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California tech CEO convicted in COVID-19 and allergy test fraud case sentenced to 8 years in prison

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A Silicon Valley executive who lied to investors about inventing technology that tested for allergies and COVID-19 using only a few drops of blood was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution, federal prosecutors said. Mark Schena, 60, was convicted last year of paying bribes to doctors and defrauding the government after his company billed Medicare $77 million for fraudulent COVID-19 and allergy tests, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.Schena claimed his Sunnyvale, California-based company, Arrayit Corporation, had the only laboratory in the world that offered “revolutionary microarray technology” that allowed it to test for allergies and COVID-19 with the same finger-stick test kit, prosecutors said.In meetings with investors, Schena claimed he was on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize and falsely represented that Arrayit could be valued at $4.5 billion, prosecutors said.Before the COVID-19 p...

Construction ongoing along stretch of Bloor Street West. Here’s when it’s expected to ease up

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

The latest construction phase is underway along a stretch of Bloor Street West.Construction is ongoing along Bloor Street West between Avenue Road and Spadina Avenue, and right now, crews are working on the south side of Bloor, reconstructing the road after previously reconstructing the sidewalk. Related: Work to transform section of Bloor Street West now underway Currently, traffic is shifted to the north side of the road, which is shared between cyclists and drivers. This ongoing construction will last until the end of the year.Once it’s completed, all lanes will reopen for a few months until early spring. The final phase, which will run from spring to summer, will be the most disruptive as the westbound portion of Bloor Street West will be shut down between Avenue Road and Spadina Avenue until all work is done.On Wednesday, the agency that oversees transportation services across Toronto said its congestion management plan needs to be updated given what it c...

Execution of Idaho’s longest-serving death row inmate delayed for sentence review hearing

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The November execution of a man on Idaho’s death row was delayed on Wednesday because the state’s parole board has granted a hearing to consider changing his sentence to life in prison. An Idaho judge last week issued a death warrant for Thomas Creech, the state’s longest-serving death row inmate. Creech was convicted of killing two people in Valley County in 1974 and sentenced to death. After an appeal, however, that sentence was reduced to life in prison. Less than 10 years later, he was convicted of beating another man in custody, David Jensen, to death with a sock full of batteries. Creech was sentenced to death for that crime in 1983.After the death warrant was issued last week, the Idaho Department of Correction had said Creech would be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 8 and said they already had the necessary chemicals. Creech’s attorneys with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho petitioned the parole board to schedule the sentence review h...

Workers noticed beam hanging off railcar days before fatal accident but didn’t tell the railroad

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Several days before a Norfolk Southern conductor trainee was killed by a metal beam protruding from a parked railcar on the next track, workers at a U.S. Pipe facility noticed the beam was hanging off the top of the car but never told the railroad about it, federal investigators say.The National Transportation Safety Board released those details this week in a report on the interviews it conducted after Walter James Griffin was killed near Bessemer, Alabama, on Dec. 13. Investigators won’t release their final report on the death until later. The accident happened as Griffin’s train was passing another train that was in the process of picking up several cars that had been parked on a siding, including ones loaded with scrap metal from U.S. Pipe’s nearby facility. The beam struck Griffin in the head as it smashed into the locomotive he was riding in and injured the conductor sitting behind him with broken glass.The death was one of the incidents th...

Escalating theft and violence aside, London Drugs not considering closures: president

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

VANCOUVER — London Drugs president Clint Mahlman says the company has no plans to close stores due to escalating violence and theft, though the issue has reached a “crisis point” for Canadian retailers. Mahlman says the company was disappointed to learn that a Vancouver city councillor said on social media that London Drugs was considering closing one of its main stores in the city, at the intersection of Granville and Georgia streets, due to crime. He says there’s no truth to the statement and it needlessly worried staff and customers at the store, which he says remains a safe place to both shop and work. Mahlman says the company has invested “significant resources” in safety measures and closing any locations would be a last resort, and a matter between London Drugs and its landlords and employees. He says retail theft and escalating violence has been an issue for many years, and working with police and government to combat the rise in organized theft...

Mountie testifies to serving DNA warrant of man accused in B.C. of murder

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

VANCOUVER — A Mountie with British Columbia’s integrated homicide team testified she was the officer who served a warrant to obtain DNA from the man accused of killing a 13-year-old girl in a Metro Vancouver park six years ago. Sgt-Maj. Heather Lew told a B.C. Supreme Court murder trial that she collected a few drops of blood from Ibrahim Ali’s finger on Sept. 9, 2018, two days after his arrest and almost 14 months after the girl’s body was found. Ali has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of the teen.The body of the girl, who can’t be named because of a publication ban, was found in Burnaby’s Central Park early on July 19, 2017, just hours after her mother reported her missing.Crown witness and RCMP forensic biologist Christine Crossman testified last month that police obtained a DNA sample from Ali from a discarded cigarette in August 2018 and matched it to an unknown male’s genetic material found on the girl’s body.The...

Hundreds of Palestinian protesters rally in downtown Chicago

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

CHICAGO -- Hundreds of protesters from the Palestinian American community called an emergency protest in Chicago after Tuesday's hospital explosion in Gaza.Just after 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of downtown Chicago after meeting at Federal Plaza and began walking towards the Israeli Consulate. For more coverage of the Israel and Hamas Conflict, click here The organizers of the rally said they don't believe Israel when it says it didn’t strike the hospital, even though the current U.S. intelligence assessment is that Israel was not responsible.Israel claims the Islamic Jihad militant group misfired a rocket within Gaza and caused the blast that killed hundreds of innocent people.Roughly 2,800 Palestinians have been reported killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. An additional 1,200 people are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, health authorities said. Those numbers predate the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital on Tuesday.Many p...

Illinois Congressman rips Texas governor for 'man-made crisis' amid migrant bus influx in Chicago

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

CHICAGO — As Democratic cities deal with a flood of migrants thanks to Republican Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star bussing program, one Democratic Congressman is calling for a Justice Department probe of the Texas governor.On Wednesday came a new effort to stop Texas Governor Greg Abbott from bussing migrants and asylum seekers to sanctuary cities.Congressman Jonathan Jackson, who represents Chicago’s South Side, wants the Justice Department and Homeland Security to investigate what he calls "alien smuggling," being carried out under the direction of Governor Abbott. As Chicago migrant crisis strains resources, Johnson seeks additional support "Republican Governor Abbott in Texas who is politically exploiting and commercially manipulating this vulnerable population," Jackson said. "He’s sending these asylum-seekers outside of the normal immigration processing channel."In a letter to the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security, Jackson writes, “Simply put, the migrant ...

FBI crime statistics show anti-LGBTQ hate crimes on the rise

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

(The Hill) — Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rose sharply in 2022, jumping more than 19 percent over 2021, according to the FBI’s annual crime report released Monday.More than 11,600 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI in 2022, the highest number recorded since the agency began tracking them in 1991. A majority of hate crimes recorded last year targeted Black people, according to the report.Hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people were up significantly compared to 2021, with 622 reported single-bias anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. Hate crimes motivated by an anti-transgender bias rose more than 35 percent year-over-year, reaching 338 incidents.Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ civil rights group, described the increase in hate crimes as “both shocking and heartbreaking, yet sadly, not unexpected.” Is crime going up in America? Some types are, new FBI data shows “The constant stream of hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures, alongsid...

Man chokes county attorney at town hall meeting in Virginia

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:16:02 GMT

GLOUCESTER COURTHOUSE, Va. (WAVY) — Leaders in Gloucester County, Virginia, say meetings can sometimes get a little heated, but not like this. Video shows the county attorney being choked by a resident at an Oct. 4 town hall meeting."This town hall meeting was for all the citizens that wanted to come out and voice their opinions, and that's just not what happened," Chris Hutson, chairman of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors, said. "It just escalated."Deputies were called to the meeting at Page Middle School around 8:40 p.m.Through a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Nexstar's WAVY obtained cell phone video that shows Gloucester County resident Lawrence Cohen choking Gloucester County Attorney Edwin N. "Ted" Wilmot. With one hand around Wilmot's throat and the other still holding onto the microphone, you can hear Cohen say, "You've had enough. Let go of me. You are attacking me." Another person intervenes and breaks it up.It began when Cohen got his turn to...