IRNews IRNews

USA Today:

As a memorial service next week for Jordan Neely is being organized, his
killer Daniel Penny awaits trial, where prosecutors will seek a grand
jury indictment on a charge of manslaughter.

On Friday, Penny was arrested less than 24 hours after Manhattan
prosecutors announced the charge of manslaughter, and then he was
released on bond.

The 24-year-old could face up to 15 years in prison for administering a
fatal chokehold on Neely, a 30-year-old Black man experiencing
homelessness, on May 1 after an altercation on board the subway.

In the days following Neely's death, New York police failed to release
substantial details about what happened on board the subway car leading
up to the chokehold, as well as what happened in the minutes leading up
to the arrival of police.

A medical examiner ruled Neely's death a homicide caused by depression
of the neck.

Lawyers for Penny, a white U.S. Marine Corps veteran, say he acted in
self-defense.

Bystanders on board the subway on May 1 have said Neely did not
physically assault anyone in the moments leading up to Penny grabbing
him from behind, lawyers say.

What charges is Daniel Penny facing?

Nearly two weeks after administering a fatal chokehold on Neely,
prosecutors announced Penny would be charged with second degree
manslaughter.

On Friday, lawyer Lennon Edwards said the Manhattan district attorney
"admitted" to him he could not recall a single other instance in the
past 25 years where a suspect in a death case was released from custody
after police secured a confession and video evidence, as in the case of
Penny.

"He should have been arrested on the spot," the day of the incident,
said Edwards, a lawyer for Neely's family.

On Friday, a judge authorized Penny’s release on $100,000 bond and
ordered him to surrender his passport and not to leave New York without
approval.

Edwards said the district attorney had told Neely's father this week to
expect a possible indictment in June.




---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message

Yahoo News:

CNN’s highly anticipated town hall with Donald Trump on Wednesday night
renewed long-standing questions about how to cover the former president
without simply allowing him to peddle falsehoods on a national platform.
Those questions are becoming more urgent as Trump’s campaign recovers
from last November’s lackluster rollout of a new White House campaign.

Hosted by anchor Kaitlan Collins, a former White House reporter and a
rising star at the network, the event came as Trump appeared to be
consolidating his position as the GOP frontrunner. In the audience sat
undecided voters from New Hampshire, a crucial early-primary state.

But there was little effort from the former president to demonstrate
that he had been chastened by his loss in 2020 and was intent on running
a more disciplined campaign in 2024.

Instead, he engaged in his usual lies about his loss to Joe Biden while
also mocking the judgment against him earlier this week in a Manhattan
sexual assault civil suit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. He claimed
that he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours and suggested that
the way to prevent school shootings was to arm teachers.

And for good measure, he insulted Collins, calling her a “nasty person.”

Questions about CNN’s judgment

Eight years after Trump launched his first presidential campaign, the
question of how to cover the master of attention-getting remains
unresolved. He is clearly not the sideshow that some dismissed him as in
2015 (he did, after all, win the presidency in 2016), but in the wake
of the Jan. 6, 2021, deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, there are
legitimate questions about how to properly cover a candidate routinely
given to make incendiary statements, not to mention transparently false
ones.

CNN chief executive Chris Licht has been intent on making the network
more appealing to moderates and even conservatives since the Trump
presidency, and Wednesday night’s town hall was clearly an effort to
appeal to voters who might otherwise have tuned in to Fox News.

But to some, simply letting Trump peddle falsehoods was a disservice to
the political process. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said on
Twitter that “CNN should be ashamed of themselves,” while Democratic
strategist Simon Rosenberg called on Licht to resign.




---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message

William Maher (/mɑːr/; born January 20, 1956) is an American comedian,
writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He
is known for the HBO political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher
(2003–present) and the similar late-night show called Politically
Incorrect (1993–2002), originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC. In
2022, Maher started the podcast Club Random.

Maher is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary.
He targets many topics including religion, political correctness, and
the mass media. His critical views of religion were the basis for his
2008 documentary film Religulous. He is a supporter of animal rights,
having served on the board of PETA since 1997, and is an advisory board
member of Project Reason. Maher supports the legalization of cannabis,
serving on the advisory board of NORML.

Maher is a frequent commentator on various cable news networks,
including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and HLN. Maher has regularly appeared on
CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and has also been a frequent
guest on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Rachel Maddow Show,
and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Maher has also appeared as a guest
on HLN's The Joy Behar Show. He wrote the foreword for the 2002 book,
Spin This!: All the Ways We Don't Tell the Truth by show host Bill
Press.

Maher hosted the January 13, 2006, edition of Larry King Live, on which
he was a frequent guest. Maher appeared as a special guest on the June
29, 2010, edition of the show, on which CNN anchor Larry King announced
his retirement. Maher co-emceed the final show of Larry King Live on
December 16, 2010, with Ryan Seacrest.




---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message

Time:

In a matter of minutes on Monday, the face of cable news changed
dramatically. First, Fox News reported that it had “parted ways” with
Tucker Carlson, the host of the conservative cable news network’s hit 8
p.m. show Tucker Carlson Tonight. Then, just as the Succession memes
started flowing, longtime CNN host Don Lemon posted a note on Twitter
informing followers that he’d just heard, via his agent, that the
network was firing him. (CNN has since disputed that characterization,
tweeting that Lemon “was offered an opportunity to meet with management
but instead released a statement on Twitter.”)

It’s tempting to lump together these two departures, considering that
they were announced almost simultaneously. (Lemon was open about his
termination, whereas Carlson’s exit was publicly framed as a mutual
decision. A source at Fox confirmed to TIME that the decision was not a
financial one and suggested that Carlson was likely surprised by the
decision, given his signoff on Friday’s show, but would not provide
further comment.) Carlson and Lemon have something else in common, too:
both men are controversial, and have faced backlash from the media and
the public as well as their co-workers. The Fox News star leans into his
role as a provocateur, promoting a right-wing agenda that barely
bothers to conceal its grounding in racism, sexism, xenophobia,
conspiracy thinking, religious intolerance, and hatred of the LGBTQ
community. His less inflammatory CNN counterpart, meanwhile, has been
mired in accusations of misogyny and bad behavior on set. But it would
be a mistake to read their tandem dismissals as some righteous act on
the part of cable news media writ large to purge itself of toxic men.
The cases have important differences, though both will surely impact how
TV covers the 2024 presidential election.

Of the two, Lemon was the much more obvious candidate for replacement.
As he put it on Twitter on Monday morning: “It is clear that there are
some larger issues in play.” As anyone who’s been following his career
recently will remember, one salient issue is Lemon himself. This past
February, the CNN This Morning co-anchor came under fire for calling
51-year-old Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley over the hill.
“Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Lemon told his female
co-hosts. “When a woman is considered to be in her prime—in her 20s,
30s, and maybe her 40s.” Further reporting turned up allegations that
Lemon had a long history of behavior that Variety characterized as
painting “a picture of a journalist who flouted rules and cozied up to
power all while displaying open hostility to many female co-workers.”





---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message

New York Times/Yahoo News:

Dominion Voting Systems did more on Tuesday than settle its lawsuit
against Fox News for $787.5 million: It also set the tone for the many
related defamation cases it has filed.

Legal experts say the settlement with Fox News, one of the largest
defamation payouts in American history, could embolden Dominion as it
continues to defend its reputation, which it says was savaged by
conspiracy theories about vote fraud during the 2020 election. The
company has several cases pending against public figures including Mike
Lindell, the MyPillow executive, and news outlets such as Newsmax.

The targets of Dominion’s remaining lawsuits, few of which have deep
pockets and legal firepower at Fox’s level, will likely take a cue from
Dominion and Fox’s faceoff, legal experts said.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

“Even though it was a settlement, it certainly was a victory for
Dominion,” said Margaret M. Russell, a law professor at Santa Clara
University. “For other possible defendants, I don’t think this will make
them double down; it will make them fearful.”

Dominion is the second-largest election technology company operating in
the United States, where there are few other major players. The company,
whose majority owner is the private equity firm Staple Street Capital,
was made “toxic” by the false fraud narratives in 2020, one of Staple
Street’s founders said in court documents. At one point, Dominion
estimated that misinformation cost it $600 million in profits.

Fox said in its court filings that Dominion did not have to lay off
employees, close offices or default on any debts, nor did it suffer any
canceled business contracts as a result of the news network’s coverage.
Fox said in one filing that Dominion had projected $98 million in
revenue for 2022, which would make Tuesday’s settlement the equivalent
of eight years of sales...




---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message

Russia Today:Paris is an ally and not a “vassal” of Washington,
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted on Wednesday. He was defending
his recent comments about the EU needing “strategic autonomy” in the
face of rising tensions between the US and China.“Being an ally
does not mean being a vassal... doesn’t mean that we don’t have the
right to think for ourselves,” Macron said in Amsterdam at a joint press
conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.Asked for the
French position on Taiwan, Macron said Paris supports the status quo,
meaning the “One China policy and the search for a peaceful resolution
to the situation.”Returning from his trip to China on Sunday,
Macron argued that the EU can’t just be “America’s followers,” and that
it is not in the bloc’s interest to stoke tensions over Taiwan. “The
worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on
this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese
overreaction,” he told reporters.The remarks earned a swift
rebuke from US Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican on the foreign
affairs committee, who suggested Washington might leave the EU to handle
the Ukraine conflict by itself. Taiwanese Parliament Speaker
You Si-kun on Tuesday argued that France had forsaken its motto of
‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, and that advanced democracies should
not “ignore the lives and deaths of people in other countries,” adding
that Macron’s comments left him “puzzled.”Meanwhile, French
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that Macron was “perfectly right to
demand European independence and sovereignty,” while the president of
the European Council, Charles Michel, noted that “quite a few” leaders
of EU countries think like Macron, even though they “wouldn’t say things
the same way.”When asked about the French president’s comments
on Monday, the US State Department said France is a long-standing ally
and that occasional disagreements do not detract from the “deep
partnership” with Paris. As for the EU position, a State Department
spokesman cited a recent speech by the bloc’s president, Ursula von der
Leyen, which described China as “a national and economic security
threat,” and said there is “immense convergence” between Washington and
Brussels on the matter.


---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/irnews/message