Tuesday, June 21 top stories
It is Tuesday, June 21. Here are today’s top stories.
Images of Uvalde police inside of school
News outlets in Texas released images of police officers inside of the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on the day of the mass shooting. It showed that the officers had AR-15 style rifles and ballistic shields, but they didn’t try to go inside of the classroom.
A previous report said the classroom door where the gunman and the victims were in was never locked. It took 77 minutes from the time the gunman entered the school up to when he was shot and killed by a Border Patrol team. At that time, children were dialing 911 and parents outside of the school were agitated and trying to rush into the school but were prevented by law enforcement.
Today there was a hearing before a Texas Senate Committee on the police response to the shooting. The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the law enforcement response to the shooting was a failure and against everything that they’ve learned over the last twenty years since the Columbine (Colorado) massacre.
5-year-old dies in hot car incident
On Monday, a 5-year-old boy in Houston died after he was left in a SUV for two to three hours during hot weather while his mother was distracted with preparing a birthday party for the boy’s 8-year-old sister.
Houston Police explained that the mother and his two children — the girl and the boy — were at the store to get things for the birthday party. When they got home, the mother may have assumed that her son knew how to unbuckle himself from her car seat and get out. The mother did not realize that his son was missing for about two to three hours.
Temperatures in the Houston area on Monday were about 100 degrees F.
News images and videos showed police officers taping off a driveway with a black SUV. Police said the SUV was a loaner — a rental vehicle or a vehicle provided by a car repair company — so the boy may have been unfamiliar with the different designs for seatbelts and car locks and couldn’t figure out how to get out.
Police did not say if the mother will face charges.
FedEx gets 150 electric vans from GM
FedEx received a shipment of 150 electric vans from General Motors and its subsidiary, BrightDrop. The vans look futuristic with smoother features, thinner headlights, and no noticeable grill.
CNN Business said FedEx and GM has a deal for 2,500 of those types of vehicles and are negotiating a purchase of about 20,000 additional vans.
Walmart is also planning to purchase those types of electric vans with a deal for 5,000 vehicles already in place.
It was not revealed how much each BrightDrop van costs, but some analysts estimate the cost to be at least $50,000 per vehicle. GM said each vehicle will save owners about $7,000 a year because electricity is cheaper than gasoline. The vehicles can go 250 miles after each charge.
CNN Business said electric vans are a “hot market because delivery companies face growing demands to reduce their carbon emissions and lower their fuel costs…”
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Americans captured in Ukraine may face death penalty
It is confirmed that two American veterans who volunteered to fight alongside Ukrainian forces against the Russian invasion were captured. Their names are Andy Huynh (27) and Alexander Drueke (39) and both are from Alabama.
A Russian spokesperson said both men will face a Russian court for being involved in illegal activities and warned that they may face the death penalty. The Russian spokesperson said both men wouldn’t be protected by Geneva Conventions that cover prisoners of war because they weren’t part of Ukraine’s army.
USAToday explained that last week, two Britons and a Moroccan were sentenced to death by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In separate news, an American veteran named Stephen D. Zabielski died in Ukraine on May 15. He went to Ukraine to help their troops. He was killed by a landmine and now leaves behind a wife and five stepchildren.
He is the second American to die in the Ukraine conflict with the first one a 22-year-old ex-Marine named Willy Joseph Cancel Jr, who died in late April.
The Biden administration has discouraged Americans from going to Ukraine to join the war due to safety risks and the U.S. government’s limited ability to help.
World’s largest freshwater fish found in Cambodia
In Cambodia, a local fisherman in the Mekong River caught a freshwater stingray that weighed 661 pounds, which is now a new world record for the biggest freshwater fish ever documented.
The fisherman alerted a team of scientists who worked in a research project called the Wonders of the Mekong. The scientists said they rushed to the scene and were stunned at the size of the stingray.
This kind of stingray is exclusively freshwater — it does not migrate between fresh and saltwater.
Scientists put a tagging device on the stingray and then it was released back into the river.
The fisherman was paid the market rate for the size of the fish, which is about $600 USD. Local residents called the stingray “Boramy,” which means full moon, because of its round size.
Jan 6. Committee holds fourth hearing
Today the Jan 6. Committee held its fourth hearing.
Today’s hearing had testimony from Republican state officials in Arizona and Georgia who said they were pressured by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the election results.
The first person to testify was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican. He testified that Trump and his allies asked him to remove the state electors that represented Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona and replace them. Bowers said he refused to do it because it was against his oath and his beliefs. Bowers said he told Trump that he wouldn’t do anything illegal for him.
The committee showed that Trump and his allies spread false stories that in Atlanta, election officials kicked out poll watchers and brought suitcases filled with ballots for Biden and used them to rig the vote.
The committee showed clips of Georgia election official Gabe Sterling in a press conference, which included deaf interpreter David Cowan, saying that the suitcases were a part of normal ballot processing.
The committee said the Justice Department determined that there were no such things as fake ballots in suitcases.
The committee showed excerpts of a phone call between Trump and Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, in which Trump pressured him to recalculate the votes and “find 11,780 votes.” Raffensperger told Trump that they had an accurate election (that showed Biden won).
Raffensperger said his team investigated every single allegation of election fraud and that they found nothing that showed fraud. One example is that Trump’s team claimed there were over 10,000 dead people who voted, but in their investigation they found two dead people and now the number is updated to only four dead people.
The committee called a former Georgia election worker, Wandrea Moss, to testify. She and her mother, who was also an election worker, were targeted by Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani who accused them of helping rig the election and passing around a USB drive. Moss said the “USB” was just a breath mint. She said she had to leave her home for two months because she feared for her safety. She said she felt horrible that because she was an election worker, her family’s lives were threatened.
That’s the recap of today’s hearing. There will be more hearings to come.
That’s all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/21/us/5-year-old-hot-car-death-houston/index.html
https://abc13.com/hot-car-death-homicide-investigation-child-died/11981689/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/21/business/gm-brightdrop-fedex/index.html
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/exclusive-first-look-brightdrop-ev600-electric-delivery-van/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/20/stephen-zabielski-killed-ukraine-russia/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61877914
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61862169
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/january-6-hearings-june-21/index.html