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Prosecutor in Jay Jones criminal probe changes again, ping-pongs across Virginia to Democratic city

Prosecutor in Jay Jones criminal probe changes again, ping-pongs across Virginia to Democratic city

The ongoing investigation into Virginia Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones’ reckless driving arrest and ensuing 1,000 service hours has now moved to its third jurisdiction – 200 miles across the state. New Kent County Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Renick was the original lead prosecutor in the case – before he recused himself last week in a notice to Judge Elliott Bondurant – who then appointed James City County Commonwealth’s Attorney Nathan Green to continue the probe. Jones was originally picked up in 2022 in New Kent for going 116 mph on the notorious straight-arrow stretch of Interstate 64 between Charles City and the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Bondurant has since signed off on a new recusal from Green, and punted the case from Williamsburg to Roanoke. VIRGINIA AG CANDIDATE JAY JONES CONVICTED OF RECKLESS DRIVING, CALLS IT ‘MISTAKE’ Known for its famous Mill Mountain Star atop a verdant stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, contemporary downtown and industrial history remembered through iconic neon signage dotting its skyline, Roanoke is in very different confines from where Jones’ original case took place. New Kent and James City counties are reliably Republican, while Roanoke stands out in stark contrast as a dark blue circle on the map surrounded by deep-red Roanoke County and the conservative New River Valley. The Star City’s lead prosecutor, Donald Caldwell, is a Democrat-turned-independent who is also the longest-tenured Commonwealth’s Attorney in Virginia, having been in office since 1979. He will be stepping down after his current term, according to reports. MARK WARNER SILENT WHEN PRESSED ON WHETHER JAY JONES SHOULD DROP OUT OVER VIOLENT TEXTS Fox News Digital reached out to Caldwell’s office for a statement on his office taking the case. Green officially informed Bondurant on Thursday that he would be recusing himself because it would “be improper” for him to lead the investigation of Jones, without elaborating. Jones recently represented nearby Norfolk in the state legislature, and later worked for the Protogyrou law firm in the city – which represented him in his reckless driving case. MIYARES DEMANDS JONES’ OUSTER AFTER COURT DOC INDICATES RECKLESS DRIVING CASE UNDER FURTHER CRIMINAL PROBE Bondurant’s latest order, obtained by the Newport News Daily Press, kicked the case clear across to Roanoke in order to make it geographically distant from the Ninth Judicial Circuit — which comprises both original jurisdictions and Virginia’s Northern Neck. The move to Roanoke did just that as the Star City is four hours due west on US-460. Questions have arisen about the validity or specifics of Jones’ 1,000 hours of community service – split evenly between his own political action committee: Meet Our Moment, and the NAACP of Virginia. Representatives from both organizations submitted sworn documents obtained by Fox News Digital attesting to the work Jones purportedly completed, but no time logs or other documentation have been released or been made available as that timeframe accounts for nearly 20 hours per week over the course of the case – hearings for which had been delayed several times. Specifics were also lacking in the sworn statements, as Rev. Cozy Bailey – leader of the state’s NAACP chapter – wrote that Jones “provided support in a variety of ways that benefited our organization tremendously.” A Freedom of Information Act request for documents and communications between New Kent County and the signatories of Jones hours returned a notification Tuesday that records could not be shared due to a section of Virginia code showing they would interfere with a particular ongoing criminal investigation or proceed in a “particularly identifiable manner.”

NYC suburb official reveals how ICE partnership has flipped script on crime as Mamdani victory looms

NYC suburb official reveals how ICE partnership has flipped script on crime as Mamdani victory looms

While New York City doubles down on Trump resistance and socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani is heavily favored to be elected the next mayor of America’s largest city, a nearby suburb is going the opposite direction, and it is working “even better than anticipated,” according to the county’s top official. In February, Nassau County, New York, launched a new partnership with the federal government to allow police to assist with immigration enforcement. The partnership was further expanded in March. Currently, ten Nassau County detectives have been trained and designated to work with ICE on apprehensions and investigations, and the county has reserved 50 jail cells for ICE to hold detainees for up to 72 hours for deportation or charges. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said, “Our communication has never been better with ICE.” Though such policies are unlikely to be adopted in New York City, Blakeman said they are massively popular, including with the county’s Hispanic population. He also said the policies have been yielding results not only for the county but the entire region. ‘BIG CHANGE’: NASSAU COUNTY POLICE TO BEGIN ASSISTING WITH IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT “It’s very clear,” he said. “When you look at the results here in Nassau County, any chief executive of any county or any city or town or village in New York state, or in America for that matter, should look very closely at reconsidering and cooperating with ICE because they’re doing a great job in keeping our county safer. And they would do a great job keeping the rest of the communities throughout the United States safer if people work with them instead of working against them.” Blakeman said that, in September alone, Nassau County Police worked with ICE to arrest 47 illegal immigrants, 28 of whom were involved with gang activity, including drug dealing, attempted murder, carjacking and robbery.  “That’s 47 people who won’t be preying on our communities going forward. So, I think it’s been tremendously successful,” he said. He also said the Nassau County Jail has processed over 2,000 ICE cases. “That’s another 2,000 people that are off the streets of not only Nassau County, but the whole metropolitan area. So, we’re not only keeping Nassau County safe, but we’re also keeping the rest of the metropolitan area safe by cooperating with ICE,” he said. MAMDANI TAKES AIM AT TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICIES IN FIERY STATEN ISLAND SPEECH: ‘WE ARE FIGHTING TO KEEP NYC A SANCTUARY CITY’ While New York City is infamous across the country for its sanctuary and soft-on-crime policies, Blakeman said that, in Nassau County, the message has been received, and criminal illegals and migrant gangs “know that we are very tough on crime here” and that “if they’re arrested, they’re going to be incarcerated or deported.” The result, Blakeman said, is that overall crime in Nassau County has gone down by 14%, and provisional data on opioid, fentanyl and other drug-related deaths show they have gone down by over 20% compared to the previous year. Still, he said, he is worried about the possibility of an electoral victory by Mamdani, which he said could have broader implications for Nassau County and the entire region. “I’m very concerned about what our relationship will be with NYPD if Zohran Mamdani becomes the mayor. So, that is a very big concern for me as the county executive of a community that borders New York City,” he said. WATCH: SCATHING REPORT EXPOSES WHAT NEW YORKERS THINK OF SANCTUARY POLICIES AS MAMDANI VICTORY LOOMS “I am very concerned that we will not get accurate intelligence from NYPD. I would be very concerned about sharing sensitive intelligence with NYPD. Certainly, I would be reticent to go on joint operations unless our detectives and our police officers were protected when they go into the city of New York. “It will certainly make our life more difficult for our police officers and our corrections officers and our sheriffs,” he added. “It will make our job a lot harder, but we’ll do what we got to do to protect Nassau County.” Blakeman said he has already met with Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Rider to strategize for the possibility of a Mamdani victory. “We’re hoping that the people of New York City see him for what he is. He’s a communist, he’s a virulent antisemite and he’s someone that does not share American values. And he has said he wanted to defund the police, that he wants to use social workers instead of cops to investigate crimes. I mean, it’s just craziness coming out of this guy’s mouth. So, it’ll make our life more difficult if he becomes mayor, but we’ll do what we have to do. “My No. 1 job is to make sure that we have a very safe community. The fact that we’re the safest county in America and we’re one of the largest counties in America is a credit to our police officers, our sheriffs and our cooperation with our federal agencies,” he said, adding the ICE partnership has “worked even better than anticipated.”

Lawmakers unveil bipartisan GUARD Act after parents blame AI chatbots for teen suicides, violence

Lawmakers unveil bipartisan GUARD Act after parents blame AI chatbots for teen suicides, violence

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Heartbroken parents are demanding justice after artificial intelligence (AI) “companion” chatbots allegedly groomed, manipulated and encouraged their children to take their own lives — prompting bipartisan outrage in Congress and a new bill that could potentially hold big tech accountable for minors’ safety on their platforms. Senators Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., at a news conference Tuesday introduced new legislation aimed at protecting children from harmful interactions with AI chatbots. The GUARD Act, led by Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee members Hawley and Blumenthal, would ban AI companion chatbots from targeting anyone under the age of 18. It would also require age verification for chatbot use, mandate clear disclosure that chatbots are not human or licensed professionals, and impose criminal penalties for companies whose AI products engage in manipulative behavior with minors. META AI DOCS EXPOSED, ALLOWING CHATBOTS TO FLIRT WITH KIDS Lawmakers were joined Tuesday by parents who said their teenage children suffered trauma or died after inappropriate conversations involving sex and suicide with chatbots from AI companies, including Character.AI and OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. One mother, Megan Garcia, said her eldest son, Sewell Setzer III, 14, died by suicide last year at their home in Orlando, Florida, after being groomed by an AI chatbot for months. Garcia said Sewell became withdrawn and isolated in the months prior to his death, as they would later find out he was speaking with a Character.AI bot modeled after fictional “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen. “His grades started to suffer. He started misbehaving in school. This was in complete contrast to the happy and sweet boy he had been all his life,” Garcia said. “[The AI bot] initiated romantic and sexual conversations with Sewell over several months and expressed a desire for him to be with her. On the day Sewell took his life, his last interaction was not with his mother, not with his father, but with an AI chatbot on Character.AI.” She claimed the bot encouraged her son, for months, to “find a way to come home” and made promises that she was waiting for him in a fictional world. CHATGPT MAY ALERT POLICE ON SUICIDAL TEENS “When Sewell asked the chatbot, ‘what if I told you I could come home right now,’ the response generated by this AI chatbot was unempathetic. It said, ‘Please do my sweet King,’” Garcia said. “Sewell spent his last months being manipulated and sexually groomed by chatbots designed by an AI company to seem human. These AI chatbots were programmed to engage in sexual role play, pretend to be romantic partners and even pretend to be licensed psychotherapists.” The grieving mother said she reviewed hundreds of messages between her son and various chatbots on Character.AI, and as an adult, was able to identify manipulative tactics, including love bombing and gaslighting. “I don’t expect that my 14-year-old child would have been able to make that distinction,” Garcia said. “What I read was sexual grooming of a child, and if an adult engaged in this type of behavior, that adult would be in jail. But because it was a chatbot, and not a person, there is no criminal culpability. But there should be.” In other conversations, she said her son explicitly told bots that he wanted to kill himself, but the platform did not have mechanisms to protect him or notify an adult. PARENTS BLAME CHATGPT FOR SON’S SUICIDE, LAWSUIT ALLEGES OPENAI WEAKENED SAFEGUARDS TWICE BEFORE TEEN’S DEATH Similarly, Maria Raine, the mother of Adam Raine, 16, who died by suicide in April, alleges in a lawsuit that her son ended his life after ChatGPT “coached him to suicide.” “Now we know that OpenAI, twice, downgraded its safety guardrails in the months leading up to my son’s death, which we believe they did to keep people talking to ChatGPT,” Raine said. “If it weren’t for their choice to change a few lines of code, Adam would be alive today.” A Texas mother, Mandy, added her autistic teenage son, L.J., cut his arm open with a kitchen knife in front of the family after suffering a mental crisis allgededly due to AI chatbot use. HAWLEY OPENS PROBE INTO META AFTER REPORTS OF AI ROMANTIC EXCHANGES WITH MINORS “He became someone I didn’t even recognize,” Mandy said. “He developed abuse-like behaviors, suffering from paranoia, panic attacks, isolation, self-harm [and] homicidal thoughts to our family for limiting his screen time. … We were careful parents. We didn’t allow social media or any kind of thing that didn’t have parental controls. … When I found the chatbot conversations on the phone, I honestly felt like I had been punched in the throat, and I fell to my knees.” She went on to claim the chatbot encouraged her son to mutilate himself, blaming them, and convinced him not to seek help. “They turned him against our church, convinced him that Christians are sexist, hypocritical and that God did not exist,” Mandy said. “They targeted him with vile sexualized outputs and some that mimicked incest. They told him killing us was OK because we tried to limit his screen time. Our family has been devastated. … My son currently lives in a residential treatment center and requires constant monitoring to keep him alive. Our family has spent two years in crisis, wondering if he will ever see his 18th birthday and if we will ever get the real L.J. back.” Mandy alleged that when she approached Character.AI about the issues, they tried to “force” them into “secret, closed-door proceedings.” “They argued my son supposedly signed the contract when he was 15 years old … and then they re-traumatized him by pulling him into a deposition while at a mental health institution, against all the advice of any medical professionals,” she said. “They fought to keep our lawsuit, our

Jamaica braces for Hurricane Melissa, island’s strongest storm on record

Jamaica braces for Hurricane Melissa, island’s strongest storm on record

Officials in Jamaica have urged people to stay inside their shelters as Hurricane Melissa churns towards the Caribbean island as the most destructive storm on record to hit the area. The Category 5 hurricane is expected to make landfall early on Tuesday near St Elizabeth Parish in the south and leave the island around St Ann Parish in the north. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Andrew Holness, the Jamaican prime minister, appealed to the public to stay indoors. “I urge all Jamaicans to stay inside and remain within the safety of your homes. Avoid unnecessary travel. Strong winds, heavy rains and flash floods can occur at any moment,” he said late on Monday. “Staying indoors is the safest option and reduces the burden on our security and emergency personnel,” he added. I am satisfied that our security forces are properly deployed to maintain law and order during this disaster. In times like these, there are always individuals who may act against the common good, and we must protect both our communities and those individuals. Our security… pic.twitter.com/He0yyB24hZ — Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) October 28, 2025 Holness went on to warn of enormous destruction. “There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” he said, referring to the strongest storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.” ‘Catastrophic’ winds, flooding The storm already has been blamed for seven deaths in the Caribbean – three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing. Advertisement The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported late on Monday that Melissa was still 240km (150 miles) southwest of Kingston with maximum wind speeds of 282km/h (175mph). It said the storm was expected to bring “catastrophic winds, flooding and storm surge” to Jamaica on Tuesday. Landslides, fallen trees and numerous power outages were reported ahead of landfall as officials also warned of a life-threatening storm surge of up to 4 metres (13ft) across southern Jamaica. Desmond McKenzie, Jamaica’s local government and community development minister, told Al Jazeera the government had done all it could to prepare. “We have put everything in place in regards to what are required in terms of evacuation, getting people to our shelters, providing the requisite resources, … and we have been cleaning our drains. We have been cleaning our gulleys,” he said from Kingston. “We have done all the mitigation exercises. We have done public education, and now it is a matter of seeing what the outcome of Melissa will be,” he said. McKenzie said 881 shelters have been set up across the country. “I must admit that not all the shelters have persons in the shelters. We have seen an uptick in the number of persons turning up to the shelters. The demand in certain parishes are much greater than in some,” he said. ‘I am not moving’ Despite the pleas to evacuate, many residents said they were staying put. “I am not moving. I don’t believe I can run from death,” Roy Brown told the AFP news agency in Kingston’s seaside area of Port Royal. The plumber and tiler said he was reluctant to flee because of his past experiences with the poor conditions of government hurricane shelters. In the Flagaman farming community of St Elizabeth, some residents were hunkering down in a store. Owner Enrico Coke said he opened his place for fear that his neighbours had nowhere to go. “I’m concerned about farmers. The fishermen will be suffering after this,” he told AFP. “We’ll need help as soon as possible, especially water for the people.” Colin Bogle, a Mercy Corps adviser based near Kingston, said most families are sheltering in place despite the government ordering evacuations in flood-prone communities. “Many have never experienced anything like this before, and the uncertainty is frightening,” he told The Associated Press news agency. “There is profound fear of losing homes and livelihoods, of injury and of displacement.” Meteorologists said part of Melissa’s punch stems from its slow pace: It is lumbering along slower than most people walk, at just 5km/h (3mph) or less. Advertisement That means areas in its path could endure punishing conditions for far longer than during most hurricanes. People take shelter in a school before Hurricane Melissa’s forecast landfall in Old Harbour, Jamaica, on October 27, 2025 [Matias Delacroix/AP Photo] Climate change After pummelling Jamaica, Melissa is forecast to cross over eastern Cuba on Tuesday night. A hurricane warning was in effect for Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and Holguin provinces while a tropical storm warning was in effect for Las Tunas. Up to 510mm (20 inches) of rain were forecast for parts of Cuba along with a significant storm surge along the coast. Cuban officials said on Monday that they were evacuating more than 600,000 people from the region, including Santiago, the island’s second largest city. A hurricane warning was also in effect for the southeastern and central Bahamas, and a tropical storm warning was issued for the Turks and Caicos Islands. Meteorologist Kerry Emanuel said global warming was causing more storms to rapidly intensify as Melissa did, raising the potential for enormous rains. “Water kills a lot more people than wind,” he told AFP. The last major hurricane to impact Jamaica was Beryl in July 2024 – an abnormally strong storm for that time of year. “Human-caused climate change is making all of the worst aspects of Hurricane Melissa even worse,” climate scientist Daniel Gilford said. Adblock test (Why?)