The Ocean Avenue News - oceanavenuenews.comEL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Up to 200 Venezuelan migrants who tried to surrender to U.S. authorities Tuesday at the border wall in South-Central El Paso were kept at bay by Texas National Guard troops, witnesses said.
The migrants, mostly Venezuelan families and single adults, began crossing the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico, around 3 p.m. after rumors spread about U.S. authorities allegedly letting asylum seekers come in between ports of entry.
The Biden administration in May began enforcing the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule making ineligible for asylum those who cross into the U.S. between ports of entry or traveled through third countries and did not apply for protection there.
But migrants like Carly, a Venezuelan, said they have grown tired of waiting for an appointment at a lawful port of entry. She has been in Juarez for two months and unable to get an appointment using an online app called CBP One. When she heard the rumor, she and her boyfriend bolted for the border wall.
“I heard they keep you in detention for 15 to 20 days, they investigate you and they (release you),” she said.
The migrants told a KTSM/Border Report camera crew they were told by people they trust to go to Gate 28 at the border wall, across the river from the Big Red X sculpture in Juarez.
Texas National Guard troops standing behind razor wire told migrants they could not pass. Some in the crowd remained on the American concrete embankment of the Rio Grande, while others stayed on the Mexican side until nightfall.
By Wednesday morning, the riverbank was mostly empty on both sides of the border. Witnesses told the camera crew most of the Venezuelans walked back to Juarez. However, a later video posted by a Juarez news outlet showed a handful were able to lift the barbwire and run toward the wall in search of a Border Patrol agent to surrender to.
Texas National Guard troops reassemble razor wire at a spot along the Rio Grande where migrants coming from Juarez, Mexico, have gone under it. (Border Report photo)
The guard and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers taking part in Operation Lone Star late last year set up camp just south of the border wall in El Paso to discourage illegal entries.
The Border Patrol earlier this week told Border Report agents are encountering 800 migrants per day in the El Paso Sector. That is far less than the 2,700 daily apprehensions recorded in the first quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, the agency said. Nonetheless, El Paso still leads the United States in total encounters in the last 10 months, with 364,092.
Juarez freelance photojournalist Roberto Delgado contributed to this report.
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(NewsNation) — Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four college students in Idaho. But while considering the case and, if found guilty, his punishment, jurors may also consider the fact that the death penalty could now be carried out by firing squad.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a law in March 2023 that would allow the Idaho Department of Corrections to carry out the death penalty via firing squad if lethal injection is unavailable.
Pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs used in lethal injections have begun to ban the use of the drugs for that purpose, leaving states to seek alternatives. Some have experimented with different cocktails of drugs for lethal injection or revived older methods of execution like electric chairs and firing squads.
While the phrase “firing squad” can conjure up frightening images, Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno told NewsNation it’s not as grisly as people might think. Prisoners shot in the heart would actually die more quickly than those killed by other means.
“Heart deaths, according to an experiment that was done in Utah in 1938, should occur within a minute, or under a minute, which is going faster than any other method of execution currently,” she said.
Denno said cases of lethal injection that didn’t go as planned have resulted in much more suffering.
“In the case of Rommel Broom in Ohio, he actually survived over two hours at a lethal injection execution. They were poking him all over his body to try to kill him,” she explained. “It was basically a slow slaughter, and they never succeeded, but he was in an enormous amount of pain.”
Broom’s execution was rescheduled after the botched attempt, but he died of COVID-19 before it could be carried out.
Denno explains that modern firing squads would work in a specific way, with an inmate strapped to a chair and surrounded by sandbags to prevent ricocheting bullets. Five shooters would be shooting from behind a wall through a small opening. Prisoners would be shot in the chest, with the shooters aiming for the heart.
“When you think of the individuals who are doing this, they’re experts,” Denno said. “Usually, they choose people who might be former police officers, somebody who’s very familiar with shooting, and they put a target on the inmate’s heart.”
“Historically, you would see who the executioner is,” she explained. “The inmate would be tied to a chair, and it would be a public execution.”
That’s no longer necessary, she said, because modern executions allow the identity of executioners to be kept secret unless they choose to disclose their involvement.
Firing squads could also make it easier to find executioners, Denno said, because people trained to be that skilled with firearms have likely also been trained to kill and are more emotionally prepared to take on the role.
For jurors, however, the mental images conjured up by the words “firing squad” may influence whether they think Kohberger should get the death penalty or life without parole.
“If they thought that, if they gave Brian Kohberger the death penalty, he was going to get the firing squad, they may be horrified by something like that, or they may think that that’s well-deserved,” Denno said. “The firing squad does not have a very good reputation in this country.”
If they do agree with prosecutors, it could still be some time before Idaho has the facilities necessary to carry out execution by firing squad.
In Idaho, it will cost $750,000 to renovate a cell block into an area suitable for use by firing squads, with some of the costs due to a mandatory area for witnesses to observe an execution.
According to the Idaho Department of Corrections, the state is still in the design phase of that effort, with no set timeline for completing the facility.
Previously, Idaho carried out executions by lethal injection alone. The state has executed three people since 1976 and has eight inmates on death row, seven men and one woman.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The lawyers of U.S. President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against an aide in the White House of former President Donald Trump over the aide’s alleged role in publication of embarrassing emails and images.
The lawsuit accuses Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, of violating California’s computer fraud and data access laws, and demands a jury trial. The 14-page complaint was filed in a California federal court.
Ziegler and other unnamed defendants are accused of obtaining “tens of thousands of emails, thousands of photos, and dozens of videos and recordings” belonging to the Hunter Biden and spreading them online.
The suit accuses the former Trump aide of “accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own.” A computer fraud sentence can carry prison time or a fine in California.
Data that has been accessed and copied includes Hunter’s credit card details, financial and bank records, and “information of the type contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency,” the suit says.
At least some of the data “originally was stored on the plaintiff’s iPhone and backed-up to plaintiff’s iCloud storage,” and accessed by “circumventing technical or code-based barriers that were specifically designed and intended to prevent such access.”
The lawsuit, which was reported first by ABC News, also seeks an injunction preventing Ziegler from continuing to access or tamper with Biden’s data.
Ziegler could not immediately be reached for comment.
Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday launched an impeachment inquiry into the president related to Hunter’s business dealings.
Republicans have accused the Democratic president of profiting while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017 from his son’s foreign business ventures, an accusation the White House denies.
“They have turned up no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong … that’s because the president didn’t do anything wrong,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
Separately, U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing earlier this month they will seek an indictment of the president’s son by Sept. 29 in a tax and firearms case.
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Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk called on Wednesday for a U.S. “referee” for artificial intelligence after he, Meta Platforms (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet (GOOGL.O) CEO Sundar Pichai met with lawmakers at Capitol Hill behind closed doors at for a forum on regulating AI.
Lawmakers are seeking ways to mitigate dangers of the emerging technology, which has boomed in investment and consumer popularity since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
Musk said it was need for a regulator to ensure the safe use of AI.
“It’s important for us to have a referee,” Musk told reporters, comparing it to sports. The billionaire, who also owns the social media platform X, added that a regulator would “ensure that companies take actions that are safe and in the interest of the general public.”
Musk said the meeting was a “service to humanity” and said it “may go down in history as very important to the future of civilization.” Musk confirmed he had called AI “a double-edged sword” during the forum.
Zuckerberg said Congress “should engage with AI to support innovation and safeguards. This is an emerging technology, there are important equities to balance here, and the government is ultimately responsible for that.” He added it was “better that the standard is set by American companies that can work with our government to shape these models on important issues.”
More than 60 senators took part. Lawmakers said there was universal agreement about the need for government regulation of AI, but it was unclear how long it might take and how it would look.
Republican Senator Mike Rounds said it would take time for Congress to act. “Are we ready to go out and write legislation? Absolutely not,” Rounds said. “We’re not there.”
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said all participants agreed “the government has a regulatory role” but crafting legislation would be a challenge.
Lawmakers want safeguards against potentially dangerous deepfakes such as bogus videos, election interference and attacks on critical infrastructure.
“Today, we begin an enormous and complex and vital undertaking: building a foundation for bipartisan AI policy that Congress can pass,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said. “Congress must play a role, because without Congress we will neither maximize AI’s benefits, nor minimize its risks.”
Other attendees included Nvidia (NVDA.O) CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft (MSFT.O) CEO Satya Nadella, IBM (IBM.N) CEO Arvind Krishna, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and AFL-CIO labor federation President Liz Shuler.
Schumer, who discussed AI with Musk in April, said attendees would talk “about why Congress must act, what questions to ask, and how to build a consensus for safe innovation.”
In March, Musk and a group of AI experts and executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.
This week, Congress is holding three separate hearings on AI. Microsoft President Brad Smith told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday that Congress should “require safety brakes for AI that controls or manages critical infrastructure.”
Republican Senator Josh Hawley questioned the closed-door session, saying Congress has failed to pass meaningful tech legislation. “I don’t know why we would invite all the biggest monopolists in the world to come and give Congress tips on how to help them make more money,” Hawley said.
Regulators globally have been scrambling to draw up rules governing the use of generative AI, which can create text and generate images whose artificial origins are virtually undetectable.
On Tuesday, Adobe (ADBE.O), IBM, Nvidia and five other companies said they had signed President Joe Biden’s voluntary AI commitments requiring steps such as watermarking AI-generated content.
The commitments, announced in July, are aimed at ensuring AI’s power is not used for destructive purposes. Google, OpenAI and Microsoft signed on in July. The White House has also been working on an AI executive order.
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U.S. President Joe Biden wants auto union UAW and major automakers to work around-the-clock to avoid a strike, White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said Wednesday.
Biden has “encouraged the parties to stay at the table and to work 24 and 7 to get a win-win agreement that keeps UAW workers at the heart of our auto future,” Bernstein said.
Asked whether Biden will bring in negotiators or be more actively involved, Bernstein said “the president’s been very much engaged.”
Biden has met the UAW president in the Oval Office, called him on Labor Day, and called executives from all three automakers before he left for the G20 last week to “encourage them to provide more forward leaning offers to stay at the table.”
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