Montana
Judge to weigh limits for aerial fire retardant in wildfires
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge is weighing whether to severely limit the government’s use of aerial fire retardant to combat wildfires following arguments Monday by environmentalists who are concerned about water pollution.
A lawsuit pitting an environmental advocacy group against the U.S. Forest Service and others — including a Northern California town called Paradise, where a 2018 blaze killed 85 people — could reshape the way blazes are fought as this year’s fire season inches closer. Aircraft drops the potentially toxic red slurry in a bid to slow the blazes.
At Monday’s hearing in Missoula, Montana — home of the Forest Service’s famous smokejumpers, who parachute into remote fires — U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen said he planned to issue his ruling soon. He said he was cognizant of the potential for a blaze erupting while the case winds its way through the legal process.
“I’m envisioning fire season just around the corner somewhere in the western United States,” Christensen said.
Over the last two decades, wildfires across North America have grown bigger and more destructive. Experts say climate change, people moving into fire-prone areas, and overgrown forests are creating more catastrophic megafires that are harder to fight.
But the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, the advocacy group, argued Monday that by continuing to use retardant without taking adequate precautions to protect streams and rivers, the Forest Service is disregarding a federal clean water law.
The group has asked the court to issue an injunction blocking officials from using aerial retardant until they get a pollution permit — which Forest Service officials say could take years.
In the meantime, the agency says the retardant is a necessary firefighting tool and that the environmental damage from fires can exceed the pollution from the aerial retardant.
To limit pollution to streams, officials in recent years have avoided dropping the fire retardant inside buffer zones within 300 feet (92 meters) of waterways. Under a 2011 government decision, fire retardant may only be applied inside the zones, known as “avoidance areas,” when human life or public safety is threatened and retardant could help.
Still, more than 200 loads of retardant got into waterways over the past decade. Federal officials say those situations usually occurred by mistake and in less than 1% of the thousands of loads annually.
Missouri
32 more years in prison for man who killed over cattle contract
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man already imprisoned for life for killing two brothers from Wisconsin over a cattle contract has been sentenced to more than 30 additional years for a related federal crime.
Garland Joseph Nelson, 28, of the northwestern Missouri town of Braymer, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City to 32 additional years in prison and also ordered to pay $261,000 in restitution for defrauding Diemel’s Livestock of Wisconsin.
Nelson pleaded guilty in September to two counts of first-degree murder in the 2019 deaths of 24-year-old Justin Diemel and 35-year-old Nicholas Diemel, of Shawano County, Wisconsin. He was sentenced to life without parole.
The Diemels’ father reported them missing July 21, 2019, after they didn’t return from a visit to Nelson’s farm, where they had gone to collect a $250,000 debt. The Diemel family had sent livestock to Nelson’s farm to be cared for and sold between 2018 and 2019. However, the animals were neglected and many died. Nelson charged the family full price, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Nelson shot the brothers and drove their pickup truck off of his farm. He told authorities he put the men’s bodies in 55-gallon barrels and burned them. Nelson told investigators he dumped the remains on a manure pile and hid the barrels on his property. The remains were later found in Missouri and in a livestock trailer in Nebraska that had been purchased in Missouri.
Federal prosecutors said Nelson tried to cover up the cattle fraud scheme by killing the brothers. He pleaded guilty to the fraud charge days after the guilty plea in the killings.
Ohio
Feds: Man tried to firebomb church to stop drag show
CLEVELAND (AP) — An eastern Ohio man told investigators that he tried to burn down an Ohio church because he wanted to prevent a drag show that was scheduled to take place there, federal prosecutors allege in newly unsealed charges.
Aimenn Penny, a 20-year-old from Alliance who is a member of a “white lives matter” group that espouses racist and neo-Nazi views, tried to burn down the Community Church of Chesterland early on March 25, authorities allege in court documents unsealed Monday. Chesterland is a small community east of Cleveland.
According to the criminal complaint, Penny said he tried to burn down the church using Molotov cocktails because he wanted to “protect the children and stop the drag show event.” He also regretted that it didn’t work, authorities said.
The FBI said the church, which was unoccupied at the time, sustained minimal damage and had scorch marks on the front door. According to court documents, investigators found broken glass from a vodka bottle and a beer bottle each containing a cloth-type material, along with a burnt matchstick and a blue plastic spray bottle filled with gasoline.
Penny was arrested March 31 and remains in custody. His attorney, John Greven, has declined to comment on the charges.
Penny is charged with violating the Church Arson Prevention Act, using fire to commit a federal felony, the malicious use of explosive materials and possessing a destructive device. He faces up to 50 years in prison if he’s convicted on all counts.
London
Prince William got ‘very large sum’ in phone hack settlement
LONDON (AP) — Prince William, the heir to the British throne, quietly received “a very large sum of money” in a 2020 settlement with the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire for phone hacking, according to court documents aired Tuesday in one of his brother’s lawsuits.
Prince Harry’s lawyer made the revelation in a summary of arguments about why Harry’s lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun and now-defunct News Of The World should not be thrown out. The suit alleges the newspapers unlawfully gathered information in a scandal dating back two decades.
News Group Newspapers, which Murdoch owns, argued that a High Court judge should throw out phone hacking lawsuits by the prince and by actor Hugh Grant because the claims were brought too late.
But Harry, the Duke of Sussex, said he was prevented from bringing his case because of a secret agreement between the royal family and the newspapers that called for a settlement and apology. The deal, which the prince said was authorized by the late Queen Elizabeth II, would have prevented future litigation from the royals.
Harry began pushing for a resolution in 2017 but said he “had enough” after the publisher “filibustered.” He filed suit in 2019.
The papers said William, Prince of Wales, later settled for a large, but undisclosed, sum.
“It is important to bear in mind that in responding to this bid by NGN to prevent his claims going to trial, (Harry) has had to make public the details of this secret agreement, as well as the fact that his brother, His Royal Highness Prince William, has recently settled his claim against NGN behind the scenes,” attorney David Sherborne wrote. “This is used very much by (Harry) as ‘a shield not a sword’ against NGN’s attack.”
The lawsuit is one of several that Harry has brought against British newspapers, including two other phone hacking cases.
California
Los Angeles pays $38M to settle suit over power line deaths
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles will pay $38 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of two people who were electrocuted by a power line that fell into their backyard.
The Department of Water and Power’s Board of Commissioners last month agreed to settle a suit over the January 2021 deaths of Ferdinand Tejada, 53, and his 20-year-old daughter, Janina Tejada. They died after coming into contact with a high-voltage electrical wire that fell into the backyard of their home in the Panorama City neighborhood.
The lawsuit by two family members said the city failed to properly maintain its power equipment.
Tejada’s wife, Julleth Tejada, said she witnessed the deaths of her husband and daughter. Estrelita Madrigal, Janina Tejada’s grandmother, “heard the explosion, smelled the smoke and fire, heard the screams and the yelling, and was aware that her granddaughter was being electrocuted,” according to the lawsuit as cited by the Los Angeles Times.
In a statement Monday, the DWP said it failed to properly inspect and repair the equipment and has “fully overhauled” its procedures.
“The loss their loved ones have experienced is unfathomable,” the statement said. “While nothing we do can bring them back, serious failures contributed to this tragedy, and we have committed to reform and major improvement to LADWP’s pole inspection and maintenance program.”
The agency said it has repaired or replaced equipment on about half of some 1,600 power poles that are considered to pose a threat to public safety, and it expects to finish temporary or permanent repairs to the others within three weeks.
The DWP board will hear an update on the inspection and maintenance program on Tuesday.
New York
Lawyer claims ‘smoking gun proof’ Ed Sheeran copied song
NEW YORK (AP) — A lawyer for the heirs of Marvin Gaye’s co-writer of the song “Let’s Get It On” told jurors at the start of a civil trial Tuesday that he has “smoking gun” proof that Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” violates the copyright of the soul classic.
Attorney Ben Crump, representing heirs of Ed Townsend, said in his opening statement that the English pop star merged the two songs in concert and jurors will get to see it.
He said merging the song was tantamount to “a confession.”
“We have a smoking gun,” he said of the concert footage showing Sheeran flipping between the two songs.
Crump said the case was about “giving credit where credit is due.”
Sheeran, 32, looked on as his lawyer, Ilene Farkas, insisted that Sheeran and a cowriter, Amy Wadge, wrote their song independently and did not steal from Townsend and Gaye.
She said they “created this heartfelt song without copying ‘Let’s Get It On.’”
The chord progression and basic music building blocks in Sheeran’s song are frequently used, and didn’t appear first in “Let’s Get it On,” his lawyer said.
“Let’s Get It On” has been heard in countless films and commercials and garnered hundreds of millions of streams, spins and radio plays since it came out in 1973. “Thinking Out Loud” won a Grammy for song of the year in 2016.
The lawsuit was filed in 2017. The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
Townsend, who also wrote the 1958 R&B doo-wop hit “For Your Love,” was a singer, songwriter and lawyer. He died in 2003. Kathryn Townsend Griffin, his daughter, is the plaintiff leading the lawsuit.
