Month: May 2022

During an interview at Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference on Tuesday, Elon Musk said he would reverse Twitter’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump if he were to assume control of the social media company. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, offered to purchase Twitter for $44 billion last month.

Musk said it was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme” for Twitter to ban Trump amid the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. Twitter said was meant to prevent the “risk of further incitement of violence.”  Said Musk: “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake. It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

Musk has more than 90 million Twitter followers, and has been vocal in his criticism of the social network’s moderation decisions. Musk said that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was in agreement that Twitter “should not have perma-bans.” Dorsey confirmed that he did agree with Musk, citing exceptions such as illegal behavior or network manipulation, writing on Twitter: “Generally, permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work.”

Musk believes Twitter exhibits a political bias that harms those on the right, saying:  “I think Twitter needs to be more evenhanded. It currently has a strong left bias because it’s based in San Francisco. I don’ think the people there necessarily intend, or at least some of them don’t intend, to have a left bias. They just, from their perspective, it seems moderate, but they’re just coming after it from an environment that is very far left.” 

Musk also repeated that while the company’s board had accepted his deal to purchase Twitter, it was not finalized:  “I will say that I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter.” 

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A Connecticut man was convicted Tuesday of all charges for murdering his wife. Despite alleging the crime was committed by an intruder, the defendant’s testimony was contradicted by a “Fitbit” activity tracker.

Following a five-week trial, a jury in Rockville Superior Court in Connecticut took less than four hours to find 45-year-old Richard Dabate guilty of guilty of all three charges — murder, tampering with evidence and making a false statement to authorities — for fatally shooting his wife, 39-year-old Connie Dabate, two days before Christmas in 2015.  The murder charge carries up to 60 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. Court marshals handcuffed Dabate and led him out of the courtroom after Judge Corinne Klatt increased his bond to $5 million. He had been free after posting $1 million bail following his arrest. Dabate’s lawyer, Trent LaLima, said they would be appealing the verdict:  “I think we put on a very strong case for why Rick did not commit this offense.”

Prosecutor Matthew Gedansky said in his closing argument that Dabate hatched a plan to kill his wife and stage a home invasion as his life was about to unravel with the birth of a child he was having with another woman. Connie Dabate was wearing the activity tracker wristwatch and data recovered from the device allegedly showed she was leisurely walking around an hour after Dabate claimed she had been killed by a large masked man with a voice like actor Vin Diesel and dressed in camouflage, and tied him up at the couple’s Ellington home in December 2015. Police said the information onConnie Dabate’s Fitbit contradicted her husband’s story.

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Officials confirmed on Monday that samples extracted from three American tourists who died at a resort in the Bahamas under mysterious circumstances have been sent to a lab in the United States, to expedite results and help authorities understand what happened.

Paul Rolle, the police commissioner of the Bahamas, stated that the police have also collected samples from the rooms where the tourists were staying and the surrounding property to determine whether any contaminants were present, saying: “We really want to know what caused this.”  Police Commissioner Rolle identified the victims as Michael Phillips, 68, and wife Robbie Phillips, 65, of Tennessee, and Vincent Paul Chiarella, 64, of Florida.  Chiarella’s wife, Donnis, was airlifted to a hospital in Florida and remains in serious condition, Rolle said. Their bodies of the three victims were found Friday morning at the Sandals Emerald Bay resort in Exuma, where the couples had been staying in two separate villas.

The samples extracted from the victims and their villas were sent to a lab in Philadelphia, with results of the toxicology report expected in about one week. Rolle noted that the Bahamas’ Department of Environmental Health and police officers are still at the resort.

All four tourists complained of feeling ill and went to a doctor the night before their bodies were discovered; they went at different times and had eaten different things. Sandals Resorts said it would not comment further beyond its original statement, which noted that it is supporting the investigation and the families of those affected.  The company said: “Out of respect for the privacy of our guests, we cannot disclose further information at this time.”

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Nearly five years after his arrest, the trial has begun for the man who drove through crowds of tourists in Times Square killing one woman and injuring 22 other people.  Richard Rojas, a 31-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, was arrested in 2017 after he barreled his Honda Accord down a sidewalk along Seventh Avenue between West 42nd Street and West 45th Street before crashing into protective barriers on May 18, 2017.

Rojas was indicted by a grand jury and charged with 29 counts including murder for “depraved indifference” for the death of Alyssa Elsman, an 18-year-old who was on a family trip when she was killed. Other charges included numerous counts of felony assault for recklessly causing physical injury and injury through risk of death, including for the injury of Elsman’s 13-year-old sister Ava.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office noted in the indictment that Rojas’ defense team does not dispute the facts of the case and intends “to offer a psychiatric defense.” According to a criminal complaint, Rojas allegedly told police that he had smoked marijuana laced with PCP.  PCP, also known as angel dust, has hallucinogenic effects that can cause users to become delusional and paranoid, resembling symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

Rojas allegedly told a traffic enforcement officer after the incident: “I wanted to kill them” and also reported he was hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations.  In addition, just days before the Times Square rampage, Rojas was arrested after he threatened a man who had gone to his apartment to help him notarize documents with a knife and accused him of trying to steal his identity.  He was also arrested twice previously for driving while intoxicated.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trial-start-driver-ran-times-square-tourists-84586199

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