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  • ‘Interview with the Vampire’ has an undying legacy. Look inside its TV rebirth | CNN

    ‘Interview with the Vampire’ has an undying legacy. Look inside its TV rebirth | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It’s been nearly half a century since “Interview with the Vampire” was published, leaving its mark on popular culture. Penned by the late Anne Rice, the book became the first of the “Vampire Chronicles,” which include 12 follow-up novels. “Interview” itself was adapted into a 1994 feature film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, while a loose “Queen of the Damned” adaptation hit theaters in 2002.

    Now TV audiences can revisit “Interview with the Vampire” in a new series on AMC Sunday night. Beloved characters like Louis, Lestat and Claudia are back – albeit with some updates to their stories.

    “We have these books that have literally been played in everybody’s head a million times, and then there’s this movie that has grafted that onto another generation of people,” said executive producer and writer Rolin Jones, who acknowledged feeling a “push and pull of how to be reverential and how to make sure that you’re not going to be boring for the people that already know these stories quite well.”

    Jones and production designer Mara LePere-Schloop spoke with CNN about reimagining “Interview with the Vampire” for television and keeping the adaptation supernatural, sensual and sumptuous, in line with the source material.

    Bringing “Interview with the Vampire” to TV involved building a “universe,” said Jones, who kept the other “Vampire Chronicles” in mind while planning everything from character details to the bigger picture. (Lestat, played by Sam Reid, saw some “rewriting” in the later books, as Jones observed – starting with a more fleshed out backstory in the second novel, 1985’s “The Vampire Lestat.”)

    The titular interview takes place in the present day; the 1994 film, its screenplay written by Rice, also placed the interview in then-modern times. Like the novel, the new “Interview with the Vampire” is centered on Louis, who shares how he became a vampire with Daniel Molloy, a character first introduced to readers as an unnamed young reporter.

    This Daniel, portrayed by Eric Bogosian, is an older seasoned journalist, but he’s essentially “the same guy,” Jones said. The show alludes to an earlier interview between Daniel and Louis from the ’70s – a callback to the novel.

    The vampire Louis de Point du Lac (Jacob Anderson) with his mortal sister Grace de Pointe du Lac (Kalyne Coleman) in

    Louis, played by Jacob Anderson, has some new origins. In previous iterations, he was the owner of a plantation near New Orleans in the late 1700s, which is when he met Lestat. The new Louis, still prone to periods of melancholy, guilt and self-loathing, is a Black brothel owner in early 20th century New Orleans when his story begins.

    The changes made were partially the result of wanting to focus on a “time period that was as exciting aesthetically as the 18th century was without digging into a plantation story that nobody really wanted to hear now,” said Jones. He noted that the character’s lineage can still be traced back to “plantation money” and that his original occupation did not particularly come up as a point of “self-reflection” in the novels.

    Another significant character update involves Claudia – just 5 years old when she was made into a vampire in the novel, though she was portrayed by an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst in the film. AMC’s adaptation ages Claudia further by making her 14 at the time of her transformation. This doesn’t make her any more prepared for the internal turmoil that sets in.

    Bailey Bass plays a slightly aged-up Claudia, now a 14-year-old when she's turned into a vampire.

    As actor Bailey Bass said in a featurette shared on the show’s Twitter account, this Claudia has to “deal with the emotions of a 19-year-old, then a 30-year-old, then 40-year-old, while still being stuck in this 14-year-old young body.”

    The decision to age Claudia was made in part due to concerns about filming certain scenes, especially those with more “adult” connotations. Child labor laws were another factor.

    “If I wanted to make Claudia on this show, I need as many hours of shooting with the actor who plays that as possible,” Jones said. “And if I put anybody that was younger than 18 in there, I would have limited hours.”

    For LePere-Schloop, who read Rice’s novels as a teen and credits them somewhat with drawing her to New Orleans, her home of two decades, the changes in the TV series are not antithetical to the author’s work. After Rice died, her assets were donated to an archive at Tulane University in New Orleans, said LePere-Schloop, who met with the archivist while the series was filming.

    “Some of the things she was discovering was that Anne was writing short stories and other interpretations of the ‘Chronicles’ where Louis was a woman, or there are other fluidity things happening,” she said. “Even within Anne’s own writing, there’s a history of kind of playing with time, place and person.”

    The series was filmed in New Orleans, once Rice’s longtime home and an integral part of “Interview with the Vampire.” Immersing the viewer in the updated setting required a good amount of research.

    “We’re now talking about a period of New Orleans that has been talked about a lot, but isn’t very well documented in images or hasn’t been captured in film and television, and that’s the period of Storyville (the red-light district),” LePere-Schloop said. “Culturally, it’s had such an impact on the city.”

    As a New Orleans resident, she knew that “when a place is done wrong, you hear it in town.” So she relied on various resources, including the expertise of local historian Richard Campanella.

    “He worked with us to capture things that he knew from oral histories and anecdotal stories that he had documented through time of elements of Storyville,” LePere-Schloop said.

    The production filmed in New Orleans, using a mix of real-life locations and newly built sets to immerse viewers in the vampires' world.

    The production incorporated New Orleans’ very real history, as well as key locations within the city, in addition to building new sets – like the one for Storyville – to bring viewers into this version of Louis’ and Lestat’s world.

    “Anne used the city as research and reference,” LePere-Schloop said. “We were lucky enough to be able to film at the actual house that Anne wrote Lestat’s townhouse to be in the novels. Her inspiration for that house is a living museum and we got to use that as the exterior house.”

    Creating the inside of the house, albeit on a stage, was also great fun, she said, noting that the original source of inspiration has “really incredible design details” like a skylight (which was worked into the script) and crown molding.

    Different design aesthetics were used to show the passage of time while the vampires remain unchanged. The sets also served as a reflection of the characters, from the art Lestat brings over to New Orleans from Europe to the depressed state the vampires’ home falls into when things go awry.

    “It’s an emotional landscape as much as a physical one,” Jones said.

    Production designer Mara LePere-Schloop aimed to give AMC's adaptation of

    LePere-Schloop wanted to avoid depicting a cliché New Orleans onscreen – and similarly, she wanted to avoid vampire clichés, opting against painting everything “bordello red” or putting Gothic arches everywhere. But for all the historical details adopted by the behind-the-scenes team, there are touches (including added saturation during the final coloring process, Jones said) that feel less natural.

    While thinking up the palette for the show, LePere-Schloop turned to a book from her childhood – “The Rainbow Goblins” – which contained “beautiful, oversaturated” illustrations and helped her land on a more dynamic backdrop. The world Louis and Lestat occupy is “sexier” and “vivacious,” she said, compared to early depictions of vampires in film, which tended to be understated and “crumbling.”

    Even with some changes to the original storylines, the “Interview with the Vampire” team did not ignore the source material – rereading and “seeing what was in the crevices and the cracks” helped them make the show, Jones said.

    There are subtle references to characters from later novels and even a quick shoutout to Rice’s Mayfair witches (also the subject of an upcoming AMC series). Characters that did not appear in the film do appear here. And – perhaps the most important detail for the diehard fans – Lestat and Louis are lovers, in a move that takes the famed subtext of Rice’s earlier vampire novels and simply turns it into text.

    Lestat (Sam Reid) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) have a blatantly romantic, albeit toxic, relationship in this iteration of

    What “Interview with the Vampire” hinted at in the ’70s was progressive for its time, Jones said, adding that by the “later books, it’s as if there was this great romance that was never really written, but we all kind of agree it happened.”

    While Jones did not sugarcoat some of the more toxic “dish-throwing” aspects of the vampires’ relationship, he saw tremendous opportunity in how he could depict it in an updated adaptation.

    Between Rice’s writings and the 1994 film, which has its fans and critics alike, Jones acknowledged that the series’ main cast “had big ghosts behind them.” But he praised Anderson – who he pointed out is in nearly every scene – and Reid for their stamina, as well as the range of their performances.

    As far as the viewers are concerned?

    “I’d like them to be surprised. For those who know it really well and love it, I want them to stick with it for seven (episodes) and if they’re still angry, that’s cool,” Jones said. “But hopefully, I made something exciting and thrilling for them.”

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  • How Buffalo is ensuring the Black community isn’t left behind after mass supermarket shooting | CNN

    How Buffalo is ensuring the Black community isn’t left behind after mass supermarket shooting | CNN

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    Buffalo, NY
    CNN
     — 

    The day after Buffalo experienced the largest mass shooting in its history, teams of emergency volunteers and mental health counselors arrived on the scene, offering emotional support and distributing food.

    The response was robust and swift, but there was one big problem.

    “The community didn’t feel comfortable coming up the stairs to the center because what they saw was a large group of White people,” said Kelly Wofford, Erie County’s director of health equity.

    A White gunman had deliberately opened fire at a predominantly Black neighborhood’s only grocery store, a Tops supermarket, on a busy Saturday in May. Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black, including the 10 killed. Authorities called the shooting racially motivated.

    “In any other kind of tragedy, like a hurricane or flood, anyone offering resources would be gladly welcomed, but this was different. This tragedy had a face and a hatred for a certain group of people,” said Thomas Beauford Jr., president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League, which was one of the community organizations on site the day of the shooting.

    “They completely rejected it,” said Beauford, adding, “The immediate reaction to the counselors was, ‘We need to see counselors that look like us.’”

    By Monday, the problem was addressed. Wofford, who grew up down the street from the Tops, tapped her network to ensure there were more Black counselors on site, that Black people were the ones handing out flyers on the street about available services, and that Black people greeted folks at the help center.

    “We made sure the community affected felt comfortable seeking the services they need,” Wofford said.

    Her response efforts – and the spotlight the May 14 shooting put on the community’s existing disparities – exemplifies the role Erie County’s newly formed Office of Health Equity is meant to play in the community: ensuring that health services are equitably distributed across disadvantaged and marginalized populations.

    Within Erie County, there is a significant disparity between the health outcomes of White residents and residents of color, which became even clearer as Covid-19 disproportionately affected Black and brown communities there, as well as across the country.

    Even before the pandemic, the life expectancy of Black Buffalo residents was 12 years shorter than White residents, according to a report published by the Buffalo Center for Health Equity in 2015, the most recent data available.

    Erie County’s Office of Health Equity was launched to help address those disparities. It was established in January by county law, and the funding was made possible by a major federal pandemic relief package known as the American Rescue Plan that distributed money to states, counties and cities across the country.

    Kelly Wofford is the first director of the Erie County Office of Health Equity, which launched earlier this year.

    Erie County allocated roughly $1 million of the nearly $179 million it received from the American Rescue Plan for the creation of the Health Equity Office. It is using the remaining funds on a variety of needs, including economic assistance for small businesses, water treatment infrastructure and restoring jobs and spending that were initially cut due to the pandemic.

    While issues of health equity were addressed prior to the formation of the office, the law formalized the efforts and put funding behind them, ensuring it can work to address long-term solutions. With Wofford at the helm, the office has nine staff members, including two epidemiologists.

    “The Office of Health Equity – which did not exist and would not have existed without the funding we received from the American Rescue Plan – immediately became an integral partner in the response to the Tops shooting on May 14, by being in some ways the boots on the ground and the coordinator between third-party agencies and the county’s delivery of these services to the community,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

    “It was unlike any experience we’ve ever had,” Poloncarz added, “and I’m very grateful that we had the Office of Health Equity in place because it would have made our job a lot tougher without it.”

    Addressing health disparities is something communities across the country are grappling with, and while the pandemic caused illness and death for millions, it also has helped spur some momentum.

    State and local health equity offices are far from being as prevalent as water departments, for example, but they are having a moment – due in part to the influx of money from the federal government meant to help communities recover.

    “The pandemic really highlighted the gross differences in our ability to keep people healthy, related to race and ethnicity,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

    The group hasn’t tracked how many formal equity offices have opened, but the number is growing, Freeman said. Philadelphia hired its first chief racial equity officer earlier this year.

    In the past, some communities have not had the political will or the resources to formalize their health equity efforts, she added.

    A memorial waterfall was built inside the renovated Tops supermarket in Buffalo, which reopened in July, two months after the mass shooting.

    High-profile killings of Black people by police, notably the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, gave rise to a number of communities declaring racism as a public health crisis, laying the groundwork for some of the offices opening now. In April 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also declared racism a serious public health threat.

    Resolving health inequities will take time and requires tackling the social determinants of health. These are the factors that contribute to someone’s health that they don’t have control over themselves, like access to clean water and healthy food and other conditions where they live, work and play that can affect their health.

    “You’re really trying to create the same opportunity for health for every single person in the community, no matter what their economic status is, where they live or whether they have a job,” Freeman said.

    In mid-July, the Tops grocery store reopened to mixed reactions from the community.

    Without the supermarket, those without a car may have lacked convenient access to nutritious food. For others, it was emotionally difficult to reenter the store.

    Migdalia Lozada, a crisis counselor with the Buffalo Urban League, spent one August morning offering support to shoppers. Lozada took one woman by the hand as she walked into the store for the first time since the tragedy, feeling the woman’s tears fall onto her arm.

    The Buffalo Urban League’s community resource center, located just two blocks from the Tops, continues to serve the traumatized neighborhood. People can walk right into the space and speak with a crisis counselor. Some people are regulars who come in nearly every day. Others may have been triggered by an event like a shooting elsewhere or movement in a court case against the shooting suspect.

    “We just try to give the person some space to open up in a safe, confidential place,” said Lozada.

    While the Buffalo Urban League’s crisis counselors had already been serving the community for months, its leaders wanted a physical space nearby the Tops store after the shooting. The group found an open space down the street that had once been a neighborhood bar known as Pixie’s and opened a resource center there within days after the tragedy. The building intentionally looks and feels much more like a local watering hole than a health institution.

    Buffalo Urban League's Yukea Wright (left), a crisis counselor team leader, and Migdalia Lozada, a crisis counselor, work at the resource center near the Tops.

    The center also serves as a place that connects people with other resources to address a wide range of social determinants of health, like employment, housing and education.

    The Buffalo Urban League plans to work closely with the county, especially with the new Office of Health Equity, to help drive long-term change going forward.

    The county office is first working on training people in the Mental Health First Aid national program, so that the county can deploy counselors throughout the community – like at Bible studies and community centers – to meet people where they already may be. A recent nationwide study found that while the share of US adults who received treatment for mental health grew throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, people of color are less able to access mental health services.

    The office is also working on a survey that, in part, will show what problems members of the community would like addressed – it could be the high prevalence of diabetes or high blood pressure, for example.

    “When you look at the social determinants of health, there are inequities across all of them, so you can pick whichever one you want,” Wofford said.

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  • A big week for Trump’s delay delay delay legal strategy | CNN Politics

    A big week for Trump’s delay delay delay legal strategy | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    While a lot of us have been diverted by weather events (Ian) and world events (Russia) there were multiple developments on multiple fronts where it concerns former President Donald Trump this week.

    Trump rode out the storm in Mar-a-Lago, which enabled him to delay testimony in a class action fraud lawsuit.

    The January 6 committee postponed its planned public hearing due to the storm, but it did interview Ginni Thomas, conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

    A judge Trump appointed in Florida shielded him from the special master he requested and she approved, which means he does not have to justify in court some of his wild claims about the FBI.

    I talked to Katelyn Polantz, CNN’s senior crime and justice reporter, who keeps track of all of this, to get read in on the developments. We conducted this conversation by direct message.

    WHAT MATTERS: What’s the thing this week that most caught your attention and why?

    POLANTZ: What all of these developments have in common is how timing really is everything.

    This week, there was a clear need to shift from the daily grind of investigations and legal battles to focus on the devastation of the hurricane in Florida. But things are really getting down to the wire on some political fronts.

    In the deposition situation, that lawsuit had a deadline of Friday to get Trump under oath, months after he had agreed to do the deposition. It was scheduled for the very last day it was possible, but the hurricane and his insistence on staying in Florida really threw a wrench in that. The new deadline for his deposition now is end of October, which further delays the work being done in that case, which is a class action against his promotions of scam businesses.

    The House too is not being helped by delay. The January 6 committee has an expiration date tied to the end of this Congress in January. As the congressional election draws near, there’s not much more time for public hearings before people vote. That said, the committee is obviously continuing its work and still promises to release a final report before the end of the year. It’s not clear if they will be able to muster the same political impact as their series of hearings over the summer.

    As for the Mar-a-Lago investigation – perhaps the most high-stakes legal situation Trump faces – Judge Aileen Cannon has given the Trump team an extra gift, in that prosecutors won’t be getting clarity on the issues Trump has with what was seized, or the ability to use the non-classified documents in their investigation until after the November election.

    The name of the game right now on every front for Trump is delay, delay, delay. Though there’s still a question of whether he can hold off all the investigations bearing down around him in a way that runs out the clock.

    WHAT MATTERS: You wrote an interesting story last week, along with Evan Perez and Zachary Cohen, about Trump’s “secret” court fight to block information from a federal grand jury. I feel like that is another theme of these inquiries. There is the publicly known information, the reported details, and then the secret things lurking below the water. What else can we assume we don’t know about?

    POLANTZ: There are always parts of investigations, or even entire investigative avenues, we don’t know about. That’s just the nature of how investigations, especially those being done by the Justice Department, work. We can’t assume much more than what we’ve reported, because this fight, like many others, didn’t bubble out of nowhere. It is another step in a painstaking effort from the federal grand jury in DC to gather information from top advisers to Trump in the White House and then-Vice President Mike Pence. We know it regards Trump’s assertions of privilege, and it could impact a very important set of witnesses, and whether they and others can be compelled to share interactions that have so far been kept secret from all investigations. We also know that, because of how Trump tends to push the courts into uncharted legal territory, we may be in for tracking rounds of appeals – even if the past precedent indicates that even sitting presidents lose these types of battles in criminal probes. But how the outcomes will settle, and when, remains a major question.

    WHAT MATTERS: The DOJ is not the only government entity with an investigation that could touch Trump. What’s going on with the Fulton County DA’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in that state?

    POLANTZ: That grand jury is still at work! They’re bringing in witnesses like Boris Epshteyn this week. Like most grand jury investigations, their work could result in charges against one or many people – several allies of Trump have received target letters. But where the investigation is exactly, and how it is functioning at the local level is a question that may be answered better by others than me.

    POLANTZ: There is an intriguing situation with all these simultaneous investigation I want to mention –

    WHAT MATTERS: Go on…

    POLANTZ: At the end of the day, will the Big Kahuna of January 6 investigations, the one being done by the Justice Department out of Washington, get answers no other investigators have been able to get? With so many investigations simultaneously, this is a very complex game.

    Take for instance, Jeffrey Clark, the ex-DOJ official whose phone was seized by federal investigators as part of their investigation into conspiracy and obstructive acts. He has not been charged with any crime.

    He is facing an attorney discipline case in DC that resulted from months of investigation and was pursued by the House Select Committee. In both of those situations, he took the Fifth and didn’t answer questions. Will the DOJ, which has tools to immunize witnesses and force them to answer questions, be able to get someone like him to talk? Will they even want to try to get him to talk? Lots of people close to Trump are taking the Fifth, based on what we know of their non-answers to the House Select Committee.

    WHAT MATTERS: That’s an interesting side drama – Trump’s legal team. There was a report this week about one of his newer lawyers, Chris Kise, being sidelined. What, if anything, do we know about the size of his legal team, how they are being paid, and how they are dividing up these many, many, many different cases?

    POLANTZ: Zach, you are asking the most complex questions today! From what we know, there are many attorneys working with Trump, and no central person coordinating all his efforts and keeping tabs on all investigative subjects who are close to and aligned with him. Payments to various lawyers have popped up consistently on Trump’s political committee expenditure reports.

    The lawyer who was sidelined – who was brought in to take charge in Florida with the Mar-a-Lago situation and was on track to have a $3 million retainer fee – wasn’t even on the Trump team’s latest filing in the public court record. There are three lawyers still listed. One of whom, Evan Corcoran, is on a separate team of three lawyers who went to court on the January 6 privilege fight, alongside yet another two attorneys. Others that we know of are in the background, including Ephsteyn. I’m not even getting to the various legal teams Trump uses to respond to his myriad ongoing civil suits. That would be a tome. Of course, it’s not unusual for a person with a lot of legal entanglements to need a lot of lawyers.

    That said, lawyers don’t come cheap! On top of all these attorneys, Trump is on the hook for special master costs in the Mar-a-Lago document review. The special master selected, a working judge, isn’t taking payment, but a retired judge he’s brought on to help him will be billing $500 an hour. And in the legal world, that’s a bargain.

    WHAT MATTERS: I think that’s a good place to leave it today. Keep up the good work!

    POLANTZ: You as well!

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  • Chinese hacking group targeting US agencies and companies has surged its activity, analysis finds | CNN Politics

    Chinese hacking group targeting US agencies and companies has surged its activity, analysis finds | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    An elite Chinese hacking group with ties to operatives indicted by a US grand jury in 2020 has surged its activity this year, targeting sensitive data held by companies and government agencies in the US and dozens of other countries, according to an expert at consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

    The findings highlight the biggest cyber-espionage challenge facing the Biden administration: combating a Chinese hacking program that the FBI has called more prolific than that of all other governments in the world combined.

    The Justice Department has aggressively sought to expose the alleged data-stealing campaigns through indictments, and made the case that Chinese hackers have robbed American companies of intellectual property, causing huge losses. But China-based hackers have often developed new tools or otherwise altered their operations, according to analysts.

    One of the Chinese groups tracked by PwC has targeted dozens of US organizations in the last year, including government agencies and software or tech firms, said Kris McConkey, who leads PwC’s global cyber threat intelligence practice. The intruders often comb networks for data that could offer insights into foreign or trade policy, he said, but also dabble in cryptocurrency schemes for personal profit. He declined to detail what types of US government agencies, whether at the federal, state or local level, were targeted.

    “They are, by far, the most active and globally impactful [hacking group] that we track at the minute,” McConkey, who closely follows China-based hackers, told CNN. He believes the attackers have been successful in breaching at least some organizations because they operate on a vast scale, targeting organizations in at least 35 countries this year alone.

    McConkey traced part of the activity to an ostensibly legitimate cybersecurity company based in the Chinese city of Chengdu, but he stopped short of publicly connecting the hacking to the Chinese government. US officials have for years accused China of using front companies to conduct hacking that feeds the government’s sprawling intelligence collection efforts.

    China has repeatedly denied allegations of hacking and Beijing has in recent months stepped up its own accusations that Washington has conducted cyber operations against Chinese assets.

    Cybersecurity issues have been a repeated source of friction between the world’s two biggest economies; President Joe Biden raised the subject on a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year.

    McConkey was one of multiple private cyber specialists who exposed the operations, and sometimes the alleged locations, of hackers from China, Iran and elsewhere at a recent conference called LABScon, hosted by US security firm SentinelOne, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

    Adam Kozy, who tracked Chinese hackers at the FBI from 2011 to 2013, showed the audience a photo of a People’s Liberation Army building in the city of Fuzhou that allegedly houses officers who conduct information operations against Chinese adversaries. That unit has targeted Taiwan, Kozy said, and “is the main area for China’s disinformation operations.”

    In their investigations of foreign hackers, the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors have drawn on those types of revelations from private researchers.

    At least one FBI agent and officials from the National Security Agency and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency attended the conference, a reminder of how reliant government officials are on data held by tech firms to pursue spies and cybercriminals. Sometimes that work happens not in a classified facility but in the halls of a luxury hotel.

    Morgan Adamski, a senior NSA official, told conference attendees that the coronavirus pandemic changed how her agency worked with private firms to guard sensitive data targeted by hackers.

    “The pandemic actually helped because it no longer revolved around big government meetings in a room, in a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility], where you couldn’t use any of the information,” said Adamski, who heads the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which works with defense contractors to blunt the impact of foreign hacking.

    After US defense contractors began working from home during the pandemic, she said, Chinese government hackers exploited the virtual private networking (VPN) software the contractors were using. One hacked contractor, which she didn’t name, shared data with federal agencies so they could build a clearer picture of what was going on.

    Asked by CNN whether the NSA and other federal agencies responding to the hacks were able to evict the Chinese hackers, Adamski said it’s an iterative process.

    “When you talk about nation-state actors, you kick them out, but they’re going to come back,” Adamski said, “especially if you’re a defense industrial base company that is producing critical military intelligence for the Department of Defense.”

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  • Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

    Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tudor Dixon, the Republican taking on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November’s midterm election, is turning to tactics that have worked for other Republican winners in competitive governor’s races as she seeks to turn the race into a cultural battle over education, transgender athletes and more.

    But her clash with a well-funded Democratic incumbent governor – one taking place in a state where a referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution has emerged as a dominant issue – is showcasing the limits of those efforts at cultural appeals to the moderate, suburban voters who could decide the race’s outcome.

    National Republicans have largely abandoned Dixon in the race’s closing weeks, leaving her outspent and floundering in one of the nation’s most important swing states.

    Dixon sought to change the race’s trajectory on Saturday when former President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally in Warren with Dixon and other GOP candidates, including Matthew DePerno, who is challenging Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Kristina Karamo, who is taking on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Dixon, DePerno and Karamo have all parroted Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

    Trump called Whitmer “one of the most radical, most sinister governors in America,” criticizing her support for abortion rights and Michigan’s pandemic-related lockdowns.

    The former President, echoing Dixon’s focus on cultural issues and education, called Dixon “a national leader in the battle to protect our children by getting race and gender ideology out of the classroom.”

    Trump’s attack on Whitmer as “sinister” is the latest in a series of rhetorical escalations by the former President. On Friday, he said on his social media website Truth Social that the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, had a “death wish” after Congress approved stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown.

    Dixon, meanwhile, spoke twice Saturday – once before Trump, and again when Trump invited her on stage. As she lambasted Whitmer, the crowd repeated a familiar Trump rally chant, this time directed at Whitmer rather than 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up.”

    “We’re not going to let our kids be radicalized. We’re not going to let our kids be sexualized. We’re not going to let our law enforcement be demonized. We’re not going to tell our businesses they can’t expand,” Dixon said.

    Dixon, a conservative commentator and first-time candidate, emerged from a crowded primary after receiving the financial support of former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos’ family. The Michigan GOP megadonors funded a super PAC bolstering Dixon’s campaign. And Trump waded into the race in the closing days of the primary with a Dixon endorsement that came after a handwritten letter from DeVos urged him to back Dixon, as reported by The New York Times.

    “The Dixon campaign is seeking to get its name ID up and MAGA base fully engaged to close the polling gap and that is what they hope to gain from a Trump rally in Macomb County,” said John Sellek, a Republican public relations adviser and head of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs in Lansing.

    However, she has struggled to raise money and gain traction since her August primary victory.

    Democrats on Saturday said Dixon’s comments at the Trump rally were an effort to distract from issues on which her positions are unpopular – particularly abortion rights.

    “Tonight, Michiganders saw a schoolyard bully on stage – not a leader,” Michigan Democratic Party chairwoman Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Tudor Dixon hurled insults and rattled off a litany of grievances because she knows that her dangerous agenda to ban abortion and throw nurses in jail, dismantle public education, and slash funding for law enforcement is out-of-step.

    “Michigan families deserve a real leader who will work with anyone to get things done, and Tudor Dixon has shown time and again she will continue to divide and pit people against each other if it means she and Betsy DeVos gain political power,” Barnes said.

    Whitmer’s campaign and her supporters have dwarfed Dixon in television advertising spending – and Dixon’s campaign is currently off the air in Michigan, underscoring the reality that major Republican donors have shifted their focus to other races they view as more winnable.

    Since the primary on August 2, Democrats have spent about $17.6 million on ads in the governor’s race, while Republicans have spent just $1.1 million, according to data from the firm AdImpact. And over the next month through election day, Democrats have $23.4 million booked while GOP has just $4.3 million booked.

    Early voting is already underway in Michigan. And in the governor’s race, Whitmer is widely viewed as the favorite by nonpartisan analysts. The race is rated as one that “tilts Democratic” by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. The Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate it as “likely Democratic.”

    “The battle has been fought on the Democrats’ terms with millions and millions of dollars, and there’s been essentially no effort to fight back,” Michigan-based Republican strategist John Yob said on the Michigan Information & Research Service Inc.’s “MIRS Monday” podcast this week. “On the Republican side, we’ve never faced this before. And, you know, it doesn’t look very good in terms of a way out unless some serious money gets on TV pretty quickly.”

    The most dominant issue in the governor’s race has been abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Michigan’s Republican-led legislature has refused to change a 1931 law that would prohibit abortion in nearly all instances. Whitmer and other pro-abortion rights groups sued to block that law. And a Democratic-backed referendum that would amend Michigan’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights is on November’s ballot in the state.

    Dixon, who opposes abortion except when necessary to protect the life of the mother, has struggled to redirect the race’s focus.

    “You can vote for Gretchen Whitmer’s position without having to vote for Gretchen Whitmer again,” she told reporters last week, explaining that voters could support the referendum but oppose the incumbent governor.

    In an effort to shift the contest’s focus, Dixon’s campaign has borrowed tactics from Republican governors who have won in battleground states in recent years.

    For months, she has focused on parental control of schools’ curriculum, as well as school choice. It’s a message built on that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose 2021 victory was an early harbinger of a potentially favorable political landscape for the GOP in this year’s midterm elections.

    “That’s why Gov. Youngkin’s message resonated,” Dixon said in an August interview on Fox News alongside Youngkin, who was campaigning in Michigan.

    “He said, ‘I’m listening to you. I want parents involved. And I’m going to bring you back into the schools,’” Dixon said. “That’s what people want to hear right now.”

    In her latest move to redefine the race, Dixon this week proposed two policies aimed at the LGBTQ community and schools.

    In Lansing on Tuesday, Dixon proposed a policy modeled after the controversial measure Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

    “This act will require school districts to ensure that their schools do not provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K through three, or in any manner that has not age- or developmentally appropriate,” Dixon told reporters, blasting what she called “radical sex and gender instruction.”

    Florida’s HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education bill, passed earlier this year effectively bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for young students. LGBTQ advocates say the measure has led to further stigmatization of gay, lesbian and transgender children, causing more bullying and suicides within an already marginalized community.

    Then, on Wednesday in Grand Rapids, she unveiled her proposal for a “Women’s Sports Fairness Act,” which would ban transgender girls from competing in sports with the gender they identify with.

    “As a mother of four girls, nothing infuriates me more than the prospect of my daughters losing their friends and their teammates, losing opportunities in sports or otherwise, because some radically progressive politicians decided one day that they should have to compete against biological men,” she said. “Gretchen Whitmer has embraced the trans-supremacist ideology, which dictates that individuals who are born as men can be allowed to compete against our daughters.”

    Whitmer’s campaign has largely ignored Dixon’s proposals, and did not respond to a request for comment on them. Instead, Whitmer has in recent days emphasized her economic message and her support for abortion rights.

    Whitmer is leaning into policies enacted by Democrats in Washington in recent months, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August.

    Whitmer in September signed an executive directive capping insulin costs at $35 per month and out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare recipients.

    And last week, Whitmer announced that student loan borrowers will not be taxed on the debt relief that Biden had ordered.

    What has dominated media coverage of the race in recent days, though, are a series of jokes Dixon has made about the 2020 kidnapping plot against Whitmer.

    A federal jury in August convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in 2020. They were also convicted of one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after prosecutors detailed their plans to blow up a bridge to prevent police from responding to the kidnapping of the governor. The men now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

    “The sad thing is that Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head, and ask if you’re ready to talk,” Dixon said at an event last week in Troy alongside Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House aide. “For someone so worried about being kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom.”

    After her comment drew backlash, Dixon joked again about the kidnapping plot at a second event Friday, this time with Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former President.

    She told a crowd that, at a stop with President Joe Biden at the Detroit Auto Show last week, Whitmer looked like she’d “rather be kidnapped by the FBI.”

    “Yeah, the media is like, ‘Oh my gosh, she did it again,’” Dixon said, anticipating the reaction to her second reference of the day to the 2020 kidnapping plot.

    As she told the crowd that her earlier remarks about the plot to kidnap Whitmer had been characterized as a joke, Dixon said: “I’m like, ‘No, that wasn’t a joke.’ If you were afraid of that, you should know what it is to have your life ripped away from you.”

    Whitmer’s campaign and Democratic groups condemned Dixon’s remarks Friday.

    “Threats of violence and dangerous rhetoric undermine our democracy and discourage good people on both sides of the aisle at every level from entering public service,” Whitmer campaign spokesperson Maeve Coyle said in a statement.

    “Governor Whitmer has faced serious threats to her safety and her life, and she is grateful to the law enforcement and prosecutors for their tireless work,” Coyle said. “Threats of violence – whether to Governor Whitmer or to candidates and elected officials on the other side of the aisle – are no laughing matter, and the fact that Tudor Dixon thinks it’s a joke shows that she is absolutely unfit to serve in public office.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Steps of a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York were splashed with red paint | CNN

    Steps of a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York were splashed with red paint | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York appears to have been defaced with red paint, following a similar incident in which the Russian consulate was vandalized with red spray paint.

    The two vandalism incidents come after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning stages of annexation of parts of Ukraine.

    An eyewitness told CNN that they saw a person in a face mask splash red paint on the steps of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral on New York’s Upper East Side late Friday night.

    The cathedral’s spokesperson, Abbot Nicodemus, also confirmed the vandalism to CNN.

    Remnants of the paint could be seen Saturday morning, after the eyewitness observed a woman working to scrub it away.

    “We sincerely do not understand those individuals that allow themselves acts of vandalism in relation to our cathedral. We pray for them,” Nicodemus said n a statement to CNN. “We want them to realize that the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA carries out important spiritual and peacemaking activities here, and we are open to all people, regardless of their nationality and political beliefs.”

    The New York Police Department said it was not aware of or investigating this incident.

    The NYPD previously told CNN it was investigating the red graffiti on the Russian consulate building as a “possible bias incident.” There were no updates in that investigation.

    The spokesperson told CNN that Friday’s incident is the third case of vandalism since the beginning of the year in which the cathedral has been marked with paint or written with “insulting” inscriptions.

    In addition, “insulting” calls and emails have been received by the cathedral, Nicodemus said, adding that some include direct threats against the clergy and parishioners.

    Saint Nicholas Cathedral said it is “compelled to turn such messages to the police,” said Nicodemus. “We are grateful to the law enforcement agencies of New York for their prompt response to our messages and their constant support.”

    The cathedral said that since February, its parishioners have been actively involved in collecting financial and humanitarian assistance for the victims of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

    Half of the parishioners of the cathedral are Ukrainian, Nicodemus said

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  • Stolen in 1917, this 1,000-year-old manuscript was just returned to its rightful owners | CNN

    Stolen in 1917, this 1,000-year-old manuscript was just returned to its rightful owners | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 1,000-year-old manuscript looted during World War I has been returned to the Greek monastery from where it was stolen more than a century ago.

    The manuscript is one of the oldest handwritten gospels in the world, according to a news release from the Museum of the Bible, which acquired it in 2014.

    The document was written in a Greek monastery in southern Italy during the late 10th to early 11th centuries, says the Museum of the Bible. But sometime between the 14th and 15th centuries, it moved to the Kosinitza Monastery, also known as the Theotokos Eikosiphoinissa Monastery, in northern Greece.

    When the Bulgarian Army invaded Greece during World War I, soldiers looted the monastery, stealing over 400 precious manuscripts as well as other books, objects, and cash. Some of the manuscripts were sold in Europe – and eventually ended up in American museums.

    The Eikosiphoinissa Manuscript 220 was sold by Christie’s in 2011, says the museum, and then purchased by the Green Collection of Oklahoma City, which donated it to the Museum of the Bible.

    In 2015, the Greek Orthodox Church had asked several American institutions that held manuscripts from Kosinitza to voluntarily return them to the monastery. The museum started researching its Greek New Testament manuscripts in 2019, leading scholars to realize the document had been stolen from the Kosinitza Monastery. And in 2020 the museum reached out to Eastern Orthodox leaders to express its desire to return the manuscript.

    The manuscript was finally returned to the monastery in a formal ceremony on Thursday, says a joint statement from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Museum of the Bible.

    “When the Museum of the Bible discovered that this text was illegally and rapaciously taken from the Monastery, it moved quickly, responsibly and professionally to see to its restoration and repatriation,” said Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, who represented His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew during the return ceremony, according to the statement.

    “We cannot express enough our gratitude to the Green Family and the Museum for their Christian and professional service,” he said. “You have set an example for others to follow, and we pray that they do.”

    Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of the Eastern Orthodox church, loaned three other manuscripts to the Museum of the Bible as a “gesture of gratitude for the gospel manuscript’s return,” says the statement.

    George Tsougarakis, general counsel at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, told CNN that he hopes the return prompts other institutions to return manuscripts stolen during the Bulgarian invasion.

    Repatriation is “recognition of the inequities and the injustice that these areas went through back then, which led to the removal of these priceless artifacts,” he said. “And it’s a way of, sort of making the world right again.”

    He noted that copies of the manuscript can allow academics to continue to study it from afar. But for the monks who venerate the manuscript, the physical document represents a powerful connection to the monks who came before them and to the religious tradition itself.

    “There is something to say about touch,” Tsougarakis said. The ability for the monks to say, “‘I touched the page that my predecessor touched’ – it means something, it’s a community.”

    And the Museum of the Bible has set a compelling example for other institutions that have manuscripts stolen from Kosinitza, he added.

    “We urge them to do the right thing,” he said. “There’s only one right answer here. And we hope that they follow suit.”

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  • ‘Predatory,’ widespread sexual harassment on Australia’s Antarctic research bases, report finds | CNN

    ‘Predatory,’ widespread sexual harassment on Australia’s Antarctic research bases, report finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Australian women working on research bases in Antarctica have been plagued by a widespread culture of sexual harassment, a recently released report found.

    The report, commissioned by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), notes that the women reported unwelcome requests for sex, inappropriate sexual comments and displays of offensive or pornographic material.

    “Given the underrepresentation of women in the AAP (Australian Antarctica Program) (especially during winter) some women also described the culture as ‘predatory’ and objectifying,” the report said, while other participants described a homophobic culture on stations.

    The report, conducted by associate professor Meredith Nash from the University of Tasmania, also revealed female expeditioners feel they “must go to great lengths to make their menstruation invisible” and go through “additional psychological and physical labor to manage” menstruation, including changing their menstrual products without privacy or adequate sanitation.

    Australia’s Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said in an interview with Australian public broadcaster ABC she was “gobsmacked” to read the report.

    “Let me be absolutely clear: there is no place for sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior in any workplace,” Plibersek said in a statement Thursday, calling the treatment described in the report as “unacceptable.”

    The report made recommendations on how to change the culture at the stations, including the creation of an “equity and inclusion task force.”

    Plibersek said Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is working through the recommendations.

    Australia is not alone in combating these issues.

    The report on the Australian research bases in Antarctica comes a month after the US National Science Foundation (NSF) released an assessment of the US Antarctic Program which found that “sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault are ongoing, continuing problems in the USAP community.”

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  • Police say no active shooter incident at Austin, Texas, hospital after responding to a report of ‘shots fired’ | CNN

    Police say no active shooter incident at Austin, Texas, hospital after responding to a report of ‘shots fired’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Authorities in Austin, Texas, said Friday that there was no active shooter at a local hospital after police responded to a call of “shots fired.”

    “Officers have secured the scene and it is safe,” Austin police said on Twitter Friday afternoon. “This was not an active shooter incident. No injuries reported, roadways are expected to open soon.”

    There was no indication that shots were fired, Austin police said, adding there is no criminal investigation.

    Earlier, the police department had said it was responding to a “shots fired” call at Seton Hospital, adding the facility was placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure.

    Police Sgt. Brian Preusse later explained someone reacting to a loud noise inside the hospital emergency room was what led to the shots fired call and prompted the lockdown and facility search.

    “The hospital is back open again and secure,” Preusse said Friday evening.

    No patients were located, treated or transported from the scene, the Austin-Travis County EMS said on Twitter. The agency said earlier in the day that among the resources that were deployed to the hospital were five ambulances and had urged residents to “avoid the area.”

    It later said it was scaling down the units on scene, before announcing all EMS resources were demobilized.

    “Today was a best-case scenario,” EMS Capt. Christa Stedman said about the incident. “This is the best possible outcome we could have had.”

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  • Abbott and O’Rourke clash over gun restrictions in lone Texas gubernatorial debate | CNN Politics

    Abbott and O’Rourke clash over gun restrictions in lone Texas gubernatorial debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke clashed over gun restrictions in a debate Friday night, with O’Rourke claiming that Abbott blames “everybody else” for mass shootings while “misleading this state.”

    “It’s been 18 weeks since their kids have been killed, and not a thing has changed in this state to make it any less likely that any other child will meet the same fate,” O’Rourke said in their debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “All we need is action, and the only person standing in our way is the governor of the state of Texas.”

    Abbott was shown a video of a child in Uvalde asking why Texas will not raise the age minimum to buy assault-style rifles. He said he believes such a move would be “unconstitutional” under recent court rulings.

    “We want to end school shootings, but we cannot do that by making false promises,” Abbott said.

    Abbott also said he opposed “red flag” laws, saying that those laws “would deny lawful Texas gun owners their right to due process.”

    O’Rourke, meanwhile, did not back away from comments that he made as a 2020 presidential candidate, in the wake of the racially motivated mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, that he would seek to confiscate assault-style rifles such as AR-15s and AK-47s. But he said as governor, he would be “focused on what we can get done.”

    He said that would include raising the age minimum to purchase such firearms to 21, implementing universal background checks and enacting “red flag” laws.

    “This is the common ground,” he said, citing conversations with Republican and Democratic voters, as well as families of those slain in Uvalde.

    Friday night’s showdown was the only scheduled debate between Abbott, the Republican seeking a third term as governor, and O’Rourke, the Democratic former El Paso congressman whose near-miss in a 2018 race against Sen. Ted Cruz electrified Texas Democrats.

    Democrats have not won a gubernatorial race in Texas since Ann Richards was elected governor in 1990. The party also hasn’t won a statewide race in the Lone Star State since 1994 — Democrats’ longest statewide losing streak in the country.

    Abbott, who is viewed as a potential 2024 presidential contender, has consistently led in the polls. A Quinnipiac University survey conducted September 22-26 found the governor with a 7-point edge over O’Rourke among likely voters, 53% to 46%.

    The most recent campaign finance reports in mid-July showed O’Rourke keeping pace with Abbott’s fundraising, but the incumbent maintained a significant cash-on-hand edge with $46 million in the bank to his challenger’s $24 million.

    On the campaign trail, O’Rourke has criticized Abbott’s opposition to abortion rights – the governor signed a so-called trigger law last year that went into effect in August and bans nearly all abortions in the state following the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Democrat has also criticized the Abbott administration’s management of the power grid during last year’s winter freeze and the governor’s rejection of gun restrictions in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.

    O’Rourke famously confronted Abbott and other officials at a news conference in Uvalde the day after the shooting, saying, “The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing.”

    Abbott, meanwhile, has campaigned on tough border security policies, including busing migrants out of state to Democratic-run cities up North to protest the Biden administration’s immigration policies. He has also accused O’Rourke of seeking to undercut police funding, saying in an ad that O’Rourke wants to “defund and dismantle the police.” It was a reference to O’Rourke’s comments in 2020, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, praising protesters for targeting “line items that have over militarized our police.” O’Rourke has said he does not support cutting funding for police in Texas.

    “Look, I don’t think Greg Abbott wakes up wanting to see children shot in their schools or for the grid to fail, but it’s clear that he’s incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to prioritize the lives of our fellow Texans. That’s why it’s on all of us to make change at the ballot box,” O’Rourke said in his closing remarks.

    In his closing, Abbott said: “I’m running for reelection to keep Texas No. 1 — to cut your property taxes, to secure the border, to keep dangerous criminals behind bars, and to keep deadly fentanyl off our streets.”

    The two also sharply diverged on abortion rights, an issue that has moved to the center of the gubernatorial race after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Abbott signed into law a measure that restricts abortion except to save the life of the mother and in certain health emergencies.

    O’Rourke said he would seek to return Texas to the abortion protections that existed under Roe v. Wade.

    “This election is about reproductive freedom. If you care about this, you need to turn out and vote,” O’Rourke said. “I will fight to make sure that every woman in Texas can make her own decision about her own body, her own future, and her own health care.”

    Abbott said O’Rourke’s position on abortion is “the most extreme,” casting O’Rourke as supporting the right to abortions up until birth.

    “No one thinks that in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke shot back. “He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America: No exception for rape, no exception for incest, it begins at conception, and it’s taking place in a state that is at the epicenter of a maternal mortality crisis, thanks to Greg Abbott — three times as deadly for Black women.”

    Abbott was asked whether emergency contraception is a viable alternative for victims of rape and incest.

    “It’s incumbent upon the state of Texas to make sure that it is readily available,” he said. “For those who are victims of sexual assault or survivors of sexual assault, the state of Texas pays for that, whether it be at a hospital, at a clinic, or someone that gets a prescription because of it.”

    He also touted the state’s “alternative to abortion program,” including living assistance and baby supplies, for those victims.

    Abbott touted reforms to the power grid after the deep freeze, pointing to record high temperatures this summer.

    “Time and again, the power grid was able to keep up, and it’s because of the reforms that we were able to make. The power grid remains more resilient … than ever before,” he said.

    But O’Rourke said the power failure was “part of a pattern” during Abbott’s almost eight years in office, and that the governor had been warned about the possibility.

    “The grid is still not fixed,” O’Rourke said, pointing to higher energy bills, Toyota stopping its third shift in San Antonio “because it was drawing too much power,” and Texas residents receiving conservation notices over the summer.

    “All Beto does is fear-monger on this issue, when in reality, the grid is more resilient and more reliable than it’s ever been,” Abbott responded.

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  • California bars tech companies from complying with other states’ abortion-related warrants | CNN Business

    California bars tech companies from complying with other states’ abortion-related warrants | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    California is attempting to stymie abortion prosecutions in other states by making it illegal for Silicon Valley giants and other businesses based in the Golden State to hand over the personal information of abortion-seekers to out-of-state authorities.

    A new law signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom forbids California-based businesses from giving up geolocation data, search histories and other personal information in response to out-of-state search warrants, unless those warrants are accompanied by a statement that the evidence sought isn’t connected to an abortion investigation.

    The prohibition also bars companies in the state from complying with out-of-state law enforcement requests related to abortion, including subpoenas and wiretaps.

    It’s the latest example of how California is using its status as a powerful state, with jurisdiction over the world’s most powerful tech companies, to influence policy at a national scale.

    “California is setting a national privacy standard,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, an architect of the bill, in a statement Tuesday. According to a release by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the law went into effect immediately upon signing.

    Bauer-Kahan’s law, AB 1242, bars California-based companies, including Google, Meta, Uber and others, from producing records about a person if the companies know “or should know” that the warrant they’re responding to is related to an abortion probe. CNN has reached out to the companies for comment.

    The new law prohibits abortion-related search warrants in the first place, and requires all out-of-state search warrants to attest that they are not abortion-related.

    But in directly undercutting the anti-abortion laws of other states, California’s new law could put businesses in the difficult position of having to pick sides — and face potential legal penalties no matter what they choose.

    Companies that violate AB 1242 could face prosecution by the California attorney general. But if they comply with AB 1242, they could also face legal action in states that have restricted abortion for failing to comply with legal process.

    “Anti-choice sheriffs and bounty hunters are going to be highly motivated to do anything they can to get this data,” said Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that supports the California law.

    In the event of a conflict between state laws, Schwartz said courts first look to whether a state has jurisdiction over a company and then, if it does, they fall back on a procedural tool known as “choice of law” to determine which law should apply.

    A state with only some employees of a company, or that is home to users of an electronic service, isn’t likely to satisfy the jurisdictional test, Schwartz said. Even if it did, he added, it would likely fail in the choice of law because the California law is tailored to govern businesses that are incorporated in California or that have their “principal executive offices” in California.

    Still, he acknowledged there will likely be many court battles ahead.

    “We are going to see more of this situation where a business is facing, at one time, legal process from an anti-choice state commanding it to disclose abortion-related data, and a blocking statute from a pro-choice state forbidding it from disclosing that same data,” Schwartz said. “This is an important new area, this contest between anti-choice legal process and pro-choice blocking statutes, and it is a matter that could work its way up the courts to the highest court.”

    In the meantime, tech companies could find themselves between a rock and a hard place, according to tech trade group Chamber of Progress.

    “Red states and blue states are at war over abortion, and online platforms are caught in the crossfire,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement to CNN. “California’s new law could potentially have a big impact on protecting reproductive privacy — but first it will create a challenging conflict between state laws.”

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • Former Trump aide Lewandowski makes deal with prosecutors to avoid misdemeanor charge | CNN Politics

    Former Trump aide Lewandowski makes deal with prosecutors to avoid misdemeanor charge | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Corey Lewandowski, one of Donald Trump’s former top campaign lieutenants, notched a deal with Las Vegas prosecutors over a misdemeanor battery charge stemming from his alleged sexual harassment of a major Republican donor’s wife in 2021.

    Lewandowski, 49, was publicly accused in September 2021 of making unwanted sexual advances toward Trashelle Odom, who is married to Idaho businessman John Odom, during a charity event in Las Vegas. At the time, Odom told Politico, which first reported both the allegations against Lewandowski and his deal with prosecutors, that Trump’s former senior campaign adviser “stalked” her during the event, made inappropriate physical contact, and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms.

    Soon after, Trump’s super PAC announced that it was cutting ties with Lewandowski and would instead install former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at the helm of the fundraising committee he had previously ran.

    In a statement to CNN, Lewandowski’s attorneys said their client had reached a deal that “did not require any admissions” of wrongdoing.

    “A misdemeanor case was filed but we are pleased to say that the matter has been resolved,” attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said. “The Court set conditions that Mr. Lewandowski will fulfill and the case will ultimately be dismissed.”

    Lewandowski has never publicly responded to Odom’s allegations and did not return a request for comment.

    Under the agreement, Lewandowski must complete an impulse-training course, serve 50 hours of community service, pay a $1,000 fine and “remain out of trouble,” said a person familiar with the matter. The case against him will be dismissed in one year if he completes these conditions, this person said.

    Despite being removed from Trump’s PAC last year, Lewandowski has remained inside the former President’s orbit. He periodically speaks with Trump himself and pops up at his Mar-a-Lago estate for events like the debut of right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” – a conspiracy-laden documentary about the 2020 election – earlier this spring. Lewandowski also found work on at least two Republican campaigns following Odom’s allegations, serving as an adviser to Ohio Senate hopeful Jane Timken, who lost her primary, and Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl.

    Still, the former Trump aide has spent the past year operating under the radar. He has not tweeted since last September and does not currently appear to be working on any major 2022 midterm races.

    Lewandowski also faced simple battery charges in Palm Beach County related to an encounter with then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, though the charges were eventually dropped.

    “Well, obviously I’m very pleased,” Lewandowski told CNN when the charges were dropped in 2016.

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  • Uvalde parents have filed a federal lawsuit against gun manufacturers, the school district and others | CNN

    Uvalde parents have filed a federal lawsuit against gun manufacturers, the school district and others | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Parents of survivors of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a federal lawsuit against multiple entities – including the gun manufacturer, school district and city – for a host of allegations, including negligence and recklessness.

    Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 24 shooting after an 18-year-old gunman walked into Robb Elementary and began firing into classrooms.

    The parents brought the lawsuit, filed Wednesday, on behalf of themselves and their children, who include: Corina Camacho’s 10-year-old son, identified as “G.M.” in the court document, who was wounded in the attack; Tanisha Rodriguez’s 9-year-old daughter, “G.R.,” who ran from the playground to a classroom to hide when she heard gunshots; Selena Sanchez’s son, “D.J.,” who was headed to the nurse’s office when he saw the gunman shooting toward classrooms. The 9-year-old hid in a nearby classroom with other students.

    Lawyers for the families say the manufacturer for the gunman’s weapon employs aggressive marketing tactics that recklessly endanger children.

    “Daniel Defense chooses not to do any studies evaluating the effects of their marketing strategies on the health and well-being of Americans and chose not to look at the cost to families and communities like Uvalde, Texas,” said the complaint.

    Days before the shooting, the complaint notes, the Georgia-based company tweeted an image of a toddler holding an assault-style weapon with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

    The claim also says Firequest International, Inc., which manufactures accessory trigger systems, similar to illegal bump stocks, sells its products to untrained civilians, young adults and minors in Uvalde. These types of devices allow semi-automatic rifles to fire more rapidly, similar to automatic weapons.

    Oasis Outback, LLC, sold the gunman weapons and ammunition allegedly knowing he was a risk, the suit claims.

    “The Uvalde school shooter’s background check was clean, and Oasis Outback sold him the guns and ammunition knowing he was suspicious and likely dangerous,” according to the legal document. “The store owner and his staff did not act on their suspicions and block the purchases or notify law enforcement.”

    The gunman legally purchased two AR platform rifles at a local federal firearms licensee on May 17 and on May 20. He also purchased 375 rounds of ammunition on May 18, according to officials.

    The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, including Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the district police chief at the time, and Mandy Gutierrez, the school’s former principal, failed to act and created a dangerous environment for the plaintiffs, according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez’s attorney told CNN his client will not be commenting on the pending litigation.

    The claim also says the city’s police department failed to protect the victims by not following state mandated active shooter training.

    “While Uvalde PD did make an early attempt to breach the classroom, they retreated and never tried again. The scene remained ‘active’ and active shooter protocol required Uvalde PD to pursue the primary goal of stopping the killing and gunman no matter how many times it takes,” said the claim.

    The suit also faults Lt. Mariano Pargas, the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre, as well as two other companies, claiming defects in their products were factors in the response to the shooting. Motorola Solutions, Inc.’s radio communications devices, which were used by some first responders, “were defective and unreasonably dangerous because they did not contain adequate warnings or instructions concerning failure during normal use,” said the claim.

    Lawyers also say Schneider Electric, the manufacturer of the door locking mechanisms used at the school, “failed to lock as designed after being shut.”

    “What happened in Uvalde was an unspeakable tragedy that we condemn in the strongest terms,” Schneider Electric spokesperson Venancio Figueroa III told CNN. “We are reviewing this recent filing but cannot comment further on pending litigation.”

    The plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages and a jury trial, among other relief.

    Daniel Defense, Oasis Outback, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, FireQuest International, Motorola Solutions, Inc., Pargas and Arredondo have all not responded to CNN request for comment.

    Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly included an extra plaintiff’s name. That person is not a party in the complaint and the name has been removed.

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  • Three people, including father and son, charged in the death of PnB Rock | CNN

    Three people, including father and son, charged in the death of PnB Rock | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday filed murder charges against a father and son in connection to the fatal shooting of musical artist PnB Rock.

    Freddie Trone, who is being sought by police, along with his minor son were each charged with murder, conspiracy to commit robbery and second-degree robbery, according to a release from the DA’s office. A woman was charged with accessory after the fact.

    The minor appeared in juvenile court Thursday and is set to return for a preliminary hearing on October 19. The woman is expected to be arraigned Thursday afternoon.

    Trone is considered armed and dangerous, police said, and anyone who sees him should immediately call 911, according to a LAPD news release.

    On Tuesday, LAPD arrested a 32-year-old woman and young man under 18 years old who police “believed to be involved” in the rapper’s death, according to the release.

    LAPD did not have information on the young man or woman’s relationship to Trone.

    The fatal shooting of PnB Rock took place September 12 while the rapper and his girlfriend were eating at Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘N Waffles on West Manchester Avenue, according to LAPD Chief Michel Moore. The chief identified the rapper by his real name, Rakim Allen.

    “[Allen] was brutally attacked by an individual who, apparently, we believe… came to the location after a social media posting of the artist and the woman accompanying him,” Moore said.

    Moore said a picture of the pair’s meal had been posted on Instagram, with the location tagged. He said a Black man attacked the rapper at the restaurant, demanding his property. PnB Rock “had an extensive amount of jewelry and other valuables,” Moore said.

    Between 2016 and 2019, PnB Rock had eight songs on the Billboard Hot 100, four of which were in 2019.

    The rapper’s latest song, “Luv Me Again,” was released on September 2.

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  • Sandy Hook parent recounts years of harassment after Alex Jones called him a crisis actor | CNN Business

    Sandy Hook parent recounts years of harassment after Alex Jones called him a crisis actor | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    In emotional testimony on Thursday, Robbie Parker, the parent of a Sandy Hook shooting victim, recounted the violent threats and harassment he and his family have suffered in the years since conspiracy theorist Alex Jones called him a crisis actor.

    The day after their six-year-old daughter, Emilie, was murdered in the 2012 shooting, Parker gave a statement to the press. Hours later, Jones was on his InfoWars show describing him as a crisis actor to his audience of millions. (Jones acknowledged that he spoke about Parker by name when he testified earlier during the trial, which is to determine how much he must pay to families of Sandy Hook shooting victims for his lies about the massacre.)

    Later that night, unable to sleep, Parker said he saw the start of a deluge of hateful messages about the press conference on the Facebook memorial page for Emilie. Parker said he removed Emilie’s Facebook memorial page weeks after the shooting because the harassment was too much to control.

    “I felt like I couldn’t protect Emilie’s name, or her memory anymore so I had to get rid of it,” Parker said through tears.

    As days passed and the harassment increased, Parker’s family grew paranoid. They questioned what of Emilie’s life to share with guests during the wake and funeral services. Ultimately, they chose to have a closed casket wake out of concern someone would try to take photos of Emilie’s body or her things, Parker testified.

    “I was paranoid and he was paranoid. Like we just shut down. We were just zombies. I don’t even hardly remember what was said on the day of the funeral,” Alissa Parker said during testimony before her husband. “They stole that from me.”

    Robbie Parker, who has in many ways been the face of Jones’ hoax narrative about the shooting, said he reported the harassment and threats to law enforcement and social media attacks to Facebook and YouTube. “I was like pleading and pleading for their help,” he said. But that didn’t work either, he testified.

    For years, he tried to ignore it, choosing not to engage with the people threatening his family and calling him an actor. “I’d been taught that like, you don’t engage with a bully,” he said. “If somebody’s bullying you, you ignore them and eventually they get tired and they leave you alone. And that had worked for me in my life.”

    The family moved to Washington state in early 2014. Within months of moving, however, Robbie Parker realized the “hoaxers” had found them. He said he saw a YouTube video detailing the sale of their new home and address.

    “And so immediately that sense of security that I thought that we had was totally shattered,” he said. “They would come in these waves and it was almost like I knew when Alex Jones said something because we would get a huge wave of stuff.”

    Through tears, he recalled a man confronting him on the street in Seattle in the fall of 2016, nearly four years after the shooting. Yelling and cursing at him, the man asked him how he could sleep at night and how much he was paid by the government for acting in the hoax.

    Robbie Parker said he confronted the man attempting to defend his family for the first time as a crowd of onlookers gathered. He said he eventually walked away from the heckler, but first he circled the block several times to make sure no one was following him before returning to his family.

    His wife described the change she saw in her husband as the weight of their family’s safety got to him.

    “I would say the most painful is just how it’s changed his view about himself. He felt so much shame. And he felt like it was his fault that all of this happened. And he felt like it was because of him that our family got attacked and all the other families got attacked,” she said.

    The emotional testimony capped off the third week of the trial. Plaintiffs in three Connecticut lawsuits against Jones, including family members of eight school students and employees and one FBI agent who responded to the scene, have all been condensed into the trial.

    The jury has now heard from most of the named plaintiffs in the case and the plaintiffs’ attorneys have indicated they’ll wrap up their case early next week.

    Jones is expected to testify again next week during his own defense case. Then the jury will deliberate to determine how much Jones and the company should pay in damages to each of 15 plaintiffs that say their lives were negatively impacted by his’ hoax coverage of the shooting.

    Judge Barbara Bellis found the defendants liable by default last year largely because Jones and the company did not comply in turning over evidence during the discovery process, according to court filings.

    Robbie Parker had flown back and forth each week to sit in the Connecticut courtroom ahead of his testimony this week. At the beginning of his testimony Wednesday, he said: “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

    – CNN’s Oliver Darcy contributed to this report.

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  • Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison this month while waiting out her appeal, judge rules | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison this month while waiting out her appeal, judge rules | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A judge on Monday denied Elizabeth Holmes’ request to remain free while she appeals her conviction, setting the stage for the disgraced Theranos founder to report to prison later this month.

    In his order, Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California said Holmes does not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk, but he cast doubt on her appeal. Even if Homes won her appeal, he said, it is unlikely to result in a reversal, or an order for a new trial, for all of the counts on which she was found guilty.

    Davila previously ordered Holmes to turn herself into custody on April 27, 2023.

    Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last November, after she was convicted months earlier on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the failed blood testing startup Theranos. Attorneys for Holmes did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on the ruling.

    Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’ ex-boyfriend and the former chief operating officer at Theranos, was also found guilty on multiple counts of fraud in a separate trial. He was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison last December. Balwani’s request to remain out of prison during his appeal was also denied, and he has been ordered by Davila to surrender to prison on April 20.

    Once valued at $9 billion, Theranos attracted top investors and retail partners with claims that it had developed technology to test for a wide range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. The company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy.

    Holmes’ trial was initially delayed multiple times, due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and then because of her pregnancy. Following her sentencing in November, Holmes sought to delay the start of her prison term after giving birth to her second child.

    While Davila denied Holmes represented a flight risk, he also addressed the fact that she had previously booked a one-way ticket to Mexico in January 2022.

    “Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defense victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight,” Davila wrote in the court filing.

    Holmes’ attorneys had previously claimed that Holmes had hoped the verdict would be different when booking the travel plans and that she wanted to make this trip to attend the wedding of friends in Mexico. Davila wrote in court documents that the court accepts Holmes’ “representation that the oneway flight ticket—while ill-advised—was not an attempt to flee the country.”

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  • Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

    Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nima Momeni, the suspect in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, appeared in a San Francisco court Friday morning for an arraignment, one day after police announced his arrest.

    When Momeni entered the courtroom, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.

    Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.

    Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.

    The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”

    In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection.

    California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.

    Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.

    “Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.

    In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.

    “Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.

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  • Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

    Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s attorney on Wednesday said the former president “wishes” to appear at next week’s civil trial where a jury will hear columnist E. Jean Carroll’s assault and defamation claims against him – but his attendance should not be necessary because it would be a “burden” on the city and court.

    The letter to the judge, from attorney Joseph Tacopina, appears to argue that Trump shouldn’t attend his civil trial without saying he won’t.

    “Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial,” the letter states, but adds “concern” that New York City and the court would face “logistical and financial burdens” to have a former president travel with the Secret Service and other security protections to the proceedings.

    “In order for Defendant Trump to appear, his movement would need to be coordinated preliminarily by a Secret Service advance team hours beforehand each day that he is present, so that a tactical plan may be developed,” such as locking down parts of the courthouse, Tacopina said. Tacopina raised the disruption Trump’s recent criminal arraignment caused in the state court as an example.

    “Your consideration is greatly appreciated,” Tacopina added.

    Jury selection begins next Tuesday in Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a New York dressing room in the mid-1990s and then defamed her years later when he denied it took place, said she wasn’t his “type,” and suggested she made up the story to promote a new book. Trump has denied all allegations against him.

    If he were to be called to testify, Trump would show up in person, Tacopina said. If he does not appear, his legal team asks the judge to instruct jurors that he isn’t required to attend and he wouldn’t be there because of the logistical burdens.

    Carroll plans to attend the trial, her attorney has said.

    In a response to the court on Wednesday afternoon, Carroll’s attorney criticized Trump’s reasoning, but indicated that a live appearance from the former president was not needed for the trial.

    “Either way, Ms. Carroll has a right to play Donald Trump’s deposition at trial,” the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote, “so she has no need for him to testify live.”

    “Mr. Trump has yet to answer the Court’s question, and he now asks the Court to deliver an excuse to the jury in the event he decides not to attend trial,” Kaplan wrote. “Given the gravity of the allegations at issue in this case, one might expect Mr. Trump to appear in person. But he is obviously free to choose otherwise … This Court and the City it calls home are fully equipped to handle any logistical burdens that may result from Mr. Trump’s appearance at a weeklong trial.”

    They also noted Trump has traveled for other recent events, including an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and has a campaign appearance scheduled two days into the trial.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • FBI warrantless searches of Americans’ data plummet in 2022, intel report says | CNN Politics

    FBI warrantless searches of Americans’ data plummet in 2022, intel report says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The number of warrantless FBI searches of Americans’ electronic data under a controversial intelligence program that aims to identify foreign threats dropped sharply from millions of searches in 2021 to over 100,000 last year, US intelligence agencies said in a report Friday.

    It is welcome news for US intelligence and security agencies that are lobbying Congress to renew the program, known as Section 702, which is set to expire later this year. Some Republicans in Congress, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have balked at renewing the program while using their criticism of it in broader political attacks on the FBI.

    The drop in FBI searches last year was due in part to stronger safeguards that the agency has put on analysts’ ability to search a database of foreign intelligence collected by US spy agencies, according to the report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

    The FBI conducted about 3 million warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2021, more than half of which related to a Russian hacking campaign against critical US infrastructure, according to ODNI. (The tallies in the ODNI report are the number of times FBI personnel searched for certain data, not the number of Americans who had their data searched.)

    The program is a 2008 revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows US spy agencies to collect the phone calls, emails and text messages of foreign targets overseas from US telecommunications providers without a warrant – even if it means sweeping up the communications of Americans in touch with those foreign targets. Analysts at multiple intelligence agencies can then search databases for leads related to foreign intelligence missions.

    US national security officials say the program is essential for thwarting terror plots and investigating malicious cyber activity. A significant portion of the intelligence that ends up in President Joe Biden’s daily intelligence brief comes from Section 702 authorities, according to US officials.

    But civil liberties groups have complained that the program infringes on Americans’ privacy. And even advocates of Section 702 in Congress have expressed concern at how it’s been implemented.

    In March, Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois accused the FBI of searching Section 702 data for his name multiple times in what he called an “egregious” violation of his privacy. Still, LaHood has said he wants Section 702 to be reauthorized with “reforms and safeguards.”

    Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Friday that the new ODNI report “provides strong evidence that the reforms already put in place, particularly at FBI, are having the intended effects.”

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  • Blinken says US is ‘engaged with Syria’ in efforts to free missing journalist Austin Tice | CNN Politics

    Blinken says US is ‘engaged with Syria’ in efforts to free missing journalist Austin Tice | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The United States is “engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries” to try to bring detained journalist Austin Tice home, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

    “We are extensively engaged with regard to Austin, engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries, seeking to find a way to get him home. And we’re not going to relent until we do,” Blinken said in remarks at a Washington Post event on World Press Freedom Day.

    Tice was taken hostage in Syria in 2012. President Joe Biden declared last year that the US government knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime” and called on Damascus to cooperate on efforts to release him.

    The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not publicly acknowledged they are detaining Tice. The US does not have diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime and has voiced opposition to rapprochement with Assad.

    Blinken did not provide details about the engagements to bring Tice home. White House and State Department officials would not confirm a report from the Wall Street Journal that US officials had held talks with Syrian officials in Oman.

    “We cannot confirm any specific meetings past or present. As you know in general meetings and negotiations to secure the release of wrongfully detained Americans, that is incredibly sensitive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing. “We want to be really, really careful and mindful and don’t want to confirm any specific conversation from the past or in the present.”

    CNN reported last August that the Biden administration had direct engagements with the Syrian government in an effort to secure Tice’s release. In 2020 under the Trump administration, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus and met with Assad regime officials.

    Austin Tice’s mother Debra Tice told CNN Monday that she thinks that the administration is committed to bringing her son home but “they stumble over what needs to be done.” She said she had no doubt that her son would walk free.

    Biden paid tribute to Austin Tice and other wrongfully detained Americans, including Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan in Russia, in remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

    A number of family members of wrongfully detained Americans – many of whom have joined forces in an organization called the “Bring Our Families Home” campaign – as well as those who had been freed from detention gathered in Washington, DC, this week to seek a meeting with the president and call on the US government to do more to secure the release of their loved ones.

    “Although our loved ones are wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad, including China, including Russia, including Iran, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, our voices are stronger together,” said Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, who is detained in China.

    “Although each case has its own idiosyncrasies, we all need the same things: for President Biden to meet with us, and to use all tools to bring them home,” he said.

    “We have asked for a meeting with the president for so long now that I frankly don’t know how else to ask or what else to say,” Hannah Sharghi, whose father Emad Shargi is detained in Iran, said at a news conference Wednesday.

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