https://twitter.com/GregStohr/status/1154393416131862530
NEW: Attorney General Barr says U.S. will resume capital punishment. He directs executions to be scheduled for five death-row inmates.

The last federal execution was in 2003. Only three federal prisoners have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated for federal crimes in 1988.

So far this year, 10 people have been executed nationwide. The number of executions nationwide has been fairly steadily declining the last two decades after peaking at 98 in 1999.

One-year-old Joseph Tidd and Orlando Pride player Carson Pickett have a lot in common: They both love soccer. They’re both athletic. And they both have partially formed left arms, which they tapped together last month in a photo that’s flying across the Internet.

The arm bump happened when Pickett, 25, jogged over to Joseph’s family after hearing them cheer at a home game. She repeatedly tapped her arm against his as he shrieked with glee, said Joseph’s mother, Colleen Tidd, who scrambled to take pictures as her husband held Joseph, decked out in a purple Pride T-shirt.

“In those situations, I want to be in the moment,” Tidd said in an interview Tuesday about the photo that’s gotten a lot of attention. “But then I realized, ‘Well, this is adorable.’ ”

Joseph spent the whole car ride home from the stadium looking at his arm and giggling, Tidd said, because he knew he had a friend.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/07/24/boy-with-one-hand-met-soccer-player-with-same-limb-difference-photo-went-viral/?utm_term=.358c25017cd6&tid=sm_tw

Jeffrey Clark thought the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was a "hero." A federal prosecutor said Clark was "a bomb" waiting to explode.



WASHINGTON ― A self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who lived in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in the nation’s capital pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single federal gun charge and could be released from custody when he’s sentenced in September.

Jeffrey Clark, who has extensive ties to the far-right, came to the attention of federal law enforcement because his relatives were concerned about his violent rhetoric in the days after his younger brother and fellow neo-Nazi committed suicide in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.

Clark, who stockpiled racist gear in his room, considered the Pittsburgh shooter a “hero” and said his victims “deserved” to be killed. A federal prosecutor described him as “a bomb” waiting to explode. But there’s no federal law that broadly outlaws domestic terrorism, so Clark’s case presented a challenge to federal prosecutors.

In a plea deal unveiled Tuesday, Clark pleaded guilty under a law that makes it illegal to possess a firearm while using or addicted to a controlled substance. Prosecutors dropped another count involving possession of a high-capacity magazine. Federal sentencing guidelines suggest Clark should receive 10 to 16 months in prison. Since he was arrested in November, he could potentially be released after his sentencing on Sept. 13.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeffrey-clark-neo-nazi-gun-guilty-plea_n_5d321f0de4b020cd99437829?13o=&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

Harriet Tubman’s biopic treatment has finally arrived. In the new trailer for Harriet, Tony winner Cynthia Erivo plays the American hero, tracing her terrifying journey from runaway slave to heroic abolitionist via the Underground Railroad.

The trailer opens on Harriet’s initial escape, running away from a vicious slave owner (played by Joe Alwyn) and braving the unknown. Using a river and the North Star as her guide, she manages to make it out of the south and meet with William Still (Tony-winner Leslie Odom Jr.), a Philadelphia-based abolitionist who helps fugitive slaves find freedom. However, it doesn’t take long for Tubman to decide that she has to go back and help free her family, as well as dozens of other enslaved people. She’s aided by Marie (Janelle Monae), a free black woman who helps train and arm Tubman for the journey ahead.

Directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou), the biopic also weaves in other elements of Tubman’s life, including her work leading an armed unit of the Union Army during the Civil War, and her tragic romance with former husband John Tubman, who married someone else after Tubman initially escaped. In a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair, Erivo promised the movie would offer a full portrait of the abolitionist icon, focusing on the human elements of her life that tend to get glossed over.

It was tough, though, to portray a woman who suffered so much hardship. “If I was to stay in her body for a really long time, I would not make it out alive most days,” Erivo said. “Like, yesterday was an emotional day, doing the scenes where she finds out [John’s] with someone else. She sees it. She also has her epilepsy—she had seizures. So that whole day, I was essentially in character.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/07/harriet-tubman-biopic-trailer