Teenage girl (19) in critical condition after Galway crash
The 19-year-old woman was injured in a two-car collision on the Ballygaddy Road in Tuam shortly after 6pm.
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The driver and passenger of the second car, a man in his 20s and woman in her 30s, were treated for non-life threatening injuries.
A technical exam of the scene has been carried out.
Anyone who was in the Ballygaddy Road area between 5.50pm and 6.15pm and who may have witnessed the incident has been asked to contact investigating gardaí.
Any road users who were travelling in this vicinity at the time, and who may have camera footage including dash cam, are asked to make this footage available to investigating gardaí.
Gardaí can be contacted at the Tuam Garda Station on 093 70840, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda station.
Investigations are ongoing, gardaí said.
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Daily Mail
13 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Ex-Trump prosecutor faces Office of Special Counsel investigation and given stern warning
The United States Office of Special Counsel appears set to give former federal prosecutor Jack Smith a taste of his own medicine, opening an investigation into his conduct. Smith resigned from his position in January after completing two criminal investigations into Donald Trump which he later said would've seen the president convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States had he not won the election. Now, Smith faces an investigation into whether he was engaging in political activities during the investigation which would be a violation of the Hatch Act. 'I appreciate the Office of Special Counsel taking this seriously and launching an investigation into Jack Smith's conduct. No one is above the law,' wrote OSC Senior Counsel Charles Baldis in a letter obtained by The New York Post. The Daily Mail has reached out to the White House for comment. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton - the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee - spurred the investigation by writing a letter to acting OSC Chairman Jamison Greer. 'Jack Smith's legal actions were nothing more than a tool for the Biden and Harris campaigns. This isn't just unethical, it is very likely illegal campaign activity from a public office,' he wrote. Cotton praised the decision to look into what Smith was doing in a statement. 'Jack Smith's actions were clearly driven to hurt President Trump's election, and Smith should be held fully accountable,' he said. Following his resignation, Smith stood by his decision to bring charges against Trump and insisted he would have been convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States had he not won the election for president in a bombshell January 6 report. In a scathing statement issued along with the report, Smith admonished Trump for what he described as excessive lies and deceit to upend the American enterprise. 'The throughline of all of Mr. Trump's criminal efforts was deceit - knowingly false claims of election fraud - and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States' democratic process,' the report states. Trump quickly slammed the report in a Truth Social post. 'Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his 'boss,' Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another 'Report' based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were,' the post read. The president-elect then followed it up with two more missives to his social media platform. 'To show you how desperate Deranged Jack Smith is, he released his Fake findings at 1:00 A.M. in the morning. Did he say that the Unselect Committee illegally destroyed and deleted all of the evidence.' He followed it up with his trademark: 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' With the prosecution foreclosed thanks to Trump's election victory, the 137-page document was expected to be the final Justice Department chronicle of the probes. Smith, who resigned after completing two criminal investigations, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland that he believed had Trump stood trial on the charges, he would have been convicted. 'The department's view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government's proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,' Smith wrote. 'Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,' he added. Trump called Smith 'a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!' Smith wrote the report, which was transmitted to Congress early Tuesday after a judge refused to block its release. It describes prosecutors' charging decisions in the case that resulted in Trump being indicted for taking a trove of national security documents to Mar-a-Lago. They also include the decision to charge Trump with heading a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. The document includes, for the first time, a detailed assessment from Smith about his investigation, as well as a defense by Smith against criticism by Trump and his allies that the investigation was politicized. Though Smith sought to salvage the indictment, the team dismissed it entirely in November because of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution. 'While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters,' Smith continued. 'I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters.' Another 'significant challenge' was Trump's 'ability and willingness to use his influence and following on social media to target witnesses, courts, prosecutors,' which led prosecutors to seek a gag order to protect potential witnesses from harassment, Smith wrote. 'Mr. Trump's resort to intimidation and harassment during the investigation was not new, as demonstrated by his actions during the charged conspiracies,' Smith wrote. 'A fundamental component of Mr. Trump's conduct underlying the charges in the Election Case was his pattern of using social media - at the time, Twitter - to publicly attack and seek to influence state and federal officials, judges, and election workers who refused to support false claims that the election had been stolen or who otherwise resisted complicity in Mr. Trump's scheme,' he added. Smith also for the first time explained the thought process behind his team's prosecution decisions, writing that his office decided not to charge Trump with incitement in part because of free speech concerns, or with insurrection because he was the sitting president at the time and there was doubt about proceeding to trial with the offense - of which there was no record of having been prosecuted before. The special counsel brought a superseding indictment in the January 6th case that narrowed the case after the Supreme Court issued issued its summer decision giving presidents presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts while in office. Trump was charged with willful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, in a case Cannon dismissed this summer that was on appeal when Trump won the November election. Trump's team previously argued that the report, under DOJ regulations, merely spews 'conspiracy theories,' and say it is unfair to release it, saying it violates his presumption of innocence. Trump, meanwhile, has continued to attack Smith publicly. The DOJ said the volume on the classified documents case would be provided to key members of Congress for both parties for private review in redacted form. 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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Tesla found partly to blame for fatal Autopilot crash
A jury in Florida has found Tesla partly liable for a 2019 crash in which a Model S sedan using self-driving software killed a pedestrian and severely injured had argued the assistance software, called Autopilot, should have alerted the driver and activated the brakes before the had maintained the driver, George McGee, was at fault and called the verdict "wrong" in a statement to the BBC, while vowing to appeal. The result means the company will have to pay as much as $243m (£189) in punitive and compensatory verdicts marks a setback for Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, who has touted self-driving technology as critical to the company's future. Shares of Tesla dipped following the news and was nearly 2% lower when US markets the verdict, plaintiff's attorneys said Mr Musk had misrepresented the capabilities of the company's Autopilot driver assistance software."Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans," said attorney Brett Schreiber in a statement to the BBC. Mr Schreiber said Tesla and Mr Musk had long propped up the company's valuation with "self-driving hype at the expense of human lives.""Tesla's lies turned our roads into test tracks for their fundamentally flawed technology," he added. The company was sued by the family of Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, who was killed when she was struck by the Model S at a T-intersection in Florida Keys in 2019. Her boyfriend Dillon Angulo suffered life-long injuries and was also involved in the court heard the driver, George McGee, lost sight of the road when he dropped his phone as he was approaching the intersection, causing his car to continue through it and crash into an SUV parked on the other side. The two victims were standing Mr McGee, nor the Autopilot software, hit the brakes in time to prevent the crash. After a three-week trial, the jury awarded $329m in total damages, including $129m in compensatory damages and $200m in punitive damages aimed at deterring Tesla from harmful behaviour in the will be responsible for paying one-third of compensatory damages - $42.5m - and the entirety of the $200m in punitive damages, but according to the company, punitive damages are likely to be capped at a lesser amount."Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology," Tesla said in a said evidence at the trial showed the driver was solely at fault because he was speeding with his foot on the accelerator, which overrode Autopilot, while looking for his phone and not at the road."To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash," Tesla said. "This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs' lawyers blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility."While there have been other federal lawsuits involving Autopilot during fatal crashes, Tesla has settled prior year, it settled a lawsuit over a 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer after his Model X collided with a highway barrier while operating the company's Autopilot Florida case which culminated on Friday was the first to go to a trial, Mr McGee said his concept of Tesla's Autopilot was that "it would assist me should I have a failure" or "make a mistake," and that he felt the software had failed McGee has settled a separate lawsuit with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed has long faced scrutiny over its Autopilot and self-driving technology, and critics hailed the jury's decision."Tesla is finally being held accountable for its defective designs and grossly negligent engineering practices," said Missy Cummings, a robotics professor at George Mason verdict comes as Tesla is battling weakening sales stemming in part from Mr Musk's political activities. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Yvette Cooper accused of blocking investigation into ‘police rapists'
The home secretary Yvette Cooper has been accused of ignoring victims by blocking an independent investigation into allegations of rape by police officers. This week five women, who were exploited by grooming gangs as children, claimed they were also sexually abused by officers in Rotherham at the time. Two of them said they were raped in the back of police cars, and told they would be handed back to the gang if they did not comply. The home secretary has resisted calls to set up a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation into police officers and other officials since January, Nick Timothy MP, a former Number 10 chief of staff, claimed on Friday. South Yorkshire police is investigating, but critics said they were 'shocked' the force had been trusted to investigate its own staff, citing 'cover-up after cover-up'. Lawyers for the victims said they were being 'retraumatised' by the process, or simply 'refuse to report' to the force that treated them so badly. One of the victims, known as Amy, said 'requests to hand over the investigation to another, independent, police [force] … have been repeatedly rejected'. Three arrests have been made, but no charges brought. The first allegation of child rape against an officer dates back ten years. The Times understands another victim has made allegations of sexual abuse against a Greater Manchester police officer. The lawyers said their clients have named a further four South Yorkshire police officers as alleged perpetrators. Timothy said a specialist NCA unit must be set up to investigate police officers and other officials who facilitated or carried out grooming crimes. 'It is harrowing that, ten years after allegations of rape were first levelled at police officers, not a single one has been brought to justice,' he said. 'These are claims of child rape in police cars and dealing of drugs used to coerce victims. This could not be more serious. Forces cannot investigate themselves. Yvette Cooper must reconsider her position.' Professor Alexis Jay, whose public inquiry found there were 1,400 child victims of grooming gangs in Rotherham, said she was 'shocked' that South Yorkshire police was being allowed to investigate its own officers. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has also written to Cooper to ask for an independent investigation. • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years Another victim said a police officer had threatened to hand her over to the grooming gang if she did not have sex with him. 'I would rather be raped once, or give one man oral sex, than to be taken somewhere where I know it'd be 15, 20 guys one after another. That was just easier,' she said. Allegations against officers emerged during the 2016 trial of the Rotherham gang. This included a claim that ringleader Basharat Hussain had 'somebody from CID' on the payroll 'so he wouldn't get busted'. The unknown detective had also divulged to him the location of a safe house being used to protect a vulnerable girl. In a separate case, a 12-year-old in a residential home said she tried to report her abuse to another police officer, but instead was driven down a country lane, called a liar and her paperwork was ripped up in front of her. Allegations against police officers in the northwest were allegedly 'buried'. Maggie Oliver, a former Greater Manchester police officer turned whistleblower, said she had been told to halt her investigation in 2004 into a suspected child rapist because he was still serving in the force and under internal investigation. When she returned to work after a period of compassionate leave 'the whole job had been buried', she said earlier this year. The victim, Steph, told a Channel 4 documentary 'there wasn't any doubt' that the car had picked her up, and taken her to a flat where she was raped for two days. An investigation by the the Independent Office for Police Conduct into allegations against 47 police officers resulted in two written warnings and no prosecutions. Whistleblowers labelled the 2022 result 'another chapter in the failure for the survivors' and revealed a litany of investigation failings, including lost documents and dysfunctional leadership. Sammy Woodhouse, who was groomed by the Rotherham gang and became pregnant, said: 'They've known about this for 12 years. It's cover-up after cover-up.' The survivor, whose testimony to the late Times reporter Andrew Norfolk in 2013 helped lead to Jay's public inquiry, added: 'It's certainly no secret that, in my hometown of Rotherham, police officers were directly involved with rape gangs.' The BBC reported that one woman in the ongoing case, known as Willow, identified PC Hassan Ali as having raped her. 'The first time, he literally said: 'You do it for the other officer. So you're gonna do it for me',' she said. Ali was also one of the main officers on Woodhouse's case, and one day turned up at her parents' home and 'asked me on a date', she said this week. The police watchdog, then called the IPCC, had opened an investigation into five allegations including corruption, and he was put on restricted duties on the day he was hit by a car in January 2015. He died a week later at the age of 44. At his inquest it emerged that Ali was considered a 'community elder' by the university student who ran him over. He was accused of leaking information from the police computer system. Woodhouse also said he attended 'pop and crisp' nights for children, where he met one of his victims. He allegedly helped to arrange a deal in which a grooming gangster handed over an abused girl, 14, to authorities at a petrol station, after being promised he would not be arrested. Arshid Hussain was found guilty of abduction over the incident. Woodhouse accused a second officer of 'buying drugs from my rapist'. She said the failure to properly investigate was 'absolutely despicable'. Amy Clowrey of Switalskis Solicitors, which represents the five women alongside dozens of other Rotherham victims, said 'the lack of progress is exhausting'. 'For seven years we thought they were handling it,' she said, referring to the allegations that emerged in 2016. 'We were waiting for the day when they said they arrested and charged this person, and it just never came.' She wrote to the IOPC and the NCA with allegations in June 2022, but it took more than two years for an arrest to be made. 'It's shocking that they didn't do anything about it [until 2024] … We've been constantly chasing,' she said. Jay said it was 'very hard to see the justification' for South Yorkshire police to investigate its own officers. 'It would have been cleaner all round to simply ask another police to investigate this.' Hayley Barnett, assistant chief constable of South Yorkshire police, said she was 'acutely aware of how profoundly difficult, if not impossible' it is for victims to report to her force. 'Our detectives, under the direction of the IOPC, have always taken prompt action when they have received information linked to this investigation, including information from solicitors,' she said. 'The enquiries carried out have been extensive and complex, and we have worked hard, and without fear or favour, to obtain relevant information from third parties in our pursuit for justice.' The IOPC said they are 'satisfied that there is no conflict of interest' from South Yorkshire police investigating its own officers. Greater Manchester police said: 'Some information has recently been raised that was not previously disclosed to the investigation at the time. We are therefore re-visiting these serious allegations and are speaking to any relevant witnesses.' A Home Office spokesman said a new national police operation, led by the NCA, would 'ensure that every historic case is fully investigated, that the perpetrators are put behind bars, and that the victims of these appalling crimes receive the justice they deserve.'
