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COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The sound of car horns roared in downtown Columbia for about an hour and a half Friday afternoon Protesters wanting to see the state 're-open' held demonstrations on the grounds of the State House and circled around it. Organizers said more than 100 cars joined them for the “Drive to Thrive” event. Tom Trammell, an unemployed hearing aid practitioner, said he created the event with the help of two other people to protest the governor’s “Stay At Home” order and the closure of nonessential businesses. He said they wanted to do this for those in South...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief executive and a managing partner of the collapsed Dubai private equity firm Abraaj Capital Ltd were arrested on U.S. charges that they defrauded their investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday. Abraaj founder and Chief Executive Arif Naqvi was arrested in the United Kingdom last Friday, while managing partner Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. Abdel-Wadood appeared at the hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud...

A retired Venezuelan army general indicted alongside Nicolás Maduro has surrendered in Colombia and is being taken by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to New York for arraignment, four people familiar with the situation said Friday. Cliver Alcalá has been an outspoken critic of Maduro for years. But he was charged Thursday with allegedly running with Maduro, socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello and another retired army general a narcoterrorist conspiracy that U.S. prosecutors say sent 250 metric tons of cocaine a year to the U.S. and turned the Venezuelan state into a platform for violent cartels and Colombia rebels. The Justice...

Millions of college students will be closing out the semester from home, with online courses replacing in-person offerings. Due to the abrupt change, many schools are acknowledging the disruption, and associated changes in students’ circumstances, may lead to a decrease in academic performance unrelated to effort or intelligence, and are therefore instituting grading policies that provide appropriate understanding for the bizarre situation. Many universities, including Georgetown, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, have extended the deadline for taking a class pass/fail until either the last day of classes or even a week after report cards are released. However, many student groups are...

COLUMBIA, SC (FOX Carolina) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson filed a lawsuit Wednesday with the state Supreme Court asking the court to strike down numerous ordinances adopted by the city of Columbia concerning guns, according to a news release... (snip) Wilson's office said, since 2015 Columbia has passed ordinances that would allow the city to confiscate firearms from those people who have Extreme Risk Protection Orders against them; banning the possession of firearms within 1000 feet of a public or private school; and prohibiting homemade firearms which have no serial number (known as ghost guns). Wilson believes the...

Craig Lang, who is charged with killing a Florida couple in 2018, has become a cause célèbre in the country where he has fought as a mercenary. In the spring of 2015, former U.S. soldier Craig Lang traveled to Ukraine and joined a paramilitary group fighting the Russians. “I never noticed any fear,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, who commanded Lang in the Georgian Legion. Four years later, Lang is under house arrest in Ukraine. His situation has nothing to do with his conduct inside the eastern European country. Lang is facing charges in the U.S. for allegedly killing a Florida couple...

Nearly 100 mayors across the United States are begging President Trump to import as many refugees to the country as possible in order to “bring cultural vibrancy and diversity” to American communities.In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, about 88 mayors — from Denver, Colorado to Columbia, South Carolina — urged Trump to end his latest executive order that gives American communities more veto power over whether they want refugees resettled in their communities.The mayors said that more refugees are needed to bring about “cultural vibrancy and diversity” to their often small towns, though they admit refugees are an initial...

Next year, the number of Venezuelans fleeing their country will overtake the Syrian exodus. To date, more than 4 million have left. One-third of these refugees and migrants are sheltering in Colombia, which has maintained a very generous open-door policy. However, the strain is beginning to show. We were recently in Colombia, where a senior international official told us, “Colombia is a now a ticking time bomb.” This description may be hyperbole, but the country indeed appears headed towards a tipping point. Such an outcome would exacerbate the regional humanitarian crisis triggered by Venezuela’s collapse. It could also threaten the...

COLUMBIA, Tenn. -- Another incident of violence erupted at a Popeyes with an employee allegedly body-slamming a woman onto the concrete outside a Tennessee restaurant. Video of the alleged incident has gone viral and is now the subject of a police investigation. Witnesses say the attack began after a woman disputed a charge on her bill at the restaurant in Columbia, Tennessee. A heated argument ensued between the customer and several employees, prompting workers to tell the customer to leave the restaurant. Employees claim the woman then used a racial slur. Footage shows the woman walking out of the restaurant,...

The House committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began releasing transcripts of witness depositions on Monday. Read the transcript of Michael McKinley, a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, below. Read McKinley deposition transcript by kballuck1 on Scribd Scribd Link: McKinley deposition transcript (156 pages)/a>

Today, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recognized members of Colombia’s military and law enforcement who have been severely wounded in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism.The 15 members of Colombia’s military and law enforcement who were recognized also participated in Sunday’s Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. on Sunday.“The United States and Colombia have a shared commitment to bringing drug traffickers to justice, stopping the production and flow of deadly drugs, and keeping our communities safe. I commend the courage and bravery of each of the individuals who have sacrificed themselves in the...

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia's president is comparing Nicolás Maduro to Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic and says Venezuela's embattled socialist leader would be making a "stupid" mistake were he to attack. Ivan Duque made the comments in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press before traveling to New York. There, Duque is expected to condemn Maduro before the United Nations General Assembly as an abusive autocrat who is not only responsible for the country's humanitarian catastrophe but is also now a threat to regional stability for his alleged harboring of Colombian rebels.

Revelations from George Stephanopoulos, Newsweek, and Columbia grads from Israel.The recent DOJ report on James Comey, the ongoing FISA investigation, and the probe of the Russia-collusion investigators under John Durham are all pointing back to POTUS 44, formerly known as Barry Soetoro. He wanted to know how Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI’s coup clan were doing. In similar style, designated prevaricator Susan Rice is on record that 44 wanted the counterintelligence operation to be done “by the book.” It didn’t exactly work out that way. As investigators probe what the president knew, and when he knew it,...

...after what they consider to be the failure of a 2016 peace deal to guarantee their political rights... "When we signed the accord in Havana we did so with the conviction that it was possible to change the life of the most humble and dispossessed," said Marquez... "But the state hasn't fulfilled its most important obligation, which is to guarantee the life of its citizens and especially avoid assassinations for political reasons."... Marquez was a key negotiator of the peace agreement signed in 2016... The announcement, which Marquez said was filmed in Colombia's Amazon, comes as the complex agreement faces...

Workers at a Maryland office space are lucky to be alive after narrowly escaping a powerful gas explosion that authorities said 'totaled' the building. The incident started just before 7am on Sunday when someone pulled the fire alarm at the Lakewood Office Building and shopping center in Columbia Maryland, a town located about 19 miles southwest of Baltimore, authorities said. Howard County Fire and Rescue emergency crews responded to the scene where fire fighters found gas hissing out of a crater in the parking lot. They made sure the shopping center was completely evacuated just before the office exploded around...

'After Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died 130 years ago today, a million and a half Americans watched his funeral procession. His mausoleum was a popular tourist attraction in New York City for decades. But for most of the 20th Century, historians and non-historians alike believed Grant was corrupt, drunken and incompetent, that he was one of the country's worst presidents, and that as a general, he was more lucky than good. A generation of historians, led by Columbia's William A. Dunning, criticized Grant for backing Reconstruction, the federal government's attempt to protect the rights...

Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks the fiftieth anniversary of the era-defining event. Some have called for celebrating with another concert. The occasion is hardly a cause for celebration—so many of the cultural changes after Woodstock had catastrophic consequences. Most do not know that the concert was a disaster—even from an organizational point of...

Think the IRA has stepped off the world stage? Their role is closer to that of ringleader. One of America’s most influential terrorist enemies traces its lineage back some thirty years — and it isn’t a Muslim organization.In splinter groups like the Continuity IRA and more recently the Real IRA, Irish terrorists have positioned themselves at the center of a network connecting revolutionary FARC rebels in Colombia, Hezbollah in the Middle East, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Taliban forces in Afghanistan currently fighting and killing American troops. The IRA and PFLP have trained together and coordinated attacks, weapons smuggling, and other...

<p>SURREY, British Columbia — The separate discoveries of three bodies and a burning car with missing occupants are shaking rural northern British Columbia.</p> <p>Canadian police said Monday they were searching for two men whose burning car was discovered on Friday about 30 miles south of Dease Lake. During that investigation, they found an unidentified body a little over a mile from the car.</p>

Full Title: Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, July 12, 2019 Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison A Colombian fentanyl trafficker, who was scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 1, 2019, pleaded guilty earlier today to drug trafficking and money laundering charges as the leader and organizer of an international continuing criminal enterprise while incarcerated in Quebec, Canada.  The enterprise involved distributing fentanyl and other similar substances from Canada and...