On This Day, June 17: Charleston, S.C., church shooting leaves 9 dead
1 of 2 | A memorial is erected outside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 19, 2015 in memory of the the nine people killed in a June 17 shooting inside the church. Dylann Roof, 21, was arrested in connection with the shootings. File Photo by Kevin Liles/UPI | License Photo
On this date in history:
In 1885, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to the United States, arrived in New York Harbor.
In 1967, China announced it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.
In 1972, the Watergate scandal began with the arrest of five burglars inside Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.
In 1982, Argentina's President Leopoldo Galtieri resigned in response to Britain's victory in the Falkland Islands war.
In 1991, a coroner in Kentucky exhumed the remains of the 12th U.S. president, Zachary Taylor, to prove or disprove rumors he was killed by arsenic poisoning. The testing proved he wasn't.
In 1994, former NFL player O.J. Simpson led California Highway Patrol on a low-speed chase in his white Bronco. The 90-minute televised chase occurred shortly after he was charged for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
File Photo by Myung J. Chun/UPI
In 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon and co-founder of al-Qaida, moved up to assume leadership of the terrorist network six weeks after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden.
In 2015, Dylann Roof killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in a mass shooting. He was sentenced to death in January 2017.
In 2017, the USS Fitzgerald Navy destroyer collided with a container ship in the Pacific off the coast of Japan, killing seven U.S. sailors.
File Photo by MC2 Christian Senyk/U.S. Navy
In 2019, Mohamed Morsi, who became Egypt's first democratically elected president shortly after the Arab Spring only to be deposed a year later, fainted and died during his trial on espionage charges.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed a law formally making Juneteenth a federal holiday, marking the end of slavery in the United States.
File Photo by Oliver Contreras/UPI
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As Trump shatters ethics norms with a Qatari jet and a $499 smartphone, experts lament Biden's ‘failure' to pass reforms
Ethics watchdogs rarely mince words about President Donald Trump. They've called him the most corrupt and conflicted president in US history. And since he returned to the White House, they've watched with horror as he privately dined with wealthy investors for his personal memecoin fund, brazenly accepted a $400 million luxury airplane from Qatar and purged inspectors general from federal agencies. Adding to their long list of gripes, the president's company announced Monday that it was launching Trump Mobile, a wireless service with monthly plans and a $499 smartphone, which would be regulated by many of the federal agencies now run by Trump appointees. That has led to soul-searching among Washington, DC's self-appointed ethics watchdogs at advocacy groups and think tanks, who are wondering how this could've been prevented. Some have championed liberal causes for years; others aren't beholden to either party but are stunned by Trump's sea-change to the ethics landscape. While they primarily hold Trump responsible for his own actions, they're increasingly concluding that former President Joe Biden also deserves some of the blame. 'The single biggest failure of the Biden administration was that he and Congress didn't pass any post-Watergate-style reforms,' said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. 'President Biden had zero interest in doing that, and congressional Democrats didn't have much interest.' Many of these experts, including Biden allies, say much more could've been done to get legislation across the finish line when Democrats had unified control in DC. House Democrats passed a landmark ethics and democracy bill in late 2021, but it languished. It would've banned officials from taking foreign money (as Trump has with his memecoin). It would've tightened the rules for who can serve as acting leaders at federal agencies (a loophole Trump used to install loyalists). 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UPI
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South Korean PM candidate vows 'inclusion' amid opposition calls for withdrawal
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Bernie Sanders backs two progressives in NYC Democratic primaries
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