12th American Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances in Dominican Republic

An American tourist from New Jersey died while on vacation in the Dominican Republic, the 12th American to perish there in the last 12 months under suspicious circumstances. Joseph Allen, 55, was found dead in his hotel room after complaining about being hot. A U.S. State Department official confirmed to ABC that Allen died on June 13.

Allen’s sister Jamie Reed said that Allen was with friends celebrating one of their birthdays. He was staying at the Terra Linda Resort in the town of Sosua. Allen “complained about being hot at the pool. He said he was going to his room to take a shower,” friends relayed to Reed. “When his friends came back, he said he wasn’t feeling 100 percent again, and said he was going to lie down for the night. The next morning his friend said he hadn’t heard from Joe before breakfast, so he knocked on his door and there was no response.” Hotel employees were alerted and opened the door, finding Allen dead. “They found him on the floor,” Reed said. “He had been there for a while. Rigor mortis had set in, and he was cold.” Like many of the other American tourists who have died or been found dead in the Caribbean country, Allen was healthy, his sister said. She’s working on getting the body back to the United States. “I just don’t want them to suppress anything,” Reed said.

The death of Allen came three days after a New York woman became the eleventh tourist to die in the Dominican Republic under circumstances family members and some doctors have described as suspicious. Leyla Cox, 53, traveled to the Excellence Resort in Punta Cana earlier this month to celebrate her birthday. She died on June 10. The resort, where rooms run around $300 a night, initially said that Cox became sick and was taken to a hospital. In a new statement, the resort told CNN that Cox actually died in her hotel room. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack. Many of the suspicious deaths have listed a heart attack as the cause of death. Allen’s death is the first to be reported at Terra Linda or Sosua. Many of the deaths and reported sicknesses have occurred in Punta Cana or La Romana, in the eastern part of the country.

The earliest death has been reported as Yvette Monique Sport, a 51-year-old Pennsylvania woman who collapsed at the Bahia Principe resort in Punta Cana in June 2018. Maryland resident David Harrison died the next month at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in the same town. In August 2018, 56-year-old Terrence Richmond passed away; it wasn’t clear where he was staying at the time of his death. Jerry Curran, a 78-year-old Ohio resident, died after traveling to the Dominican Republic in January at Dreams Resort in Punta Cana. Robert Bell Wallace, a 67-year-old California man, passed away at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in April.

During the same month, “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran’s brother John died, she said on June 12. Officials there said his cause of death was a heart attack but Corcoran said she still hasn’t seen documents and doesn’t know if an autopsy was done. Pennsylvania woman Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, died suddenly on May 25 at the Bahia Principe Bouganville while Maryland couple Cynthia Day, 49, and Nathaniel Holmes, 63, were found dead in their room at the nearby Grand Bahia Principe La Romana five days later. And a Pennsylvania yoga teacher, 42-year-old Surely Miller, was found dead about two nautical miles from the beach where she was swimming on June 11.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/12th-american-dies-under-suspicious-circumstances-in-dominican-republic_2967000.html

>>6773778

The advisory is a level 2 it should be higher imho

>>6773970

I really can't understand why they are dragging their feet. There has to be more to this than we are being told.

>>6774058

This is interesting..wonder if there is any connection with Cory Booker's I am Spartacus, they seem eerily similar.

Closing Arguments Commence in NXIVM Trial

NEW YORK—Closing arguments in the high-profile trial of the leader of the NXIVM secret society, Keith Raniere, began on June 17 as a federal prosecutor told jurors how his tactics “destroyed their victims’ sense of self.” At a packed Brooklyn federal court assistant U.S. Attorney Moira Penza alluded to the prosecution’s May 7 opening statements, telling the jury of eight men and four women that Raniere was chiefly after “sex, money, power.” Penza brought up testimony of former NXIVM members, including one identified by prosecutors as “Daniela” who had spoke about being locked up in a room for nearly two years after Raniere found out she had kissed another man. Another member, identified as Sylvie, testified about being forced into a sex act with the leader, as another, a senior board member, detailed Raniere’s manipulation and fraud. “Even though his community members considered him a humanitarian, leader, mentor, and guru, you saw him for what he was: a con-man, a predator, and a crime boss,” Penza told jurors. Penza detailed the crimes committed by Raniere over a 15-year period. The organization was founded by him in 1998.

The accusations against Raniere center around a secret society he allegedly created in 2015 named DOS, an acronym for the Latin “dominus obsequious sororium,” loosely translated as “master of the slave women.” Prosecutors say Raniere forced other members—all women—to have sex with him. Members were recruited by DOS on the condition that they would give up personal, often embarrassing, information about themselves, including compromising images or videos, as “collateral.” Once inside, members were regularly required to provide additional collateral to ensure that they kept the group’s activities secret. A number of alleged former “slaves” were also in court on June 17, including actress India Oxenberg, who is the granddaughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. India did not testify in the trial.

Raniere faces a maximum sentence of life in prison for seven criminal counts, including sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and racketeering. Many of the DOS slaves were branded with a cauterizing pen while naked and being filmed. The prosecution went through the charges in court, telling jurors of the ample evidence proving Raniere’s guilt. Penza said Raniere also turned “victims into victimizers” as the five other co-defendants in the case have all pleaded guilty.

At the packed court room, Penza also brought up added child pornography charges against Raniere, who had it stored on a hard drive. “The evidence is overwhelming that [the girl] was under 18 when the naked pictures were taken,” Penza told the court. DOS masqueraded as a women’s empowerment group. But members testified they wouldn’t have joined if they had known Raniere was running it. “The defendant did not create DOS to be a sisterhood,” Penza said. “…Can there really be any doubt that DOS was just a way for the defendant to get what he wanted and for sex? “These women had the best of intentions. They wanted good in the world and that was what was used against them,” Penza

continued.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/closing-arguments-commence-in-nxivm-trial_2966997.html

Top Melania Trump aide emerges as favorite to become new White House press secretary

Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for first lady Melania Trump, is emerging as the top candidate to replace outgoing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, according to sources familiar with the selection process. Grisham, a former Trump campaign aide who has served in the White House since Trump took office, is known as a shrewd tactician loyal to the first family. But significantly, she meets President Trump’s top criteria: that Sanders’ replacement be a woman. “When he says he wants a woman, he wants a woman,” a source familiar with the selection process told the Washington Examiner. A second source, a former Trump aide, said “the president really wants to have a woman fill this role,” adding Trump has mentioned both Grisham and former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as possible successors to Sanders.

Grisham, 42, is a beloved East Wing figure and has many supporters close to Trump. In November, she issued an unusual statement calling for the ouster of Mira Ricardel, a National Security Council official with whom the first lady clashed on a trip to Africa. Ricardel quickly lost her job. A single mother of two sons, she followed Trump to Washington from Arizona, where she worked for state Republicans including then-Attorney General Tom Horne. In 2012, she was part of GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. While working as a traveling press secretary on the 2016 Trump campaign, she was so dedicated she did not see her son, Jake — who was then eight — for five-and-a-half months. Her older son has now graduated from high school.

A shortlist of four contenders in the aftermath of Sanders’ surprise departure announcement Thursday featured Grisham, Nauert, outgoing Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh, and Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley. But Nauert was forced in February to withdraw from a nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly due to employing a foreign nanny. A source said the issue that derailed Nauert is serious enough to keep her out of the running, however. "The reasons she had to pull out from the U.N. would be the same reasons she couldn’t do it,” said a source close to senior State Department officials.

The first source said of Grisham: “She handles herself well on TV, but the press secretary job has turned more into a comms than a press role. And there are some people who are good on camera but not so good at communications strategy. She's a killer on both fronts." “[Grisham] would be fine in front of the podium, and she would be fine on strategic issues. I don’t think Sarah was as sharp as her. Grisham won’t hesitate to slide that knife into someone's back, which is what you need. This is the White House." Sanders said she plans to leave at the end of June, establishing a short window to pick her replacement.

Grisham, the first source said, may take a sharper approach to “reporters being unfair” and “people in the administration doing things they shouldn’t." They imagine Grisham “basically being the president's press and political secret service — if you need to shiv someone, you do it.” The second source said Sayegh “is awesome and would be the best choice,” but is not a woman, and that “I don’t hear Hogan being discussed as a real option.” They noted that although Trump seems likely to pick a woman, it was possible Trump could end up "thinking way outside the box" and "further redefine the role."

Sanders has gone nearly 100 days without an official White House briefing, opting instead for informal driveway gaggles. Trump tweeted this year that he asked Sanders to cease briefings because "the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately." In another break from tradition, Trump has not filled the vacant White House communications director role since the exit of former Fox News executive Bill Shine in March. A third source, a former White House official, said they heard Grisham has a “good shot” but that there’s “nothing final.” A fourth source, who worked on the Trump campaign, said “I’ve heard is that Stephanie is open to the position." Several sources say they have not heard Gidley mentioned as a serious contender.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/top-melania-trump-aide-stephanie-grisham-emerges-as-favorite-to-become-new-white-house-press-secretary