Sheriff: Woman who died in cell mentioned previous suicide attempt to jailer during booking
DALLAS (AP) — A woman whose death in a Texas jail has raised suspicions about the official conclusion that she hanged herself told a guard during the booking process that she had tried to kill herself in the past, the sheriff said Wednesday.
Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith told The Associated Press that Sandra Bland told a jailer about the previous suicide attempt sometime after her arrest on July 10.
Bland provided the information while being asked a series of questions posed to each person booked into the jail in Hempstead, about 60 miles northwest of Houston, the sheriff said.
He did not provide details about the conversation.
The attorney representing Bland’s family, Cannon Lambert, said relatives have no evidence that she ever attempted suicide or had been treated for depression.
Tested by growing dissent, Greek parliament to vote on more bailout conditions
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek lawmakers launched a late-night debate Wednesday on further reforms demanded by international creditors in return for a third multi-billion-euro bailout, with attention focusing on government dissenters who have vowed to reject the measures.
Despite the revolt in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ own party, parliament is expected to approve the draft legislation in a vote early Thursday — the second such crucial test in a week — again with broad support from pro-eurozone opposition parties. Failure to do so would derail the bailout and rekindle fears over Greece’s future in the shared euro currency.
As with last week’s vote, Tsipras’ main problem lies with hard-line lawmakers in his party, many of whom see the reforms as a betrayal of the anti-austerity platform that brought their Syriza party to power in January.
That sentiment was reflected by about 10,000 people who demonstrated outside parliament before the debate, protesting the latest measures, which will overhaul Greece’s judicial and banking sectors. Minor violence marred the end of the protest, when a few teenagers threw petrol bombs at riot police, but no injuries or arrests were reported.
Negotiations with creditors are expected to start soon after the latest package of reforms is approved. The radical left-led government hopes the new bailout talks can conclude before Aug. 20, when Greece must repay a debt worth more than 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) to the European Central Bank.
After 5 killed in Tennessee shootings, armed citizens taking on job of guarding recruiters
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Gun-toting citizens are showing up at military recruiting centers around the country, saying they plan to protect recruiters following last week’s killing of four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The citizens, some of them private militia members, said they’re supporting the recruiters, who by military directive are not armed.
“We’re here to serve and protect,” Clint Janney said Tuesday, wearing a Taurus 9mm handgun as he stood in a parking lot across from a recruiting center on the west side of Columbus. “What the government won’t do, we will do.”
Similar posts have been set up outside recruitment centers in several cities around the country, from Spanaway, Washington, to Hiram, Georgia. Other sites are in Madison, Wisconsin; McAllen, Texas; Auburn Hills, Michigan; Phoenix; and several locations in Tennessee, including Murfreesboro.
There’s no evidence that such centers are in danger, and the government isn’t changing how they’re staffed, although some governors have temporarily moved National Guard recruiting centers to armories and several — including Ohio’s John Kasich on Wednesday — have authorized Guard personnel to carry weapons at state facilities.
Higher minimum-wage proposals gain ground in New York and California; $15 an hour is the goal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The push for a higher minimum wage gained momentum on both sides of the country Wednesday, with New York embracing an eventual $15 an hour for the state’s 200,000 fast-food workers and the huge University of California system announcing the same raise for its employees.
“How we support our workers and their families impacts Californians who might never set foot on one of our campuses,” said UC President Janet Napolitano, who oversees 10 campuses, including UCLA and Berkeley. “It’s the right thing to do.”
The 240,000-student University of California becomes the nation’s largest public university to commit itself to the $15-an-hour wage that has become the rallying cry of many labor groups in recent months.
So far, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have approved phased-in increases that eventually will take their minimum wage to $15 an hour, or about $31,200 a year. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, voted to craft a law to do the same over five years.
In New York, the state Wage Board endorsed a proposal to set a $15 minimum wage for workers at fast-food restaurants with 30 or more locations. The increase would be phased in over three years in New York City and over six years elsewhere.
Social Security disability payments face significant cuts in 2016 without congressional action
WASHINGTON (AP) — The 11 million Americans who receive Social Security disability face steep benefit cuts next year, the government said Wednesday, handing lawmakers a fiscal and political crisis in the middle of a presidential campaign.
The trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare said the disability trust fund will run out of money in late 2016. That would trigger an automatic 19 percent cut in benefits, unless Congress acts.
The average monthly benefit for disabled workers and their families is $1,017. The typical beneficiary would see a reduction of $193 a month.
“Today’s report shows that we must seek meaningful, in some instances even urgent, changes to ensure the program is on stable ground for future generations,” said Jo Ann Jenkins, the chief executive officer of AARP.
In more bad news for beneficiaries, the trustees project there will be no cost-of-living increase in benefits at the end of the year. It would mark only the third year without an increase since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.
Now seen as a local son in Kenya, Obama set to make 1st trip to father’s homeland as president
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Barack Obama visited Kenya for the first time nearly 30 years ago, he was astonished that an airport worker recognized his last name.
It was a striking experience for a young man — and future American president — struggling to understand how a country he had never seen and a Kenyan family he barely knew had shaped his identity.
“My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges I did not yet understand,” Obama wrote in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” about the airport encounter.
This week, Obama will make his first visit to Kenya as U.S. president, a trip that will bear little resemblance to the 1988 one, when he arrived aboard commercial flight and his luggage got lost. Now, Air Force One will take Obama to a country where children, roads and schools now bear his name, and the world leader is seen as a local son.
Yet traveling with the trappings of the presidency appears likely to diminish the fulfillment of a trip to his father’s homeland.
