April 12 top stories
It is April 12. Here are today’s top stories.
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1) Alabama death row inmate gives up appeals and asks to be executed
The 35-year-old inmate, Derrick Dearman, on Alabama’s death row has spent almost six years fighting his sentence after being convicted of killing five people, including a woman who was pregnant. But now, he says he’s asked the state to execute him.
Dearman told a news outlet in a phone interview last Friday from a prison in Atmore, Alabama, “I don’t want to die. But I feel it in my heart that this is the only option that would help the victims’ families get the closure they need to move forward. I made peace with my decision. It’s time for justice to be delivered and it’s the right thing to do.”
What happened? According to court documents, in the early morning hours on August 20, 2016, Dearman broke into a home in small-town, Citronelle, Alabama. He made his way through the house, attacking five of the occupants one by one, using an ax, a .45 pistol and a shotgun. All victims were left dead.
He pleaded guilty to capital murder charges on August 31, 2018; a jury recommended the death penalty. And now, about 5.5 years after his sentence, Dearman says the fight is over. On April 5, Dearman said, he fired his attorneys who were representing him during the appeals process. Dearman told a news outlet he wrote letters to Alabama Gov. Ivey and the state’s attorney general, asking them to carry out his death sentence.
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2) Ohtani’s ex-interpreter charged with stealing $16M
The former interpreter for the Japanese MLB star player Shohei Ohtani has been formally charged with bank fraud for allegedly stealing more than $16 million from him.
The interpreter’s name is Ippei Mizuhara and he was familiar to many people who followed Ohtani’s career.
A federal prosecutor said the interpreter made several unauthorized transfers from Ohtani’s bank account to pay off his gambling debts.
Prosecutors explained that the interpreter helped Ohtani to open a bank account in 2018 when he started playing for the MLB. The interpreter allegedly posed as Ohtani to fool bank employees to get them to wire money.
The interpreter faces a maximum fine of up to $1 million and/or up to 30 years in federal prison.
Ohtani said the interpreter stole money from him and that he’s never bet on baseball or any other sports.
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3) Stranded fishermen rescued from tiny island thanks to ‘HELP’ sign
According to U.S. Coast Guard officials, the three men had been planning to fish the waters around the Pikelot Atoll, a part of Micronesia, on March 31 when their 20-foot open skiff was caught by swells and its outboard motor was damaged. They scrambled ashore on uninhabited Pikelot, but their radio ran out of battery power before they could call for help.
So the castaways gathered palm fronds from the 31-acre island, arranged them to spell out “HELP” on the beach, and waited. For more than a week, the men lived off coconut meat, but they did have fresh water from a small well on the island, which is sometimes visited by fishers in the region.
The search for the men began on April 6, when one of their relatives called rescue officials, saying they had not returned to Polowat Atoll, an island more than 100 miles away, where the three started their voyage on Easter Sunday.
The Coast Guard said a U.S. Navy jet dispatched from Japan spotted the palm-frond “HELP” sign on the beach on April 7. The Navy jet dropped survival packs to the three men and relayed their location to the rescue center. Two days later, they were rescued by the Coast Guard.
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4) U.S. aid official says famine has begun in northern Gaza
The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told Congress that people in parts of northern Gaza have begun facing famine.
Axios explained that the director, Samantha Power, is the first U.S. official to publicly say that famine has started. USAID is warning that there will be increasing hunger-related deaths.
USAID said prior to the current Israel-Hamas war, children in northern Gaza had almost no issues with food supplies — there was almost a zero percent of malnutrition. But now it’s one in three children who is malnourished.
Power said in addition to the food issue, people in Gaza lack access to clean water, medicine, medical care and other essentials due to damage from Israel airstrikes and Israel’s blockade of the enclave.
That is all the top stories for this week. Hope you have a nice weekend and stay with the light!
Alabama death row inmate gives up appeals and asks to be executed
Ohtani’s ex-interpreter charged with stealing $16M
Stranded fishermen rescued from tiny island thanks to ‘HELP’ sign
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/help-sign-tiny-pacific-island-coast-guard-rescues-stranded-mariners/
U.S. aid official says famine has begun in northern Gaza
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/11/us-official-famine-northern-gaza