Also on today’s menu:
Arrested Protester Will Not Be Charged
Making Sense Of What’s Happening In Russia
Police Shooting Sparks Riots In France
A multi-agency search for a missing person on June 26 ended with the recovery of a body identified as Anthony Costa, 45, of Tilton.
The missing person call came in at 2:47 p.m., and divers from New Hampshire Fish and Game recovered Costa’s body from Lake Winnisquam near Mosquito Bridge at 4:45 p.m. The New Hampshire State Police Marine Patrol launched a craft from Winnisquam Marine and brought the body back to shore.
Personnel from the Belmont Fire Department assisted in the search.
Arrested Protester Will Not Be Charged
Terese Grinnell Bastarache of Loudon says she intends to sue the state after charges against her were dropped. A nurse and a leader of We the People NH, Batarache and eight other anti-vaccine protesters were charged with disrupting an October 2021 meeting of the Executive Council where officials were discussing a $27 million federal grant to help administer COVID-19 vaccines.
Court documents allege that Basterache had yelled “amen” during the meeting.
Department of Safety Public Information Officer Tyler Dumont said the state opted not to move forward with the charges “because the prosecution did not believe they could prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
At the time of the arrests, State Police said, “The Department of Safety respects the protected right to peacefully protest in accordance with all State laws. The individuals arrested at today’s Governor and Council meeting failed to comply with a lawful order from the NH State Police and intentionally disrupted the meeting.”
Making Sense Of What’s Happening In Russia
Ukrainian officials say Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to mount a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and last weekend’s mutiny by the Wagner group, including Yevgeny Prigozhin’s denunciation of the Kremlin's justifications for the war, have removed what remained of Putin’s chances of hanging onto power.
“Without doubt, he is facing the most serious challenge to his authority since he first became president in 2000,” writes the BBC.
The Free Press today made an attempt to make sense of the current situation in Russia, and its post contains useful links to various news stories and commentary. “What was clear, looking at the handheld videos and selfies coming out of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, was something is happening in Russia. But what exactly that was — or what it meant — was not at all clear,” wrote Bari Weiss, Peter Savodnik, and Julia Steinberg.
President Biden said Monday it’s “too early” to say how U.S. policy vis-à-vis the ongoing war in Ukraine will change, if at all, in the wake of whatever just went down in Russia. It may be that many things are happening, and we just don’t know. (“Good foreign policy is often invisible,” the political scientists James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders have noted.) But it can’t be a total coincidence that the Pentagon announced Tuesday it’s sending another $500 million in Stinger and Patriot air-defense missiles, among other weapons, to Kyiv. The Russian war effort just sustained a body blow; the hawks in Washington see an opening that didn’t exist just last week. On top of that, the Ukrainians appear to be pushing on with their counteroffensive.
Police Shooting Sparks Riots In France
A series of protests broke out in Nanterre, the area just west of Paris, on June 27 after French police shot a teenager identified as Nahel during a traffic stop. Some 31 protesters were arrested.
French media report that police initially suggested the teen drove his car toward them with the intention of hurting them, but videos posted online and verified by the AFP news agency show two officers at the vehicle. One points his weapon at the driver through the window and appears to fire at point-blank range as he tries to drive off. Nahel died of bullet wounds in the chest despite help from emergency services.
Nahel is the second person this year in France to have been killed in a police shooting during a traffic stop. Last year, a record 13 people died that way.
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