Sandra E. Garcia

Most of the recalled poultry is bulk chicken products that are shipped to “industrial business customers,” according to Donny Epp, a company spokesman.

“These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase,” the USDA said in a statement Wednesday, adding that there had been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions related to consumption of the recalled poultry.

The products, which were produced from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4, were shipped to locations in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, according to the USDA. Simmons declined to say what metal was found in the chicken.

“We are working closely with regulatory authorities and affected customers to expedite this product recall,” Simmons said in a statement Wednesday. The company has already contacted its customers, according to Epp.

Two million pounds is a large amount of chicken to recall, according to Pamela Koch, a professor of nutrition ecology at Columbia University, who said the ever speedier distribution of mass produced food would make large recalls more and more likely.

In January, Tyson Foods, one of the United States’ largest meat producers, recalled more than 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets. The company found pieces of rubber in the food.

Then, in March, Tyson recalled 69,093 pounds of frozen chicken strips after two people said they found pieces of metal in the chicken.

A year ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans to not eat romaine lettuce, days before Thanksgiving. The CDC said at the time that it was taking the precaution after 32 people across 11 states got sick with E. coli.

So are recalls becoming more common, or is recall information more accessible?

Both, according to Koch. Food recalls are happening “all the time,” she said, and because the volumes of food that are produced at once are getting larger, the recalls are getting larger as well.

Americans spend the lowest percentage of their income on food compared with people in similarly large countries, Koch said, creating the need to make more food faster.

“To do that, food gets mixed together in larger batches,” she said. “It is very easy to spread contamination to a lot of food, and that food is getting distributed very quickly to multiple states.”

“If we want to eat well for our health, the environment, to decrease climate change and to minimize food safety changes,” people have to consume smaller, more locally distributed food, Koch said.

“The only way that could be accomplished is if food becomes more expensive and it takes more to accomplish that.”

This article originally appeared in

Chicken Recall Affects Over 2 Million Pounds of Simmons Products

Simmons Prepared Foods has recalled over 2 million pounds of poultry products after it found last month that the chicken may have been contaminated with metal, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

President Donald Trump on Twitter accused news outlets of trying to pressure the justice into taking more liberal positions and suggested, without elaborating, that the “Justice Department should come to his rescue.”

On Saturday, The Times published an essay in its Opinion section adapted from a forthcoming book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation,” by two Times reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who helped cover his confirmation hearings.

The reporters wrote that they spent 10 months investigating the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault at the center of the hearings, including one by a former Yale classmate, Deborah Ramirez. She recalled being at a dorm party where participants were drinking heavily, and Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it.

While Senate investigators concluded at the time that Ramirez’s account lacked corroboration, the authors said at least seven people “heard about the Yale incident long before Kavanaugh was a federal judge,” including Ramirez’s mother and two classmates who learned of it just days after the party.

The book also reports that Ramirez’s lawyers gave the FBI a list of at least 25 people who may have had corroborating evidence, but that the bureau interviewed none of them. The two agents who interviewed Ramirez told her they found her “credible,” the excerpt said.

The authors also said they uncovered a second, previously unreported incident involving similar behavior by Kavanaugh at a different party in his freshman year.

The excerpt said a classmate, Max Stier, who now runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the FBI about what he had witnessed but that the bureau did not investigate.

The excerpt cites two unnamed officials who have communicated with Stier, who has declined to discuss the episode publicly. Kavanaugh has declined to answer questions about it, according to the excerpt.

At the center of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing was the testimony of sexual misconduct allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, a California university professor who had attended a Washington-area high school near his.

She testified that when they were teenagers, he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth. He has denied the allegations from both women.

“These newest revelations are disturbing,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote on Twitter about The Times essay. “Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a member of the Senate committee that presided over his confirmation hearings, on Twitter echoed the call for impeachment.

“He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice,” she wrote.

Julián Castro, who was housing secretary under President Barack Obama, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also called for his impeachment.

Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, defended him on Twitter on Sunday.

“He is an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY,” he wrote. “Such lies about him. They want to scare him into turning Liberal!”

In another tweet, the president suggested that Kavanaugh should “start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.”

The Senate Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Twitter, that the “far left’s willingness to seize on completely uncorroborated and unsubstantiated allegations during last year’s confirmation process was a dark and embarrassing chapter for the Senate.”

Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, wrote on Twitter that “The New York Times should be ashamed of this smear on Justice Kavanaugh.”

James Dao, deputy editorial page editor for The Times, said in a statement that the essay was “a well-reported and newsworthy account that sheds new light on a matter that provoked significant national debate.”

The Times was roundly criticized for a tweet — which was later deleted — made on its Opinion account on Saturday about the essay that read: “Having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun. But when Brett Kavanaugh did it to her, Deborah Ramirez says, it confirmed that she didn’t belong at Yale in the first place.”

Dao said the tweet “was clearly offensive and never should have gone out and we sincerely apologize.”

Calls for Kavanaugh's Impeachment Come Amid New Misconduct Allegations

Several Democratic presidential candidates called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh on Sunday after The New York Times published new information about allegations of sexual misconduct against him, while Republican leaders condemned the reporting as irresponsible and defended him.

<h1>Six police officers walked into a Starbucks in Tempe, Arizona, on Independence Day, paid for their orders and began to enjoy their drinks near the entrance.</h1>

A customer who was “anxious, nervous or uncomfortable” seeing the officers asked a barista multiple times what the officers were doing there, a Starbucks spokesman, Reggie Borges, said.

“The barista said, ‘These guys come here all the time,’” Borges said on Sunday. “The barista repeatedly said, ‘They come here all the time. There is nothing wrong.’”

The customer, a white man, continued to ask about the officers, who were also white men. The barista asked the officers to move away from the area where customers pick up their orders, which was near the entrance, to relieve the customer’s anxiety, Borges said.

The Tempe Officers Association said in a Facebook post that the barista had asked the officers “to move out of the customer’s line of sight or to leave.”

“Disappointed,” the post continued, “the officers did in fact leave. This treatment of public safety workers could not be more disheartening. While the barista was polite, making such a request at all was offensive. Unfortunately, such treatment has become all too common in 2019.”

On Twitter, the association posted an image similar to the Starbucks logo, with “Dump Starbucks” in a green circle around an illustration of a hand pouring out a cup of coffee. The tweet included a thread explaining what had happened, as well as the hashtag “#ZeroRespect.”

Some Twitter users backed the officers.

“I bet if and when the Starbucks customer needs help, the cops would be the first ones they called,” one person wrote on Twitter.

Another wrote: “Damn, in my city officers get free coffee just for making a presence in the shop. The barista should’ve told that customer to suck it up or leave.”

Some wrote in support of the nervous customer.

“I don’t feel safe around the police, EVER. You need to work harder to earn our respect and trust, we don’t have to blindly give it to you,” read a tweet.

Employees at the Starbucks in Tempe where the officers had been asked to leave declined to answer questions about the episode Sunday.

The chief of the Tempe Police Department, Sylvia Moir, wrote on Twitter that the episode was an opportunity to work together.

“We are using this incident to show how to thoughtfully engage in dialogue — it is NOT ok to blame, rage, or call for anything other than positive change — @TempePolice &amp; @Starbucks are professionals!” she wrote.

Rossann Williams, executive vice president/president of retail for Starbucks in the United States, said in a statement that she had spoken to Moir.

“On behalf of Starbucks, I want to sincerely apologize to you all for the experience that six of your officers had in our store on July 4,” Williams said. “When those officers entered the store and a customer raised a concern over their presence, they should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the utmost respect by our partners (employees). Instead, they were made to feel unwelcome and disrespected, which is completely unacceptable.”

Williams added: “Our partners rely on your service and welcome your presence, which keeps our stores and the community a safe and welcoming place.”

In Tempe, Starbucks holds “coffee with a cop” events, Borges said. “We invite the community to talk to the police,” he said.

This was the latest episode in which Starbucks found itself in the spotlight over its handling of customers.

The coffee chain made headlines last year after two black men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. The men had asked to use the restroom but were refused because they had not made a purchase. They were asked to leave, and when they refused, an employee called the police. The men were arrested but were released after the company declined to press charges.

The coffee company apologized on Twitter and in full-page newspaper ads. The hashtag #BoycottStarbucks picked up steam on social media.

The backlash pushed the coffee chain to announce that it would close more than 8,000 stores in the United States for one day to conduct anti-bias training for 175,000 employees. Starbucks changed its policy and began allowing guests to sit in its locations without buying anything. It also brought on social justice activists and policy advocates as counsel.

“It is our hope that the incident which occurred at Starbucks was an isolated incident between one community member and a single employee, rather than an entire organization,” the Tempe Police Department said in a statement.

Williams and Moir were scheduled to have a conversation Sunday — over a cup of coffee.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/business/starbucks-tempe-police.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Starbucks apologizes after six police officers in Arizona say they were asked to leave

A customer who was “anxious, nervous or uncomfortable” seeing the officers asked a barista multiple times what the officers were doing there, a Starbucks spokesman, Reggie Borges, said.

In the report, the FDA named for the first time the pet food brands most frequently associated with adverse events. In descending order of most incidents of heart disease, the brands are Acana, Zignature, Taste of the Wild, 4Health, Earthborn Holistic, Blue Buffalo, Nature’s Domain, Fromm, Merrick, California Natural, Natural Balance, Orijen, Nature’s Variety, NutriSource, Nutro and Rachael Ray Nutrish.

The heart condition examined in the report, canine dilated cardiomyopathy, often results in heart failure and is believed to have a genetic component, according to the report. The disease usually affects large breeds, but the FDA said it knew of smaller dogs that have been afflicted with it.

The disease was most frequently reported to the FDA in golden retrievers, but the report noted that breed-specific social media groups and activities raised awareness of the issue in these communities of golden retriever owners, who perhaps disproportionately notified the FDA of their dogs’ diagnoses.

Most of the dog foods listed are usually labeled “grain-free” and contain a large proportion of peas, lentils, legume seeds or potatoes, according to the report. Many of the dogs researched in the investigation did not have a genetic predisposition to the condition, the FDA said.

With that in mind, it is important to check the ingredients label of the products you are buying. Check out as many reviews as you can especially the <a href="https://www.wellpet.org/best-dog-food-for-shar-pei/">dog food reviews by Well Pet Coach</a>. Do not rush to buy just because of the price points. Quality food is important if you want your dog to live healthily.

Using an abbreviation for the disease, the FDA said in its report that it was “using a range of science-based investigative tools as it strives to learn more about this emergence of DCM and its potential link to certain diets or ingredients.”

“We understand the concern that pet owners have about these reports: The illnesses can be severe, even fatal, and many cases report eating ‘grain-free’ labeled pet food.”

In July 2018, the study began investigating diagnosed cases of the disease that had been reported to the FDA. The agency started receiving reports of dilated cardiomyopathy in cats and dogs in 2014. Since that year, 560 dogs with the heart condition have been reported to the FDA, of which 119 have died, according to the report.

The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates there are 77 million pet dogs in the United States, most of which are not developing dilated cardiomyopathy, the FDA said in a statement. The number of dogs affected with heart disease may not seem like a lot, John de Jong, president of the veterinary association, said Saturday, but the FDA found a trend and is informing consumers of it.

FDA links 16 brands of dog food to canine heart disease

The Food and Drug Administration identified 16 brands of dog food that had been linked to heart disease in dogs that eat them, according to a report the agency published Thursday.

The flights were grounded around 8:45 a.m. An hour later, flights resumed, but officials said to expect delays. Airport officials on Twitter described what happened as an “airport emergency.”

Scott Ladd, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, said a United Airlines flight that had left LaGuardia Airport headed for Houston experienced hydraulics problems around 8:30 a.m. and had to make an emergency landing at Newark.

“The plane blew a tire on landing and there was other structural damage that forced closure of the runway,” he said.

Passengers were removed from the plane on the runway and were taken by bus to an airport terminal, he said.

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said that the crew of United flight 2098, an Airbus A319, reported a brake problem and that the two left main tires blew when it landed. The agency said it would investigate.

John Murray, 24, of Manhattan, who had been on the plane, said the flight was in the air for not more than 20 minutes. “The emergency response staff said we had a flat tire,” he said.

Murray said that after the plane landed and passengers disembarked, he overheard flight staff members say the plane’s flat tire had created some friction in the wheel well, and that the friction created smoke, which prompted the emergency landing.

He said there had been no formal announcement about the emergency landing.

“It was a little nerve-wracking seeing that we weren’t gaining any altitude and we were just circulating,” Murray said. “We kind of figured that something was amiss.”

He added, “Once I saw we were landing at Newark, I was sure it had to be for a good reason.”

Neil Reisner was on board a grounded plane on the tarmac at Newark.

“All I could see was another plane surrounded by emergency vehicles,” Reisner said.

Flight staff members told passengers that there was an emergency at the airport and that all the planes were being held. “They didn’t give us any updates,” Reisner said.

Earlier this month, tires on a Boeing 757 operated by United Airlines blew out as the plane was landing at Newark. The episode caused flight delays but no injuries to the 166 passengers on board.

Even with the emergency landing, and the shuffling on and off the tarmac, Murray found a silver lining.

“Also, lighthearted aside,” Murray posted on Twitter. “Got to try out the aircraft slide! Also top-notch.”

Newark airport 'emergency' briefly halts flights, causing delays, officials say

Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey briefly grounded all arriving and departing flights Saturday morning after a flight that had departed from LaGuardia Airport made an emergency landing at Newark, officials said.

<h1>Joe Sestak, a former Navy admiral and congressman from Pennsylvania, said he was joining the crowded field of Democratic candidates running for president in 2020.</h1>

With an announcement on his website on Saturday, Sestak became the 24th Democratic candidate running for president.

“I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold War eras, to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the emergence of China,” Sestak said.

His announcement came later than those of the other Democratic candidates. He said the delay had happened because he had wanted to spend time with his daughter, who had been battling brain cancer but had since beaten it.

Sestak, 67, a native of Pennsylvania, was elected to Congress in 2006, defeating a 10-term incumbent. He served in the military from 1974-2005, finishing his career as a three-star Navy admiral.

He commanded an aircraft carrier battle group that conducted combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; served as President Bill Clinton’s director for defense policy on the National Security Council in the White House; and served as the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements.

Sestak, who had a reputation as a hard-charging and demanding taskmaster, positioned himself in his announcement as a supporter of working-class Americans. He said that during his time in Congress, his office had fought to overturn denials of treatment by health insurance companies and to save more than 800 homes from foreclosure, as well as to help veterans.

In describing his platform, he said, “Our country desperately needs a president with a depth of global experience and an understanding of all the elements of our nation’s power, from our economy and our diplomacy to the power of our ideals and our military, including its limitations.”

Referring to President Donald Trump, Sestak said: “The president is not the problem. He is the symptom of the problem people see in a system that is not fair and accountable to the people.”

Although he enters the race later and against more well-established candidates, Sestak is no stranger to long-shot political bids.

He mounted an improbable victory in the 2010 Democratic primary to gain the party’s nomination to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

That quixotic yearlong quest to win the Democratic Senate nomination pitted Sestak against an array of Democratic power brokers, from the White House to the governor to organized labor to the party apparatus to Democratic donors.

Sestak defeated Sen. Arlen Specter, who had served in the Senate for nearly three decades as a Republican but who, in a political bombshell, announced he was switching to the Democratic Party because he could not win reelection in a Republican primary. Sestak lost in the general election to Republican Patrick J. Toomey, a former congressman.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/us/joe-sestak-2020-candidates.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Former Pa. Congressman Becomes the 24th Democratic Candidate for President

With an announcement on his website on Saturday, Sestak became the 24th Democratic candidate running for president.

Former Pa. Congressman becomes the 24th Democratic candidate for president

The plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft BE65, crashed under unknown circumstances while taking off from Dillingham Airfield on Oahu’s North Shore about 6:30 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. The plane was destroyed by the fire, according to the agency.

“In my 40 years as a firefighter here in Hawaii, this is the most tragic aircraft incident that we’ve had,” Honolulu Fire Department Chief Manny Neves said at a news conference Friday night. “We had some helicopters with the military, but this is a civilian plane that went down.”

The authorities have identified the skydiving company but have not released its name. The names of the victims were also not released.

The Hawaii Department of Transportation said Saturday that 11 people were on the plane and that there were no survivors. It was unclear how many of those on board were passengers.

Neves said the cause of the crash was not known.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate, an agency spokesman, Eric Weiss, said.

Hawaii plane crash kills 11 people, officials say

All 11 people aboard a plane taking passengers on a skydiving trip were killed after the plane crashed and burned Friday evening north of Honolulu, authorities said.

The home was filled with smoke when officers arrived around 10:30 a.m. responding a 911 call of an assault, Assistant Chief Kenneth Corey, the commanding officer of Staten Island, said at a news conference.

Firefighters put out the fire, and the victims were discovered in the same room. They were pronounced dead at the scene, Corey said.

The authorities found a 36-year-old man — believed to be the father of the children — walking along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway around 7:48 a.m., officials said. The man was taken to a hospital for an evaluation.

The woman and the man were believed to be active members of the U.S. military, officials said, although they did not specify what branch.

On Saturday, three men and a woman wearing U.S. Army uniforms stood behind the yellow crime-scene tape and consoled one another. They formed a prayer circle and left after the medical examiner’s office removed the bodies.

Neighbors said that the couple had recently moved to the dead-end street populated with newly constructed row homes and that they mostly kept to themselves.

Mary Jo Kammerer, 63, said she smelled the smoke in the morning and went to see what was going on.

“I thought it was just a small fire at first,” she said. “They put it out right away. But when I saw a lot of police and detectives filling the street, I knew it was something big.”

She said the loss of the toddlers affected her the most.

“They were tiny. It’s so sad. It’s such a bad tragedy,” she said.

Rod Hamed, 59, said neighbors were trying to comprehend the deaths of the children. “It’s shocking, two kids,” Hamed said. “They were both in the Army, nice people. You never expect something like this.”

The police had been called to the home for a previous domestic incident, Corey said. The names of the victims were not released, and the causes of death were yet to be determined.

Woman and 2 children are found dead on Staten Island, police say

NEW YORK — A 36-year-old woman and two children, ages 2 and 3, were found dead Saturday in a Staten Island home, the police said.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a crash with this much loss of life,” state police Capt. Chris Vetter said at a news conference Friday night.

The motorcyclists were riding east on Route 2 in Randolph, about 100 miles northeast of Concord, when the pickup truck, a 2016 Dodge 2500, swerved over the yellow line and “jackknifed” into the motorcyclists’ lane around 6:30 p.m., said Jerry Hamanne, the owner of the Inn at Bowman Bed and Breakfast. The inn, where several of the motorcyclists were staying, was about 1,000 yards from the scene of the crash, he said.

The identities of the victims were not publicly released pending notification of their relatives.

Two of those injured were taken to Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, New Hampshire. One person was discharged and the other was taken to a tertiary-care center, hospital officials said. Information on the condition of the third injured person was unavailable.

At a news conference Saturday, authorities said the driver of the pickup truck was a 23-year-old man. His identity could not be confirmed. Officials said that the driver lived in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and that he was the only occupant of the truck. No charges had been filed as of Saturday.

Hamanne said that he heard the pickup truck explode and that he could see smoke from his inn. He said he searched the inn to see if any of the guests were doctors. He found one and set out to the crash site.

“It was devastating,” Hamanne said. “Motorcycles were spilled on the highway, and there were parts everywhere. There were bodies scattered over the road.”

He said he saw other drivers get out of their cars with blankets and run to the motorcyclists to help the injured.

“You could hear people screaming and yelling and crying for help,” Hamanne said. “One guy, we got a rope out of a truck to put a tourniquet on his leg to stop the bleeding. It was all so fast.”

The motorcyclists were in the area a week after they had attended the Laconia Motorcycle Week. Hamanne said that the motorcyclists would come once a year in June and that the group in the crash were Marine Corps veterans.

“After several days of rain, people were out,” Charlie St. Clair, the executive director of the Laconia Motorcycle Week rally, said Saturday. “Everyone fears someone crossing a lane, but for motorcyclists, it is a big fear. Unfortunately sometimes it happens so quick that there is no chance to react, and that is probably what happened yesterday.”

St. Clair said the motorcyclists involved in the crash were part of a group called the Jarheads.

“In my years of riding, this just hasn’t happened,” said St. Clair, who has been the executive director of the event since 1992. “So many fatalities at once. To have seven riders go down is just terrible.”

The motorcyclists were headed to a charity event at an American Legion in Gorham, New Hampshire, when the crash occurred, according to a GoFundMe page created by the Jarheads.

7 killed after a pickup truck crashes into motorcyclists in new Hampshire, police say

Seven people were killed and three others injured after a pickup truck collided with a group of motorcyclists on a rural two-lane highway in New Hampshire on Friday night, the New Hampshire State Police said.

He added: “There is nothing left of the plane.”

Authorities have identified the sky diving company but have not released its name, or the names of the victims killed in the crash. It was unclear how many of those on board were passengers.

No one at the airfield was available to comment Saturday. Neves said the cause of the crash was unknown.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate, agency spokesman Eric Weiss said.

9 killed in plane crash in Hawaii, officials say

Nine people aboard a plane taking passengers on a skydiving trip were killed after the plane crashed and burned Friday night north of Honolulu, authorities said.

In the sermon, delivered June 2, the pastor, Grayson Fritts, also called for the government to send a riot team to a Pride parade scheduled for June 22 in Knoxville. He said LGBT people should be arrested, tried, and if convicted, executed.

“That’s the problem with law enforcement nowadays,” he said in a video of the sermon posted by The Tennessee Holler. “They are chasing around cookie thieves, when the real animals are on floats rolling down Gay Street.”

Fritts is a pastor at All Scripture Baptist Church, which makes its stance on homosexuality known on its website: “A person will only burn in their lust toward the same gender if they have been given over to a reprobate or rejected mind. God said homosexuality should be punished with the death penalty, as set forth in Leviticus 20:13. No homosexual will be allowed to attend or join All Scripture Baptist Church.”

Fritts is also a detective at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. His sermon prompted the Knox County district attorney’s office to examine cases Fritts had worked on as a detective.

“When any potential witness in a criminal proceeding expresses an opinion of hatred and or bias toward a class of citizens, I am ethically bound to explore that witness’ credibility,” the district attorney, Charme P. Allen, said in a statement. “Accordingly, I am reviewing all pending cases involving Mr. Fritts to scrutinize them for any potential bias.”

It was not immediately clear how many cases would be reviewed. Allen could not be reached for comment Saturday.

She also assigned an assistant district attorney to take complaints about closed cases that Fritts may have worked on, the statement said. Allen said that while her office had never received a complaint about Fritts before, it was important to act on complaints “as justice dictates.”

Fritts could not be reached for comment Saturday, but in another video posted Thursday by The Tennessee Holler, he responded to criticism about his earlier sermon, saying he had not called for violence against LGBT people.

“I am not an anomaly,” Fritts said in the video. “I am a Baptist preacher that is just preaching the Bible, and if it offends society, then it is just going to offend society.”

The Knox County mayor, Glenn Jacobs, called Fritts’ earlier sermon “outrageous.”

“I think they’re vile and reprehensible,” he said Saturday of the comments. “I condemn any sort of comment like that, that calls for violence.”

He said Fritts had sought an early retirement from his detective position before his sermon had drawn widespread attention, and that he was not currently active with the Sheriff’s Office. Representatives from the office did not respond to emails and phone calls Saturday. But according to The Knoxville News Sentinel, Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler said in a statement Wednesday that he had agreed to a request Fritts had made for a county buyout from his position.

The mayor of Knoxville, Madeline Rogero, said that the city would host its Pride parade and that she would attend, along with members of other churches.

Referring to Fritts’ comments, she said: “That is not what Knoxville or Knox County is about. That is an aberration. What that particular pastor said is not reflective of our community and the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat our citizens. We want the world to know that that is not how we are and that is not how we behave.”

Tennessee pastor who is also a detective calls for LGBTpeople to be executed

A Tennessee pastor who is also a detective said in a sermon this month that people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender were “freaks” and “worthy of death,” comments that have prompted prosecutors to review cases he has investigated.

Tennessee pastor who is also a detective calls for LGBT people to be executed

Such account information would give the government access to photos, locations, dates of birth, dates of milestones and other personal data commonly shared on social media.

“We already request certain contact information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses from all visa applicants,” the State Department said in a statement. “We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect U.S. citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States.”

In March 2017, President Donald Trump asked the secretary of state, the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security and the director of national intelligence to put in effect “a uniform baseline for screening and vetting standards and procedures,” according to a memo published in the Federal Register. Requiring information about the social media accounts of visa applicants was part of that.

The move represents a step up from a September 2017 measure in which the Homeland Security Department proposed and enacted a regulation calling for the surveillance of social media use of all immigrants, including naturalized citizens. During the Obama administration, the State Department began to ask visa applicants to voluntarily submit their social media information.

“This seems to be part and parcel of the same effort to have an extraordinary broad surveillance of citizens and noncitizens,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, said on Sunday of the latest development. “Given the scope of the surveillance efforts, it is hard to find a rational basis for the broad surveillance the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security have been doing for almost two years.”

The added requirement could dissuade visa applicants, who may see it as a psychological barrier to enter the United States.

“This is a dangerous and problematic proposal, which does nothing to protect security concerns but raises significant privacy concerns and First Amendment issues for citizens and immigrants,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said on Sunday. “Research shows that this kind of monitoring has chilling effects, meaning that people are less likely to speak freely and connect with each other in online communities that are now essential to modern life.”

The social media web today is a map of our contacts, associations, habits and preferences. This kind of requirement will result in suspicion of surveillance of travelers and their networks of friends, families and business associates, Shamsi said, adding that the government had failed to explain how it would use this information.

Further, the government has been unable to prove that social media can provide reliable indications that identify a security threat, she said.

“In the absence of any such indicators, what we’ve seen domestically and abroad is government officials penalizing people’s speech, religious affiliation and other conduct,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/us-visa-application-social-media.html" id="c0f31d20-6943-37b9-ab29-acbc8b66eeef">The New York Times</a>.

U.S. requiring social media information from visa applicants

Visa applicants to the United States are required to submit any information about social media accounts they have used in the past five years under a State Department policy that started on Friday.

“I’m sorry that this happened,” the chief, William Scott, told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m sorry to the people of San Francisco. I’m sorry to the mayor. We have to fix it. We know there were some concerns in that investigation, and we know we have to fix it.”

The freelance journalist, Bryan Carmody, was targeted by the police in May after his reporting on the death of Jeff Adachi, a public defender, was used by local news outlets.

Carmody reported to local television stations that Adachi had collapsed in front of a woman who was not his wife, information that he got from a police report that had not been publicly released.

In an attempt to find out who gave Carmody the police report, the police obtained a search warrant, raided his apartment and held him in handcuffs for six hours.

“I am specifically concerned by a lack of due diligence by department investigators in seeking search warrants and appropriately addressing Mr. Carmody’s status as a member of the news media,” Scott said in a statement separate from his comments to The Chronicle. “This has raised important questions about our handling of this case and whether the California shield law was violated.”

The shield law protects journalists if they refuse to disclose sources, or refuse to disclose unpublished information, such as notes and recorded interviews and photographs. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the raid, and the Society of Professional Journalists was among numerous organizations that demanded that Carmody’s equipment and notes be returned to him.

The national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, J. Alex Tarquinio, said Saturday that the California shield law was definitely violated in this instance.

“It is illegal,” Tarquinio said in an interview. “The California shield law clearly protects journalist from this kind of search and seizure of their equipment and notes and records.”

Carmody declined to comment, but his lawyer, Ben Berkowitz, said in a statement that he hoped journalists around the country would not get used to this kind of behavior by the authorities.

“It is a troubling and alarming time for journalists in this country,” he said. “They have, unfortunately, grown all too accustomed to daily assaults on their profession. The principle at stake here is one that is fundamental to our democracy — the press must be free to investigate and report without fear of police intimidation.”

Tarquinio said there was no excuse for the raid and called it unconscionable.

The chief of the San Francisco Police Department apologized Friday for a police raid at the home of a Bay Area freelance journalist in an effort to discover his confidential sources.

Sandra E. Garcia

Articles written by the author

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