Defense attorneys representing Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes have offered to have him plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, 9NEWS has confirmed. This is only an offer from the defense team.
The two-page filing released on Wednesday goes on to say the prosecution has yet to accept the deal because “it may choose to pursue the death penalty.” The deal hinges completely on the prosecution’s willingness to take the death penalty off the table.
Should prosecutors choose to pursue the death penalty, there is still a widespread belief that Holmes’ defense team will attempt to use an insanity defense to guarantee their client life in a mental health facility instead. Judge William Sylvester has given the prosecution until April 1 to decide whether or not it will pursue the death penalty.
Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at “any moment”, it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.
The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.
The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.
While officials in South Korea and the United States continue to downplay recent threats from the North Korean government, both have also repeatedly condemned the increasingly incendiary rhetoric, which follows the implementation of new U.N. sanctions against the North. The United States has also bolstered its missile defense systems in the region as an added precaution.
President Barack Obama has chosen veteran Secret Service agent Julia Pierson as the first woman to become director of the agency that protects the president, two officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
Pierson has been chief of staff at the Secret Service, which last year became embroiled in a scandal involving agents taking prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Colombia before Obama visited the country.
Pierson will replace former Secret Service Mark Sullivan, who retired last month after 30 years with the agency. Unlike many of President Obama’s recent appointments, Pierson will not need approval from the Senate, meaning she’ll actually get to start working sometime this decade. source
Bank Head Resigns: Antreas Artemis, former CEO of Cyprus’ largest bank, stepped down on Tuesday, citing government interference with the Bank of Cyprus as his primary cause of departure. Banks throughout Cyprus remain closed on Tuesday, following a government ordered 48-hour delay of the previously scheduled return to semi-normalcy. Officials in Cyprus are working to verify that recently adjusted systems will function smoothly when banking operations resume, amid fears of a bank run in the recently bailed-out nation. Many in Cyprus have vehemently opposed the bailout plan, which will see steep levies on those who have more than 100 thousand euros in the bank. (Photo via EuroNews)
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple on Tuesday signed a measure giving the state the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, a bill banning the procedure in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks.
Dalrymple also said the constitutionality of the measure was an open question and said state lawmakers should appropriate money to a litigation fund for the state attorney general to defend against any possible challenges to the law.
“Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade,” Dalrymple said in a statement.
Considering many women don’t even receive confirmation that they’re pregnant until four to six weeks after conception, the decision essentially gives women roughly fourteen days (if they’re lucky) to decide whether or not they’d like to be a mother. Because forcing people to rush important decisions, like whether or not somebody wants to be a parent, is always a good idea, right?
Johnson Confirms Retirement: According to The Hill, South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson will announce that he has no plans to seek reelection in 2014 on Tuesday, ending an 18-year career in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Johnson is the fifth Senate Democrat to announce retirement this year, leaving many to wonder if the Democratic Party will be able to maintain its majority after the midterm elections. (Photo via nnwo)
Jordan closed its main border crossing with Syria on Monday after two days of fighting there between Syrian troops and rebel fighters, Jordan’s information minister said.
Border traders said passengers were turned back at the Jordanian border crossing of Jaber and prevented from entering in the first such closure of the crossing since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule started two years ago.
“The border post is effectively closed because there have been clashes since yesterday and they are continuing,” minister Samih Maaytah told Reuters.
While some have assumed that the Syrian conflict was reaching an end, following massive land gains by the Syrian rebels in recent weeks, the events of the last 24 hours serve as a reminder that the battle between President Bashar al-Assad and his opposition is far from over.
The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is currently investigating Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, on suspicion of improper usage of campaign funds, according to a new report from The Daily Beast. While Rep. Bachmann is not believed to have personally committed any criminal actions, investigators are trying to ascertain whether or not Bachmann was aware of under-the-table payments to several advisers and, if so, when she became aware of the cash transfers. While OCE has no real enforcement powers of any kind, the board does make direct recommendations to the House Ethics Committee, though we don’t suspect the threat of censure (a.k.a a stern talking to from Congress) particularly frightens Rep. Bachmann. (Photo via Gage Skidmore) source
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Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents, every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their homes. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.President Barack Obama • Urging Israeli citizens to pressure their own government to work harder on attaining the two-state solution which so many world leaders claim to want to see. President Obama told the crowd that “as a politician” he could assure them that their leaders would never do what wasn’t demanded of them. According to the NY Times, President Obama’s remarks were met with raucous applause, despite the generally skeptic view many Israelis have of the President. source
SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas
Trigger Warning: Rape, Physical Assault
My heart and my support go out to Adria.
Also, my righteous anger.
Here’s the gist of what happened. Adria was at PyCon, a developer conference, and noticed that two men behind her were making lude sexual jokes. She snapped a photo, tweeted it, brought up the behavior to PyCon officials (since they did have a code of conduct for their conference), and the situation was “handled”.
What’s happened after that is a prime example of why women and people of color (and women of color, of course) are few and far between in the world of tech.
One of the men making the jokes, who was there representing his employer, got fired for his actions. Adria’s website starts getting DDoS attacks, as does her employer’s website. People are leaving her nasty comments and she’s been getting death threats and rape threats tweeted to her since yesterday.
Today, SendGrid fired Adria. And they didn’t just fire her, but they announced it on Twitter and on Facebook so people could spread the word and comment on it. The Facebook comments are particularly vile, including one where a man details a particularly gruesome threat against Adria, concluded with the words “Make her pay. Make her obey.”
All of this for speaking up about something which made her uncomfortable.
To say that this is problematic would be an understatement, and it’s particularly troubling in a week when we’ve already seen two high-profile (and altogether disturbing) responses to sexual assault cases capture media headlines. We can’t figure out what possible justification SendGrid thinks they have for terminating Adria — and don’t even get us started on how they handled it — but if you’re as curious as we are then here’s SendGrid’s contact information.
Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered his fighters on Thursday to cease fire and withdraw from Turkish soil as a step to ending a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, riven the country and battered its economy.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, gathered in the regional center of Diyarbakir, cheered and waved banners bearing Ocalan’s mustachioed image when a letter from the rebel leader, held since 1999 on a prison island in the Marmara Sea, was read out by a pro-Kurdish politician.
“Let guns be silenced and politics dominate,” he said to a sea of red-yellow-green Kurdish flags. “The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders … It’s not the end. It’s the start of a new era.”
As is the case with any sizeable guerilla army, there is some concern that word of the cease fire either won’t reach or won’t be accepted by some of Ocalan’s former fighters. Still, a call for political discourse from the man who’s inspired people to take up arms against Turkey for decades is certainly a good sign for the future.
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