Rapper Young Thug pleads guilty to gang, drug and gun charges

Rapper Young Thug pleads guilty to gang, drug and gun charges
Atlanta rapper Young Thug. (AFP)
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Updated 01 November 2024
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Rapper Young Thug pleads guilty to gang, drug and gun charges

Rapper Young Thug pleads guilty to gang, drug and gun charges

ATLANTA: Rapper Young Thug pleaded guilty Thursday in Atlanta to gang, drug and gun charges and will be released from jail, though he could be put back behind bars if he violates the terms of his sentence.
The 33-year-old Grammy winning artist, whose given name is Jeffery Williams, entered his pleas without reaching a deal with prosecutors after negotiations between the two sides broke down, lead prosecutor Adriane Love said. That left the sentence completely up to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker.
Young Thug’s plea comes two and a half years after he was arrested and charged and nearly a year after the prosecution started presenting evidence in the problem-plagued trial. Jury selection at the courthouse in Atlanta began in January 2023 and took nearly 10 months. Prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses since opening statements last November in the trial of six defendants.
The trial has faced many delays, including in July when the original judge was removed after two defendants sought his recusal, citing a meeting the judge held with prosecutors and a state witness.
Young Thug pleaded guilty to one gang charge, three drug charges and two gun charges. He also entered a no contest plea to another gang charge and a racketeering conspiracy charge, meaning that he decided not to contest those charges but can be punished for them as if he had pleaded guilty.
The judge imposed a sentence of 40 years with the first five to be served in prison but commuted to time served, followed by 15 years on probation. If he successfully completes that probation without any violations, another 20 years will be commuted to time served. But if he violates the conditions, he will have to serve those 20 years in addition to any penalty for a probation violation.
Young Thug must stay away from the metro Atlanta area for the first 10 years of his probation, except for weddings, funerals, graduations or serious illness of family members, the judge said.
But she also ordered him to return to the Atlanta area four times a year during his probation to make a live anti-gang, anti-gun violence presentation at a school or a community organization serving children. She said that can count toward the 100 hours of community service she ordered him to perform each year during probation.
He’s also not allowed to associate with gang members or with the victims or other defendants in the case, with the exception of his brother and the rapper Gunna, with whom he has contractual obligations. He also cannot promote any criminal street gang or gang activity and can’t use hand signs or terminology that promotes a street gang.
Additional conditions include submitting to random drug screens and not possessing a gun. But he is allowed to travel both nationally and internationally for work, even while on probation.
Love had outlined for the judge the evidence she would have presented to prove Young Thug’s guilt, including some of his rap lyrics. She asked the judge to sentence him to 45 years, with 25 years in prison and the remaining 20 years on probation.
The rapper’s lead attorney Brian Steel said they “vehemently disagree” with many of the statements Love made and said it was “offensive” that the state is using Young Thug’s lyrics against him.
Steel said the evidence against his client is weak and accused prosecutors of misrepresenting and hiding evidence, saying Young Thug was “falsely accused.” Steel said he told his client that he thought they were winning the trial and should go through to a jury verdict.
“But he told me, ‘I can’t wait another three months if there is any possibility I could go home because I have children that are hurting. I have things to do,’” Steel said.
Steel asked the judge to impose a sentence of 45 years with five in prison commuted to time served and 40 years on probation.
Young Thug asked the judge to let him go home, saying he wouldn’t be in a similar situation again.
“I’ve learned from my mistakes, you know. I come from nothing and I’ve made something and I didn’t take full advantage of it. I’m sorry,” he said.
The judge said she appreciated that he realized the impact that he has on people worldwide. She said rap music may involve a lot of posturing but that children emulate some of the dangerous behavior mentioned in songs. She encouraged Young Thug to use his talent and influence to encourage kids to do the right thing.
“I want you to try to be more of the solution and less of the problem,” Whitaker said.
A tremendously successful rapper, Young Thug started his own record label, Young Stoner Life or YSL. Prosecutors have said he also co-founded a violent criminal street gang and that YSL stands for Young Slime Life.
He was charged two years ago in a sprawling indictment accusing him and more than two dozen other people of conspiring to violate Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. He also was charged with gang, drug and gun crimes.
Three of his Young Thug’s co-defendants had already pleaded guilty this week after reaching deals with prosecutors. The pleas leave the fates of two other co-defendants still undecided.
Nine people charged in the indictment accepted plea deals before the trial began. Twelve others are being tried separately. Prosecutors dropped charges against one defendant after he was convicted of murder in an unrelated case.


Nepal community fights to save sacred forests from cable cars

Nepal community fights to save sacred forests from cable cars
Updated 19 sec ago
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Nepal community fights to save sacred forests from cable cars

Nepal community fights to save sacred forests from cable cars
  • Across Nepal, five cable car projects have opened in the past two years – and 10 more are under development
  • Critics accuse the Nepalese government of failing to assess the environmental impact properly
TAPLEJUNG, Nepal: They appear tranquil soaring above Himalayan forests, but a string of cable car projects in Nepal have sparked violent protests, with locals saying environmental protection should trump tourism development.
In Nepal’s eastern district of Taplejung, the community has been torn apart by a $22-million government-backed project many say will destroy livelihoods and damage ancient forests they hold as sacred.
Across Nepal, five cable car projects have opened in the past two years – and 10 more are under development, according to government figures.
Critics accuse the government of failing to assess the environmental impact properly.
In January, protests at Taplejung escalated into battles with armed police, with four activists wounded by gunfire and 21 officers injured.
The protests calmed after promises construction would be suspended, but erupted again this week, with 14 people wounded on Thursday – 11 of them members of the security forces.
“We were in a peaceful protest but hired thugs showed us kukris (large knives) and attacked us – and we countered them,” protest committee leader Shree Linkhim Limbu said after the latest clashes.
He vowed to continue demonstrations until the project is scrapped.
Around 300,000 Hindu devotees trek for hours to Taplejung’s mountaintop Pathibhara temple every year – a site also deeply sacred to the local Limbu people’s separate beliefs.
In 2018, Chandra Prasad Dhakal, a businessman with powerful political ties who is also president of Nepal’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, announced the construction of a 2.5-kilometer-long (1.5-mile) cable car to the temple.
The government calls it a project of “national pride.”
Dhakal’s IME Group is also building other cable cars, including the 6.4-kilometer-long Sikles line in the Annapurna Conservation Area, which the Supreme Court upheld.
The government deemed the project a “national priority,” thereby exempting it from strict planning restrictions in protected areas.
The Supreme Court scrapped that controversial exemption last month, a move celebrated by environmentalists.
But activists fear the project may still go ahead.
Taplejung is deeply sacred to local Mukkumlung beliefs, and residents say that the clearance of around 3,000 rhododendron trees – with 10,00 more on the chopping block – to build pylons is an attack on their religion.
“It is a brutal act,” said protest chief Limbu. “How can this be a national pride project when the state is only serving business interests?”
Saroj Kangliba Yakthung, 26, said locals would rather efforts and funding were directed to “preserve the religious, cultural and ecological importance” of the forests.
The wider forests are home to endangered species including the red panda, black bear and snow leopard.
“We worship trees, stone and all living beings, but they are butchering our faith,” said Anil Subba, director of the Katmandu-based play “Mukkumlung,” which was staged for a month as part of the protest.
The hundreds of porters and dozens of tea stall workers that support trekking pilgrims fear for their livelihoods.
“If they fly over us in a cable car, how will we survive?” said 38-year-old porter Chandra Tamang.
The government says the cable car will encourage more pilgrims by making it easy to visit, boosting the wider economy in a country where unemployment hovers around 10 percent, and GDP per capita at just $1,377, according to the World Bank.
“This will bring development,” said resident Kamala Devi Thapa, 45, adding that the new route will aid “elderly pilgrims.”
The cable cars symbolize Nepal’s breakneck bid to cash in on tourism, making up more than six percent of the country’s GDP in 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).
Beyond the Pathibhara project, the government’s environmental policy is in question – in a country where 45 percent is forest.
More than 255,000 trees have been cut down for infrastructure projects in the past four years, according to the environment ministry.
“Nepal has witnessed massive deforestation in the name of infrastructure,” said Rajesh Rai, professor of forestry at Tribhuvan University. “This will have severe long-term consequences.”
Unperturbed, the cable car builder assures his project will create 1,000 jobs and brushes aside criticism.
“It won’t disturb the ecology or local culture,” Dhakal said. “If people can fly there in helicopters, why not a cable car?”
The argument leaves Kendra Singh Limbu, 79, unmoved.
“We are fighting to save our heritage,” he said.
It has split the community, local journalist Anand Gautam said.
“It has turned fathers and sons against each other,” Gautam said. “Some see it as progress, others as destruction.”

‘Just two glasses’: In Turkiye, lives shattered by bootleg alcohol

‘Just two glasses’: In Turkiye, lives shattered by bootleg alcohol
Updated 17 min 9 sec ago
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‘Just two glasses’: In Turkiye, lives shattered by bootleg alcohol

‘Just two glasses’: In Turkiye, lives shattered by bootleg alcohol
  • Toxicology professor: ‘Just one glass of fake vodka made from methylated alcohol can be deadly’
  • ‘People really need to be careful. But who would drink alcohol without a proper label?’

ISTANBUL: Taskin Erduan thought he’d got a bargain: three liters of vodka for around $15. But it took only two glasses to kill the 51-year-old hairdresser who worked at an Istanbul salon.
“He came in a bit late on that Saturday saying he couldn’t see properly,” said Belgin, joint owner of the salon where he worked in the Ortakoy district, who didn’t want to give her surname.
Not long after he got there, Erduan needed to sit down because he couldn’t even hold a pair of scissors, she said.
“He told us all he could see was whiteness so I immediately drove him to a private hospital,” she said.
There, he saw an ophthalmologist who quickly realized it was a case of bootleg alcohol poisoning.
Erduan collapsed in late January, barely a week after the city was shaken by news that within just four days, 33 people had died and 29 were critically ill after drinking bootleg alcohol.
That number has since shot up to 70, with another 63 dead in the capital Ankara, Turkish media reports say. Another 36 remain in intensive care.
Erduan told the doctors he bought the vodka at a corner shop in Ortakoy, saying it was five times cheaper than the supermarket because it was imported from Bulgaria.
They gave him folic acid to try and stave off the effects of methanol, a toxic substance often found in bootleg alcohol that can cause blindness, liver damage and death.
“He was still perfectly conscious,” his boss said, her eyes red from crying.
Shortly afterwards, he was rushed into intensive care and intubated.
“On the fourth day, we went with his son to see him. He was totally yellow,” she said, describing jaundice, another symptom of methanol poisoning.
“That evening, we heard he had died.”
“Nobody should have to die like that. The alcohol seemed totally legal from the packaging and the branding when in fact it came from an illegal distillery,” said Erol Isik, her partner at the salon, who was clearly angry.
“Taskin didn’t drink to get drunk, he wasn’t an alcoholic,” he said.
Speaking to AFP at his laboratory at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University where he heads the toxicology department, professor Ahmet Aydin explained how lethal it can be.
“Just one glass of fake vodka made from methylated alcohol can be deadly,” he said.
The difference between ethanol, which is used for making spirits, and methanol, which is used in varnishes and antifreeze, is only visible in a laboratory, he explained, showing test tubes containing the two alcohols.
“No-one can tell them apart by taste, sight or smell,” he said.
“The biggest danger with methanol poisoning is that you don’t feel the effects straight away. It only manifests after about six hours. If the person goes straight to hospital, they have a chance of recovering.”
But it can very quickly become “too late.”
“People really need to be careful,” he warned, saying it was a lot easier to buy methanol than ethanol, the purchase of which is highly regulated.
“But who would drink alcohol without a proper label?” he wondered, following reports several people died after buying alcohol in half-liter water bottles from a business posing as a Turkmen restaurant in Istanbul.
Like the main opposition CHP party, Ozgur Aybas, head of the Tekel association of alcohol retailers, blames the crippling taxes imposed by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who regularly rails against drinking and smoking.
“Nowhere else in the world are there such high taxes on alcohol,” he said, saying people had no choice but to seek out alternatives.
Buying a liter bottle of raki, Turkiye’s aniseed-flavored national liquor, from a supermarket currently costs around $35 in a country where the minimum wage is $600.
Standing in front of the now-closed shop where Taskin Erduan bought the vodka that killed him, a neighbor called Levent, who didn’t give his surname, also blamed taxes.
“Alcohol is too expensive in Turkiye. It costs about 100 Turkish liras to make a bottle of raki but with the tax, that becomes 1,200 liras,” or the equivalent of 12-hours work at minimum wage, he raged.
Levent said he had long known the owner of the shop, describing him as “a nice guy.”
But with Turkiye in the grip of a severe economic crisis, he said he’d long since stopped being surprised at how far people would go to bring in a bit more cash.
“People will do anything for money. They have no shame anymore.”


China snow village apologizes for fake cotton snow

China snow village apologizes for fake cotton snow
Updated 18 February 2025
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China snow village apologizes for fake cotton snow

China snow village apologizes for fake cotton snow

HONG KONG: A tourist village in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan famed for its scenic snow landscape said it was sorry for using cotton wool and soapy water to create fake snow after online criticism from visitors went viral.
In a post on its official Wechat account on February 8, the Chengdu Snow Village project said during the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January, the weather was warm and the snow village did not take shape as anticipated.
China is facing hotter and longer heat waves and more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain as a result of climate change, the country’s weather bureau has warned.
“In order to create a ‘snowy’ atmosphere the tourist village purchased cotton for the snow...but it did not achieve the expected effect, leaving a very bad impression on tourists who came to visit,” the Chengdu Snow Village project said in the statement.
After receiving feedback from the majority of netizens, the tourist area began to clean up all the snow cotton.
The village said it “deeply apologizes” for the changes and that tourists could get a refund. The site has since been closed.
Photos on Wechat showed large cotton wool sheets strewn about the grounds, only partially covering leafy areas. A thick snow layer appeared to blanket the houses in the zone but as you got closer, it was all cotton, said one netizen.
“A snow village without snow,” said another user.
“In today’s age of well-developed Internet, scenic spots must advertise truthfully and avoid deception or false advertising, otherwise they will only shoot themselves in the foot.”


France finds smuggled dinosaur teeth in parcels bound for Italy

France finds smuggled dinosaur teeth in parcels bound for Italy
Updated 15 February 2025
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France finds smuggled dinosaur teeth in parcels bound for Italy

France finds smuggled dinosaur teeth in parcels bound for Italy
  • The teeth, probably from Morocco, were found during a routine check
  • They included the tooth of a long-necked marine reptile called a zarafasaura oceanis, a type of plesiosaurus at least 66 million years old first discovered in Morocco

NICE: French customs officers seized nine dinosaur teeth last month from a courier truck transiting through the country from Spain on its way to Italy, they said on Friday.
The teeth, probably from Morocco, were found during a routine check along a highway running along France’s Mediterranean coastline near the Italian border, customs official Samantha Verduron said.
Using sniffer dogs and opening some parcels at random, inspectors have been known to find cannabis or even cocaine among such truckloads of hundreds of parcels traveling from Spain to Italy, she said.
But on January 27, officials from the French border town of Menton found nine enormous teeth in two parcels that were destined for addresses near the Italian cities of Genoa and Milan, French customs said.
An expert at the Menton prehistory museum helped identify the fossils as probably dating back tens of millions of years and originating from what is now Morocco.
They included the tooth of a long-necked marine reptile called a zarafasaura oceanis, a type of plesiosaurus at least 66 million years old first discovered in Morocco.
Some people believe plesiosauruses, which lived in different parts of the globe, inspired the legend of the Loch Ness monster in Scotland.
Three other teeth would have once belonged to a mosasaurus, an extinct aquatic lizard with a long snout.
The remaining five teeth were thought to belong to a dyrosaurus, an ancestor of the crocodile.
Fossils must be authorized for export and without such a license are usually returned to their country of origin.
An investigation is under way to identify the receivers and decide how to proceed, Verduron said.
In 2020, France returned 25,000 items including fossils, minerals, stones and art objects to Morocco after intercepting them in 2005 and 2006.
Most had been found during illegal excavations.
In 2015, customs officers in the French city of Lyon found part of the skeleton of a tarbosaurus bataar, a land dinosaur that walked on its hind legs, that had been illegally excavated in Mongolia.
Dinosaur remains have become a hot-ticket item in recent years, with paleontologists voicing concern that museums are losing out to private bidders.
A hedge fund CEO last year spent a record $44.6 million to buy a stegosaurus fossil at a New York auction.
Dinosaurs first appeared at least 230 million years ago, while the first humans are believed to have appeared on Earth only around six million years ago.


Spanish tourist hotspot Malaga to ban horse-drawn carriages

Spanish tourist hotspot Malaga to ban horse-drawn carriages
Updated 15 February 2025
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Spanish tourist hotspot Malaga to ban horse-drawn carriages

Spanish tourist hotspot Malaga to ban horse-drawn carriages

MALAGA: A pair of tourists admire the shimmering Mediterranean from their horse-drawn carriage on the seaside promenade in Spain’s southern port of Malaga — a postcard image whose days are numbered.
The city wants to ban horse-drawn carriages from its streets this year to protect the animals after years of criticism of the trade.
The decision to follow in the footsteps of other tourist hotspots such as Rome and Chicago dismayed visitors including Anastasia, a chef who had traveled from Britain.
“It’s really nice, I was impressed — seeing Malaga like this is completely different,” said the 47-year-old as she dismounted from a carriage.
Fellow British tourist Robert agreed, expressing his wonder at his “amazing” trip with a “beautiful” horse.
“I am sure it helps the city attract more tourists,” added the 46-year-old business owner.
Animal rights activists criticize horse-drawn carriages for tourists because of the strain they put on the animals, especially during the searing summer heat.
Summer temperatures in Malaga can soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), said Concordia Marquez, founder of a nearby shelter called “Todos los Caballos del Mundo” (All the Horses in the World).
“Horses and horse-drawn carriages have to cover a lot of ground, both to get to where they spend the night, where they sleep, and to get back to their place of work,” added Marquez.
“That’s inhumane to make a horse work like that.”
Malaga city hall had announced in 2015 that it aimed to ban horse-drawn carriages from its streets by 2035, but it now wants to bring the ban forward to this year.
Officials are in talks with the holders of the last 25 licenses to reach an agreement.
“We have been negotiating for a long time, we have met 99 percent of the demands of carriage owners,” Malaga’s city councillor for mobility, Maria Trinidad Hernandez, told AFP.
“What we are looking for is animal welfare, but it is also the case that they used to have more places to circulate,” she added.
“With the building works that have gone on for the last 20 years, there is hardly any left. There is the park and a little bit of the promenade left.”
Horse-drawn carriages will not totally disappear — they will still be allowed as part of festivals and traditions like Malaga’s annual fair in August.
“What there won’t be are municipal licenses, the tourist horse-drawn carriage, the one you take and pay for as if it were a street taxi,” said Hernandez.