Also on today’s menu:
Gilmanton Among Towns Receiving Grants For Body Cams
Disorder In The House Threatens Federal Shutdown
Zelenskyy To UN: ‘Evil Must Be Stopped’
A painting purchased for $4 at the Manchester Savers thrift store turned out to be one painted by N.C. Wyeth, the father of painter Andrew Wyeth. On Tuesday, the painting sold at auction for $150,000.
The woman who had purchased the dusty oil-on-panel work had stored it in her closet, but when she pulled it out to clean it, she noticed the signature on the back of the painting and posted an image of the work to a Facebook page dedicated to the Wyeth family of artists. She learned that it was an original painting from the 1930s titled “Ramona” which captures the tension between a woman and her foster mother. Wyeth had created it for a 1939 edition of a novel of the same name by Helen Hunt Jackson.
Whoever owned the painting for the past several decades is unknown and it is uncertain how it came to be offered for sale in the Manchester discount store. Neither the woman who bought it there nor the buyer at the auction have been publicly identified.
Gilmanton Among Towns Receiving Grants For Body Cams
The Gilmanton Police Department will receive $33,800 in a matching grant from the New Hampshire Department of Safety as it distributes money from the Body-Worn and Dashboard Camera Fund, created in 2021 to help police departments purchase the equipment.
In all, the state gave $134,833 to six police departments. The others are the Chester Police Department, which will receive $50,000; Newport Police Department, $15,477; Northumberland Police Department, $15,033; Nottingham Police Department, $19,980; and Springfield Police Department, $543. Seven departments had applied for the grants but one withdrew its application.
Helping police departments purchase body cameras came out of the recommendations by the Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community, and Transparency, known as the LEACT Commission. Governor Chris Sununu had formed the commission in response to the push for police reform after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.
Disorder In The House Threatens Federal Shutdown
With time running out for Congress to pass legislation to keep the federal government open, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is warning extreme conservatives that no party wins with a closure. However, with the House insisting on more severe budget cuts than McCarthy and President Joe Biden Jr. had worked out in a compromise proposal, whatever the House comes up with is almost certain to face Senate rejection. Democrats and most Republican Senators want to keep the government operating.
House Republicans are in such disarray that they voted against their own defense bill, 212-214. The ultra-conservatives have rejected McCarthy’s latest proposal, which would impose steep spending cuts of more than 8% on many government services, saying they are not severe enough, but the White House said it would lead to fewer border patrol agents, school teachers and aides, Meals on Wheels for seniors, and Head Start slots for children, among other cutbacks.
A bipartisan group of senators has been approving their own spending bills, some of which are more expensive than the Biden-McCarthy agreement.
Zelenskyy To UN: ‘Evil Must Be Stopped’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the United Nations General Assembly to prevent Russia from “pushing the world to the final war”, declaring, “Evil cannot be trusted,” as he urged the world to unite and end Russian aggression against his country.
Zelenskyy accused Russia of weaponizing everything from food to energy. “Weaponization must be restrained, war crimes must be punished, deported people must come back home, and the occupier must return to their own land,” he said.
President Joe Biden Jr. had commented earlier, “Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalize Ukraine without consequence. If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi took Russia’s side, saying, “The United States of America has fanned the flames of violence in Ukraine in order to weaken the European countries. This is a long-term plan, unfortunately.”
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