Tag: fox news
Longest-ever border smuggling tunnel found stretching between Tijuana and San Diego, officials say
U.S. authorities discovered the longest smuggling tunnel ever found along the southwest border.
The tunnel originates in Tijuana, Mexico, near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry and extends a total of 4,309 feet long — more than three-quarters of a mile. The next longest tunnel in the U.S., discovered in San Diego in 2014, was 2,966 feet long.
“While subterranean tunnels are not a new occurrence along the California-Mexico border, the sophistication and length of this particular tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organizations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling,” Cardell Morant, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Diego, said in a press release. The investigation that led to the discovery spanned many years and involved various agencies.
The tunnel features a complex cart and rail system, forced air ventilation, high-voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance and a complex drainage system, according to U.S. Border Patrol.
No arrests or seizures have been made at this point after the discovery of the tunnel.
“The investigation continues, and I am confident that our hard work and dedication to uphold the law will lead to future arrests and seizures,” Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said.
The tunnel is approximately 5 and a half feet tall, 2 feet wide and has an average depth of 70 feet from the surface. An offshoot of the main tunnel was discovered at around 3,500 feet into the U.S. It traveled several feet and came to an end without breaching the surface. It led agents back to the main tunnel where they discovered several hundred sandbags blocking the suspected former exit of the tunnel.
“As efforts to strengthen security on our Southern border increase, Mexican drug cartels are forced underground to smuggle their deadly drugs into the United States,” DEA Special Agent in Charge John Callery said. “The sophistication of this tunnel demonstrates the determination and monetary resources of the cartels.”
Article via FoxNews
North American bird population has dropped by 3 billion since 1970, study reveals
There are almost 3 billion fewer birds in the United States and Canada now than in 1970, according to a disturbing new study.
That amounts to a 29 percent drop in the avian population over the past half-century.
“Three billion is a punch in the gut,” Peter Marra, a conservation biologist at Georgetown University, told Science News. “Our study is a wake-up call. We’re experiencing an ecological crisis.”
For their study, which was published Thursday in Science, researchers examined a dozen databases covering decades of bird observations in the U.S. and Canada. They used statistical analysis to estimate trends since 1970.
“This loss of bird abundance signals an urgent need to address threats to avert future avifaunal collapse and associated loss of ecosystem integrity, function and services,” the study’s abstract states
The population loss affected common and rare birds alike, as well as invasive species.
Although the study does not specifically address why the birds are disappearing, experts believe that many species face habitat damage or loss.
“As habitats diminish, birds have nowhere to go,” Kenneth Rosenberg, an ornithologist at Cornell University, told Science News.
However, the study shows that some populations of birds — such as mallard ducks and Canadian geese — have actually increased in number since 1970.
“This increase is no accident,” Rosenberg said. “It’s a direct result of decades of conservation efforts made by hunters and billions of dollars
to protect these birds and their habitat.”
Rosenberg added that he hopes the study will spur similar concern for all types of birds.
Article via FOXNews
Pizza Hut introduces massive Cheez-Its stuffed with cheese
Pizza Hut finally found a new place to hide cheese… inside of a giant Cheez-It.
The pizza chain just announced the addition of a brand new item to their menu, called the Stuffed Cheez-It Pizza. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
Now available nationwide, the new “pizza” looks like a giant Cheez-It, albeit stuffed with mozzarella cheese (pepperoni is also available). A single order comes with four large squares containing the mozzarella inside a cheese-baked crust. It also comes packed with a side of marinara sauce for dipping.
The concept was apparently born when Pizza Hut realized that Cheez-Its were popular among the chain’s largest fan base: college students. According to a press release, customers crave “these kinds of mashups between beloved food brands.”
“We pride ourselves on being the go-to for unexpected pizza innovations, and I can’t think of a better partner than Cheez-It to bring our next original menu item to life,” said Marianne Radley, chief brand officer of Pizza Hut. “Not to mention, as fellow NCAA partners, this collaboration is the perfect way to kick off football season, combining America’s go-to gameday cravings into one next-level snack.”
“The Stuffed Cheez-It Pizza is an example of two great companies leveraging their strengths to delight guests with a new experience on a classic favorite,” adds Wendy Davidson, President of Kellogg’s U.S. Specialty Brands.
The Stuffed Cheez-It Pizza is available for a limited time nationwide, starting today.
Article via FoxNews
Girl’s feet infested with parasitic sand fleas after running through pigsty barefoot
A 10-year-old girl who had developed itchy, painful brown-colored papules on the bottom of her feet was actually suffering from a parasitic sand flea infestation. The girl, who had traveled to Brazil with her family two-weeks prior to visiting a health clinic, reported running through a pigsty with no shoes on.
Her case, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, included a 10-day history of pain and itchiness before she sought care. Doctors then removed the sand fleas from the bottom of her foot and diagnosed her with tungiasis.
Tungiasis is a cutaneous parasitosis caused by the female sand flea, which burrows into the skin, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Cases predominately involve the toes, sole, rim of the foot and heels, with itching and irritation a common complaint among patients. The girl, who was not named in the case report, had received vaccines for tetanus before infection. Illness related to the infection is not well-documented, according to WHO.
In the girl’s case, doctors treated her wounds after the fleas were removed, and her feet healed with no complications.
Article via FOXNews
Gayle King fires back at the Fox News host who mistook her for Robin Roberts: ‘All black people do not look alike’
Article via Business Insider
- The “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King has weighed in about being mixed up with ABC News’ Robin Roberts.
- The Fox News host Jesse Watters confused the two black journalists on Wednesday, praising King for “redeeming herself” for an interview that Roberts had done.
- Watters has apologized for the mistake.
- King told the “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Thursday that she had reached out to Watters’ colleague Dana Perino and asked her to “let the rest of your colleagues know that all black people don’t look alike.”
Gayle King, the “CBS This Morning” host who recently earned praise for her composure during an emotional interview with R. Kelly, spoke out about the Fox News host who confused her with Robin Roberts, the anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Fox News’ Jesse Watters praised King on a Wednesday episode of “The Five” for “totally redeeming herself after the Smollett fiasco.”
But his cohost Dana Perino quickly stepped in to correct him, saying King had not conducted a recent, highly criticized interview with the actor Jussie Smollett; Roberts had.
“Oh, I knew that,” Watters responded before apologizing for the mistake.
Watters had been referring to Roberts’ interview with Smollett on February 12, just days before Smollett was arrested and charged with filing a false police report about an attack the Chicago police believe he staged.
Roberts was accused of being too sympathetic to Smollett during the interview and failing to challenge him on certain inconsistencies with his story.
Watters drew scorn for mixing up the two prominent black journalists, and on Thursday evening, the “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert asked King to weigh in on the situation.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee resigns as Congressional Black Caucus Foundation chairwoman in wake of ex-staffer’s lawsuit
Article via FoxNews
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, resigned as the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) Wednesday after a former staffer filed a lawsuit earlier this month claiming she was fired as retaliation for planned legal action related to an alleged 2015 rape by a supervisor.
“We are grateful for Rep. Jackson Lee’s unswerving commitment to the Foundation, and her efforts to help shape and elevate our programming for the last two years as chair, and a number of years as a board member,” CBCF interim President and CEO Elsie Scott said in a statement. “The congresswoman values the Foundation’s ideals and does not want to be a distraction during the legal proceedings of the suit filed against the CBCF.”
Jackson Lee’s office had no immediate comment on her resignation, but previously denied “that it retaliated against, or otherwise improperly treated” the staffer, who is identified in the lawsuit only as “Jane Doe.”
Earlier Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Jackson Lee had decided to “voluntarily and temporarily step back” from her post as chairwoman of the panel’s crime subcommittee.
“This decision does not suggest any culpability by Rep. Jackson Lee,” Nadler said.
The move comes one day after the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence said it could not support making Jackson Lee the lead sponsor of legislation reauthorizing the federal Violence Against Women Act.
“We begin and end all of our work with supporting survivors and support Jane Doe and many others who have been unsupported in their attempts to speak out,” the group’s statement said.
According to The New York Times, which first reported on Jackson Lee’s plans to resign, CBCF board members told Jackson Lee to step down as chairwoman or face a removal vote after the lawsuit became public late last week.
In the suit, Jane Doe alleges she was raped while a CBCF intern by Damien Jones, the foundation’s internship program coordinator and her supervisor at the time. Two years later, Doe was hired to work for Jackson Lee, who had recently been made chairwoman of the CBCF’s board of directors. Shortly after she was hired, Doe said Jackson Lee received a text message from the CBCF’s chief executive at the time, A. Shaunise Washington.
“I just received a notification that you have a new staffer,” Washington allegedly messaged Jackson Lee, mentioning Doe’s name. “Call me, I have background on her.”
Doe says she was fired in March 2018, roughly two weeks after she told Jackson’s chief of staff, Glenn Rushing, that she had “recently learned more about her case involving Mr. Jones and CBCF, and planned to move forward with legal action” against the foundation.
The lawsuit says Rushing was initially supportive of Doe and agreed to arrange a meeting between Doe and Jackson Lee to discuss the matter but never did so.
When she was dismissed, Doe claims, Rushing told her she was being let go because of “budgetary issues” and added that as the most recent hire, she’d be the first to go. However, Doe claims, Jackson Lee had hired at least two new employees who made “at least the same salary” as her since her arrival in November 2017. She also claims two more employees were hired shortly after she was fired, while another staffer received a raise.
Suspect at large after sexual assault, fatal shooting at St. Louis Catholic Supply store: cops
A suspect is at large on Tuesday after he sexually assaulted at least one woman in a St. Louis religious supply store and shot a woman in the head on Monday, police said. It was unclear if the woman he shot was the person he assaulted.
Police are searching for a white male about 5-foot-7 with a heavy build. The suspect is believed to be between 45 to 50 years old, and should be considered armed and dangerous, St. Louis County Police said.
“We have a loose, armed gunman out there who’s already shot one person,” St. Louis County police Sgt. Shawn McGuire said, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The victim, 53, at a died at a hospital from the shooting at a Catholic Supply store.
“I think everyone needs to be aware this happened at 3:30 in the afternoon on one of the busiest roads in St. Louis County,” McGuire said.
It wasn’t clear why the store was targeted and McGuire didn’t know if its religious affiliation was a factor.
“Our hearts go out to the victims of this horrific tragedy at Catholic Supply,” St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson said on Twitter.
Article via FOXNews
Chipotle rethinking firing manager who refused to serve black customers over ‘dine and dash’ fears
The restaurant chain Chipotle announced Saturday that it had terminated one of its managers for suggesting in a viral video that five black customers were planning to order food without paying — but on Sunday, the company acknowledged to Fox News that it was considering re-hiring the manager because her suspicions may have been well-founded.
In a series of video clips seen more than 3 million times on Twitter, a Chipotle customer in St. Paul, Minn., identifed as 21-year-old Masud Ali, and several friends are told by a manager: “You gotta pay, because you’ve never had money when you come in here.” An employee adds, “We’re not gonna make food unless you guys actually have money.”
As Ali and his friends complain about “stereotypes,” the videos show employees at the store claiming that the group had previously ordered food on two occasions without paying. The store manager also calls the police in the videos, which were recorded and uploaded by Ali.
In one video clip, the manager smiles and tries to ignore the men while they produce what appears to be cash, as proof that they can pay for their food. One of the employees visible in the kitchen is black.
“It sounded really racist — the way she said it was racist,” Ali told Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper on Friday. “She asked for proof of income as if I’m getting a loan.” On Twitter, Ali asked Chipotle: “Can a group of young well-established African-American get a bite to eat after a long workout session?”
Ali also posted the restaurant’s phone number and address to social media. Within hours and under a deluge of criticism, Chipotle issued a statement implying that the manager had acted out of bias and announcing her termination.
“Our actions were based on the facts known to us immediately after the incident, including video footage, social media posts and conversations with the customer, manager, and our employees,” Chipotle Chief Communications Officer Laurie Schalow told Fox News on Sunday. “We now have additional information which needs to be investigated further. We want to do the right thing, so after further investigation we will re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it.”
Despite reports on Twitter late Sunday that the manager had received her job back, Chipotle confirmed to Fox News that “nothing has changed from this morning. We are still investigating a few things.”
“After further investigation we will re-train and re-hire if the facts warrant it.”
In a previous statement on Saturday, the company had said: “We are committed to treating all of our customers fairly and with respect. … Regarding what happened at the St. Paul restaurant, the manager thought these gentlemen were the same customers from Tuesday night who weren’t able to pay for their meal. Regardless, this is not how we treat our customers and as a result, the manager has been terminated and the restaurant is being re-trained to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.”
In subsequent interviews, though, Chipotle representatives admitted that the manager might have been right in claiming that individuals in the group had ordered food just days before without paying once their order was completed. (As a matter of policy, Chipotle only provides food to customers upon payment, but store employees finish making orders before payment is requested at the register.)
“We are not able to confirm that with 100 percent certainty,” Schalow acknowledged in a statement to The Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We asked Masud if he was in our restaurant on Tuesday and he said no.”
And almost immediately, it emerged that Ali had apparently spoken favorably of “dining and dashing” — the practice of ordering food and not paying for it — several times on Twitter in the past.
“aye man i think chopotle catchin up to us fam. should we change locations and yoooooo what should we do about the other thang,” read a since-deleted post on Ali’s account from 2016.
In 2015, he wrote that “we finna goto Applebees and eat as much as we can and tip the nice lady 20cents and walk the f— out.”
When another Twitter user objected, he replied that “we’re just borrowing the food for a couple hours” as opposed to dining and dashing.
Later that year, he opined that “Dine and dash is forever interesting” and discussed stealing Tabasco bottles from Chipotle.
Another post read: “Guys we’re borrowing food… that’s it. And if the lady tries to stop you at the door don’t hesitate to truck the sh– out of that bi—.” Ali has since deleted all of these posts.
“We finna goto Applebees and eat as much as we can and tip the nice lady 20cents and walk the f— out.”
As those tweets surfaced over the weekend, Chipotle’s media representatives, including Schalow, initially said that they had seen the tweets and would stand by their decision to fire the manager — seemingly contradicting Schalow’s statement to Fox News on Sunday.
According to author Matt Palumbo, Schalow had previously claimed that the store’s manager was justifiably terminated because she broke protocol by requiring payment before making the customers’ food, regardless of her suspicions about the customers’ intention to pay.
Palumbo called Schalow’s suggestion that Chipotle had not been aware of Ali’s tweets when it fired the manager an “absolute lie.” (For her part, Schalow has reportedly said that other information — and not simply Ali’s tweets –was behind Chipotle’s desire to reconsider the manager’s fate.)
“The correct action to take would have been to make their food and not hand it over to them until they paid for it,” Schalow had asserted as part of her justification for firing the manager, according to Palumbo.
Ali did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
The episode follows several other high-profile incidents of alleged racism that have rocked the service industry. In May, Starbucks closed 8,000 of its stores for anti-bias training after two black men were arrested for trespassing in one of its Philadelphia shops. The store manager, who stopped working at Starbucks shortly after the episode, had called the police because the men remained seated in the shop without ordering anything, and refused to order something when asked.
Earlier this year, a fired Chipotle manager who was accused of stealing $626 ended up winning nearly $8 million from the company in a wrongful termination suit.
Article via FOXNews
Pamela Anderson blasts the #MeToo movement, says feminism can ‘go too far’
Pamela Anderson sat down for a lengthy interview with Australia’s “60 Minutes” Sunday, offering some controversial comments about the #MeToo movement and the negative impact she perceives it having on men.
The former “Baywatch” star derided the current wave of feminism and called it a “bore.”
“I think this feminism can go too far,” Anderson told journalist Liam Bartlett. “I’m a feminist, but I think that this third wave of feminism is a bore.”
She continued: “I think it paralyzes men, I think this #MeToo movement is a bit too much for me. I’m sorry, I’ll probably get killed for saying that.”
Stars who have criticized the #MeToo movement in the past haven’t fared well. “The Big Bang Theory” star Mayim Bialik apologized after being accused of victim-blaming when she spoke about the movement, and French actress Catherine Deneuve caught serious backlash for similar comments made about its effect on men.
Anderson, however, was undeterred by the possibility of being labeled anti-#MeToo and doubled down on her controversial comments, going as far as to suggest that those who encountered the likes of Harvey Weinstein boiled down to a lack of common sense.
“My mother taught me don’t go to a hotel with a stranger. If someone opens the door in a bathrobe and it’s supposed to be a business meeting, maybe I should go with somebody else,” the 51-year-old says in the clip below. “I think some things are just common sense. Or, if you go in… get the job. I’m Canadian, I’m going to speak my mind. I’m sorry, I’m not politically correct.”
The animal rights advocate also discussed her image as a sex symbol and noted that it opened doors to her activism.
“I’d rather be a sex symbol than a… not a sex symbol. That’s a compliment, isn’t it?” she said. “Every girl wants to be sexy. Every girl wants to be, you know, as beautiful or pretty as they can be. I never thought of myself as beautiful. I always thought of myself as kinda cute, a little funny and maybe I’ve improved with age.”
Article via FoxNews