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1 dead and 13 injured after semitrailer intentionally crashed into Texas public safety office
Updated: Apr 12, 2024 / 02:51 PM PDT
BRENHAM, Texas (AP) — A Texas semitrailer driver rammed a stolen 18-wheeler through the front of a public safety building where his renewal for a commercial driver’s license had been rejected, killing one person and injuring 13 others, authorities said Friday.
The intentional crash into the single-story brick building off a highway in Brenham, a rural town outside of Houston, littered debris in the parking lot and left a gaping hole in the entrance. The crash damaged the front of the red semitrailer, which was hauling materials on a flatbed.
After crashing into the building the first time, the driver backed up the truck with the intention of smashing it again before being detained, Brenham Mayor Atwood Kenjura said.
“It’s unfortunate that we are here gathered for a really senseless tragedy,” Kenjura said.
The driver — identified as Clenard Parker, 42 — was pulled out of the truck by authorities at the Texas Department of Public Safety office. Authorities say Parker was taken into custody but did not say which charges he would face.
On Thursday, Parker was told by employees at the office that he would not be eligible to renew his commercial driver’s license, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Justin Ruiz said. He did not elaborate as to why Parker’s renewal was rejected.
One employee in the building was trapped “for a period of time” after the crash but no one who worked at the driver’s license officer suffered serious injuries, Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst said.
Following the crash, two people were flown to a hospital in Bryan and another to Houston. Three people were transported to local hospitals but later released, and eight people others were treated on the scene.
A heavy presence of police surrounded the building and drivers were urged to steer clear of the area on Friday. Brenham, a city of about 19,000 residents, is about 80 miles (128 kilometers) miles west of Houston.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is a sprawling agency and one of the largest state law enforcement operations in the country. It includes troopers who are a central part of a massive border security operation on the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the Texas Rangers, the state’s top criminal investigators. But the department also has offices across the state that issue driver’s licenses.
https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/ap-commercial-vehicle-crashes-into-texas-department-of-public-safety-office-multiple-people-injured/
Roberto Cavalli, legendary maximalist fashion designer, dead at 83
Updated April 12, 2024, 4:19 p.m. ET
Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli has died. He was 83.
“It is with great sadness that today we say our final goodbyes to our founder Roberto Cavalli,” his namesake brand announced in a statement on Instagram Friday.
“From humble beginnings in Florence, Roberto succeeded in becoming a globally recognised name loved and respected by all. Naturally talented and creative, Roberto believed that everyone can discover and nurture the artist within themselves.
“Roberto Cavalli’s legacy will live on via his creativity, his love of nature and via his family who he cherished.”
Cavalli’s cause of death was not immediately shared.
The legendary maximalist was known for his love of bright colors, animal print and bejeweled designs worn by celebrities from Zendaya to Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Rita Ora, the Spice Girls and more. His creations included skin-baring designs, embellishments, exotic motifs and all manner of bold accents that made a Cavalli look instantly recognizable.
Cavalli was a fan of the phrase “excess is success” — and the motto was apparent in his work as well as his personal sensibilities, including his purple metallic yacht, among many other cherished items.
He launched his brand in 1970 after studying at the Art Institute of Florence. He later invented and patented his own printing process on leather and quickly opened shop in St. Tropez, where he gained notoriety for his leather goods.
Cavalli shared children Tommaso and Cristina with his first wife, Silvanella Giannoni, whom he married in 1964. Ten years later, the couple divorced.
He was married to pageant queen Eva Maria Düringer — whom he met while serving as a judge at Miss Universe in the Dominican Republic, where she was a contestant — from 1980 until 2010, and the pair share three children: Robert, Rachele and Daniele. Düringer was also a fashion designer and was named creative director of his brand in 1994.
Cavalli had been dating model Sandra Nilsson-Bergman, 38, since 2014, and, earlier this year, she gave birth to his sixth child, Giorgio.
The Italian star’s talents expanded well past clothing, with Cavalli opening up clubs and cafés as well as designing home furnishings like wallpaper, furniture, textiles and more. A penthouse he designed completely was even featured on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” when Heather and Terry Dubrow purchased the $14 million Los Angeles property — the first Cavalli had ever done in the United States — in an episode of the Bravo show last year.
He also penned an autobiography called “Just Me!” in 2014, discussing the hardships of his life and his rags to riches story.
In 2015, as Cavalli slowly exited the fashion industry, selling a majority stake in the eponymous brand and giving up creative control, Peter Dundas was named creative director and was succeeded by Paul Surridge in 2017. In 2020, Sicilian star Fausto Puglisi took over the collections.
Puglisi honored Cavalli on Instagram, writing, “Dear Roberto, you may not be physically here with us anymore but I know I will feel your spirit with me always. It is the greatest honour of my career to work under your legacy and to create for the brand you founded with such vision and style.
“Rest in peace you will be missed and you are loved by so many that your name will continue on, a beacon of inspiration for others, and especially for me.”
https://pagesix.com/2024/04/12/style/fashion-designer-roberto-cavalli-dead-at-83/
Robert MacNeil, Creator and First Anchor of PBS 'NewsHour' Nightly Newscast, Dies at 93
12 April 2024 01:56 PM EDT
Robert MacNeil, who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” in the 1970s and co-anchored the show with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday. He was 93.
MacNeil died of natural causes at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, according to his daughter, Alison MacNeil.
MacNeil first gained prominence for his coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings for the public broadcasting service and began his half-hour “Robert MacNeil Report” on PBS in 1975 with his friend Lehrer as Washington correspondent.
The broadcast became the “MacNeil-Lehrer Report” and then, in 1983, was expanded to an hour and renamed the “MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.” The nation's first one-hour evening news broadcast, and recipient of several Emmy and Peabody awards, it remains on the air today with Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz as anchors.
It was MacNeil’s and Lehrer’s disenchantment with the style and content of rival news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC that led to the program’s creation.
“We don’t need to SELL the news,” MacNeil told the Chicago Tribune in 1983. “The networks hype the news to make it seem vital, important. What’s missing (in 22 minutes) is context, sometimes balance, and a consideration of questions that are raised by certain events.”
MacNeil left anchoring duties at “NewsHour” after two decades in 1995 to write full time. Lehrer took over the newscast alone, and he remained there until 2009. Lehrer died in 2020.
When MacNeil visited the show in October 2005 to commemorate its 30th anniversary, he reminisced about how their newscast started in the days before cable television.
“It was a way to do something that seemed to be needed journalistically and yet was different from what the commercial network news (programs) were doing,” he said.
MacNeil wrote several books, including two memoirs “The Right Place at the Right Time” and the best seller “Wordstruck,” and the novels “Burden of Desire” and “The Voyage.”
“Writing is much more personal. It is not collaborative in the way that television must be,” MacNeil told The Associated Press in 1995. “But when you’re sitting down writing a novel, it’s just you: Here’s what I think, here’s what I want to do. And it’s me.”
MacNeil also created the Emmy-winning 1986 series “The Story of English,” with the MacNeil-Lehrer production company, and was co-author of the companion book of the same name.
Another book on language that he co-wrote, “Do You Speak American?,” was adapted into a PBS documentary in 2005.
In 2007, he served as host of “America at a Crossroads,” a six-night PBS package exploring challenges confronting the United States in a post-9/11 world.
Six years before the 9/11 attacks, discussing sensationalism and frivolity in the news business, he had said: “If something really serious did happen to the nation — a stock market crash like 1929, … the equivalent of a Pearl Harbor — wouldn’t the news get very serious again? Wouldn’t people run from `Hard Copy’ and titillation?”
“Of course you would. You’d have to know what was going on.”
That was the case — for a while.
Born in Montreal in 1931, MacNeil was raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1955 before moving to London where he began his journalism career with Reuters. He switched to TV news in 1960, taking a job with NBC in London as a foreign correspondent.
In 1963, MacNeil was transferred to NBC’s Washington bureau, where he reported on Civil Rights and the White House. He covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas and spent most of 1964 following the presidential campaign between Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, and Republican Barry Goldwater.
In 1965, MacNeil became the New York anchor of the first half-hour weekend network news broadcast, “The Scherer-MacNeil Report” on NBC. While in New York, he also anchored local newscasts and several NBC news documentaries, including “The Big Ear” and “The Right to Bear Arms.”
MacNeil returned to London in 1967 as a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Panorama” series. While with the BBC, be covered such U.S. stories as the clash between anti-war demonstrators and the Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the funerals of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Sen. Robert Kennedy and President Dwight Eisenhower.
In 1971, MacNeil left the BBC to become a senior correspondent for PBS, where he teamed up with Lehrer to co-anchor public television’s Emmy-winning coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/robert-macneil-pbs-newshour/2024/04/12/id/1160785/