips in the world," said James J. Hunt, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in New York. "You think they're tough guys, but they're all looking out for themselves. The only way they get promoted is by a guy dying or going to jail."While Fiore initially plotted how Cali's death would help him and his faction, he adopted a different tone when calling his own ex-wife a few days later, prosecutors said. He warmly referred to Cali as "Frankie" and seemed to mourn the boss as a man who "was loved." He speculated about the killer's motive, saying he had watched the surveillance tape from Cali's home that captured the murder.Vincent Fiore appeared ambitious, court documents showed, eager to reveal his connections to other gangs and organized crime families. About two weeks after Cali's death, Fiore bragged in another wiretapped conversation about how he could take revenge on students who had hit his son at school, a government filing said.Fiore talked first about sending his daughter to beat the students up.But he also had other options, he said on the call. His ex-wife's father was a Latin King, her nephews were Bloods, and her cousin was a member of the Ching-a-Lings, the South Bronx motorcycle gang.Vincent Fiore and the other defendants have each pleaded not guilty to the charges. A lawyer for Fiore did not respond to a request for comment.Despite decades of declining influence in New York City, the Gambino family, led by the notoriously flashy John J. Gotti in the 1980s, is still raking in millions of dollars, according to the government. Prosecutors said they had evidence that the family had maintained its long-standing coziness with the construction industry, infiltrating high-end Manhattan properties.The indictments accused Gambino associates of bribing a real estate executive to skim hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York City construction projects, including the XI, a luxury building with two twisting towers being built along the High Line park in West Chelsea.At the height of their power in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Gambinos and other organized crime families had a stranglehold on New York City construction, through their control of construction unions and the concrete business.Some of the defendants charged last week operated a carpentry company called CWC Contracting Corp., which prosecutors said paid kickbacks to real estate developers in exchange for contracts.Despite the scramble after Cali's death in March, the Gambino crime family continued to thrive through fraud, bribery and extortion, investigators said.The wiretaps quoted in court papers hinted at the crime family's capacity for violence. One of the defendants was recorded in April claiming that he had a fight in a diner and "stabbed the kid, I don't know, 1,000 times with a fork." Inside another defendant's home and vehicle, agents found brass knuckles and a large knife that appeared to have blood on it.Among the notable names in last week's takedown were two longtime Gambino members, Andrew Campos and Richard Martino, who were once considered by Gotti to be rising stars in the Mafia, according to former officials."John was enamored by these guys," said Philip Scala, a retired FBI agent who supervised the squad investigating the Gambino family. "He couldn't believe what they were doing. These kids were making millions of dollars as entrepreneurs."In particular, Martino has long been viewed by mob investigators as somewhat of a white-collar crime genius, former officials said. Prosecutors have previously accused him of orchestrating the largest consumer fraud of the 1990s, which netted close to $1 billion. One part of that scheme involved a fake pornography website that lured users with the promise of a free tour and then charged their credit cards without their knowledge.Campos, 50, and Martino, 60, each pleaded guilty in 2005 to their role in the fraud and served time in federal prison.But as soon as they were released, the government said, they returned to the family business.Martino is now accused of hiding his wealth from the government to avoid paying the full $9.1 million forfeiture from his earlier case.After Martino's release from prison in 2014, he still controlled companies that conducted millions of dollars in transactions, using intermediaries to obscure his involvement, the government alleged. This included investments in pizzerias on Long Island and in Westchester County, according to a person familiar with the matter.Martino's lawyer, Maurice Sercarz, said his client fully paid the required forfeiture before reporting to prison. He added, "The suggestion that Mr. Martino concealed his ownership of businesses and bank accounts to avoid this obligation ignores or misrepresents his financial circumstances."Campos, meanwhile, climbed the ranks to become a captain inside the Gambino family, according to prosecutors.Henry E. Mazurek, a lawyer for Campos, said the government's photos and surveillance footage of his client were not evidence of a crime. "The government presents a trumped-up case that substitutes old lore for actual evidence," Mazurek said.After searching Campos' home in Scarsdale, New York, a wealthy suburb north of New York City, investigators found traces of a storied mob legacy. In his closet there were photos taken during his visits with Martino to see Frank Locascio, Gotti's former consigliere, or counselor, in prison.Locascio is serving a life sentence. He was convicted in 1992 alongside Gotti by the same U.S. attorney's office that brought last week's indictment. Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, was found guilty of, among other things, ordering the killing of Paul Castellano in 1985, the last time a Gambino boss was gunned down in the street.On March 14, the day after Cali's death, Campos drove into Manhattan around 5:50 p.m. to discuss the circumstances of the murder with Gambino family members, seemingly unaware that law enforcement was tracking his every move.He parked near a pizzeria on the Upper East Side, according to a person familiar with the matter. As the night progressed, he met with Gambino family captains on the Upper East Side and near a church in Brooklyn. They stood in the street, chatting openly, but law enforcement officials could not hear the conversations.Several days later, Campos and Fiore drove to Staten Island for a secret meeting. A group of about eight high-level Gambino lieutenants gathered to discuss Cali's murder, a court filing said. In a wiretapped call the next day, Fiore complained that he had stayed out past midnight.Fiore said on the call that a woman had been at Cali's home the night of his death, pointing to her as a possible connection. Court papers do not reveal the woman's identity.Nobody within the mob family seemed to suspect the person who was charged: a 25-year-old who appeared to have no clear motive.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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