NPR editor resigns after accusing US outlet of liberal bias
Uri Berliner quits broadcaster days after being suspended over essay accusing network of lacking viewpoint diversity. A senior editor at a public broadcaster in the United States who accused his employer of liberal bias, igniting heated debate about standards in journalism, has resigned. Uri Berliner, an editor with National Public Radio (NPR), announced his resignation on Wednesday just over a week after he published an essay accusing the outlet of being fixated on race and identity and lacking “viewpoint diversity”. “I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” Berliner said in a resignation letter posted on X. “But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.” My resignation letter to NPR CEO @krmaher pic.twitter.com/0hafVbcZAK — Uri Berliner (@uberliner) April 17, 2024 NPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Berliner’s resignation came after NPR on Friday slapped the editor with a five-day suspension without pay in response to his essay calling out the network. In the essay published in The Free Press, Berliner argued that the outlet had lost the public’s trust by putting a progressive slant on coverage of major news stories, including the COVID-19 pandemic and claims that Donald Trump colluded with Russia. “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,” Berliner wrote. “It’s frictionless – one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.” Berlinera also cited voter registration data that he said showed there were 87 Democrats and no Republicans on staff at the outlet’s Washington, DC, headquarters. Berliner’s essay promoted public pushback from NPR employees, including recently-appointed CEO Katherine Maher, whose own views came under scrutiny after conservatives surfaced old tweets expressing progressive views. “Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions,” Maher said in a memo to staff that was also published online. “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Adblock test (Why?)
West Bengal: Ram Navami procession in Murshidabad disrupted by explosion, stone-pelting, BJP reacts
Clashes and violence erupted during the Ram Navami parade in the Shaktipur area of Rejinagar, Murshidabad district, West Bengal on Wednesday.
After success of Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO chief Somanath makes big claim on India’s lunar mission
India’s Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the lunar south pole in August 2023, making it the first country to land on the uncharted surface.
‘Not an ordinary election’: PM Modi sends personalised letters to NDA candidates ahead of first phase of Lok Sabha polls
Families across India, especially the senior members, would remember the difficulties they had gone through in the five decades of the Congress’ rule, PM Modi said.
‘Squad’ Democrat promotes ‘peace’ in Middle East as hometown ranks among worst for crime
“Squad” member Cori Bush called for “peace” and de-escalation in the Israel-Hamas war, as her hometown – St. Louis – recently ranked as the third “most dangerous” city in the United States. A report released earlier this month from real estate company Norada listed Rep. Bush’s hometown as the third “most dangerous” city in the United States after analyzing FBI data. Only Detroit and Baltimore were deemed more dangerous than St. Louis in the rankings. Norado pointed to St. Louis’ high poverty rates, unemployment and lack of access to quality education and healthcare for creating an environment that reportedly “fosters criminal activity.” DEMOCRAT PRO-ISRAEL GROUP LOOKS TO OUST 2 ‘SQUAD’ MEMBERS FROM CONGRESS On Wednesday, the Democratic representative called for peace in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war – pointing towards the “toll of violence” overseas. Bush has been one of the leading critics of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. ST. LOUIS JAIL UNDER STATE INVESTIGATION OVER MISMANAGEMENT, ABUSE CLAIMS “In the clouds of political rhetoric and the clamor of war, it is also easy to lose sight of the lives that have been shattered, the futures extinguished by violence, and the profound grief that war leaves in its wake,” Bush said. “We need to confront the harsh realities of war and recommit ourselves to the pursuit of peace.” “We are saying no to war. Stop the bloodshed. Stop the violence. Stop the trauma. Just stop,” she said. Bush said that the U.S. “gravitates towards war.” “You see, our country knows war. Our country understands war. Our country, it has experienced war on numerous occasions and in numerous places,” she said. “But seldom does our country know peace.” “It might make sense that our country would gravitate toward war, but just because it makes sense, doesn’t make it logical or right,” she said. Fox News Digital has reached out to Rep. Bush’s office for comment.
Lok Sabha elections 2024: EC to issue notification for phase 4 today, check all details
The polling will be held in 96 constituencies in 10 states and Union territories (UT) in the fourth phase on May 13.
Biden claims uncle vanished after crashing in area of New Guinea with cannibals; Military has different story
President Biden made a stop in Pittsburgh on Wednesday where he told members of the United Steelworkers Union that his uncle vanished in an area of New Guinea that was populated with cannibals, after his plane crashed during World War II. Biden told the steelworkers that after D-Day, his mother’s four brothers volunteered to join the military. One of those uncles, he said, was Ambrose Finnegan, who went by the nickname Bozey. “He was a hell of an athlete, they tell me, when he was a kid,” Biden said, adding that he was in the Army air corps, which was in place before the Air Force came along. “He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones, and he got shot down in New Guinea. They never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.” The president spoke with reporters earlier in the day before boarding Air Force One and heading out to Pittsburgh. BIDEN’S BOGUS COLLEGE CLAIM IS JUST LATEST IN DECADES-LONG PATTERN OF EMBELLISHMENT He told reporters he wanted to see how his uncle was memorialized in a World War II memorial for those who lost their lives in the war. “When D-Day occurred, the next day, on Monday, all four of my mother’s brothers went down and volunteered to join the military,” Biden said. “Ambrose Finnegan, we called him Uncle Bozey, he was shot down. He was Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force. “They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there, and they checked and found some parts of the plane,” he added. TRUMP RIPS BIDEN ON KEY ISSUE IMPACTING VOTERS AFTER DAMAGING REPORT: ‘TOTALLY LOST CONTROL’ The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has a different record of what happened to Biden’s uncle. The site said on May 14, 1944, an airplane carrying a crew of three and one passenger, identified as Finnegan, left Momote Airfield on Los Negros Island for a courier flight to New Guinea. “For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea,” the report reads. “Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.” BIDEN ADMIN FACING LEGAL CHALLENGES AFTER DECLARING WAR ON CHEMICAL INDUSTRY The report also said three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash, while one crew member survived and was rescued by a barge. Finnegan has not been associated with any of the remains recovered from the area after the war and is still not accounted for, according to the report. Biden is no stranger to making questionable claims. Earlier this week, he claimed he was the “first” person in his family to “go to college,” while speaking in Wisconsin. “I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college,” Biden told the crowd. However, less than two years ago, during a speech in Pennsylvania, Biden told an audience his grandfather played college football. In the statement, he said his “Grandfather Finnegan” was an “all-American football player” in Santa Clara. REPUBLICAN STATE SUES BIDEN ADMIN OVER ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ACTIONS: ‘DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE’ Years before, when he ran for president in 1987, Biden exaggerated his academic record by bragging he graduated “in the top half” of his class while berating a reporter on the campaign trail. “I think I have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect,” Biden told the reporter in New Hampshire at the time. “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship. “In the first year of law school, I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class,” he said. “And then I decided to stay, went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class.” He later admitted that he graduated 76th in a class of 85. “I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school, and my recollection of this was inaccurate,” he told The New York Times. “I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science,” he said. “My reference to degrees at the Claremont event was intended to refer to these majors. I said ‘three’ and should have said ‘two.’” The outlet pointed out Biden received a single bachelor’s degree in history and political science. Since then, Biden has told numerous stories that have also been deemed exaggerations. Mainstream outlets, including The Washington Post, have even called him out on them, including the publication’s top fact-checker, Glenn Kessler. Some stories Kessler addressed include Biden’s claim he and his father saw two men in suits kissing each other in public when he was a teenager, that he was arrested for trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa and how, as vice president, he arranged for his uncle to be presented a Purple Heart that he was owed and never received. The uncle died in 1999, long before Biden was vice president. Biden also repeated a false claim last year about his house burning down in his attempt to relate to those who lost their homes to wildfires ravaging Maui. “I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it was like to lose a home,” Biden said. “Years ago, now, 15 years, I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press’… Lightning struck at home on a little lake outside the home, not a lake, a big pond. It hit the wire and came up underneath our home, into the … air condition ducts. “To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette and my cat,” the president added. A
Alabama lawmakers advance bills ensuring Biden appears on November ballot
Alabama lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday to ensure President Joe Biden will appear on the state’s November ballot, mirroring accommodations made four years ago for then-President Donald Trump. Legislative committees in the Alabama House of Representatives and Senate approved identical bills that would push back the state’s certification deadline from 82 days to 74 days before the general election in order to accommodate the date of Democrats’ nominating convention. The bills now move to to the full chambers. Alabama has one of the earliest candidate certification deadlines in the country which has caused difficulties for whichever political party has the later convention date that year. FIGURES AND DOBSON TO FACE OFF IN CLOSELY WATCHED RACE FOR ALABAMA’S NEW 2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT “We want to make sure every citizen in the state of Alabama has the opportunity to vote for the candidate of his or her choice,” Democratic Sen. Merika Coleman, the sponsor of the Senate bill, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. The issue of Biden’s ballot access has arisen in Alabama and Ohio as Republican secretaries of state warned that certification deadlines fall before the Democratic National Convention is set to begin on Aug. 19. The Biden campaign has asked the two states to accept provisional certification, arguing that has been done in past elections. The Republican election chiefs have refused, arguing they don’t have authority, and will enforce the deadlines. Democrats proposed the two Alabama bills, but the legislation moved out of committee with support from Republicans who hold a lopsided majority in the Alabama Legislature. The bills were approved with little discussion. However, two Republicans who spoke in favor of the bill called it an issue of fairness. Republican Rep. Bob Fincher, chairman of the committee that heard the House bill, said this is “not the first time we’ve run into this problem” and the state made allowances. “I’d like to think that if the shoe was on the other foot, that this would be taken care of. And I think that Alabamians have a deep sense of fairness when it comes to politics and elections,” Republican Sen. Sam Givhan said during the committee meeting. Trump faced the same issue in Alabama in 2020. The Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature in 2020 passed legislation to change the certification deadline for the 2020 election. The bill stated that the change was made “to accommodate the dates of the 2020 Republican National Convention.” However, an attorney representing the Biden campaign and DNC, wrote in a letter to Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen that it was provisional certification that allowed Trump on the ballot in 2020, because there were still problems with the GOP date even with the new 2020 deadline. Allen has maintained he does not have the authority to accept provisional certification. Similarly, in Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, both Republicans, rejected a request from Democrats to waive the state’s ballot deadline administratively by accepting a “provisional certification” for Biden. In a letter Monday, Yost’s office told LaRose that Ohio law does not allow the procedure. LaRose’s office conveyed that information, in turn, in a letter to Democratic lawyer Don McTigue. LaRose’s chief legal counsel, Paul Disantis, noted it was a Democrats who championed the state’s ballot deadline, one of the earliest in the nation, 15 years ago. It falls 90 days before the general election, which this year is Aug. 7. Ohio Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio said she is waiting to hear from the Democratic National Committee on how to proceed. One of her members, state Sen. Bill DiMora, said he has legislation for either a short- or long-term fix ready to go when the time comes.
Ellen Ash Peters, first female chief justice of Connecticut Supreme Court, dies at 94
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Ellen Ash Peters, who was the first woman to serve as Connecticut’s chief justice and wrote the majority opinion in the state Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation ruling in 1996, has died. She was 94. Peters, who also was the first female faculty member at Yale Law School, passed away Tuesday, according to the Connecticut Judicial Branch. The cause and location of her death were not immediately disclosed. CONNECTICUT’S TOP PUBLIC DEFENDER FACES TERMINATION OVER MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS “What a trailblazer she was!” the current chief justice, Richard Robinson, said in a statement. “While small in stature, she was a fearless legal giant who was dedicated to upholding the rule of law. She also recognized the importance of fairness, openness, transparency and providing true equal access to justice for all.” Peters was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 1978 by then-Gov. Ella Grasso, a Democrat and the first woman who was not a spouse or widow of a former governor to be elected the governor of a U.S. state. Peters was also the first woman to serve on the state’s highest court. She became chief justice in 1984, served on the court until 1996 and later took part-time senior status. In her last year as chief justice, Peters wrote the majority opinion in a 4-3 ruling in the Sheff v. O’Neill case, declaring the segregation of Hartford-area schools to be unconstitutional. In particular, the majority said the extreme racial isolation of minorities in Hartford schools deprived them of a state constitutional right to equal education. “In staying our hand, we do not wish to be misunderstood about the urgency of finding an appropriate remedy for the plight of Hartford’s schoolchildren,” Peters wrote. “Every passing day shortchanges these children in their ability to contribute to their own well-being and to that of this state and nation.” In response, the state legislature created a network of magnet schools and school choice options to attract a mix of city and suburban children. But the legal case that prompted the ruling continued to be litigated because of what advocates said were continuing inequalities until 2022, when a settlement was reached. During her time on the Supreme Court, Peters presided over cases ranging from ones involving the death penalty to property disputes. She also led an effort to prevent gender and racial bias in the court system. In 1995, she wrote the majority opinion in a ruling that upheld the state’s ban on assault weapons. On her last day as chief justice, she spoke of the importance of preserving justice for all people. “The court embodies the pluralist spirit of America,” Peters said. “If the court is to be a leader in the development of the law, it must be prepared to respond″ to all of the population. Peters was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. Her family fled eight years later in fear of Nazi party rule and emigrated to New York City, according to a biography by Yale Law School. She went on to graduate from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1951 and from Yale Law School in 1954. After law school, she was a clerk for a federal appeals court judge in New York City and then taught at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1956, when she was 26, she became Yale Law School’s first female faculty member, according to the university. Peters also became the first woman to earn tenure at Yale Law School, in 1964. After being appointed to the Supreme Court, she continued to teach law at Yale as an adjunct professor until she became chief justice. The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at a 1994 event, said Peters “gave generations of women law students cause for hope (and) a reason to believe that they, too, could aspire and achieve.” Top political leaders and legal experts were praising Peters on Tuesday. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, also called Peters a trailblazer and noted the importance of the school desegregation ruling. “Throughout her tenure, she dedicated her work to ensuring that Connecticut’s courts are operated fairly and are equally accessible to all of this state’s residents,” Lamont said in a statement. “Her service is to be emulated and she will be remembered for her intelligence, her tenacity, and her remarkable fortitude.” Former Connecticut Chief Justice Chase Rogers, the state’s second female chief justice who retired in 2018, said Peters was a brilliant jurist dedicated to ensuring justice was achieved. “Chief Justice Peters not only smashed the glass ceiling for other women who wanted to become judges but also served as a role model for all judges,” Rogers said. Peters’ husband, Phillip Blumberg, who was a professor and dean at the University of Connecticut School of Law, died in 2021. They lived in West Hartford.
Shock poll: Trump edges past Biden in key state, potential sign of cracks in Dems blue wall
Former President Donald Trump holds a two-point edge over President Biden in Wisconsin, according to a new poll on their 2024 presidential election rematch. Trump stands at 51% support among registered voters in the crucial Midwestern battleground, with Biden at 49%, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released on Wednesday. According to the survey, which was conducted April 3-10, the former president holds the same 51%-49% edge over his White House successor among the smaller pool of likely voters. HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING IN THE 2024 ELECTION When third-party and independent candidates are included, Trump grabs 41% among registered voters, with Biden at 40%, Democrat turned independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 13%, Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 3% and independent progressive Cornell West at 2%. Among likely voters, it’s Trump 42%, Biden 41%, Kennedy 12%, Stein 3% and West 1%. The poll is the latest in Wisconsin over the past month to indicate Trump either with a slight advantage or tied with Biden. Wisconsin — which Democrats carried in presidential elections from 1988 through 2012 — was part of the party’s so-called ‘blue wall.’ But eight years ago, Trump topped Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by a razor-thin margin to win the state. But four years later, Wisconsin was one of six battleground states that Biden narrowly carried over Trump to win the White House. The poll indicates Biden topping Trump 97%-3% among Democrats, with Trump holding a 91%-9% lead among Republicans. “Independents lean substantially to Trump in this month’s survey, with 59% for Trump and 41% voting for Biden,” a release from the Marquette Law School Poll highlights. The poll also notes, “In the five-way ballot test, Kennedy takes more votes from Republicans than from Democrats and an especially large share from independents. Stein and West take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans.” According to the survey, Trump enjoys the advantage when it comes to enthusiasm. Respondents who said they were very enthusiastic about voting supported Trump over Biden 59%-41%. The president campaigned in Wisconsin last month, with Trump stopping in the state earlier this month. Wisconsin is also one of a handful of states that will determine if Republicans can win back the Senate majority. The poll indicates Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin leads Republican challenger Eric Hovde 52%-47% among registered voters. But the survey suggests the race is deadlocked at 50% among likely voters. The Marquette Law School poll questioned 814 registered voters, with an overall sampling error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.