https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/448703-arkansas-authorities-arrest-woman-in-killing-of-former-state-senator

Arkansas authorities have arrested a woman in connection with the murder of former state Sen. Linda Collins-Smith (R), State Police and Randolph County Sheriff's deputies announced Friday.

Special agents have taken Rebecca Lynn O’Donnell, 48, into custody and criminal charges against her are pending, police said in a statement.

Police said the investigation is currently at a “critical juncture,” and they are not releasing any further information to maintain the case's integrity.

Collins-Smith, 57, was reportedly found in her Pocahontas, Ark., home with a gunshot wound on June 4. It wasn’t clear how long she had been dead when her body was found, but she was said to be wrapped in some kind of blanket and her body had begun to decompose.

Collins-Smith served in the state House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013. When she was first elected, she identified as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party during her first term.

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https://www.axios.com/iran-oil-tankers-us-drones-e7ed44d5-4036-42d4-a4e0-04bba5a46fc4.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic


The Norwegian-owned Front Altair tanker, which was attacked in the Gulf of Oman. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Iranian forces reportedly shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone in the hours before Thursday's attack on two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official tells CNN.

Why it matters: Heightened tensions and hawkish American rhetoric in the wake of Thursday's incident have brought back recently reduced fears that the U.S. could be on course for war with Iran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump have accused Iran of being responsible for the oil tanker attacks based on U.S. intelligence that has not been made public.

The administration released a video on Friday purporting to show Iran’s Revolutionary Guard removing a mine from one of the oil tankers after the attack. "It’s probably got essentially Iran written all over it," Trump said in a Fox & Friends interview, referring to the video.

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The other side: The Iranian mission to the U.N. dismissed accusations of orchestrating the oil tanker attack as "unfounded" on Thursday and called for an immediate dialogue to reduce pressure and prevent "the reckless and dangerous policies and practices of the U.S."

Iran's president also said Saturday the country would continue to scale back its compliance with provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal until other parties tot he agreement show "positive signs," Reuters reports.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum



The PS General Slocum was a sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions.

On June 15, 1904, General Slocum caught fire and sank in the East River of New York City. At the time of the accident, she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks. It is the worst maritime disaster in the city's history, and the second worst maritime disaster on United States waterways. The events surrounding the General Slocum fire have been explored in a number of books, plays, and movies.

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1904 disaster
General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years, a period when German settlers moved out of Little Germany for the Upper East and West Sides. Over 1,400 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded General Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island.

The ship got underway at 9:30 am. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in the Lamp Room in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match. It was fueled by the straw, oily rags, and lamp oil strewn around the room. The first notice of a fire was at 10 am; eyewitnesses claimed the initial blaze began in various locations, including a paint locker filled with flammable liquids and a cabin filled with gasoline. Captain Van Schaick was not notified until 10 minutes after the fire was discovered. A 12-year-old boy had tried to warn him earlier, but was not believed.


Carrying away a body from North Brother Island

Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, the owners had made no effort to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The fire hoses had been allowed to rot, and fell apart when the crew tried to put out the fire. The crew had never practiced a fire drill, and the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. (Some claim they were wired and painted in place.) Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands. Desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.


Victims of General Slocum washed ashore at North Brother Island.

It has been suggested that the manager of the life preserver manufacturer placed iron bars inside the cork preservers to meet minimum weight requirements at the time. Many of the life preservers had been filled with cheap and less effective granulated cork and brought up to proper weight by the inclusion of the iron weights. Canvas covers, rotted with age, split and scattered the powdered cork. Managers of the company (Nonpareil Cork Works) were indicted but not convicted. The life preservers had been manufactured in 1891 and had hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements, for 13 years.

Captain Van Schaick decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing. By going into headwinds and failing to immediately ground the ship, he fanned the fire. Van Schaick later argued he was trying to avoid having the fire spread to riverside buildings and oil tanks. Flammable paint also helped the fire spread out of control.

Some passengers jumped into the river to escape the fire, but the heavy women's clothing of the day made swimming almost impossible and dragged them underwater to drown. Many died when the floors of the overloaded boat collapsed; others were battered by the still-turning paddles as they tried to escape into the water or over the sides.

By the time General Slocum sank in shallow water at North Brother Island, just off the Bronx shore, an estimated 1,021 people had either burned to death or drowned. There were 321 survivors. Five of the 40 crew members died.


Firefighters working to put out the fire on the listing General Slocum.

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The captain lost sight in one eye owing to the fire. Reports indicate that Captain Van Schaick deserted General Slocum as soon as it settled, jumping into a nearby tug, along with several crew. Some say his jacket was hardly rumpled, but other reports stated that he was seriously injured. He was hospitalized at Lebanon Hospital.

Many acts of heroism were committed by the passengers, witnesses, and emergency personnel. Staff and patients from the hospital on North Brother Island participated in the rescue efforts, forming human chains and pulling victims from the water.

Aftermath
Eight people were indicted by a federal grand jury after the disaster: the captain; two inspectors; and the president, secretary, treasurer, and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, for failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other two counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison before he was paroled. President Theodore Roosevelt declined to pardon Captain Van Schaick. He was not released until the federal parole board under the William Howard Taft administration voted to free him on August 26, 1911. He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912; the pardon became effective on Christmas Day. After his death in 1927, Schaick was buried in Oakwood Cemetery (Troy, New York).

The Knickerbocker Steamship Company, which owned the ship, paid a relatively small fine despite evidence that they might have falsified inspection records. The disaster motivated federal and state regulation to improve the emergency equipment on passenger ships.

The neighborhood of Little Germany, which had been in decline for some time before the disaster as residents moved uptown, almost disappeared afterward. With the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy and the loss of many prominent settlers, most of the Lutheran Germans remaining in the Lower East Side eventually moved uptown. The church whose congregation chartered the ship for the fateful voyage was converted to a synagogue in 1940 after the area was settled by Jewish residents.

The victims were interred in cemeteries around New York, with 58 identified victims buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. Many victims were buried at Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens (now Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery) where an annual memorial ceremony is held at the historical marker.

In 1906, a marble memorial fountain was erected in the north central part of Tompkins Square Park on Manhattan by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies, with the inscription: "They are Earth's purest children, young and fair."

The sunken remains of General Slocum were salvaged and converted into a barge named Maryland, which sank without loss of life in the Atlantic Ocean off the southeast coast of New Jersey near Strathmere and Sea Isle City during a storm on December 4, 1911, while carrying a cargo of coal.

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https://twitter.com/RepCohen/status/1139609662297378817
Steve Cohen ✔ @RepCohen
'I think I'd take it' is the last straw. Nancy Pelosi, it's time to impeach Trump. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/13/impeach-trump-after-foreign-dirt-abc-interview-column/1442767001/ … via @usatoday

3:04 PM - Jun 14, 2019

https://twitter.com/StormyDaniels/status/1139631197611421696
Stormy Daniels ✔ @StormyDaniels
And I hope to be remembered for being a virgin **eyeroll**

Boing Boing ✔ @BoingBoing
Sarah Sanders hopes she'll be remembered as being "transparent and honest" https://boingboing.net/2019/06/14/sarah-sanders-hopes-shell-be.html …

4:30 PM - Jun 14, 2019

https://twitter.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1139642644190126087
Jeff Tiedrich @itsJeffTiedrich
if Trump had been on John McCain's plane shot down over Vietnam, what do you think would have been the very first thing he said to his captors?
— [blubbering] "don't kill me," or
— "my father has money," or
— "I have valuable information about my squadron"

5:15 PM - Jun 14, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/business/reimann-jab-nazi-keurig-krispy-kreme.html

Their billionaire descendants, who control Krispy Kreme, Stumptown and other brands, are grappling with the exposure of an unspeakable secret.


Emilie Landecker, circa 1961. Her Jewish father, Alfred, was killed by the Nazis. When her children asked about the family’s roots, she would admonish them to stop talking about “that old stuff.” - The Reimann family

By Katrin Bennhold
June 14, 2019


1. Such appalling events
Emilie Landecker was 19 when she went to work for Benckiser, a German company that made industrial cleaning products and also took pride in cleansing its staff of non-Aryan elements.

It was 1941. Ms. Landecker was half Jewish and terrified of deportation. Her new boss, Albert Reimann Jr., was an early disciple of Adolf Hitler and described himself as an “unconditional follower” of Nazi race theory.

Somehow, inexplicably, they fell in love.

The story of Ms. Landecker, whose Jewish father was murdered by the Nazis, and Mr. Reimann, whose fervent Nazism and abuse of forced laborers did not stop his family from attaining colossal wealth after the war, is a tale of death and devotion and human contradictions. It is also a tale of modern-day corporate atonement.

Decades after World War II, Benckiser evolved into one of the largest consumer goods conglomerates on the planet. Known today as JAB Holding Company and still controlled by the Reimann family, it is worth more than $20 billion and owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Peet’s Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Pret A Manger, Keurig and other breakfast brands.

The relationship between Mr. Reimann and Ms. Landecker was for many years a secret. He was married, but had no children with his wife. He and Ms. Landecker had three, and he adopted them in the 1960s; today, two of them own a combined stake in JAB of about 45 percent. For decades, they say, they did not know about their father’s Nazism and the abuses that took place at the company they inherited: The female forced laborers who had to stand at attention outside their barracks naked. A prisoner of war who was kicked out of a bomb shelter and died.

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