USA Posts

A Florida victim of Jeffrey Epstein who was sexually abused up to three times a week for years testified on Tuesday that his alleged collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell , routinely called her to schedule “massages” and even invited the girl to the financier’s private island. “Carolyn,” who is Minor Victim-4 in the criminal case against Maxwell, says Epstein molested her more than 100 times between 2001 and 2004, and that several other people in the late sex offender’s orbit knew what was happening within his Palm Beach mansion. She was only 14 when the abuse began. Each time she visited, she received a few hundred dollars after giving Epstein a massage that ended with him masturbating while touching her. “I was young and $300 was a lot of money to me,” said Carolyn, who is testifying under her first name at Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial, now in its second week. According to Carolyn, both Epstein and Maxwell knew she was underage because, after a year of abuse, they’d … [Read more...]

Glenn Foster Jr., a former defensive lineman for the New Orleans Saints , died this week after being arrested in Alabama and allegedly denied medical care in a whirlwind saga that even had the police chief whose department arrested him asking questions. According to a statement from the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), the agency is investigating the “in-custody death” of Foster, 31, which was first reported on Monday at a medical facility in Northport, Alabama. The agency said Foster’s body has been released to the Alabama Department of Forensic Services for further investigation, but declined to answer further questions. A spokesperson for the latter agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Foster’s mother, Sabrina Foster, told The Daily Beast late Tuesday that her son “died in custody after being denied medical treatment” by local law enforcement. “We asked them for him to have medical treatment and they denied him for two days. I told … [Read more...]

A statue of an early Ku Klux Klan leader and Confederate general that long raised the ire of motorists along Tennessee's Interstate 65 was removed Tuesday morning from the private property where it sat for decades. The owner of the land where the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue was recently died, NBC affiliate WSMV of Nashville reported . Bill Dorris left the property to the Battle of Nashville Trust, and the group had the statue removed. The statue of Forrest “is ugly” and even he would think so, the trust said in a statement. Forrest “was not present at the Battle of Nashville,” and the property “has no historical significance,” it said. Democratic State Senator Heidi Campbell called the statue's removal "great news." "As Oak Hill Mayor I implored the state to allow vegetation to grow in front of it (they kept that particular stretch trimmed in a way that was inconsistent with the rest of the roadside)," she tweeted. Dorris is said to have placed the … [Read more...]

Greg Tate, a music and cultural critic who elevated hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon worthy of the kind of respect and admiration jazz has received, has died. He was 64. Laura Sell, a spokeswoman for Duke University Press, which published Tate's "Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader" in 2016, confirmed his death Tuesday. The cause was not immediately available. Tate began impacting popular music and criticism in the 1980s as a staff writer for New York's Village Voice, and he eventually contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post and Vibe. He was a Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies and lectured at New York's Museum of Contemporary Art . The Source magazine called him "one of the godfathers of hip-hop journalism." Tate praised the Voice's music critic, Robert Christgau, for hiring him in 1981. He's been quoted as saying Christgau "believed Afro-diasporic musics should on occasion be covered by people who weren't … [Read more...]

Prosecutors have charged approximately seven individuals, described as self-identified anti-fascists, regarding eight alleged assaults in January amid a Pacific Beach “Patriot March,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday. The march event was organized by supporters of former President Donald Trump. The Union-Tribune article continued: Those arraigned Monday in San Diego Superior Court were among a group arrested Thursday in raids by police officers and sheriff’s deputies across Southern California. Prosecutors allege the defendants “are self-identified to be affiliated with Anti-fascists or Antifa,” according to a criminal complaint, and began organizing themselves — with one group originating in San Diego and the other in Los Angeles — a week before the pro-Trump rally. DA charges San Diego, Los Angeles 'Antifa' groups with violently countering P.B. 'Patriot March' https://t.co/VZRw2NhCwx pic.twitter.com/zpkme3sPhl — San Diego Union-Tribune (@sdut) … [Read more...]

South African Dr. Angelique Coetzee — who discovered a new variant of “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus, called Omicron last month in her patients — told the Africa News Agency (ANA) on Tuesday she considered the worldwide bans on travel out of southern Africa following Omicron’s emergence “knee-jerk” and short-sighted, given the lack of information about the strain. “The world, especially England, had a knee-jerk reaction. They stopped everything even after our scientists told them that not enough is known about the variant, whether it is more transmissible or more severe,” Dr. Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association (SAMA), told the ANA on December 7. Several nations across the globe announced varying degrees of travel restrictions on flights entering their borders from southern Africa in late November after the first cases of Omicron were detected in the region earlier that same month. Britain, the European Union ( E.U. ), Japan , and … [Read more...]