Connect with us

News

Video Shows Tyre Nichols’ Brutal Beating By Memphis Police

(CTN NEWS) – Police released video footage Friday showing Tyre Nichols being beaten by five Memphis police officers as he screamed for his mother as they repeatedly struck him with fists, boots, and batons.

The video shows the Black officers chasing and pummeling Nichols, leaving him propped against a squad car as they fist-bump and celebrate.

The footage emerged a day after the officers were charged with murder in Nichols’ death.

Another Black man was killed by police, raising tough questions about why deadly encounters with law enforcement persist despite repeated calls for change.

There were mostly peaceful protests in multiple cities, including Memphis, where demonstrators blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that crosses the Mississippi River toward Arkansas.

/ AP

There was a long line of semi-trucks. Across the street from the White House and near Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, dozens of protestors gathered in Lafayette Park.

According to the recording, police brutally beat the 29-year-old FedEx worker for three minutes while screaming profanities at him.

According to the Nichols family’s legal team, the assault is similar to the infamous 1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.

As a group of officers wrestles him to the ground, Nichols says, “I didn’t do anything,” as the first officer roughly pulls him out of a car.

A police officer yells, “Tase him!” ” A calm Nichols says, “OK, I’m on the ground.”

Nichols tells them, “You’re doing a great job.”. “I just want to get home.”. He yells, “Stop! I’m not doing anything!” Moments later.

The officer then fires a Taser at Nichols, who runs away. The officers then chase Nichols.

/ AP

A search ensues before Nichols is caught at another intersection after other officers are called. The officers beat him with a baton, kicked, and punched him.

Three officers surround Nichols as he lies in the street, cornered between two police cars, and a fourth officer is nearby.

As Nichols moves about, two officers hold him to the ground, and then the third appears to kick him in the head.

All three officers surround Nichols as he slumps further onto the pavement. Once again, the officer kicks him.

As two officers hold Nichols upright, the fourth officer draws a baton and holds it at shoulder level.

The officer can be heard saying, “I’m going to baton you to death.” The officer can be seen raising his baton while at least one other officer holds Nichols. Three times, the officer strikes Nichols on the back with the baton.

Nichols flops like a doll as the other officers hoist him to his feet.

As the officer with the baton continues to threaten him, an officer punches him in the face. Nichols stumbles and turns, still being held up by two officers.

Protesters gather Friday, Jan. 27, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn., as authorities are set to release police video depicting five Memphis officers beating Tyre Nichols, whose death resulted in murder charges and provoked outrage at the country’s latest instance of police brutality. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

He then walks around to Nichols’ front and punches him four more times. After that, Nichols collapses.

For about 40 seconds, two officers are seen atop Nichols on the ground, with a third nearby. Then, three more officers run up, and one kicks Nichols.

Nichols is slumped against a car, but no officer offers assistance. The body camera footage shows one of them tying his shoe from a first-person perspective.

Even though two fire department officers arrived on the scene with medical equipment within 10 minutes after Nichols was beaten and on the pavement, no medical attention was provided for more than 20 minutes after Nichols was beaten and on the pavement.

In the videos, officers make claims about Nichols’ behavior that are either not supported by the footage or have been denied by the district attorney and other officials.

According to one of the videos, Nichols almost reached for his gun before fleeing during the initial traffic stop, which is not shown in the video.

RowVaughn Wells, the mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is comforted by Tyre’s stepfather Rodney Wells, at a news conference with civil rights Attorney Ben Crump in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Nichols is handcuffed and leaning against a police car when several officers say he must be high. After an officer says no drugs were found in Nichols’s car, another counter that he must have ditched something as he ran away.

An autopsy report has not been released, but authorities say there was no reason for the traffic stop and nothing of note was found in the car.

Additionally to the five officers charged, the video raised questions about the role and potential culpability of the other officers at the scene.

After the beating, other officers are seen standing around.

According to Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, other officers are under investigation.

Davis described the actions of the five officers as “heinous, reckless, and inhuman.”

The video shows the officers “already ramped up, at about a 10,” she said. “The officers were aggressive, loud, used profane language, and probably scared Mr. Nichols from the start.”

According to Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies the use of force, police are trained to understand that people might flee when they are scared.

CORRECTS DATE FROM THURSDAY, JAN. 26 TO FRIDAY, JAN. 27 – Protesters gather in Lafayette Park outside the White House in Washington, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023, over the death of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Demonstrations were expected across the country. In Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, and Portland, Oregon, protests were planned for Friday night.

Supporters of Nichols were urged to protest peacefully.

On Thursday, Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said that burning down our city and tearing up the streets isn’t what her son stood for. “If you’re here for Tyre and me, you’ll protest peacefully.”

On Friday, Christopher Taylor was one of the protesters at the Interstate 55 bridge. He watched the video, he said. After the beating, the officers appeared to be laughing, according to the Memphis native.

He said, “I cried.”. “And that right there, as a father myself and as a son, my mother is still alive, that could have been me.”

Joe Biden said Friday at the White House that he was “very concerned” about the prospect of violence and called for peaceful protests.

Nichols’ mother told Biden earlier in the day that he was going to “make a case” to Congress for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed “to get this under control.”

/ AP

The legislation, which has been stalled, is intended to combat police misconduct and excessive force and boost federal and state accountability initiatives.

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III, and Justin Smith were all taken into custody, according to court records.

Each officer faces charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and official oppression.

According to court and jail records, four of the five officers had posted bonds and had been released from custody by Friday morning.

Tennessee law punishes second-degree murder with 15 to 60 years in prison.

In a statement late Friday, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies who appeared on the scene after the beating had been relieved of duty.

The national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Patrick Yoes, condemned the alleged actions of the Memphis police officers. “The events described do not constitute legitimate police work or a traffic stop gone wrong.” Yoes called it a criminal assault.

As state and federal investigations continue, Davis pledged the police department’s “complete cooperation.”

RELATED CTN NEWS:

FDA Calls for New Regulatory Framework for the Use Of Cannabis Compound CBD

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

Continue Reading

News

2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

Continue Reading

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

SEE ALSO:

Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

Continue Reading

Trending