National News - Page 107

‘Grandmother of Juneteenth’ celebrates federal holiday — but there is more work to do. Here’s how you can help

By Ashley Vaughan – Before Juneteenth became an official federal holiday, 94-year-old Opal Lee was on a mission. “I’m not just going to sit and rock, you know?” the determined “Grandmother of Juneteenth” told CNN. “The Lord is going to have to catch me.” Days later, the spirited nonagenarian shouted with delight as she watched Congress pass a bill to make Juneteenth — June 19 — a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery. “I’ve got so many different feelings all gurgling up here — I don’t know what to call them all,” she told CNN affiliate KTVT in Fort Worth, Texas, where she

Sickle cell scientist fights for a cure for herself and others

Amy Chillag Lakiea Bailey has tried to hide the pain and breathlessness she feels from her disease for most of her life. As a child, she missed weeks out of every school year because of sickle cell — a painful, genetic disease that’s believed to impact 100,000 Americans. Patients’ red blood cells are “sickle” shaped and can clump together to impede blood flow to the rest of the body, causing serious problems, including strokes and organ failure. As a studious young woman yearning to be normal, she hid her condition from her professors when she went off to college. But she says

Chicago pastor says residents growing numb to deadly shootings

By Jermont Terry Early Tuesday morning, eight people were shot in one house in the Englewood community, and four of them died. It was the third mass shooting in two weeks in Chicago, and there was yet another one in which five people were shot in West Garfield Park on Tuesday evening. That incident happened in the 3800 block of West Monroe Street. As CBS 2’s Jermont Terry reported, there were concerns Tuesday night that Chicago might be becoming numb to this type of violence. According to Chicago Police, shots were fired after a quarrel inside a residence in the

Airline and bank websites go down in another major internet failure

By Charles Riley, Tina Burnside and Alexandra Meeks Airlines, banks, stock exchanges and trading platforms suffered brief website outages early Thursday after a key piece of internet infrastructure failed, sparking the second major interruption of the past 10 days. Virgin Australia said in a statement on Thursday that it had resolved an IT outage caused by a failure at Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery network. “Virgin Australia was one of many organizations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today and we are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these

Moderates win the day in close vote over Southern Baptist presidency

By Michael Warren Alabama pastor Ed Litton will be the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention following a narrow election win Tuesday — a victory for the more moderate establishment against a conservative insurgency in an ongoing fight within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. The vote comes as the SBC has been grappling with questions about racial reconciliation, gender roles within the clergy and how to handle sex abuse cases. Litton defeated the favored candidate of conservative Southern Baptists, Georgia pastor Mike Stone, in a runoff, receiving support from 52% of the delegates (called “messengers”) to the SBC’s annual meeting

US officials propose $25 million fine against Air Canada over airfare refunds

By Gregory Wallace US officials are seeking a $25 million fine from Air Canada, accusing the airline of failing to provide timely refunds to more than 5,000 passengers during the coronavirus pandemic. The formal complaint is the first enforcement action that the Department of Transportation has announced against an airline since the pandemic upended the travel industry in the spring of 2020. Air Canada said it would dispute the allegations and believes the DOT argument “has no merit.” US rules set the minimum standards for airline refunds, requiring that tickets be paid back in cash when an airline cancels a

Senate unanimously passes a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday

By Ted Barrett, Ali Zaslav and Alex Rogers The Senate unanimously passed a resolution on Tuesday establishing June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day, a US holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The legislation has gained momentum since the massive Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd last year and the Democrats’ takeover of the White House and Congress. But Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the bill in 2020, saying that the day off for federal employees would cost US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Johnson dropped his objection

‘Eyes on the prize’: Two activists set aside personal threats to fight new voting restrictions

By Fredreka Schouten This week, voting right activists Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown will board a 53-foot bus and kick off a tour through the South. Their task: Rally public support for federal legislation to combat the raft of new state laws aimed at restricting voting rights. They face big obstacles. Among them: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist who is a key vote in a 50-50 Senate and has opposed a sweeping voting rights bill, in its current form, that the Senate is slated to consider this month. He also has resisted changing Senate rules to allow

Harris hosts female senators for ‘evening of relationship building’ at vice president’s residence

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By Jasmine Wright and Veronica Stracqualursi Vice President Kamala Harris held a private dinner Tuesday night for the female US senators, a show of bipartisanship among a deeply divided Congress. It was the first known time that Harris hosted lawmakers in the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory since moving in April, a process that was delayed due to renovations. CNN previously reported that Harris had invited all 24 female senators — 16 Democrats and eight Republicans. “What a wonderful bipartisan women Senators dinner at our @VP ‘s residence!” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan tweeted. In photos Stabenow shared, Harris is

Democrats, led by Cortez Masto, seek answers from Citizenship and Immigration Services on DACA delays

By Daniella Diaz A group of Democratic senators, led by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, sent a letter to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services demanding an explanation on processing delays for applications related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on the day of the program’s ninth anniversary, CNN has learned. The request for information comes after the program, which was established in 2012 — following multiple failed legislative efforts — to address a portion of the undocumented population that came to the US as children, faced a turbulent few years in the Trump administration. “DACA processing delays have significant consequences,

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