NPR Identifies 4th Attacker In Civil Rights-Era Cold Case

June 18, 2019 12:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
GRAHAM SMITH
CAT SCHUKNECHT

An NPR investigation has uncovered new evidence in a prominent unsolved murder case from the civil rights era, including the identity of an attacker who admitted his involvement but was never charged.

The murder of Boston minister James Reeb in 1965 drew national attention at the time and spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the Jim Crow voting practices that had disenfranchised millions of black Americans.

The case remains officially unsolved. Three men charged in 1965 with attacking Reeb and two other ministers on a street corner in Selma, Ala., were acquitted by an all-white jury.

But a four-year NPR investigation, led by Alabama-based reporters Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace, found an eyewitness to the attack who has never spoken publicly about what she saw. She said the three men acquitted in the case — Elmer Cook, William Stanley Hoggle and Namon O'Neal "Duck" Hoggle — were, in fact, the men who attacked Reeb.

That witness, Frances Bowden, also described the participation of another man, William Portwood. In an exclusive interview with NPR, Portwood confirmed his participation in the 1965 assault.

-snip-

The controversial ketamine-like drug that Trump is pushing on veterans

The president has touted the drug’s benefits and offered to help a senior Veterans Affairs official negotiate the purchase of the drug

Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity
Tue 18 Jun 2019 07.00 BST Last modified on Tue 18 Jun 2019 12.59 BST

Personal interest from Donald Trump appears to have put a controversial anti-depressant on a fast track at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that shoved aside usual protocols, even though experts inside and outside the government have serious concerns the drug is effective and say it may be dangerous.

Sources inside the Department of Veterans Affairs say staffers were essentially told by a senior official to drop everything in March and accelerate the drug’s availability because the president had expressed enthusiasm for the drug, Spravato, as a possible treatment for depressed veterans.

Questions have also been raised about a trio of Trump friends who have been working on veterans issues and interacting with Johnson & Johnson regarding programs for troubled vets.

In the midst of a rapidly convened series of VA meetings early that month, another official said the president wanted the VA to buy “truckloads” of the drug, according to sources. Trump also touted the drug’s benefits to the veterans affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie, in a White House meeting just last week, offering to help negotiate the VA’s purchase of the drug, according to Bloomberg.

A key VA panel, the so-called formulary committee, is meeting this week to decide if Spravato, whose formal name is esketamine, will be added to the list of drugs that must be available to VA pharmacies. A vote is expected on Wednesday, though a final decision may take longer. Esketamine is a derivative of ketamine, which has been used to treat depression, and has been abused as a party drug.

-snip-

How does a $50 million charter scam work? Here’s what happened in California (before 11 people were indicted).

By Valerie Strauss
June 17 at 11:41 AM

Late last month, San Diego officials indicted 11 people in what they described as a charter scam that defrauded the state of California of more than $50 million in education funds.

The indictment details a scheme in which an Australian man and his business partner in Southern California opened 19 charter schools throughout the state and then took the public funding the schools received to operate and used it instead for real estate and other ventures.

This post explains the scam that the 235-page indictment spells out in detail. This is long but worth the time to read to get an understanding of how easy it is, because of lax charter sector laws in some states, to defraud the public.

California, which has more charter schools and more charter school students than any other state, now has one of the most lax charter laws in the country, allowing these schools to operate with little if any accountability or transparency to the public.

-snip-

Inside the Charter School Empire Prosecutors Say Scammed California for $80M

The indictment against the leaders of A3 Education lays out a complex organizational structure with two top leaders and several lieutenants who led the charge to enroll thousands of summer school students, who did not actually take classes. Several superintendents, knowingly or not, helped fuel the network’s growth. And untold coaches, students and parents were roped in to help boost enrollment.

Will Huntsberry
June 12, 2019

Sean McManus and Jason Schrock created an online charter school empire that covered more than half the state of California, according to prosecutors and investigators for an outside charter school organization.

From the port of entry at San Ysidro up to Los Angeles, past the cliffs of Big Sur all the way to Santa Cruz; east through Raisin City, past the giant sequoias of Sierra National Forest, and down into the flat and quiet of Death Valley; south again to the Mexican border; and back to the coast – a person could travel unbroken through 20 counties that made up the lower half of their empire. An outpost of 14 counties encompassing Sonoma and Sacramento sits further north.

From this vast swath of territory, McManus and Schrock absorbed mind-blowing profits. Take just some of their 2016 tax returns: Their nonprofit charter management company A3 brought in $14.2 million in revenue. It spent only $3.6 million. Of the money it spent, $855,796 went to McManus and Schrock’s salaries. They appeared to be the only two employees, according to the tax return.

The profits climbed even higher in the months that followed, according to an indictment filed by prosecutors. A3 Education and other companies controlled by McManus and Schrock ultimately brought in more than $80 million, prosecutors say.

Nothing in the law stops a nonprofit charter management company from operating on wide profit margins or paying its officers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But the company’s “profits” aren’t ever supposed to make it into personal bank accounts. To get them there requires shady accounting. Prosecutors say McManus and Schrock extracted roughly $8 million into bank accounts and personal charities and bought a $1.6 million house for joint use in San Juan Capistrano.

-snip-

Dangerous skin bleaching has become a public health crisis. Corporate marketing lies behind it.

As a result, when African nations ban bleaching products, the bans will probably backfire

By Ramya M. Vijaya June 15 at 7:00 AM

In the past several years, multinational corporations have heavily marketed the idea that lighter skin leads to more prosperity. As a result, dangerous skin bleaching has become a public health crisis, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In response, the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) recently passed a resolution recommending a regional ban on cosmetics with hydroquinone, a skin-bleaching agent — a ban that looks likely to pass. Several countries, including Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan, have also banned bleaching cosmetics in recent months.

Despite these warnings and bans, the skin-whitening industry has experienced phenomenal growth in parts of Asia and Africa in recent years. A WHO report found that nearly 77 percent of Nigerian women reported using skin-lightening products regularly. In India, 61 percent of the skin-care market consisted of skin-lightening products. Analysts project still more growth in years to come. However, in my research on the cosmetic industry’s global colorism marketing, I found that banning bleaching agents is counterproductive and might exacerbate the crisis, as I explain below.

Market research shows continued, exponential growth in the global market for skin-whitening products. One forecast projects the industry to reach about $24 billion in value by 2027. Another puts the figure at $31.2 billion by the year 2024. Multinational brands Unilever, Beiersdorf and L’Oreal are the three dominant players in this industry globally. In India and Nigeria, the two country case studies in my chapter in the book “Race in the Marketplace,” Unilever and Beiersdorf have the largest market shares respectively. The dominance of multinational corporations in the industry is creating a new dynamic in colorism, the preference for lighter skin tones even among nonwhite majority populations. Their marketing is amplifying colonial-era associations of power and privilege with white skin already embedded in parts of Asia and Africa.

Attempting to cash in on a growing, aspirational middle-class consumer base in these regions, companies use advertising to link lighter skin with perceptions of not just beauty but also socioeconomic mobility.

In the early 2000s, Unilever began airing what became a notorious commercial for its Fair and Lovely whitening cream on Indian television. ...

-snip-

WORLD NEWS JUNE 14, 2019 / 5:47 PM / UPDATED 12 HOURS AGO

U.S., others object to U.N. counterterrorism chief visit to China's Xinjiang

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and other western countries have objected to a visit by the United Nations counterterrorism chief to China’s remote Xinjiang, where U.N. experts say some one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centers.

Vladimir Voronkov, a veteran Russian diplomat who heads the U.N. Counterterrorism Office, is in China at the invitation of Beijing and is due to visit Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, according to an email sent by his office to countries that raised concerns.

Diplomats said that along with the United States several other countries, including Britain, also complained.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan spoke with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday “to convey deep concerns” about Voronkov’s trip because “Beijing continues to paint its repressive campaign against Uighurs and other Muslims as legitimate counterterrorism efforts when it is not.”

“The Deputy Secretary expressed that such a visit is highly inappropriate in view of the unprecedented repression campaign underway in Xinjiang against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

-snip-

Sara Netanyahu pleads guilty in illegal meals case as corruption probes loom over husband

By Oren Liebermann, CNN
Updated 0847 GMT (1647 HKT) June 13, 2019

Jerusalem (CNN) — Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed to a plea deal on Wednesday morning in a case concerning illegally ordered meals at the Prime Minister's residence, according to a statement released by Israel's Justice Ministry.

Sara Netanyahu, who was initially charged with fraud one year ago, agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of taking unfair advantage of a mistake, the Justice Ministry statement said. She will also pay 55,000 shekels (approximately $15,300) -- 45,000 shekels back to the state, and 10,000 shekels in the form of a fine.

A spokesman for Israel's first lady had no comment.

According to an amended indictment sheet, the case involved the ordering of catered meals delivered to the residence worth a total of 175,000 shekels (just under $50,000).

-snip-