61 indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges connected to ‘Stop Cop City’ movement

(Photo By Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Construction via AP, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — Sixty-one people have been indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges following a long-running state investigation into protests against a planned police and firefighter training facility in the Atlanta area that critics call “Cop City.”

In the sweeping indictment released Tuesday, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr alleged the defendants are “militant anarchists” who supported a violent movement that prosecutors trace to the widespread 2020 racial justice protests.

The Aug. 29 indictment is the latest application of the state’s anti-racketeering law, also known as a RICO law, and comes just weeks after the Fulton County prosecutor used the statute to charge former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants.

Credit to R.J. Rico 

No longer stranded, tens of thousands clean up and head home after Burning Man floods

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The traffic jam leaving the Burning Man festival eased up considerably Tuesday as the exodus from the mud-caked Nevada desert entered another day following massive rain that left tens of thousands of partygoers stranded for days.

A pair of brothers from Arizona who took their 67-year-old mother with them to Burning Man for the first time spent 11 hours into early Tuesday morning just getting out of the festival site about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno.

“It was a perfect, typical Burning Man weather until Friday — then the rain started coming down hard,” said Phillip Martin, 37. “Then it turned into Mud Fest.”

Event organizers began letting traffic flow out on the main road Monday afternoon — even as they urged attendees to delay their exit to help ease traffic. The wait time to exit Black Rock City was about 3.5 hours as of Tuesday at about 5 p.m., according to the official Burning Man Traffic account on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Credit to Scott Sonner, Ed Komenda and Gabe Stern.

Fierce storm in southern Brazil kills at least 21 people and displaces more than 1,600

SAO PAULO (AP) — At least 21 people died in southern Brazil due to a fierce storm that caused floods in several cities, authorities said Tuesday.

Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Eduardo Leite said the death toll is the state’s highest due to a climate event. He said about 60 cities had been battered by the storm, which was classified as an extratropical cyclone.

Leite said 15 of the deaths occurred in one house in Mucum, a city of about 50,000 residents.

The Rio Grande do Sul state government said it had recorded 1,650 people made homeless since Monday night.

*Author not provided*