Teacher shot by 6-year-old “will never forget the look on his face” – National & International News – TUE 21Mar2023

Teacher shot by 6-year-old “will never forget the look on his face”.

Banks connected with Epstein face sex trafficking suits.

China’s Xi visits Putin in Moscow

NATIONAL NEWS

Teacher shot by 6-year-old “will never forget the look on his face”

On Jan. 6 this year, a 6-year-old boy shot his 1st grade teacher, 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner, in the hand and chest with his mother’s 9mm pistol. On that day, three staff members brought concerns to administrators about the boy’s behavior and fears that he had a gun. An administrator told one of those staff members they should just “ride it out” because the school day was nearly over. The shooting took place about an hour later, around 1pm.

Zwerner, who has since been in recovery, sat down for an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. During the interview, Zwerner and her attorney, Diane Toscano, said school administrators should have done more to prevent the shooting. She described how her fear had grown throughout the day  

Zwerner still has a long road to physical recovery, but in some ways, she believes she’ll never be the same. “I just will never forget the look on his face that he gave me while he pointed the gun directly at me,” Zwerner said. “It’s changed me. It’s changed my life.”

When Guthrie asked how she could make sense of something like that, Zwerner answered “You can’t.”

Toscano intends to sue the school district and administrators for failing to take action to prevent the shooting. The child is too young to be charged, but local prosecutors haven’t ruled out criminal charges against others. This may include charges against the boy’s parents if it’s found they failed to secure the gun properly.  The parents say the boy has an “acute disability” for which he was receiving treatment. The boy remains in treatment at a hospital.

Click here for the full story and the 12-minute video of the interview (opens in new tab).

Banks connected with Epstein face suits for sex trafficking

Victims of sex trafficking by financier Jeffrey Epstein have the go-ahead to sue banks connected with his activities. Two women from the US Virgin Islands have brought against JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. The suit alleges that the banks “knowingly benefited from participating in a sex trafficking venture”. 

Epstein was a client of JPMorgan from 2000 to 2013, and of Deutsche Bank from 2013 to 2018. Both banks had asked for the women’s suits to be dismissed. JP Morgan has sued one of its own former senior executives, Jess Staley, who oversaw Epstein’s business at the bank. The bank accuses Staley of withholding potentially damaging information about his client.

Epstein is believed to have trafficked hundreds of young women and girls for sex over two decades. During that time, he hobnobbed with prominent figures including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. His partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted last year on sex trafficking charges. 

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

China’s Xi visits Putin in Moscow

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Moscow for two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Xi’s ties with Putin have only deepened. They share a distrust of the West and many of their economic and geo-political interests overlap. Both are strongmen who exercise near-total control over industry in their countries, and each have extensive records of human rights violations that long predate the war. 

Xi has attempted to position himself as a possible peacemaker in the Ukraine conflict by finding possible points of common ground. However, both Ukraine’s leadership and its allies are skeptical and have rejected Xi’s 12-point peace plan, which rejects Western sanctions and does not require Putin to withdraw his troops from Ukraine. 

Putin and Xi appeared especially chummy during this visit. Xi even invited Putin to Beijing for a return visit. This is just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over a scheme to illegally deport Ukrainian children to Russia. The warrant severely restricts Putin’s travel as any nation that is a signatory to the ICC would be obliged to arrest him. Neither Russia nor China is a signatory of the ICC (nor is the US).

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