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L.A. City Council refuses police dog donation over training firm’s name it shares with Hitler bunker

Published

4 weeks ago

June 5, 2024

The Los Angeles City Council has declined a donation for two police dogs after one city leader raised concerns that the canines were trained by a company that shares its name with a Nazi military hideout used by Adolf Hitler.

City Councilman Bob Blumenfield said he didn’t have an issue with the dogs, which were paid for with a nearly $27,000 donation by the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a nonprofit independent group that has long bankrolled equipment for the LAPD and offered other support the department. Blumenfield said his main concern was that the Riverside County company that supplied the animals, Adlerhorst International, shares “the name of the Nazi bunker used by Adolf Hitler during World War II.’’

“This company is a company that is glorifying Hitler’s bunker, and it’s a company that is dealing with German shepherds, of which there’s all that history with the Holocaust,’’ Blumenfield said. “I don’t know that’s the intent of this company, but in reality it’s a creepy name that shouldn’t really be associated with a company like this. They’ve had plenty of time to deal with it, and I can’t support doing business with a company that’s glorifying Hitler’s bunker.”

Nestled in the Bavarian Alps, Adlerhorst, which means “Eagle’s Nest’’ in German, was a bunker complex built to hide Hitler during World War II. The location also served as the Nazi leader’s command post in December 1944 and January 1945.

Adlerhorst’s president, Michael Reaver, said he didn’t understand the council’s decision and had no intention of changing the company’s name.

“We have no affiliation with any Nazi anything, we’re just like everyone else, we look back at the Nazis and we consider that to be a horrible period of mankind,” Reaver said in a phone interview Tuesday.

After searching online, Reaver said, he found that there are “about a thousand” cafes, sandwich shops and streets bearing the Adlerhorst name in Germany today.

“In Germany, it’s not a name that is associated with the Nazi Party whatsoever,” he said.

Blumenfield, who represents the west San Fernando Valley, said he could find no other meaning beyond the Hitler reference. After Blumenfield voiced his misgivings at the council meeting Tuesday, the K-9 donation issue was sent back to the public safety committee for further discussion.

Activists and community members have raised questions about Adlerhorst in recent months at meetings of the Board of Police Commissioners, citing both the problematic name and the violent history of police dogs being used against Americans of color.

Jason Reedy, an organizer with the activist group People’s City Council and a regular at the public meetings, said “it goes beyond the name — the name is deplorable enough, but it goes back to the history of the ways that dogs have been used,” such as police unleashing dogs on civil rights protesters and against U.S. prisoners in Iraq.

Reedy said he hopes the controversy prompts a “deeper dive” into donations made by the Police Foundation.

Some have pointed to a 2021 Vice story about Adlerhorst that reported Reaver, a pioneering police K-9 trainer, had been sued dozens of times related to alleged injuries caused by the dogs that come from his facility, one of the nation’s largest.

Reaver called the article “biased” when asked about it this week.

In March, the commission, a five-member civilian panel that oversees the LAPD, approved a transmittal for the acceptance of two dogs for Metropolitan Division’s K-9 Platoon to replace a pair of dogs who officials said have been retired due to age and health concerns.

When reached Tuesday, the commission would not comment on criticism of Adlerhorst, but a spokesperson for the panel said it would help the public safety committee “to the best of our ability.”

“We’ll assist in whatever way we can with the process,” said the spokesperson, Sarah Bell.

According to a series of purchase orders released on the city’s online records portal, the company has sold at least 14 dogs to the LAPD since October 2021. The Police Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reaver said the company name comes from a German kennel where his father bought a dog, Cora, in the 1960s. His father, a former electrician and Air Force veteran who was once stationed in Germany, started breeding sporting dogs and then began working with law enforcement. The elder Reaver launched the business in 1976, and his son said they buy most of their dogs from breeders in Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

“He had zero idea about any correlation between any German names and any Nazi party,” Reaver said of his father. “No History Channel, no Wikipedia information back then, it just wasn’t at your fingertips that it was named after a compound that Nazis made or somebody had made and Hitler used it once.”

Adlerhorst, Reaver added, is “the name of a bloodline. In Germany, breeders of German shepherds historically would have a kennel name, a bloodline name, so if you buy a dog named Luke the dog’s full name would be ‘Luke from Adlerhorst.’”

“If Adlerhorst was considered with something associated with the Nazi Party, that name would not exist in modern-day Germany at all,” he said.

Adlerhorst has worked with hundreds of police forces nationwide. Reaver said the kennel was responsible for Cairo, the 70-pound Belgian Malinois that accompanied the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Reaver questioned why his company’s German name was singled out for backlash.

“No one’s looking to shut down the Porsche. Hugo Boss, he’s the one who made the uniforms for the SS, the real Hugo Boss. Volkswagen and all that, they all contributed to the war efforts of the Nazis,” he said.

Times staff writer David Zahniser and City News Service contributed to this report.

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China’s BYD posts 21% jump in quarterly EV sales, closes gap with Tesla

Published

3 hours ago

July 2, 2024

worlddailyinfo

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s BYD (BYDDY) posted a 21% rise in second-quarter electric vehicle sales, closing the gap with Tesla (TSLA) after handing back the world’s top EV vendor title to the U.S. rival in the first quarter.

BYD sold 426,039 EVs in the April-June quarter, according to Reuters’ calculations based on its monthly sales reports. That’s around 12,000 vehicles fewer than Tesla’s vehicle deliveries estimated for the second quarter.

FILE PHOTO: BYD and Autotorino store in Milan — BYD and Autotorino store in Milan. (Reuters)

Tesla is expected to report a 6% drop in April-June quarter vehicle deliveries on Tuesday, the first time the U.S. firm is set to post two straight quarters of decline, as it deals with stiff competition in China and slow demand due to a lack of affordable new models.

The company may again cede its EV championship to BYD if the actual results turn out to be softer than estimated, with Barclays predicting an 11% drop in second-quarter deliveries, Tesla’s biggest ever.

Tesla has hit a speed bump after years of rapid growth that helped make it the world’s most valuable automaker. It warned in January that deliveries growth in 2024 would be “notably lower” as a boost from months-long price cuts wanes.

The EV maker has cut output of its best-selling Model Y electric car by a double-digit percentage number at its Shanghai plant since March to address weakening demand for its aged models in China, its second-largest market after the United States, Reuters reported in May.

By comparison, its top Chinese competitor BYD maintained steady growth in EV sales, while EV upstarts such as Nio reported stellar growth last quarter. NIO’s vehicle deliveries in the second quarter more than doubled to 57,300 units.

Price cuts and a growing shift in consumer demand to EVs and hybrids from gasoline-powered vehicles are the main reasons behind Chinese EV makers’ strong sales in recent months, said Cui Dongshu, secretary general, China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

Sales of new energy vehicles including EVs and plug-in hybrids in China made up 46.7% of total car sales in May, a fresh monthly high, as per CPCA data.

(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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Biden slams SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling, ignores questions about dropping out

Published

7 hours ago

July 2, 2024

Stepheny Price

President Biden slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, saying it means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do, in a speedy address Monday evening.

The president spoke for less than five minutes – four minutes and 40 seconds to be exact – before turning his back to the press and walking away.

“This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent, because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden said.

The Supreme Court ruled that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office, but not for unofficial acts.

TRUMP IMMUNITY CASE: SUPREME COURT RULES EX-PRESIDENTS HAVE SUBSTANTIAL PROTECTION FROM PROSECUTION

Trump and Biden squared off in their high-stakes 2024 election debate rematch last week. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, left, )

In a 6-3 decision, the Court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not former President Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Biden continued his address, saying that the American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s assault on democracy on January 6th makes him “unfit” for public office and the highest office in the land.

“The American people must decide if Trump’s embrace of violence to preserve his power is acceptable. Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide if they want to entrust the presidency to Donald Trump once again. Now knowing, he’ll be even more emboldened to do whatever he pleases, whenever he wants to do it,” Biden said.

Biden also spoke about the character of the nation’s first president, George Washington, and how he believed power was limited, not absolute.

Biden wrapped his speech and dodged questions from reporters as he left abruptly.

Reporters shouted questions at Biden, asking him if he plans to drop out of the presidential race following his debate with Trump.

TRUMP TOUTS SUPREME COURT’S PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY RULING AS ‘BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND FOR DEMOCRACY’

US President Joe Biden speaks during a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, US, on Monday, May 27, 2024. (Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Biden has not taken questions from the press and has used teleprompters at his events, including a fundraiser in the Hamptons, following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last week.

“Today’s Historic Decision by the Supreme Court should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me, including the New York Hoaxes – The Manhattan SCAM cooked up by Soros backed D.A., Alvin Bragg, Racist New York Attorney General Tish James’ shameless ATTACK on the amazing business that I have built, and the FAKE Bergdorf’s “case.” PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social.

BIDEN CAMP DISMISSES TRUMP IMMUNITY RULING: ‘DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACTS’

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued he should be immune from prosecution from official acts done as president of the U.S. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The former president was charged in August 2023 by Special Counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to President Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has denied doing anything wrong and has said this prosecution and three others are politically motivated to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

Trump shared his reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling on his presidential immunity case, saying it’s a “big win for our constitution and democracy,” according to his Truth Social page.

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“THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IS A MUCH MORE POWERFUL ONE THAN SOME HAD EXPECTED IT TO BE. IT IS BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STENCH FROM THE BIDEN TRIALS AND HOAXES, ALL OF THEM, THAT HAVE BEEN USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON CROOKED JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME. MANY OF THESE FAKE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR, OR WITHER INTO OBSCURITY. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” Trump posted.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.

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Hurricane Beryl Flattens Grenada’s Carriacou Island

Published

11 hours ago

July 1, 2024

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega

Officials in Barbados said on Monday that the island had been spared the worst of Beryl.

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, told a nationwide broadcast from the island’s emergency operations center that as many as 20 fishing boats, including two popular cruisers, had possibly sunk. Still, she added, “This could have been far worse for us.”

Roughly 40 homes were known to have sustained roof or structural damage so far, she said, though that number was expected to rise as more than 400 residents returned home from shelters.

On St. Lucia, storm surge caused significant damage to fishing vessels, sinking at least 20 boats, according to initial reports. Dozens of homes were also damaged.

People across the eastern Caribbean had started preparing for the storm over the weekend, including those doing some last-minute shopping for supplies.

“Hurricanes are not something that we take lightly at home as a family,” said Fleur Mathurin, who lives on St. Lucia, where some parts of the island were experiencing power outages. “Having my family, my grandmothers, great-grands, gone through Hurricane Allen and Gilbert, this is something that they always preach to us.”

As of Monday afternoon, the storm was expected to continue tearing its way through the Caribbean, reaching Jamaica with potential hurricane conditions by Wednesday according to the National Hurricane Center.

Julius Gittens contributed reporting from Christ Church, Barbados; Linda Straker from Gouyave, Grenada; Kenton X. Chance from Kingstown, St. Vincent; Sharefil Gaillard from Gros Islet, St. Lucia; and Maria Abi-Habib from Mexico City.

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