Starbucks CEO proposes 'bias' training
PHILADELPHIA -- Starbucks wants to add training for store managers on "unconscious bias," CEO Kevin Johnson said Monday, as activists held more protests at a Philadelphia store where two black men were arrested after employees said they were trespassing.
Johnson, who has called the arrests "reprehensible," arrived in Philadelphia this weekend after video of the incident gained traction online. He said he hopes to meet with the two men in the next couple of days and apologize face to face.
Stewart Cohen, the lawyer for the two men, said he hopes "something productive for the community" can come out of such a meeting.
Video shows several police talking quietly with two black men seated at a table. After a few minutes, officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren't doing anything wrong. After a video of the arrests spread online, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks trended on Twitter.
On Monday morning, about two dozen protesters took over the Philadelphia shop, chanting slogans like, "A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black." A Starbucks regional vice president who attempted to talk to the protesters was shouted down.
Minnesotan, 8, slashes 3 classmates
SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. -- An 8-year-old student took a kitchen knife to a central Minnesota elementary school and randomly attacked three other children in a hallway as students arrived for class Monday, authorities said.
Police Chief Perry Beise said the victims -- ages 8, 9 and 13 -- suffered "superficial wounds" requiring stitches in the attack at Pleasantview Elementary in Sauk Rapids. No one else was hurt.
Beise said investigators don't know what prompted the attack.
"If I could answer that question I would," the police chief said. "He randomly cut three students then walked into the office and set the knife down."
By the time officers arrived, Beise said, the boy was with a counselor and the three injured students were being treated by the school nurse.
Beise said the boy was released to his parents.
Lawyer: Reporter an immigration target
MEMPHIS -- Lawyers for a journalist who was arrested in Tennessee and placed in an immigration lockup said Monday that the government was trying to suppress his reporting and violated his rights of freedom of speech and the press.
Attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center have asked a federal court to release Manuel Duran Ortega, a reporter who was arrested in Memphis during an April 3 demonstration that coincided with days of remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in that city.
Duran, 42, was working for Spanish-language media outlet Memphis Noticias. He has written stories raising questions about city police and their cooperation with federal immigration officials, a law center attorney said.
A spokesman with the Memphis Police Department and a federal immigration official insisted that Duran's journalism had nothing to do with his arrest on charges that were later dropped as he covered a protest on immigration policies. Immigration officials maintain that Duran's status was flagged to them only after he was arrested by police.
Bryan Cox, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called Duran, a native of El Salvador, an immigration fugitive who was ordered removed from the United States by a federal immigration judge in January 2007 after failing to appear for his scheduled court date.
Heat, wind fuel 2 Oklahoma wildfires
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Wildfires that have killed two people in western Oklahoma are nearing conditions not seen in at least a decade because of the mixture of high temperatures, low humidity and heavy winds, the National Weather Service said Monday.
Weather service meteorologist Doug Speheger said temperatures are projected to reach the mid-90s with humidity below 10 percent and winds gusting to 40 mph.
One fire has burned more than 245,000 acres near Leedey while another blaze has burned nearly 68,000 acres near Woodward, about 20 miles north of Leedey.
A Section on 04/17/2018