Police: Army vet drove into people thinking they were Muslim
SAN FRANCISCO — An Iraq War veteran deliberately drove into a group of pedestrians because he thought some of the people were Muslim, California authorities said Friday.
Isaiah Joel Peoples, 34, faces eight counts of attempted murder for injuring eight people, including four who remain hospitalized. The most seriously injured is a 13-year-old Sunnyvale girl of South Asian descent who is in a coma with severe brain trauma.
“New evidence shows that the defendant intentionally targeted the victims based on their race and his belief that they were of the Muslim faith,” Sunnyvale police chief Phan Ngo said.
Peoples appeared briefly in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Friday. He did not enter a plea and is being held without bail.
The former U.S. Army sharpshooter experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, his family said. Peoples’ attorney, Chuck Smith, said Friday that the crash was in no way deliberate.
Hours after mass escape, migrants chant for food, freedom
TAPACHULA, Mexico — About 600 mostly Cuban migrants who were part of a mass escape from a southern Mexico immigration detention center a day earlier remained at large Friday evening, immigration authorities said.
Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said in a statement that rather than the 1,300 escapees it reported Thursday night, only 645 migrants had actually fled. It said only 35 of those who escaped had returned without explaining why it had lowered its figures.
The center was holding 1,745 people at the time, nearly double its capacity, the statement said.
The escape began with Cuban migrants escaping their holding area into an area reserved for women, who were mostly Honduran. That caused a commotion and migrants gained access to other parts of the detention center before eventually making it to the main entrance. Immigration agents were unarmed and unable to intervene.
Hours after the mass escape, throngs of detained migrants raised their fists in the air Friday and chanted “We want food! We want out!”
Biden reports $6.3 million 1-day haul, biggest in 2020 field
Former Vice President Joe Biden is reporting he raised $6.3 million in the first day of his campaign, the most of any of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in the first 24 hours after their announcements.
In a news release Friday, Biden’s campaign says he raised the money from nearly 97,000 individuals across all 50 states, including 65,000 who weren’t solicited by email.
Biden edged former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s first-day total of $6.1 million and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ sum of slightly less than $6 million.
Biden attended a fundraiser in Philadelphia on Thursday evening aimed at raising $500,000. Hosts said Friday raised substantially more.
The former vice president under Barack Obama entered the race Thursday, declaring the “soul of this nation” at stake under President Donald Trump’s administration.
Russian Maria Butina gets 18 months for being Kremlin agent
WASHINGTON — In a quivering voice, Maria Butina begged for leniency Friday as she awaited sentencing on charges of being a secret agent for Russia. She cast herself as an innocent caught up in a massive geopolitical power game.
But a federal judge sentenced her to 18 months in prison followed by deportation. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sided with prosecutors, who said the 30-year-old Russian deliberately obscured her true purposes while developing backdoor contacts inside the American conservative movement to advance the interests of Russia.
The sentence can be appealed and Butina will get credit for her time in jail since her high-profile arrest in July 2018. The case garnered intense media coverage amid speculation over the extent of Russian interference in American politics.
Butina admitted last year to covertly gathering intelligence on the National Rifle Association and other groups at the direction of a former Russian lawmaker. Her guilty plea to a single charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent came as part of a deal with prosecutors.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, Butina appealed to Chutkan to release her with nine months of time served.
Outlook for the US economy and stock market brightens
WASHINGTON — The worries that hung ominously over the U.S. economy early this year appear to have lifted. And that sunnier picture has helped bolster confidence in the stock market — driving the benchmark S&P 500 index to another record high Friday.
The latest dose of encouragement came in a report Friday that the U.S. economy grew much faster than expected in the January-March quarter, suggesting that the nearly decade-long expansion still has a ways to go.
Other recent signs have fed a growing view among many analysts that the economy faces little risk of slipping into a recession anytime soon as some had feared when the year began. Retail sales jumped in March. And with hiring solid and wages rising at a decent pace, consumer spending will likely strengthen in the coming months.
In Friday’s report, the government said the economy grew at a 3.2% annual rate in the first quarter. That’s much better than the 1% or below rate that was forecast in the early weeks of 2019.
Though the economy is widely expected to slow in the current quarter to a roughly 2% rate or less, such a pace would still produce annual growth for the first half of the year of roughly 2.5%. That would be a solid gain. And it would be in line with the modest but steady growth that has prevailed for most of the expansion.
