Rep. King suggests rapes, incest helped populate the world
DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. Rep. Steve King on Wednesday defended his call for a ban on all abortions by questioning whether there would be “any population of the world left” if not for births due to rape and incest.
Speaking before a conservative group in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, the Iowa congressman reviewed legislation he has sought that would outlaw abortions without exceptions for rape and incest. King justified the lack of exceptions by questioning how many people would be alive if not for those conceived through rapes and incest.
“What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” King asked, according to video of the event, which was covered by The Des Moines Register. “Considering all the wars and all the rape and pillage that’s taken place … I know I can’t certify that I’m not a part of a product of that.”
He added: “It’s not the baby’s fault for the sin of the father, or of the mother.”
A King spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
For inmates like Epstein, suicide watch is meant to be short
NEW YORK — Suicide is such a constant concern at federal jails that guards have ready access to “the stick,” a wooden pole with a sharpened blade at the end that’s used to cut down inmates if they try to hang themselves with bedsheets.
That’s thought to be exactly how Jeffrey Epstein took his life Saturday at the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s Special Housing Unit after a possible previous attempt, and less than two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch, in which the lights are left on all night, inmates are not allowed bedsheets, and they are monitored round-the-clock by someone making notes every 15 minutes.
For all the talk from politicians and conspiracy theorists that Epstein should have remained under such scrutiny behind bars, prison experts say suicide watch is intended for only short periods because it puts too much stress on the staff and inmate alike.
“It’s just not humane to keep them on those restrictions indefinitely,” said Lindsay Hayes, a nationally recognized expert on inmate suicide prevention and a project director for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. “Many times, suicidal inmates will deny they’re suicidal so they can get their clothes and privileges back.”
The 66-year-old Epstein was awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls when he killed himself, taking his life amid a cascading series of breakdowns at the MCC’s Special Housing Unit, a chronically overcrowded, understaffed lockup-within-a-lockup that has held some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, drug lords, sex traffickers and swindlers. The SHU can hold several dozen inmates at once.
Pure as snow? Scientists say air carrying plastics to Arctic
BERLIN — Scientists say they’ve found an abundance of tiny plastic particles in Arctic snow, indicating that so-called microplastics are being sucked into the atmosphere and carried long distances to some of the remotest corners of the planet.
The researchers examined snow collected from sites in the Arctic, northern Germany, the Bavarian and Swiss Alps and the North Sea island of Heligoland with a process specially designed to analyze their samples in a lab.
“While we did expect to find microplastics, the enormous concentrations surprised us,” Melanie Bergmann, a researcher at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, said.
Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Previous studies have found microplastics — which are created when man-made materials break apart and defined as pieces smaller than 5 millimeters — in the air of Paris, Tehran and Dongguan, China.
Jay-Z defends NFL deal with Roc Nation, talks Kaepernick
NEW YORK — A day after Jay-Z announced that his Roc Nation company was partnering with the NFL, the rap icon explained that he still supports protesting, kneeling and NFL player Colin Kaepernick, but he’s also interested in working with the league to make substantial changes.
The Grammy winner and entrepreneur fielded questions Wednesday at his company’s New York City headquarters alongside NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. When directly asked if he would kneel or stand, Jay-Z said: “I think we’ve moved past kneeling and I think it’s time to go into actionable items.”
He then added: “No, I don’t want people to stop protesting at all. Kneeling — I know we’re stuck on it because it’s a real thing — but kneeling is a form of protest. I support protest across the board. We need to bring light to the issue. I think everyone knows what the issue is — we’re done with that,” he added. “We all know the issue now. OK, next. What are we moving (on to) next? …And I’m not minimizing that part of it because that has to happen, that’s a necessary part of the process. But now that we all know what’s going on, what are we going to do? How are we going to stop it? Because the kneeling was not about a job, it was about injustice.”
Jay-Z has been among the biggest supporters of Kaepernick, who sparked a fissure in the NFL when he decided to kneel when the national anthem was played before games to protest the killings of blacks by police officers. Some called him unpatriotic, and he has not played for the NFL since he opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers in 2017. Earlier this year, the NFL settled a lawsuit brought by Kaepernick and Eric Reid that alleged that owners colluded to keep them from playing in the league (Reid criticized Jay-Z’s new deal with the league).
When asked why he didn’t involve Kaepernick in the new Roc Nation-NFL deal, Jay-Z said: “You’d have to ask him. I’m not his boss. I can’t just bring him into something. That’s for him to say.”
