CBS News
Nitrogen gas execution was “textbook” and will be used again, Alabama attorney general says
The execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen hypoxia was “textbook,” Alabama’s attorney general Steve Marshall said in a news conference on Friday.
The execution was carried out on Thursday night and marked the first time nitrogen hypoxia, a process that aims to cause asphyxiation by forcing an individual to inhale pure nitrogen or lethally high concentrations of it through a gas mask, was used to execute someone.
“What occurred last night was textbook,” Marshall said. “As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven one.”
Smith had requested the method of death after surviving a botched lethal injection in 2022, but his attorneys argued that he was being used as a “test subject,” and human rights activists criticized the untried new method.
Multiple legal challenges were levied against the use of nitrogen hypoxia before the execution. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama was within its constitutional rights to carry out the execution, and on Thursday the court allowed the execution to proceed as planned.
Marshall said Friday morning that he could hardly call the execution “justice” for the family of Elizabeth Sennett, whom Smith was convicted of killing in 1989, because of how long it took for the sentence to be carried out. Smith was one of two men who received $1,000 from Sennett’s husband to kill her. Sennett’s husband committed suicide a week after the killing. His accomplice Parker was executed in June 2010 for his part in the killings, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Marshall apologized to the couple’s sons on Friday.
“I want to tell the family, especially the victim’s sons, Mike and Chuck, how genuinely sorry I am for the horrific manner in which their mother lost her life, but I also want to apologize to them for how long it took for this sentence to be carried out,” Marshall said.
Marshall said that 43 other inmates sentenced to death in Alabama have requested execution by nitrogen hypoxia. He said that he also believes other states will begin using the method.
“Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” Marshall said. “We stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.”
CBS News
McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
CBS News
U.S. health officials report 1st case of new form of mpox in a traveler
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.
CBS News
China school knife attack kills at least 8, wounds 17, days after fatal car attack killed dozens
Eight people were killed and 17 others wounded Saturday in a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China, and the suspect — a former student — has been arrested, police said.
The attack took place in the evening at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in the city of Yixing in Jiangsu province, police in Yixing said in a statement, confirming the toll.
This was the second incident of fatal violence in China in a matter of days.
Earlier this week, a 62-year-old man killed 35 people and wounded more than 40 more when he rammed his small SUV into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai. The suspect was discovered in the car with a knife, with wounds to his neck thought to be self-harm injuries, according to the police.
Police said the suspect in the knife attack was a 21-year-old former student at the school who was meant to graduate this year, but failed his exams.
“He returned to the school to express his anger and commit these murders,” police said, adding that the suspect had confessed.
In Yixing, police said emergency services were fully mobilized to treat the wounded, and provide follow-up care for those affected by the attack.
Violent knife crime is not uncommon in China, where firearms are strictly controlled, but attacks with such a high death toll are relatively rare.
In recent months, there has been a spate of other attacks.
In October in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket.
And the month before, a Japanese schoolboy was fatally stabbed in the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.