ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) –Thursday, New Mexico’s Attorney General filed criminal charges against former Albuquerque Police Department officer Kenneth Skeens. The Attorney General alleges Skeens unlawfully arrested a customer in an Albuquerque Target.

“Today my office filed charges against former APD Officer Kenneth Skeens for his role in the unlawful arrest of a customer with disabilities who was struggling to complete his purchase at a Target located in Albuquerque in August of 2022.

Rather than acting as a professional public servant and a guardian of vulnerable members of this community, Mr. Skeens engaged in abusive and unlawful behavior that undermined public safety and violated his oath as a peace officer in the State of New Mexico,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a press release.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - A man died in the hospital early Friday morning after being tased twice while trying to flee from police.

On Thursday around 8:45 p.m., St. Louis Metropolitan Police were requested to respond to a violent CIT offender in the 3700 block of Minnesota. According to SLMPD, when officers arrived and made contact with the offender, he was completely naked and disoriented. He then tried to flee from police but tripped and fell into a fence at the front of the residence. Two officers picked him up and tried to handcuff him; however, he slipped from their hold, tripping over a bicycle, and fell to the ground. One officer then tased him in his back while the other two tried handcuffing him again. While they were trying to put him in handcuffs a second time, an officer “applied a drive stun” with the taser to his shoulder. The other two officers were then able to place him in handcuffs.

SLMPD says the man became unresponsive and one of the officers began CPR until EMS arrived. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:48 a.m. The Force Investigation Unit was requested and assumed the ongoing investigation. The officer the deployed the taser was placed on leave, according to the department.

Police told News 4 the officers were wearing body cameras at the time of the incident. The video has not been released.

Video from the near scene showed flames shooting from the facility and a large amount of smoke rising into the air.

Iberville Parish Sheriff Brett Stassi said air monitoring outside of the facility did not detect any dangerous chemicals.

Iberville Parish Emergency Preparedness Officials urged residents within a one-half mile radius of the plant to “shelter in place”. The order means residents should remain indoors with air conditioning units turned off. As of 11pm Friday, that order was still in place. Officials said that order was put in place out of “an abundance of caution.”

“The Dow Fire Unit is cooling down the tanks in the area where the fire occurred, and they’re still telling us that no one was injured,” Stassi said about thirty minutes after the incident.

Kenneth Haydel was near the plant with family members and said he heard several explosions within a few seconds of one another. “We looked up in the sky and the whole sky was lit up orange,” Haydel said.

Residents as far away as along Burbank Drive in Baton Rouge reported that the explosions shook their homes.

President Joe Biden’s administration will automatically wipe a total of $39 billion in federal student loans for more than 804,000 borrowers in the coming weeks, the U.S. Department of Education announced on Friday.

The relief comes just a few months before borrowers have to start repaying their federal student loans after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a three-year pause.

The administration’s move is a result of fixes to the student loan system’s income-driven repayment plans that ensure all borrowers have an accurate count of the number of monthly payments that qualify toward forgiveness.

“Nearly a million borrowers who have been trapped in decades of never-ending payments will finally get the relief Congress intended,” Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Yu said. “Working people with student loan debt have been made collateral damage by a dysfunctional student loan system.”

The Biden administration and education department have also created a new repayment plan called Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE).

The SAVE plan will cut payments on undergraduate loans in half, ensure that borrowers’ balances don’t grow as long as they keep up with their required payments and allow borrowers to save more of their income for basic needs, according to the Department of Education.

BLADENSBURG, Md. - Police say five people were taken to the hospital after a shooting in Bladensburg Friday afternoon.

FOX 5 DC has learned that a call came in around 12:28 p.m. for a shooting on the 4300 block of Bladensburg Rd. in Prince George's County, Maryland.

Officials have confirmed to FOX 5 that five people were taken to a hospital, with three victims in critical condition.

The union representing Hollywood actors formally announced a strike on Thursday, expanding the standoff between Hollywood workers and studio executives over wages, AI technology, and how to divide the profits of the new digital streaming era.

The strike by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) marks the first time in 63 years Hollywood writers and actors are striking simultaneously.

Hollywood writers went on strike in early May. Now the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) will be joined by some of Sag-Aftra’s 160,000 members.

The simultaneous strikes are expected to halt the majority of Hollywood’s film and TV production, and have major effects on the broader Los Angeles economy. With some of Hollywood’s biggest stars on strike, press junkets for summer and fall movie premieres will be cancelled, and the Emmy Awards will likely be postponed. Workers across LA are gearing up to survive for weeks or months without wages.

Members of both Sag-Aftra and WGA voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if needed, a sign of their growing frustrations with what actors and writers have described as shrinking compensation for their work as film and TV shows have increasingly moved to online streaming platforms, and rising fears of how the industry might try to replace creative workers of all kinds with AI technologies.

In recent weeks, Hollywood’s top acting talent had made it clear they were willing to strike. In late June, a letter from Hollywood A-listers, including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, urged their union leaders not to settle for a mediocre deal in what they saw as a historically important contract negotiation.

and the studios had been negotiating for weeks, but failed to reach an agreement by the deadline of midnight on Wednesday. In a statement on Thusday, the actors’ union said its negotiating committee had voted unanimously to recommend a strike, and that its national board would decide on the matter on Thursday morning.

It said: “After more than four weeks of bargaining, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the entity that represents major studios and streamers, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery – remains unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues that are essential to Sag-Aftra members.”

The Sag-Aftra president, Fran Drescher, said: “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us. Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal. We have no choice but to move forward in unity, and on behalf of our membership, with a strike recommendation to our national board. The board will discuss the issue this morning and will make its decision.”

A strike is expected to have an immediate impact on publicity efforts for the summer’s top films; the Thursday evening premiere of Oppenheimer in London has been moved to start an hour earlier so the cast can attend regardless of the outcome. Other major commercial films including Barbie and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One have already hosted their world premieres, though their stars will be restricted from participating in further promotional events.

The strike might also delay the Emmy awards until late autumn, or even next year, industry publications reported.

Disney has announced that a 15 July premiere of its movie Haunted Mansion will still take place at Disneyland regardless of the strikes, though the film’s actors – including LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, and Jamie Lee Curtis – will not be present.

San Diego Comic-Con, scheduled to begin on 20 July, will be affected as well.

Hollywood writers have been on strike since 2 May. The beginning of that strike was marked by strong solidarity from Hollywood’s other unionised workforces, including the powerful Teamsters’ union, and Sag-Aftra members showed up in solidarity at Writers Guild of America picket lines, even before their own strike was called.

Anonymous industry sources told Deadline this week that studio executives did not plan to resume negotiations with the striking writers until late October.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” an industry source was quoted as saying, with another saying the goal was to “break the WGA”. A spokesperson for the studios denied those anonymous claims, telling Deadline in a statement that the companies “are committed to reaching a deal”.

Devastating flooding on Sunday swept away a woman in Orange County, left multiple roads and bridges shut down Monday in parts of Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam, and curtailed some Metro-North train service after a rain deluge sent vehicles floating, opened sinkholes and flooded homes.

"You only need to walk through these streets and see the pain in people's eyes as they described to me their loss, their fear, their anxiety," Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a Highland Falls news conference in Orange County on Monday.

A woman was rescued from her senior apartment by crews from West Point, Hochul said. But there was also a 35-year-old woman who officials said drowned. She came out, saw her house taking on too much water, and didn't survive.

MIAMI – Three TSA officers at Miami International Airport are accused of stealing from airline passengers, including hundreds of dollars from one victim’s wallet, and were arrested last week, according to reports.

Arrest affidavits show that 22-year-old Elizabeth Fuster, 33-year-old Labarrius Williams and 20-year-old Josue Gonzalez were all arrested Thursday on charges of organized schemes to defraud, the Miami Herald reported.

The federal security director for law enforcement at the airport notified a Miami-Dade Police detective regarding thefts that occurred at Checkpoint E involving TSA officers, according to the arrest affidavit.

Members of SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents performers, say they are ready to walk off the job which would mark the first time since 1960 that both writers and actors would be actively on strike.

The looming strike could yield serious economic impacts on Hollywood’s film and television industry.

On Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA announced it had agreed to a last-minute request for federal mediation by the Alliance of Film and Television Producers, the trade union representing studios, but would not waver from striking at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday if no deal was reached.

Actors would be joining WGA writers who have been on the picket lines for more than two months since May 2.

The union previously reached a strike deadline on July 1 before talks were extended, but since then, no deal has been reached.

In a significant move aimed at addressing longstanding grievances, the Biden-Harris Administration has officially launched a $2.2 billion relief initiative to support Black farmers and others who have faced discrimination within federal government lending programs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that it is now accepting applications for its Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, which will provide financial aid to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who experienced discrimination in USDA farm lending prior to 2021. This landmark initiative, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, marks a crucial step towards rectifying historical injustices.

The Significance of this program for Black Farmers and others Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack emphasized the significance of this program, stating, “The opening of the application process is an important step in delivering on our commitment of providing financial assistance to those who faced discrimination in USDA farm lending, as swiftly and efficiently as possible.”

The announcement comes after decades of Black farmers accusing the USDA of discrimination and being denied loans critical for their livelihoods and the preservation of their land.

The Discrimination Financial Assistance Program was established following the suspension of the Biden-Harris Administration’s initial $4 billion debt relief program for Black and “socially disadvantaged” farmers. The program faced a class-action lawsuit from White farmers who claimed that it discriminated against them under the American Rescue Plan.

In response, Democrats in Congress revised the law to remove race from the eligibility requirements for the USDA program, while the initial loan assistance under the American Rescue Plan remains subject to ongoing litigation in Texas. In an effort to urge the USDA to move forward with the intended relief, Black farmers initiated their own lawsuit.

While the new loan assistance program does not explicitly mention race as an eligibility factor, the administration has made it clear that it is intended for farmers who have suffered harm due to USDA practices. The USDA has taken considerable time to select vendor partners and community-based organizations responsible for educating farmers about the program and offering assistance throughout the application process. Notably, several of the selected organizations work closely with Black and Brown farmers, underscoring the Administration’s commitment to equity and inclusive decision-making.

Acknowledging the importance of these efforts, a senior advisor at the USDA, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stated, “We realized the importance of this in terms of the overall equity work at the department but also in terms of being able to incorporate some needed input from the people that we were trying to help.” The selection process for vendors and the formulation of an effective application process required careful consideration, emphasizing the critical nature of this initiative.

Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant. Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after governor Kim Reynolds called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.

Iowa’s ban will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity, usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.

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