Category: US

Herschel Walker’s ex-wife relates how the former grid star put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her in a brutal new attack ad in the Georgia Senate race.

“He held the gun to my temple and said he was gonna blow my brains out,” Cindy DeAngelis Grossman says in the hard-hitting spot.

Grossman, who was married to Walker for 20 years, said her then-husband’s eyes “would become very evil” when he got angry.

“The guns and knives, I got into a few choking things with him,” she recalls.

Walker has previously acknowledged the accusations and has said he suffered from mental illness although he claims he can’t recall threatening to kill Grossman.

Walker is waging an even campaign to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in one of the marquee battles of the midterm congressional elections.

[ Walker gives unusual explanation of climate change ]

The onetime University of Georgia football star played professionally for both the New York Giants and the New Jersey Generals of the upstart USFL, a team that was owned by former President Donald Trump.

Buoyed by Trump’s endorsement, Walker cruised to an easy win in the GOP primary.

But the first-time candidate has struggled in the general election fight, with Warnock holding a modest but steady lead in polls.

Walker was forced to acknowledge fathering three children out of wedlock that he has never spoken of before and has no contact with, a damaging admission for a candidate who often speaks of family values ​​and the importance of fathers taking responsibility for their children.

[ Herschel Walker scrambles to explain previously undisclosed children after calling for responsible fatherhood  ]

He also once falsely suggested he was a federal law enforcement agent.

The new ad, which was produced by a group called the Republican Accountability Project, plays on his football fame.

It kicks off with a clip of Walker slicing through defenders as an announcer excitedly proclaims: “Touchdown, Georgia!”

“Do you think you know Herschel Walker? Well, think again,” the narrator intones.

The camera then cuts to Grossman’s shocking claims about her ex-husband.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the Senate over the weekend will pursue an extremely wide and varied array of strategies intended to combat climate change. The $369 billion in climate-related spending over 10 years targets five areas: consumer clean energy costs, decarbonizing various sectors of the economy, domestic clean energy manufacturing, environmental justice, and agriculture and land use. Taken together, these programs would help the US reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2005 levels by 2030, and would save an estimated 3,700 to 3,900 lives per year thanks to cleaner air from a reduction in burning fossil fuels.

This approach represents a break from many past congressional proposals designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, most of which proposed using a singular, overarching policy, such as taxing emissions or requiring tradable permits for emissions. Those measures all died in Congress, but this one made it through the Senate and is expected to pass the House later this week.

“The whole package in terms of dealing with climate change is a long-overdue improvement,” former Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman told Yahoo News on Tuesday. Waxman was chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for many years, and he co-wrote a bill that passed the House but died in the Senate that would have capped carbon emissions and gradually reduced the number of tradable credits for them, a system known as cap-and-trade.

“Unlike other efforts in the past, such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, this approach gives a lot of incentives, especially financial, through the tax code and appropriations for industry to accomplish a reduction in emissions,” Waxman said. “This climate proposal has very little, if any, regulation. It’s a lot of incentives to develop, in effect, a partnership with industry and the government … to sharpen up the technology to accomplish our goals.”

Here’s a guide to the biggest programs in each bucket of climate policies, and what they will mean for American families.

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Consumer clean energy costs

The IRA would pour money into helping homeowners, especially those with low and moderate incomes, and lower their carbon footprint and their energy bills by helping them transition to more efficient heating and cooling systems. There will be a $9 billion program to help low-income households switch to electric appliances (such as stoves) and to retrofit their homes for energy efficiency (by insulating windows, for example).

There will also be tax credits for replacing oil and gas burners with electric heat pumps and water heaters and installing rooftop solar, allowing customers to get 30% off the cost of these purchases.

To reduce dependence on oil, the bill would provide a $4,000 consumer tax credit for lower- and middle-income individuals to buy used electric vehicles, and a $7,500 tax credit to those who make less than $150,000 per year or couples who make less than $300,000 per year who buy new electric vehicles. (Qualifying EVs must cost less than $55,000 for cars and less than $80,000 for trucks.) There is also a $1 billion grant program to help local authorities make affordable housing more energy-efficient.

A family that uses all these rebates and tax credits could receive an additional grand total of $28,500 in incentives, according to the Center for American Progress. Rewiring America, an advocacy group that promotes electrification, estimates that a family that takes advantage of these incentives will save an average of $1,800 per year on home heating fuel and lower energy bills.

However, in order to win the crucial support of Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., the IRA requires that an EV eligible for the tax credit must have a battery built in North America with minerals mined or recycled there as well. Currently, most EVs on the market would not qualify. The purpose is to develop EV building capacity domestically, instead of relying on China, which is the main producer of lithium-ion batteries. But automakers have expressed doubts that they will be able to meet the bill’s requirements on its timeline.

Decarbonizing the economy

About $30 billion will be doled out in grants and loan programs to states and electric utilities to switch utilities from burning gas and coal to using clean energy sources such as wind and solar power. There are also grants and tax credits for clean commercial vehicles — think electric delivery trucks, buses and taxis — and money for efforts to reduce emissions from industrial processes, such as chemical, steel and cement plants.

In order to use the federal government’s buying power to catalyze private sector investment as well, the IRA contains $9 billion for the US to buy clean technologies. For example, it includes $3 billion for the US Postal Service to purchase zero-emission vehicles.

As part of this bill’s emphasis on equity, there is a $27 billion “clean energy technology accelerator” that will distribute funds to deploy clean energy technologies, especially in lower-income communities. An example of a recipient of these funds would be, say, a nonprofit that helps low-income renters, who can’t buy a solar panel for their own home, enjoy the cost savings of buying solar panels by pooling their money and buying solar panels to go in a public space and sharing in the savings

In a major win for environmentalists, there is also going to be a program to reduce the leakage of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells and pipelines. This is the rare portion of the IRA that includes sticks as well as carrots: grants to help the industry comply and the imposition of fees for operators that continue to leak methane at a high rate.

Domestic clean energy manufacturing

Whatever the costs and benefits of Manchin’s buy-American requirements for the EV tax credits, every Democrat agrees that developing the ability to produce the key ingredients of a clean energy economy within the United States would be beneficial. So the IRA includes $30 billion worth of tax credits for manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries capable of storing wind and solar energy, and the processing of key minerals needed for all those technologies (and for electric vehicles).

Separate from those tax credits for making the actual products, there are $10 billion in tax credits for building the infrastructure needed for that production, such as wind turbine and solar panel factories, and $2 billion for renovating auto factories to make EVs. The federal government will also offer up to $20 billion in loans to build new EV manufacturing facilities across the country and will provide $2 billion for additional clean energy research.

environmental justice

Predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods and poorer communities suffer an outsize share of the effects of climate change, such as extreme heat, flooding and the pollution from burning fossil fuels on highways and in factories and power plants. The IRA will give out $3 billion in block grants for community-led projects to deal with those kinds of problems, another $3 billion for neighborhood improvements like reconnecting areas separated by highways, $3 billion to reduce pollution at ports and $1 billion for electric heavy-duty duty vehicles, like garbage trucks.

Agriculture and land use

Plants absorb carbon dioxide, so how they are managed can affect how much carbon is in the atmosphere. The IRA will spend $20 billion on climate-smart agriculture practices (rotating crops instead of planting the same ones in the same place every year, for example) and $5 billion for forest conservation and urban tree planting.

The bill also incorporates tax credits and grants to support the domestic production of lower-carbon biofuels and $2.6 billion in grants to conserve and restore coastal areas that are needed both to absorb carbon and to manage storm surges that are becoming severe because of climate change, via rising sea levels and more intense storms.

The bill also includes some measures that were needed to win Manchin’s support that will actually make climate change worse, such as requirements that the federal government lease swaths of federal land and coastal areas for oil and gas drilling. As with the electric vehicles, Manchin is focused on producing as much energy domestically as possible. Still, the overwhelming majority of environmentalists are exultant at the IRA’s overall potential to reduce the severity of climate change.

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Global temperatures are on the rise and have been for decades. Step inside the data and see the magnitude of climate change.

In closing arguments on Tuesday, lawyers on both sides offered differing views of who had been responsible for the deaths of seven people who had been riding their motorcycles on Route 2, about 100 miles northeast of Concord. Some were en route to a charity event in Gorham when a flash of collisions sent riders hurtling to the road in a scene that witnesses described as bloody and chaotic.

Mr. Duguay, argued in his summation that Albert Mazza Jr., the president of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club who was killed in the collision, had caused the crash because he had been “driving his motorcycle while drunk, wasn’t looking where he was going, lost control of his bike and just slid into the oncoming truck.”

Mr. Duguay also said that prosecution witnesses had offered conflicting accounts of what transpired before the crash: One witness testified that she had seen Mr. Zhukovskyy’s truck swerve in the lanes, while another said that he had not. Witnesses, Mr. Duguay said, had shared “completely different irreconcilable recollections.”

Prosecutors, however, said that while Mr. Mazza’s impairment was a “poor choice,” it ultimately had nothing to do with the crash.

“Not one person saw Mazza impaired or driving off the road,” Scott D. Chase, a New Hampshire assistant attorney general, said during closing arguments. “But every person on that road saw the defendant all over it.”

A report from the National Transportation Safety Board released in December 2020 found that on the day of the crash, Mr. Zhukovskyy had been “impaired by several drugs,” including heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. He was working for Westfield Transport, a trucking company, at the time and was driving to Albany, NY, and Gorham, according to court records.

Politicians are increasingly promoting Christian nationalism, the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation, by Christians, and that all its laws and institutions are based on Christianity

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has cited the ideology several times in recent weeks.
• It comes as conservatives are more often calling for less separation between church and state.
• The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is most frequently cited on the need for that separation.

On numbers recent occasionsRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene described herself as a “Christian nationalist,” calling the political ideology and cultural framework “actually a good thing” and claiming it’s an “identity that (Republicans) need to embrace.”

“I am being attacked by the godless left because I said I’m a proud Christian Nationalist,” Greene, R-Ga., wrote on Twitter on July 25. “The left has shown us exactly who they are. They hate America, they hate God, and they hate us.”

A burning body was found hanging from a tree in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, according to authorities in the city.

Los Angeles Fire Department says that the gross discovery was made near the park’s merry-go-round on Tuesday afternoon.

Authorities say that the victim’s age, gender, and race are not yet known.

Firefighters called to the scene said that the victim was already dead when they arrived, according to NBC Los Angeles.

“It’s a death investigation. We’re assisting with body recovery,” an LAFD spokeswoman told Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Police Department has launched an investigation into the death.

Griffith Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States, covering 4,210 acres of land in the city’s Los Feliz neighborhood.

“Situated in the eastern Santa Monica Mountain range, the Park’s elevations range from 384 to 1,625 feet above sea level,” states the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

“With an arid climate, the Park’s plant communities vary from coastal sage scrub, oak and walnut woodlands to riparian vegetation with trees in the Park’s deep canyons.”

It is not the first body found in the park this year.

In April the body of a hiker who went missing two weeks ago was found in the park with his pet dog still sitting loyally by his side.

Oscar Alejandro Hernandez, 29, was found in a remote area of ​​Griffith Park after being reported missing on 16 March. His Golden Retriever from him, King, was emaciated but alive, having faithfully remained with his owner until his body from him was discovered.

A search and rescue team used a helicopter to remove Hernandez’s body from the steep hillside, also near the merry-go-round in the east end of the park.

Yaser Said was convicted of capital murder Tuesday in the 2008 fatal shootings of his two teenage daughters, 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said.

After hearing closing arguments and deliberating for three hours, the Dallas County jury reached the guilty verdict. Judge Chika Anyiam sentenced Said to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case.

Patricia Owens, the mother of Amina and Sarah, addressed her ex-husband on the stand after the verdict. “You deserve to die now, not in prison,” Owens said. “You took my life. You took my family all in one night.”

Said was placed on the FBI’s most-wanted list after the murders and evaded arrest for more than 12 years. Said, who had worked as a cab driver, was arrested in August 2020 in Justin, Texas. He denied killing his daughters from him when he took the stand Monday, entering a not guilty plea,

Prosecutors claim Said, who is Muslim, murdered his daughters because he was upset that the girls were dating.

“He wouldn’t even let these girls go to a movie. He wouldn’t let them date,” a prosecutor said during closing statements Tuesday.

ABC News local affiliate WFAA reported that police have described the murders as “honor killings” — defined as the killing of a relative, especially a girl or woman, who is perceived to have brought dishonor on the family in certain cultures.

During the trial, prosecutors read a December 21, 2007, email Amina wrote to her history teacher 10 days before she and her sister were killed, saying their father “made our lives a nightmare” and that she and her sister wanted to run away.

“I am so scared right now,” Amina wrote, according to prosecutors. “OK, well as you know we’re not allowed to date and my dad is arranging my marriage. My dad said I cannot put it off any more and I have to get married this year.”

“He will, without any drama nor doubt, kill us,” she also wrote.

The girls, along with their mother and their boyfriends, fled their Texas home to Oklahoma on Christmas Day 2007, four days after Amina sent the email. Witnesses said the girls returned to the Dallas area on New Year’s Eve when their mother de ella said Said convinced her to return home.

The girls’ bodies were found on New Year’s Day 2008 in a taxi cab prosecutors said Said drove.

Last Wednesday, the prosecution played the 911 call Sarah allegedly made the night of her death. During the call, a woman can be heard frantically screaming that her father had shot her and that she was dying.

During her testimony in court last Thursday Owens pointed to her ex-husband, calling him “that devil.” She testified that Said was controlling and abusive throughout their relationship, adding that she and her daughters de ella left him several times over the years, but they always returned out of fear.

Owens declined to comment on the case until her ex-husband is convicted, she told ABC News.

In a letter written to the judge overseeing the case, Said said while he disapproved of his daughters’ “dating activity,” he denied killing the girls.

“I was upset because in my culture it’s something to get upset about,” said Said through a translator. I have testified that I immigrated to the US from Egypt in 1983 and later became a US citizen.

Said told jurors that the evening his daughters were killed, he was taking them to dinner because he wanted to smooth things over and “solve the problem.”

However, Said claims he left the vehicle, fleeing into a wooded area before the girls were killed because he thought someone wanted to murder him, testifying that he spotted an unknown person in a car stalking them while they were driving to dinner.

Said said he did not turn himself in after the murders because he didn’t think he would get a fair trial.

The defense team claims that Said was targeted by law enforcement because of his Muslim faith and cultural beliefs.

“Everybody has a preference in how they discipline their kids, just like they have a preference for what kind of food they eat, what kind of people they date, what religion they want to practice,” Baharan Muse, Said’s defense attorney, said in closing arguments Tuesday. “Discipline does not mean you murdered your children. Your culture does not mean you murdered your children.”

Said’s defense team alleged prosecutors sought to “generalize” and “criminalize an entire culture, to fit their narrative.”

The prosecution rejected the claim that Said was unjustly accused for his religious beliefs.

“If you intentionally or knowingly cause the death of another in Dallas County, we are coming for you. Period. You will be prosecuted. Period. It has nothing to do with your race or religion,” prosecutor Lauren Black said in her closing argument .