Rise in California homicides echoes the nation, FBI stats show
LOS ANGLES — California's 31% jump in homicides in 2020 reflected a national trend that saw the largest one-year increase since the FBI began collecting numbers in the 1960s, the bureau said Monday.
The national increase was 29.4%, according to FBI statistics.
The numbers also showed an increase in fatal gun violence. Nationwide, guns accounted for 76% of the weapons used in slayings last year, up from 73% in 2019, according to the FBI report.
That, too, echoed California's Department of Justice numbers released in July that showed gun fatalities in 2020 accounted for nearly 3 out of 4 of 2,202 homicides in the state compared with 69% the year before.
"What is really striking is that this was a universal increase from the big cities to the smaller communities," said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri St. Louis. "When you see it ... everywhere in the U.S. that isn't a local phenomenon."
The fact that California and the rest of the nation behaved similarly when it comes to more homicides, he said, would seem to suggest that "all the ideas that red states differ from blue states are nonsense."
Rosenfeld said more universal explanations and the most obvious are how the coronavirus pandemic affected society and how the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off widespread unrest.
The surge of homicides nationwide along with more aggravated assaults resulted in a 5.6% increase in violent crime last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.
—Los Angeles Times
Female genital mutilation case tossed following yearslong fight
DETROIT — A judge Tuesday dismissed what remained of a landmark criminal case that started with allegations members of a Muslim sect abused young girls, saying prosecutors vindictively pursued new charges after a federal female genital mutilation law was declared unconstitutional.
In a pointed rebuke, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman criticized the conduct of prosecutors who waged a more than four-year fight against Dr. Jumana Nagarwala of Northville and three others who faced decades in prison if convicted of charges that included conspiracy, lying to investigators and tampering with witnesses.
The case was being closely followed by members of the sect and international human-rights groups opposed to female genital mutilation and has raised awareness in the U.S. of a controversial procedure and prompted Michigan to enact new state laws criminalizing female genital mutilation.
The order comes almost three years after Friedman dismissed female genital mutilation charges against several doctors in the first criminal case of its kind nationwide, ruling the law was unconstitutional.
Prosecutors said girls — four from Michigan, two from Minnesota and three from Illinois — underwent female genital mutilation, but defense lawyers say the procedure performed on the girls was benign and not female genital mutilation. They accused the government of overreaching.
Postal Service changes may slow some deliveries for holidays
Folks dropping letters in the mail starting Friday may want to add a few extra days for transit if their missives are going cross-country.
Likewise, anyone sending packages and cards around the holiday season will want to have a smidge of extra cash on hand to pay the postage piper.
The U.S. Postal Service is tweaking its delivery standards in changes set to take effect Friday. Local mail will still take two days, but mail traveling farther could take one or two days longer than the previous three-day guarantee, the USPS said last week.
The changes are negligible and might not be glaring, but their effects may be felt.
“Most first-class mail (61%) and periodicals (93%) will be unaffected by the new service standard changes,” the USPS said in its statement and accompanying fact sheet. “Standards for single-piece first-class mail traveling within a local area will continue to be two days.”
The overall goal is to increase reliability and reduce inefficiency, the USPS said, imbuing more than 70% of first-class mail volume with a delivery standard of three days.
“The Postal Service will increase time‐in‐transit standards by one or two days for certain mail that is traveling longer distances,” the USPS said. “By doing so, the Postal Service can entrust its ground network to deliver more first-class mail, which will lead to greater consistency, reliability, and efficiency that benefits its customers.”
Part of the changes stem from the increased reliability of ground shipping over air, USPS spokeswoman Kim Frum said.
“The Postal Service can entrust its ground network to deliver more First-Class Mail, which will lead to great consistency, reliability and efficiency that benefits its customers,” she told USA Today.
—New York Daily News
Rate of child COVID-19 cases in SC nearly double US average
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina has the second highest rate of COVID-19 in children as of last Thursday, according to an updated analysis from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
For every 100,000 children in South Carolina, about 14,600 have contracted the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic — almost double the national rate of 7,600 COVID-19 positive children per every 100,000.
The only state with a higher rate of cases in children was Tennessee, with 15,225 cases per 100,000 children.
As of last Thursday, 596 children in South Carolina had been hospitalized after contracting the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the report.
The American Academy of Pediatrics started compiling data on children with COVID-19 at the beginning of the month. The reports collect case counts from health departments in 49 states, New York City, Washington, Puerto Rico and Guam.
In each report published since, South Carolina has sat among the top three states of minors with COVID-19.
Cases of COVID-19 among children have increased nationally in recent weeks, reaching high levels in late August and early September, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. In the last week alone, there were almost 207,000 reports of children contracting the virus.
—The State (Columbia, S.C.)
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