Random News: April 6, 2024

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s April 6, 2024, and it’s a Saturday. It was too cold to lounge about comfortably in my bathrobe this morning, so I’m already showered and dressed. This won’t make any difference in my news; I just thought I’d share the current situation with you all.

• We’ll start with something I’m not going to do, which is poke fun at people in the Tri-state area for their earthquake yesterday morning.
• A 4.8, if you’re close enough to it, can be at least mildly exciting, especially if you’re close to the epicenter. And yes, no need to explain the detailed description of the bedrock of the East Coast and how earthquakes feel stronger there. I’m aware.
• There have been sizable aftershocks as well, as one would expect.
• Look, it’s a matter of acclimation. We get an inch of rain here in Southern California and a disaster is called (because we don’t have the infrastructure designed for big storms, since they’re rare here), and you all laugh about it. You guys get a rather mild 4.8 quake and it’s top headline news for days.
• You’re not used to them. I do understand.
• Just how not-used to them are you, if you’re a New Yorker? At a magnitude 4.8, it was one of the strongest quakes felt in the area over the past century.
• The West Coast gets quakes that size somewhere at least once per week if not more often. Here by the ocean, we’re actually on an entirely different tectonic plate than the rest of the USA… and the eastern edge of that plate is called the San Andreas fault.
• The more you know™.
• Let’s do some news.
• Donnie Dump is desperately demanding a new judge just days before his hush-money criminal case is set to go to trial.
• He’s asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to step aside from the case because his daughter is a Democratic political consultant. Merchan rejected the same request last August.
• Fuck you, Donnie. 
• The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday April 15. It is the first of Dump’s four criminal cases scheduled to go to trial and will be the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
• He’s going to keep trying — and failing — to wriggle out of the mess he made. He will fail.
• Interesting side note on that…
• About 500 Manhattan residents were sent notices to appear at the borough's criminal court on April 15 without being told why.
• It’s because they're under consideration to be jurors in the most high-profile criminal trial in U.S. history.
• Can you imagine? What would you do… try and get on the jury, try and stay neutral, or try like fuck to wriggle out of it?
• Ultimately, the group will be whittled down to 12 jurors and a few alternates who will determine whether Dump is guilty of 34 felony counts. Those people are going to be hounded and threatened for doing their civic duty.
• Let’s move on for now, heading south to Mexico.
• Mexico is breaking off diplomatic ties with Ecuador and recalling all of its diplomats after police broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who has sought political asylum there after being indicted on corruption.
• President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the announcement last night after Ecuadorian police arrested Jorge Glas, who has been residing there since December.
• Today, the Mexican government strongly condemned the acts of violence committed against the deputy chief of mission, Roberto Canseco Martínez, who was photographed struggling and being physically restrained by Ecuadorian officers outside the embassy.
• That’s not good. Ecuador, be better.
• In other news…
• More than 30 Democratic House members have called for a full halt to the transfer of weapons to Israel, in a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
• “In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers,” read the letter signed on Friday by the lawmakers, including former House speaker and Biden ally Nancy Pelosi.
• The death toll in the Gaza Strip has crossed 33,000 since the Israel offensive started in October.
• I want to tell you something about war that you may not know.
• When you think of civilians getting killed in. war zone, you probably picture bombs dropping and machine gun fire in the streets. And yes, those things do happen.
• But that’s not the cause of most civilian deaths. The reality is much worse.
• War causes supply chains and travel routes to be cut off.
• And throughout history, warring parties may purposefully plunder an enemy's food supply, deliberately destroying farms, livestock, and other civilian infrastructure.
• During WWII, about 27,000,000 Russians died, and the majority of them were non-combatant civilian families who just starved to death.
• Most of the people who die in Gaza won’t be shot or bombed, and the grand majority of the Palestinian people have nothing to do with Hamas or with terrorism in general. They’re just families with kids who have no food and no way of getting food.
• So before you make some big commitment in terms of right or wrong in this conflict, keep in mind that the side you’re cheering for might not be as much the good guys as you assume they are.
• Side note: the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes starvation as a war crime when committed within an international armed conflict.
• So after this is said and done, and leader who purposefully cut off food supplies to civilian populations could and should be tried by international courts for having committed war crimes.
• They might want to keep that in mind.
• Okay, let’s move on.
• I think we skipped over too many details about Florida’s new abortion law last week.
• On Monday, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that triggered a six-week abortion ban approved by state lawmakers last year. On May 1, it will replace the state’s current 15-week ban.
• I will remind you that at six weeks of gestation, a large percentage of women don’t yet know they’re pregnant. When they find out, it’s too late under Florida’s new law that was put in place by state Republicans.
• This affects more than just Floridians. Last year, about 1 in 12 abortions nationwide and 1 in 3 abortions in the South were performed in Florida.
• More than 9,000 people traveled from other states to get an abortion in Florida in 2023, around twice as many as 2020.
• Now the closest option for women to receive reproductive health care is in North Carolina, where abortion is allowed up to 12 weeks into pregnancy, or Virginia, where it is allowed prior to the third trimester.
• What they expect as a result is horrifying. They fear that patients are going to try to handle this themselves, and there will be an uptick in patient injuries and miscarriages that are not managed appropriately.
• ER’s are going to be starting to fill up with patients that are trying to manage their abortion on their own because they’re that desperate.
• Can this be stopped? Yes, but not until November, when Florida voters have a ballot measure to amend their state constitution to include the right of reproductive choice in the state before fetal viability – approximately 24 weeks into pregnancy – or to protect patient health.
• The amendment will need 60% of the vote to pass. My Florida friends, if you have a heart, or care about women in any way at all, please vote yes and allow them to control their own reproductive freedom.
• Thank you.
• Moving on.
• Let’s head north back to New York City, who’ve agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action suit brought by two women who were forced to remove their hijab while being photographed by police for mug shots.
• Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, both practicing Muslims, brought the case in 2018 after saying their experiences left them humiliated and in tears.
• In the Muslim religion, women cover their hair in public or in front of men outside of their immediate family. not doing so is the equivalent of being naked.
• When Aziz was arrested, officers refused to allow her to keep her hijab on for her photo, and refused her request that she pull her hijab back only slightly to reveal her bangs and hairline, which obviously would have been plenty to use to identify her.
• Instead, they forced her to take photos in full view of about a dozen male officers and more than 30 male inmates for almost five minutes.
• The lawsuit also led to the NYPD changing its policy in 2020, to stop requiring people to remove religious head coverings such as hijabs or yarmulkes after their arrest, with limited exemptions if the covering obscured the individual’s facial features.
• Good. Fuck them. And New York definitely isn’t the only place where this happens.
• Last year, a 37-year-old woman brought a lawsuit against the sheriff and three law enforcement officers in Rutherford County, TN who told her to remove her hijab or stay in jail indefinitely.
• Pricks.
• Moving on.
• Speaking of pricks, though… yesterday, someone tried to burn down the offices of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. The small blaze caused minor damages but no injuries.
• An unknown male suspect sprayed what they described as a possible accelerant on the office door, set it on fire and fled. The suspect remains at large and no motive has been established.
• Bernie was not in the office at the time, but his staff was trapped inside, and significant water damage happened as a result of their fire suppression systems.
• Let’s move on to the always-benevolent House Freedom Caucus, otherwise known as the worst human beings in America.
• Yesterday, they put out a list of demands they require to pay for the rebuilding of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
• Yes, you read it right.
• The right-wing extremist group proposed conditions that include paying for the bridge by eliminating the Endangered Species Act, and to lift the pause on liquefied natural gas exports, before doing anything to help the people of Maryland and the USA.
• If there’s a wrong way to do something, the far right Republicans will choose that way.
• Moving on to a little follow-up from a story I mentioned last week.
• Inmates at a New York prison who sued the state corrections department over a planned lockdown during this coming Monday’s total solar eclipse will be able to see the celestial event after all.
• The lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court claimed that the lockdown constituted a violation of religious rights.
• I support this. New York has not experienced a total solar eclipse since 1925.
• Let’s do some comedy news.
• After House Republicans introduced legislation to rename one of Washington, D.C.’s airports after Donnie Dump, a group of House Democrats are now proposing a bill to rename a federal prison in Miami after the smelly criminal.
• No, really.
• The legislation, which would rename the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida as the "Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution," was officially filed on Wednesday, April 3.
• I support this as well.
• And now, The Weather: “You're Not Here Anymore” by hockey season
• From the Sports Desk… let’s start with the NCAA Women’s final. 1-seed South Carolina walked over 3-seed NC State 78-59, while 1-seed Iowa beat 3-seed UConn in a nail biter.
• The championship game of South Carolina vs. Iowa is on Sunday at 3PM EDT/noon PDT.
• Today in history… Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger at the Battle of Thapsus (46 BC). The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 begins near Broadway (1712). John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company, that would eventually make him America's first millionaire (1808). U.S. President John Tyler is sworn in, two days after having become president upon William Henry Harrison's death (1841). In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I (1896). Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first people to reach the North Pole (1909). The United States declares war on Germany (1917). Huey P. Long, Governor of Louisiana, is impeached by the Louisiana House of Representatives (1929). Sarajevo is liberated from German and Croatian forces by the Yugoslav Partisans (1945). The first Tony Awards are presented for theatrical achievement (1947). Launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit (1965). Pierre Elliott Trudeau wins the Liberal Party leadership election, and becomes Prime Minister of Canada soon afterward (1968). Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft (1973). 
• April 6 is the birthday of philosopher/scholar Maimonides (1135), poet/playwright Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671), engineer/businessman Anthony Fokker (1890), businessman Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. (1892), composer/conductor André Previn (1929), guru Ram Dass (1931), singer-songwriter Merle Haggard (1937), actor Billy Dee Williams (1937), actress Marilu Henner (1952), actor John Ratzenberger (1947), singer-songwriter/guitarist Warren Haynes (1960), singer-songwriter/guitarist John Pizzarelli (1960), actor Paul Rudd (1969), actor Zach Braff (1975), NFL player Tim Hasselbeck (1978), and soccer player Julie Ertz (1992).

Today is a big maintenance day for me… I’m going to be doing some operating system updates and some backend updates to my web stuff and more. I’ve been putting it off for awhile, and now things are getting fucked up. Wish me luck with that. Enjoy your day.