‘Cult’ shed fire eyed as cause of deadly Colorado wildfire – National & International News – TUE 4Jan2022

Colorado wildfire: Shed fire on cult land eyed as cause. Former Silicon Valley billionaire guilty of fraud in Theranos case. Haiti PM survives assassination attempt.

NATIONAL NEWS

Colorado wildfire: Shed fire on cult land eyed as cause

On New Years Eve, a massive wildfire swept through part of Boulder County, CO, aided by high winds. The fire torched nearly 1000 homes and caused tens of thousands of residents to flee. As of now, two people remain missing and are presumed dead.

The Boulder County Sheriff’s office is investigating the cause of the fire. Video is circulating online of what appears to be a burning shed, shortly before the wind carried the fire across the neighborhood. The burning shed is on land belonging to a cult called the Twelve Tribes, a fundamentalist Christian group.

A near neighbor claims a member of the group told him that one of their domiciles had caught fire. Illegal fires have previously been noted on the cult’s lands. But it’s unclear at this point whether the shed was the source of the wildfire or a casualty of it. The Sheriff’s department confirms that the fire did start in that area, but the cause was still under investigation. 

Twelve Tribes started in Tennessee in the 1970s. Despite being relatively low key, the cult has since spread across the U.S. and even taken root abroad. A 2018 article from the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Twelve Tribes group in damning terms. “On first impression,” the article says, “its communes and hippie-vibed restaurants and cafes can seem quaint and bucolic. But beneath the surface lies a tangle of doctrine that teaches its followers that slavery was “a marvelous opportunity” for Black people, who are deemed by the Bible to be servants of whites, and that homosexuals deserve no less than death”.

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Former Silicon Valley billionaire guilty of fraud in Theranos case

Elizabeth Holmes, formerly Silicon Valley’s youngest billionaire, has been found guilty on four counts of defrauding investors in her medical tech start-up Theranos. At just 19, Holmes founded Theranos with the claim she’d invented a process that could scan for 100s of diseases using just a few drops of blood. She raised billions of dollars from investors on that premise. The only problem was that the technology simply didn’t work.

Over months of testimony, the court heard from patients and healthcare practitioners who’d received misleading or falsified results from Theranos. However, the jury did not find Holmes guilty on charges of intentionally deceiving patients.

By sheer force of personality, Holmes bamboozled high level government and military officials into believing in her technology. When anyone asked how the technology worked, Holmes sidestepped, saying it was a ‘trade secret’.

Holmes’ trial is almost unique in that it’s rare to prosecute founders of a start-up in the event their business venture fails. Many consider her brazen as a case of the Valley’s “fake it till you make it” business culture gone too far. But it has opened up speculation as to how many other cases of Silicon Valley snake oil are waiting to be discovered.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Haiti PM survives assassination attempt

Ariel Henry, who has been leading Haiti since the assassination of his predecessor Jovenel Moise last year, survived an assassination attempt himself over the weekend. According to Henry’s aides, gunmen targeted Henry during an independence day celebration at a church in the northern city of Gonaïves on Saturday. Online video shows the PM and his aides fleeing towards their vehicles, with intense gunfire heard in the background.

A group of “bandits and terrorists” are being blamed for the attack. Arrest warrants have been issued for several suspects.

In recent years, Haiti has been overtaken by several armed organized gangs. The gangs have a stranglehold on the country’s vital supply lines. They routinely set up blockades and seize goods and frequently take hostages for ransom. One group held a group of 17 missionaries hostage for two months late last year before they managed to escape.

Henry has pledged to crack down on Haiti’s gangs. The gang’s banditry has hindered recovery from a devastating quake last year and created a nationwide fuel shortage.

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