Tennessee House Speaker's Top Aide Resigns After Accusations of Framing Black Activist and Sending Racist and Sexist Texts

Anne Branigin
Today 10:51am Filed to: TENNESSEE

Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada’s chief of staff, a white man who actually and truly goes by the name Cade Cothren, has resigned amid allegations that he framed a black activist, as well as sent racist and sexually explicit texts, some of which were received by his boss. Cothren announced his resignation on Monday, hours after admitting to using illegal drugs, including snorting cocaine, in his legislative offices.

Yes, it’s astoundingly messy. So, let’s take it slowly.

The first allegation to surface involves Cothren’s participation in framing Justin Jones, a Vanderbilt University divinity student who has protested at the Tennessee State House over a bust honoring a Confederate general, according to ThinkProgress. Tennessee politics being Tennessee politics, the state legislature refused to take down the statue. In February, following a protest at the Capitol, Jones was arrested for assault after a cup was thrown into Speaker Casada’s elevator.

Because elevators matter more than black lives at the State House, a condition of Jones’ bond was that he was prohibited from contacting Casada. This is where our boy Cade Cothren comes in.

Jones maintains that he’s obeyed the order, but Cothren sent a photo to Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk showing Jones emailed Casada’s office one day after the order was handed down. The problem? Jones’ email records show the email was actually sent on February 25—before his arrest.

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‘The colony within the colony’: Puerto Rico fumes as FEMA deliberates over remote hospital

By Jeff Stein and Dennis M. Rivera May 6 at 11:41 AM

VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO — Sylvia Velez woke up at 4 a.m. one day in February to catch the ferry from this isolated island community to a hospital on the main island of Puerto Rico.

But when she arrived at the dock, Velez, 64, discovered the boat was already filled. There wasn’t space for her on the next ferry, either, or the one after that.

The cancer patient waited 32 straight hours — sleeping in her car, snacking on chips and soda from the vending machine, going to the bathroom off the side of the road — before securing a spot on the ferry that took her across the water and then to her doctor in San Juan.

Velez’s struggle to secure medical treatment reflects one of the many ways residents of Vieques, and Puerto Rico more broadly, have been frustrated with the pace of federal disaster recovery and its implications for their health.

More than 19 months after Hurricane Maria hit in September 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not decided whether to reconstruct Vieques’s only hospital amid conflicting estimates about how much the federal government is required to rebuild.

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Call for students to film 'biased' teachers brings Brazil's culture wars to classroom

President Bolsonaro has accused schoolteachers of indoctrination but educators say his aim is to stifle critical thinking

Anna Jean Kaiser in São Paulo
Fri 3 May 2019 10.00 BST Last modified on Fri 3 May 2019 14.49 BST

Jair Bolsonaro has encouraged school students to film teachers during class if they suspect them of pushing leftist ideas, reigniting a battle in one of the most contested arenas of Brazil’s raging culture wars.

“Teachers need to teach and not indoctrinate,” Bolsonaro tweeted this week as he shared a video shot in class by a student who accused her teacher of criticizing the far-right president.

Bolsonaro’s son Carlos also retweeted a student-made video with the comment: “Filming/recording in schools is an act of legitimate defense against ideological predators who are disguised as teachers.”

The call to film teachers originated with a movement called Schools without Party (known by its Portuguese acronym ESP) – a fringe rightwing movement founded in 2004 which gained influence as Bolsonaro rose to power.

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Trump's new ambassador to Colombia was once expelled from Bolivia

• Philip Goldberg was accused of fomenting dissent in 2008
• Conservative will oversee vast military aid budget

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Thu 2 May 2019 17.15 BST Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 18.45 BST

Donald Trump has nominated a controversial career diplomat who was once expelled from Bolivia as the new US ambassador to Colombia, in a move that is likely to raise eyebrows across Latin America.

Philip Goldberg served as the US ambassador to Bolivia for two years before its leftwing president, Evo Morales, accused him of fomenting dissent in 2008 and ordered him to leave the country.

Goldberg had provoked the Bolivian president’s fury by meeting with members of the rightwing opposition; the US denied Morales’s accusations and expelled Bolivia’s envoy to Washington in response.

Unlike Bolivia, which has been governed by Morales since 2006, Colombia has long been a staunch ally of the US, which views it as a bulwark against leftwing governments across the region.

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U.S. LEGAL NEWS MAY 2, 2019 / 9:03 AM / UPDATED 20 MINUTES AGO

Pepsi withdraws lawsuits against Indian potato farmers

Mayank Bhardwaj
2 MIN READ

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc said on Thursday it will withdraw its lawsuits against a number of Indian potato farmers accused of infringing its patent.

After suing four farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, grown exclusively for PepsiCo’s popular Lay’s potato chips, the snack food and drinks maker said last week it wanted to “amicably settle” the issue.

Other than filing the lawsuit against the four farmers in April, PepsiCo had also sued five other potato growers.

“After discussions with the government, the company has agreed to withdraw the cases against the farmers,” a PepsiCo India spokesman said, adding that applied to all nine of them.

The decision comes after an influential Hindu nationalist group with close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party accused PepsiCo of coercing the farmers.

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‘I’m F*cked!’: Amber Guyger’s Frantic 911 Call Leaks Ahead Of Her Murder Trial

The fired police officer can be heard panicking after shooting Botham Jean.

NewsOne Staff
Written By NewsOne Staff
Posted 7 hours ago

The 911 call made by an off duty Dallas police officer who shot and killed a man in his own home last year has been made public by a local news station. WFAA on Monday night published the audio of Amber Guyger‘s frantic phone conversation with an emergency services operator in moments after she shot and killed Botham Shem Jean in his own home back in September.

The call provided a glimpse into what Guyger may have been thinking after she purportedly mistook Jean for a burglar in her apartment, which was actually located one floor below.

WFAA said that it “obtained the recording after months of reporting,” but it could have been leaked by Guyger’s defense attorneys, or even her former colleagues at the Dallas Police Department, looking to curry favor with potential jurors in her murder trial, which was slated to begin in late September, more than a year after Botham was killed. The 911 call has not been officially released by any law enforcement agency.

On the call, Guyger can be heard breathing heavily and cursing in between telling the operator what she had done. Guyger openly says several times that she’s probably going to lose her job over this, apparently showing more concern for her career than the innocent Black man she is accused of executing.

“I’m f*cked,” she said at one point during the call before later adding, “I’m going to lose my job.”

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Jean Family Lawyer: Guyger supporters leaked audio to gain sympathy

LOOP NEWS CREATED : 30 APRIL 2019

Jean family attorney Lee Merritt reacted in a Facebook post to the release of the 911 call that Amber Guyger made following her fatally shooting Botham Jean in his own apartment:

Merritt wrote: "Supporters of Amber Guyger, the former Dallas Police officer that murdered Botham Jean in his apartment, have leaked a recording of her 911 call to the media in hopes of drumming up sympathy ahead of the looming murder trial.

On the recording, Guyger repeatedly claims that she thought she was in her apartment. She callously despairs over the idea that she would probably lose her job— not that she had murdered a man in his own home. There is nothing new that can be gleaned from this recording that helps justify Guyger’s actions.

Completely absent from the 911 recording is any actual justification for the use of deadly force. Guyger will almost certainly argue at trial that she “feared for her life”. She failed to make any such claim moments after shooting Botham in the chest. If he presented a threat to her at all— this would be the first thing she said as she explained away her actions on the call.

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A symbol of slavery — and survival

Angela’s arrival in Jamestown in 1619 marked the beginning of a subjugation that left millions in chains.

By DeNeen L. Brown
APRIL 29, 2019

By the time Angela was brought to Jamestown’s muddy shores in 1619, she had survived war and capture in West Africa, a forced march of more than 100 miles to the sea, a miserable Portuguese slave ship packed with 350 other Africans and an attack by pirates during the journey to the Americas.

“All of that,” marveled historian James Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, “before she is put aboard the Treasurer,” one of two British privateers that delivered the first Africans to the English colony of Virginia.

Now, as the country marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of those first slaves, historians are trying to find out as much as possible about Angela, the first African woman documented in Virginia. They see her as a seminal figure in American history — a symbol of 246 years of brutal subjugation that left millions of men, women and children enslaved at the start of the Civil War.

Two years ago, researchers launched an archaeological investigation in Jamestown at the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America to find any surviving evidence of Angela.

She is listed in the 1624 and 1625 census as living in the household of Capt. William Pierce, first as “Angelo a Negar” and then as “Angela Negro woman in by Treasurer.” By then, she had survived two other harrowing events: a Powhatan Indian attack in 1622 that left 347 colonists dead and the famine that followed.

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Mozambique situation 'worse than thought': UN agency

28 April 2019

The situation in northern Mozambique is worse than thought, a UN spokesman says, days after Cyclone Kenneth ravaged the country.

The system struck the Africa nation on Thursday with winds of 220km/h (140mph) which flattened whole villages.

Around 700,000 people are now thought to be at risk in the area as torrential rains continue.

Pemba, regional capital of Cabo Delgado state, has experienced more than 2m (6.5ft) of rain and flooding.

Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) spokesman Saviano Abreu said the situation in the towns of Macomia and Quissanga was critical, adding that there were also worries for the cut-off island of Ibo.

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