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Central Park Five members condemn Trump at DNC for calling for their execution
Four members of the so-called Central Park Five were introduced at the Democratic convention by the Rev. Al Sharpton Thursday, who brought them on stage after saying that Donald Trump “a fellow New Yorker I’ve known for 40 years,” took “a position on racial issues” just once in that time.
“He spent a small fortune on full-page ads calling for the execution of five innocent young teenagers,” Sharpton said.
“Our youth was stolen from us,” one of the exonerated five, Korey Wise, said. “Every day, as we walked into the courtroom, people screamed at us and threatened us because of Donald Trump. He spent $85,000 on a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for our execution. We were innocent kids. But, we served a total of 41 years in prison.”
The Central Park Five were a group of Black and Latino teenagers arrested and charged for the rape and assault of a White female jogger, Trisha Meili, in Central Park 1989. Trump bought the ad soon after the attack — it called on New York to “bring back the death penalty.” They five teens were wrongly convicted in 1990 and exonerated when DNA evidence was matched to a different man who confessed to the attack. Their convictions were tossed out in 2002.
Yusef Salaam, now a New York City councilmember, said Trump wanted him and the other four men, who were teenagers at the time of the case, dead.
“45 wanted us unalive,” he said of Trump, the 45th president.
Despite the DNA evidence and confession, Trump has said he will not apologize for the comments he made more than 30 years ago. In 2019, while he was president, the New York Times noted that he was asked at the White House about the ads he bought.
“You have people on both sides of that,” he said. “They admitted their guilt.”
He also said, according to the Times, that “some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case — so we’ll leave it at that.”
“That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not,” Salaam said. “We have the constitutional right to vote, in fact, it is a human right. So, let us use it. I want you to walk with us. I want you to march with us. I want you to vote with us.”
At least 11 employees were taken to hospitals and residents were urged to shelter in place on Tuesday after an explosion at a Louisville, Kentucky, business.
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services reported on social media a “hazardous materials incident” at 1901 Payne St., in Louisville. The address belongs to a facility operated by Givaudan Sense Colour, a manufacturer of food colorings for soft drinks and other products, according to officials and online records.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said emergency teams responded to the blast around 3 p.m. News outlets reported that neighbors heard what sounded like an explosion coming from the business. Overhead news video footage showed an industrial building with a large hole in its roof.
WLKY-TV
“The cause at this point of the explosion is unknown,” Greenberg said in a news conference. No one died in the explosion, he added.
Greenberg said officials spoke to employees inside the plant. “They have initially conveyed that everything was normal activity when the explosion occurred,” he said.
The Louisville Fire Department said in a post on the social platform X that multiple agencies were responding to a “large-scale incident.”
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services first urged people within a mile of the business to shelter in place, but that order was lifted in the afternoon. An evacuation order for the two surrounding blocks around the site of the explosion was still in place Tuesday afternoon.
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A rare square 37-carat emerald owned by the Aga Khan fetched nearly $9 million at auction in Geneva on Tuesday, making it the world’s most expensive green stone.
Sold by Christie’s, the Cartier diamond and emerald brooch, which can also be worn as a pendant, dethrones a piece of jewelry made by the fashion house Bulgari, which Richard Burton gave as a wedding gift to fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor, as the most precious emerald.
In 1960, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan commissioned Cartier to set the emerald in a brooch with 20 marquise-cut diamonds for British socialite Nina Dyer, to whom he was briefly married.
Dyer then auctioned off the emerald to raise money for animals in 1969.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
By chance that was Christie’s very first such sale in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the emerald finding its way back to the 110th edition this year.
It was bought by jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels before passing a few years later into the hands of Harry Winston, nicknamed the “King of Diamonds.”
“Emeralds are hot right now, and this one ticks all the boxes,” said Christie’s EMEA Head of Jewellery Max Fawcett. “…We might see an emerald of this quality come up for sale once every five or six years.”
Also set with diamonds, the previous record-holder fetched $6.5 million at an auction of part of Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor’s renowned jewelry collection in New York.
