NEW YORK (AP) — Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving original member of the beloved Motown group the Four Tops that was known for such hits as “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” has died at age 88.
Fakir died Monday of heart failure at his home in Detroit, according to a family spokesperson, with his wife and other loved ones by his side. Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement that Fakir helped embody the Tops’ “showmanship, class and artistry.
“Duke was first tenor — smooth, suave, and always sharp,” Gordy said. “For 70 years, he kept the Four Tops’ remarkable legacy intact.”
Musician John Mayall, often referred to the “godfather of the British blues,” whose bands of the late ’60s and early ‘70s featured some of the most notable rock instrumentalists of the era, died Monday at home in California, according to a statement posted by his family on his social media accounts. He was 90.
Among the fans and organizations posting condolences was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was set to induct him into its ranks in October.
At this point there is not enough information to indicate how it should be filed, dear Reader, which is very odd, indeed. Usually the FBI is racing the DOJ to get in front of the news cameras and crow about their triumph.
[Breitbart] The FBI raided the $3.5 million home of a former Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) staffer on Tuesday, law enforcement sources told the New York Post.
The five-bedroom Long Island property of Linda Sun, Hochul’s former deputy chief of staff, was searched in the early morning hours before dawn, the outlet reported.
Inside sources told the publication that neither Sun, 40, nor her husband, Chris Hu, 41, have been accused of criminal wrongdoing and that they were not arrested.
The search warrant was obtained by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, sources said.
It is unclear if anything was seized from the home, which the couple owned until transferring it into a trust in March.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed to the New York Times that agents from the bureau’s New York field office had “conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity” at Sun’s gated-community home in Manhasset, but declined to provide more information.
According to her LinkedIn, Sun most recently worked as a campaign manager for Austin Cheng, a Democrat who ran for New York’s third congressional district before withdrawing from the race in December 2023.
Sun has also had multiple “diversity officer” jobs in recent years, including within the New York State Department of Financial Services and the New York State Executive Chamber.
She stopped working for Hochul’s office around two years ago, according to NBC New York.
Exactly why Sun and her husband were the target of an FBI search is still unknown, but details are beginning to emerge around Sun — the latest person in New York politics whose home or property was raided by the FBI (See: Winnie Greco, Briana Suggs and Rana Abbasova — all connected to the mayor of New York City.)
Here’s what we know about Linda Sun:
1. She was fired from the Department of Labor for “misconduct” in 2023
A source in state government, who requested anonymity to freely provide details about Sun, said she was fired from her job in the Department of Labor in March of 2023 after the administration discovered “evidence of misconduct.”
“Immediately upon discovering the evidence of misconduct, the administration referred the matter to law enforcement authorities,” the source said.
Sun could not be reached for comment.
2. She served in mid-level roles within the Cuomo and Hochul administrations.
Sun was brought on by the Cuomo administration in 2012 to be their liaison to the AAPI community and work on intergovernmental affairs in Queens.
After three years with Cuomo, Sun worked for Empire State Development for another three years as “Director of External Affairs for Global NY,” according to her Linkedin profile.
The job included leading trade and investment missions to five countries each year and “negotiating mutually beneficial deliverables in-line with NYS trade and foreign direct investment goals,” according to the profile.
She then took a job as deputy chief diversity officer in Cuomo’s executive chamber in 2018, before moving to the Department of Financial Services, before being hired by Hochul in September 2021 to work as her deputy chief of staff. In 2022, she left the chamber to work for the state’s Department of Labor.
In New York State government, secretary to the governor — not chief of staff — is the most powerful position within the executive chamber.
3. She has a really, really nice house
The home the FBI raided on Tuesday was in a gated community in ritzy Manhasset on Long Island’s North Shore. It last sold for $3.5 million, according to property records. The home has five bedrooms and six bathrooms, and costs over $50,000 in property taxes, according to real estate websites Zillow and Compass.
According to the Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY database, Sun’s salary was about $145,000 in 2021.
4. Her most recent financial disclosure provides few details
Besides her state salary, Sun reported no other sources of income in 2021, according to financial disclosure documents reviewed by Playbook. The New York Times, which broke the news of the raid on Sun’s home, reports that her husband, Chris Hu, operates a liquor store in Queens and had other ventures before then, like starting a company called Medical Supplies USA LLC during the COVID pandemic.
The documents reviewed by Playbook also show that Hu was also listed as the CEO for the company “Foodie Fisherman LLC” and was shown to have partial ownership of a property in Jamaica, Queens, with his share reportedly valued somewhere between $250 to $500k.
According to The Salem News, a local newspaper for communities north of Boston, Hu was with delegates from the Chinese Consulate General’s office during a trip and luncheon in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
The article, published in 2016, said Hu’s company “exports more than a million pounds of lobster annually back to China.”
5. She is active in the China General Chamber of Commerce
Upon Sun’s appointment as Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, the China General Chamber of Commerce — an organization that calls itself “the largest and most impactful non-profit organization representing Chinese enterprises in the U.S.” — celebrated Sun for her appointment to the governor’s administration and for being the highest-appointed Asian American in the executive chamber.
“CGCC has had the honor and pleasure to work with Ms. Sun and her colleagues on many charitable projects,” the organization’s website reads.
#4
/\ Sadly, I have suspected #1 for quite some time, and it may not be just the democrats.
During the African war of 1901-1903, the British did not seek to destroy the gold and diamond mines, only to control them. It was politics at first, then shooting.
[Breitbart] At least ten people are injured after a fire broke out in New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday morning, officials said.
A chaotic scene played out when smoke began filling Terminal 8 around 7:00 a.m., the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) told the New York Post.
The flames appeared to erupt from an escalator, but the cause of the fire is still unclear.
Of the ten injured people, four were taken to the hospital with minor wounds, officials told the outlet.
Around 1,000 travelers were forced to evacuate, with footage posted to the Citizen app showing people waiting on the tarmac as emergency responders worked to extinguish the flames:
Video obtained by Newsweek shows the smokey terminal prior to fliers being evacuated:
[FoxNews] Ahead of President Biden’s first address in the Oval Office since announcing he was dropping out of the presidential race, the North American Aerospace Defense Command Public Affairs (NORAD) says it sent out fighter jets to intercept two Russian Tu-95 "Bear" bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers off the coast of Alaska.
In a press release, the agency confirmed that it detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on July 24.
NORAD fighter jets from the United States and Canada conducted the interception.
This is the first time Russia and China have flown a joint bomber patrol off Alaska, Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson reported.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2024 06:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11136 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Practicing co-ordination and testing response patterns
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The cybersecurity firm behind the software update that crashed millions of computers globally has been hit with a complaint over sidelining its white, male employees under a diversity-hiring scheme.
A conservative legal action group alleges that CrowdStrike favors women and minorities for jobs and promotions in coding, programming and other areas through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
America First Legal (AFL), the group that complained about CrowdStrike to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), did not blame DEI for the bug that crashed some 8.5 million computers globally.
But critics of DEI say it's problematic because jobs and promotions are awarded based on sex and skin color — not talent — leaving companies less efficient as their products and services suffer.
Elon Musk has suggested that DEI hiring at CrowdStrike led to the damaging outages, starting a debate on his platform X over whether it could have somehow resulted in the coding error.
#6
As recompense, CrowdStrike is giving affected partners a $10 UberEats card. Totally not making this up.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/
Posted by: ed in texas ||
07/25/2024 9:48 Comments ||
Top||
#7
So Bill Gates modifies the human genome using a pandemic vax, then tracker and influencer code is deployed via BSD reboot to 8.5 million Windows machines.
I just can't make this shit up.
It comes to me in my sleep.
Elysium...
[Regnum] Chinese scientists have discovered traces of water in samples of lunar soil delivered to Earth by the Chang'e-5 probe. This was reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Researchers analyzed the lunar soil and found a hydrated mineral in it, in which the mass fraction of water is about 41%.
Scientists say its structure and composition are similar to terrestrial fumarole minerals, which are formed by a reaction between hot basalt and water-saturated volcanic gases.
It is noted that lunar minerals also contain ammonium, which indicates a more complex history of the Moon's outgassing and points to its potential as a resource for habitation.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on June 25, the Chinese probe Chang'e-6 returned to Earth with lunar soil. According to the Xinhua agency, Chang'e-6 has become one of China's most complex space exploration missions.
The craft landed on the far side of the Moon on June 2 and carried out sampling operations. It lifted off from the Moon with samples on June 4 and entered lunar orbit. The probe then completed docking with the orbiter on June 6 and transferred the samples. The orbiter spent 13 days in lunar orbit, awaiting a suitable opportunity to return to Earth.
Yang Wei, a research fellow at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the delivered samples would lead to new discoveries.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The cybersecurity firm behind the software update that crashed millions of computers globally has been hit with a complaint over sidelining its white, male employees under a diversity-hiring scheme.
