Friday, July 9 top stories
It is Friday, July 9. Here are today’s top stories.
Haiti’s National Police announced they have detained two American citizens and 15 Colombian suspects in connection to the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and the wounding of his wife, Martine.
There is a video that shows Haitian authorities watching over a line of handcuffed suspects sitting on a hard floor. The suspects were roughly treated. The two American citizens are James Solages (35) and Joseph Vincent (55).
Haitian authorities said the men were a part of a group of 28 mercenaries (paid soldiers) that killed the president at his private residence after they got through security by posing as D.E.A. agents.
Haitian authorities say they have killed four suspects and are searching for more suspects.
The U.S. State Department said they can’t confirm if a U.S. citizen was arrested. The Haitian First Lady Martine is now in stable condition at a Miami-area hospital.
World leaders have continued to express concern about the government’s stability. The country currently has an interim prime minister and another person who was appointed as a prime minister by the president a day before he was killed.
President Joe Biden announced a plan on Tuesday to get more Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus. News reports explained that inoculation numbers are slowing across the U.S. and starting to hit a “ceiling.”
Biden said the Delta variant, which is extremely contagious, is now responsible for half of the cases in the U.S. and is spreading fast through unvaccinated populations.
One of Biden’s ideas is to target communities with a door-to-door outreach, but it has raised controversy with people rejecting the idea of the government knocking on their doors to pressure them to get a vaccine.
Axios reports that South Carolina’s Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, said this was akin to coercion and intimidation. He called on his state’s board of health to issue a directive to bar state and local healthcare organizations from knocking on people’s doors to promote the vaccines.
The Biden administration said conservative people are twisting the concept of the door-to-door vaccination campaign and warned that people can die if they don’t have accurate information about vaccines.
Last night, 14-year-old Zalia Avant-garde won the 93rd Scripps National Spelling Bee when she correctly spelled “Murraya.” ESPN said she is the first African-American winner of the competition.
Murraya is a type of plant that grows in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.
“Insider” reported that she has other talents — that she holds three Guinness world records, including one for dribbling six basketballs simultaneously.
Zalia is from Louisiana and wants to go to Harvard University and work for NASA in the future.
First Lady Jill Biden congratulated her on Twitter.
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Cobb County Police announced they have arrested a suspect in connection to the shooting death of a professional golfer and two others whose bodies were found in a truck that was stopped on a golf course.
The suspect’s name is Bryan Rhoden (23). Police said they believe he is the “lone shooter.” He is charged with three counts of murder.
Police said they believe Rhoden first killed two victims named Henry Valdez (46) and Paul Pierson (76), who owned the truck, then put their bodies in the back of the truck and drove it on the golf course. The pro golfer, Gene Siller (46) worked at the golf course and was checking on what was going on with the truck when he was shot. Police said they believe he was killed because he witnessed a crime in progress. The suspect fled and was unaccounted for until now.
Police have not given out much information on why Rhoden would want to kill Valdez and Pierson, nor on why he decided to drive on the golf course.
A man from Newport, Michigan, Lee Mouat (43), was sentenced five years to federal prison for committing what federal officials say is a hate crime when he swung a bike chain at a Black teenager’s face.
The incident was in June 6, 2020, which was only a few days after the murder of George Floyd and the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement. Witnesses said Mouat was angry that three Black teenagers were playing music at a state park, shouted racial slurs at them, and shouted “Black Lives Don’t Matter.”
Witnesses said Mouat went to his vehicle to get the bike chain and then returned to swing it at 18-year-old Devin Freelon Jr.'s face, which knocked out several of his teeth and fractured his jaw. Mouat pleaded guilty to causing bodily harm in March.
Federal officials said the teenagers were targeted because they are Black. He will now go to prison for five years and then will have to serve three years of supervised release.
Michael Avenatti, who became well-known for being the attorney for Stormy Daniels, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, or two and a half years, for trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike.
Avenatti was convicted in February 2020 of trying to force Nike to pay him millions of dollars or he would go public with allegations that Nike paid amateur basketball players. In his sentencing, a federal judge said he “became drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived his platform to be.”
Avenatti was on cable television, mostly CNN and MSNBC, for hours and hours of interviews when news surfaced about an alleged affair between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels and a hush-money payment. Stormy terminated her deal with Avenatti in 2019 after two failed lawsuits against Donald Trump and has spoken out against him, saying he was disrespectful and ignored her requests.
CNN reported that at Avenatti’s sentencing, he openly wept and said he betrayed his own values, his friends, his family, and himself.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced they are developing a Covid-19 booster shot that is intended to fight against the Delta variant. Clinic trials could begin in August if it is approved by federal regulators. Pfizer said a third shot would give people the highest levels of protection against all currently known variants, including Delta.
That is all the top stories for today. Have a great weekend and stay with the light.
https://www.axios.com/biden-white-house-plan-covid-vaccine-a77fe756-f0c5-4ffb-b6ee-d885077fcb26.html
https://www.insider.com/zaila-avant-garde-first-african-american-win-scripps-spelling-bee-2021-7
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-stormy-daniels-michael-avenatti-20190312-story.html