Rosa Zapata, News Editor
- Fox Lake Police
When Illinois police officer Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was discovered to have been killed in the line of duty, thousands mourned and attended his funeral.
He was hailed as a hero who had given his life to protecting his community. According to the Chicago Tribune, to some his death was even a sign of the growing war on police.
Before his death, Gliniewicz reported to his station he was chasing three suspects on foot. He was shot twice with his own gun, once on the right side of his chest and one on the left.
Gunshot residue tests were inconclusive in determining who had fired the gun, which had fallen to the ground three feet away from Gliniewicz’s body and was not easy for investigating officers to find.
But, on Nov. 4, after several weeks into the investigation of Gliniewicz’s death, investigators declared that the death was actually a suicide.
George Filenko, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force commander, said that there was “an overwhelming amount of evidence that Gliniewicz’s death was a carefully staged suicide.”
“This staged suicide was the end result of extensive criminal acts that Gliniewicz had been committing,” Filenko maintains.
The New York Times reported that Gliniewicz had been stealing money from the Fox Lake Police Explorer program, in addition to forging documents and signatures.
Gliniewicz had purportedly used money for travelling, paying off debt, adult websites and other things. According to Filenko, the amount of money stolen was “in the five-figure range,” and that there are at least two other suspects that took part in the embezzlement.
The Lake County Department’s declaration is considered controversial by many local residents, but the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force has closed the investigation.
- Russian Plane
On Saturday, Oct. 31, a Russian plane headed to St. Petersburg crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 passengers on board.
According to a statement released by Egypt’s civil aviation ministry, the plane took off from Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular resort in the Sinai Peninsula, and went off-radar 23 minutes after taking off.
Immediately after, Russian president Vladimir Putin called for an investigation to reveal the cause of the crash.
During a news conference in Moscow, Aleksandr A. Smirnov, the airline’s deputy director for aviation, said, “We absolutely exclude the technical failure of the plane, and we absolutely exclude pilot error or a human factor.”
The airline insists that there were no safety or maintenance procedures that went wrongly, and that the airplane broke up in the air at about 30,000 feet.
Shortly after, according to The Washington Post, an ISIS affiliate group claimed that they caused the crash in an audio clip, urging officials to “search the wreckage of the plane and bring forth [their] black box and analyze it. Show us your expertise and prove that we did not cause the plane to crash.”
Although, Russian and Egyptian officials have said that claim is premature and unsupported, it did not stop the British government from temporarily ceasing incoming flights from the Sharm el-Sheikh resort after British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the plane “may well have been brought down by an explosive device.”
According to the New York Times, Cameron’s statement was the “strongest so far by an official of any government to suggest that a bomb may have been responsible for the downing of the plane.”
A U.S. official said that the Russian plane crash could have potentially been brought down by a bomb but that theory is still being examined.
III. Canada’s new PM
On Nov. 4, Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Canadian liberal party, was appointed as the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, replacing former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This marked the end of a nearly decade-long conservative party rule.
According to the New York Times, Trudeau and his cabinet members took the oath of office at Rideau Hall, the residence of Canada’s governor general, David Johnston.
Trudeau has wasted no time instituting a definitely liberal agenda. He told reporters that the first thing he plans to establish is a tax cut for middle-class Canadians and a tax raise for the top one percent.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Trudeau also said he would bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of the year. In addition, he plans to implement a “pan-Canadian strategy” to address climate change.
Trudeau has put together a diverse cabinet that consists of 15 women and 15 men. According to The Guardian, that is the first time in Canada’s history that there are an equal number of women and men in a cabinet.
“It’s important to be here before you today to present to Canada a cabinet that looks like Canada,” Trudeau said during a press conference.