Category: US

The flashy Brooklyn minister robbed at gunpoint mid-sermon returned to his Brooklyn church Sunday — and lay down on the floor to reenact the heist for his parishioners.

“We could’ve been planning our funerals,” Bishop Lamor Whitehead told worshipers. “But we made it.”

During his sermon in the rented-out Canarsie workspace that doubles as his church, Whitehead reflected on the events of last Sunday — and the video that went viral worldwide showing him lying down in the middle of the sermon as the crooks raided the room.

“I got a phone call,” Whitehead said of the attention. “They said, ‘You’re in Ukraine.’”

Lamor was preaching at Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministry on Remsen Ave. near Avenue D about 11:15 am Aug. 24 when three masked bandits stormed into the church, video shows. Whitehead stopped his sermon and crouched down, saying, “Yo, all right, all right, all right” as he lay on the floor.

High-profile Brooklyn bishop robbed mid-sermon, thieves make off with $400k in jewelry (New York Daily NewsExclusive)

Police sources told the Daily News Whitehead’s stolen jewelry was worth $1 million though Whitehead told a Daily News reporter in an exclusive sit-down interview last week that figure is inflated and inaccurate. He declined to give his own estimate.

Whitehead rolled up to church in his Rolls-Royce convertible Sunday and preached to a crowd of about 20 worshipers. I have discussed a Bible passage where King David brutally smites, with God’s blessing, those who stole from him.

Whitehead wore a Gucci and Balenciaga suit Sunday with Gucci loafers along with a large ring on his right hand showcasing an oversized red gemstone. At one point, Whitehead removed a heavy gold watch and placed it on a table by his pulpit.

His family and friends expressed concern over what he was planning to wear to church, he said.

“I’m gonna wear my Gucci,” Whitehead told parishioners he told them, “because God says, ‘You are my chosen vessel.’ He didn’t tell me I couldn’t wear what I want to wear.”

“’Why’s he gotta wear Gucci?’” he said, imitating his critics. “Because I want to. It is my civil right to wear what I want to wear. … We are a church of wealth. We’re not a church of poverty.”

Less than half the seats were filled, but a parishioner who only gave her name as Tonya supported Whitehead.

“People are talking about, ‘Oh, maybe he was the one who set himself up, it could be an insurance scam.’ Or ‘He’s a bling-bling pastor,’” she said, “If he works hard, why can’t we wear what we want to wear?”

“You would think that there would be more support, like more pastors, more of the community out here to support him,” she added. “What I find is that he’s not getting a lot of sympathy.”

Whitehead said some worshipers claiming they were too scared to come to church were just looking for an excuse to skip out.

“When they shot up the club last week,” he said, rhetorically, “you were back there the next week.”

Missing parishioners too traumatized to attend included the pastor’s wife and children, who Whitehead said had not “stopped crying” all week. One of the crooks held a gun to his 8-month-old daughter’s head, Whitehead says.

Parishioner Krystal Moore said she wasn’t at services during the robbery but that she “felt secure” Sunday morning.

“I really enjoyed the service,” she said. “I wasn’t even thinking about [the robbery] half the time I was really in the moment.”

The bishop also spoke at length about a recently surfaced lawsuit accusing him of defrauding a former congregant out of her life savings after promising to buy her a house with the money.

“If that was my parishioner,” Whitehead said, referring to the plaintiff in the case, “where are they?”

“Oh, it’s an elderly lady and that’s my savings,” Whitehead said mockingly before shouting, “That’s what the enemy wants you to believe.”

On Friday, Whitehead raised eyebrows when he held a press conference to urge elected officials to pass a law allowing clergy to carry guns to protect themselves and their congregations.

“They don’t like Bishop Whitehead because I am God-made, not man-made,” he said Sunday of his critics.

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Bay Area residents are warned about possible thunderstorms late Sunday night into Monday, the National Weather Service (NWS) announced on Twitter. A map shows those listed with a “limited” lightning risk include all Bay Area counties except Solano County.

Although forecasters say chances are “low,” possible thunderstorms can arrive as early as 12 am to 3 am Monday in Monterey County. “Isolated” thunderstorms are then projected to work its way north to the area of ​​Santa Cruz County from 3 am to 6 am

The majority of the Bay Area can expect thunderstorms around 6 am to 9 am, according to an NWS map. The northernmost parts of Marin and Napa Counties can expect thunderstorms late Monday morning to early afternoon.

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NWS offered tips on safety for the possible upcoming conditions:

• Do
  • Go inside if you hear thunder or see lightning
  • Find a roof, building or a car with a “hard-top” roof
  • Stay indoors for at least 30 minutes after you last hear thunder
• no
  • Retreat to dugouts, sheds, pavilions, picnic shelters or other small structures
  • Use touch electronic devices, outlets or corded phones
  • Go under or near tall trees
  • Swim, be near water or be near metal objects/windows

For latest weather conditions, check out KRON4’s Weather Center.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

Governor Charlie Baker’s announcement last week that the state’s record-setting revenues are poised to trigger a nearly 40-year-old tax cap law upended negotiations over a separate $1 billion tax relief proposal that lawmakers spent months developing and were aiming to finalize before the end of the weekend.

The 1986 voter-passed law at issue seeks to limit state tax revenue growth to the growth of total wages and salaries in the state. Should revenue exceed that “allowable” amount, taxpayers are then due a credit equal to the excess amount.

The Baker administration said last week that the state is poised to trigger it for the first time since 1987, and estimated taxpayers could be due back more than $2.9 billion. In response, House Speaker Ronald Mariano had left open the possibility of seeking to undo, change, or suspend the law just as it’s about to potentially benefit millions of taxpayers.

The might-be windfall for taxpayers roiled the Legislature’s own plans for millions of one-time rebates and a slew of permanent tax changes.

Lawmakers’ constituents face rapidly rising inflation, and economic worries have topped residents’ list of concerns. Aiming to help, the House and Senate each tucked a similar tax relief package into hulking economic development legislation, including proposals to increase a tax deduction for renters, hike the Earned Income Tax Credit, and lift the state’s child and dependent tax credits. The economic development bill itself would also borrow or spend more than $4 billion to help prop up housing production, financially strained hospitals, and the state’s unemployment trust fund, among a slew of other things.

But that package remained locked in negotiations Monday morning, along with any potential legislation addressing the tax cap law — two pieces that insiders said cast a shadow over everything else in the session’s final hours.

“We are kind of perplexed,” Senator Cindy F. Friedman told reporters shortly before midnight. “We’ve got this tax piece, which is really serious and was laid in front of us in a pretty short amount of time.”

Friedman said lawmakers were considering passing an economic development bill that does not include any tax relief, and then “continuing discussions with the taxes.” That would mark an extraordinary flip, after legislators had recently heralded the meaningful relief their plan was poised to offer.

A late-session crunch is typical on Beacon Hill. Lawmakers’ self-imposed deadlines often provide the last antidote to legislative logjams, forcing compromise, horse-trading, or in some cases, the death of major bills. But not at least a generation has the Legislature entertained such major tax relief plans, let alone in the session’s waning hours.

On Sunday afternoon, the Legislature actually added to its list of bills in closed-door negotiations. Members created a sixth conference committee shortly before 3 pm to reconcile differences on a bill that would tighten the state’s firearms laws in the wake of a Supreme Court decision expanding gun rights across the country. But that, too, had not emerged as the night dragged into the early Monday morning hours.

While joint legislative rules require formal lawmaking to conclude by midnight, on Beacon Hill, lawmakers can—and often do—suspend their own rules.

Besides barreling toward making major changes to state law in the dead of night, lawmakers’ tardiness also gave the upper hand to Baker, a lame-duck Republican governor who isn’t seeking reelection this fall. Baker is allowed 10 days to act on any legislation that reaches his desk, meaning he can veto a bill and the Legislature will have little ability to act beyond calling a special session, a rarity on Beacon Hill.

Baker was in the State House at around 9 pm Sunday and was in “regular communication” with legislative leadership on major bills still being negotiated, including the economic development bill, spokeswoman Sarah Finlaw said.

As they awaited word on pending bills, lawmakers did take action on some items.

The chambers sent to Baker an $11.3 billion infrastructure and transportation borrowing bill that also includes a slew of policy, including regulations on so-called e-bikes and $275 million in funding to extend passenger rail service from Boston to the western part of the state.

Cut from the final version, however, was a Senate-passed provision that would have required the MBTA to produce a plan for a low-income fare program. A coalition of transit advocates called the decision “deeply disappointing.”

Lawmakers also delivered a response to a series of amendments Baker sought on a sweeping climate and energy bill, sending it back to him Sunday night.

They agreed to several of Baker’s proposed changes, notably one to eliminate the “price cap” on offshore wind projects — a mechanism that requires each new project to offer power at a lower price than the one brought online before it. Some have worried that the cap has discouraged bids, and while lawmakers had initially left it intact, they ultimately capitulated to Baker’s push to kill it.

“Removing the price cap has been a top priority for the governor, and we share his view that it will allow our future procurements to give us more value per dollar,” Representative Jeffrey N. Roy, the House’s lead negotiator, said from the chamber floor.

Legislative leaders, however, rejected other changes, including Baker’s bid to inject $750 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding into the legislation.

Legislators in the overwhelmingly Democratic House and Senate also accepted changes Baker made to a bill that would reshape oversight of the state’s two soldiers’ homes, including elevating the Department of Veterans Services to a Cabinet-level executive office that reports directly to the governor.

In a letter to lawmakers, Baker said he supports the changes, but asked that deadlines for standing up new offices be pushed back four months until March — when Baker’s successor, not him, will be in office.

And early Monday lawmakers sent Baker a compromise package of reforms to the state’s marijuana industry that cracked down on steep local fees charged to marijuana operators and steered a significant chunk of the state excise tax on recreational pot sales into a fund for disenfranchised cannabis entrepreneurs.

Advocates, cannabis businesses, and progressive lawmakers had spent years lobbying for the reforms, arguing they are straightforward fixes to well-documented problems with the original legalization law, passed by voters in 2016 and rewritten by the Legislature in 2017.

Among those issues: an onerous municipal approval process that has been implicated in two federal corruption investigations, and a lack of institutional financing that has allowed larger corporations backed by wealthy private investors to dominate the space at the expense of smaller, locally owned businesses with more different ownership.

Ace of Monday morning, lawmakers were still working to iron out differences in other major pieces of legislation where the House and Senate differed.

After years of failed efforts, lawmakers were attempting to nail down a final version of a bill to legalize sports betting.

At the center of the disagreement was a proposal to allow people to place wagers on collegiate games. The House wants it, and the Senate—whose top leaders have historically opposed legalized gambling—does not.

If signed into law by Baker, who has expressed his support in the past, Massachusetts will join 30 states and Washington, DC, in allowing for the increasingly popular type of gambling, according to the American Gaming Association.

Ever since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law that banned sports betting, the concept has been a priority of Mariano, the House speaker, who said a year ago that a sports betting bill without the ability to bet on college games “probably would be” a deal-breaker for him.

Last week, Senate President Karen E. Spilka told WBUR’s “Radio Boston,” that Mariano should soften his “all or nothing” stance.

A conference committee, a compromise-seeking group of representatives and senators, had been deliberating on sports betting since early June.

The prospects of the betting bill, a House priority, were unclear as August dawned. So, too, was the potential of a separate measure on mental health access that Spilka has personally touted as a top priority.

The Senate version of the bill would mandate insurance coverage for an annual mental health wellness exam, and mental health bills passed by both chambers attempt to ensure compliance with the state’s mental health parity laws.

Amid the fray of the last day, lawmakers were also negotiating a relatively obscure piece of conservation legislation intended to protect public lands from development pressure.

The House last year passed a bill that environmentalists have championed for more than 20 years, and would require anyone looking to sell or develop protected public greenspace to replace it with another comparable property.

The Senate, however, embraced a different version, which has the support of the Baker administration and would create an alternative where developers or communities could set aside money to purchase property later when replacement land cannot be found in the community.

Dan Adams of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Simon Levien contributed to this report.

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Matt Stout can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @mattpstout. Samantha J. Gross can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @samanthajgross.

This story has been updated to include the names of the failed officer and suspect.

ELWOOD, Ind. – Elwood police officer Noah Shahnavaz was killed early Sunday during a traffic stop in Madison County.

Just after 2 am, Shahnavaz conducted a traffic stop on a 2012 Buick LaCrosse near the intersection of State Road 37 and County Road 1100 North, said Indiana State Police Public Information Officer Scott Keegan during a press conference. During the stop, the driver, identified as Carl Roy Webb Boards II, 42, of Anderson, Indiana, exited the vehicle and fired at the officer multiple times, striking him at least once, Keegan said.

• Joe Manchin avoided a question on whether he wants the Democratic Party to win the House and Senate.

• Manchin said he thought people were sick of politicians fighting and holding “hostage” legislation.

• He said he’d be OK with whoever the voters choose and would “work with whatever I have.”

Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday dodged a direct question about whether he wanted the Democratic Party to win the November midterms and keep control of the House and Senate.

Speaking to NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” the West Virginia lawmaker said: “I think people are sick and tired of politics, Chuck. I really do.”

“I think they’re sick and tired of Democrats and Republicans fighting and feuding and holding pieces of hostage legislation because they didn’t get what they wanted, or something or someone might get credit for something,” Manchin added.

Todd then pressed Manchin, asking him directly if he wanted the Democrats to win.

“I think the Democrats have great candidates that are running. They’re good people I’ve worked with,” the senator responded. “And I have a tremendous amount of respect and friendship with my Republican colleagues. So I can work on either side very easily.”

“You don’t care about the outcome this year of the election?” Todd asked Manchin.

“Well, whatever — whatever the voters choose. I can’t decide what’s going to happen in Kansas or California or Texas. I really can’t,” Manchin said.

He added that he has always respected the representatives elected by the states and does his best to work with them.

“I don’t play the politics that way. I don’t like it that way,” Manchin added. “That’s not who I am.”

Manchin has been one of the biggest obstacles to the Democrats passing major legislation in the Senate, despite the party having control of the chamber. For one, the senator killed President Joe Biden’s landmark Build Back Better legislation.

In April, Manchin also addressed claims that he might switch parties to the GOP — an idea touted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — saying he’s “never considered” the idea from “such a standpoint.”

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Manchin has also been reticent about expressing support for Biden in 2024.

In a surprise U-turn last week, Manchin said he would back the Inflation Reduction Act, a deal that he and Sen. Chuck Schumer cut that allots $370 billion for climate and energy programs and commits the US to a 40% emissions reduction by 2030.

Read the original article on Insider