15 February 23
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According to a report from the Conflict Observatory, a State Department-supported initiative, Russia has placed at least 6,000 Ukrainian children at 43 camps and institutions stretching from Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea region to Siberia and Russia’s Pacific coast, or with new families, as part of its “systematic, whole-of-government approach to the relocation, re-education and, in some cases, adoption and forced adoption of Ukrainian children.”
Some of Russian authorities’ actions, they believe, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Researchers said the primary goal of the camps is “political re-education,” exposing children to “Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic” information. Two camps in Crimea and Chechnya appear to subject children to military education, teaching them about firearms and military vehicles.
Nathaniel Raymond, a researcher at the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, told reporters that Russia had failed to take measures required under the Geneva Conventions, including the creation of a transparent registration system for children separated from their families in wartime; the transfer of children to a neutral nation; and steps to ensure they retain their national and ethnic identities.
“Consider this report a gigantic Amber Alert that we are issuing on Ukraine’s children,” he said, referring to the U.S. system for publicizing news about missing or endangered children. “All levels of Russia’s government are involved.”
66,000 war crimes have been reported in Ukraine. It vows to prosecute them all.
The report adds to the growing picture of alleged Russian crimes during President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which began nearly a year ago. The United States remains the largest backer of the Ukrainian government’s attempt to expel Russian forces and authorities from vast areas of Ukraine, some of which have been under direct Kremlin control since 2014.
The report, which researchers said reflects six months of documentation from an array of sources including satellite imagery and Russian state media, alleges that most Ukrainian children who have been in Russian custody came from Russian-occupied areas including Donetsk and Luhansk, while a minority were taken from Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia before those areas were retaken by Ukrainian forces.
The report also describes what it calls a “consent crisis.” While some of the children’s parents gave their consent for them to go to summer camp in Russia and they subsequently returned, other children’s return was delayed temporarily or indefinitely. In other cases, the researchers said, some Ukrainian parents may have been coerced by pro-Russian authorities into permitting their children to be taken to Russia.
In many instances it has been difficult for parents to obtain information about their children, who range in age from 4 months to 17 years old, the report said.
The researchers said there had no evidence that children exposed to military education at Russian camps had been sent into combat. Some of the facilities appear to date to the Soviet Union’s system of youth camps.
Fellow Yale researcher Caitlin Howarth said that although some children have been returned to their families in Ukraine, the harm they experienced may linger much longer.
“That level of so-called ‘re-education’ is a very clear and systematic attempt to erase the history and culture and, in very clear documented cases, even the historical importance and language of Ukraine,” she said.
The report also identifies Russian officials who the authors allege are responsible for the practices, including Maria Lvova-Belova, Putin’s commissioner for children’s rights, and several regional governors.
After State Department spokesman Ned Price shared details of the report in a briefing Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Washington responded in a Telegram post, calling accusations of forced transfer and deportation “absurd.” It said that Russia had accepted children who were forced to flee Ukraine and that “we do our best to keep minors in families.”
Colleen Crenwelge, with the State Department’s conflict and stabilization bureau, said the Biden administration is pursuing a number of avenues for holding Russian officials accountable for actions in Ukraine but provided no details about how the alleged system for reeducating children would fit into that.
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Vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff at the memorial to the Buffalo victims in May last year. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
ALSO SEE: Buffalo Shooter Rushed From Courtroom
After Man Tries to Attack Him
Sentencing for Payton Gendron disrupted as man in courtroom charges towards him before being restrained
The sentencing hearing for Payton Gendron was disrupted when he was charged at by a man in the audience who was quickly restrained. It resumed after about 10 minutes, with more emotional testimony from people who talked about losing loved ones in the attack.
Gendron, whose hatred was fueled by racist conspiracy theories he encountered online, cried during some of the testimony and apologized in a brief statement.
He pleaded guilty in November to crimes including murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate, a charge that carried an automatic life sentence.
The 19-year-old wore bullet-resistant armor and a helmet equipped with a live-streaming camera as he carried out the 14 May attack with a semiautomatic rifle purchased legally but modified so he could load it with illegal high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Gendron faces separate federal charges that could carry a death sentence if the US justice department chooses to seek it. His defense attorney said in December Gendron was prepared to plead guilty in federal court as well to avoid execution.
The disruption in the sentencing hearing on Wednesday happened as Barbara Massey Mapps excoriated Gendron for killing her 72-year-old sister, Katherine Massey. As Mapps shouted and pointed at Gendron, a person in the audience took a few steps toward him before getting held back.
“You don’t know what we’re going through,” the man shouted as he was led away by court officers.
For several minutes, family members hugged and calmed each other. The judge, Susan Eagan, ordered Gendron back in and let the proceeding resume after about 10 minutes, admonishing everyone to “conduct ourselves appropriately”.
“I understand that emotion, and I understand the anger, but we cannot have that in the courtroom,” Eagan said.
The sentencing was a chance for loved ones of the dead, as well as people wounded in the attack, to express their grief and anger. Some angrily condemned Gendron. Others quoted from the Bible or said they were praying for him. Several condemned him for his deliberate attack on a Black community far from his nearly all-white hometown.
“You’ve been brainwashed,” Wayne Jones Sr, the only child of the victim Celestine Chaney, said as sobs rose from the audience. “You don’t even know Black people that much to hate them. You learned this on the internet, and it was a big mistake.
“I hope you find it in your heart to apologize to these people, man. You did wrong for no reason.”
Kimberly Salter, the widow of the security guard Aaron Salter, said she and her family were wearing “red for the blood that he shed for his family and for his community, and black because we are still grieving”.
Christopher Braden, a Tops Friendly Market employee who was shot in the leg, said he was haunted by seeing the victims as he was carried out of the store.
“The visions haunt me in my sleep and every day,” he said.
Gendron began crying himself.
There were only three survivors after he shot 13 people. The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86.
In documents posted online, Gendron said he hoped the attack would help preserve white power in the US. He wrote that he picked the Tops store, about a three-hour drive from his home in Conklin, New York, because it was in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
The mass shooting, and another less than two weeks later that killed 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school, amplified calls for stronger gun controls, including from victims’ relatives who traveled to Washington to testify before Congress.
New York legislators quickly passed a law banning semiautomatic rifle sales to most people under age 21. The state also banned sales of some types of body armor.
Joe Biden signed a compromise gun violence bill in June, intended to toughen background checks, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders and help states put in place red flag laws making it easier to take weapons from people adjudged to be dangerous.
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Justice Department prosecutors wish to speak with Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, seeking approval from a judge in a sealed filing to invoke the crime-fraud exception. (photo: Getty)
Justice Department prosecutors wish to speak with Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, multiple outlets reported late Tuesday, seeking approval from a judge in a sealed filing to invoke the crime-fraud exception.
The rare move to push for such cooperation from an attorney can only be ignited when legal advice was given in furtherance of a crime, a key issue for prosecutors as they investigate an obstruction of justice charge in connection with their search of Mar-a-Lago.
Corcoran did not immediately respond to request for comment, nor did a spokesman for the special counsel.
The investigation was launched after a months-long battle to recover presidential records from Trump’s Florida home, when an initial batch of returned documents included nearly 200 documents with classified markings.
Corcoran would later turn over more than 30 documents to prosecutors following a subpoena, later drafting an attestation he handed to colleague Christina Bobb to sign indicating that all remaining classified records had been returned.
Corcoran appeared before a grand jury last month, and it’s not clear what matters the Justice Department wishes to speak to him about where he may have asserted he was unable to do so due to attorney-client privilege.
The matter is set to be decided by Judge Beryl Howell, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for D.C., who has largely sided with the Justice Department on matters of privilege in the Mar-a-Lago case.
Trump’s team in January turned over an additional classified record and a laptop to the Justice Department amid ongoing efforts to determine whether all classified records at Mar-a-Lago have been returned.
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Lamar Johnson celebrates being released from custody on Tuesday at the Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis. (photo: Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio)
Circuit Judge David Mason found that two people, Greg Elking and James Howard, provided credible testimony that absolved Johnson in the slaying of Marcus Boyd.
"This combined testimony amounts to clear and convincing evidence that Lamar Johnson is innocent and did not commit the murder of Marcus Boyd either individually or acting with another,” Mason wrote.
After Mason announced his decision, Johnson’s supporters in the courtroom burst into joyous cheers and applause. He later walked out of the Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis a free man.
“I want to thank, first off, people who had information about the case and came forward with the truth,” Johnson said to a crowd of reporters and supporters. “All of the people who came out and supported me — this is overwhelming. I just thank everybody. Just thank you.”
Johnson contended for years he did not kill Marcus Boyd on his porch in 1994.
But Johnson was found guilty along with Phillip Campbell of murdering Boyd. Much of the conviction revolved around the account of an eyewitness who was later found to have been compensated and ultimately recanted his testimony that Johnson was one of the killers.
A hearing on the case in December also featured dramatic testimony from Howard, who said on the witness stand that he and Campbell killed Boyd during a robbery attempt.
The 2021 law
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Conviction Integrity Unit first highlighted Johnson’s case as a wrongful conviction in 2019. But efforts to free Johnson were stymied after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2021 she didn’t have the authority to try to vacate his sentence.
“The criminal justice system is premised on the idea that innocent people shouldn't be convicted,” said Washington University Law School professor Peter Joy. “And if they're convicted, they should be set free. And in Missouri, unfortunately, the way the courts interpreted the existing laws on the books was they basically said, ‘Even if there's actual innocence proven on a person, unless the person was convicted and given the death penalty, there wasn't any way of relief.’”
Eventually, the Missouri General Assembly passed legislation that gave prosecutors like Gardner the pathway to set aside potential wrongful convictions. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker was able to use that law to free Kevin Strickland in 2021.
Speaking to reporters after Mason’s decision, Gardner said, “This is an amazing day.”
“We showed that the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri is about justice — and not defending the finality of a conviction,” Gardner said.
But both Gardner and Baker had opposition from then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office. In Johnson’s case, several assistant attorneys general argued that the people vouching for Johnson’s innocence had credibility issues or had made contradictory statements over the years.
In a statement, Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office said it was “committed to enforcing the laws as written.”
“Our office defended the rule of law and worked to uphold the original verdict that a jury of Johnson’s peers deemed to be appropriate based on the facts presented at trial,” the statement said. “The court has spoken, and no further action will be taken in this case.”
Some legal observers felt the case was a critical test of whether the 2021 law was meaningful. And others like former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff said Schmitt’s office was engaging in misguided tactics.
“Doing justice is the value, not making sure that a wrong judgment stays in place,” Wolff said.
Baker said it makes sense for the attorney general’s office to be involved in these types of cases — especially if a prosecutor thinks someone is wrongfully convicted but it turns out they were actually guilty.
First hours of freedom
Johnson smiled and laughed excitedly while talking to Lindsay Runnels, one of his attorneys, before a celebratory dinner at Maggie O’Brien’s on Tuesday evening. He motioned to a red-and-green trolley that whisks hockey fans to and from the Enterprise Center and a Ferris wheel that towers over Union Station.
“This is all so new,” Johnson said. “Everything’s so different.”
Johnson said he’s ready to tackle the adjustment into today’s society after being behind bars for nearly three decades.
“I thought I would have some time to rest, but it kind of feels like I'm ready to hit the ground running,” he said while looking around downtown St. Louis. “I want to work to try to rebuild my life.”
Johnson attributed a few factors with fueling his drive to fight — education in the legal system, his faith and working out. Now, he said, he’s hoping his case serves as an inspiration for others who may also be wrongfully convicted.
“I hope I can be an inspiration and that they will continue to fight — truth finds a way,” he said. "I think there's a purpose in pain. To some degree, I have an obligation to try to help others and help them get through what they're going through."
restitution
Several House Democrats said Johnson’s case should compel the state legislature to provide restitution for people whose convictions are overturned.
“Lamar Johnson spent 28 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, and our judicial system finally honored that truth today as Judge David Mason overturned his conviction,” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield. “While Mr. Johnson celebrates alongside his family, his community and the thousands of people who have supported him along his journey, the state has an obligation to make him as whole as it can after it robbed him of nearly three decades of his life.”
State Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins, D-St. Louis, noted that she had visited Johnson in a Jefferson City prison and was “overjoyed” to see him set free.
“The overturning of his conviction illustrates how a system can own up to its mistake,” Collins said. “However, to truly right the wrong that has been done to Mr. Johnson, this same system must take full accountability for its actions as he deserves restitution for nearly three decades of wrongful imprisonment that took away valuable time spent with his family and community."
State Rep. LaKeySha Bosley said Johnson “spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit because our justice system failed him.”
“Mr. Johnson deserves more than just a pat on the back or money in his pocket, he deserves time,” said Bosley, D-St. Louis. “But because we cannot give him that, we can give him our best by providing adequate financial assistance, access to further education, housing, and other things the state effectively took from him. I urge the governor to work with members of the General Assembly to pass legislation that would offer restitution to Lamar Johnson, Kevin Strickland, and the other Missourians like them who have had their convictions overturned — or may have them overturned in the future.
“To Mr. Johnson, I am sorry our system took so much from you. As an innocent man, you deserved better from Missouri,” she added.
Despite the calls for restitution, Johnson said he wasn’t expecting anything from the state.
"Unfortunately, Missouri has spent thousands of dollars fighting innocence cases that come forward and it won't give a dime to anybody who was wrongfully incarcerated," he said. “That’s just the way Missouri chooses to handle that.”
Looking to the future
Johnson sat alongside his legal team, exchanging smiles and laughs as a smorgasbord of appetizers were brought by servers — wings, fries, salads, onion rings and more.
He settled on his first meal after all that time eating prison food — chicken strips and fries. There are a few things Johnson said he’s looking forward to, aside from ordering dinner at a restaurant, but primarily he wants to experience day-to-day life as a free man.
“I want to stand in line and be frustrated because it’s not going fast enough,” he said. “I mean, all the things a lot of people may overlook and may be annoyed by, I want to experience.”
But there are a few significant events Johnson is looking forward to, like boarding a plane to see the ocean and walking his daughter Kierra down the aisle in April.
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings, and that's the way I've got to look at life,” he said. “I’m happy to have my life back, and I'm going to try to make the best of it.”
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President Joe Biden speaks during his State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., February 7, 2023. (photo: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg)
You are not the only person who thinks resort fees are ridiculous and it shouldn’t cost you $200 to cancel your cable.
One minute you’re trying to buy concert tickets on Ticketmaster for X dollars, and boom, the cost leaps by 30 percent to Y dollars, thanks to random fees you can’t even see unless you click a little drop-down arrow to figure out the provenance of the extra charge. Or you’re booking a flight, and somehow the original cost of your seat has skyrocketed when all is said and done. Or you just want to sit next to your elementary schooler on the plane, and there’s a charge for that, too.
President Joe Biden knows America’s fees-riddled economy can feel frustrating, deceptive, and, of course, expensive. And so, to channel some Elizabeth Warren here, he’s got a plan for that: He’s calling for a Junk Fee Prevention Act in an effort to ax hidden fees and take aim at the ways consumers are nickeled and dimed by corporations.
This is part of the White House’s broader efforts to try to increase competition across the economy and go after the proliferation of fees in industries ranging from banking to ticketing to travel. In October, the White House also rolled out a blog post outlining its plans to take on junk fees, and the FTC announced it would explore a rule to take a look at the issue. Other agencies, including the CFPB and the Department of Transportation, are taking a crack at fees in their respective areas as well.
“Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most folks in homes like the one I grew up in. They add up to hundreds of dollars a month. They make it harder for you to pay the bills or afford that family trip,” Biden said at his State of the Union address in February. “I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it. Not anymore.”
Right now, the Junk Fee Prevention Act is basically a plan to have a plan — there’s no actual bill yet. The White House is trying to tackle the fees issue from multiple angles.
The idea here isn’t necessarily that companies can’t charge for their services, but instead that they’ve got to be fair and honest about those charges and compete for consumers’ business in a way that isn’t, to put it plainly, tricky.
“That’s bad for market efficiency, that’s bad for firms that price in an honest way, and if you’re an industry and you’re choosing how to innovate, if junk fees are permissible, then one way to make more profits is to come up with new and more sophisticated junk fees rather than actually making your product better or making your product lower cost,” one White House official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity.
If the only way to get a Beyoncé ticket or book your Cancún vacation is to pay the extra charges, they’re not really extras anymore, they’re just kind of the price.
“Basic economics teaches us that there’s supply and demand and prices are market signals. Common sense shows that people shop and compare goods on the basis of price, among other things,” said Aaron Klein, senior fellow in economics at the think tank Brookings Institution, in an interview. “The internet revolutionized how we bought and sold goods and services, so what we’re finding is that in the quest to have the lowest price, cost is being moved from price to fees, so that consumers think they’re buying something at a cheaper price when in point of fact the true cost to that might be higher.”
What’s in the still-to-come Junk Fee Prevention Act
The Junk Fee Prevention Act doesn’t exist as actual full legislative text on Capitol Hill. For now, it’s more talking points as the White House gets the ball rolling, and it’s still not clear with whom. One senior Democratic congressional aide who Vox granted anonymity in order to speak freely on the matter said they have “no fucking clue” on the bill and that as far as they know it is “made up.”
A White House spokesperson who agreed to speak anonymously said they are having “productive conversations” with many members of Congress who have expressed interest in junk fees and noted there has been bipartisan interest in the issue in the past, including from Republican Reps. Ann Wagner of Missouri and Paul Gosar of Arizona. As mentioned, the Biden administration is also taking aim at fees at the agency level to try to tackle some of these problems from different avenues.
In broad outlines, the junk fee legislation the White House is advocating for Congress to take up would take aim at four areas:
Concerts, sporting events, and entertainment ticket fees. Anyone who’s tried to buy tickets for a Taylor Swift concert or any other event recently is well aware, the process can be a mess, including and often especially when it comes to extra charges. Consumers are met with nebulous service fees and venue fees when making a purchase, and those fees often appear at the end of the buying process and make up a significant chunk of the final price.
The White House wants Congress to bar excessive fees, require those fees be disclosed in the ticket price from the start, and make sellers disclose holdbacks of tickets that diminish supply (and can therefore drive up prices).
Elsewhere in the government, the Department of Justice has reportedly undertaken an antitrust investigation against Live Nation Entertainment, the company born after Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010 that is the one charging a lot of these fees.
Extra charges for sitting next to your kid on a plane. If you have flown lately, you’ve probably noticed airlines often now charge you extra for choosing a seat. It’s annoying for any traveler who remembers the days when sitting somewhere not terrible on a flight did not run you $50. For parents, the stakes can be higher — they are often faced with the choice of paying to sit next to their child or hoping a kind stranger will switch seats. (The kindness of strangers is not guaranteed.)
In July 2022, the Department of Transportation put out a notice urging airlines to “do everything in their power to ensure that children who are age 13 or younger are seated next to an accompanying adult with no additional charge,” but no airlines actually guarantee this one yet. The DOT is still working on the matter with a fees dashboard and a potential rule to ban sit-by-your-child charges. Still, it’s hoping Congress can fast-track the matter by including a ban on these fees in legislation.
Fees for quitting your cable company, your phone plan, or your internet service. When you sign up to get cable or internet in your home or open up a new phone plan, it often comes with a set time frame — and a financial punishment if you want to back out before that time frame ends. Quitting early can cost tens and hundreds of dollars.
The White House makes the case that these early termination fees hurt market dynamism “by making it harder for innovative companies to win a toe-hold in the market by encouraging customers to switch.” Essentially, if a company wants to keep your business, it should have to do so by having a competitive offer, not by threatening to charge you a bunch of money if you go elsewhere. Biden wants Congress to ax “excessive” early termination fees so companies can’t lock in customers with the threat of a giant bill if they switch phone companies.
Surprise charges that make what’s supposed to be your fun vacation a little less fun. The story with resort fees and destination fees is similar to what happens with concert tickets: The consumer sees one price for a hotel room when they start their vacation planning, and by the time they hit checkout, that total amount has jumped. The charade makes it hard to comparison shop because the low price shown at the outset can get pretty meaningless. As the advocacy group Kill Resort Fees notes, there’s not much stopping a hotel from advertising a $1 room rate and $99 in fees.
It’s often not clear what these fees are for, beyond making hotels and resorts more money. The hotel industry makes billions of dollars in fees and surcharges each year. “The hotel likes to say that they provide amenities in exchange for that resort fee, but it’s a complete and total lie,” said Lauren Wolfe, the founder of the website Kill Resort Fees. “The resort fee exists so that the hotel can lie to consumers about the advertised price.”
The White House wants Congress to bar surprise fees by making hotels include them in room prices up front.
The idea here is there ought to be some limits on how companies charge you for random stuff
Much of what the White House is pushing for isn’t that companies shouldn’t be allowed to impose various fees and charges for different services ever (though in some instances that is the case). What it’s saying is that there should be a cap on the amount those companies can collect so that arrangement is a little less predatory or, at the very least, companies should have to tell you how much something costs with the fees included from the get-go. It’s also looking to discourage the proliferation of fees across various industries and companies. In multiple sectors, there’s a culture of exploitative fees, and the hope is to reverse the tide and make companies think twice about adding on extra charges.
There are areas where specific fees and charges make sense, and where differential pricing seems fair. At the very least, you can sometimes see the argument for them.
In flying, for example, airlines say that much of what they’ve done is to disaggregate different options and services so travelers can sort of pick and choose what they want. The idea is that you see the stripped-down price initially and then decide whether you want to pay to check a bag, sit comfortably, print your ticket, whatever. (Vox has a whole explainer on the airline fee situation here.)
Reasonable minds can disagree about whether this business practice is good. Some people really do want the lowest fare and are happy to take that middle seat in the back. At the same time, the checked bag fee distorts behavior because then everybody tries to bring their bags on the plane. And fees often add up so quickly that the original price you’re shown when booking on a website like Expedia or Google Flights, ultimately, ends up being a complete lie.
“The airlines that competed on price in the same search engine started moving cost to things like bag fees and other things so you would think, ‘Oh, this is the cheapest flight,’ and buy it, and you get to the airport and boom. Same thing with the hotels,” Klein said. “Free market competition assumes transparent information about prices, and what we’ve seen are companies, and broadly speaking industries, moving toward taking something out of one price tag and moving it to another.”
Again, this Junk Fee Prevention Act is not an actual thing that exists at the moment. If and when it does (which, you know, we have a Congress that often doesn’t do much), it’s not entirely clear how implementation would work. Which resort fees are unfair and which are for a legitimate thing? Is there a way to opt out of whatever amenities they correspond to? What would travel website designs need to look like? What counts as a fair rate for quitting your phone plan early, and how much exactly does that cost the company dealing with it?
“There’s been too little policing of fees in the market, but I think implementation is challenging because sometimes the fees are correlated to different services,” Klein said.
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, but a lot of this stuff probably isn’t that hard to figure out — or at least it’s not as hard as many companies will likely say it is.
It’s impossible not to note how much the economy has become overridden by fees. Banks charge a web of fees for accessing your own money or for making a mistake there’s no way it costs them that much to address. They often make money off of fees levied on those who can least afford it. The costs added onto food delivery services for consumers and restaurants are disorienting, and it’s never clear whether the fees companies say go to workers actually do. It’s impossible to know what so many goods and services are going to cost you because of charges and fees that consistently pop up. This isn’t good for anyone, ultimately, even businesses.
Another White House official who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said he’s heard in conversations with some companies that they’d be amenable to tighter rules around fees — assuming everyone else has to go along. If you’re a ticketing platform and you’re the only one showing full prices up front while all your competitors are going to add them on later, you’re at a disadvantage. Consumers won’t choose you if there’s no way for them to know you’re actually the right choice.
“That’s bad for consumers and it’s bad for industry in the long run,” Klein said. “We should be competing on the best service and the best price, not on who can shock you with the most fees at the end.”
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Haitian president Jovenel Moise was shot and killed in July 2021. (photo: Getty)
US police have arrested four more people for alleged roles in the plot to assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moise in 2021.
President Moise was shot and killed at his home in Port-au-Prince, reportedly by Spanish-speaking foreign mercenaries.
Eleven suspects are now in US custody.
According to the Justice Department (DOJ), Venezuelan-American Antonio "Tony" Intriago, who is the owner of Florida-based CTU Security, hired a squad of former Colombian soldiers for the operation. He has now been hit with a slew of charges, including conspiracy to kill or kidnap a person outside of the US.
A CTU company representative, Colombian citizen Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, has also been arrested.
A third suspect, Florida-based financier Walter Veintemilla, is accused of financing the plot to kill Mr Moise. His attorney told the Associated Press that he plans to plead not guilty.
The fourth suspect - Frederick Joseph Bergmann Jr - has been accused of smuggling ballistic vests as part of the plot.
"It is extremely important to bring (them) to justice," said US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Markenzy Lapointe. "We will deliver justice in the courtroom."
US authorities had previously announced the arrest of seven men for their alleged role in the plot, including Haitian-American dual citizens James Solages and Joseph Vincent, and pastor and businessman Christian Emmanual Sanon.
Haitian police have said that Mr Sanon had "political objectives" to replace President Moise.
The DOJ believes that Mr Solages and Mr Vincent, along with Colombian national Germán Alejandro Rivera, originally planned to detain the Haitian president and fly him away from Haiti so that a new president could be installed. The plan was reportedly abandoned because they did not have an aircraft.
In a statement in January, US prosecutors said that the three men and others met at a house in Haiti just before the assassination, "where firearms and equipment was distributed and Solages announced that the mission was to kill President Moise".
Haiti's own investigation into the assassination has largely stalled, with three judges having resigned from their posts due to security concerns. A fourth was dismissed.
More than 40 suspects have been arrested in Haiti and remain in custody, including 18 Colombians. Three others were killed immediately after President Moise's death.
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An accident involving a commercial tanker truck caused a hazardous material to leak onto Interstate 10 outside Tucson, Arizona, on Tuesday, prompting state troopers to shut down traffic on the freeway. (photo: Arizona Department of Public Safety)
Residents within a half mile of the crash on Interstate 10 southeast of downtown Tucson were ordered to leave and those within a mile were told to shelter in place after liquid nitric acid was determined to be leaking from the truck tractor pulling a box trailer, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said.
The shelter-in-place order was lifted Tuesday night, but officials reinstated the order Wednesday morning, saying gassing occurred as crews tried to remove the load. Area residents were told to turn off heaters and air conditioning systems that bring in outside air.
The driver of the truck was killed, the department said, but few other details were released.
The agency warned motorists in the Tucson area should anticipate impacts on their Wednesday morning commute in and around I-10.
"This will be an extended closure," it said in a tweet Tuesday evening.
The University of Arizona Tech Park was among the areas evacuated. Some schoolchildren in Rita Ranch were among those who sheltered in place, the Arizona Daily Star reported. Officials canceled classes at several nearby schools on Wednesday.
Nitric acid is used to make ammonium nitrate for fertilizers and in the manufacture of plastics and dyes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website says nitric acid is a highly corrosive, colorless liquid with yellow or red fumes and can cause an acrid smell.
It says exposure to nitric acid can irritate the eyes, skin and mucous membranes. Depending on the dosage, it also can cause delayed pulmonary edema, pneumonitis, bronchitis and dental erosion.
This hazardous crash comes as Ohio residents continue to raise concerns about the release of toxic chemicals on board a freight train that derailed Feb. 3 and left 50 cars in a fiery, mangled mess. There were no injuries but officials later ordered the evacuation of the immediate area. Residents are worried about the potential health impacts from the wreckage.
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