Thursday, April 29 top stories
It is Thursday, April 29. Here are today’s top stories.
President Joe Biden gave an address to Congress last night.
Biden said he is proud to be the first president to address the Speaker of the House and the Vice President behind him as “Madam Speaker and Madam Vice President.”
Biden said he is giving his speech because it is the 99th day of his presidency — today is the 100th day. He said when he took office, the nation was in a crisis, but now America is on the move again.
Biden touted his achievements in 100 days: passing a massive coronavirus relief bill with $1,400 stimulus checks, providing 220 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and over 1.3 million new jobs created.
Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) delivered the rebuttal/response to the speech on behalf of the Republican Party. He said Biden and the Democratic Party are causing more division in the U.S. He said schools should have been reopened months ago. He warned against using race as a political weapon to settle issues.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted three men with hate crime charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running on a street in Georgia. The shooting was seen in a video last year that was released two months after Arbery’s death in February. The video showed Arbery trying to run around a pulled-over pickup truck. Two men in the truck jump out brandishing firearms and one of them shot at Arbery three times at close range using a shotgun.
The three men are Travis McMichael, his father Gregory, and an acquaintance of theirs, William “Roddie” Bryan. The three men are already jailed on state murder charges.
PBS explained that at the time Arbery was killed, Georgia did not have a hate crimes law, but after his death, Georgia lawmakers passed new hate crime laws. However the new laws can’t be applied to the three men. But the federal government has power to indict, and the three men are now charged with one count of interference with civil rights and attempted kidnaping. The father and son had an additional charge of using a firearm during a crime of violence.
The three men said they chased down Arbery because they suspected him of being a burglar. But prosecutors said Arbery stole nothing and was only jogging outside. The DOJ said the men targeted Arbery because of his race.
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In Boone, North Carolina, two deputies went to a home on Wednesday morning because the homeowner and his family missed work and didn’t answer the phone. When the two officers arrived, they were fired upon and were wounded. Other officers tried to rescue the deputies, but they came under fire. Eventually, one of the deputies, Chris Ward, was retrieved and airlifted to a hospital, but died. The other deputy, Logan Fox, was dead on the scene.
SWAT teams and multiple police officers surrounded the home and there was a hours-long standoff that ended with the gunman committing suicide on Wednesday night. Two more people were found dead inside of the home — they were the gunman’s mother and stepfather. It is not known the gunman’s identity at the time I'm signing this news.
The White House said it would send $100 million worth of supplies to India to help the country fight a dangerous surge in Covid-19 cases. The White House said U.S. government assistance flights would begin arriving in India on Thursday and continue into next week. The supplies include N95 masks, rapid Covid-19 tests, and oxygen cylinders.
India reported 380,000 new Covid-19 cases and 3,645 new deaths in the past 24 hours. Axios reported that doctors in India are concerned about a new Covid-19 variant that is infecting fully vaccinated doctors, young adults, and babies.
A 23-year-old Minnesota man was sentenced four years in federal prison and fined $12 million for setting a police station in Minneapolis on fire during protests a few days after the murder of George Floyd. His name is Dylan Shakespeare Robinson and he is from Brainerd, which is about 120 miles south of Minneapolis.
Federal authorities said there are three other men who pleaded guilty to setting the police building on fire that will be sentenced at a later date.
An attorney for Robinson said he is disappointed because he is “bearing the sentence for the other thousand people who participated.”
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/us/politics/joe-biden-speech-transcript.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-indicts-3-on-hate-crime-charges-in-death-of-georgia-man
https://www.facebook.com/Albemarle.Police.Department/posts/4493038197393412
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/us/minneapolis-police-fire-dylan-shakespeare-robinson.html