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☆ Whitey Herzog, Hall of Fame Cardinals Manager, Dies at 92
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-16 | by ( Richard Goldstein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Whitey Herzog, the Hall of Fame manager who led the St. Louis Cardinals to three pennants and a World Series championship in the 1980s, died on Monday in St. Louis. He was 92 and had been the second-oldest Hall of Famer after Willie Mays. “Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it,” Herzog liked to say. Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from Manager Casey Stengel at spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams over eight seasons with only modest success.

Persons: Whitey Herzog, St . Louis, Willie Mays, ” Herzog, Casey Stengel, Herzog Organizations: of Fame, St, Louis Cardinals, of Famer, Cardinals, “ Baseball, Yankees, American League, Royals, Busch Locations: St ., Kansas City

☆ Opinion: ‘Dune: Part Two’ falls into a familiar – and telling – trap
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-26 | by ( Opinion Noah Berlatsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

His hero, Paul Atreides, is filled with doubts about his role as a Messianic leader and director of colonial conquest. (The distributor of “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two” shares a parent company, Warner Bros. So in the movie, it’s not just Paul who sees problems with his colonial power. Timothée Chalamet in "Dune: Part Two" Warner Bros. PicturesIn the book, Chani is mostly supportive of Paul, with few reservations. Paul feels bad for being the destined one; Herbert and Villeneuve, to varying degrees, seem to regret making Paul the destined one.

Persons: Noah Berlatsky, CNN — Frank Herbert’s, revel, Whitey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Fenimore Cooper, Rider Haggard, Herbert, Paul Atreides, Noah Berlatsky Noah Berlatsky Denis Villeneuve’s, ”, Villeneuve, he’s, Paul, Timothée, Atreides, Paul’s, Leto Atreides, Oscar Isaac, Arrakis, Emperor, Christopher Walken, Baron Harkonnen, Stellan, Leto, Jessica, Rebecca Ferguson, Natty Bumppo, it’s, Chani, Tasha Suri’s “, Ambha, Sriduangkaew’s, Thompson’s, Suri, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Paul doesn’t, “ Organizations: CNN, Warner Bros, Pictures Locations: Chicago, swash, Vietnam

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — Todd Helton and Joe Mauer will become just the sixth pair of players inducted together into the Hall of Fame after spending their big league careers with one organization. “A lot of things had to go right,” Helton said Thursday during a news conference in the Hall’s plaque gallery alongside Mauer and fellow electee Adrián Beltré. You try to make the team better and you lead, and if they want you there, great. Just 58 of 273 players elected to the Hall spent their entire career with one team. Helton was nervous meeting the Hall of Famer Brett, but is eager to spend time with him, Mike Schmidt and other members this summer.

Persons: — Todd Helton, Joe Mauer, ” Helton, Mauer, Adrián, …, Helton, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Johnny Bench, Carl Yastrzemski, George Brett, Robin Yount, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez, Keli McGregor, ” Mauer, “, ”, It’s, Chip, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Jim Leyland, Juan Marichal, ” Beltré, Marichal, Pedro Martínez, Vladimir Guerrero, David Ortiz, Albert, Pujols, Felipe Alou, Ralph Avila, Pablo Peguero, Larry Walker, of Famer Brett, Mike Schmidt Organizations: of Fame, Rockies, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox, Cal, Cal Ripken Jr, Red Sox, Boston, Baseball Writers ’ Association of America, Helton, Dominican, Dodgers, Hall, of Famer Locations: COOPERSTOWN, N.Y, Colorado, St, Paul , Minnesota, Dominican

The stabbing on Friday of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020, at a special unit inside a Tucson, Ariz., prison is the latest in a series of attacks against high-profile inmates in the troubled, short-staffed federal Bureau of Prisons. The assault comes less than five months after Larry Nassar, the doctor convicted of sexually abusing young female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times at the federal prison in Florida. The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an inmate at the Tucson prison was stabbed around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, though the bureau did not identify Mr. Chauvin, 47, by name. The agency said in a statement that the inmate required “life-saving measures” before being rushed to a hospital emergency room nearby. The office of Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general who prosecuted the former police officer, identified the inmate as Mr. Chauvin.

Persons: Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Larry Nassar, James Bulger, Whitey, Jeffrey Epstein, Chauvin, Keith Ellison Organizations: of Prisons, Department, Federal Bureau of Prisons Locations: Minneapolis, Tucson, Ariz, Florida, Boston, Minnesota

☆ Nassar Is Said to Have Been Stabbed Multiple Times in Florida Prison
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Glenn Thrush | More About Glenn Thrush | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In a scathing 2021 report, the inspector general for the Justice Department found that the F.B.I. initially botched the investigation, allowing Mr. Nassar to assault more young women. Mr. Nassar was convicted on federal charges in 2017. A federal judge ordered that sentence to run concurrently and remanded him to federal custody. Last year, 13 female athletes who were sexually assaulted by Mr. Nassar each sought $10 million from the F.B.I., claiming agents mishandled the investigation, allowing him to continue abusing more victims.

Persons: Nassar, Theodore J . Kaczynski, James Bulger, Whitey, Jeffrey Epstein Organizations: Justice Department, Federal, of Prisons Locations: Michigan, North Carolina, Boston, West Virginia, Manhattan

☆ Two guys who were fed up with spam calls created a ChatGPT tool that trolls telemarketers and wastes their time
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-01 | by ( Will Gendron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Jolly Roger is a telephone service that uses AI to fight back against pesky telemarketing calls. With the prevalence of robocalls across the country, Jolly Roger serves as a way to fight back. A telephone service called Jolly Roger harnesses ChatGPT and voice modulation software to create and read scripts to telemarketers. There were 4.7 billion spam calls made in November 2022 and 5.08 billion this past May, according to YouMail's robocall index. Until a world where dubious calls from unidentified numbers exists, Jolly Roger will do its best to alleviate the annoyance.

Persons: Jolly Roger, pesky, Whitey Whitebeard, Sally, telemarketers, Roger Anderson, Anderson, Steve Berkson, Berkson, Steve, Sid Berkson, Berkson's, ChatGPT, it's Organizations: Morning, Street Journal, robocalls, Force Locations: Washington, Arizona

☆ Massachusetts US attorney to resign amid Justice Dept ethics probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Sarah N. Lynch | Thomson Reuters | Sarah N. Lynch Is The Lead Reporter For Reuters Covering The U.S. Justice Department Out Of Washington | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins will resign her post by Friday, her lawyer said on Tuesday, after the prosecutor became the subject of a wide-ranging ethics investigation by the Justice Department inspector general's office. Bromwich announced her decision to resign her post not long after Rollins met with officials in Washington at the Justice Department on Tuesday. Rollins was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in December 2021 after Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote. "I warned Democratic senators that Rachael Rollins wasn't only a pro-criminal ideologue, but also had a history of poor judgment and ethical lapses," Cotton said in a statement on Tuesday. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had vowed when he assumed his post as the nation's top law enforcement official to protect the Justice Department from partisan influence.

☆ The Justice Department investigated Jeffrey Epstein's death. Then it went silent.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +25 min

Jeffrey Epstein's death in a federal jail was seen as a shocking Justice Department failure. But more than three years later, the office still hasn't released its report into the circumstances of Epstein's death. "We all took it by surprise," Mark Epstein told Insider. Barr tasked the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and the FBI with investigating "the circumstances of Mr. Epstein's death." Mark Epstein told Insider that he spoke to his brother about once a month in the years before his death.

BOSTON, March 1 (Reuters) - Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins has hired a former Justice Department inspector general to defend her in a widening ethics investigation into her appearance at a political fundraiser and her travel. The controversy has threatened to undermine Attorney General Merrick Garland’s vow to protect the Justice Department from partisan influence and efforts to extend progressive criminal justice policies championed by Rollins to the federal level. It is unclear what the inspector general's probe will find or when it will be completed. James Borghesani, a spokesman for Hayden, said they have received no inquiries from the inspector general's office. Investigators are also looking at Rollins' use of a personal cellphone, rather than her government-issued one, for Justice Department business, said two other people familiar with the matter.

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” suffers from thin dialogue and predictability — dull trappings intrinsic to biopics. Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." To wit: Whitney Houston was a Black woman — ate Black, slept Black, lived Black, cried Black, walked Black and died Black. The most peculiar aspect of this criticism is the fact that nearly all American music is Black music. While Houston has mostly elided criticism that she wasn’t Black enough or didn’t make Black music, the spirit of this indictment lives on today.

☆ Former mob boss Francis 'Cadillac Frank' Salemme dies at 89 while serving life sentence for murder
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

BOSTON — Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, the once powerful New England Mafia boss who was serving a life sentence behind bars for the 1993 killing of a Boston nightclub owner, has died at the age of 89, according to the Bureau of Prisons. After being released from prison, Salemme was seriously wounded in a shooting outside a suburban Boston pancake house. The racketeering case revealed that Bulger and Salemme’s best friend, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, had secretly worked as FBI informants. Just before DiSarro’s death, the FBI told him he was about to be indicted and should cooperate with the government against the Salemmes. “You’re not going to beat the government,” Salemme told a reporter in 2004.

At 190 minutes, the running time of “Avatar: The Way of Water” is longer. Jake and Neytiri have had numerous children and adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the daughter of a human scientist’s avatar body. Rather than invaders exploring the land they’ve invaded, the second “Avatar” film is about the encounter of two different indigenous societies. But the human colonizers —preparing to strip-mine Pandora for its minerals and its biological resources (including space whale essence) — are the aliens. Rather than invaders exploring the land they’ve invaded, the second “Avatar” film is about the encounter between two different indigenous societies.

The sky was darkening above Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia when a prison van rolled up carrying an elderly gangster. ‘I’m deteriorating’His final hours were described in detail for the first time in a Justice Department Inspector General report released Wednesday. The news somehow got out among the Hazelton inmates, the report says, a detail that had been previously disclosed by federal prosecutors. The facility, known as Misery Mountain, was among the most violent in the federal prison system. Two hours passed before a prison staffer went into the cell and found Bulger’s lifeless body.

The inspector general found that prison officers spoke openly about Bulger’s anticipated arrival around inmates, in violation of policy. Elderly, ailing inmates are often transferred to a prison medical center. Bulger had a heart condition and should have been sent to a prison with special medical facilities, the inspector general found. The FBI is conducting a separate criminal probe into the murder, but it’s not clear whether the bureau is investigating any prison employees. The inspector general's report cites six prison employees as having committed potential misconduct.

☆ Whitey Bulger Killed After Inmates Were Tipped Off on His Prison Transfer, Watchdog Says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Sadie Gurman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—Inmates at a West Virginia federal prison knew well in advance that convicted Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was being transferred there and placed bets on how long it would be before the notorious FBI informant was killed, the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in a withering report released Wednesday. Bulger, 89 and in failing health, was bludgeoned to death with a padlock less than 12 hours after arriving at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in October 2018, the violent capstone to his own murderous career and to what the watchdog’s report described as a series of management failures, flawed policies and bureaucratic ineptitude.

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