Author: J.P. Knowles

Amber Heard sat down with Savannah Guthrie to talk about the defamation case brought by ex-husband Johnny Depp that concluded earlier this month with the jury unanimously finding that Heard defamed Depp and awarded him more than $10 million in damages.

In a preview clip from Heard’s exclusive interview with NBC News, Heard criticized social media for influencing the trial.

“Even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t tell me — look me in the eye and tell me — that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation,” Heard said. “You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”

The former couple duked it out in court over a 2018 op-ed Heard wrote for The Washington Post in which she described surviving domestic abuse. Though she did not name Depp, his attorneys allege the op-ed references claims that she made during their divorce in 2016. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star sued Heard for $50 million, claiming the op-ed impacted his career. She countersued for $100 million.

People on social media expressed overwhelming support for Depp throughout the trial. As of June 3, the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp had nearly 20 billion views on TikTok, while #justiceforamberheard had over 80 million. Hashtags like #amberheardisguilty had 900 million views.

The judge instructed the jury to stay off social media, but Heard’s legal team argues that it still impacted the case.

“There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it, and it was horrible,” Heard’s attorney Elaine Charlson Bredehoft said. “It really, really was lopsided.”

Depp’s attorneys, Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez said there was “no reason to believe the jurors violated their oath” by engaging on social media.

Ultimately, the seven-person jury unanimously found “clear and convincing evidence” that Heard defamed Depp, awarding him $15 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages. The judge reduced the punitive damages, making the total amount that Heard owes Depp $10.4 million. The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in compensatory damages after the jury found one of Depp’s lawyers had defamed her.

Despite the verdict and media response, Heard said that she was not offended by the public’s opinion of her.

“I don’t care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors,” Heard said. “I don’t presume the average person should know these things. And so I don’t take it personally.”

Heard added that she doesn’t blame the jury for ruling against her.

“I actually understand,” she said. “He’s a beloved character and people feel they know him. He’s a fantastic actor.”

Heard plans to appeal the verdict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is so paranoid that his excrement and urine might reveal too much information about his health that he carries it with him in a suitcase to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

“Putin fears the possibility of any information about his health getting into the hands of foreign intelligence services,” according to Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former DIA intelligence officer.

“He wants to project the image that he will be ruling Russia indefinitely to deter any chaos associated with a change of power.”

A special aide from the Federal Guard Service is in charge of the suitcase that contains his fecal matter and urine collected during his trips and returns it to Moscow.

Kofler suggests that Putin doesn’t want anyone using the excrement as evidence of some kind of weakness in his health.

“While there is much speculation about Putin’s having a terminal illness, the intelligence about his health is inconclusive,” Koffler said. “Short of a terminal illness, Putin will likely be Russia’s president at least through 2024 and probably through 2036, given that his popularity has skyrocketed after the invasion of Ukraine.”

Putin currently has an 81% approval rating even though there have been scattered protests since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Rumors about Putin’s health have been circulating since before the invasion began, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denying that the Russian president was seriously ill as recently as last week.

“You know, President Putin appears in public every day. You can see him on the screens, read his speeches, listen to his speeches,” Lavrov said. “I don’t think sane people can discern any sort of symptom of disease in this man.”

In a recent recording, a Kremlin-aligned Russian oligarch said that Putin was seriously ill with blood cancer.

There has been speculation that Putin remained isolated before the invasion to avoid showing signs of poor health. Critics cited his extended periods of isolation as a cause for questionable judgment leading up to and during the invasion of Ukraine.

Missouri police say a woman stole a dog, killed it, and set it on fire as part of a ritualistic sacrifice.

Brianna Lynn Lingo, 29, is facing felony charges of stealing an animal and animal abuse by torture and mutilation while the animal was alive,

A Moberly Police Department spokesperson said officers arrested Lingo after her mother dialed 911 and asked for help at her home on Thursday.

Lingo’s mother told officials that her daughter killed her dog – a terrier mix – as part of “a ritual sacrifice,” according to an affidavit.

When officers arrived at the mother’s home, they found the dog’s burned body in a fire pit in a courtyard.

Lingo admitted to detectives that she had strangled and then burned its body.

She was arrested and booked into the Randolph County Jail, where she was being held Friday on a $15,000 bond.

Lingo was arraigned Friday morning and is due back in court on June 21 for a bond hearing.

A man who broke into the Dallas Museum of Art overnight and destroyed more than $5 million in irreplaceable artwork told police he did it because he “got mad at his girl.”

Brian Hernandez, 21, was arrested late Wednesday night at the museum after he forced his way inside and destroyed several items.

Hernandez shattered the front entrance glass with a metal chair at about 9:40 p.m., then made his way inside where he purposefully damaged or destroyed $5,153,000 worth of artwork including several pots and statues.

A guard told police that he and another guard went to investigate after a motion sensor went off and found Hernandez. He told the guards that “he got mad at his girl so he broke in and started destroying property.”

The guards called the police and Hernandez voluntarily waited on a bench until they arrived a short time later.

Police officers along with the director of security did a walk-through of the museum and discovered that several art displays and cases had been destroyed.

Surveillance video showed Hernandez used a stool to destroy at least two display cases worth $17,000 each along with four pieces, a “Black Figure Panel Amphora 6th Century Greece” pot and a “Red Figure Pyxis 450 B.C.” pot that were both shattered. The pots, together, were valued at $5 million. A 6th Century ceramic cup, “Kylix Herakles and Nemeon Lion,” valued at $100,000, and the Caddo statue “Bath Kuhuh Alligator Gar Fish,” valued at $10,000, were also destroyed.

“The items inside of the display cases that were destroyed are rare ancient artifacts that are extremely precious and one of a kind,” according to the police affidavit.

A computer, phone, bench, and signage were also destroyed.

“While we are devastated by this incident, we are grateful that no one was harmed,” the museum said in a statement. “The safety of our staff and visitors, along with the care and protection of the art in our stewardship, are our utmost priorities.”

Hernandez confessed to the crime and was booked into the Dallas County Jail on a charge of criminal mischief greater than $300,000 and is being held on a bond of $100,000.

Though some of the permanent collection galleries were closed due to the ongoing investigation, The Dallas Museum of Art was open to visitors Thursday.

ITA Airways fired a pilot after he fell asleep while flying from New York City to Rome, causing a communication blackout and a terror alert.

The flight which departed John F Kennedy International Airport on April 30 was unresponsive for 10 minutes while flying over French airspace, prompting France to engage 2 fighter jets over concerns of a potential terror attack.

Investigators say the ITA Airways co-pilot was asleep during his designated sleep break, but the pilot fell asleep at the controls. ITA claims that although the pilot was sleeping, the 250 passengers aboard the plane were safe.

“All rules and safety procedures were carefully followed in compliance with the highest standards, with the usual support of advanced onboard technology, thus guaranteeing the highest level of safety for the passengers,” ITA Airways said.

“The plane can still fly on autopilot, but this is not smart or safe,” Aviation analyst John Nance said. The pilots could have fallen asleep when expected to monitor weather and fuel status, making it “extremely dangerous,” he added.

The pilot claimed there was a failure in the communications system making it impossible to respond to French Authorities.

The ITA Airways said they fired the pilot due to “strong inconsistencies between the statements made by the captain and the outcome of the internal investigations.” The pilot “did not comply with the procedures in force both during the flight and once landed,” they added.

Three police officers in Arizona are on administrative leave after watching a man drown.

Body cam shows 34-year-old Sean Bickings drowning in a Tempe City reservoir.

New Body Camera Video Shows Arizona Man Pleading Officers For Help Before Drowning

Officers responded to an “alleged fight” between Bickings and a woman claiming to be his wife, Susan.

Officers can be seen approaching the woman as she explains she is having some “conversating issues” with her husband, she stressed that he had not been violent.

The officers then approach Bickings, who is also distraught. As the officers are talking to him, he suddenly climbs over the four-foot railing as he tells them he is going for a swim.

“I’m free to go, right?” Bickings calls back.

“You can’t swim in the lake, man,” they tell him, leaning on the railings. “You’re not allowed to swim in the lake.”

But Bickings jumped into the water and swam out about 100 feet as the officers looked on.

“How far do you think he’s gonna be able to swim?” one officer asked his fellow officer. One of the officers advises keeping an eye on him just in case he gets out, while he goes to call for a boat.

As the officer filming makes his way along the bridge, a bike-mounted officer said, “I’m pretty sure there are turbines at the base of the dam that could suck him under the water.”

The Tempe Police Department provided a transcript of what happened.

“So what’s your plan right now?” the officer asked Bickings in the water.

“I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown,” he replied.

“No you’re not,” one officer tells him.

“Go at least go to the pylon and hold on,” the second officer calls down.

“I’m drowning.”

“Come back over to the pylon.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Okay, I’m not jumping in after you,” the officer tells him.

“Please help me. Please, please, please,” the victim begs. “I can’t touch. Oh, God. Please help me. Help me.”

Bickings’ last words are “Can you hear me?” Then he slipped under the water.

The officers then turned their attention to Bickings’ frantic wife, who was telling them how much she loved him and cannot afford to lose him; the officers tell her to calm down and even threaten to put her in the patrol car if she didn’t.

The Tempe Police Department said Bickings drowned after “voluntarily entering the water and soon becoming unable to continue swimming.”

“Before entering the lake, he had been conversing, unhandcuffed, with the officers, who had responded to a call about an alleged fight between Bickings and his companion,” police said.

The incident is now under investigation at a state and local level.

President Biden recently introduced a new insult for Republicans, recalling them “ultra-MAGA,” a play on former President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. The new handle wasn’t accepted among most Democrats, but some Republicans have embraced the title and they especially liked when Biden called Trump “The Great MAGA King.”

Co-hosts Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters of “The Five,” had fun roasting Biden for the botched messaging.

“You can’t burn someone with ‘king’ in the nickname,” Watters joked. “It’s like calling me King Fox. OK, I’ll take it.”

“Biden has such difficulty communicating that even his nicknames, his smears, are ineffective,” co-host Geraldo Rivera said.

Meanwhile, the source of the title has come into question with the White House claiming the new moniker was the president’s creation, but other sources say it was a liberal-funded focus group project.

The Uvalde school police chief, who has come under fire for his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, is now claiming that he was never the incident commander on the scene and that he did not issue orders directing responding officers to stand down. For the first time, Pete Arredondo is describing what he claims happened on May 24 in Uvalde, Texas, when gunman Salvador Ramos massacred 19 children and two teachers.

“Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” Arredondo said. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”

 

Since the massacre, authorities have been bombarded by public questions about why they did not confront Ramos sooner. Responding cops didn’t engage the gunman right away, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, because “the on-scene commander at the time” — whom he identified as Arredondo – “believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

However, Arredondo, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s chief of police, said he never considered himself in that position while the shooting unfolded.

“I didn’t issue any orders,” Arredondo said, noting that he “called for assistance and asked for an extraction tool to open the door” to the classroom that Ramos was inside.

It was alleged that the group of US Border Patrol agents that killed Ramos were warned not to enter the classroom through their earpieces at one time, but Arredondo’s lawyer stated his client didn’t say it, and if it was, he isn’t sure who said it.

“It’s not that someone said stand down,” said Arredondo’s attorney, George Hyde. “It was ‘Right now, we can’t get in until we get the tools. So we’re going to do what we can do to save lives.’ And what was that? It was to evacuate the students and the parents and the teachers out of the rooms.”

Arredondo also said in an interview that he tried dozens of keys to try to gain entry through the door separating police from Ramos.

“Each time I tried a key I was just praying,” he added.

Following the shooting, Arredondo got death threats and claims he didn’t come out sooner because he didn’t want to add to the community’s pain, according to the website.

Albany City Court was closed for fumigation Tuesday after a protester released hundreds of cockroaches during an arraignment for tenant advocates who’d been arrested at a good cause eviction rally in the state capital last month.

One of the activists supporting the defendants was placed in handcuffs after she tried to recover her phone, which court personnel had confiscated when she began filming the proceeding.

Tenant advocate Clyanna Lightbourn, was fired from her job at the state Senate Democratic Conference Services Office following the arrest. Lightbourn allegedly created a distraction so the cockroaches could be released.

As that dispute played out, another person dropped cockroach-infested lettuce leaves, which had been smuggled into the courtroom, onto the floor.

“What transpired is not advocacy or activism, it is criminal behavior with the intent to disrupt a proceeding and cause damage,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the state Office of Court Administration.

Others may be charged as an investigation continues, Chalfen said.

“While the incident remains under investigation, the office of the district attorney would like to emphasize that while the right to protest is protected, we oppose the disruption of court proceedings, and the apparent display of disrespect shown to the court,” the statement said.

A Prisma Health worker died after a patient who was trying to escape the hospital during a court-ordered visit attacked him. Imani Cox, 27, had been admitted to Prisma Health Tuomey for a court-ordered evaluation. According to police, Cox was trying to leave the hospital when security tried to stop her.

She became “aggressive and began to fight with employees,” police said. She hit at least two employees, including mental health technician Kevin Robinson who got kicked in the groin.

Robinson later went into cardiac arrest and was a patient in the ICU when he died days later. Investigators are awaiting the results of an autopsy to confirm Robinson’s cause of death.

Cox was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and battery. Robinson had worked for Prisma health for over a decade.

“He worked for us for 11 years and was well-loved by his team members,” the hospital said in a statement. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to our team member’s loved ones and to our Tuomey hospital family who share his loss.”

“Tragically, we are seeing an increase in aggression and violence across the nation, in settings such as shopping malls, airplanes, schools, and healthcare facilities,” the hospital statement added. “Prisma Health has Security on hospital campuses and an active workplace violence task force that is examining how to balance compassionate care with protecting our team members, patients, and visitors.”