Chef, cancer worker face terrorist charges

Chef, cancer worker face terrorist charges

CHICAGO

Two suburban Chicago men who posed for photos holding a black Islamic State group flag at a Lake Michigan beach park were arrested Wednesday on federal terrorist charges, and an undercover operative said one of the men suggested homosexuals should be thrown off the city’s tallest building.

An FBI sting begun in 2015 compiled evidence that Joseph D. Jones and Edward Schimenti sought to provide material support to Islamic State. Support included providing cellphones to one person working for the FBI and posing as an IS supporter believing the phones would be used to detonate car bombs in Syria, the 65-page complaint says.

Jones, a part-time chef, and Schimenti, who worked at a cancer-treatment center, drove the FBI operative to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport last week on what they thought would be the first leg of a journey to Syria. The complaint says Schimenti told him to “drench that land ... with blood.”

Legislator from NC compares Lincoln to Hitler

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

A North Carolina legislator used his Facebook campaign page on Wednesday to compare President Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler.

Cabarrus County Republican Rep. Larry Pittman posted the comment in response to a torrent of criticism over legislation he and two others sponsored in the General Assembly to restore a state ban on same-sex marriage.

In the lengthy thread, someone posted that “the Civil War is over. The Fed won. Get over it.”

In an apparent response, Pittman said, “And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort of tyrant.”

Family of teen killed by police to get nearly $1M

DENVER

Denver officials announced Wednesday that they reached a settlement to pay nearly $1 million to the family of a teenager who was shot and killed by police while driving a stolen car toward an officer in 2015.

Besides the $999,999 payout to the parents of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez, the city also pledged to invite the family to appoint a representative to a committee advising police on use-of-force policy and do outreach meetings with the Latino and LGBTQ communities. The City Council still must approve the deal over the death of Hernandez, who was gay.

The Jan. 26, 2015, shooting came shortly after the officer-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York.

Peru floods leave thousands of children at risk

LIMA, Peru

The United Nations’ child relief agency is warning that thousands of children in Peru are at risk of severe malnutrition as a result of floods and mudslides that have killed 106 people and left countless more homeless.

An estimated 15,000 children under age 2 living in the Andean nation’s hardest hit regions don’t have access to sufficient food, clean water and sanitary living conditions, UNICEF representative Maria Luisa Fornara said Wednesday.

A warming of Pacific Ocean waters along Peru’s coast has generated a series of intense storms that officials are calling the worst environmental calamity to strike the nation in nearly two decades.

Associated Press