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NEW ORLEANS (AP) —
New Orleans' leaders on Thursday made a sweeping move to break with the city's Confederate past when the City Council voted to remove prominent Confederate monuments along some of its busiest streets.
The council's 6-1 vote allows the city to remove four monuments, including a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has stood at the center of a traffic circle for 131 years.
It was an emotional meeting — often interrupted by heckling — infused with references to slavery, lynchings and racism, as well as the pleas of those who opposed removing the monuments to not "rewrite history."
City Council President Jason Williams called the vote a symbolic severing of an "umbilical cord" tying the city to the offensive legacy of the Confederacy and the era of Jim Crow laws.
"If anybody wins here, it will be the South, because it is finally rising," Williams, who is African-American, said.
Stacy Head, a council member at large, was the lone vote against the removal. She is one of two white council members.
She lamented what she called a rush to take the monuments down without adequate consideration of their historic value and meaning to many in New Orleans.
Fixing historic injustice is "a lot harder work than removing monuments," she said, even as many in the packed council chambers jeered her.
She said the issue was dividing the city, not uniting it. "I think all we will be left with is pain and division."
The decision came after months of impassioned debate. On Thursday, four preservation groups filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop the city from taking down the monuments by challenging the city's removal process.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu first proposed taking down these monuments after police said a white supremacist killed nine parishioners inside the African-American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June.
Anti-Confederate sentiment has grown since then around the country, along with protests against police mistreatment, as embodied by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Before Thursday's vote, Landrieu told the council and residents who gathered on both sides of the issue that for New Orleans to move forward, "we must reckon with our past."
Landrieu said the monuments reinforce the Confederate ideology of slavery, limit city progress and divide the city. He used President Abraham Lincoln's famous quote: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Landrieu signed the new ordinance into law shortly after the vote. His administration said it would cost $170,000 to take the monuments down and put them in a warehouse until a new location is found for them — perhaps in a park or museum. The city said it would hire contractors soon to remove the monuments.
The meeting was lively and sometimes disorderly.
The Rev. Shawn Anglim, a Methodist pastor, is among clergy who have spoken out in favor of taking down the monuments. Anglim told those gathered Thursday to "do the right thing."
"Do it for our children, and our children's children," he said.
Activist Malcolm Suber called the monuments "products of the Jim Crow era, an era when blacks were hunted and persecuted." Others said they want the council to go even further and change street names associated with "white supremacy."
The most imposing of the monuments the council has voted to strike from the cityscape has had a commanding position over St. Charles Avenue since 1884: A 16-foot-tall bronze statue of Lee stands atop a 60-foot-high Doric marble column, which itself rises over granite slabs on an earthen mound. Four sets of stone staircases, aligned with the major compass points, ascend the mound.
Above it all, the Virginian stands in his military uniform, with his arms folded and his gaze set firmly on the North — the embodiment of the "Cult of the Lost Cause" southerners invoked to justify continued white power after the Civil War.
The council also voted to remove a bronze figure of the Confederate president that now stands at Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway, and a more local hero, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who straddles a prancing horse at the entrance to City Park. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard was born in St. Bernard Parish, and commanded Confederate forces in the war's first battle.
The most controversial is an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. An inscription added in 1932 said the Yankees withdrew federal troops and "recognized white supremacy in the South" after the group challenged Louisiana's biracial government after the Civil War. In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors "Americans on both sides" who died and that the conflict "should teach us lessons for the future."
Before the vote, council member Head asked to keep the large monuments to Lee and Beauregard in place. But her motion received no support from the seven-person council.
NEW YORK (AP) —
A boyish-looking entrepreneur who became the new face of corporate greed when he jacked up the price of a lifesaving drug fiftyfold was led away in handcuffs by the FBI on unrelated fraud charges Thursday in a scene that left more than a few Americans positively gleeful.
Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old former hedge fund manager and relentless self-promoter who has called himself "the world's most eligible bachelor" on Twitter, was arrested in a gray hoodie and taken into federal court in Brooklyn, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on $5 million bail.
If convicted, he could get up to 20 years in prison. He left court without speaking to reporters. His attorneys had no immediate comment.
Hours later, Shkreli tweeted: "Glad to be home. Thanks for the support."
Online, many people took delight in his arrest, calling him a greedy, arrogant "punk" who gave capitalism a bad name and got what was coming to him. Some cracked jokes about lawyers jacking up their hourly fees 5,000 percent to defend him in his hour of need.
Prosecutors said that between 2009 and 2014, Shkreli lost some of his hedge fund investors' money through bad trades, then looted Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company where he was CEO, for $11 million to pay back his disgruntled clients.
Shkreli "engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit," U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said in a statement.
Shkreli was charged with securities fraud and conspiracy. A second defendant, lawyer Evan Greebel, of Scarsdale, New York, was charged with conspiracy and also pleaded not guilty.
A spokesman for Shkreli released a statement saying he denies the charges and "expects to be fully vindicated."
"It is no coincidence that these charges, the result of investigations which have been languishing for considerable time, have been filed at the same time of Shkreli's high-profile, controversial and yet unrelated activities," said spokesman Craig Stevens.
In September, Shkreli was widely vilified after a drug company he founded, Turing Pharmaceuticals, spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a medicine called Daraprim and promptly raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
The 62-year-old drug is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that mainly strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.
The move sparked outrage on the presidential campaign trail and helped prompt a Capitol Hill hearing on drug prices. Headlines called the Brooklyn-born Shkreli such thing as "America's most hated man," the "drug industry's villain" and "biotech's bad boy" — and those were just some of the more printable names.
Hillary Clinton called it price-gouging and said the company's behavior was "outrageous." Donald Trump called Shkreli "a spoiled brat." Bernie Sanders returned a donation from Shkreli.
Prosecutors said the investigation that led to Shkreli's arrest dated back to last year, before the furor over the drug-price increase.
Shkreli defended the increase by saying that insurance and other programs would enable patients to get the drug and that the profits would help fund research into new treatments.
But he also made an unapologetic business-is-business argument for the price jump. In fact, he recently said he probably should have raised it more.
"No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules," he said in an interview at the Forbes Healthcare Summit this month. "And my investors expect me to maximize profits, not to minimize them or go half or go 70 percent but to go to 100 percent of the profit curve."
Amid the uproar, Shkreli said Turing would cut the price of Daraprim. Last month, however, Turing reneged. Instead, the company is reducing what it charges hospitals for Daraprim by as much as 50 percent.
While most patients' copayments will be $10 or less a month, insurance companies will be stuck with the bulk of the tab, potentially driving up future treatment and insurance costs.
On Thursday, Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said Shkreli got "a deserved comeuppance."
"Al Capone was brought down for tax evasion, but he committed many worse crimes," Weissman said. "So if Shkreli's arrested for securities violations, it's a comparable justice."
Shkreli is known as a prolific user of Twitter and often livestreams his work day over the Internet, inviting people to chat with him at his desk. He refers to those who follow him online as his "fans."
Recently it emerged that he bought the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album titled "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," which the hip-hop group sold on the condition that it not be released publicly. He said he paid $2 million.
The FBI's New York office said on Twitter that agents did not seize Shkreli's album. Said Capers, the chief federal prosecutor: "We're not aware of how he raised the funds to buy the Wu-Tang album."
Last month, Shkreli was named chairman and CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals after buying a majority stake in the struggling cancer drug developer. After his arrest, its stock fell by more than half Thursday before trading in the company was suspended.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) —
Less than a month before his friend carried out the San Bernardino massacre, the man who bought the assault rifles used in the attack wondered when the multiple lives he was leading would come crashing down.
"Involved in terrorist plots, drugs, anti-social behavior, marriage, might go to prison for fraud, etc," Enrique Marquez Jr. told someone in a Nov. 5 chat on Facebook described in a court document that foreshadowed the trouble he was facing before any bullets started flying.
Now he stands accused of terrorism-related charges and other counts that connect him to the the San Bernardino attack.
Marquez, 24, was charged Thursday with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in deadly plots with Syed Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012 that they never carried out.
The duo, who had become adherents to radicalized Islam ideology as neighbors in Riverside, wanted to maximize carnage by using pipe bombs and guns to kill innocent people at a campus cafeteria and those stuck in rush hour traffic, court documents said.
Those plans may never have come to light if not for the attack where Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, used guns Marquez bought years ago to kill 14 people and wound 22 at a holiday meeting of Farook's health department co-workers.
Marquez was charged with illegally purchasing the rifles that the shooters used in the slaughter and were found with hours later after dying in a gunbattle with police.
In his initial court appearance, Marquez looked disheveled. His short hair flopped over his forehead, there was stubble on his face, and the pockets of his black pants were turned out. He appeared calm and showed no emotion as he gave one-word answers to the judge.
No plea was entered and he was ordered held until a bail hearing Monday in U.S. District Court. If convicted of all three counts, he could face up to 35 years in federal prison.
His public defender declined comment, though friends and family have described him as a good person who was easygoing and liked to party.
Marquez, a former licensed security guard, was working at a Riverside bar at the time of the shooting and is not alleged to have had a role in the attack.
But prosecutors said he was linked to the killings by the guns and explosive materials he bought years earlier. The couple used that material in a remote-controlled pipe bomb that never detonated at the conference room where the shootings occurred.
"His prior purchase of the firearms and ongoing failure to warn authorities about Farook's intent to commit mass murder had fatal consequences," U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said.
A lengthy affidavit by FBI special agent Joel Anderson outlines evidence against Marquez, including statements he gave investigators over 11 days after he waived his rights to remain silent and be represented by a lawyer.
Attorney E. Martin Estrada, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said the admissibility of Marquez's statements to the FBI will likely be challenged by defense lawyers, but if the statements are allowed in court, they give prosecutors a very strong case because of corroborating evidence.
"This wasn't a conversation with an average Joe," Estrada said. "This was a conversation with a person that was capable and had the capacity and the intent to commit mass murder. That's pretty chilling."
The affidavit said Marquez called 911 hours after the attack to say his neighbor had used his gun in the shooting, using an expletive to describe Farook.
Marquez then showed up agitated at a hospital emergency room, saying he had downed nine beers and was "involved" in the shooting. He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward.
Marquez lived next door to Farook, 28, who introduced him to Islam 10 years ago. Marquez told authorities he converted to Islam around age 16 and four years later was spending most of his time at Farook's home, reading, listening to and watching "radical Islamic content" that included al-Qaida instructions on how to make bombs.
Four years ago, Marquez said, he and Farook planned to toss pipe bombs into the cafeteria at Riverside Community College and then shoot people as they fled.
They also planned to throw pipe bombs on a busy section of freeway that has no exits, bringing traffic to a halt and then picking off motorists. Marquez would shoot from a nearby hillside, targeting police, as Farook fired at drivers from the road.
As part of the plan, Marquez bought two assault rifles — in November 2011 and February 2012. He said he agreed to buy them because "Farook looked Middle Eastern."
Authorities previously said Marquez had legally purchased the guns Farook and Malik used. But the charges allege that Marquez lied by signing paperwork that said the guns were for himself or a family member.
The FBI has said Farook and Malik, 29, were radicalized before they met online in 2013, but the court documents show Farook had turned down the path to violent plots much earlier.
Marquez said he and Farook aborted their plans after authorities interrupted a terror plot in the area in November 2012 that involved four men who wanted to join either the Taliban or al-Qaida fighting U.S. forces overseas.
He said they didn't see much of each other after it unraveled, though he deepened his connection with the Farook family, marrying the Russian sister of the wife of Farook's brother last year.
Prosecutors said it was a sham marriage to help the woman obtain U.S. residency.
According to the affidavit, Marquez was paid $200 per month for the union and said his own mother and brother didn't know about it.
When his mother visited him at the hospital two days later after the shootings, her son again referred to Syed Rizwan Farook by an expletive and said he did not know "he was going to do that," Anderson said in the affidavit. Marquez also said he no longer wanted Farook as a friend.