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Back-to-back shark attacks leave 4 people injured in Texas and Florida

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Back-to-back shark attacks leave 4 people injured in Texas and Florida

This image provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows a shark close to the shore in South Padre Island, Texas, on Thursday.

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Shark attacks in Texas and Florida left at least four people injured, including one person seriously hurt, as Fourth of July festivities lured crowds to coastal waters this week.

Two people were injured in a shark attack off the coast of southern Texas on Thursday, local officials said.

At South Padre Island, two people were bitten by a shark and two more “encountered” the predator but were not seriously hurt, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department said in a statement.

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The two bite victims were taken to a hospital in Brownsville for treatment, and one of them was flown out elsewhere for further treatment, according to the department.

Game Warden Capt. Chris Dowdy told The Associated Press that authorities believe a single shark about 6 feet long was involved in all four incidents based on information from witnesses and social media images.

The last shark attack reported in the area was five years ago, Dowdy said.

State officials said that shark attacks on humans are rare in Texas.

“When bites from sharks do occur, they are usually a case of mistaken identity by sharks looking for food,” Texas Parks & Wildlife said.

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“If you see large schools of bait near the shore, this typically [is] an indicator a predator is nearby, or if you see a shark in the water, calmly exit the water and wait for the predatory wildlife to pass,” the department advised in the statement.

Also on Thursday, another beachgoer was injured in a shark attack off the Florida Coast — the first of two shark bite incidents in the area in the span of a day.

At New Smyrna Beach, a 21-year-old man was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after a shark bit his right foot around 4 p.m. on Thursday, Volusia County Beach Safety interim director Tamra Malphurs said in an emailed statement. He’d been playing football in knee-deep water.

On Friday just after 4 p.m. at the same beach, a 26-year-old man was wading in an inner tube in water about 5 feet deep when a shark bit his left foot, Malphurs said. He was treated on the scene and hospitalized for further care, according to Volusia County; his injuries were also not life-threatening.

Last year saw a total of 69 unprovoked shark attacks globally, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. Almost half of those attacks occurred in the U.S. That’s an increase from the 57 attacks in 2022, but is still on par with the five-year average of 63 attacks annually.

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The increase in global shark attacks last year does not necessarily signal a rising trend, Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

“These are natural processes, random events, which happen to be when people are in the water, where there are sharks in the water — I would think that the variance would be much higher. But in fact, it is remarkably steady,” he said.

Sharks do tend to attack more commonly under certain conditions, he told the publication.

“You only get shark bites when there is a lot of people in the water, a lot of sharks in the water, the sharks are trying to feed on things, and they do not have good visibility,” Naylor said.

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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