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Friday, May 24, 2024

5/24 WAKE-UP CALL: Thousands Rally for Trump In The Bronx


Former President Donald Trump promised Thursday evening to “make New York City great again” during a raucous rally in the South Bronx, his first major campaign event in the state of his birth since 2016. “This is some turnout,” Trump told a rowdy crowd in Crotona Park. “We have thousands of people outside the gate.”

The event was permitted to host up to 3,500 people, but thousands more gathered outside security checkpoints in the 127.5-acre public park in the hope of catching a glimpse of the 45th president or a snatch of his remarks. Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita claimed to The Post that 20,000 people had RSVPed to the event, thought no immediate crowd estimate was made available by the NYPD. In his remarks, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee lamented that “Joe Biden is not getting the job done for the Bronx” and “not getting the job done for New York.”

“Our subways are squalid and unsafe, the ceiling tiles are falling down, and they look worse than a Third World country,” continued Trump, 77. “The medians of our highways are crumbling, our sidewalks are littered with garbage bottles and trash.

➤LATEST BORDER BILL FAILS: The Senate again failed to advance a bipartisan border-security bill. The vote was 43 in favor and 50 opposed. Republicans dismissed the episode as a stunt designed to protect vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Democrats said the vote showcases what they call Republicans’ hypocrisy in using the border as a political cudgel on the campaign trail while turning down opportunities to address it in Congress by changing the law. Over in the House, lawmakers grilled the leaders of Northwestern, Rutgers and UCLA over antisemitism and how they handled recent pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses. Elsewhere in Washington, the Supreme Court restored a white-dominated congressional district drawn by the South Carolina legislature, overruling a lower court.

➤CHAOS SLOWS GAZA AID: Hijacking, mobs, and combat are creating a significant stumbling block to humanitarian aid delivered to Gaza, forcing officials to develop alternative routes for trucks arriving by the Pentagon's newly-built pier, U.S. officials said Thursday. The Biden administration has trumpeted the effort of 1,000 U.S. troops to build a $320 million floating pier and causeway as pivotal to delivering food and medicine to Palestinians caught in the war between Israel and Hamas. Instead, the two-month effort has gotten off to a slow start in what officials termed a "staggering" need. Deliveries were suspended for a time after trucks in the first convoys were hijacked.  Daniel Dieckhaus, director for USAID’s Levant Response Management Team, described the effort to deliver aid as "incredibly complicated" because of active fighting and desperate needs in Gaza.


➤DAD, SON RAPED WOMAN, BEFORE KILLING HER
: Bone-chilling new footage shows a Hamas terrorist and his teenage son casually telling Israeli interrogators how they took turns raping a woman, then executed her during the Oct. 7 terror rampage. The NY Post reports Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his 18-year-old son, Abdallah, were seized by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip this spring and subsequently questioned about the terror attack. Jamal described finding a woman who was “screaming” and “crying” in a house at Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community near the Israel-Gaza border, Jamal claimed that he did not know what happened to the woman after the rape, but his teen son told the interrogator that his father killed the desperate victim. “My father raped her, then I did and then my cousin did and then we left but my father killed the woman after we finished raping her,” Abdallah said in his own interview tape.

➤AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING FOR DIDDY: Another woman has come forward and filed a lawsuit against music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs for allegedly drugging and raping her multiple times, beginning when she was a student at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the 1990s. The mogul’s latest accuser, April Lampros, claimed that Combs offered to be her mentor in the fashion industry when she first met the rapper in 1995, according to a lawsuit obtained by TMZ. After a night out in a Soho bar, where Lampros alleges Combs overserved her alcohol, he took her back to his room at the Millennium Hotel, where she says she felt “the walls were closing in on her” as he began to force himself on her, the suit says. Lampros said she remained conscious when Combs began raping her but was unable to defend herself. She woke up the next morning “nude, sore and confused,” the suit states.


➤R-R SETTLES $310M PAY-OFF: Norfolk Southern agreed to pay more than $310 million to resolve a U.S. government lawsuit over a 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, court documents show. Under a proposed consent decree, the railroad also agreed to make significant safety improvements, install additional safety equipment, improve training and pay for medical monitoring for health impacts tied to the derailment and release of hazardous chemicals.

DOJ SUES LIVE NATION: The Justice Department and more than two dozen states sued Live Nation, alleging it has a monopoly in ticketing and concert promotion and should be broken up. The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, alleges Live Nation used its power to squelch competition and retaliate against promoters and venues that threatened its dominance, driving prices and fees higher for fans. If the government prevails, officials said, U.S. consumers could in the future pay lower prices because a broader range of companies could offer tickets to shows, which could drive down the extra fees that Live Nation subsidiary Ticketmaster adds to the price. The company said that it doesn’t have a monopoly in ticketing or promotion and will fight the government’s case. Ticketmaster doesn’t set prices, according to the company, artists and teams do, while the majority of fees go to venues.

➤NCAA TO PAY FOR PLAY: The NCAA, the Power Five conferences and lawyers for the plaintiffs in three antitrust cases concerning the compensation of college athletes on Thursday completed approvals of a proposed settlement that would include a nearly $2.8 billion damages pool for current and former athletes and fundamentally alter how current and future athletes are paid for playing their sports. The SEC and the Pac-12 conferences provided their approvals of the deal on Thursday, sources familiar with those actions told USA TODAY Sports. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing state of the process, which includes the parties needing to craft a formal version of the proposed agreement and obtain court approval for it. Thursday’s moves followed approvals earlier this week from the other three conferences and two NCAA governing boards.

⚾WALK TRIGGERS WALK-OFF WIN: Pinch hitter Tyler Soderstrom drew a four-pitch, walk-off walk from Colorado Rockies reliever Peter Lambert to cap a five-run uprising in the 11th inning as the host Oakland Athletics rallied for a 10-9 victory on Thursday afternoon.

The shocking finish came after the Rockies scored four runs in the top of the 11th, as Jake Cave and Brenton Doyle delivered run-scoring singles off A's closer Mason Miller, and Brendan Rodgers hit a two-run double off Brandon Bielak. Oakland countered with Max Schuemann's RBI double, Abraham Toro's RBI single and JJ Bleday's two-run, game-tying home run off the Rockies' Matt Koch.

7th Series Win for Phillies

⚾MLB SCORES:

  • Phillies 5 Rangers 2
  • Yankees 5 Mariners 0
  • Orioles 8 White Sox 6
  • Blue Jays 9 Tigers 1
  • Athletics 10 Rockies 9
  • Braves 3 Cubs 0
  • Padres 6 Reds 4
  • Giants 7 Pirates 6

🏀NBA SCORES:

  • Celtics 126 Pacers 110

🠊Jaylen Brown scored a game-high 40 points to lead the Boston Celtics to a 126-110 victory over the visiting Indiana Pacers on Thursday in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals. Brown was 14 of 27 from the floor and made 8 of 11 free throws. He added five rebounds. Boston had a 13-point lead after three quarters and the Pacers were never closer than 11 points in the fourth. The victory gave Boston a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which will shift to Indianapolis for Game 3 on Saturday. The Celtics won Game 1 133-128 in overtime.

🏒NHL SCORES:

Oilers 3 Stars 2

➤SEVERE WEATHER STILL IN THE PICTURE: Millions across the central and eastern U.S. − including in some states that were ravaged by tornadoes earlier this week − are bracing for severe weather as an onslaught of powerful storms pushes ahead into the holiday weekend. About half the country, from Texas to North Dakota and from Georgia through New England, was at risk of fierce weather conditions on Thursday. The biggest threat was concentrated in parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri, an area where winds at speeds of 75-85 mph, large hail and a few tornadoes were "probable" into the evening.  And as Memorial Day weekend approaches, the weather doesn't look super encouraging for outdoor activities, either. 

➤FRIDAY'S WEATHER:



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