Month: October 2021

According to agency officials and a news release on Thursday, the Justice Department has agreed to pay $88 million to families and survivors of the 2015 deadly church shooting in Charleston, S.C., due to a failure in its gun background check system. A federal jury sentenced White supremacist Dylann Roof to death in January 2017 after he openly admitted to killing nine people at the historic Black church Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a bible study. A month before the sentencing, the jury convicted him on 33 federal charges, including hate crimes.

The 21-year-old Roof was arrested for a felony drug offense in Lexington County, S.C., a few months before he purchased the Glock 41 semi-automatic pistol used to kill nine people on June 17, 2015. Court records show that an examiner for the FBI’s background check system failed to contact the arresting agency for an incident report, which would have blocked him from purchasing the gun from Shooter’s Choice in West Columbia, S.C.  About a year ago, a federal judge ruled that a federal agent failed to follow the FBI’s system for conducting background check ruled under the Brady Act, which denies gun purchases to someone with a felony allowing lawsuits by family members and survivors to proceed.

The settlement in the lawsuit against the illegal gun purchase will provide $63 million for family members of the victims and $23 million for survivors. South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pickney, 41, who was also a church pastor, Cynthia Hurd, 54; Tywanza Sanders, 26, Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; and Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, all died in the 2015 shooting.

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Facebook on Thursday announced that it has changed its company name to Meta. The name change, which was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media with the metaverse, a classic sci-fi term Facebook has adopted to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta in an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future.

Zuckerberg says he expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade. The metaverse, he says, will be a place people will be able to interact, work and create products and content in what he hopes will be a new ecosystem that creates “millions” of jobs for creators. In explaining the rebrand, Zuckerberg said the name “Facebook” just doesn’t encompass “everything we do” any more. In addition to its primary social network, that now includes Instagram, Messenger, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform and more.

Facebook, now known as Meta, will also change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, effective Dec. 1, the company said in the announcement of its name change.

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Authorities confirmed on Wednesday that the child whose skeletal remains were found in a Houston-area apartment Sunday along with three abandoned siblings died violently due to blunt force sometime around Thanksgiving last year. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said that the boy was 8 years old when he was killed via physical abuse allegedly by his mother’s boyfriend Brian Coulter, who has been charged with murder.

During a news conference Wednesday, Gonzalez said the apartment where the boy’s skeletal remains were found and where three siblings, ranging in ages from 7 to 15, lived was unfurnished and full of roaches, flies and soiled carpeting. The oldest boy contacted authorities, and Gonzalez said: “In the midst of the darkness and this horrific situation, I’m so glad that this 15-year-old finally reached out for help. I’m glad that he found assistance at the end of the other line with one of our call-takers. And I’m comforted to know that when he opened the door, and there was a Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy there, that they could finally receive the care and protection that they needed for so long.”

The Sheriff’s office said that the dead boy’s mother and her boyfriend were charged Tuesday in the child’s death. Coulter, 31, faces a murder charge, and the boy’s mother, Gloria Williams, 35, faces charges of injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence.  Williams and Coulter moved out of the apartment and lived separately from the children, at least two of whom were believed to be on the autism spectrum and were described as “special needs,” officials said Wednesday. The boys appeared malnourished, showed signs of physical injury and were brought to a hospital, according to officials.

A judge granted the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services temporary custody of the three children. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said in a statement that the department “sought and received emergency custody” of the three boys found abandoned in the apartment and said that the children are safe in CPS custody.

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A severe Nor’easter pummeled southern New England and the New York tri-state area, bringing flooding rains, a dangerous storm surge and destructive winds gusting between 60 and 100 mph. The nor’easter knocked out power to more than half a million customers and forced school cancellations in eastern Massachusetts. Due to the storm’s pace of intensification, it was qualified as a “bomb cyclone.”

High winds and swiftly strengthening ocean storm left more than a dozen counties in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island were 75 percent in the dark, with winds gusting to 94 mph on Martha’s Vineyard. Fierce winds resulted i a 3- to 4-foot ocean surge, which was considerably more than what was anticipated.

The bulk of the outages were focused in Massachusetts, with near half a million customers in the dark Wednesday. Hardest hit was Plymouth County, which was 90 percent in the dark. Around 85,000 were without electricity in Rhode Island and another 25,000 combined in Connecticut and Maine. As of Wednesday morning, conditions were beginning to ease. Still, bands of light to moderate rain were continuing to pinwheel ashore from the east-northeast in eastern Massachusetts, along the New Hampshire Seacoast and across parts of south coastal Maine on Wednesday morning. Winds were still gusting to around 60 mph in coastal areas.

The vaccines advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Tuesday to recommend that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine be approved for children between 5 and 11 years old. The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee convened to hear presentations for several hours before it held the vote. The FDA will consider the recommendation before deciding whether to grant emergency authorization for smaller doses vaccine for children in the younger age range. Last week, the pharma company said that the doses were better than 90% effective in children 5-11.

To date, fewer than 100 children between 5 and 11 have died from COVID-19 and 8,300 have been hospitalized, said Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the FDA vaccines division. If the FDA gives approval for the vaccine for younger children, it would also need to be approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

On Monday, Moderna said that smaller doses of its vaccine in children of the same age group has proven to be safe and spurs an antibody response in recipients in late-stage clinical trials.

President Joe Biden nominated the Federal Communications Commission’s acting chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, to fill the post permanently, which would make her the agency’s first female chief. Rosenworcel took over as acting head of the FCC on Jan. 21 after former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stepped down from his role upon Biden’s inauguration. Rosenworcel has served eight years as a commissioner within the agency. She previously served as the senior communications counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

The White House said in a statement: “During her time at the agency, she has worked to promote greater opportunity, accessibility, and affordability in our communications services in order to ensure that all Americans get a fair shot at 21st century success. From fighting to protect an open internet, to ensuring broadband access for students caught in the Homework Gap through the FCC’s Emergency Connectivity Fund, to making sure that households struggling to afford internet service stay connected through the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, she has been a champion for connectivity for all.”

The White House also said Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to be a commissioner on the FCC, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton senior fellow and public advocate. Sohn previously served as counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. The White House said: “Gigi is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks. For over 30 years, Gigi has worked to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective of user privacy.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Rosenworcel would be the first woman to head the FCC. If Sohn is confirmed, she’ll be the first openly LGBTQ commissioner on the FCC.

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