QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A prolonged gunbattle between rival gangs inside Ecuador’s largest prison killed at least 68 inmates & wounded 25 on Saturday, while authorities said it took most of the day to regain control at the Litoral Penitentiary, which recently saw the country’s worst prison bloodbath.
The killing erupted before dawn at the prison in the coastal city of Guayaquil in what officials said was the latest outbreak of fighting among prison gangs linked to international drug cartels. Videos circulating on social media showed bodies, some burned, lying on the ground inside the prison.
The shooting lasted around 7 hours, officials said & then new clashes were reported in part of the prison in the afternoon.
Presidential spokesman Carlos Jijón finally announced after nightfall that “the situation is controlled throughout the penitentiary.” He said about 900 police officers had taken control of the situation.
In the initial fighting, inmates “tried to dynamite a wall to get into Pavilion 2 to carry out a massacre. They also burned mattresses to try to to drown (their rivals) in smoke,” said the governor of Guayas province, Pablo Arosemena.
“We are fighting against drug trafficking,” Arosemena said. “It is very hard.”
The bloodshed came less than two months after fighting among gangs killed 119 people at the prison, which houses more than 8,000 inmates.
NEW YORK (AP) — The rapper Fetty Wap was charged on Friday with participating in a conspiracy to smuggle large amounts of heroin, fentanyl and other drugs into the New York City region.
The rapper, whose real name is Willie Maxwell, was arrested Thursday at Citi Field, where the three-day Rolling Loud hip-hop music festival is taking place. An indictment unsealed on Friday named Maxwell and five other defendants, including a New Jersey corrections officer.
“The fact that we arrested a chart-topping rap artist and a corrections officer as part of the conspiracy illustrates just how vile the drug trade has become,” Michael J. Driscoll, a top official with the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement.
The indictment charges Maxwell and his co-defendants with conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine between June 2019 and June 2020. The scheme involved using the U.S. Postal Service and cars with hidden compartments to move the narcotics from the West Coast to Long Island, where they were stored for distribution to dealers in Long Island and New Jersey, authorities said.
A phone message seeking comment was left with an attorney who has represented Maxwell in the past. He was to be arraigned Friday afternoon.
Maxwell, 30, rose to prominence after his debut single “Trap Queen” reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in May 2015.
Momentum Entertainment CEO and Top 5 DOA emcee, Ransom, and Griselda Records artist Rome Streetz are about to shake up the industry with the release of their collaborative album, "Coup De Grâce," on October 29th.
Today the duo bless fans with the project's lead single "Pray for the Weak" featuring The Game.
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on September 19, 2021 at 7:55am
Wack 100 says he has an unreleased sex tape belonging to Kim Kardashian and her ex, Ray J, that's never been seen before -- and he's weirdly offering it to ... Kanye West.
RJ's former manager spilled the alleged tea to Bootleg Kev on his podcast this week ... saying there was a "part 2" to the infamous sex tape that put Kim on the map in the 2000s. Unclear if it's just a continuation of the tape that's already out there, or a new one entirely.
*UPDATE* Wack 100 is desperate for attention and simply trolling Kim and Kanye to claim he's in possession of an unreleased sex tape, so says Kim's attorney. Speaking on her behalf, legal pitbull Marty Singer just unloaded on Wack, telling us, "The claim that there is an unreleased sex tape is unequivocally false. It is unfortunate that people make these statements to try and get their 15 minutes of fame."
Singer is certainly not one to shy away from legal filings, so it's likely the last we hear from Wack on the matter, or else.
Wack 100 and Jim Jones are currently going back and forth after Tekashi69 accused Capo of being an informant while being interviewed by Wack on DJ Akademiks podcast.
That led to Jim calling Wack on clubhouse earlier this week, but Wack never entered the room to talk about the situation,
This fantasy project was created to pay homage to the late, great Nipsey Hussle.
It consists of music produced by BeatSmith with acapella's from Nipsey and other featuring artists. If you enjoyed this project it drop a like, share and a comment.
R.I.P. Nip Hussle The Great. The Marathon Continues!
Nipsey Hussle - Go For Broke Tracklist:
0:00 1. Comfort (Intro) 1:46 2. Supposed To (ft. YG) 5:43 3. Go For Broke (ft. Dom Kennedy) 8:53 4. Lord Have Mercy (ft. Dave East & Stacy Barthe) 12:36 5. Marathon (ft. Rick Ross) 15:16 6. Chances (ft. Meek Mill & T-Shyne) 19:08 7. Legacy (Outro)
A Louisiana man was cited for criminal mischief and trespassing after he jumped into an alligator-infested river because he was "bored" while sitting in traffic.
26-year-old Jimmy Ivan Jennings sparked an hours-long search and rescue effort after he jumped into the Atchafalaya river from a span bridge that is part of interstate 10. Speaking to New York Daily News, Jennings said he now realizes he's lucky to be alive. "I started going under and almost drowned a few times. I really and truly thought it was the end of my time. I asked God for forgiveness. I forgave everyone in my life. It was hectic," he told the outlet.
Jennings recounted how he had been stuck in a traffic jam for over two hours following a multi-car collision up ahead. His boredom inspired a rather risky plan – he would jump from the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge into the river, swim quickly back to shore, and jump back into his friend's car. "We were bored inside the truck... I looked down at the water, and it didn't seem too far. As soon as my fingertips came off that side, I was like, 'Oh my god, this was the stupidest idea,'" he told the Daily News.
Footage of Jennings plunging into the river went viral, as he was seen taking a running jump before hopping over the barrier with his fingertips and crashing down into the water. He was reportedly forced to remain in the alligator-infested river for almost three hours as the rescue team was delayed.
"I was just high on life. Everything was going my way and I've seen people do it before only I remembered after I jumped that was in movies," he recounted on Facebook. "Once I hit the water, my mouth busted open and I hurt my left arm. I tried to swim to the shore, but the current was too strong. An hour and a half in, I was so tired of swimming. My left arm went out. I turned onto my back and would push with my right hand and my legs whenever I went under. I was praying the entire time."
Jennings somehow managed to swim against the current and crawled back ashore of a small island. He then borrowed a boat in order to reach the mainland, where authorities placed him in handcuffs. "They got me with criminal mischief and some other charges. It was crazy to do what I did. But after the fact, after realizing it was a bad idea, everything else I did was in pure survival mode," the man from Lafayette, Louisiana said, promising to never try something like this in the future. "I don't even want to swim anymore," he said.
A video of a Kentucky school girl’s terrifying ordeal from 2015, in which she was dragged along by a school bus, has been released as a trial begins into the incident.
The girl, who was aged six at the time, was getting off the Jefferson County school bus six years ago when her backpack appeared to get stuck in its doors.
The doors closed and trapped the child. School bus driver Melinda Sanders is accused by the girl’s family of failing to notice the child getting off the bus.
The girl’s family alleged in court on Tuesday that the bus was driven 1,1,47 feet before coming to a stop. Both Ms Sanders and Jefferson County school district are named in the lawsuit.
Video footage, which was expected to feature in the trial, showed the six-year-old getting dragged along by the school bus while hanging from its doors by her backpack.
Ms Sanders failed to realize what was unfolding to her left, before hearing a passing vehicle beep her, the video shows. She can be heard saying; “Oh my God, Oh my God”.
The school district fired the driver after an investigation determined she did not watch the child get off the bus and ensure that all children were seated before driving, as required by her training.
Ms Sanders was found to have broken a total of 16 rules during the incident.
The child, who was identified as AR in court, suffered severe nerve damage and PTSD, and has since had multiple surgeries, the lawsuit reportedly said.
The family of the six-year-old is asking for damages, and the trial is ongoing.
Dark Lo aka Ron Harvey Jr. and super producer V Don are back riding together again like Jordan and Pippen for a new album, "Charlie Pope," dropping on 7-23-2021.
Peep the second single off of the project "100 Proof."
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — A wing of a 12-story beachfront condo building collapsed with a roar in a town outside Miami early Thursday, killing at least one person & trapping residents in rubble & twisted metal. Rescuers pulled out dozens of survivors and continued to look for more.
Nearly 100 people were still unaccounted for at midday, authorities said, raising fears that the death toll could climb sharply. But officials did not know how many were in the tower when it fell around 1:30 a.m.
Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead. In another case, rescuers saved a mother & child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated to remove her from the rubble.
Video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage, but it was not clear whether he was the same person.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who toured the scene, said television did not capture the scale of what happened.
Rescue crews are “doing everything they can to save lives. That is ongoing & they’re not going to rest,” he said.
Teams of 10 to 12 rescuers were entering the rubble at a time with dogs & other equipment, working until they tire from the heavy lifting, then making way for a new team.
Patronis said he was deeply moved by the image of a bunk bed near the now-exposed top of the building.
“Somebody was probably sleeping in it,” he said. “There’s all those what-ifs.”
Authorities did not say what may have caused the collapse. On video footage captured from nearby, the center of the building appeared to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering & coming down seconds later.
Work was being done on the building’s roof, but Burkett said he did not see how that could have been the cause.
“The building is literally pancaked,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean, to me, that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The Black Wall Street Market is nowhere near Black Wall Street.
The original Black Wall Street vaporized a hundred years ago, when a murderous white mob laid waste to what was the nation’s most prosperous Black-owned business district and residential neighborhood. When Billie Parker set out to memorialize the name with her new development, she built it far from Tulsa’s historic Greenwood neighborhood.
She followed the trail of the city’s Black population. There were roughly 10,000 Black Tulsans in 1921; displaced by the massacre, they would be pushed farther and farther north into what is unambiguously an underdeveloped and underserved section of the city today.
Parker’s Black Wall Street Market is a ramshackle outpost on a 3-acre lot abutting a two-lane road, a far cry from the booming city within a city that was Greenwood, with its Black grocers, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, newspaper publishers and other businessmen and women.
But Parker thought it was important to lay claim to the name and its legacy.
“We were taught not to even think about that,” Parker, who is in her 50s, said on a recent Saturday morning after opening up the market’s gift shop. “We had to hush up. So, I say it’s time for us to put Black Wall Street out there.”
The 6 miles between the old and new incarnations of Black Wall Street belie the dire connection that links them: Racial and socioeconomic inequality on Tulsa’s north side has its roots in the 100-year-old atrocity of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
First, a racist mob stripped an almost unknowable amount of wealth from Black Tulsans overnight. Then, desegregation and urban renewal further upended the post-massacre Black business community that was rebuilt. Insurance claims for massacre victims’ losses were denied and their civil lawsuits against the city and state seeking financial relief were tossed out.
No Black survivor or descendant has been justly compensated for their losses. That timeline left a gaping wound unhealed for a century -- and that wound is still open on Tulsa’s north side.
The question is: What can be done now to help it heal?
According to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate, the median household income for Black households across Tulsa was an estimated $30,955 in 2019, compared with $55,278 median income for white households. In a city of an estimated 401,760 people, close to a third of Tulsans who lived below the poverty line in 2019 were Black, while 12% were white.
A quick drive between south and north Tulsa shows a clear difference in development. Some paved streets don’t have streetlights or traffic signals. Until recently, the entire north side had easy access to just one grocery store. Many homes are in need of repair and renovations.
The Gibbs Next Generation Center, a small shopping mall and office park run by descendants of a woman who survived the Tulsa Race Massacre, is located in the same ZIP code as Parker’s market. LeRoy Gibbs II and his wife, Tracy, purchased the center in 2015 — the property used to be the location of businesses run by LeRoy’s grandfather and grandmother, LeRoy and Ernestine Gibbs, who was a teenager during the massacre.
The younger generation of Gibbs has revived the center with the hope that it brings jobs and revenues to the Black community. They rent office space and storefronts to six tenants, including a graphic design shop, a legal defense aid organization, a Black beauty boutique and a candy store.
But the Gibbs have also grown frustrated with the stark inequality of Tulsa’s north side.
“One thing we have to remember is when the 1921 Race Massacre occurred, people’s homes and businesses were destroyed,” said Tracy Gibbs, CEO of the center.
The community didn’t just lose structures and buildings, they lost an educational base of residents who knew how to start and grow businesses, Gibbs said.
“You lose all of that history as it relates to businesses and that information being passed down from generation to generation,” she said. “You have African American businesses that are striving and struggling to turn a dollar, make a dollar, keep a dollar in a community because of that lack of education that’s there.”
Look around, says Brandon Oldam, a native north Tulsan and member of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, and you’ll see the cascading effects of a 100-year-old massacre: “We don’t know how the wealth that would have been passed down would have changed the trajectory of millions of people.”
Greenwood -- where the massacre occurred -- has seen some improvements. There are white-napkin restaurants, a bookstore, a gourmet dessert bar, and a jazz club within blocks of the district. Silhouette Sneakers and Art, on Archer Avenue, is a Black-owned boutique that opened in 2019. Prior to the massacre, it was Grier-Shoemaker, a Black-owned shop.
And soon there’ll be a $30 million history center at Greenwood and Archer avenues. Greenwood Rising will honor the legacy of Black Wall Street, with exhibits depicting the district before and after the massacre, according to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission.
But Greenwood’s expansion appears choked off by the development happening around it, in Tulsa’s Art District. And for Billie Parker, any revitalization of Black Wall Street in Tulsa should be where Black people reside -- and that’s not in Greenwood, 6 miles south of her lot.
“I’m sorry to tell you that we don’t own it (Greenwood) anymore,” Parker said.
She owns her lot, on North Osage Drive, and uses it as an incubator for Black entrepreneurship and an events venue.
It’s a fixer upper. There are no paved parking spaces at Black Wall Street Market. A museum consists of a glass case displaying Black cultural antiques. The gift shop is organized inside of a one-room trailer, where Parker sells dashikis, African shea butter, black soap, body oils, jewelry made from cowrie shells and other vintage Black culture trinkets.
To the left of the gift shop is a hoop house, where she allows her neighbors to plant and grow vegetables and herbs in raised garden beds. The produce is sometimes sold in the gift shop.
When Dawn Tree, a Black abstract painter and graphic design artist, stopped by the market on a recent day, the discussion turned to the massacre -- and to reconciliation. Tree said it was impossible without compensation to victims. And that compensation should include more than just the dozen or so plaintiffs in an ongoing reparations lawsuit, she said.
“There’s trauma that’s blanketed over this city,” said Tree. “Going forward, whatever is done to atone for what happened 100 years ago must be done for the north side community.”
The city’s white, Republican mayor, G.T. Bynum, doesn’t support paying direct reparations to massacre victims and descendants. But he recognizes that racial disparities in Tulsa demand attention, and public initiatives that he says are helping to address, for example, the 11-year gap in life expectancy between north Tulsans and others in the city.
“The city of Tulsa in 1921 had two choices,” Bynum said. “They could either be completely transparent about what happened, hold those who did it accountable, and help a community rebuild. Or in embarrassment and disgrace, they could pretend it never happened, cover it up and tell everybody to just get on with their lives.”
He added: “I think to our city’s eternal detriment, they chose door No. 2, when given that option. I can’t imagine how better off we would be as a city today, if they had chosen door No. 1.”
For Tiffany Crutcher -- organizer of the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, which is independent of the city’s official commemoration -- the argument for reparations rests on two tragedies that befell her family, almost a century apart.
Terrorized by the massacre, “My father’s grandmother, Rebecca Brown Crutcher, had to flee Greenwood in fear of her life,” Crutcher said.
But the family stayed in Tulsa, enduring some of the same post-massacre hardships that generations of Black Tulsans endured: urban renewal, inequality on the north side and police brutality.
Then, in 2016, her unarmed twin brother, Terence, was shot and killed by a Tulsa police officer on the north side. Terence was a father to a young boy. The now-former city officer, Betty Jo Shelby, was acquitted of first-degree manslaughter in 2017.
“I can’t help but think, almost 100 years later, about what happened to my twin brother,” Crutcher said. “I like to note that the same state-sanctioned violence that burnt down my great-grandmother’s community is the same state-sanctioned violence that killed my twin brother.”
It is that kind of trauma -- as much as the crippling financial losses suffered in the wake of the riot, and in the decades since -- that Crutcher said demanded compensation.
“We paid reparations to the Japanese, (and) the Jews received reparations” after World War II, she said. “And even when I think about the Oklahoma City bombing, those victims, they’ve received some compensation.
“But when it comes to Blacks in America, why is it so difficult? Why is there a debate? Why do we have to negotiate what’s right and what should be owed? Lives were lost.”
A 23-year-old man is suspected of stealing a Kansas Highway Patrol vehicle and leading officers on a chase with speeds topping 100 mph -- while handcuffed behind his back.
Investigators are trying to determine how the suspect, Joshua D. Swartwout of Naples, Florida, managed to get behind the wheel of the patrol car & drive it more than 30 miles without the use of his hands.
"As a high-speed pursuit driving instructor for 20 years, I can only assume he was using his knees," Tod Hileman, a spokesman for the Kansas Highway Patrol said.
The Houdini-like escape unfolded just after noon on Saturday as a trooper was transporting Swartwout to a detention facility after he had been arrested on suspicion of auto theft following an earlier pursuit.
Hileman said the patrol car was not equipped with a rear-seat cage or a partition.
"He was being transported in the front seat of the car," Hileman said.
While on Highway 25, the trooper witnessed a serious motorcycle crash & pulled over to help, leaving Swartwout alone in the patrol car.
While the trooper was assisting the crash victim, Swartwout, who was handcuffed behind his back, scooted over into the driver's seat & drove off.
Hileman said the chase topped 100 mph on a stretch he described as a narrow two-lane highway with ditches on both sides.
The chase continued & headed west toward the Kansas-Colorado border. As the pursuit reached Edson, Kansas, roughly 30 miles from where it began, the stolen patrol car ran out of gas.
"The suspect, who was still handcuffed behind his back, fled on foot but was quickly apprehended," a statement reads.
Song: HARLEMDELPHIA Artist: Pretty Flock Feat: Stan Spit & Herb McGruff Label: SWAG100 Copyright: Kashal Johnson - 2020
Philadelphia native and OBH heavy spitter, Pretty Flock, locked in with Harlem legends Herb McGruff and Stan Spit for his new single appropriately titled "HARLEMDELPHIA."
Peep game as the three emcees go in over ill production from Mr. Dose.
Brooklyn, New York rapper and BSB Records CEO, Dope Boy Troy Ave, goes at his bitter rival Casanova 2x on a new diss song titled "Assanova 2x." This is off of Troy's new "White Christmas 8" album.
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on November 10, 2020 at 11:32am
Video After The Jump
Class is in session with some real OG’s from different sides of the turf! Big U and Wack 100 discuss real issues in our communities, including law enforcement and more in this session of Cannon's Class.
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on September 23, 2020 at 11:30am
(CNN) Megan Thee Stallion is most likely feeling "All Dat" after being named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2020.
The 25-year-old rapper -- born Megan Jovon Ruth Pete -- is among the high-profile "pioneers" to feature on the prestigious list, which recognizes those who have impacted the world by "harnessing the power of influence to forge genuine progress."
Explaining why the Houston native deserves a place among other high-profile names including Selena Gomez, Michaela Coel and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson described Megan as "the epitome of tenacity."
"I don't like to put the stigma of the word strong on Black women because I think it dehumanizes us, but she has strength -- strength through vulnerability," the "Empire" star wrote in the special issue of Time.
"It's invigorating to see her become a platinum-selling artist with the viral hit 'Hot Girl Summer' and multiple No. 1 songs in the past year, 'Savage' and 'WAP.' But you would be a fool to think that's all there is to her. She's deep."
Henson emphasized the influence Megan has had in the music industry in the early stages of her career.
"She rode the beat like I'd never heard anybody ride the beat in a long time—and I'm a hip-hop head," Henson wrote.
Touching on Megan's personal struggles, she continued: "She's lost much of her family -- her mother, her father, her grandmother -- yet she is the epitome of tenacity, of pulling herself up by her bootstraps. She was shot this summer, and still people tried to tear her down."
Henson concluded the piece by adding that despite the industry's efforts to "pigeonhole" her, Megan's "got a plan that's much bigger. And we got her. I just want her to keep winning."
Two people were shot, more than 100 people were arrested and 13 police officers were injured as crowds broke windows and looted stores along Michigan Avenue and on the Near North Side overnight and into Monday morning.
Supt. David Brown called the looting “pure criminality” in a news conference Monday morning, not connected to any protest.
“Criminals took to the streets with the confidence that there would be no consequences for their actions,” Brown said, adding that police would aggressively pursue cases against people involved in the looting.
“You have no right, no right to take and destroy the property of others,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at the news conference. “We are coming for you. ... I don’t care what justification was given for this. There is no justification.”
The police have started a neighborhood protection plan, and Brown said a team of detectives has been assigned to scour security footage of all incidents.
Access to downtown will be restricted from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., effective Monday night, Brown said.
For several hours this morning, there were no bus or train service in the area bordered by Fullerton and Ashland avenues and Cermak road for several hours, the CTA said. The transit agency was in the process of restoring normal service shortly before 8 a.m.
All downtown bridges except LaSalle Street were raised. The Chicago Department of Transportation said they were being lowered again as of 7:15 a.m., but ongoing street closures could be expected throughout the downtown area.
Brown said “the seeds for the shameful destruction we saw last night” started with a police-involved shooting in Englewood Sunday afternoon. About 2:30 p.m., officers responded to a report of a man with a gun. He fled as they arrived, Brown said, and fired at officers. They returned fire, striking the man, who was taken to the University of Chicago Hospital and is expected to survive. The 20-year-old man had previously faced charges of domestic battery, reckless conduct and child endangerment, Brown said.
After the shooting, a crowd gathered in the area. “Tempers flared, fueled by misinformation,” Brown said. Shortly after that, police became aware of “several social media posts” about looting planned downtown. He said the department reacted by deploying 400 officers to the downtown area.
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