Latest news with #homeless
CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
Woman's body found inside pink clothing donation box in Plantation "Super sad"
Plantation police are investigating after a woman was found dead inside a pink clothing donation box in Plantation on Friday morning. Police believe the woman got trapped inside and that her death appears to be an accident. This happened in the 8300 Block of West Federated Road. CBS News Miami's Peter D'oench spoke to a woman who works nearby and has donated clothes herself in that box. "They said it was a homeless person who had gotten stuck in the donation box. Which is sad. Because we would put clothes in their all the time," said the woman. "The opening to the box is pretty small. So I'm assuming they tried to get in the box to get some stuff and they got caught somehow and ended up suffocating. It's super sad. Just trying to get some fresh clothes. But I've dropped clothes off in that bin and the opening is super small. It's kind of like at the post office when you put a package in. I can't imagine someone trying to get into there," the woman continued. Neighbors and people who work nearby say they are sad to hear what happened. Police have not identified the woman at this time and are checking to see if nearby businesses may have any surveillance video.
CTV News
2 days ago
- CTV News
B.C. man who used Bobcat as ‘weapon' against homeless people has appeal dismissed
A B.C. man found guilty of assault with a weapon for using a skid-steer Bobcat to chase two homeless people off his lawn – injuring one of them – has lost an appeal of his conviction, according to a recent court decision. William John Mcrae was found guilty of assault with a weapon and dangerous driving in provincial court last year, and the ruling on his appeal was posted online Wednesday. Justice Steven Wilson's reasons begin by recounting the incident that led to Mcrae's arrest, explaining that a homeless couple 'carrying all of their worldly possessions' stopped on a path adjacent to Mcrae's lawn while seeking out shade on a hot day in August of 2022. Mcrae called Vernon city bylaw officers who told him to contact the police, according to the decision, which notes he did not follow that direction. 'The appellant decided to deal with matters by himself. He initially told them to leave before turning on his sprinklers to soak the couple. When that did not have the desired effect, the appellant, who owned a landscaping business, went to get his Bobcat and put an eight-foot-wide bucket on the front of it before driving out towards the couple,' the judge wrote. 'He initially banged the bucket on the ground to encourage them to move more quickly. He then used the Bobcat to scoop up the couple's possessions and push them down the path in front of a neighbouring property.' The couple tried to stop Mcrae by yelling and waving their arms but were unsuccessful. The man – who the judge described as 'upset, in part because his belongings were damaged' – cut some flowers out of Mcrae's garden. 'In response, the appellant drove back to their possessions and ran over them,' the decision said. Mcrae challenged his conviction, which came after a four-day trial, on several grounds – mainly taking issue with the judge's approach to the evidence. One error Mcrae alleged the trial judge made was failing to adequately consider the possibility the female complainant fell to the ground as a result of heatstroke and not after being struck by the Bobcat. Mcrae argued the judge 'reversed the burden of proof' when dismissing this alternate theory of what took place, shifting the onus onto the accused to prove his innocence when the onus was on the Crown to prove his guilt. Wilson dismissed this argument. 'The trial judge did not require the appellant to prove the third instance of heat stroke to draw an inference of innocence. Instead, the trial judge found that the evidence as a whole did not support the inference that she collapsed again due to heat stroke and, that even if it did, that the evidence as a whole established she was still hit by the Bobcat,' he wrote. 'Thus, the trial judge found that there was no reasonable doubt as to the appellant's innocence, even after considering the appellant's heat stroke theory.' The appeal decision noted that to convict on the assault with a weapon charge, the trial judge did not necessarily need to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman was actually struck – although in this case, the lower court found she was knocked down and injured. 'Threats by way of gestures' is also a 'path to conviction' on the charge of assault with a weapon, the decision explained. Another ground of Mcrae's appeal focused on 'disputing the alternative path to conviction,' the judge wrote. Mcrae argued the trial judge made an error when saying a conviction would have been possible 'on (Mcrae's) evidence alone' even if the woman had not been struck by the Bobcat. 'The appellant's argument is that his evidence was only that he wished to intimidate (the couple) and to strike fear in them, but from a distance,' Wilson wrote. 'The appellant argues that based on his own evidence there was never an actual threat that he would hit them, and that scaring and intimidating is insufficient to ground a conviction.' Again, Wilson found the trial judge's conclusions were reached after considering the evidence as a whole, and no legal error was made. 'It is important to review the reasons for judgment as a whole, as opposed to criticizing certain sentences or phrases,' the decision said. Wilson dismissed the appeal entirely, finding no errors were made by the trial judge. 'The trial judge made findings of fact based upon his overall review of the evidence he accepted and the evidence he rejected, and his findings are entitled to deference,' the decision concluded.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Rampant street crime. One alleged rape every hour. Homeless beggars. And demographic changes that have made the city unrecognisable. With a heavy heart, MATT GOODWIN says London is OVER
When I fired off a tweet about my day trip to London last week, I didn't expect it to be read by 12 million people around the world. But that's exactly what happened when I shared a few observations about our once-great capital under Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan. 'All these things happened to me in London today,' I wrote. 'I paid nearly £30 for a train ticket to take me into London from a town just 30 miles away – on a Saturday. 'The first person I sat next to decided to have a FaceTime conversation with his friend on speakerphone, so we all had to listen to it. 'The train was late by 40 minutes due to unexplained 'signalling issues'. It was also filthy. I paid nearly £8 for a pint. I offered a woman my seat on the Tube without realising she was with a man – who intervened and said: 'No man.' He was not from the UK. I think he took my gesture as an insult. 'I was asked for money by homeless people three times in one day. 'I noticed that several people who are paid to give information to taxpayers and tourists over the Tannoy on the Tube cannot speak English properly. 'A cabbie told me: 'London is dead most nights.' Restaurants are struggling and hideously overpriced. I was constantly aware I should not get my phone out on the street – as more than 70,000 were stolen last year. I also discovered there were 90,000 shoplifting offences in London last year, up 54 per cent.' Behind all these observations lies a deeper point that has gradually become unavoidable. London is over. It's so over. It's morphed into a city that is unrecognisable from years ago and is now in manifest and rapid decline, with deteriorating standards and no real sense of identity or belonging. While my tweet predictably irritated London liberals, it clearly struck a chord with a much larger audience. Millions have watched as a toxic cocktail of accelerated demographic change, mass immigration and economic stagnation have ripped the heart and soul out of our capital. Another person who has noticed this is respected British writer Professor David Goodhart, who last week pointed to many of the same concerns. A quarter-century ago, he wrote, London was a booming metropolitan centre: a beacon of openness and opportunity for the rest of the country and, indeed, the world. But no more. When a recent report suggested that white Britons with no immigrant parents look set to become a minority in the UK by the year 2063, Goodhart pointed out: 'I heard nobody saying, 'rapid demographic change is nothing to worry about – just look at London'.' He has a point. London has been irreversibly transformed. White Britons, the indigenous population for centuries, now represent one-third of the city. Only 22 per cent of children in Greater London's schools are White British – and in one school, Kobi Nazrul Primary in Whitechapel, not a single child speaks English as their first language. Four in ten people currently living in London were born overseas. Close to one in seven are Muslim. And nearly one-quarter of Londoners do not speak English as their main language. While London's liberal set may respond to this by repeating, in robotic fashion, 'diversity is our strength', Goodhart asks a more troubling question. Yes, immigration has long been a feature of London. But is all this demographic change actually improving the quality of life in the city? Or is it making it far worse? Compare the capital to the rest of the country. Shoplifting is up 15 per cent in England – but has soared by 54 per cent in the capital. Theft is down 14 per cent in England – but has rocketed by 41 per cent in London. Home ownership in London is down 20 per cent since the early 1990s – while rents are up 85 per cent on the past 15 years, and earnings are up just 21 per cent. And even in some prime areas of central London, half of all social housing includes people who were not born in Britain. Another thing that has collapsed in recent years is London's fertility rate, which has slumped 30 per cent in the past decade, making it the lowest of all UK regions. When people no longer want children, it's a pretty good sign of how they feel about their surroundings. There are other things I could add. Like the fact there is an alleged rape every hour in London. In just five years, reported sexual offences against women and girls rose 14 per cent while homelessness and rough sleeping climbed 26 per cent in one year. Does this look like a thriving city to you? Knife crime, gang violence, robberies, pickpocketing and so-called 'moped-enabled crimes' have also become everyday features of London life. And 30,000 millionaires left London in the past decade according to research from Henley & Partners, a firm that helps high net-worth clients move countries. Meanwhile, according to a recent Thames Water study, up to 600,000 illegal migrants may be living in London, flouting our laws and taking taxpayers for a ride. While these findings have been subject to debate, if correct, how can you possibly sustain the social contract in a major city when it's possible that one in every 13 people is an illegal immigrant? Or when nearly one-quarter of the people in London do not speak English as their main language –while 320,000 cannot speak English at all? If London really is so vibrant and wonderful, why, according to one survey from Opinium, do one in four Londoners say they feel unsafe in their own neighbourhood? The truth is, London's famed diversity has changed in profound and negative ways since the 1990s. The European bankers, asset managers and Polish plumbers who came two decades ago have now largely been replaced by low-wage, low-skill migrant workers from across the Middle East and Northern Africa – a situation that worsened hugely during the last Tory government, which opened the floodgates to migrants from the developing world. This more recent wave of immigration, as studies by the Office for Budget Responsibility and elsewhere have made clear, is taking more from the economy than it's putting in, exacerbating not just the housing crisis but our glaring lack of growth. To be clear, this is not to criticise the migrants themselves. It's merely to accept reality. Like much of the rest of the country, London's energy, productivity and prosperity are being drained by a model of low-skill, low-wage, non-European immigration that makes no economic sense. Take one iconic example: London's famous black cabs with a driver who possesses a deep and historic knowledge of our capital. Increasingly, he is being replaced by an Uber driver from Somalia or Afghanistan who drives you around while relying on Google Maps. Rather than build a dynamic, integrated and unified capital city with a clear sense of history and identity, these forces are inexorably pushing us towards the ongoing 'Yookayfication' of our capital city and, indeed, our country. Increasingly, the label 'Yookay' has caught on to refer to the jarring aesthetic quality of the country today – a mix of cultures, languages and identities spreading across the landscape. Examples include the proliferation of Palestinian flags and obvious signs of sectarianism in migrant communities, the spread of multicultural 'English' with its global slang, the mainstreaming of gang culture in everything from fashion to advertising, the constant smell of weed, the American candy store next to the kebab shop, the Deliveroo riders scrolling through their phone and so on. All have become symbols of a new, migration-fuelled and sagging economy. As Lord Frost pointed out recently, as these demographic changes take effect, the 'Yookay' risks gradually becoming a permanent new country: a successor state to Great Britain, with a new identity, character, culture, values and way of life. Nowhere are these changes more profound than in our capital. As David Goodhart asks: 'What happens when London's white British population falls below 20 per cent in ten years? Is there some minimum number of natives that a capital requires before it ceases to be the capital?' While I'm not sure of the answer, I am certain that unless there is a radical change of direction, London will look increasingly unlike the city I once knew.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Climate
- Washington Post
A rare cold snap stuns Uruguay, hitting the homeless hard and causing 7 deaths
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — An unusual gust of frigid air extending from Antarctica has blasted the small South American nation of Uruguay, leading to the deaths of at least seven homeless people this week and prompting authorities to declare a state of emergency as they scrambled to open shelters. The polar front first dumped the mass of freezing weather on Uruguay on Monday, shocking a coastal nation with flat terrain accustomed to mild winters in the Southern Hemisphere.
Asharq Al-Awsat
5 days ago
- Climate
- Asharq Al-Awsat
US Enters First Major Heat Wave of 2025
The United States is experiencing its first significant heat wave of the year, beginning Friday across the Great Plains and expanding into parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The extreme heat is expected to intensify as it shifts to the East Coast early next week, with temperatures reaching the highest level on the NWS's HeatRisk tool: Level 4, or "Extreme." "Numerous daily record highs and warm lows are likely," the NWS said. "Light winds, sunny days, and a lack of overnight cooling will significantly increase the danger." The capital city Washington could see highs of 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) on Monday and 101F on Tuesday, AFP said. This level of heat can be dangerous for anyone without access to effective cooling and hydration, especially those engaged in prolonged outdoor activity, the NWS warns. Designated cooling centers -- including recreation centers and libraries -- will be open during business hours, the mayor's office announced. Homeless residents will have access to shelters. Overnight lows may remain around 80F in urban areas such as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. Fueled by human-caused climate change, 2024 was the warmest year on record globally -- and 2025 is projected to rank among the top three.
