June 1, 2017

(Reuters) – A noose, a symbol of racial lynching, was found on Wednesday on the floor of an exhibit about segregation at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution officials said.

A gallery at the museum on the National Mall was partially closed for about three hours, and U.S. Park Police were called in to investigate what was described by the museum’s director as a “horrible act.”

“The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity — a symbol of extreme violence for African Americans,” Director Lonnie Bunch said in an email to museum staff sent to Reuters by a museum spokeswoman.

Bunch said museum officials do not know who was responsible and told staff the incident “is a stark reminder why the work you do is so important.”

A U.S. Park Police spokeswoman confirmed the agency was investigating but declined to provide any further details.

The incident comes less than a week after a noose was found hanging from a tree outside the nearby Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian.com, an affiliated news organization, said.

Speaking at a dedication ceremony in September 2016 for the $540 million African American museum, then-President Barack Obama said the facility tells the story of black America, and “helps to tell a richer and fuller story of who we are.”

The museum contains about 36,000 items that trace the journey of African Americans from slavery in the 1800s to the fight for civil rights in the 20th century and beyond.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is part of the Smithsonian, which includes 19 museums, including the Hirshhorn and galleries and the National Zoological Park.

It had 30.2 million visits last year, according to its website.

“The Smithsonian family stands together in condemning this act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity,” the institution’s secretary, David Skorton, told the staff in an internal email. “We will not be intimidated.”

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

May 31, 2017

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City police sergeant was charged on Wednesday with murdering an emotionally disturbed black woman whom he shot inside her apartment last year, police and prosecutors said.

Sergeant Hugh Barry, 31, was arrested on charges of murder in the first degree, manslaughter in the first and second degrees and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Deborah Danner, the Bronx district attorney’s office said.

Barry pleaded not guilty to the charges in the Bronx Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon, according to his union-appointed lawyer, Andrew Quinn, the general counsel of the New York City Sergeants Benevolent Association. Quinn declined further comment.

Ahmed Nasser, a police department spokesman, declined to comment on the arrest beyond confirming details of the charges.

Danner’s shooting drew criticism from Mayor Bill de Blasio at the time and was seen as one of a string of episodes across the United States where police have been criticized as using excessive force against black people and the mentally ill.

Barry, who is white, entered Danner’s apartment in the Bronx on October 18, 2016. He arrived after other police officers and paramedics had already arrived on the scene, responding to a neighbor who had called the police to say Danner was acting irrationally and screaming in the hallway, according to the district attorney.

At one point, Danner, 66, picked up a pair of scissors as she resisted Barry’s efforts to take her to hospital. She then held a wooden bat towards him before Barry shot her twice in the torso with his service revolver.

De Blasio told reporters last year that Danner was mentally ill, according to her sister, and that the police had previously been called to her apartment several times and taken her to the hospital without harm. “It should have never had happened,” he said of the shooting.

After entering his plea, Barry was released on bail, which Judge Robert Neary set at $100,000, the district attorney’s office said.

If convicted of murder, he could be sentenced to up to life in prison.

Barry has been suspended without pay, according to Martin Brown, a police department spokesman.

James O’Neill, the city’s police commissioner, said at the time that Barry, who had been with the department for eight years, had not followed the department’s procedures for dealing with emotionally disturbed people.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Diane Craft and Alistair Bell)

May 31, 2017

By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canadian politicians and refugee advocates urged the government on Wednesday to scrap a U.S. pact that has spurred asylum seekers to cross the border illegally after a woman trying to walk into Canada was found dead of possible hypothermia.

U.S. police said they discovered the woman’s body on Friday near Noyes, Minnesota, which is directly across from the Canadian border town of Emerson where asylum seekers have been crossing in recent months.

“This is exactly what we have feared,” said New Democrat parliamentarian Jenny Kwan. “We’re forcing people to risk life and limb.”

More than 2,000 asylum seekers have walked into Canada through fields or across ditches since January because if they present themselves at formal border crossings they will be turned back under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement.

The agreement requires refugees to claim asylum in whichever country they arrive in first, meaning they cannot land in the United States and then try to claim asylum in Canada or vice versa. However, anyone who manages to get in the country is allowed to file an asylum claim.

Most of those border crossers say they left the United States because they fear President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Opposition critics pressed the government in Parliament on Wednesday about when it would suspend the 2004 agreement, which Canada has said it will not withdraw from.

“We understand deeply the extent to which people will go to to seek protection for them and their families,” Canadian Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told the House of Commons. “But we discourage strongly people crossing our borders irregularly.”

A final autopsy result on the woman, identified as Ghanaian Mavis Otuteye, 57, is pending. Police said she was last seen on May 22 and her body was discovered on May 26 after she was reported missing a day earlier.

Greg Janzen, elected leader of a Manitoba border municipality that has seen many crossers, said his community has responded to three medical calls from asylum seekers in the past two weeks.

    “One person has lost her life. How many more have to lose their lives? Now it’s more desperate than ever that something has to get changed.”

(Writing and additional reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Sandra Maler)

May 31, 2017

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – CBS journalist Scott Pelley will leave the evening news anchor chair and work full-time on news magazine “60 Minutes,” the network said in a statement on Wednesday.

Anthony Mason will serve as interim anchor of “CBS Evening News” beginning in the coming weeks, the statement said.

Pelley has anchored the evening news broadcast for six years while also working as a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” which he joined in 2004. Both programs are broadcast on the CBS network, a unit of CBS Corp.

“CBS has been great to me for nearly 30 years,” Pelley said in a statement. “I’m glad to accept this assignment with continuing gratitude.”

“60 Minutes,” the highest-rated television news magazine, will start its 50th season this fall. The milestone season for the program “requires Scott’s full contribution,” CBS President David Rhodes said.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

May 31, 2017

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A midnight tweet by Donald Trump unleashed a wave of sometimes mocking speculation by Internet users wondering what the U.S. president meant by writing “covfefe” in an apparently unfinished Twitter post that lingered online for hours.

At 12:06 a.m. ET, Trump wrote: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

The post, since deleted, was followed by a Trump message at 6:09 a.m. ET that sought to put a playful tone on the misfire, saying, “Who can figure out the true meaning of “covfefe” ??? Enjoy!”

The original message, which seemed to have been the start of a Trump complaint about media coverage, soon became a top trend on Twitter.

Some users sought clarification from dictionary company Merriam-Webster. They did not get a definition but did draw a response.

“Wakes up. Checks Twitter… Uh…. Lookups fo(r)… Regrets checking Twitter. Goes back to bed,” @MerriamWebster wrote after Trump’s first tweet ignited a slew of possible definitions and jokes, as well as defenses of the president.

“Covfefe” also made its way into the Urban Dictionary, a website that collates online word submissions.

Asked at a briefing whether people should be concerned that the president sent out an incoherent Tweet and left it up for hours, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said: “No.”

“I think the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” Spicer added when asked why the Tweet remained uncorrected for so long on Trump’s personal @realDonaldTrump account.

Democratic U.S. Senator Al Franken, in a CNN interview on Wednesday morning, joked: “A covfefe is a Yiddish term for ‘I got to go to bed now,’” dismissing the tweet as a late-night error.

Conservative commentator and radio show host Laura Ingraham tweeted in response to Trump’s guess-the-meaning post that, “It’s so bad–the collusion b/t (between) the Dems & the press, the establ(ishment) vs the ppl(people), that we needed a new word to describe it all. #Covfefe!”

Trump’s “covfefe” message drew renewed attention to his prolific Twitter habit.

The Republican president has said using Twitter helps him speak directly to Americans and bypass the media, which he has long criticized. When asked in the past about other Trump tweets, White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said the posts speak for themselves.

Trump was relatively quiet on Twitter during a nine-day trip to Middle East and Europe but resumed tweet storms after returning home on Saturday. Moments after tweeting about the “meaning of covfefe” on Wednesday, he turned to Twitter again to blast the Russia probes and address a series of other issues.

(Writing by Susan Heavey, David Alexander; Editing by Frances Kerry and Cynthia Osterman)

May 31, 2017

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Eleven U.S. citizens working as contractors in Afghanistan were injured when a powerful bomb hidden in a sewage tanker exploded during the Wednesday morning rush hour in Kabul, a State Department spokesman said.

None of their injures are considered life-threatening, the spokesman said.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati)

May 30, 2017

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday tightened rules on where injury lawsuits may be filed, handing a victory to corporations by undercutting the ability of plaintiffs to bring claims in friendly courts in a case involving Texas-based BNSF Railway Co.

The justices, in a 8-1 decision, threw out a lower court decision in Montana allowing out-of-state residents to sue there over injuries that occurred anywhere in BNSF’s nationwide network. State courts cannot hear claims against companies when they are not based in the state or the alleged injuries did not occur there, the justices ruled.

BNSF [BNISF.UL] is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Businesses and plaintiffs have been engaged in a fight over where lawsuits seeking financial compensation for injuries should be filed.

Companies typically can be sued in a state where they are headquartered or incorporated, as well as where they have significant ties. They want to curb plaintiffs’ ability to “shop” for courts in states with laws conducive to such injury lawsuits.

Plaintiffs contend that corporations are trying to limit their access to compensation for injuries by denying them their day in state courts.

The case involves two lawsuits against BNSF brought under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, a U.S. law that allows injured railroad employees to sue for compensation from their companies.

BNSF fuel truck driver Robert Nelson sued in 2011 over a slip-and-fall accident in which he injured his knee. Kelli Tyrrell, the widow of railroad employee Brent Tyrrell, sued in 2014 alleging her husband was exposed to chemicals that caused him to die of kidney cancer.

Neither BNSF employee lived in Montana and their allegations did not occur in the state, according to court filings.

BNSF argued that the Montana courts did not have jurisdiction over the cases. The Montana Supreme Court in May, however, ruled that state courts there can hear cases against BNSF without violating due process rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution because the company does business in the state.

Writing for the majority on Tuesday, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that even though BNSF has more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of track and 2,000 employees in Montana, it cannot be held liable for “claims like Nelson’s and Tyrrell’s that are unrelated to any activity occurring in Montana.”

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, calling the ruling a “jurisdictional windfall” for large multistate or multinational corporations.

“It is individual plaintiffs, harmed by the actions of a far-flung foreign corporation, who will bear the brunt of the majority’s approach and be forced to sue in distant jurisdictions with which they have no contacts or connection,” Sotomayor wrote.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule before the end of June in a similar challenge brought by drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb, which says it should not have to face injury suits filed by hundreds of out-of-state residents in California over its blood-thinning medication Plavix. The company is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the majority on Tuesday, the first ruling he has participated in since joining the court in April.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

May 30, 2017

JUPITER, Fla. (Reuters) – Former world No. 1 golfer Tiger Woods was asleep at the wheel of a stationary Mercedes-Benz vehicle on a Florida road and did not know where he was, according to a police report released on Tuesday, a day after his arrest on a charge of driving under the influence.

Woods had “extremely slow and slurred speech” after being awoken by a Jupiter police officer, who found the car the golfer was driving stopped in the right lane of the roadway and still running, the report said.

Woods was heading south, away from his Jupiter Island home, before his arrest at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Monday, according to the report. It said Woods was cooperative but had a hard time walking and keeping his eyes open.

“Woods had changed his story of where he was going and where he was coming from,” the report said, noting at one point he indicated he was returning from a golf trip in California.

The 41-year-old golfer, who underwent surgery in April to relieve lingering back pain, on Monday blamed an unexpected reaction to legal drugs for his arrest and apologized for the incident. Two breathalyzer tests showed Woods’ blood alcohol content to be zero, according to the report.

“I want the public to know that alcohol was not involved,” Woods said in a statement. “What happened was an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications,” he said. “I didn’t realize the mix of medications had affected me so strongly.”

(This version of the story has been filed to correct timing of back surgery in fifth paragraph)

(Reporting by Zachary Fagenson; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Rigby)

May 30, 2017

By Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – Three past winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee say losing was the secret to their success.

Early defeats spurred an inner competitive streak that they used to eventually seize the title, said champions from 1985, 1999 and 2010. The 2017 national spelling bee winner will be crowned on Thursday.

“Those were tough losses but they also made me dig deeper and work harder,” said Balu Natarajan, 45, who flamed out on the national stage in 1983 and 1984. He won the next year at age 13 and is now a sports medicine doctor in Chicago.

Nupur Lala, 32, still remembers the word that tripped her up in 1998: commination, which ironically means the act of threatening divine vengeance. She took the title in 1999 at 14.

“It was one of the really healthy moments in my life. Any hubris that I had was eliminated at that point,” said Lala, headed for a 2018 medical school degree with a focus in neurology after conducting research at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

For 2010 winner Anamika Veeramani, losing in front of a worldwide audience on live television in 2009 was a seminal lesson in handling life’s challenges.

“In the spelling bee, you really learn how to deal with failure. And dealing with those things gracefully is really important to living a good life,” said Veeramani, 21.

She graduated last week with a biology degree after just three years at Yale University and is applying to medical school. She envisions treating patients as well as launching a broadcast career covering medical stories.

Defeat has fanned the competitive fires within, all three past winners said in separate interviews.

“The competition is not with other spellers but with yourself,” Lala told Reuters. “I don’t think that besting other people is quite as motivating for me.”

Natarajan, who is chief medical officer at Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care, the nation’s largest privately owned hospice provider, agreed he has been his own fiercest rival.

“Some people love to win. Some people want to keep pushing to be their best. I am the latter,” he said.

Natarajan won the title for correctly spelling ‘milieu,’ Lala for ‘logorrhea’ and Veeramani for ‘stromuhr,’ after their opponents had stumbled.

And how do the world’s best spellers handle errors in emails, classroom lessons, or even romantic love letters? Do they point out corrections or suffer in silence?

“I don’t hesitate,” Natarajan said. “It drives me crazy.”

But Lala and Veeramani hold their tongues.

“I don’t want to be obnoxious. Nobody wants to be that kid,” Veeramani said.

This week, 291 whizzes ages 6 to 15 will descend on a resort in the Washington area to compete in the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee.

They have made the cut from more than 11 million contenders who faced off in spelling bees in all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several nations from Jamaica to Japan.

The victor on Thursday takes home a $40,000 cash prize. But second place also has its rewards: a $30,000 prize.

Natarajan, a married father of boys 8 and 11, said his elder child just missed competing in the national bee this year, coming in second in a countywide spelling competition. If losing really is the key to winning, that may be great news.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jeffrey Benkoe)

May 30, 2017

By Scott DiSavino

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island power plant will close in 2019, forty years after it was the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, as low natural gas prices make the costs of atomic energy uncompetitive, its owner said on Tuesday.

The plant’s name has been synonymous with public fears over the risks associated with nuclear power since the plant suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, sparking sweeping new rules for handling emergencies at nuclear sites.

No one died during the 1979 meltdown and a federal review found minimal health effects in the 2 million people who lived near the central Pennsylvania plant, situated about 180 miles (300 km) west of New York City.

Exelon Corp, the U.S. power company that owns the Middletown, Pennsylvania, power plant, said it will close by Sept. 30, 2019, unless the state adopts rules to compensate the company for benefits Exelon says nuclear power provides.

Chris Crane, Exelon president and CEO, in a statement urged Pennsylvania “to preserve its nuclear energy facilities and the clean, reliable energy and good-paying jobs they provide.”

Three Mile Island employs about 675 people, produces enough electricity to power 800,000 homes and pays more than $1 million in state property taxes a year, the company said.

Low natural gas prices from abundant shale formations like Pennsylvania’s Marcellus have helped keep power prices low for years, making it difficult for nuclear reactors to compete with gas-fired generators in deregulated power markets in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest.

Since 2013, the nuclear industry has shut six reactors for economic reasons before their licenses expired in California, Florida, Nebraska, Vermont and Wisconsin, and plan to shut at least six more over the next five years.

‘CHINA SYNDROME’

The movie “The China Syndrome,” about a fictitious near-meltdown at a California nuclear plant, came out two weeks before the real-life crisis at Three Mile Island. In the film, Jane Fonda, playing a TV reporter, says a meltdown could “render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”

New York and Illinois adopted rules in 2016 to provide payments to nuclear reactors to keep the units in service to help meet state carbon reduction goals and keep the jobs, taxes and fuel diversification the plants provide.

At least four other states are considering similar policies to provide additional revenue to keep their reactors in service, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Other power generators that would benefit if the reactors shut down, however, have challenged New York and Illinois’ nuclear payments in federal court, arguing the rules unfairly subsidize one fuel source in a federally administered competitive market and will boost ratepayer costs.

Exelon said that despite producing 93 percent of Pennsylvania’s emissions-free electricity and avoiding 37 million tons of carbon emissions — the equivalent of keeping 10 million cars off the road every year — nuclear power is not included in the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, which includes 16 power sources including solar, wind and hydro energy.

Exelon said it will take a one-time charge of $65-110 million for 2017 for the early retirement of Three Mile Island, and accelerate about $1.0-1.1 billion in depreciation and amortization through the announced shutdown date.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)