October 31, 2021

Man dies in Spain after being gored during bull run

Madrid – A 55-year-old Spanish man bled to death after being gored in the leg by a bull during a festival in which the animals are released into the streets, local authorities said Sunday.

The town hall of Onda, in the eastern Spanish province of Castellon, said in a statement that it would suspend Sunday’s last day of bull-running following the goring on Saturday afternoon during the annual festival.

The local Levante news site said that the man was taken to a nearby hospital, but doctors couldn’t save him.

It is the first known death during a running-of-the-bulls since the festivals returned to many towns across Spain after a pandemic-imposed pause. Despite the occasional casualties and growing opposition from animal rights groups, racing bulls or cows remains a popular tradition. Two other people were injured during a similar bull-run in another town, Levante reported. ................(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/world/2021/10/31/man-dies-spain-after-being-gored-during-bull-run/6224142001/

October 31, 2021

Florida man arrested after leaving a pizza trail of clues for deputies

DELTONA, Fla. — A pizza-eating suspect responsible for a pair of car break-ins was caught after deputies followed a trail of evidence in Deltona.

Dewey J. Smith, 38, was arrested on Wednesday after being caught walking down the street, carrying victims’ credit cards and IDs. The victims reported the car break-ins around 7:30 A.M. on Jefferson Avenue. Deputies with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene and discovered one of the car’s center console was open and a glove box rummaged through. The victim’s wallet was also missing. According to deputies, marinara sauce was on the inside handle of the driver’s side door.

Authorities also noticed an empty pizza box at the scene where there was another car break-in. A 9mm handgun and an old concealed weapons permit were missing, according to officials. ...............(more)

https://nbc-2.com/news/crime/2021/10/28/florida-man-arrested-for-leaving-pizza-trail-of-clues-for-deputies/

October 31, 2021

Toronto: Community-engaged art project transforms Wilson subway station in North York

When Natalie Volkova walks to or from her North York home, she no longer passes by “plain concrete” as she makes her way through a pedestrian tunnel at Wilson subway station. She passes by a meaningful cultural space instead.

Volkova has been living near the subway station, at Wilson Avenue and Allen Road, for more than a year and uses the station daily. She was among dozens of local residents who turned out for the recent unveiling of “Daily Migration,” a 1,400-square-foot mural by Canadian-Chilean artist Shalak Attack that transformed the station into a cultural space.

“It’s a new neighbourhood and it’s a developing one,” Volkova said of the area southeast of the subway station, where several residential buildings have been built over the past few years.

The mural, she said, is a “way to attract more people here because it’s a nice touch to the otherwise gloomy” pedestrian tunnel at the station, which sees more than 17,000 daily visitors. “It’s very beautiful. It’s very bright and vivid, and it tells a nice story,” she said of the artwork. “Every day when you walk in there, it’s not just the plain concrete anymore. (There’s) something to look at and enjoy.” .............(more)

https://www.toronto.com/news-story/10504406-community-engaged-art-project-transforms-wilson-subway-station-in-north-york/?

October 30, 2021

San Francisco's Iconic Fog on the Decline Due to Climate Change: Report

October 30, 2021

Florida man found with live grenade, clown mannequin inside truck: video

Deputies in Florida found a live grenade in the truck of an “idiot” who was driving with a terrifying clown mannequin in the passenger seat, wild video shows.

The footage released Monday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office shows the moment a deputy stumbled upon the explosive find after Louis Branson, 65, was pulled over in Bunnell for expired tags on his Dodge pickup.

“Oh shoot, is this for real?” a deputy asks her partners after discovering the grenade inside a sealed canister in the back of Branson’s ride, video shows. “Get out of the truck, it looked like a possible grenade.” .............(more)

https://nypost.com/2021/10/27/florida-man-had-live-grenade-clown-mannequin-inside-truck/

October 29, 2021

President Biden joins federal, state and local officials to break ground on Portal North Bridge

The Portal North Bridge, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest rail bridge and a notorious chokepoint on the Northeast Corridor, is one step closer to its next chapter that will include greater reliability and capacity with a ceremonial groundbreaking of the project to replace the bridge attended by federal, state and local officials, including President Joseph Biden.

The Portal North Bridge is a key project of the Gateway Program and calls for the replacement of a swing span that carries about 450 New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit) and Amtrak trains daily over the Hackensack River. The bridge is the busiest rail span in the Western Hemisphere and when an issue or failure occurs, the impact on rail movements not only affects New Jersey, but has cascading effects throughout the Northeast Corridor.

President Biden noted the bridge was considered state of the art when it was built 110 years ago, but now carries many other less flattering descriptors including “a ‘chokepoint,’ a ‘bottleneck,’ and an ‘Achilles heel’ of the Northeast Corridor.”

“Aging infrastructure like this is more than an inconvenience or a nuisance; it’s an impediment — impediment to America’s global competitiveness,” said President Biden. “Today, we’re moving forward on a new bridge that will be higher over the water, so it won’t need to open and close. It’ll allow us to increase speed, safety and efficiency and capacity. It’s going to make life a lot better for New Jersey’s commuters. It’s also going to create nearly 8,000 construction jobs in this area alone — this area’s workers — 8,000 union jobs.” ........(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21243952/president-biden-joins-federal-state-and-local-officials-to-break-ground-on-portal-north-bridge

October 29, 2021

Ex-Fox News Reporter Warns Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 Series Is Intended To Do 1 Thing

Carl Cameron on Thursday accused his old network Fox News, where he was chief political correspondent until 2017, of betraying its audience with Tucker Carlson’s upcoming series about the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A widely criticized trailer for “Patriot Purge” — set to stream Monday on Fox Nation — includes the baseless claim that the U.S. Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation.

Cameron has slammed the “partisan misinformation” pumped out by right-wing hosts at his former employer before. He and Cooper acknowledged Carlson’s full series may not plunge as deeply into conspiracy theory territory as the promo suggests.

But Cameron, once known as “Campaign Carl,” said it was “really frightening and, frankly, it’s a betrayal to the audience, it’s a betrayal to the public.”

“Some of what is espoused or is meant to espouse just in that trailer suggests that there is more violence to come,” Cameron said. “And that’s a big, big rock around the author’s neck if that trailer and this upcoming thing actually does that. There are clearly huge divides in this country, the media shouldn’t be putting more gas on the fire.” ..........(more)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/carl-cameron-tucker-carlson-jan-6-special_n_617bae5fe4b0657357477c7b?

October 28, 2021

JFK-Orange County flight Diverts To Denver After Flight Attendant Attacked By Passenger

SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — An American Airlines flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on its way to John Wayne Airport in Orange County Wednesday evening diverted to Denver International after a passenger assaulted a female flight attendant.

Mackenzie Rose, another passenger on the flight, told CBSLA that the incident occurred about halfway through the trip, when the plane was over Ohio. The passenger suspected of assaulting the flight attendant was reportedly in first or business class.

The flight attendant, though, did have blood on her after the assault, according to Rose.

“I saw her walk by and she had blood on the outside of her mask, which bless her, she was still wearing,” she said.

According to the airline, AA Flight 976 was able to taxi safely to the gate where law enforcement removed the passenger. ............(more)

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/10/28/aa-flight-from-new-yorks-jfk-to-john-wayne-airport-diverts-to-denver-after-flight-attendant-attacked-by-passenger/

October 28, 2021

Twitter is actually doing a (relatively) good job limiting right-wing misinformation, study finds

(Salon) Whenever a far right personality is banned from social media — or even considered as a possible target for such a ban — conservatives frequently respond that being deplatformed only makes them stronger.

In some cases, as with Trump, the results of this deplatforming can be mixed. A recent New York Times study found that Trump's dual bans from both Facebook and Twitter have reduced the spread of his Big Lie on both platforms. At the same time, his allies have still managed to keep his larger political brand alive on those sites by spreading his messages to their millions of followers.

When it comes to other right-wing misinformation peddlers, a new study in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction found that deplatforming can be quite effective in curtailing both malicious actors and their narratives. The researchers learned this after studying the Twitter fortunes of three influential far right personalities — Owen Benjamin, Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos — after they were kicked off the site.

"Analyzing the bans of 3 extremist influencers with thousands of followers, we found that banning disrupted the discussions about influencers: posts referencing each influencer declined significantly," Shagun Jhaver, the study's lead author and an assistant professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, told Salon by email. "More importantly, our study showed that deplatforming helped reduce the spread of many anti-social ideas and conspiracy theories popularized by influencers. Further, we found that banning significantly reduced the overall posting activity and toxicity levels of thousands of supporters for each influencer." ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/27/twitter-is-actually-doing-a-relatively-good-job-limiting-right-wing-misinformation-study-finds/

October 27, 2021

Florida manatees dying in record numbers amid food scarcity

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Florida fishing guide and environmental activist Paul Fafeita says a highlight for his charter customers is spotting the manatees that forage for seagrass in shallow waters. It's not so thrilling when they come across the emaciated carcass of a manatee that starved to death.

“It’s not good when you’ve got clients on the boat and all of a sudden there’s a dead manatee,” Fafeita, president of the Clean Water Coalition of Indian River County, said during a recent excursion in the Indian River Lagoon, a favorite hangout for the marine mammals along Florida's east coast. “They’re wanting to see them. They don’t want to see them dead.”

Florida is experiencing an unprecedented die-off of manatees this year, with 959 documented deaths as of Oct. 1. That's already more than any full year on record, and colder weather soon to come could bring another wave of deaths in a population that numbers between 7,500 and 10,200 along both Florida coasts, according to state estimates.

Manatee deaths this year will likely double the 593 recorded in 2020, and will far outnumber the latest five-year average of 146 deaths in Florida, according to state figures, with no end to the die-off in sight. ..............(more)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/florida-manatees-dying-record-numbers-amid-food-scarcity-n1282398