Amber Alert issued for pregnant 16-year-old believed to be with the 40-year-old father
Missingkids.org
(BEAVER DAM, Ark.) — An Amber Alert has been issued for a pregnant Wisconsin teen, who police believe is with the 40-year-old man who impregnated her.
Sophia Martha Franklin, 16, is three months pregnant, according to the alert, which was issued Monday.
Gary Day, 40, “is known to be the father of the unborn child,” according to the alert.
Franklin has a no-contact order against Day, according to the alert.
Day faces charges of child enticement and abduction, according to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News.
Franklin previously told police she began speaking with Day online in April, according to the complaint, and later traveled with him to his home in Arkansas.
She was last seen at her home in Beaver Dam, located about an hour northwest of Milwaukee, on Sunday night, the complaint states.
Early Monday morning, Day was seen walking near the family’s home on surveillance footage, it states.
Day, who is believed to be driving a black Buick LaCrosse, is known to have used various license plates, according to the Beaver Dam Police Department. The vehicle has been seen with both Arkansas license plate number BBR20L and a Pennsylvania license plate of KGW5186.
Police are asking anyone with information on Sophia’s whereabouts to contact them at 920-887-4612 or the Amber Alert tip line at 888-304-3936.
Photo by Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean “Diddy” Combs
(NEW YORK) — Sean “Diddy” Combs appeared again in a New York City courtroom on Friday as he continues to fight for his release on bail in his racketeering and sex trafficking case.
Combs’ lawyers argued he should be released on bail and placed on home confinement in a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side under 24/7 monitoring by three full-time security professionals, while prosecutors said the hip-hop impresario “cannot be trusted” to follow the rules of pretrial release.
The judge did not immediately rule but said he would have a decision next week.
The defense said it was proposing conditions “far more restrictive” than Combs faces in jail, including limiting phone calls to lawyers, restricting visitors other than lawyers and specific family members, keeping a visitor log and avoiding contact with witnesses or potential witnesses.
“If what the government is afraid of is that Mr. Combs is going to be violent toward someone, there’s just zero chance of that happening,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said.
Combs blew kisses to his family and tapped his heart as he entered federal court Friday in a beige jail smock over a white long-sleeve T-shirt. He hugged his attorneys and, once seated, turned in his chair to smile at his mother and children, who were seated in the second row.
Prosecutors reminded the judge “this is a case about violence” and argued the conditions proposed in the defense bail package fell short.
“At bottom, in order for conditions to be sufficient there has to be some level of trust that the defendant will follow them,” prosecutor Christy Slavik said. “Simply put, the defendant cannot be trusted.”
She also questioned the efficacy of a team of private security guards paid for by Combs.
“There is really just no separation for the defendant. You work for him. There’s just no way to trust that any private security firm could do what the court requires and ensure compliance,” Slavik said.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and prostitution charges.
His attorneys conceded hotel security camera video obtained by CNN depicted “physical conduct” between Combs and his ex-girlfriend Cassie but argued the video should not be used to keep Combs behind bars.
The defense argued in a filing on Thursday that prosecutors “invented” the narrative using a “manipulated version” of the video. The defense insisted the video did not depict a “freak off,” the name for the sex-fueled parties allegedly held by Combs, but rather showed a domestic dispute in which Combs ran down the hall of the hotel to recover his clothes and cellphone.
“It’s our defense to these charges that this was a toxic end of a loving relationship,” Agnifilo said Friday.
Federal prosecutors said “it was a bit puzzling” the defense brought up the video because Combs does not dispute what it shows.
“The defendant admitted it and apologized for it in a public Instagram post. Shoving, kicking and dragging a female victim,” Slavik said.
(WASHINGTON) — A Republican president-elect pledges support for expansive tariffs as a means of protecting U.S. businesses and hamstringing global competitors.
That description may conjure up former President Donald Trump, but it also applies to Herbert Hoover, who led the country nearly a century ago during the onset of the Great Depression.
Within months of the stock market crash, Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a 1930 measure that increased tariffs for a broad swathe of imported goods. In response, several countries imposed retaliatory tariffs and trade plummeted. Many economists view the measure as a factor that exacerbated the nation’s economic downturn.
“A whole generation of Republicans and Democrats after World War II was very much conditioned against tariff hikes because of the experience of the 1930s. Now we have a new generation of leaders who are much more willing to pull the trigger on higher tariffs,” Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and author of “Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression,” told ABC News.
Here’s what to know about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, its economic impact, and what its legacy means for tariffs promised by Trump, according to experts.
What is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act?
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act arrived at a moment of economic crisis.
As the stock market wobbled and financial panic took hold, Congress negotiated a set of tariff increases that initially aimed to protect U.S. farmers from foreign competition but ultimately extended to a wide range of manufactured goods.
The measure is named after its key supporters in Congress: Republican Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Republican Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon. It passed the Senate by a narrow margin of 44 to 42, and sailed through the House of Representatives by a vote of 264 to 147. Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law in June 1930.
For products already facing tariffs, the law, on average, raised the import tax from 40% to nearly 60%, making for an increase of roughly 20 percentage points, Kris Mitchener, a professor of economics at Santa Clara University who studies Smoot-Hawley, told ABC News. It also significantly expanded the number of goods subject to a tariff, he added.
“It culminated in a more or less complete rewrite of the tariff schedule,” Mitchener said, referring to the nation’s tariff code.
What happened after Smoot-Hawley took effect, and did it cause the Great Depression?
The Smoot-Hawley tariffs set off a near-immediate trade war, in which several foreign nations responded to tariffs by slapping U.S. imports with taxes of their own.
For instance, Canada placed tariffs on 16 products that accounted for roughly a third of U.S. exports, according to a working paper co-authored by Mitchener in 2021. France and Spain both slapped taxes on imported American automobiles, a major U.S. industry.
“America’s trade partners responded by targeting U.S. exports,” Mitchener said. “The most important declines were in the products that were targeted.”
As a result, trading partners suffered reduced output, but so did the United States, Michener said.
The trade slowdown weakened the economy and exacerbated the nation’s economic downturn, experts said. However, the Great Depression had taken hold before the effects of Smoot-Hawley, ruling it out as a cause of the crisis, they added.
“Smoot-Hawley impacted the U.S. economy at a vulnerable moment,” Irwin said.
What could the legacy of Smoot-Hawley mean for Trump’s tariff proposals?
Smoot-Hawley cast a shadow over tariff policy for decades, Irwin said. “It gave tariffs a bad name,” he added.
For decades, prominent members of both major parties focused on the risks posed by tariffs, occasionally citing Smoot-Hawley, Irwin said.
“The Smoot-Hawley tariff ignited an international trade war and helped sink our country into the Great Depression,” then-president Ronald Reagan said during a radio address in 1986.
The measure also played a key role in shifting tariff authority from Congress toward the executive branch, since lawmakers sought a speedy way to roll back the tariffs, experts said.
In 1934, the Reciprocal Tariffs Act gave the president the power to increase or reduce tariff levels by up to 50%. A series of subsequent laws helped shift additional tariff authority to the president.
“Now, Congress doesn’t have much to do with setting tariffs,” Irwin said.
On the campaign trail, Trump said he could enact tariffs without support from Congress. He is largely accurate in his description of the wide latitude enjoyed by the president in setting and implementing some tariffs, experts previously told ABC News.
“Trump is using the delegated powers to pass tariffs,” Irwin said. “That’s completing the circle of Smoot-Hawley in some sense.”
(NEW YORK) — Amid the Thanksgiving travel rush, a stowaway was discovered Tuesday night onboard a Delta Air Lines flight out of JFK Airport in New York City headed to Paris.
Authorities said the stowaway was discovered on board Delta Flight 264 from JFK to Paris and removed after the plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
The person who boarded the flight bypassed the document check podium and a gate agent, but was fully screened at a security checkpoint at JFK, a TSA spokesperson told ABC News. That means they weren’t carrying any prohibited items and did not pose a security risk, TSA said.
It’s unclear how the person got around the document check podium.
The FBI is aware of the incident.
No other details about the person who boarded the flight have been made public.
A representative for Delta said the airline is “conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”
A video taken by another passenger on board the flight shows the flight attendants walking down the aisle as the pilot’s voice on the intercom says, “We are just waiting for the police to come on board … They directed us to keep everyone on the plane until they sort out the extra passenger.”
