For 70 years, Queen Elizabeth held one of the most high-profile jobs in the world. While her time in the spotlight was filled with glitz and glamour, it also put her in considerable danger.
In 1970, Elizabeth and Prince Philip had a close call in Australia when their train encountered a log blocking the track. It was later determined that the log’s placement was intentional, rather than accidental.
A decade later, the 1980s were particularly difficult for the monarch, with multiple assassination attempts both at home and abroad.
In 1981, Elizabeth was shot at during her annual birthday parade, Trooping the Colour. Fortunately, the blank cartridges didn’t harm the queen. She had another near-miss when visiting New Zealand that same year.
The 1980s were also fraught due to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Although the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s activities were centered in Northern Ireland, some of the conflict extended into England.
The royal family was also involved when Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle and Elizabeth’s distant cousin, was killed when I.R.A. bombs exploded on his boat in Ireland.
So as the queen and Prince Philip prepared to visit President Ronald Reagan in the U.S. in 1983, law enforcement were on the lookout for possible security risks.
And, according to FBI documents just released via the Freedom of Information Act, a threat was made prior to Elizabeth’s arrival, making them extra wary.
Devastated neighbors of a 6-year-old girl found severely injured in a squalid Bronx apartment Friday were stunned but hardly surprised by her shocking death.
Cops responding to a 12th-floor apartment in NYCHA’s Forest Houses just before 4 a.m. discovered little Jalayah Eason unconscious with bruising and trauma to her wrists and chest, said police sources. She was pronounced dead at Lincoln Hospital.
Her mother, identified by police sources as Lynija Eason, was being questioned in connection with the death, with no arrests made as of late Friday. An autopsy was scheduled to determine how the little girl died.
Neighbors spun a terrifying tale of steady abuse inside the home at E. 165th St., with police responding to the apartment on numerous occasions for calls sparked by family disputes.
The Administration of Children’s Services was called in at least twice on abuse allegations involving an 8-year-old boy in the home, said a police source with knowledge of the case.
The 8-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl were found unharmed inside the apartment on Friday, although police spotted bruises and what appeared to be ligature marks from old injuries on the surviving children.
The children’s mother would constantly yell at the kids, neighbors said.
“Last night there was terrible screaming,” recalled neighbor Dennis Rivera. “It was exactly 4 a.m. The little girl was screaming. I had to go outside. I knew something like this would happen.
“I feel terrible that I didn’t call somebody about this. Now she’s dead.”
“I was crying when the detective told me (that Jalayah died),” said neighbor Michelle Abreu, whose sister’s apartment sits right beneath Eason’s residence.
Police officers are pictured outside the 12th-floor apartment on E. 165th St. near Tinton Ave. — part of NYCHA’s Forest Houses — after little Jalayah Eason was found unconscious. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)
Abreu recalled her sister often saying something bad would happen in the home below. On Friday morning, Abreu called her sibling with news of the girl’s death.
“I hope they find someone to (take) them in and get justice for the little girl because it’s not fair,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
The son told detectives “Mommy hit me” when questioned, although the child later indicated the attack happened some time ago, a police source said.
Aidan Doviw, a 9-year-old classmate of the son, recalled how the boy often showed up for school in tears.
“When he comes to class, he’s been crying a little bit,” he said. “Like every day.”
Lynija Eason, mother of Jalayah Eason, is pictured in an undated photo.
Eason, 26, said she called 911 when the child wouldn’t wake up. Someone attempted and failed to perform CPR, although it was unclear who made the effort, said a police source with knowledge of the case.
When cops arrived, Eason was the only adult in the apartment, cops said. Emergency medical technicians noted the marks on Jalayah’s wrists and chest as they treated her.
Eason said Jalayah went to bed at around 11 p.m. When the mom awoke in the middle of the night, she claimed the child was lying unconscious inside her bedroom near the closet.
The apartment was in complete disarray and filthy with clothes and other items strewn about, a law enforcement official said. The Administration for Children’s Services was alerted to Jalayah’s death, cops said.
An ACS spokeswoman confirmed that the agency was “investigating this case with the NYPD” but would not disclose if they were already investigating the mom for abuse and neglect.
“The safety and well-being of New York City’s children is our top priority,” the spokeswoman said without offering any details.
Another building resident said the mom disappeared for a while before returning to the family apartment a couple months ago with a change in her demeanor. The 8-year-old was soon turning up at the neighbor’s home asking for food.
“She wasn’t a bad person,” said the 39-year-old neighbor. “In the beginning, when I first met her, she was a very nice girl. She said, ‘Hi, good morning.’ I seen her taking her son to school.”
Abreu also recalled a time she heard Eason striking her son with a belt through the thin walls.
“You could hear the whooping (of the belt),” she recalled. “ You could hear it. I told my nephew, ‘You hear that? She’s hitting him because he’s crying.’”
Cops responding to a 12th-floor apartment in NYCHA’s Forest Houses just before 4 a.m. on Friday, May 26, 2023, discovered Jalayah Eason (pictured) unconscious with bruising and trauma to her wrists and chest, according to police sources. Though EMS rushed the tot to Lincoln Hospital from her home at E. 165th St., the little girl died. (Macdonald, Kevin A)
Eason lived in Queens before moving to the Bronx. While in Queens, when she was 19, she was busted in 2016 on a grand larceny charge for stealing a co-worker’s credit card, which she used to rack up more than $200 in charges at a deli, a 99-cent store and a Rite Aid, according to court documents.
She was working at a Queens Costco when she stole her co-worker’s card. When detectives questioned her about the theft, she admitted to shopping at the Rite Aid, claiming that she was “buying diapers, a radio and other items,” court papers indicate.
Eason ultimately pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. She was fined $120 and didn’t face any jail time.
When you get home at night, do you just close the door behind you, or do you close it and lock it? Well a video making the rounds on TikTok shows why you should always be locking it.
The clip comes from Jojo Ramirez’s doorbell cam by the front door of her home in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. In the video, you see her arriving home with her child.
She closes her door and locks it and seconds later, a man, who seemed to be following her, walks up to her door and attempts to open it, only to find it locked.
In the video, which Jojo shared on TikTok, you can hear her confused and saying, “Who is that?” before she yells, “Who is that, get out of here!” The man then stands in front of her door, looking at it and waiting.
She captioned the post, “You never know when something like this could happen to you, the outcome could’ve been different if I wouldn’t have locked the door right away, God was by my side.”
Jojo explained to her local news, “I was getting out of my car, walking up to my apartment and I get into my house and I just heard the doorknob wiggle. I look at my app, my Ring door app. I see a guy standing outside and I just freak out. It was just pretty creepy to see a guy on the Ring door app outside. I heard the door knob wiggle… and, I was thinking, ‘What does he want?’”
According to the police, it is hard to tell what the man’s intentions were, and he could be charged with attempted trespassing.
In this situation, the LAPD was able to identify the man as someone who lives nearby with mental health issues who cannot remember where he lives, but nevertheless urge residents to “always be aware of your surroundings.
Don’t just jump out of your car. Don’t just assume everything is just safe and cleared. Look around. See who’s around.”
A two-year-old is set to spend his entire life in a prison camp after his Christian parents were found with a Bible in their homes, according to a report by the US State Department
A toddler is said to have been sentenced to life in a North Korean prison camp after his parents were discovered with a Bible in their home.
The shocking tale was revealed by the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report.
It claimed the two-year-old and his entire family were locked up for their religious beliefs.
Several other cases of North Koreans being killed for being Christian were also included in the report, including the firing squad execution of a woman and her grandchild in 2011.
Other believers faced “pigeon torture”, where they were suspended with their hands tied behind their backs, unable to sit or stand for days on end.
One victim said: “It was the most painful of all tortures.”
“It was so painful I felt it was better to die.”
Some were tortured with sleep deprivation including one woman in solitary confinement who was driven to suicide in 2020 after prison guards refused to let her sleep.
As many as 70,000 Christians have been imprisoned for their faith under the Kim Jong-un regime, out of a possible population of 400,000.
The new publication said several North Korean Christians hid their faith from their children.
It cited the finding of one NGO, Open Doors USA (ODUSA), which said: “A Christian is never safe.
“Children are encouraged to tell their teachers about any sign of faith in their parents’ home.”
Another NGO, Korea Future, said children were taught in school about the “evil deeds” of Christian missionaries, including “ rape, blood sucking, organ harvesting, murder, and espionage”.
The report said: “One defector told Korea Future the government published graphic novels in which Christians coaxed children into churches and took them to the basement to draw their blood.”
And while most of the cases of religious persecution documented by Korea Future targeted those practicing shamanism, it was Christians who normally received the harshest punishments.
It’s because they’re perceived as a “hostile class” and a “serious threat to loyalty to the state” the report said.
Officially, North Korea guarantees its people religious freedom in its constitution and the regime highlights the churches it has built in Pyongyang as proof.
But the publication said these churches operated only as “showpieces for foreigners”.
It cited the testimony of one defector, who said people could be arrested for lingering too long outside the churches and listening to music from within, or even consistently driving past them.
Ray Cunningham, from Illinois, US, visited Chilgol Protestant Church in Pyongyang during a service.
He told Pen News: “I came away wondering just how real this is.”
“Are the services regular? The church seems maintained but is it a regular event? In the society you see no evidence of religious activity – except for Buddhism.
“It feels real but like many things indeed it may be somewhat a show for tourists. In this case it might be a mixture of showmanship and a few elderly Christians in the area.”
He also noted something that was highlighted in the report – no children attend the services.
He added: “The congregation was made up of older men – all seemingly over 65 – and women over 40.
“What you did not see were children or young working-age people.”
For followers of shamanism, punishments range from six months in a forced labour camp to three or more years in a reeducation facility.
Christians, meanwhile, can be executed, or face anything from 15 years to life in a prison camp, imposed on up to three generations of the immediate family of the person found guilty.
A plane passenger in South Korea is said to have opened the aircraft’s emergency door during flight, violently blasting the interior with air and startling passengers and crew.
Other passengers attempted to stop the suspect but failed to prevent him from partially opening the emergency exit door.
The Asiana Airlines Airbus A321 aircraft was immediately filled with a whirlwind that disoriented passengers.
Upon landing, the suspect was arrested by police on charges of violating aviation security laws.
The plane was en route to the Daegu Airport in the southeastern region of the Korean peninsula.
The suspect allegedly pulled open the emergency door while at a 700-feet altitude during the plane’s descent.
Twelve passengers were reportedly so affected by the blasting winds that they were taken to the hospital.
Some of the affected passengers reported breathing issues and ear pain from the rapid decompression of the airplane cabin.
The identity of the passenger who opened the emergency door and was arrested is currently unknown.
A New York City artist who was randomly shoved into a moving Manhattan subway train over the weekend is learning to navigate a new way of life after authorities say she was left “instantly paralyzed,” according to multiple news reports.
Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy, 35, was walking along the platform at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station around 6 a.m. Sunday when a man allegedly grabbed her by the head and pushed her into a passing train, the NYPD said, per NBC 4 New York, CBS News, and ABC 7 New York.
Authorities said in court documents the victim was “instantly paralyzed,” according to NBC 4 New York. Ozsoy was taken to the hospital, where she underwent surgery for serious injuries, including a cervical spine fracture and lacerations to the head, the outlet reports, citing court papers.
The suspect has allegedly been identified by the NYPD as Queens resident Kamal Semrade, 39, according to ABC 7 New York. He has been charged with attempted murder and assault. Police say the attack was random.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by NBC 4 New York, Semrade got on the same uptown train as Ozsoy in Queens that morning, before both of them got off the train on the Upper East Side.
Investigators do not believe the two knew each other and have used security footage and witness statements to allegedly connect Semrade to the crime, the outlet reports.
Ferdi Ozsoy identified the victim as his wife in a public statement released Tuesday, saying she was on her way to work at a cafe when the assault happened. According to the statement, Emine Ozsoy is an “award-winning artist, illustrator and painter,” who immigrated to New York from Turkey in 2017.
“Her life has been profoundly impacted by this tragic act of violence,” the statement reads. “She has suffered a severe injury to her neck that has resulted in significant limitations. Unfortunately, her mobility is expected to be affected, greatly impacting her daily life. But of course, faith and hope are never-ending. She’s young. She’s a strong woman. She’s creative. She’s empathetic. She’s a warrior. She’s a true friend who goes out of her way to help people.”
The Jackson Heights man expressed gratitude to the bystanders who came to his wife’s aid during a critical time.
“The individuals that surrounded her on that train station, that comforted her and told her that everything was going to be okay until the EMTs came, they were there to keep her motivated to hang on to life and I really appreciated the New Yorkers who came to her aid in that moment,” Ozsoy wrote.
The husband says he’s now working to obtain emergency visas for his wife’s family members who remain abroad, while Ozsoy faces a long road to recovery.
“Her life after this is going to need constant care,” the statement reads. “We need all the help we can get.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up by Ozsoy’s co-workers at the cafe to help with rising medical expenses, which they claim have already reached the six-figure mark.
“Emine is a source of joy as a friend, colleague, and human being,” the fundraiser reads. “She’s artistic, lighthearted, witty, and, above all, someone we consider family.”
“Doctors initially informed us she had a slim chance of recovering movement below the neck,” the page continues. “In just one day, she challenged that prognosis by moving her arms. It is a huge step, but her road to recovery will be long and challenging. She’s a fighter and is already fighting to recover. She will get there, but she needs everyone’s help.”
According to CBS News, Semrade is being held without bail. It’s unclear if he has entered a plea or retained an attorney to speak on his behalf.
Original Article – Known for his many antihero roles, Dustin Hoffman is one of the most prominent actors to emerge from modern Hollywood.
Despite having a flawless acting record and brilliant roles that upheld his legacy, he was also the subject of several scandals.
Although his altercation with Meryl Streep is well-known, he had been once accused of sexual assault by several others.
In an exclusive article on his sexual assault charges published by Variety in 2017, a woman alleged that the actor made her feel uncomfortable by flashing her when she was a teenager.
This occurrence sparked renewed interest in Meryl Streep’s nearly four-decade-old claim that her ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ co-star introduced himself by touching her inappropriately.
According to the Variety article, Hoffman allegedly flashed himself to a teenage girl in the 1980s. The Oscar-winning actor was charged with inappropriate behavior in a New York hotel room, which the playwright Cori Thomas claimed left her traumatized.
In 1980, Thomas, 16 at the time, was Karina Hoffman’s high school classmate at the United Nations International School in New York.
Thomas told Variety that she had gone to lunch with the father and daughter at Jim McMullin’s on the Upper East Side and visited bookstores with them.
She exclaimed at the time, “This was at first one of the greatest days of my life. One of my idols was spending time with me and talking with me respectfully.”
Her parents were meant to pick her up from the restaurant, but Thomas, an aspiring actress at the time, alleged that Hoffman proposed they leave a note asking her parents to pick her up from his hotel instead.
Thomas went on to say that the three went to Hoffman’s hotel room on the top floor, but shortly after, “either Karina or Dustin suggested that [Karina] should go home because it was a school night and she had homework. So she left, and I was left in the hotel room with him alone.”
Thomas claimed that Hoffman went to the bathroom not long after Karina left. After some time, “he came out of the bathroom with a towel at first wrapped around him, which he dropped,”
Thomas recalled. “He was standing there naked. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time.”
Hoffman reportedly put on his robe at last, but he then requested a foot massage from Thomas. She complied since she was a confused and naive teenager. He kept telling her, “I’m naked, Do you want to see?” while she continued massaging him.
Thomas, a famous playwright, and mother of one, claimed in 2017 that it wasn’t until seven years after the event that she felt ready to discuss what had happened.
She never revealed to Hoffman’s daughter Karina, until her revelation to Variety, who remained a close friend.
According to an interview with the New York Times, Hoffman allegedly grabbed Meryl Streep by her breast when they met for the first time on the set of ‘Kramer vs. Kramer.’
Streep recalled, “He came up to me and said, ‘I’m Dustin — burp — Hoffman,’ and he put his hand on my breast.” She further claimed that her co-star “just slapped [her]” during the filming of a particular scene, despite the fact that it was the very first take.
“And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping,” Streep said at the time.
The interview was “not an accurate rendering of that meeting,” a spokesman for Streep later claimed to E! News, adding that “there was an offense and it is something for which Dustin apologized. And Meryl accepted that.”
Philip J. Buyno, 73, of Prophetstown, has been arrested and federally charged after he allegedly used fire to damage a building used in interstate commerce.
According to the affidavit, Danville Police responded to an alarm at 600 N. Logan Ave. in Danville around 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
They found Buyno stuck inside a maroon Volkswagen Passet that he had backed into the entrance of the building, which is being renovated for use as a reproductive health clinic.
According to the affidavit, Buyno brought several containers filled with gasoline with him.
Danville Police arrested Buyno on Saturday. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Urbana at 1:15 p.m. Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Eric I. Long.
Judge Long will address whether Buyno will be released on bond or held in custody pending further proceedings.
If convicted of attempted arson, Buyno faces five to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and three years of supervised release.
The charges are the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Springfield Field Office, and the Danville Police Department. Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene L. Miller is representing the government in the prosecution.
Original Article – A passenger who was asked to leave a Frontier Airlines plane departing from Denver was later cited for striking an airline employee with an intercom phone, according to the airline and police.
While Frontier Airlines Flight 708 awaited an early Sunday departure to Tampa from Denver International Airport, the airline’s main hub, the female passenger “became belligerent onboard and was asked to deplane,” the statement said. “As she was deplaning, she picked up an intercom phone and struck a flight attendant with it.”
In a statement to CNN, the Denver Police Department said the passenger was cited for assault in connection with the incident.
The flight left for Tampa around 5:30 a.m. local time, after the woman was removed from the plane, according to Frontier. The flight left Denver nearly four hours late, according to FlightAware tracking data.
The passenger was able to book another flight home after being released, according to police.
It’s not clear what behavior led to the passenger initially being asked to leave the plane.
The Denver International Airport told CNN in an email Sunday that it, “unfortunately,” didn’t “have information on the flight.”
In November, a Frontier Airlines flight out of Cincinnati made an emergency landing in Atlanta after a passenger, who was later arrested, was seen with a box cutter, an airline spokesperson said.
The passenger had a second box cutter in his carry-on baggage, the Transportation Security Administration told news outlets at the time.
The Federal Aviation Authority has received reports of at least 670 unruly airline passengers in 2023 as of May 14, the US transportation agency’s statistics showed.
There were 2,455 unruly passengers reported in 2022, according to the FAA.
The disgraced pedophile, who killed himself in 2019, appeared to threaten Gates over the alleged affair with Russian card-wiz Mila Antonova in a 2017 email, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Gates met Antonova in 2010, with the two playing in a tournament together after she moved to the Bay Area to work as a software engineer, the newspaper said.
While Antonova acknowledged that she was on friendly terms with Gates during a 2010 video about her love of bridge, the two allegedly had a brief romance while Gates was still married to his then-wife, Melinda Gates, sources told the Journal.
Epstein, meanwhile, met Antonova while she was looking for financial backers for a bridge academy.
Jeffrey Epstein (center) threatened to expose an affair Bill Gates (right) had with a Russian Bridge player.
In the 2017 email, Epstein called on Gates to reimburse him for the cost of investing in Antonova’s coding education, the Journal reported.
The message came just after the tech titan declined to join the convicted sex offender’s multi-billion-dollar charity he was trying to kick off with JPMorgan Chase.
“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” a spokesperson for Gates said.
The spokesperson added that Gates never paid up over the threat and that he had “no financial dealings” with Epstein.
Antonova told the Journal that she didn’t know who Epstein really was when they met, thinking he was just a “successful businessman and wanted to help.”
“I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did,” Antonova said, while declining to comment on her alleged relationship with Gates.
Following her tournament match with Gates, which resulted in the billionaire’s victory, Antonova was inspired to start her own business venture teaching people to play the game she loved.
Boris Nikolic, a top adviser to Gates at the time, pointed Antonova to Epstein, then a well-connected financier, who agreed to meet her in 2013, sources said.
Mila Antonova acknowledged that she was on friendly terms with Gates during a 2010 video about her love of bridge.
Although Epstein passed on the project, she said he did agree to help pay for her software engineer studies.
“I don’t know why he did that,” she told the Journal. “When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
Epstein also let her stay in his New York City townhouse in November 2014.
Antonova said she did not interact with Epstein or anyone else during the brief stay.
As Epstein’s finance empire began to crumple amid the growing allegations of sex and human trafficking crimes, he appeared to be on damage control and hoped to create a multi-billion-dollar charitable foundation with Gates headlining as a big-name donor, sources said.
Epstein allegedly dropped Gates’ name as he worked to secure the foundation with JPMorgan Chase, but Gates and the bank declined to work together with him.
The rejection then triggered the email billing the billionaire for Antonova’s studies, sources told the Journal, suggesting the failed financier was blackmailing Gates.
Gates, Nikolic and JPMorgan Chase have said in statements that they regret ever meeting with Epstein on charitable matters.
“I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein,” Nikolic, who worked with Epstein on philanthropic proposals, told the Journal. “His crimes were despicable. I never saw anything like his illegal behavior. My heart goes out to his victims and their families.”