Month: April 2025

A federal judge will temporarily block the Trump administration from cutting billions in federal dollars that support COVID-19 initiatives and public health projects.

By AMANDA SEITZ WASHINGTON (AP) — Former heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr. Mehmet Oz was confirmed Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz became the agency’…

Still, the optics are reminiscent of Daboll and Schoen conducting separate press conferences on a tense Black Monday after John Mara announced that both men were being retained for a fourth season.

A Brooklyn jury on Thursday found a woman guilty of executing her longtime friend in front of a group of people, after a surprise witness at her trial testified the killer’s brother helped throw cops off the suspect’s trail.

Murder victim Delia Johnson’s mother said she can finally mourn with a semblance of peace after the Brooklyn Supreme Court jury found Claudia Banton, 46, guilty of her daughter’s Aug. 4, 2021 slaying.

“It’s hard for me to express it, but they came back with a guilty verdict, something I needed to hear. This has been a hard road, a very hard road,” Johnson’s mother, Delia Berry, said outside the courtroom Thursday. “It broke me down. It broke my body down.”

Johnson and Banton had spoken at a neighborhood funeral the night of her death, and Johnson was chatting with a group of people by a stoop on Franklin Ave. at Prospect Place in Crown Heights when a blonde woman in a black outfit walked out of a double-parked white Mercedes, shot her in the head, then fired again after she hit the ground.

In the chaos that followed, police got a bad description from a woman at the scene who told them the killer was a man in a white shirt and blue jeans. The officers pulled over the getaway car, but when they saw a woman behind the wheel, they let her go. They realized their mistake a couple of hours later after seeing footage of the killing.

Detectives linked the Mercedes’ license plate to a Claudia Williams in Georgia, one of the names and addresses Banton uses. Cops tracked Banton down three months later in Jacksonville, Fla.

Her lawyer, Jonathan Strauss, maintained that police arrested the wrong woman. But midway through the trial, investigators found the woman who gave the bad ID at the scene, and hauled her in to testify.

The woman took the stand Monday and said Banton’s brother was on the scene and told her the killer was a man, and she repeated that information to cops, News 12 reported.

Strauss, who objected to bringing in the late witness, described her as a “lifelong member of the Bloods” who couldn’t be trusted.

Strauss said he hopes to appeal the verdict. “There’s certainly issues here that need to be addressed.”

Jurors watched chilling video of the shooting, and of police officers frantically trying to revive Johnson as she gasped for breath and blood poured from her head. They also saw bodycam footage of police pulling over the shooter and letting her go.

The motive for the killing remains unclear.

CROWNHEIGHTS

Banton was a longtime friend of Johnson’s family, and Berry treated her as another daughter. “My daughter’s gone, and she will never be able to come back,’ she said. “Claudia’s gone … the difference is that she can call her children, or they can call her, whatever they do.”

Banton, who remains held without bail, faces a possible 25 years to life when she’s sentenced May 1.