Texas native and journalist Austin Tice is still imprisoned in Syria
The high-level prisoner swap that freed Brittney Griner this week has placed a spotlight on another Texan imprisoned across the world, journalist Austin Tice.
Tice, a former U.S. Marine, was abducted in Syria in August 2012 shortly after his 31st birthday. The Houston native disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus.
A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by armed men, saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. Syrian officials have repeatedly denied detaining Tice, but President Joe Biden has said “we know with certainty that the Syrian government is holding Tice.”
Tice was working as a freelance investigative journalist for The Washington Post, CBS News and McClatchy newspapers, among other organizations, coverage he’s won numerous accolades for since his abduction. He was set to return to Washington, D.C., to finish his third and final year at Georgetown Law before he went missing.
Earlier this year, Biden met with Tice’s parents and reiterated his commitment to working toward “Austin’s long overdue return to his family.”
On Thursday, Tice’s family applauded Griner’s release while urging the U.S. National Security Council to work with the Syrian government to bring home their son.
—The Dallas Morning News
Judge dismisses Flint water charges against ex-Michigan governor
DETROIT — A Genesee County Circuit Court judge has ordered the dismissal of charges against former Gov. Rick Snyder related to the Flint water crisis, but Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's Flint legal team vowed to appeal.
Judge F. Kay Behm on Wednesday ruled that a June Michigan Supreme Court ruling was controlling on Snyder's case when the high court declared unconstitutional the use of a one-judge grand jury to charge the Flint defendants.
Snyder was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty in January 2021 by a one-judge grand jury, along with eight other city and state officials, in relation to the Flint water crisis investigation by Nessel's office.
The Flint water prosecution team said in a Friday statement the decision is not surprising and the team "looks forward to addressing these issues in court."
Many of the dismissed charges in the Flint water prosecutions led by Hammoud and Worthy could be difficult to reauthorize if the team is unsuccessful on appeal. The team is running up against the statute of limitations clock, which, in many cases, limits charges to a six-year window after an alleged crime is committed.
Behm wrote in her Wednesday opinion that the Supreme Court’s decision on the one-judge grand jury “requires dismissal of appellant’s charges” and remanded the case to district court for dismissal.
Putin says Russia may add nuclear first strike to strategy
Vladimir Putin said Russia may consider formally adding the possibility of a preventive nuclear first strike to disarm an opponent to its military doctrine, just days after warning that the risk of atomic war is rising.
“We’re thinking about this,” the Russian president told reporters after a summit in Kyrgyzstan. “If we are talking about a disarming strike, perhaps we should think about using the approaches of our American partners,” he said, citing what he called U.S. strategies to use high-accuracy missiles for a preventive strike.
The comments were Putin’s second on the nuclear issue this week. On Wednesday, he said the risk of atomic warfare is rising and called Russia’s arsenal “a deterrent factor” in conflicts. Russia’s doctrine currently envisions using nuclear weapons as a last resort in the event of a threat to the state’s existence.
The U.S. and its allies have denounced Putin for what they call nuclear saber-rattling over his invasion of Ukraine. Russia blames the West for raising the issue first, although Kremlin officials began the threats.
—Bloomberg News
Teacher fired after viral video shows her disrupting student prayers
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — An anonymous user posted a viral video of a teacher interrupting Muslim students’ prayer at Franklin Academy Charter School in Pembroke Pines on Wednesday night.
By 2 p.m. the next day, the school had announced that the teacher was “no longer a member of the Franklin Academy staff.”
In the video, a group of boys begins to pray on mats laid out in what appears to be a teacher’s office. A few seconds into the video, she enters the room.
“Hold on, this is my office,” the teacher says. “And y’all doing this magic?”
The students continue to pray. At one point, the teacher says, “I believe in Jesus, so I’m interrupting the floor” and steps over them.
As of Friday afternoon, the video had garnered over 5 million views and thousands of comments, most of them asking for the teacher to be fired.
The incident also got the attention of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR-Florida, which said it “welcomed the firing of a teacher who allegedly engaged in hate speech targeting Muslim students performing prayer at school.”
The teacher herself has not been identified. The person who posted the video also has remained anonymous, but claims to be one of the students involved.
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
