2 weeks allotted for Rittenhouse trial
MADISON, Wis. -- The November trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois man charged with killing two people during the protests that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin last year, will take up to two weeks, attorneys said Friday.
Prosecutors and Rittenhouse's attorneys confirmed with Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder during a 10-minute status conference that the trial will begin Nov. 1. Both sides said they don't expect the proceeding to last the full two weeks.
Rittenhouse, who appeared in person in the courtroom for the first time since he was arrested last year, didn't say anything during the hearing.
Prosecutors say Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time and carrying an AR-15-style rifle, shot and killed two people and wounded a third in August after traveling from his home in Antioch, Ill., to Kenosha. The city was experiencing sometimes violent demonstrations after Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, leaving the Black man paralyzed.
Rittenhouse and his attorneys have said he went to Kenosha to protect businesses. He turned himself in to police in Antioch several hours later, saying that he was attacked and he fired in self-defense.
He has since become a figure in the national debate over police brutality and racism. Conservatives have held him up as a symbol for gun rights, even going so far as to raise $2 million to cover his bail. Others contend he escalated tensions by walking around the protest with a rifle.
State offers to buy out flooded residents
BATON ROUGE -- Louisiana is offering a $30 million voluntary buyout program to residents of a neighborhood that has flooded three times in recent years, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday.
This week's rains brought the latest floods to the Greinwich Terrace neighborhood in Lake Charles, a city which was hit by Hurricanes Laura and Delta last year and Harvey in 2017.
The money is from a $1.2 billion federal mitigation grant the state announced in 2018 and received access to in September.
The buyout program will be managed by the Louisiana Watershed Initiative, which Edwards created in 2018 to manage flood-reduction programs within areas defined by waterways rather than along parish lines.
"These buyouts will not only deliver immediate relief to the residents of this area who want to relocate out of harm's way but also provide greater capacity to store water and benefit many more throughout the floodplain and beyond," said Calcasieu Parish Police Jury President Brian Abshire.
Alabama lifts yoga ban in public schools
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed legislation that allows public schools to teach yoga, overturning a ban put in place 27 years ago at the urging of conservative groups.
The legislation sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jeremy Gray, a former college athlete who did yoga as part of his training, allows schools to teach yoga if they choose. However, all poses would have to have English names. The use of chanting, mantras and teaching the greeting "namaste" would be forbidden.
Gray, a former cornerback at North Carolina State University, said he was introduced to yoga through football and said the exercises can provide mental and physical benefits to students. He noted that many professional and college sports teams incorporate yoga into their training.
However, Gray was unhappy with Senate amendments to the bill that require parents to sign a permission slip in order to participate and put more limitations on what can be taught such as banning "guided imagery, meditation, or any aspect of Eastern philosophy and religious training." However, Gray accepted them instead of risking the bill failing.
Woman who kept FBI papers indicted
WASHINGTON -- An FBI employee has been indicted on charges that she stored classified documents and other national security information at home over the course of more than a decade, the U.S. Justice Department said Friday.
Kendra Kingsbury, 48, is accused of having unauthorized possession of a broad swath of sensitive government documents, including materials that describe sources, methods and operations and that contain information about operatives such as a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden.
Kingsbury, of Dodge City, Kan., worked as an intelligence analyst in the FBI's Kansas City office for 12 years until her suspension in December 2017. The two-count indictment, filed in the Western District of Missouri, alleges that during that time, Kingsbury illegally stored documents at home.
Though Kingsbury held a top-secret security clearance and was assigned to a range of cases dealing with crimes and threats, she did not have a "need to know" the information in most of the documents, prosecutors say.
The indictment does not say why Kingsbury mishandled the documents, nor does it accuse her of having transmitted the information to anyone else.