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Alton Maddox, lawyer in Tawana Brawley hoax case, dead at 77

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Civil rights lawyer Alton Maddox Jr., who represented victims of several notorious racist attacks in New York in the 1980s, has died. He was 77.Maddox died Sunday in a Bronx nursing home, funeral director Isaiah Owens said.Maddox represented Tawana Brawley, a Black teenager who claimed that a group of white men had abducted and raped her in 1987. A grand jury determined that Brawley’s story was a hoax, and former prosecutor Steven Pagones sued Maddox, fellow attorney C. Vernon Mason and the Rev. Al Sharpton for defamation for accusing him of taking part in the alleged attack.A jury ruled in 1998 that the three men had defamed Pagones and ordered them to pay $345,000.Maddox also represented Cedric Sandiford, one of three Black men who were accosted and chased by a group of white men in the Queens neighborhood of Howard Beach in 1986, as well as the family of Michael Griffith, who died after he was struck by a car during the Howard Beach attack.Maddox and other a...

Cale Makar suspended 1 game for hit on Jared McCann

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

SEATTLE (KDVR) -- Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar will miss Wednesday's game 5 matchup against the Seattle Kraken after being suspended by the league.Makar was suspended for hitting Kraken forward Jared McCann about halfway through the first period. Full Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup Playoffs coverage After a shot by McCann, the puck was knocked up and out of play. Initially, Makar seemed to put a hand out to steady himself against McCann, but as the two men skated toward the corner Makar shoulder checks McCann into the boards.After the game, Makar said he didn't know the puck was out of bounds when he made the hit.“It’s unfortunate. I never want to injure guys. Hopefully he’s all right,” Makar said after the game. “I didn’t feel like I tried to finish him that hard, but I feel like if I was in that scenario they would have done the exact same thing. I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”According to a video posted by the NHL's Department of Player Safety, there were three fa...

Gorsuch sold Colorado property to major law firm head after confirmation: report

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

(The Hill) - Justice Neil Gorsuch and two partners sold a Colorado property they owned to the head of a major law firm with business before the Supreme Court days after Gorsuch’s confirmation, according to Politico.Politico reported that Gorsuch had sought a buyer for nearly two years for the 3,000-square-foot home, located in Granby, Colo., and that Greenberg Traurig CEO Brian Duffy put the property under contract nine days after Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation to the high court in April 2017.Greenberg Traurig, which employs more than 2,000 attorneys, is regularly involved in cases before the high court. Denver among top 10 places people are leaving in 2023 Grand County, Colo., real estate records show that Brian and Kari Duffy, which match the names of the firm’s CEO and his wife, closed on a property sold by Walden Group, LLC, the name of Gorsuch’s company, on May 19, 2017. The sale was for $1.825 million, the records indicate. Gorsuch reportedly owned a 20 percent stake in ...

How Denver's high altitude can impact your cooking

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) -- Denver is known as the Mile High City for a reason: it sits at an elevation of 5,280 feet -- one mile -- above sea level.While Denver's elevation has nothing on some of the mountain towns west of it, residents still have to keep it in mind in their everyday lives. This includes cooking and baking. What works in a kitchen in Los Angeles -- situated at just over 300 feet above sea level -- won't work in Lakewood, and vice versa. What is the difference between altitude and elevation? According to the United States Department of Agriculture, most cookbooks consider anything 3,000 feet above sea level and higher "high altitude."Given the Denver metro sits at least 2,000 feet above that, there are some issues from the high altitude that might come into play when you're searing a steak or baking banana bread. How does it affect cooking?According to the USDA, the higher the elevation, the lower the atmospheric pressure.One way this impacts food preparation is by making wa...

BSO: Father charged after accidentally placing loaded gun in students bag

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

A father is facing several charges after officials said he accidentally left his loaded gun inside his child’s bag, prompting a lockdown at the student’s school. Park Lakes Elementary had to be placed on lockdown following calls that the gun was on campus, but just before 11 a.m., the lockdown was lifted. On Tuesday, Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the scene around 9:15 a.m. after the call came in from the school, located at 3925 N. State Road 7 in Lauderdale Lakes. BSO released a statement after coming in with the student: “Deputies made contact with the student and the child’s father, who stated he accidentally placed the weapon in the wrong bag,” the statement read in part. After searching the campus, the loaded gun was safely located and has since been confiscated. According to school officials, no threats were made to the school or staff. According to BSO, the father has been identified as 34-year-old Rasheed Anderson. He was charged...

Judge drops Broward school superintendent’s perjury case

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A judge dismissed a perjury charge Tuesday against a former Florida school superintendent accused of lying to a grand jury that investigated events surrounding the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, which left 17 dead.The case against former Broward County superintendent Robert Runcie stemmed from questions over his management of a $1 billion bond issue that passed four years before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High massacre.Runcie and other bond supporters had said its primary focus would be to improve school safety. But the grand jurors in their final report accused Runcie and school board members of making “uninformed or even misinformed decisions, incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight” in the bond’s implementation.Circuit Judge Martin Fein dismissed the grand jury’s 2021 indictment against Runcie, agreeing with defense attorneys that state law only gives it jurisdiction over crimes that occurred in multiple counti...

EU to deploy mission to Moldova to combat threats from Russia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

The EU will send a civilian mission to Moldova to help the Eastern European nation combat growing threats from abroad, officials have confirmed, following a string of reports that the Kremlin is working to destabilize the former Soviet Republic.In a statement issued Monday, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that the mission, under the Common Security and Defence Policy, would step up “support to Moldova [to] protect its security, territorial integrity and sovereignty” against Russia.Officials confirmed that the mission will focus on “crisis management and hybrid threats, including cybersecurity, and countering foreign information manipulation and interference.”In February, the president of neighboring Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Kyiv’s security services had intercepted Russian plans to “break the democracy of Moldova and establish control over Moldova.” The country’s pro-EU leader, President Maia Sandu, ...

Small Massachusetts town bars drag show; ACLU fires back

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

NORTH BROOKFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Officials in a small Massachusetts town have revoked permission for a local group to hold a Pride event because it included a drag show, drawing a sharp rebuke from the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the town is trampling on the organization’s constitutional rights.The North Brookfield select board at a meeting in March at first approved a request by the Rural Justice Network to hold a “Small Town Pride Day” on the town common in June.But the three-member board voted 2-1 at its April 11 meeting to pull permission, ruling that a drag show violated the town’s restrictions on “adult entertainment.” They said the event could go on without the drag show.The ACLU in a letter dated April 18 asked the board to restore full permission for the event and asked for a response by Wednesday in order to “avoid potential litigation.”“We call on North Brookfield and all communities in Massachusetts to recognize that discrimination ag...

Scratch Tix Push Lottery’s March Sales Past Half A Billion

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

Instant ticket sales surged well into the black in March, further buoying the Lottery’s financial performance three-quarters of the way through the fiscal year. The Lottery sold $366.4 million in instant tickets last month, about $57.5 million more than in March 2022, Interim Executive Director Mark William Bracken told the Lottery Commission on Tuesday. He called it a “very strong increase.” That burst helped fuel total sales of $519 million in March and represented the majority of Lottery growth over the same stretch a year earlier. All other games besides Mega Millions and Lucky for Life saw decreased sales in March compared to March 2022. Instant tickets are the most popular Lottery product and typically make up 65 to 70 percent of all sales. For much of fiscal year 2023, instant tickets have sold more slowly than last year, but March’s performance pushed the year-to-date instant ticket haul to $51.3 million, or 1.7 percent more than the same stretch in F...

John Travolta’s white ‘Saturday Night Fever’ suit fetches $260K at auction

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:11 GMT

(CNN) — The white three-piece suit worn by John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever” fetched $260,000 at a California auction.The monochromatic ensemble went under the hammer as part of the “Hollywood: Classic & Contemporary” sale organized by Julien’s Auctions and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) over the weekend. (TCM, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)In the 1977 dance drama, Travolta plays Tony Manero, a young Italian-American from Brooklyn who tries to escape the realities of his life by dominating the dance floor at the local disco. The hit movie helped to popularize disco music around the world and Travolta received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his groovy performance.According to auction organizers, the polyester suit worn by Travolta in the movie’s famous dance competition scene is one of only two used during the production of the film. The jacket features exaggerated peak lapels with pick stitching and two ov...