Shootings dip in Chicago but grow in domestic violence cases
Chicago is expected to end 2023 with a double-digit decline in both shootings and homicides, a sign that the pandemic-era rise in gun violence is beginning to recede. But citywide data shows that a small subset of Chicago’s shootings — those involving domestic violence — have accelerated this year, a spike that is prompting new alarm among advocates for victims. As 2023 nears an end, shootings that Chicago authorities deemed domestic in nature have increased 19% compared with last year at this time, according to city data. While the number of fatal domestic shootings is unchanged from 2022, nonfatal shootings have increased 27%.
Man with developmental disabilities settles wrongful conviction suit for $11.7 million
A man with developmental disabilities who spent over 16 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder has reached a settlement of $11,725,000 with the city of Elkhart, Indiana, his lawyers said Friday. The man, Andrew Royer, said that when he first learned of the settlement, he “went numb.” “I’m a brand-new person,” Royer, 48, said in an interview Saturday. “I’m ecstatic.” A jury convicted Royer, 48, in the 2002 killing of a 94-year-old woman, Helen Sailor, who had been found strangled in a high-rise apartment in downtown Elkhart. Royer was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Democrats in key states worry Biden could be a drag on their races
Democrats in battleground states, including Arizona and Michigan, are growing increasingly anxious about President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, worrying that voters’ persistent antipathy toward his leadership could not only cost the party the White House but weigh down the candidates who are sharing the ballot with him. These Democrats fear that the Biden campaign is late in building a strong organization in the handful of states that are likely to determine next year’s presidential election. They point to polling numbers showing Biden lagging far behind Democratic candidates for Congress in those states and struggling among key groups of voters, including Black and Latin Americans.
Jurors find San Francisco homeless man not guilty in pipe beating
A homeless man who beat a former San Francisco city official with a metal pipe was found not guilty Friday of assault. Garret Allen Doty, 25, faced up to seven years in prison. On April 5, police responded to Don Carmignani, 54, who had a fractured skull and facial injuries. Witnesses identified Doty as the assailant, and police arrested him. But public defender Kleigh Hathaway determined Carmignani sprayed a canister of what appeared to be bear mace before Doty attacked him. Hathaway surfaced unsolved cases in which pepper spray or bear mace had been used against homeless people. She felt it was enough to argue Doty responded in self-defense.
Rikers detainees were kept locked in cells
after fire broke out
For nearly 30 minutes in April, Rikers Island staff members kept eight people locked in their cells while the workers tried to extinguish a fire and smoke spread through a housing unit, according to a report from the city’s Board of Correction. The fire was ignited in the complex’s North Infirmary Command, which houses people with acute medical conditions who require infirmary care or have a disability. About a dozen people, including staff members and four detainees, were transferred to hospitals after the fire, according to the report, which was released Friday. A review of the Department of Correction’s response to the fire revealed a series of lapses in protocol.
The Supreme Court helped Trump’s delay strategy. By how much remains to be seen.
The Supreme Court’s decision Friday not to fast-track consideration of former President Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune to prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election was unquestionably a victory for Trump and his lawyers. The choice by the justices not to take up the issue now — rendered without explanation — gave a boost to Trump’s legal strategy of delaying the proceedings as much as possible in the hopes of running out the clock before Election Day. It is not clear, however, that the decision holds any clues to what the Supreme Court might think of the substance of his immunity claim.
During a wartime Christmas, There’s rubble in the manger
There will be no musical festivities. No tree-lighting ceremony. No decorations bedecking the West Bank city of Bethlehem at Christmas. This is a city in mourning. In perhaps the most overt display of how Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip has dampened celebrations in the city seen as Jesus’ birthplace, a Lutheran church put up its crèche, but with a sad twist: The baby Jesus is lying not in a manger, but among the rubble of broken bricks that represents Gaza’s destruction. Although Gaza is about 43 miles from Bethlehem, Palestinians in the city fret about family and friends in Gaza and find their own lives restricted.
Putin quietly signals
he is open to a
cease-fire in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been signaling through intermediaries since at least September that he is open to a cease-fire that freezes the fighting along the current lines, far short of his ambitions to dominate Ukraine, two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin and U.S. and international officials who have received the message from Putin’s envoys say. In fact, Putin also sent out feelers for a cease-fire deal in fall 2022, after Ukraine routed Russia’s army in the country’s northeast. Putin’s repeated interest in a cease-fire is an example of how opportunism and improvisation have defined his approach to the war behind closed doors.
In remote Canada,
a college becomes
a magnet for
Indian students
Northern College traditionally drew its students from the province of Ontario’s vast, sparsely populated hinterland, a region dominated by miners and loggers. Today, a whopping 82% of the public college’s students come from abroad — nearly all from India. How the college became a magnet for young Indians is the story of the many forces buffeting the country. Canadian public colleges and universities, hit hard by budget cuts, have grown dependent on the higher tuitions paid by international students. For foreign students, the institutions can be a conduit to permanent Canadian residence; and for Canada, the students help reduce labor shortages and increase the country’s flagging productivity.
Without a truce, U.N. resolution may do little for Gaza, aid groups say
United Nations and other aid officials warned Saturday that a new U.N. Security Council resolution calling for stepped-up aid delivery to the increasingly hungry and sick civilians of the Gaza Strip would fail to stop the spiraling humanitarian crisis because it did not demand a full halt to the fighting. Even if enough aid were to cross the border, aid officials said, without a cease-fire, they would be unable to distribute it amid Israel’s frequent airstrikes and a ground invasion that has turned much of the territory into an active combat zone.
Houthi militia in Yemen presents a special challenge for U.S.
In the past month alone, the Houthis have launched more than 100 attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea, crippling traffic there. So why hasn’t the U.S. retaliated? The reasons are many. The U.S. is wary of disrupting a tenuous truce between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, who spent the bulk of the last eight years at war, that was negotiated in 2022 and has largely held even without a formal agreement. The Biden administration is also concerned the war in the Gaza Strip could escalate into a wider conflict in the region. Striking Houthi targets in Yemen could quickly escalate and draw Iran further into the conflict.
Ukraine accuses senior defense official of embezzling $40 million
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has made tackling corruption one of his wartime goals, not only to reassure Ukraine’s Western allies their billions of dollars in aid are not being siphoned off but also to ensure an efficient allocation of resources in its fight to fend off Russia’s forces. And on Friday, Ukrainian police arrested a senior Defense Ministry official, whose name was not released, on suspicions he embezzled nearly $40 million as part of a fraudulent purchase of artillery shells for Ukraine’s military. Authorities have been working to clean up the ministry since reports of graft and financial mismanagement led to the removal of the then-minister in September.
By wire sources
