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Tornadoes Cause Damage in Michigan as Severe Storms Batter Midwest

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Tornadoes ripped through Michigan on Tuesday evening, injuring residents, damaging nearly 200 mobile homes and lifting some off the ground, and trapping dozens of FedEx workers inside a building, officials said.

Over a dozen tornadoes were reported in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio on Tuesday night as severe storms battered the Midwest, officials said. A handful of others were reported early Wednesday in Arizona and West Virginia. The threat of tornadoes ended in many areas before midnight on Tuesday.

One of the hardest hit counties was Kalamazoo in Southern Michigan, where officials said multiple tornadoes caused significant damage. One tornado tore through a mobile home park, damaging about 176 homes inside the park, Rick Fuller, the county sheriff, said at a news conference early Wednesday.

Strong winds carried away some of the homes, Sheriff Fuller said. “We found homes in the roadway, we found homes in neighbors’ homes. We found large trees in homes. We found many vehicles that had been smashed by large trees or homes,” he said.

Between 16 and 20 people were injured at the mobile home park, but none were seriously hurt and no fatalities had been reported so far, Sheriff Fuller said.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Kalamazoo and the neighboring counties of St. Joseph, Branch and Cass, which were also pummeled by storms and large hail.

About 50 workers were trapped inside a FedEx depot center in Kalamazoo County after it suffered significant damage, county officials said. The workers had all been safely rescued from the building by early Wednesday, a statement from the Kalamazoo County Government said. No serious injuries were reported, a FedEx spokeswoman said.

Over 30,000 customers across Michigan were without power early Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.

The storms were expected to continue on Wednesday. Forecasters said roughly 9.5 million people in cities in Ohio and Kentucky, including Columbus, Cincinnati and Louisville, faced an enhanced risk of severe thunderstorms on Wednesday, with the possibility of strong tornadoes and large hail, according to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

On Monday night, at least 15 tornadoes were reported to have struck parts of the Plains. One tornado that was up to two miles wide ripped through Barnsdall, Okla., a city about 40 miles northwest of Tulsa, killing one person, an Osage County official said.

One Osage County official said it had caused multiple injuries and leveled about a third of the small city, which has a population of about 1,000. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that up to 40 homes in the town had been damaged.

The tornado also lifted the roof off a nursing home in Barnsdall, though all residents were accounted for with no injuries or deaths, officials said.

Mayor Johnny Kelley said one person was reported missing.

“We are going through the debris very thoroughly,” Mr. Kelley said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Considering the widespread destruction, it was “shocking” there were so few casualties, he said: “The devastation is pretty substantial.”

The tornado also caused power outages in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. But by early Tuesday, power had been largely restored.

In Bartlesville, Okla., about 20 miles southwest of Barnsdall, city officials said that emergency responders had rescued people trapped at a Hampton Inn and were recovering downed power lines early Tuesday. Only minor injuries had been reported.

Rescue operations were also ongoing at the Osage Nation Reservation, where officials warned residents to stay clear of the roadways and damaged areas.

Johnny Diaz, Judson Jones, John Yoon and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.



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Texas crime victims liaison pleads guilty to human smuggling with county vehicle

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A Texas crime victims coordinator who was employed by the Starr County District Attorney’s Office has pleaded guilty to using a county vehicle to smuggle immigrants into the United States.

Bernice Garza pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to transport undocumented people within the United States, according to a report from KRGV.

Two others, Magali Rosa and Juan Antonio Charles, were also arrested in connection with the investigation and have pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges, according to the report.

TEXAS CRIME VICTIMS LIAISON ARRESTED AFTER ALLEGEDLY USING COUNTY-ISSUED CAR IN HUMAN SMUGGLING SCHEME

Texas human smuggling arrest

A 2015 Chevrolet Traverse with the emblem of the Starr County District Attorney’s Office in Texas. An employee of the office was fired after the car was used in a human smuggling scheme, authorities said. (Victoria County Sheriffs Office)

Garza was arrested in December 2022 after a traffic stop in Victoria County noted that the vehicle registered with the county was making “numerous unauthorized trips to the Houston area,” the criminal complaint said.

Magali Rosa was the driver of the vehicle, according to police, while Garza and Charles were among the passengers in the vehicle.

Police say Rosa tried to argue that Garza was the Starr County district attorney during the stop, though she later confessed to making over 40 smuggling trips from Rio Grande City to Houston in the government vehicle.

Texas

Houston skyline (Reuters/Richard Carson)

FOX NEWS CREW WITNESSES DRAMATIC HUMAN SMUGGLING BUSTS BY TEXAS AUTHORITIES

“This investigation is an example of no one being above the law, and our office taking swift action in eliminating public corruption,” the DA’s office said in a statement after the arrests.

Garza was soon terminated from the DA’s office, while the four migrants who were in the vehicle at the time of the stop were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

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Sentencing for Garza and Charles was set for Sept. 28, the reporting notes, while sentencing for Magali Rosa is set for June 27.



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At Chaotic Rally in Brooklyn, Police Violently Confront Protesters

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A large protest in Brooklyn against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza erupted into a chaotic scene on Saturday, as the police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and at times confronted them violently.

In videos posted on social media, officers can be seen punching at least three people who were prone on the ground at the demonstration in the Bay Ridge neighborhood. The aggression was corroborated by witnesses. Another protester who was filming the police was tackled and arrested. A police spokesman declined to comment on the officers using force on protesters.

The police said Sunday that 40 people were arrested. They have not released details on the charges the protesters face.

“I saw police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk,” said Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within Our Lifetime, an activist group led by Palestinians that organized the demonstration. “They were grabbing people at random.”

According to the Police Department’s patrol guide, officers must use “only the reasonable force necessary to gain control or custody of a subject.”

In recent years, Within Our Lifetime has put on an annual mid-May rally in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood with a large Arab population, to commemorate what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe” — when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s founding in 1948.

Given the war in Gaza and months of protests in New York, this year’s protest was charged from the start. It started at 2 p.m. at the intersection of Fifth and Bay Ridge Avenues. Within about 25 minutes, a large group of officers arrived and warned protesters to get onto the sidewalk. Those who remained in the street would be arrested, the police told them.

From there, the event alternated between protest marches and standoffs with the police. In one video taken by Katie Smith, an independent journalist, a police commander in a white shirt delivers at least three punches to a person lying on the pavement. In another video she recorded, an officer punches a man who is on the ground at least six times and a white-shirted commander aims a kick at the man, though it is not possible to see if it landed.

In a separate instance filmed by another independent journalist, Talia Jane, an officer flings a protester against a signpost and then hurls him to the pavement, where he is pinned by two officers as he is punched by a third.

The footage of the police, including at least one commander, pummeling protesters recalled some of the N.Y.P.D. conduct caught on video at the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. The city ended up paying $13 million to settle a class-action suit brought by those protesters.

In a video of the Saturday protest posted on Twitch, half a dozen people could be seen filming a group of police officers and commanders walking on Bay Ridge Avenue. A police commander grabbed the nearest one, followed by two more commanders and a scrum of blue-shirted officers.

The protester was shoved to the ground, handcuffed and arrested. Other people in the crowd continued recording the event.

Those arrested were led to police vans and driven to the headquarters in Manhattan. A light rain began to fall, and by 8 p.m. the protest had dispersed.

Sabir Hasko contributed reporting.



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Virgin Trains targets West Coast in return to rail

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Virgin Group has applied for a licence to run trains on the route it lost to Avanti in 2019.



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