Author: J.P. Knowles

Family members say they made the right decision to prop up and display a young rapper’s corpse in a Washington, D.C. nightclub April 3 while loved ones danced around him.

Bliss Nightclub hosted the celebration, and video of the embalmed, upright corpse quickly spread on social media. Twenty-four-year-old rapper Markelle Morrow, known as “Goonew,” was shot and killed on March 18. His mother and sister say they did the right thing when they decided to display his body during a celebration of his life, adding that it was what he would have wanted.

The rapper’s mother, Patrice, and his sister, Ariana Morrow, explained to fans that every aspect of his memorial was planned with Goonew’s personality and preferences in mind.

“My mom made it very clear, she said ‘I don’t want it to be a funeral it’s his last show… I don’t want nobody to ever look down on my son,’” Ariana said. That’s why they made the decision to prop up Goonew’s embalmed body and present him to his loved ones in an authentic way.

The family said the funeral home helped them create their club-themed memorial and even suggested a crown be placed atop Goonew’s head as a nod to the way fans used to reference the artist as “The King Of Maryland.” Patrice and Ariana went on to say they had dressed Goonew in his personal style, adding that dressing his body in a traditional suit would have been “fake and phony.” The family stated that Goonew did not attend church, so a church service didn’t seem to be an appropriate setting for the event.

Goonew was shot and killed on March 18 in Prince George’s County, in what the family believes to have been an armed robbery.

After the celebration a horse-drawn carriage took the rapper’s body through his neighborhood and to his final resting place.

“He was the life of the party, so that’s why I sent him home that way, having a party,” his mother said.

A church in Chicago announced that it is “fasting from whiteness” this year during the season of Lent.

The First United Church of Oak Park said it has banned all music written by white people, while they are observing Lent this year.

“In our worship services throughout Lent, we will not be using any music or liturgy written or composed by white people,” the church’s website reads. “Our music will be drawn from the African American spirituals tradition, from South African freedom songs, from Native American traditions, and many, many more.”

The church’s decision to ban music composed by white people is part of a larger theme by the church during Lent called, “fasting from whiteness,” the church announced in a Facebook post March 3.

“This Lent we build our worship life around the voices of Black people, indigenous people, and people of color,” the Facebook post reads.

“For Lent, it is our prayer that in our spiritual disciplines we may grow as Christians, united in the body of Christ with people of all ages, nations, races, and origins,” the post continues.

The church describes itself as an “open and inclusive Christian Community.”

An upstate New York mob assassin who murdered three rivals in the 1980s and attempted to murder two others has escaped from federal custody in Florida.

Dominic Taddeo, 64, was living in a halfway house while preparing for his planned release next year when he went to an approved medical appointment on March 28 and failed to return, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

In 2020, a judge denied Taddeo’s plea for a compassionate release during COVID.

U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci Jr. wrote, “Taddeo’s prior convictions are for crimes including assault, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and, most notably, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) conspiracy arising from his employment and association with Rochester’s La Cosa Nostra organized crime family.”

“The RICO charges involve the murder of three individuals, attempted murder of two more individuals, and conspiracy to murder a fifth person,” Geraci said.

In 1987, Taddeo disappeared after being released on bail then was found two years later visiting his brother in Cleveland. At that time, he had not yet been linked to the murders of Nicholas Mastrodonato, Gerald Pelusio, and Dino Tortatice in 1982 and 1983, and was facing only federal firearm charges.

U.S. District Judge Michael Telesca sentenced Taddeo to 54 years in prison in 1992.

Mayor Don McLaughlin of Uvalde, Texas, stated on Monday that illegal migrants crossing the Southern border have more rights than American citizens.

“You and I have to obey the rule of law, if we break the law, they’re going to come arrest us, we’re going to be punished,” McLaughlin said. “But yet we’re going to reward all these migrants that are coming across the border; and these should have been here and broke the law, now we’re going to drop the cases and let them run free?”

McLaughlin said that the city has no choice but to use local taxpayer funds to deal with the border crisis.

“I mean, I had to take money, the county judge and I had to take money from our citizens and hire busses to haul these people from Uvalde because there’s no public transportation here,” Mayor McLaughlin said.

“And this administration does nothing about it,” McLaughlin added.

“It’s ridiculous that we, this administration, put illegal immigrants across our border illegally. They have greater rights than American citizens,” the Texas mayor said.

The Biden administration announced it would end Title 42, which allows border officials to quickly turn migrants away if, “there is a serious danger to the introduction of a communicable disease into the United States.”

After the Biden administration did away with most border restrictions, Title 42 is one of the few remaining methods which border officials can use to curb the flow of illegal crossings at the Southern border.

Jury selection has begun in the case of the suspected killer known as the “Disney Dad.”

Anthony Todt allegedly murdered his wife, three kids and the family dog in 2020, then lived with their decaying bodies in the family’s Disney vacation home for weeks.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in Florida found Todt with his family’s decaying bodies on January 13, 2020, when they conducted a welfare check, according to the criminal complaint.

First responders said that when they arrived on the scene, Todt “was barely able to stand and shaking.” He told paramedics he had tried to kill himself by taking an overdose of Benadryl.

Todt confessed to the murders while he was in the hospital, but his defense argued that he had not been properly read his Miranda rights before the interview began.

Police took a 50 minute break during the interrogation and when they returned they reread Todt his rights, but the defense said that the entire interrogation should be thrown out and so should his January 15, 2020 statements because they were tainted.

The Florida judge presiding over the trial partially granted the defense’s motion in March and the statements Todt made before the officers took their break were thrown out.

The judge also ruled that all statements made after the break on January 15, 2020, will be allowed.

“That’s the effect it will have on the defense,” University of Miami law professor Donald Jones said. “The chess game over the confessions will likely be the entire trial.”

If the jury accepts Todt’s confession included in evidence, “it’s game over,” Jones said.

However, should the defense convince the jury the rest of his statements to the police were compromised and that he didn’t fully understand the rights that he’d waived, Todt has a chance to win the case, the legal expert said.

Todt was formally charged with four counts of murder and animal cruelty on January 29, 2020 and could face the death penalty if he’s convicted.

Scientists are planning to beam a radio message into deep space that had the late Stephen Hawking worried because it details information on human life.

Hawking, a renowned theoretical physicist, and cosmologist generally supported all efforts to confirm alien life but he cautioned scientists about actively reaching out our selves. Hawking was worried that any extraterrestrials who received our signal might not respond amicably.

“If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced,” Hawking said at the time, noting that any superior forms of life “may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.”

Now, a new message is being beamed to space with detailed information on Earth’s location, the solar system and human DNA. The Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG) message is an update on the 1974 binary code Arecibo message.

“The proposed message includes basic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System’s time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth’s surface,” BITG creator Jonathan Jiang wrote in the study concerning the message, “The message concludes with digitized images of the human form, along with an invitation for any receiving intelligences to respond.”

The BITG team said that they believe the benefits of contacting aliens outweigh any potential risks. “Stephen Hawking’s quote is absolutely inspiring and my personal conclusion was that any species capable of understanding and interpreting our message will likely be equally if not more intelligent and wary of our existence,” Jamilah Hah, a BITG team member said.

The message will co-launch from the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in northern California and the Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China.

Hawking compared humanity’s encounter with alien life to the Native Americans meeting Columbus, “that didn’t turn out so well,” he said. The famed physicist clearly had serious concerns about contacting alien life, but they were outweighed by his desire to know if they were really out there.

Hawking’s Breakthrough Listen project focused on searching for signs of intelligent life rather than broadcasting signals from Earth. The project launched in 2015 and was given a 10-year duration. In 2021, Breakthrough Listen announced that much of their work was being interfered with by human technologies.

Two men have been arrested for posing as federal agents and giving extravagant gifts to members of the Secret Service, including one who was assigned to First Lady Jill Biden’s protective detail, according to court documents.

The FBI arrested Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36, both of Washington, D.C., Wednesday on a criminal complaint charging them with the federal offense of False Impersonation of an Officer of the United States, according to the U.S. attorney’s offic.

Taherzadeh and Ali have been posing as federal law enforcement officers who work for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since February 2020. The pair has used their false credintials in an attempt to buy off members of the Secret Service and one Department of Homeland Security employee, according to an affidavit.

Taherzadeh bought their targets rent-free apartments, each costing $40,000 a year per apartment, iPhones, surveillance systems, drones, a flat screen tv, an assault rifle case, a generator and law enforcement paraphernalia, according to the court document. He also provided them with the use of what he said were “official government vehicles.” Taherzadeh offered to buy a $2,000 assault rifle for a Secret Service agent who was assigned to the first lady’s security detail.

On Wednesday, federal agents entered and exited the lavish apartment building for hours carrying evidence boxes.

One resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that she knew one of the accused, and was not surprised to hear the news.

“He talked about how he … lived in the building and was a secret police and my sister thought it was weird because she works for the federal government, and he just talked about how … they put him here because he works with gang violence and … whatever happened at the Capitol brought him here,” she said.

“Me and my sister always thought it was like a weird story and I work in Navy Yard as a waitress on the weekends and I came back … and he was like belligerently drunk like all the time at like 3 or 4 in the morning, like just made everyone uncomfortable, would hit on like women in the building,” she continued.

The woman said she “always thought he was weird.”

“And I’m guessing one of the Secret Service members, I know it was a woman, so I don’t know if he had a relationship with her or not, that’s why they were so heavily involved, but it would make sense … He made a lot of people uncomfortable in our building by the way he acted towards women, so yeah not surprised,” she said.

Four members of the Secret Service have been put on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to the court document.

Taherzadeh and Ali are in custody and will appear in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

A Beijing radical is poised to become Hong Kong’s chief executive following his announcement to seek Carrie Lam’s position on Wednesday.

Mark Simon, a former executive at Apple Daily, predicts Hong Kong’s Chief Secretary for Administration, John Lee, will become the next chief executive.

“Lee rose from police inspector under Beijing’s influence to be Hong Kong’s Secretary of Security where he led the crackdown in 2019 and ushered in the National Security Law in 2020,” Simon said.

Lee served in the Hong Kong Security Bureau between 2017 and 2021 and was “responsible for the formulation of security policies,” according to his government profile.

“Lee has been the Chinese Communist Party boot on Hong Kong’s throat,” said Simon.

He tendered his resignation from Secretary of Administration and Wednesday announced his intention to run in May’s election.

“Beijing is going to pickLam’s replacement because the election committee will follow what Beijing demands. If by the time of the meeting the election committee wants John Lee, that’s what the election committee is going to do,” author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” Gordon G. Chang, said.

“It should be the people in Hong Kong who choose their next leader, not Beijing. Beijing has taken away Hong Kong people’s right to universal suffrage, a right that is promised to the Hong Kong people in its functional constitution, the Basic Law,” Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

“Lam says she wants to spend more time with her family, there are hundreds of political prisoners in Hong Kong jails who want to be with their families. Her departure doesn’t free them,” Simon said.

“There’s no recovery for Hong Kong from Lam’s term unless political prisoners are released to go abroad, and the courts can regain their independence,” Simon said, referencing the National Security Law.

The National Security Law was billed as “preventing, suppressing and imposing punishment for the offenses of secession, subversion, organization and perpetration of terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country.”

Chang said the legislation was “essentially the end of law in Hong Kong.”

“There’s no rule of law anymore,” said Chang. “Hong Kong is a disaster.”

Simon and other employees of Apple Daily were targeted under Lee’s enforcement of the National Security Law.

Along with other Apple Daily executives, Simon’s bank account was frozen in August 2020, and his former boss, Jimmy Lai, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for holding a vigil commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre in December 2021.

President Joe Biden seemed to be invisible at the White House Tuesday as prominent Democrats flocked around former President Barack Obama after the president signed an executive order aimed at strengthening the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

After signing the order, Biden shook several hands and saluted the crowd before he walked away from the table. When he realized no one was walking with him, the president threw his arms up in frustration as he turned around to see several people, including Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, gathered around former President Barack Obama.

Biden stood looking stunned for several seconds before walking away.

Obama, who first signed the ACA into law in 2010, visited the White House Tuesday for the first time since former President Donald Trump was inaugurated. Biden and Obama shared friendly banter in their speeches, with Obama jokingly referring to Biden as “Vice President Biden.”

“It feels like the good old days,” Biden said of Obama’s visit.

“They are real friends, not just Washington friends,” Psaki said in a Monday press conference. “I’m sure they will talk about events in the world as well as their families and personal lives.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken extreme measures to curb a COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest cities.

Thousands of health care workers have been sent into the city to conduct daily mass testing of its 26 million residents. Children who test positive for the virus are being taken from their uninfected parents and forcibly moved to government isolation facilities, according to multiple reports.

CCP authorities began a two-stage lockdown on March 28, which was set to end Tuesday after there had been time to test every resident of the city in two groups. But the lockdown has been extended, and testing continues, with some residents being woken up by CCP workers and military members to get swabbed.

Around 38,000 medical professionals and 2,000 members of the People’s Liberation Army have been sent to Shanghai to assist with the mass testing and lockdown effort, according to state media. Testing facilities are using pool testing, meaning up to 20 samples are pooled together for a single test, and if the overall sample is positive then every individual included is treated as positive.

Individuals who refuse a COVID-19 test are subject to criminal punishment, authorities said. Asymptomatic positive tests surged to 13,000 Monday. There have been no deaths reported since the current outbreak began in March.

There has been public outcry over the policy of separating children from their parents to quarantine, as well as isolating asymptomatic individuals along with those who are actually sick.

A petition to allow children without symptoms to isolate themselves at home with their parents was removed from the social media platform WeChat this week. Diplomatic sources have said that some children of American citizens have been taken from their parents.

There are currently 23 Chinese cities under full or partial lockdown, with a combined population of nearly 200 million people.

Municipal health official, Wu Qianyu said during a briefing the city must adhere to the zero-COVID policy “without wavering.” The lockdown could last for months.

New Zealand, South Korea and Hong Kong have also seen unprecedented upticks in COVID-19 cases, but haven’t responded with the same draconian measures seen in Shanghai.