the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

25 YEARS!!!!?:!????!!

That's all they gave this bastard??
:mad:

www.yahoo.com

Tampa man who turned infant’s skull into ‘puzzle pieces’ gets 25 years

TAMPA — Seated in a wheelchair, unable to speak, 4-year-old Ty’ahni Williams bore witness to the cruelty of the man facing prison time for abusing her. A collective sigh of relief arose from half the courtroom Monday as a judge sentenced Demarcus Johnson to 25 years for shattering the girl’s...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Tampa man who turned infant’s skull into ‘puzzle pieces’ gets 25 years​


Josh Fiallo, Tampa Bay Times
Mon, March 28, 2022, 11:41 AM


TAMPA — Seated in a wheelchair, unable to speak, 4-year-old Ty’ahni Williams bore witness to the cruelty of the man facing prison time for abusing her.

A collective sigh of relief arose from half the courtroom Monday as a judge sentenced Demarcus Johnson to 25 years for shattering the girl’s skull so badly it “looked like puzzle pieces,” in the words of a child protection team specialist. Just three months old then, Ty’ahni was the daughter of Johnson’s girlfriend at the time and had been left in his care.

Emotions were strong in the other half of the courtroom, too, Monday as Hillsborough Circuit Judge Christopher Sabella issued the sentence. Johnson’s partner and the mother of his child, Aesha Jolly, ran crying for the door. Johnson stared blankly as Sabella announced his sentence. He was convicted in January for aggravated child abuse with bodily harm.

Ty’ahni will never speak, cry or laugh again, her mother Tyreonna Williams said Monday. She suffers from daily seizures and likely always will. To know whether the girl is hungry, hurt, or happy, her mother must learn what she means with the different sounds she makes.

“She’ll never be able to play with her brother, say mommy, go swinging, or pick out nail polish because of you,” Tyreonna Williams told Johnson in court.

Ty’ahni was a healthy child, Tyreonna Williams said, before she left her with Johnson at a home on E 122nd Avenue in North Tampa so she could go to work. It was July 13, 2018.

When Tyreonna Williams came home, she found the infant unresponsive with her “arms bent at her elbows,” an arrest affidavit said. The girl was taken to a nearby hospital and later flown by helicopter to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg for emergency surgery.
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more at the link if you need more..................
 
jpd said:
Ahhh..California....

A 70-year old California man who has spent four decades in prison for kidnapping a bus full of children and burying them alive could be freed if Gov. Gavin Newsom approves his parole.
Click to expand...
Geezzz, I say for the sane people to make their point if Gov. Newsome approves his parole then everyon should march down there. Put him in a bus, drive him around town then go bury him alive !! Not only would you solve that problem but you would send a great message. Here we call that Tit for Tat.!!
 
Damn, there goes one excuse for a second drink...

Does Moderate Drinking Protect Your Heart? A Genetic Study Offers a New Answer.​

By studying the relationship between gene variants and alcohol consumption, scientists found no real cardiac benefit to drinking, even modestly.
 
Roccus7 said:
Damn, there goes one excuse for a second drink...

Does Moderate Drinking Protect Your Heart? A Genetic Study Offers a New Answer.​

By studying the relationship between gene variants and alcohol consumption, scientists found no real cardiac benefit to drinking, even modestly.
Click to expand...
Well Hell, if their is no real cardiac benefit and no real harm, Just go for it if that's what floats your boat !!. You know that popular saying. "Be Happy" :p
 

Testify or Pay Up, Judge Tells Alex Jones in Sandy Hook Suit​

A Connecticut judge rejected the Infowars conspiracy theorist’s claim that he was too ill to sit for a deposition, and set a schedule of hefty fines.

A Connecticut judge, exasperated by the Infowars broadcaster Alex Jones’s “bad faith” failure to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit brought by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, ruled on Wednesday that he would be subject to escalating daily fines for future delays.

The judge, Barbara Bellis of Connecticut Superior Court, found Mr. Jones in contempt and ordered that he be fined $25,000 for the first weekday he fails to appear for testimony, beginning on Friday. For every day thereafter that he does not appear, the daily fine will increase by $25,000. She also ordered that he be deposed in Connecticut, rather than in his home of Austin, Texas.

If Mr. Jones fails to testify by April 15, Judge Bellis will impose further sanctions, potentially revoking his ability to call witnesses or present evidence in the trial. The judge rejected a motion by the families’ lawyers that Mr. Jones be jailed until he testifies.

Mr. Jones for years spread bogus claims that the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting of 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn., was staged by the federal government as a pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms, and that the families were actors in the supposed plot. The falsehoods have led to years of torment and threats against the victims’ relatives.

The families of 10 Sandy Hook victims are suing Mr. Jones for defamation in three separate lawsuits: two in Texas filed by the families of two victims and one in Connecticut filed by the families of eight victims and an F.B.I. agent targeted by conspiracy theorists.

Over nearly four years of litigation, Mr. Jones repeatedly delayed proceedings, violated court rules and failed to submit business records and testimony ordered by the courts. Late last year, judges in Texas and Connecticut ruled him liable by default, granting the families a sweeping victory. In trials slated to begin next month in Texas, juries will determine how much Mr. Jones must pay the families in damages. The Connecticut case is the last scheduled trial, set to begin on Sept. 1.

With the trials looming, Mr. Jones continues to stonewall. Judge Bellis last week rejected his claim that a medical emergency prevented him from sitting for a two-day deposition in Austin. The day before his court-ordered deposition, Mr. Jones was broadcasting from his Infowars studio while his lawyer, unknowing, told the judge he was under a doctor’s care at home.

“The plaintiffs subjected themselves to hours and hours of painful questioning by Mr. Jones’s lawyers — and Mr. Jones plays sick when it is his turn to tell the truth under oath,” the families’ motion for contempt read.

Mr. Jones’s lawyer did not respond to messages seeking comment.
 
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by this. It's not like I never heard of the Russian Trawlers off LI before the EEZ was introduced...

Seafood industry braces for losses of jobs, fish due to sanctions on Russia​

pressherald.com/2022/03/31/seafood-industry-braces-for-losses-of-jobs-fish-due-to-sanctions-on-russia/

By PATRICK WHITTLE March 31, 2022
Russia-Ukraine-War-Seafood_31368-1648745881.jpg

A cod to be auctioned sits on ice at the Portland Fish Exchange in Portland in 2015. Russia is not one of the biggest exporters of seafood to the U.S., but it’s a world leader in exports of cod. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

The worldwide seafood industry is steeling itself for price hikes, supply disruptions and potential job losses as new rounds of economic sanctions on Russia make key species such as cod and crab harder to come by.

The latest round of U.S. attempts to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine includes bans on imports of seafood, alcohol and diamonds. The U.S. is also stripping “most favored nation status” from Russia. Nations around the world are taking similar steps.

Russia is one of the largest producers of seafood in the world, and was the fifth-largest producer of wild-caught fish, according to a 2020 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Russia is not one of the biggest exporters of seafood to the U.S., but it’s a world leader in exports of cod (the preference for fish and chips in the U.S.). It’s also a major supplier of crabs and Alaska pollock, widely used in fast-food sandwiches and processed products like fish sticks.

The impact is likely to be felt globally, as well as in places with working waterfronts. One of those is Maine, where more than $50 million in seafood products from Russia passed through Portland in 2021, according to federal statistics.

“If you’re getting cod from Russia, it’s going to be a problem,” said Glen Libby, an owner of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, a seafood market in Tenants Harbor. “That’s quite a mess. We’ll see how it turns out.”

Russia exported more than 28 million pounds of cod to the U.S. from Jan. 1, 2020, to Jan. 31, 2022, according to census data.

The European Union and United Kingdom are both deeply dependent on Russian seafood. And prices of seafood are already spiking in Japan, a major seafood consumer that is limiting its trade with Russia.

In the U.K., where fish and chips are a cultural marker, shop owners and consumers alike are bracing for price surges. British fish and chip shops were already facing a squeeze because of soaring energy costs and rising food prices.

Andrew Crook, head of the National Federation of Fish Friers, said earlier this month that – even before the war – he expected a third of Britain’s fish and chip shops to go out of business. If fish prices shoot up even higher, “we are in real dire straits,” he said.

In mid-March, the U.K. slapped a 35 percent tariff hike on Russian whitefish, including chip-shop staples cod and haddock.

“We’re a massive part of U.K. culture and it would be a shame to see that go,” he told broadcaster ITV.
U.S. consumers are most likely to notice the impact of sanctions via price and availability of fish, said Kanae Tokunaga, who runs the Coastal and Marine Economics Lab at Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.

“Because seafood is a global commodity, even if they are not harvested in Russia, you will notice the price hike,” Tokunaga said.

In the U.S., the dependence on foreign cod stems from the loss of its own once-robust Atlantic cod fishery that cratered in the face of overfishing and environmental changes. U.S. fishermen, based mostly in New England, brought more than 100 million pounds of cod to the docks per year in the early 1980s, but the 2020 catch was less than 2 million pounds.

Regulators have tried to save the fishery with management measures such as very low fishing quotas, and many fishermen targeting other East Coast groundfish species such as haddock and flounder now avoid cod altogether.

Seafood processors in Massachusetts are concerned about job losses due to loss of Russian products, Democratic U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who does support sanctions on Russia, said.

“I have heard from seafood processors in my home state with concerns about potential sudden effects of a new, immediate ban on imports on their workforce, including hundreds of union workers in the seafood processing industry,” he said on the Senate floor in February.

For U.S. producers of seafood staples such as fish and chips, the lack of Russian cod could mean pivoting to other foreign sources, said Walt Golet, a research assistant professor at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences.

“We might be able to bring in more from Norway, a little more from Canadian fisheries,” Golet said. “It really is driven by the price of those imports.”

As an alternative, producers and consumers could try underutilized fish species caught domestically, such as Atlantic pollock and redfish, said Ben Martens, executive director of Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.

“Maybe this is a time to use haddock or hake or maybe monkfish, something different,” Martens said. “If it’s going to disrupt supply chains, it does present an opportunity for other species to fill that void.”

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
 
I like this, but no help to me, my first complete mowing isn't done until early June: NO MOW MAY

In Wisconsin: Stowing Mowers, Pleasing Bees​

Can the No Mow May movement help transform the traditional American lawn — a manicured carpet of grass — into something more ecologically beneficial?

As I drove last May through Appleton, Wis., the small city offered up a series of idyllic scenes: children playing on tree-lined streets, couples walking their dogs, and all the while, the wind carrying the sweetness of spring.

But something was unusual here. The lawns of many of the homes were wild. Resembling miniature meadows, they sported long grass, bright yellow dandelions and carpets of purple creeping Charlie — a far cry from the traditional American lawn.

These homes were not abandoned or neglected, and no stacks of newspapers festooned their porches. Rather, the city had asked residents to put away their lawn mowers for the month of May. This allowed plants typically identified as weeds — including violets, white clover and dandelions — to flower.
 
I've always LOL'd when either Party complains about the other Party gerrymandering. Let's' face it, it's one thing they both love to do...

State courts in both Democratic and Republican states have been aggressively striking down gerrymandered political maps, as this year’s redistricting fights drag on and begin to create chaos in upcoming primary elections.

In Maryland, a state judge last week threw out a congressional map drawn by Democrats, citing an “extreme gerrymander.” In North Carolina, the State Supreme Court in February struck down maps drawn by Republicans. And in New York, a state judge ruled on Thursday that a map drawn by Democrats had been “unconstitutionally drawn with political bias.”

The flood of rulings reflects an emerging reality: that state courts, rather than federal ones, have become a primary firewall against gerrymandering as both Democrats and Republicans try to carve out maximum advantages in the maps they control. The parties have been emboldened to do so by a 2019 Supreme Court decision that federal courts cannot hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering, though they can still hear challenges to racial gerrymandering.

At the same time, however, state judges in at least five states — many, though not all, from the opposing party of the one that drew the districts — have slapped down contorted maps as illegal partisan gerrymanders.
 

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