Today in History: June 7, James Byrd Jr. killed in hate crime
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a Creole of color, was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court upheld 'separate but equal' racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)
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In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City formally came into existence as the Italian Parliament ratified the Lateran Treaty in Rome.
In 1942, the Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American naval forces over Imperial Japan, marking a turning point in the Pacific War.
In 1965, the US Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples.
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In 1976, New York magazine published an article by journalist Nik Cohn entitled 'The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,' which inspired the film 'Saturday Night Fever,' which in turn sparked a nationwide disco craze. (Cohn admitted in 1997 that the article was actually a work of fiction.)
In 1979, Texas became the first state to recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday. (Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.)
In 1982, Graceland, Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion, was opened to the public as a tourist destination, five years after Presley's death.
In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation and led to stronger state and federal hate crime laws, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old Black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death and executed for the crime; a third was sentenced to life in prison.)
In 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by a US airstrike on his safe house.
In 2021, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh, 22, from a prominent South Carolina legal family, were found shot and killed on their family's property. (Alex Murdaugh, Maggie's husband and Paul's father, would be found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.)
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Khaby Lame Was Detained by ICE, Agency Confirms
Let's cut to the chase. Yes, the world's top TikToker Khaby Lame was detained by ICE, the agency confirmed on June 7. 'U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Seringe Khabane Lame, 25, a citizen of Italy, June 6, at the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada for immigration violations,' ICE confirmed to Men's Journal in an emailed statement after Men's Journal asked whether it was true that ICE had arrested the popular TIkToker. 'Lame entered the United States April 30 and overstayed the terms of his visa. Lame was granted voluntary departure June 6 and has since departed the U.S.,' ICE wrote. That news came after confusion erupted because Lame is not in the ICE arrest database. Furthermore, he's been posting on Instagram and on TikTok since the rumor went viral, including in a bookstore. Men's Journal asked ICE public relations about the viral and unverified rumor that Lame was arrested, which started on the X page of a social media influencer named Bo Louden. A spokeswoman for ICE, Alethea Smock, told Men's Journal on the evening of June 6 that she was looking into it, and the agency responded with the statement on June 7. On June 7, Lame posted several times to his Instagram story, including a post in a bookstore, holding a book. He also wished a top athlete a happy birthday. The moral of the story is to not instantly believe everything you read on the Internet. Furthermore, X's Grok was already warning on June 6 that the rumor was likely false. And Lame posted this video on TikTok on June 7: In a June 6, 2025, post, Louden alleged that Lame - who has more than 162 million followers on TikTok - was arrested by ICE in Nevada and is in custody, and he shared a supposed ICE database screenshot in the name of Serigne Khabane Lame of Senegal. The post then ricocheted around social media and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. A community note was quickly attached to his post. "Khaby Lame is still living in Italy, and was granted citizenship there in 2022. ICE is a U.S.-based organization and cannot deport someone not living in the USA," it read. But here's the thing. When you try it yourself, you get zero results. No evidence of Khaby Lame, Khabane Lame, or Serigne Khabane Lame being in ICE custody (as the screenshot lists). Nothing. Zero results come up also when you put the supposed A-Number from the screenshot into the database. In other words, the screenshot is impossible to replicate. That's likely because Lame was allowed to voluntarily leave the country, though, per the new statement. On Louden's comment thread on X, other people wrote that they also got no results when they tried to replicate it in the official database, and they accused him of perpetrating a hoax. Lame is an Italian citizen. Furthermore, Italian citizens do not need a visa to be in the United States for up to 90 days. KRON4 confirmed that Khaby Lame was born in Senegal. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. "Lame moved to Italy from his native Senegal when he was an infant with his working class parents, but was only granted Italian citizenship when he was 20," that site reported. In 2024, he starred in a show about trying to find a new home in the U.S. In early May, Lame was photographed attending the Met Gala in New York. This post was updated with the ICE Lame Was Detained by ICE, Agency Confirms first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 7, 2025
CNBC
11 hours ago
- CNBC
'Bitcoin Family' hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists. Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called "Bitcoin Family," said he overhauled the family's entire security setup after a string of threats. The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked. Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents. "We have changed everything," Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. "Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can't give them more than what's on my wallet on my phone. And that's not a lot." CNBC first reported on the family's unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America. As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure. This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives. One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal. In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive. Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements. The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets. "It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen," said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions. Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility. That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders. But Taihuttu isn't waiting for corporate solutions. He's opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile. As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation. "We've been talking about it a lot as a family," Taihuttu said. "My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street." Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What's the plan? Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely. "We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now," Taihuttu said. "And I think we'll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we're definitely going to skip France." Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs. "We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone," he said. "So we moved. And now we don't film anything at all." "It's a strange world at the moment," he said. "So we're taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we're now completely hardware wallet-less. We don't use any hardware wallets anymore." The family's new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents. "Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can't do anything," Taihuttu explained. On top of that, he's added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective. "You only need to remember which ones you changed," he said. Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups. While the family still holds some crypto in "hot" wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed. The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit. About 65% of the family's crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust. "What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?" he said. "You're putting your capital back in someone else's hands." Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he's targeting for 2033. The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model. Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a "single point of compromise" — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access. Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share. The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers. Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto's original ethos. While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids. Lately, he's also considering stepping back from the spotlight. "It's really my passion to create content. It's really what I love to do every day," he said. "But if it's not safe anymore for my daughters ... I really need to think about them."
Boston Globe
15 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Today in History: June 7, James Byrd Jr. killed in hate crime
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a Creole of color, was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court upheld 'separate but equal' racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.) Advertisement In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City formally came into existence as the Italian Parliament ratified the Lateran Treaty in Rome. In 1942, the Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American naval forces over Imperial Japan, marking a turning point in the Pacific War. In 1965, the US Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples. Advertisement In 1976, New York magazine published an article by journalist Nik Cohn entitled 'The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,' which inspired the film 'Saturday Night Fever,' which in turn sparked a nationwide disco craze. (Cohn admitted in 1997 that the article was actually a work of fiction.) In 1979, Texas became the first state to recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday. (Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.) In 1982, Graceland, Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion, was opened to the public as a tourist destination, five years after Presley's death. In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation and led to stronger state and federal hate crime laws, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old Black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death and executed for the crime; a third was sentenced to life in prison.) In 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by a US airstrike on his safe house. In 2021, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh, 22, from a prominent South Carolina legal family, were found shot and killed on their family's property. (Alex Murdaugh, Maggie's husband and Paul's father, would be found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.)
