MicroWave

joined 2 years ago
 

Family members say the man killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis on Saturday was an intensive care nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital who cared deeply about people and was upset by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in his city.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula Leopard dog who also recently died. He had participated in protests following the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer on Jan. 7.

Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois. Like Good, court records showed he had no criminal record and his family said he had never had any interactions with law enforcement beyond a handful of traffic tickets.

In a recent conversation with their son, his parents, who live in Colorado, told him to be careful when protesting.

 

European Council President Antonio Luis Santos da Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will be chief guests at India's Republic Day celebrations next Monday.

Besides state banquets and the ceremonial pomp of the event, the two leaders will have a more pressing item on their agenda - advancing free trade talks with Asia's third largest economy. This comes at a particularly trying geopolitical moment for Europe, with Donald Trump first threatening to escalate his trade war with European allies for opposing a US takeover of Greenland and then backing off.

The choice of guests also carries an important diplomatic message from India - Delhi is accelerating strategic and trade ties with the rest of the world as the impasse over Washington's 50% tariffs on India spills over into the new year.

 

The NFL’s decision to feature Latin artist Bad Bunny at halftime has already sparked controversy in some conservative circles, with critics arguing that his predominantly Spanish-language music and stances on issues such as immigration make him an unconventional pick for the game’s massive audience.

His 2025 song “Nuevayol” features an imitated Trump voice saying, “I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. . . . This country is nothing without the immigrants. This country is nothing without Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Cubans.”

Green Day, which formed in the East Bay Area in the 1980s, is set to perform during the game’s opening ceremony. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has long denounced the administration and has altered the lyrics of the band’s 2004 Grammy-nominated song “American Idiot” during live performances, changing the line “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.”

In July, Armstrong led a Download Festival crowd in a chant calling Trump a “fat bastard.”

 

The footage of the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, said one journalist, “shows that the final act of his life was trying to help a woman who was being physically assaulted by the masked agents who would then kill him.”

In the original video of the shooting of a man in Minneapolis, identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune at 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a woman in a pink coat was seen in the background filming the incident with her phone. 

Drop Site News obtained footage that appeared "to come from the direction of the woman in pink filming from the sidewalk" and showed the shooting at a closer distance than the footage taken from inside Glam Doll Donuts. 

In the video, the shooting victim, dressed in a brown coat and pants, is seen filming a federal agent with his phone. He's then seen guiding another person toward the sidewalk as the agent forcefully shoves a third person to the ground.

 

The man fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 24, has been identified as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The shooting follows the shooting death of Renee Good by an agent on Jan. 7 in south Minneapolis.

Pretti, 37, has an address listed in south Minneapolis.

Reporters with the Minnesota Star Tribune reached two members of Pretti’s immediate family as the news was still spreading. His sister fought back sobs on the phone before hanging up.

At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the man who was shot was a 37-year-old white man whose criminal record only showed some parking tickets. Law enforcement sources said Saturday their records show Pretti had no serious criminal history.

 

Exclusive: German research into responses to health queries raises fresh questions about summaries seen by 2bn people a month

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.

The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.

However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world’s second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google.

Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said.

 

Fatal shooting comes less than three weeks after Renee Good was killed by federal immigration agent in city

A person was shot to death by federal law enforcement officers on Saturday in Minneapolis for the second time in less than three weeks.

Saturday morning’s shooting comes after Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, was shot and killed on 7 January by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis after video showed her trying to drive away from a confrontation, sparking protests nationwide.

City and local police officials said in their statement that the “shooting involving federal law enforcement” occurred in the area of West 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, and that they were “working to confirm additional details”.

 

The office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was among the latest to be added to the lengthy list of Trump critics who are under investigation.

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the “weaponization“ of the Justice Department, saying the previous administration abused its power to investigate political opponents.

But in recent weeks, the Justice Department has started investigating Trump's political adversaries, including one of his former opponents in the 2024 election, the head of the Federal Reserve and a former cable TV critic.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the president suggested more was on the way. Speaking of the 2020 presidential election — which he lost by more than 7 million votes— Trump said, “It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. ... People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

 

Prosecutors say cuts to funding and training limits their ability to bring child predators to justice

The US Department of Justice has slashed funding and training resources for law enforcement working on investigations and prosecutions of sex crimes against children under the Trump administration, which limits their ability to carry out this work.

Major cuts include the cancelation of 2025 National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation, due to be held in Washington DC in June. The conference is an annual event that provides technical training to prosecutors, state and federal law enforcement officers on investigating online crimes against children.

The sweeping cuts, enacted soon after Donald Trump began his second term as US president, are putting vulnerable children at risk and impeding efforts to bring child predators to justice, according to four prosecutors and law enforcement officers specializing in cases of child sexual exploitation, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

 

Groups say EPA did not adequately consider adverse health effects to children when it approved the pesticide

Public health groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its approval of a Pfas “forever chemical” insecticide that industry research found likely reduces testicle size, lowers sperm count and harms the liver in rats.

The pesticide, isocycloseram, is used on food crops and could especially threaten children and developing fetuses, but the EPA did not factor those risks into its safety assessment, said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a plaintiff in the suit.

The lawsuit marks the latest flare-up in an ongoing controversy over the use of forever chemicals in pesticides, which public health advocates discovered under the Biden administration, and has accelerated under Trump.

 

Snow, sleet and freezing temperatures are forecast for the south, midwest and east coast over the weekend

The dangerous monster storm threatening half of the US was on Friday bearing down, with 16 states and Washington DC already declaring emergencies and areas typically unused to prolonged Arctic temperatures bracing for power failures and supply shortages.

At least 230 million people are likely to be affected by the huge winter weather system as it forms in parts of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains and surges across southern and midwestern areas from Friday, blowing up the east coast on Saturday and as far north as Maine by Sunday.

 

A new Pentagon strategy paper breaks with much past US defense policy, while ignoring climate change as a growing threat. It also foresees allies receiving less military support from Washington.

The US will concentrate mostly on protecting the homeland and combating the threat posed by China, while expecting allies to look after their own defense with reduced help from Washington, according to a strategy document released by the Pentagon on Friday.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), subtitled "Restoring peace through strength for a new golden age of America," differs markedly in its priorities from previous such documents.

It highlights a very different set of threats to US security, with immigration seen as a top danger and that posed by Russia and China downplayed.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks officer

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Thanks, that’s nice to hear from a fellow longtimer.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago (4 children)
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