Category: US

Fall City, Wash. — Law enforcement officials found five people killed in a shooting inside a home southeast of Seattle on Monday morning and took a teenager into custody, police said.

Several people called 911 around 5 a.m. to report a shooting in Fall City, Washington, King County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Mike Mellis said at a media briefing Monday afternoon.

Arriving deputies immediately took one teen into custody while another teenager who’d been wounded was taken to a Seattle hospital, Mellis said. Both teens live at the house, Mellis said.

Deputies entering the home found the bodies of five people, he said. Two were adults and three were described by Mellis as young teenagers. No names have been released yet.

“Once bodies were discovered, clearly we understand that this is a hugely significant crime scene,” he said.

Mellis said the shooting appears to involve members of a family, but added that they didn’t yet know how they were related. He also said there was no ongoing threat to the community.

“I have no reason to think that there will be any additional arrests,” he said.

Other people called police from a bathroom inside the home where they hid during the incident, sources told CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.

Deputies said a neighbor with medical experience helped a teenager who was injured during the incident, according to KIRO. That victim was taken to a hospital for treatment.  

The teen in custody was booked into King County’s juvenile detention facility, according to Mellis. The teen was to appear in court for a first hearing on Tuesday or Wednesday, a spokesperson for the county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said in an email.

A neighbor told KING-TV that a couple and their five children lived in the home.

“I’m just in total shock, I keep bursting into tears,” Lynne Trowern, told the news outlet.
An emailed statement Monday evening from King County Councilmember Sarah Perry said the shooting involved a family of seven people.

Sheriff Patricia Cole-Tindall told KING-TV that she was “very sad, very disturbed” to learn about the shooting.

Disgraced Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein has been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, according to numerous outlets. NBC News was first among them.

Weinstein, 72, has chronic myeloid leukemia and is undergoing treatment behind bars in Rikers Island, the reports say, citing sources.

Chronic myeloid leukemia is a rare type of cancer of the bone marrow, the Mayo Clinic says.  

His reported diagnosis is the latest in a string of health issues for the once-powerful entertainment mogul, who appeared pale and visibly frail during a brief court appearance in September.

He underwent emergency heart surgery last month, after which his representative said he was “out of danger at the moment.”

A statement provided to CBS News by Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer says, “Craig Rothfeld, Mr. Weinstein’s authorized legal healthcare representative in New York state, expresses “profound dismay at the speculation surrounding Mr. Weinstein’s medical condition. It is both troubling and unacceptable that such private and confidential health matters have become a subject of public discourse. Out of respect for Mr. Weinstein’s privacy, we will offer no further comment.”

Weinstein is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted on rape charges in California.

He was also convicted in New York in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of an actress and of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison in that case.

However, a New York appeals court overturned the verdict in April, ruling that the trial judge had allowed testimony in error from accusers who weren’t directly involved with the charges Weinstein was facing.

A retrial in the case had been slated for November, though prosecutors have deemed that “unrealistic.”

Allegations against Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement in 2017, a watershed moment for women fighting sexual misconduct.

More than 80 women have accused him of harassment, sexual assault or rape, including prominent actors Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd.

Weinstein has claimed any sexual relations in question were consensual.

In 1979, Weinstein and his brother Bob co-founded prominent Hollywood studio Miramax Films.

Their hits included 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” and 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” for which Weinstein shared a best picture Oscar. 

For decades, the Willamette River that runs through Portland, Oregon, was a look-but-don’t-touch situation.

“When we first moved here, there was no way in hell you’d get in the water,” resident Matthew Mangus said.

The river was contaminated by raw sewage and had been closed for swimming since 1924, but now things are very different. Willie Levenson, founder of the Human Access Project, helped turn the Willamette into a vibrant recreational space that officially became swimmable again in 2012. 

“Step number one — find a way to clean up the river. Step number two — there’s the cultural change around getting people to see there’s value in this river,” Levenson said.

A $1.4 billion pipe project that kept sewage from spilling into the river took care of the first step. Then came step two — an annual inner tube parade called “The Big Float” brought thousands to the water, making the river party central.

“I talk to people who tell me, ‘I feel differently about our city now.’ They feel more connected to the city,” Levenson said.

That’s exactly what Nick Wesley is hoping to achieve in Chicago. His non-profit, Urban Rivers, is leading the charge to transform the Chicago River. He believes that within 10 years, it’ll be a lot more commonplace to see people swimming in the river.

“I think a lot of people see their waterways as a lot of unrealized potential,” Wesley said.

While the idea of an urban river renaissance is providing hope for cities like Chicago and Portland, there’s still plenty of work to be done. Of the 3.5 million miles of rivers in the U.S., 50% are too polluted for fishing, boating or swimming, according to American Rivers, a group focused on protecting and restoring rivers.

Efforts to revitalize the rivers began with the 1972 Clean Water Act and now include river renaissance projects in Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta and New York among other cities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

There’s still more that can be done, including a cultural shift in how people perceive urban rivers.

“The most powerful thing is a community of people on a river that love that river,” said American Rivers spokesperson Amy Souers Kober.

Chicago had hoped to host its first swim in the Chicago River last month. When organizers hit roadblocks getting the proper permits fast enough, they moved it to Lake Michigan. But organizers and Levenson, who flew in from Portland, are determined to swim in the river next year.

“Once the Chicago River becomes a part of culture, Chicago has a hidden level of joy that it’s going to discover,” Levenson said.

It’s high praise from a man who’s already helped his own city discover theirs.

Washington — The members of the so-called Central Park Five filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump on Monday, alleging he made defamatory statements about them during the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Filed in federal district court in Pennsylvania, the suit claims that Trump falsely said during the debate last month that the five Black and Latino men who wrongly convicted for the rape of a White female jogger when they were teens in 1989 pleaded guilty to the crime and killed a person during a series of assaults that occurred in Central Park.

During the debate, Harris criticized the Republican presidential nominee for taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times soon after the attacks that called on New York to “send a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York” by bringing back the death penalty.

The lawsuit argues that Trump’s statements in response to Harris are “demonstrably false,” as the Central Park Five — all of whom are plaintiffs in the case — never pleaded guilty, and the victims of the assaults weren’t killed.

The Central Park Five were teenagers at the time of the assaults against Trisha Meili, the White female jogger, and two men, all of whom were attacked on the same night while jogging in Central Park. They were arrested and charged for the rape and assault of Meili and other crimes. The five pleaded not guilty and maintained their innocence throughout the trial, but were convicted in 1990.

But the five were exonerated and their convictions tossed out in 2002, when DNA evidence was matched to a different man who confessed to the assaults. They’re now known as the “Exonerated Five.”

Their lawsuit alleges that Trump’s statements during the debate were “false and insulting,” and ascribe to them the “commission of criminal offenses, including offenses for which plaintiffs have never been charged or accused, offenses for which they were acquitted at trial and offenses for which they were conclusively exonerated and their convictions vacated.”

It also details a brief exchange one of the men, Yusef Salaam, had with Trump in the “spin room” after the debate, during which Salaam introduced himself as one of the “Exonerated Five.” The suit states that Salaam was “attempting to politely dialogue” with Trump about his statements and accuses the former president of refusing to engage with him.

Salaam and three members of the exonerated group of men appeared at the Democratic National Convention in August and lambasted Trump. Salaam, now a New York City councilmember, and Korey Wise, one of the exonerated five, have also appeared on the campaign trail as part of a get-out-the-vote bus tour with civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton.