NewsWrongfully imprisoned woman freed, Bangladesh riots continue, Chicago tornadoes
Wrongfully imprisoned woman freed, Bangladesh riots continue, Chicago tornadoes
It happened while you slept. Here's what global agencies reported from Friday night to Saturday morning.
6:34 AM EDT, July 20, 2024
- 64-year-old Sandra Hemme was released after serving 43 years of a life sentence. Missouri's Attorney General had tried to keep her behind bars for the past month. Hemme was the longest-held wrongfully imprisoned woman in the USA, according to her legal team at the Innocence Project. A judge initially ruled on June 14 that Hemme's lawyers presented "clear and convincing evidence" of her "actual innocence" and overturned her conviction. Still, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey refused to allow it. During a Friday hearing, Judge Ryan Horsman threatened that if the 64-year-old was not released within the hour, Bailey himself would have to appear in court Tuesday morning. Hemme had been serving a life sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center for the murder of library worker Patricia Jeschke in 1980 in St. Joseph, Missouri.
- The authorities in Bangladesh imposed a curfew nationwide after further riots in the capital, Dhaka, which resulted in 35 deaths. Students demanded that the government abolish a regulation reserving many public positions for families of veterans of the country's 1971 War of Independence, after which several days of riots erupted. The Prime Minister's office decided to impose the curfew after an attack on Narsingdi prison on Friday, which freed hundreds of inmates. The army is to be sent to the streets to restore order. Since the riots began, 67 people have died. However, the exact number of victims is complex to estimate partly due to nearly complete communication breakdowns and disruptions of mobile internet and phone lines.
- A fire broke out on one of Maersk's chartered ships sailing from Mundra off the western coast of India to Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Friday. Local media reported that the fire started due to a short circuit, which caused an explosion and killed a Filipino sailor. There were 21 crew members on board. "The vessel is in stable condition," the company reported.
- Venezuelan state media have been repeating warnings for several days from President Nicolas Maduro, who, speaking at a rally on Tuesday ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for July 28, threatened that if he is not re-elected as the head of state, an inevitable "bloodbath" awaits Venezuela. He warned that only his re-election could "prevent civil war," emphasizing Venezuela's fate in the 21st century depends on the re-election victory. The Venezuelan dictator, in his speech at a rally in La Vega, a western district of the capital Caracas, warned his compatriots: "If they do not want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, product of the fascists, we guarantee the greatest success of the electoral history of our people!"
- After Monday's powerful storms, there were 24 tornadoes in the Chicago area and surrounding area by Friday. This is a record, with the strongest wind exceeding 134 mph. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), two more tornadoes were confirmed on Friday. They swept through Cook County, which also includes Chicago. Previous records for the NWS forecast area in the city were 22 tornadoes. This was on June 30, 2014, and March 31, 2023. As local television WGN emphasizes, the strongest tornadoes were accompanied by wind speeds from 111 to 135 mph. Power lines were downed, closing a section of Interstate 55 and causing numerous accidents.
