Introducing Lord Ivar Mountbatten, The Traitors S3 Star Who Is King Charles’ Cousin

The Traitors, Peacock’s reality TV competition, has revealed its cast for its upcoming Season 3, and one of the new stars will be British aristocrat Lord Ivar Mountbatten, second cousin to King Charles III and a direct descendent of Queen Victoria. 

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The Traitors, which operates similarly to a murder mystery show and a game of Mafia, has become extremely popular, and is Peacock’s most streamed unscripted original series to date.  Hosted by Tony award-winning actor Alan Cumming, and set in Ardross Castle in Scotland, the show sees the contestants secretly marked as either “faithfuls” or “traitors.” The stars hope to eliminate each other in pursuit of a cash prize of $250,000, through a series of activities, round-table votes and secret murders. 

Others in the new season include four previous Survivor contestants, Big Brother alums Britney Haynes and Danielle Reyes, The Real Housewives franchise faces like Chanel Ayan and Dolores Catania, Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval, and former  RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen.

While U.S. audiences may, at present, be unfamiliar with Mountbatten, that looks set to change. Ahead of his debut on The Traitors, here’s what you need to know about the British aristocrat. 

Lord Mountbatten’s family tree 

Mountbatten’s family tree and that of the Windsors are very closely related. Mountbatten’s father, David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, was first cousin of Prince Philip. Mountbatten is a direct descendent of Queen Victoria and third cousin once-removed of Queen Elizabeth II. He is also the great-nephew of Louis Mountbatten, who was the last Viceroy of India, and was killed when the Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb on board his boat in August 1979.

Mountbatten is one of the godparents of Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of King Charles’ brother Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh.

In 1994, Mountbatten married Penny Thompson, British philanthropist and businesswoman. The ceremony was attended by Princess Margaret and Prince Edward.

Mountbatten and Thompson went on to have  three daughters together— Ella, Alix, and Luli. The couple separated in 2010 and divorced in 2011.

Lord Mountbatten’s husband

Mountbatten made headlines in 2016 by being the first person in the extended British Royal Family to come out as gay. He opened up about his decision to go public in an interview with the Daily Mail, and in 2018 he married his now-husband James Coyle, who is an airline cabin services director.

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According to an interview Mountbatten and Coyle did with Tatler in 2019, Mountbatten had always known he wasn’t straight, but was not sure he would ever want to come out after his divorce. But all that changed when he met Coyle in 2015 in the Farinet bar in Verbier, Switzerland.

“[Ivar] doesn’t hang around,” Coyle said of his husband. “And that’s the delightful thing about Ivar, he makes his mind up about some­thing and sticks to it. There’s no game-playing, to a degree where you’re almost looking for the catch. He’s so straightforward and remarkably easy to love.”

The two were married at their home in Bridwell Park, and Mountbatten told Tatler that he was walked down the aisle by ex-wife Thompson, and that though no royal family members were in attendance at his second wedding in 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh gave their warm wishes to the couple. 

“They’re very support­ive and think James is brilliant,” said Mountbatten.

Lord Mountbatten’s net worth

According to Company Check, Mountbatten’s current total business assets are valued at £838k. 

Previously, Mountbatten worked as a geologist and as director of the SCL Group, which was a British behavioral research and strategic communication company, which closed operations due to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Mountbatten and Coyle’s country house estate Bridwell Park, located in Devon, southwest England, is now open to the public and can be reserved for weddings and large events. In 2020, the couple opened the Orangery Cafe at the estate. The Queer Spirit Festival, which includes DJ’s, workshops, and group ceremonies related to queer spirituality, is also set to take place at Bridwell Park in August.

Lord Mountbatten’s TV past

This is not Mountbatten’s first foray into the world of reality television. He was on Keeping Up With The Aristocrats in 2022 and the 2019 season of the U.K. Channel 4 survival-based program Treasure Island with Bear Grylls, though he called his decision to go on the show a part of his “on-going midlife crises.”

source https://time.com/6986600/lord-ivar-mountbatten-king-charles-cousin-royals-the-traitors/

U.S.-Built Pier in Gaza Reconnected After Repairs, U.S. Central Command Says

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military-built pier designed to carry badly needed aid into Gaza by boat has been reconnected to the beach in the besieged territory after a section broke apart in storms and rough seas, and food and other supplies will begin to flow soon, U.S. Central Command announced Friday.

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The section that connects to the beach in Gaza, the causeway, was rebuilt nearly two weeks after heavy storms damaged it and abruptly halted what had already been a troubled delivery route.

“Earlier this morning in Gaza, U.S. forces successfully attached the temporary pier to the Gaza beach,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters by phone Friday. “We expect to resume delivery of humanitarian assistance from the sea in the coming days.”

Cooper said operations at the reconnected pier will be ramped up soon with a goal to get 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of food and other supplies moving through the pier into Gaza every two days.

The pier was only operational for a week before a storm broke it apart, and had initially struggled to reach delivery goals. Weather was a factor, and early efforts to get aid from the pier into Gaza were disrupted as civilians desperate for food stormed the trucks that aid agencies were using to transport the food to the warehouses for distribution.

However before it broke apart the pier had been gradually increasing aid movement each day. Cooper said Friday that the lessons learned from that initial week of operations made him confident higher levels of aid throughout could be attained now.

A large section of the causeway broke apart May 25 as heavy winds and high seas hit the area, and four Army vessels operating there went aground, injuring three service members, including one who remains in critical condition. The damage was the latest stumbling block in what has been a persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians during the nearly 8-month-old Israel-Hamas war.

The maritime route for a limited time had been an additional way to help get more aid into Gaza because the Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafahhas made it difficult, if not impossible at times, to get anything through land routes that are far more productive. Israel’s Rafah military operations and military strikes in northern Gaza had also temporarily halted U.S. airdrops of food.

Cooper said Friday the U.S. also expects to resume those airdrops in the coming days.

President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.

After the May 25 storm damage to the causeway, large sections were disconnected and moved to the Israeli port for repairs. In addition, two of the U.S. Army boats that went aground during the same bad weather near Ashkelon in Israel have been freed.

Two other Army boats two beached onto the Gaza shoreline took on a lot of water and sand and the Israeli Navy has been helping with the repairs, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.

Biden, a Democrat, announced his plan for the U.S. military to build a pier during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it installed and operational. The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but Singh said earlier this week that the price had dropped to $230 million, due to contributions from Britain and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was less than expected.

It took a bit longer than the planned two months for installation, with the first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip rolling down the pier on May 17. Just a day later, crowds overran a convoy of trucks as they headed into Gaza, stripping the cargo from 11 of the 16 vehicles before they reached a U.N. warehouse.

The next day, as officials altered the travel routes of the convoys, aid finally began reaching people in need. More than 1,100 tons (1,000 metric tons) of aid were delivered before the causeway broke apart in the storm, Pentagon officials said.

source https://time.com/6986630/us-built-pier-gaza-reconnected/

How to Get Back to Sleep After Waking Up at Night

Waking up throughout the night is normal. Most adults do it between two and six times per night—and if you’re a good sleeper, these wakings will be so brief that you likely won’t remember them, says Lynelle Schneeberg, a sleep psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale Medicine. 

But for some people, nighttime wakings are so intrusive that they experience what Schneeberg calls “the download.”

“You wake up and think, Why am I awake? How long have I been asleep? How much longer do I have to sleep?” she says. You might start worrying about something that’s been on your mind, whether it’s a big presentation at work or a conflict with a family member. After the download, you’re up.

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Even people who have no trouble falling asleep can struggle with night wakings. These expert tips will help you figure out what’s waking you up—and how to get back to sleep. 

Rule out medical conditions 

One good first step is to rule out intrinsic sleep disorders, says Dr. Venkata Mukkavilli, a psychiatrist specializing in sleep medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center’s O’Donnell Brain Institute. These can include obstructive sleep apnea—a condition in which a person’s airway becomes blocked, pausing their breathing—and restless leg syndrome, a nervous system disorder characterized by an urge to move one’s legs at night. Signs of obstructive sleep apnea include snoring and waking up gasping.

Read More: How to Sleep When It’s Really Hot Outside

Other chronic medical conditions can also contribute to difficulty staying asleep at night, Mukkavilli says. These include depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, fibromyalgia, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and arthritis. Menopause can also cause night wakings due to hot flashes, as can an enlarged prostate, as it often leads men to urinate more frequently at night. 

Cut out alcohol and limit your caffeine

Even though alcohol might seem like it’s helping you sleep well, it’s probably doing the opposite. “It increases your sleepiness, but decreases your quality of sleep,” Mukkavilli says. People who drink alcohol regularly might fall asleep quickly, but they’ll often wake up in the middle of the night because alcohol can inhibit the body’s ability to enter a deep stage of sleep. It’s also a diuretic, so it can cause people to urinate more.   

It should come as no surprise that you should limit your coffee, tea, and soda intake as well, since caffeine is a stimulant. Schneeberg’s recommendation is to have no more than three or four eight-ounce cups of caffeinated beverages a day, preferably all before noon. “Caffeine has a half-life of three to five hours, so if you have coffee too late in the day, you might still have some caffeine in your bloodstream around bedtime,” she says.

Watch what (and when) you eat

If you find yourself waking up multiple times a night, consider moving your dinnertime earlier, says Dr. Vishesh Kapur, a professor and director of sleep medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. If you eat a very large meal too late at night, the digestion process could wake you up. Spicy foods, acidic foods, and fatty foods are particularly troublesome. 

Schneeberg agrees—she often tells patients to have no large meals within three hours of bedtime. But she’s all in favor of a small bedtime snack, such as toast with peanut butter or oatmeal cookies with milk. “Often it’s comforting, relaxing, and doesn’t give your body too much to digest,” she says.

Read More: How to Get Real Rest

Many people who wake up at night head to the kitchen for a middle-of-the-night munch, but Schneeberg warns against doing this. “[This] is a terrible idea actually, because then you set an alarm to get up and eat in your body,” she says. Eating crackers at 2 a.m. will teach your body to expect them. 

Move up your workout

Exercise is a wonderful way to improve your sleep quality. Research has shown it can help people fall and stay asleep because it increases production of the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, reduces stress, improves mood, and regulates your body’s temperature, which can help you doze off.

But if you find yourself waking up multiple times a night, try not to exercise in the evening, preferably within two hours of bedtime, Mukkavilli says. Research found that intense physical activity late at night can impact sleep quality, likely because it increases your heart rate and body temperature. 

Don’t check your phone

Phones are stimulating, so checking them at night—even just to see what time it is—can keep you up longer. If you find yourself tempted to look at your phone, Kapur recommends leaving it out of your bedroom. 

The same goes for your TV, tablet, laptop, and other electronic devices. Melatonin is produced in the absence of light, Mukkavilli says, so using these devices can inhibit your body’s production of it.

Get out of bed

Most experts recommend staying in bed after night wakings and trying to fall back asleep for 15 to 20 minutes. If you’re still awake after that window, get out of bed and go to a calm, quiet place in your home to do something relaxing like reading, completing a puzzle, or listening to an audiobook, Schneeberg says. (If you find reading particularly soothing, she believes it’s OK to do this activity in bed for up to 30 minutes, as it often helps people fall back asleep.)

Avoid naps when possible

Napping can be an effective way to recharge when you’re tired. But if you’re struggling with night wakings, napping during the day—especially for too long or too late in the day—could impact your nighttime sleep quality. “Generally, if someone is having trouble with getting back to sleep after awakening at night, it’s better not to nap,” Kapur says.

Read More: How to Deal With Sweaty Feet

There are exceptions to this rule. Kapur says naps can be beneficial for people with daytime sleepiness related to obstructive sleep apnea, at least until it’s properly treated. Schneeberg also adds that many older adults tend to need less nighttime sleep as they age, with a nap added in. 

Enhance your environment

Environmental issues are a common cause of night wakings. These could include disruptive noises, like cars driving by; a bedroom that’s too warm (around 65°F is ideal); too much light coming through your window; or movement, such as little kids or pets in your bed. 

Pay attention to whether any of these are waking you up at night, and make adjustments accordingly. For example, if you always wake up because the sun peeks in at 5 a.m., hang up blackout curtains. Or, if you wake up feeling warm, set your thermostat a few degrees cooler the next night. 

Consider doing CBT-I for insomnia

There are three primary types of insomnia: sleep onset insomnia (difficulty falling asleep), sleep maintenance insomnia (difficulty staying asleep), and early waking, a subset of sleep maintenance insomnia, Mukkavilli says. 

If you’ve ruled out medical conditions and have tried to improve your sleep habits, and you’re still struggling with night wakings, consider cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I. “It’s as effective as medication,” Mukkavilli says, and it typically lasts just eight weeks. “Even though it’s a short duration, it can have a lasting effect for the rest of someone’s life.”

Unfortunately, there are only around 150 to 200 sleep therapists who practice CBT-I in the country, Mukkavilli says, so it can be difficult to get an appointment (check this list of providers to get started). If you can’t schedule an appointment right away, there are several online CBT-I tools that are very helpful, Mukkavilli says.

source https://time.com/6985605/how-to-stay-asleep/

The History—and Money—Behind Country Music’s Embrace of the U.S. Military

CMA Fest, the Country Music Association’s (CMA) lucrative annual takeover of downtown Nashville — which produced $75 million in revenue in 2023 — kicks off on Thursday with special events including a live interview with Dolly Parton followed by a program billed as “Enlisted: Where Music Meets Military with Craig Morgan and Gary Sinise.” Morgan, a country singer and U.S. Army veteran, has long made his service a prominent aspect of his public personae, while Sinise has built a reputation in acting and music as a vocal supporter of U.S. troops.

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This combination of musical profits and military promotion is nothing new for the CMA. In fact, it has driven the organization’s business and political aspirations since its founding in 1958. Established as a “chamber of commerce” for country music, the CMA sought to boost the genre’s commercial and political power in the U.S. and around the world, adopting the founding slogan “Best Liked World-Wide.” The organization used its connections to politicians and the U.S. Defense Department to turn that slogan into reality. Together, these forces promoted country music as “America’s music” and cemented a relationship between the genre and the U.S. Armed Forces that continues to shape the country industry’s politics in 2024.  

The effort to rebrand country music and tie it to the U.S.’s Cold War mission began in the early 1950s. In 1951, country music impresario Connie B. Gay booked artist Grandpa Jones on a tour of Japan and South Korea, where he played for an estimated 38,000 U.S. and U.N. troops. Gay, who owned multiple radio and television stations around Washington, D.C., also joined with the U.S. Army and Air Force Recruiting Service to create country music-themed recruitment radio shows. 

The Army found a spokesperson for those efforts in Faron Young, an up-and-coming country artist who was drafted in 1952 just before his break-out single hit the Billboard charts. Taking advantage of this new star in olive drab, Young’s commanding officers excused him from basic training and sent him on the road as the voice of recruitment and entertainment for the Third U.S. Army until he received his discharge in 1954. Country music recruitment campaigns proliferated throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, eventually accounting for more than one-third of all musical recruitment on television.

Read More: The Story Behind Toby Keith’s Controversial 9/11 Anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”

In the mid-1950s, the push from the country industry received a boost from Tennessee’s moderate Democratic Governor Frank G. Clement. At the time, Nashville was gaining prominence as the Music City thanks to its combination of studios, song publishers, and the Grand Ole Opry. Recognizing the commercial impact of country music on his state, Clement launched a public relations campaign to shake off the genre’s previous reputation as hillbilly music and pitch it as a respectable style for modern mid-century consumers. By making the genre seem quintessentially American, he hoped to maximize that sales potential.

In 1956, Clement told a luncheon of the Radio and Television Executives Society that “today’s country music has captured and held the melodies our forefathers sang as they trudged through the tall rhododendron-covered Smokies . . . This was the music of the pioneers.” Clement closed his address to the industry leaders with a conflation of personal taste, country music, and American identity, claiming, “I love country music because when I hear it, I hear America singing.”

The next year, Clement used a televised broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry to promote the idea that country music epitomized patriotism and Americanism. The genre was “just plain good for the people of Tennessee, the nation and the world.” The governor recalled how during World War II and the Korean War, the Opry’s stars had visited the troops, “to bring the message from home — in words and music — to the front lines where America’s homes were being defended.”

But the country music industry and its backers weren’t just boosting military recruiting efforts and visiting the troops as a public service. The business benefited from its ties to the military and the patriotic image it was creating in multiple ways. As the Cold War military grew in size and scope, the country music industry latched onto this well-funded and ever-growing arm of the U.S. government while also cultivating a record-buying audience among U.S. servicemembers.

Nashville’s music leaders first realized the potential for this strategy when recruitment shows delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars to studios and producers on Music Row. Additionally, the CMA cultivated relationships with disc jockeys on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, who played more Nashville artists and positioned country music as patriotic. In 1965, Billboard reported that the U.S. Armed Forces had begun a “campaign in Europe to present country music as ‘an integral part of the American cultural heritage and of the American way of life.’” Officials announced a plan that included a concerted effort to stop the “disparagement of country music,” banning the use of the words “hick” and “hillbilly” to describe the music on air. Instead, the military required disc jockeys to refer to the genre as “country,” “c&w,” or “the music of America.” 

With more country music on the air and the genre gaining a reputation for patriotism, servicemembers began purchasing more country records. The genre accounted for around 65% of the records sold in the U.S. military’s Post Exchange stores across Europe by 1968. Even during the height of the Vietnam War, the CMA could count on Uncle Sam to be a powerful and lucrative promotional partner.

Although the genre painted itself as patriotic and tied itself to the military, country music wasn’t partisan. Politicians of all stripes jumped at the opportunity to campaign with and earn endorsements from country artists in the Vietnam era. At the presidential level, everyone from conservatives Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon to liberals Lyndon Johnson, Edmund Muskie, and George McGovern rushed to recruit country artists for their campaigns. Country music provided a down-home, patriotic soundtrack for these candidates.

Read More: Beyoncé Is Boldly Defying Country’s Stereotypes

In return, country music executives and artists rubbed elbows with the country’s most powerful politicians. And, by playing to both sides of the partisan line, the country music industry hoped to sell records to all listeners within the broad ideological span of the Cold War consensus, who saw U.S. military might as a necessary defense against potential communist threats.

By the country music boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, country artists and CMA officials could be found partying at Jimmy Carter’s White House but also serving in the administration of Ronald Reagan. Of course, George H.W. Bush campaigned alongside the pro-military Lee Greenwood, and U.S. troops embraced his song “God Bless the U.S.A.” as an anthem during the Gulf War.

The reason the genre could swing left, right, and center in these ways was that politicians and government institutions had worked so hard to label country as America’s music, despite the fact that it was no more or less American than other genres like blues, jazz, or R&B. However, country was whiter than any other intrinsically American style, a reminder of how the white supremacy of U.S. politics and music could reinforce each other.

Since 9/11 and the War on Terror, the country music industry’s close relationship with the military and songs like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” have skewed the perception of the genre and its homebase in Nashville as bastions of political conservatism. In 2020, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire relocated to Music City in search of a more hospitable home. When right-wing artist Jason Aldean’s sings about vigilantism he seems to march in step with conservative Tennessee politicians like Senator Marsha Blackburn and Governor Bill Lee to define MAGA country music values.

Meanwhile, country’s few outspokenly liberal performers like Maren Morris, Jason Isbell, and the Chicks remind listeners that not every artist in the genre supports the rightward drift of the music’s culture. But it’s an uphill battle for those musicians. The country industry’s support for the military too often reads as inherently conservative in the current political landscape where Aldean sells shirts that insist “Military Lives Matter” and Greenwood sells “God Bless the U.S.A.” Bibles with the endorsement of Donald Trump.

It’s tempting to see the CMA Fest’s “Enlisted” program with Morgan and Sinise as another part of country music’s conservative Republican identity. Yet doing so would neglect the deeper roots of the CMA’s affiliation with the U.S. Armed Forces. The CMA’s inclusion of a military-themed event is a part of a long effort to brand country music as “America’s music.” It’s a campaign that has yielded not just the political power that comes with currying favor with presidents but record-setting profits for generations.

Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University. His first book, Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (The University of North Carolina Press, 2024), traces the economic, political, and cultural connections between the country music business and the U.S. military since World War II.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/6985662/country-music-patriotism-military-money/

Beau Biden’s Widow Takes the Stand in Hunter Biden’s Gun Trial

(WILMINGTON, Del.) — The widow of Hunter Biden’s brother, Beau, testified Thursday in his federal gun trial that she found his crack at her Wilmington, Delaware, house, saw him use the illicit drug and eventually starting abusing it herself.

“Where did he get the drugs from?” prosecutor Leo Wise asked.

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“Various dealers,” replied Hallie Biden, who had a brief romantic relationship with Hunter following her husband’s death. She was sometimes with Hunter when he met dealers.

Federal prosecutors have argued that Hunter Biden was in the throes of a heavy addiction when he bought the gun at the center of the case. They have accused him of lying on a government form. He’s been charged with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.

Hunter Biden, who has pleaded not guilty, has said the Justice Department is bending to political pressure from Republicans and that he’s being unfairly targeted.

Much of the prosecution’s case so far has been dedicated to highlighting the seriousness of his crack addiction and showcasing to jurors bare-chested moments with ex-girlfriends, infidelity and crack pipes — judgment lapses they believe prove he was actively using when he checked “no” on the form. Prosecutors argue that the evidence is necessary to show his state of mind when he bought the gun.

Hallie Biden took the gun from Hunter and tossed it into the garbage at a nearby market, afraid of what he might do with it. The weapon was later found by someone collecting cans and eventually turned over to police. Her text exchange with Hunter Biden shortly after he bought the gun is also part of the prosecution’s evidence.

Read More: Hunter Biden Is on Trial for Gun Charges. Here’s What to Know

The prosecution played surveillance footage showing her dumping the gun in the trash.

“I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was panicking,” she said.

Wise asked Hallie about a 2018 trip to California, where she visited Hunter at the Roosevelt Hotel, and asked her whether she was also using drugs.

“Yes, I was,” she said.

“And who introduced you to it?’” the prosecutor asked.

“Hunter did,” Hallie said as Hunter rested his face on his left hand and looked down.

“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I regret that period of my life,” Hallie said.

Hallie said she stopped using drugs in August 2018, but that Hunter continued smoking crack.

The Democratic president’s son arrived at court Thursday with a copy of his memoir, “Beautiful Things,” tucked under his arm. The book, written after he got sober in 2021, figures heavily into prosecutors’ case: They’ve played audio excerpts for jurors in which he details his descent into drugs and alcohol following the death of his brother in 2015.

Jurors at Hunter Biden’s criminal trial heard more Thursday from the former gun store clerk who sold him the .38-caliber Colt revolver.

The clerk testified Wednesday that he watched as President Joe Biden’s son answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of or addicted to” marijuana, stimulants, narcotics or any other controlled substance.

Gordon Cleveland, the former clerk at StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply, told jurors he walked Hunter Biden through a few options before he settled on the $900 gun, and he watched Biden sign the form, which includes a warning about the consequences of submitting false information.

“Everything he bought, he ultimately decided on,” he told jurors.

In his cross-examination Thursday, defense attorney Abbe Lowell pointed out that some of the questions on the form are in the present tense, such as “are you an unlawful user of or addicted to” drugs. He has suggested Hunter Biden did not believe he had an active drug problem.

Other questions are in the past tense, such as asking the potential gun buyer whether he or she has ever been discharged from the military or been adjudicated as a mental defective.

The proceedings are unfolding after the collapse of a plea deal that would have resolved the gun charge and a separate tax case, and spared the Biden family the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. First lady Jill Biden spent several days in court before joining President Joe Biden in France for the D-Day anniversary. Allies worry about the toll the proceedings will take on the president, who is deeply concerned about the health and sustained sobriety of his only living son.

Read More: ‘We Are the World Power.’ How Joe Biden Leads

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s friends and family are being called to testify.

Kathleen Buhle, who was married to Hunter Biden for 20 years, told jurors Wednesday that she discovered her husband was using drugs when she found a crack pipe in an ashtray on their porch on July 3, 2015, a day after their anniversary. When she confronted him, “he acknowledged smoking crack,” she said.

Buhle testified that even before she found the drugs, she suspected he was using. He had been kicked out of the Navy after testing positive for cocaine.

“I was definitely worried, scared,” she said. They have three children and divorced in 2016 after his infidelity and drug abuse became too much, according to her memoir, “If We Break,” about the dissolution of their marriage.

Buhle, who was subpoenaed, was on the stand for a brief 20 minutes. She remained composed but seemed upset as she recounted how she searched his car about a dozen times for drugs, whenever the children were driving it.

Prosecutors also called Zoe Kestan, who testified under immunity about meeting Hunter Biden in December 2017 at a strip club in New York where she worked. During a private session, he pulled out a pipe and began smoking what she assumed was crack.

“He was incredibly charming and charismatic and friendly, and I felt really safe around him,” she said. “I remember after he had smoked it, nothing had changed. He was the same charming person.”

Kestan detailed for jurors when she saw him use drugs, buy drugs, talk about drugs or possess drug paraphernalia. Prosecutors asked her where he stored his drugs and pipes, and she testified he kept them in pouches and other places, such as sunglasses cases.

On cross-examination, Kestan acknowledged that she had no contact with him in October 2018, the period when he bought the gun.

Prosecutors have also used his own words as evidence through his memoir and text messages he sent to friends and family. The memoir covers the period he bought the gun, though it doesn’t mention the weapon specifically.

Lowell has said Hunter Biden’s state of mind was different when he wrote the book than when he purchased the gun, when he didn’t believe he had an addiction. And he’s suggested Hunter Biden might have felt he had a drinking problem at the time, but not a drug problem. Alcohol abuse doesn’t preclude a gun purchase.

If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it’s unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.

He’s also facing a separate trial in September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes.

In Congress, Republicans have for months pursued an impeachment inquiry seeking to tie President Biden to his son’s business dealings. So far, GOP lawmakers have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating President Biden in any wrongdoing. But on Wednesday, House Republicans accused Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden of making false statements to Congress as part of the inquiry.

The trial is unfolding shortly after Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was convicted of 34 felonies in New York City. The two criminal cases are unrelated, but their proximity underscores how the courts have taken center stage during the 2024 campaign.

___

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/6986245/beau-biden-widow-hunter-gun-trial/

Man Charged in Gilgo Beach Serial Killings Allegedly Kept Document to ‘Blueprint’ Crimes

(RIVERHEAD, N.Y.) — The New York architect previously accused of killing four women and leaving their corpses scattered along a coastal highway was charged Thursday in the deaths of two more after prosecutors said they gathered new DNA evidence and found a computer document he had used to “blueprint” his crimes.

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Rex Heuermann, 60, appeared before a judge on the eastern end of Long Island to face charges that he killed Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla, two young women who were long suspected of being the victims of men preying on sex workers.

Taylor disappeared in 2003. Costilla was killed in 1993. The new charges came just days after police finished extensive searches of Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home and a wooded area on Long Island tied to the investigation of a string of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings.

In a court filing, prosecutors said were able to use new forensic testing methods to match hairs found on or near the vicinity of both victims to a DNA profile that is a likely match to Heuermann. Additionally, prosecutors say they discovered a “planning document” on the hard drive found in his basement used to “methodically blueprint” his killings.

The document includes Heuermann’s concerns about leaving behind forensic evidence, guidance for cleaning and washing bodies, and notes on how to improve “next time,” according to the bail application.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty at the court hearing and was ordered held without bail.

Read More: Our Fascination With the Serial Killer Next Door

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney planned to hold a news conference following the court hearing.

The charges involving Costilla, who was killed 30 years ago, indicate that prosecutors believe Heuermann was killing victims for much longer longer than previously thought. Prosecutors say one entry in the planning documents suggested he was involved in the death of another woman, Valerie Mack, who was found dismembered in the same vicinity as Taylor. Heuermann has not been charged in the death of Mack, who disappeared in 2000.

Since late 2010, police have been investigating the deaths of at least 10 people — mostly female sex workers — whose remains were discovered along an isolated highway not far from Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s south shore.

The victims had disappeared over a span of at least 14 years. Vexed police officers made only halting progress in identifying possible suspects. Investigators long said it was likely that not all of the deaths were the work of the same killer. Some of the victims disappeared in the mid-1990s. Investigators concluded that an 11th person who disappeared in 2010 from the barrier island community of Oak Beach had accidentally drowned.

Heuermann, who lived across a bay from where the bodies were found, was arrested last July. Prosecutors said a new investigative task force used mobile phone location data and DNA samples to link the architect to some of the victims. He was charged with killing four of the women: Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

Investigators who had searched Heuermann’s home extensively and dug up his yard last summer returned to the house again last month and spent nearly a week searching it again. They focused their efforts mostly in the basement, according to a lawyer for Heuermann’s wife.

That followed a search in April of a wooded area in Manorville, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Heuermann’s home, linked to another Gilgo Beach victim.

Jessica Taylor, 20, vanished in 2003 while working as an escort in New York City. Some of her remains were discovered in Manorville that year. Other remains were found in a 2011 search of the beach scrub by the side of Ocean Parkway, the road where the other Gilgo Beach victims were found.

Investigators in April also spent days searching a property in the eastern Long Island hamlet of North Sea, where the Costilla’s body was discovered in 1993. Costilla was 28 when she was killed and had lived in New York City.

A decade ago, Suffolk County prosecutors said publicly that they believed Costilla had been killed by a carpenter who lived in the area, John Bittrolff, who was convicted of murdering two other women whose bodies had been found on the same part of Long Island. But Bittrolff was never charged with Costilla’s death due to lack of evidence. He insists he is innocent of any murders.

Heuermann’s lawyer and the lawyers separately representing his wife and two adult children declined to comment.

Heuermann, who has been in custody since his arrest, has pleaded not guilty. He had been set to return to court on July 30 for a status hearing. No trial date has been set.

source https://time.com/6986227/gilgo-beach-serial-killer-new-charges/

The Tale of the Tuskegee Airmen Is Poignantly Told in a New Documentary

Frank Moody was prepared to give up his life over the battlefields of Europe. What he didn’t bargain for was giving up his life over Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. But on April 11, 1944, that’s what happened when Moody, a Black Tuskegee Airman, was flying a training run with three other pilots in his P-39 fighter and his plane suddenly augured in, crashing into the deep Huron waters. Fifty-four days later, his body washed ashore, but it was not until 70 years to the day after the crash—on April 11, 2014—that divers discovered the wreckage of the plane.

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The cause of the accident that claimed the young lieutenant was always a mystery. Ten years of salvage work and accident forensics, however, finally pinpointed the cause as a breakdown in the forward machine guns’ interruptor—a timing device that pauses the firing of the bullets in the fraction of a second when the propeller is spinning in front of the gun barrel. In the case of Moody’s plane, holes in the propeller proved that the interruptor failed, dooming him to a tragic end before he ever left to fight for his country.

Many other Black men made that journey and braved that fighting. From 1941 to 1946, close to 1,000 African American pilots were trained as Tuskegee airmen, back in the days before Jan. 26, 1948, when Pres. Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the American armed forces. Now, Moody’s story, and that of the Tuskegee airmen as a whole, are being told in a National Geographic special, The Real Red Tails, which premiered May 31. Told with archival films, Lake Huron dive footage, and interviews with surviving airmen, the special is equal parts tribute, tone poem, and historical object lesson—one that tells the tale of what the airmen called their Double-V campaign: victory over facism abroad and victory over racism at home.

“I tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps, and they didn’t want me. I had to be drafted,” retired Lt. Col. James Harvey, who will turn 101 in July, told TIME. “The commanding general of the Air Force did not want us in his Air Corps.”

What the commander wanted and the country needed were two different things, however, and with the U.S. mobilizing for a massive, two-front war, the military could not afford to sideline the 9.8% of the population that was Black. Still, there were massive hurdles to overcome, beyond the officially sanctioned segregation of the armed forces. As the film shows, a 1925 document on the suitability of Blacks for military service was awful and unsparing in its racism.

“He is,” read the ostensibly learned analysis of African American males, “by nature subservient [and] mentally inferior.” He is “susceptible to crowd psychology,” “cannot control himself in the face of danger,” and does not have “the initiative, courage, and resourcefulness of the white man.”

It was Pres. Franklin Roosevelt who started the first Black fighter squadron, the 99th pursuit squadron, in January of 1941, in part as a bid for the Black vote in the 1944 election. It didn’t hurt either Roosevelt’s or Black Americans’ cause that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt famously traveled to Tuskegee to be photographed in a plane with an African American airman.

Still, the fight was uphill for the men of the 99th. Harvey recalls that even after establishing himself as a qualified pilot, he had to practice twice in a training plane just to prove he could fly, while white servicemen were not made to jump through that same hoop. His white wing commander once asked him what he wanted to be called, and Harvey looked at the man with stupefaction. “I said, ‘I’m a first lieutenant, so how about Lieutenant Harvey?’” he told TIME.

In the documentary, Harvey also recalls training on the Tuskegee military base, which he describes as “a Jim Crow base in a Jim Crow city.” When he went into town one day, the sheriff made it clear just how welcome his presence was, telling him, “If I find you back in town I’ll blow your brains out.”

Still, Harvey flew and fought bravely for his country. He was at the dock preparing to ship out overseas when word came down that the war in Italy had ended and the rest of Europe was likely to follow, so the men of his detachment remained stateside. He did not see combat until the Korean War, when he flew 126 combat sorties in just 89 days, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and numerous Air Medals. He came close to losing his life like Moody, during one mission when he was peeling off at a nearly vertical angle after strafing a town and a burst of anti-aircraft fire caught the fuel tank on the tip of his wing. 

“My wing man said he saw this big ball of fire about the size of a basketball hit my tank,” he says. “Lucky for me I was turning, or I wouldn’t be here today.”

But he is here today, and that is a gift to history. Ultimately, Harvey served 22 years in the military before retiring to work for the Oscar Mayer company. That, however, was not his first choice. He originally interviewed to be a commercial airline pilot, but was told that the company had an age cutoff of 35, and he was 42.

“I said OK, if that’s their policy, that’s their policy,” he says. As it turned out, it wasn’t their policy. Sixteen years later he spoke to a white pilot who was hired by the same airline at about the same time and was also over 35. 

“The light went on,” Harvey says. “They didn’t want passengers to get in the aircraft, gaze in the cockpit, and see a person of color behind the controls.”

Given his druthers, Harvey would still be at the controls. The Real Red Tails ends with him and another very elderly airman walking out of a hangar, shot from behind, laughing about the fact that they would take a nearby Cessna up today if they could. They can’t, of course. But while they may have flown their last, they have not spoken their last. The story they tell in the new documentary is one of a nation slowly, haltingly, imperfectly getting right with itself and its history—and honoring a thousand of its heroes in the process.

source https://time.com/6985609/tuskegee-airmen-real-red-tails-james-harvey-interview/