Vikings' Jordan Addison resolves dui case by pleading no contest to a lesser charge
Addison, who has 133 catches for 1,786 yards and 19 touchdowns in two seasons, agreed to what is known as a 'wet reckless' in California. His attorney, Jacqueline Sparagna, said he will pay a fine and complete two online courses with the expectation that his probation will be shortened from 12 to six months. 'Wet reckless' is a plea bargain in which a person charged with a DUI accepts a lesser misdemeanor charge of reckless driving. The 'wet' indicates that alcohol or drugs were involved.
'While Mr. Addison's case would have made for a great trial, I admire him for taking responsibility by accepting the City Attorney's 'wet reckless' offer,' Sparagna said. 'Now he can put this incident behind him and solely focus on his promising career.' Tim Younger, Addison's agent, wrote on a social media post that Addison has kept the organization apprised throughout these legal proceedings and will continue in his full commitment to being a valuable member of his team. Addison still could face discipline from the NFL.
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Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Titan sub disaster tied to ignored warnings and weak oversight, Coast Guard says
MAINE, USA: The 2023 Titan submersible disaster that killed five people could have been prevented, the US Coast Guard said Tuesday, but OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush ignored safety warnings, design flaws and crucial oversight that could have resulted in criminal charges — had he survived. The Titan suffered a catastrophic implosion as it descended to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a dayslong search in the North Atlantic off Canada that grabbed international headlines. The Coast Guard convened its highest level of investigation in the aftermath, and the disaster has led to lawsuits and calls for tighter regulation of the developing private deep sea expedition industry. The Titan was owned by OceanGate, a private company based in Washington state. The Coast Guard report found the company's safety procedures were 'critically flawed' and cited 'glaring disparities' between safety protocols and actual practices. Preventing the next Titan disaster Jason Neubauer, with the Marine Board of Investigation, said that the findings will help prevent future tragedies. 'There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework,' he said in a statement. OceanGate suspended operations in July 2023. A spokesperson for the company said it has been wound down and was fully cooperating with the investigation. 'We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragedy,' said the spokesperson, Christian Hammond. Coast Guard report describes 'red flags' at OceanGate Throughout the report, which spans more than 300 pages, investigators repeatedly point to OceanGate's culture of downplaying, ignoring and even falsifying key safety information to improve its reputation and evade scrutiny from regulators. OceanGate ignored 'red flags' and had a 'toxic workplace culture,' while its mission was hindered by lack of domestic and international framework for submersible operations, the report says. Numerous OceanGate employees have come forward in the two years since the implosion to support those claims. The report says firings of senior staff members and the looming threat of being fired were used to dissuade employees and contractors from expressing safety concerns. 'By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate TITAN completely outside of the established deep-sea protocols,' the report found. The Titan's inadequacies Investigators found that the submersible's design, certification, maintenance and inspection process were all inadequate. Coast Guard officials noted at the start of last year's hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. Mounting financial pressures in 2023 led to a decision by OceanGate to store the Titan submersible outdoors over the Canadian winter, where its hull was exposed to temperature fluctuations that compromised the integrity of the vessel, the report said. The Marine Board concluded that Rush, OceanGate's CEO, 'exhibited negligence' that contributed to the deaths of four people. If Rush had survived, the case would have been handed off to the US Department of Justice and he may have been subject to criminal charges, the board said. The Marine Board said one challenge of the investigation was that 'significant amounts' of video footage evidence that had been captured by witnesses was not subject to its subpoena authority because the witnesses weren't US citizens. The victims of the Titan disaster In addition to Rush, the implosion killed French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British adventurer Hamish Harding and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood. The family of Nargeolet, a veteran French undersea explorer known as 'Mr. Titanic,' filed a more than $50 million lawsuit last year that said the crew experienced 'terror and mental anguish' before the disaster. The lawsuit accused OceanGate of gross negligence. The Titan's final dive Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic site since 2021. The Titan's final dive came on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning when the submersible would lose contact with its support vessel about two hours later. The submersible was reported overdue that afternoon, and ships, planes and equipment were rushed to the scene about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John's, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan would subsequently be found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. The Marine Board of Investigation held several days of hearings about the implosion in October 2024. During those hearings, the lead engineer of the submersible said he felt pressured to get the vessel ready to dive and refused to pilot it for a journey several years earlier. Tony Nissen told the board that he had told Rush: 'I'm not getting in it.'
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
US House panel subpoenas Clintons in Epstein probe
The US House Oversight Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for testimony on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to letters posted on its website. The Clintons were among multiple former government officials -- including two of President Donald Trump's attorney generals from his first term -- summoned by investigators in a major escalation of the controversy surrounding the investigation into the disgraced financier, who died in 2019 awaiting trial for sex trafficking. The White House has been facing increasingly intense demands to be more transparent after the Justice Department angered Trump supporters -- many of whom believe Epstein was murdered in a cover-up -- when it confirmed last month that he had died by suicide and that his case was effectively closed. The department also said Epstein had no secret 'client list' -- rebuffing conspiracy theories held by Trump's far-right supporters about supposedly high-level Democratic complicity. Trump has urged his supporters to drop demands for the Epstein files, but Democrats in the Republican-led Congress -- with some support from majority lawmakers -- have also been seeking a floor vote to force their release. 'By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003,' committee chairman James Comer wrote to former president Clinton. 'During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a 'massage' from one of Mr. Epstein's victims. 'It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex trafficking allegations against your 'good friend' Mr. Epstein, and there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein's island.' Other officials targeted by the panel include former FBI director James Comey, former special counsel Robert Mueller and ex-attorney generals Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, and Alberto Gonzales. Their depositions will take place between mid-August and mid-October. Comer also issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for records related to Epstein -- including its communications with Trump's predecessor Joe Biden and his officials. House Oversight Committee Democrats, backed by some Republicans, approved a subpoena in July for the Justice Department to hand over documents. Lawmakers have also been seeking testimony from Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for her role in his alleged crimes -- although her cooperation is seen as unlikely. Meanwhile the Supreme Court's justices are expected to consider at a September 29 conference ahead of their October term whether to hear an appeal by Maxwell of her sex trafficking conviction.
Arab News
18 hours ago
- Arab News
Bondi moves forward on US Justice Department investigation into origins of Trump-Russia probe
WASHINGTON: Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed that the Justice Department move forward with a probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation following the recent release of documents aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the inquiry that established that Moscow interfered on the Republican's behalf in the 2016 US presidential election. Bondi has directed a prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury after referrals from the Trump administration's top intelligence official, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. That person was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press. Fox News first reported the development. It was not clear which former officials might be the target of any grand jury activity, where the grand jury that might ultimately hear evidence will be located or which prosecutors — whether career employees or political appointees — might be involved in pursuing the investigation. It was also not clear what precise claims of misconduct Trump administration officials believe could form the basis of criminal charges, which a grand jury would have to sign off on for an indictment to be issued. The development is likely to heighten concerns that the Justice Department is being used to achieve political ends given longstanding grievances over the Russia investigation voiced by President Donald Trump, who has called for the jailing of perceived political adversaries, and because any criminal investigation would revisit one of the most dissected chapters of modern American political history. It is also surfacing at a time when the Trump administration is being buffeted by criticism over its handling of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. The initial, years-old investigation into Russian election interference resulted in the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who secured multiple convictions against Trump aides and allies but did not establish proof of a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign. The inquiry shadowed much of Trump's first term in office and he has long focused his ire on senior officials from the intelligence and law enforcement community, including former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017, and former CIA Director John Brennan. The Justice Department appeared to confirm an investigation into both men in an unusual statement last month but offered no details. Multiple special counsels, congressional committees and the Justice Department's own inspector general have studied and documented a multi-pronged effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump's behalf, including through a hack-and-leak dump of Democratic emails and a covert social media operation aimed at sowing discord and swaying public opinion. But that conclusion has been aggressively challenged in recent weeks as Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and other allies have released previously classified records that they hope will cast doubt on the extent of Russian interference and establish an Obama administration effort to falsely link Trump to Russia. In one batch of documents released last month, Gabbard disclosed emails showing that senior Obama administration officials were aware in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to manipulate the votes in Trump's favor. But President Barack Obama's administration never alleged that votes were tampered with and had instead detailed other forms of election interference and foreign influence. A new outcry surfaced last week when Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a set of emails that FBI Director Kash Patel claimed on social media proved that the 'Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.' The emails were part of a classified annex of a report issued in 2023 by John Durham, the special counsel who was appointed during the first Trump administration to hunt for any government misconduct during the Russia investigation. Durham did identify significant flaws in the investigation but uncovered no bombshells to disprove the existence of Russian election interference. His sprawling probe produced three criminal cases; two resulted in acquittals by a jury and the third was a guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer to a charge of making a false statement. Republicans seized on a July 27, 2016, email in Durham's newly declassified annex that claimed that Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic candidate for president, had approved a plan during the heat of the campaign to link Trump with Russia. But the purported author of the email, a senior official at a philanthropic organization founded by billionaire investor George Soros, told Durham's team he had never sent the email and the alleged recipient said she never called receiving it. Durham's own report took pain to note that investigators had not corroborated the communications as authentic and said the best assessment was that the message was 'a composites of several emails' the Russians had obtained from hacking — raising the likelihood that it was a product of Russian disinformation. The FBI's Russia investigation was opened on July 31, 2016, following a tip that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, had told an Australian diplomat that he had learned that Russia was in possession of dirt on Clinton.
