A8â Monday, January 11, 2021 â DAILY REPUBLIC
Apple, Amazon Shooting leaves at least 3 dead remove Parler Tribune Content Agency
Bloomberg News Apple Inc. and Amazon. com Inc. are removing Parler from their services, part of a growing backlash after the social media network was among those used to organize Wednesdayâs riots at the Capitol. Apple dropped Parler from its App Store, while Amazonâs cloud unit decided to stop hosting the social media company starting Sunday night. They joined Alphabet Inc.âs Google, which removed the app from its Google Play store on Friday, saying that it created an âongoing and urgent public safety threat.â Parler, which is popular with extremist groups seeking an alternative to more mainstream social media sites, has come under fire since the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The move by the tech companies will leave Parler ending the weekend without easy access to virtually all of the worldâs smartphone users, and scrambling to find a new company to host its services. Appleâs decision came a day after the Cupertino, California-based technology giant threatened to remove the app, telling Parler developers Friday they had 24 hours to provide Apple with a plan for moderating and filtering the service. A letter provided by Apple to Parler indicates that the social media company did offer to make changes in order to remain on the App Store. Parler told Apple that it âhas been taking this content very seriously for weeks,â that it would implement a moderation plan âfor the time beingâ and that it
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The Parler Social Media App, where many supporters of President Donald Trump have turned to express their opinions regarding the election, choosing to move away from Facebook and Twitter, where they feel censored. would implement a temporary task force, according to the letter. Apple rejected those efforts as a solution in its explanation for removing the app. âWe have continued to find direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action,â Apple wrote to Parler on Saturday, adding that the measures were âinadequate to address the proliferation of dangerous and objectionable content on your app.â Also on Saturday, Amazon Web Services wrote to Parler about its decision to suspend its AWS account, according to a letter obtained by Bloomberg. The largest cloud computing provider said it had informed the social media company of 98 instances of posts inciting violence in recent weeks, and that Parlerâs plans to moderate its content were insufficient. âWe cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,â according to the letter, signed by AWSâs Trust & Safety Team and addressed to Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff.
Covid: ICUs tested From Page One started earlier in the week, but (definitely) here in the last day or two.â A preliminary, incomplete survey of local health jurisdictions in L.A. County found at least 14,000 new coronavirus cases reported Sunday, and at least 160 deaths. The daily tallies for Sundays are generally lower due to reporting delays over the weekend. L .A. County is now averaging about 211 Covid-19 deaths a day, a record. Thatâs a far more accelerated pace than the number from Christmas, when L.A. County was averaging about 80 deaths a day, and Thanksgiving, when about 30 deaths a day were recorded. There continues to be ongoing pressure on Californiaâs overloaded intensive care unit system. According to data released Sunday, the number of Covid-19 patients in the stateâs ICUs climbed to a record Saturday â to 4,863. Thatâs about triple the number from Thanksgiving. As of S at u r day, there were about 22,000 Covid-19 patients in Californiaâs hospitals. That number has remained relatively flat for the last week. Officials expect the number of hospitalizations to start worsening this week, as people who were infected over Christmas
start to become ill. Whatâs still not fully known is how bad the post-holiday surge will be in the hospitals. L.A. C o u n t y âs Covid-19 hospitalizations have been stable in recent days, hovering between 7,900 and 8,100 overall hospitalizations, including about 1,700 in the ICU. The ICUs in L.A. County are effectively out of available space. There are typically only about 2,000 staffed ICU beds in the county, and as of last week, about 400 were occupied by non-Covid patients. In recent days, available ICU beds in the county fell to zero or one in each of the following regions: central L.A., the Westside, southeast L.A. County, the San Gabriel Valley and the Antelope Valley. The South Bay-and-Long Beach region had as few as three available ICU beds in recent days, and the San Fernando Valley as few as six. Though Californiaâs existing pandemic surge is dire, the state has one of the lower cumulative numbers of Covid-19 deaths on a per capita basis, ranking 38th among the 50 states, probably a result of the early imposition of the stay-at-home order in the spring and summertime closures of certain high-risk businesses. New Jerseyâs cumulative Covid-19 death rate is triple that of Californiaâs; Arizonaâs is double; and Floridaâs is 1.5 times larger.
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CHICAGO â A man suspected of killing at least three people and wounding four more âjust randomlyâ targeted a girl of 15, an 81-year-old woman and people of different ages in between before he was killed during a shootout with Evanston police, officials said. The man shot dead by Evanston police was identified by Chicago police Superintendent David Brown as 32-yearold Jason Nightengale, who was a suspect in three fatal shootings on Chicagoâs South Side earlier in the day. In a series of secondslong videos posted to his personal Facebook page from Friday night on, a man displays wads of cash and alcohol in a vehicle while speaking unintelligibly to the camera. In one video, he can be heard saying, âIâm going to blow up the whole community.â About 10:30 a.m. Sunday it appeared Facebook disabled the manâs page after many of the videos had been shared and commented on dozens of times. Addressing reporters late Saturday, Brown explained without surveillance imaging or âa crystal ball,â police remained one step behind the shooter as he moved from the South Side to Evanston, shooting people at random along the way. There was no way to connect the shootings to one another in real-time as officers responded to each shooting scene, he said. At one point, they believe the gunman backtracked from the fourth Chicago shooting location to the third, where he shot at police officers who were investigating the manâs earlier crime, Brown said. A police source said a marked squad car was shot at least twice and a citizenâs vehicle also was
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Police investigate a shooting scene at the corner of Asbury and Howard, on the Chicago-Evanston border, Jan. 9. hit, but Brown said no officers were injured and none returned fire. The Chicago shooting rampage began at 1:50 p.m. in the 5300 block of South East End Avenue in the East Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side, when police believe Nightengale entered a garage and shot a man in the head as he sat in a vehicle, Brown told reporters. The man who died was a 30-year-old University of Chicago student, according to the school, which shared the âdeeply painful news.â âIt is with great sadness that we inform our community that a current student of the University was shot and killed this evening in a parking garage of the Regents Park apartment complex at 5035 S. East End Avenue,â read an emailed statement from the school. âThe University was notified at approximately 5:10 p.m. today that a student had been discovered in a car with a gunshot wound.â A police source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the student was a resident of China who had been studying at the school.
None of the victims had been identified by the medical examinerâs office as of Sunday morning and Chicago police said they did not have additional information or updated conditions of those who were shot. Next, just after 2 p.m., police believe Nightengale traveled to the 4900 block of South East End Avenue, where he entered an apartment building âjust randomlyâ and began firing shots, Brown said. He shot a security guard, 46, who was sitting at the desk, in the chest, and she later died at the University of Chicago Medical Center. A 77-year-old woman, who was getting her mail, was shot in the right side of her head and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition. About 2:45 p.m., Nightengale then entered the back door of a building in the 5500 block of South East End Avenue and took the elevator to the 19th floor, Brown said. He got off the elevator and saw a man he knew because a relative of Nightengale used to live in the building. Nightengale demanded
the keys to the manâs vehicle but did not shoot him. âHe pushes that man inside and steals his red Toyota, so itâs a carjacking victim but not a shooting victim,â Brown said. Nightengale then took the red Toyota and drove away, Brown said. After the carjacking, Nightengale entered a convenience store and announced a robbery at 3 p.m. in the 9300 block of South Halsted Street in the Brainerd neighborhood, Brown said. He then shot a 20-year-old man in the head. âJust a random victim,â Brown said. The 20-year-old man was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in critical condition and later pronounced dead, Brown said. An 81-year-old woman in the convenience store was also shot in the back and the neck, and she was also taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in critical condition. At 4 p.m. in the 10300 block of South Halsted Street in the Washington Heights neighborhood, a 15-year-old girl was shot in the head while she was being driven by her mother, Brown said.
Pelosi: GOP officials call for resignation From Page One Also Sunday, a second Senate Republican called on Trump to âresign and go away.â âThe best way for our country,â Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania said, âis for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible.â In interviews on NBCâs âMeet the Pressâ and CNNâs âState of the Union,â he became the second GOP senator, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to tell the president that it was time to go. But with Trumpâs term ending in nine days, Toomey and several other Republicans argued that if the House impeached the president, a Senate trial would not occur until after Trump had already left office and was a private citizen. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said all 100 senators would have to consent to fast-tracking a trial or any business of substance before Inauguration Day, an unlikely prospect. Although Toomey agreed that the presidentâs actions were impeachable, he demurred when asked whether he would vote to convict the president in the Senate. âI donât know, as a practical matter, that it is actually even possible to do an impeachment in the number, in the handful, of days that are left,â the senator said on CNN. D emo crat s say impeachment is still vital because it signals that Trumpâs behavior is unacceptable, and could also result in barring him from running for office again, as he has hinted he might. In response to complaints that pursuing impeachment would dis-
tract the new Congress and the nation from coping with the pandemic and supporting President-elect Bidenâs agenda, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina raised the possibility of delaying the Senate trial for up to several months. He said that even if the House impeached Trump this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could refrain from immediately sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. That would allow Biden to deal with crucial early business, such as securing confirmation for key Cabinet nominees and taking steps to rein in the coronavirus that is killing Americans at a record pace. Last week, the number of daily deaths from COVID-19 touched 4,000 for the first time, pushing the national toll to nearly 375,000. âLetâs give Presidentelect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running,â Clyburn said on CNNâs âState of the Union.â Four days after the Capitol was broken into and ransacked, many lawmakers still seemed to struggle for words to describe an event unprecedented in modern American history. The violence â which left five dead, including a Capitol police officer â forced lawmakers to flee and temporarily delayed their formal counting and announcement of electoral votes in Bidenâs victory, as required by the Constitution. With redoubled focus on securing Bidenâs inauguration, senior Democrats called on law enforcement to address the continuing threat posed by Trump partisans. Incoming Senate
Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday he had urged FBI Director Christopher Wray a day earlier to ârelentlessly pursueâ the Capitol attackers, some 100 of whom have been arrested and charged. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., appearing Sunday on CBSâ âFace the Nation,â urged authorities to âflood the zone around the Capitol with federal resourcesâ for Bidenâs inauguration on Jan. 20. Although the president has yet to publicly express any remorse over Wednesdayâs mob attack, his most ardent defenders, including Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., pivoted swiftly to grievances over the permanent termination of Trumpâs personal account on Twitter, his favorite social media platform. âRepublicans have no way to communicate,â Nunes complained on a nationally televised cable program, Foxâs âSunday Morning Futures.â Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., suggested â as some other senators did after Trumpâs first impeachment last year â that the president had learned his lesson. âMy personal view is that the president touched the hot stove on Wednesday and is unlikely to touch it again,â said Blunt, interviewed on CBSâ âFace the Nation.â He said Trump should serve out the remainder of his term. Democrats disagreed. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the chair of the Democratic caucus, said Trumpâs remaining days in power represented peril for the country. âEvery second, every minute, every hour that Donald Trump remains in office presents a danger to the American people,â Jeffries said on âMeet the Press.â Trump, he
said, âmay be in the Twitter penalty box, but he still has access to the nuclear codes.â Many Democrats have characterized the Capitol attack as a logical culmination of Trumpâs years of hateful rhetoric, demonizing opponents and undermining democratic principles. But although some longtime Trump loyalists broke with him over the violent episode, many insisted at the same time that it was a departure from the overall trajectory of his presidency. âWednesday was a fundamental threat to the United States,â former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who resigned his position as a special envoy to Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Capitol attack, said on NBC. But he defended Trumpâs previous record, as did Toomey. âPolicy differences are different. Stylized, stylistic differences are different. Things you donât like about a personâs personality are different than what happened on Wednesday,â Mulvaney said. A few elected Republicans, including Marylandâs Gov. Larry Hogan, faulted both Trump and the members of Congress who backed his falsehood that the election was stolen. âThere is no question in my mind that he was responsible for inciting this riotous mob,â Hogan, interviewed on CNN, said of Trump. He also said he was âembarrassed and ashamedâ of lawmakers who voted to contest the election results even after the attack, though he declined to call explicitly for their expulsion. âI think history will decide how theyâre remembered,â he said.
