Statue some call racist is removed

Statue some call racist is removed

san francisco

A 19th-century statue near San Francisco’s City Hall that some said is racist and demeaning to indigenous people was removed early Friday.

A group of Native Americans chanted, beat drums and burned sage as the workers used a crane to take down the “Early Days” statue depicting a Native American at the feet of a Spanish cowboy and a Catholic missionary. It was part of group of bronze statues near City Hall that depict the founding of California.

Native American activists tried to have the statue removed for decades. They renewed efforts last year after clashes broke out across the U.S. over Confederate monuments.

Texas cop shot in head, suspect killed during bar robbery

dallas

A gunbattle between police and group of robbery suspects outside of a Fort Worth bar early Friday left one suspect dead and an undercover officer fighting for his life, authorities said.

The undercover officer, Garrett Hull, was in critical condition at a hospital, Fort Worth police Chief Joel Fitzgerald said at a news conference. The suspect who was killed, Dacion Steptoe, was the one who shot Hull after Steptoe and two accomplices left a bar they had just robbed, the chief said.

The two other suspects were arrested and none of the 10 people who were in the bar were hurt.

At an earlier news conference, Fitzgerald said Hull was part of a team of undercover and uniformed officers that was trailing the suspects and rushed into the bar when officers discovered it was being robbed. But he later clarified that the officers, wary of endangering bystanders, waited for the three suspects outside the bar before they confronted them.

Drug kingpin busted in massive smuggling operation

LOS ANGELES

A Colombian drug kingpin who participated in a violent ring that used planes, speedboats and submarines to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine faced federal trafficking charges Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom, prosecutors said.

Victor Hugo Cuellar-Silva is among nearly four dozen defendants charged in a vast conspiracy to ship tons of cocaine from South America through Mexico to the U.S.

The indictment unsealed Thursday was unique in targeting people throughout the drug distribution chain from the source of where the coke was produced in Colombia to investors in Mexico, transportation coordinators, houses where the drugs were stashed and to large-scale distributors in the U.S., federal prosecutors said.

SpaceX signs 1st private moon traveler

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

SpaceX said it has signed the first private moon traveler, with some changes to its original game plan.

The big reveal on who it is – and when the flight to the moon will be – will be announced Monday at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

It’s not the same mission SpaceX founder Elon Musk outlined last year. The original plan called for two paying passengers to fly around the moon this year, using a Falcon Heavy rocket and a Dragon crew capsule.

At the time, Musk said the pair approached SpaceX about sending them on a weeklong flight and paid a “significant” deposit for the trip.

The new strategy is to still fly around the moon, but using an even bigger SpaceX rocket still in development that has its own dedicated passenger ship. And now, it appears there will be only one person aboard.

Associated Press