The nation in brief

Virginia set to remove Lee monument

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to announce plans today for the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Richmond's prominent Monument Avenue, a senior administration official said.

Also Wednesday, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced plans to remove the other Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue, which include statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. Those statues sit on city land, unlike the Lee statue, which is on state property.

The governor will direct the Lee statue to be moved off its pedestal and put into storage while his administration seeks input on a new home, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak before the governor's announcement.

The move is taking place during turmoil across the nation and around the world over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for several minutes, even after he stopped moving.

Floyd's death has sparked anger over issues of racial bias and police brutality and prompted a new wave of Confederate memorial removals.

It was not immediately clear when the statue, erected in 1890, would be removed.

Suspect in TNT sales held after ATMs hit

PHILADELPHIA -- Explosions have hit 50 cash machines in and near Philadelphia since the weekend in what authorities described as coordinated effort to steal them or take the money inside.

A 25-year-old who's accused of selling homemade dynamite on the streets with instructions on how to use it on ATMs has been arrested, though authorities aren't yet sure whether the man is connected to the coordinated effort, the state attorney general said Wednesday.

Police earlier urged businesses that host the machines to remove cash to discourage further thefts, one of which resulted in the death of a 24-year-old man hours after he tried to break into an ATM early Tuesday, authorities said.

Talib Crump is charged with felony possession of weapons of mass destruction as well as numerous misdemeanor charges including weapons offenses, terroristic threats and risking a catastrophe.

Crump had "bragged on social media that using dynamite was better than bullets for robbing an ATM and offered up explicit instructions on how to best set dynamite up to blow up an ATM," Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at his news conference Wednesday.

Crump was taken into custody during an undercover buy, and his vehicle was found to have enough dynamite to blow up at least four more ATMs, Shapiro said.

Mississippi to pay $5M in food-aid case

JACKSON, Miss. -- The Mississippi Department of Human Services will pay $5 million to the federal government to settle claims that it manipulated reporting within a food-assistance program and received undeserved performance bonuses.

The settlement announced Monday stems from allegations that Julie Osnes Consulting gave the state recommendations that injected bias into its federal reporting for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Washington.

Mississippi hired the consulting company in 2011, but the office states that the settlement involves the alleged false reporting of data for fiscal 2012 and 2013.

Other states, including Alaska, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as Osnes Consulting and its owner, have reached settlements with the government in the federal investigation, the release stated.

Gulf 'dead zone' predicted to grow large

NEW ORLEANS -- High rivers and high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from farm and urban runoff mean a larger-than-average oxygen-starved "dead zone" is likely this year in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers said Wednesday.

But the predicted size for an area with too little oxygen for marine life is nowhere near a record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a release.

"We can't control the weather; keeping nutrients out of streams and rivers should be our focus," Nancy Rabalais of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, who has been mapping the dead zone since 1985, said in an email.

The area forms every summer off Louisiana and stretches into Texas waters, starting at the sea floor and extending upward. It's created as calm weather lets fresh river water form a layer above the denser salt water in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizer and other nutrients in the fresh water feed algae, which die and then decompose on the sea floor, using up oxygen.

This year's low-oxygen area is expected to cover about 6,700 square miles NOAA said. That's about the size of the southern African nation of Eswatini.

The average is nearly 5,400 square miles The record from 2017 is nearly 8,800 square miles.

A Section on 06/04/2020

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