The Italian author Umberto Eco, a philosopher who wrote best-selling novels including "The Name of the Rose," has died at 84, Italian media said Saturday, quoting his family.
Eco, who had been suffering from cancer, passed away at 9:30pm (2030 GMT) on Friday, La Repubblica said on its website.
Donald Trump claimed Saturday at a North Carolina rally that President Joe Biden and the Democrats are "downright crooked," and that he is retiring the "Crooked" moniker from Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who spoke in Georgia for the first time since being hit with a federal indictment before heading to a speech scheduled in North Carolina, said the purported corruption within the Democratic party is "why we now call him Crooked Joe Biden."
"We took the name away from Hillary; she suffered enough with that name," Trump said. "So, I retired the name from Hillary because I wanted to bring it over to Biden because he's probably worse than she ever was, and that's saying something."
OTHER NEWS: Trump's classified documents case sent to Trump-friendly judge randomly: report
Trump went on to accuse the Democrats of spying on his presidential campaign, and of forging "false evidence" to get illegal wire taps.
"We beat it all off, didn't we?" Trump asked the supportive crowd.
The federal case in which Donald Trump is facing criminal charges for his handling of classified documents was reportedly randomly sent to a Trump-appointed judge who has provided the former president with friendly rulings in the past.
Jack Smith's criminal indictment of Trump, which outlines various charges including those under the Espionage Act, was sent to Judge Aileen M. Cannon. The clerk for the federal court system for the Southern District of Florida confirmed that the choice was random and that Cannon's assignment to the case was not temporary, according the Charlie Savage of the New York Times.
"The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene," Savage wrote.
The new case wasn't assigned to Cannon because of her prior involvement in Trump's documents scandal, but due to a luck of the draw, according to the news report.
"Under the district court’s procedures, new cases are randomly delegated to a judge who sits in the division where the matter arose or a neighboring one, even if it relates to a previous case. That Judge Cannon is handling Mr. Trump’s criminal indictment elicited the question of how that had come to be," Savage reported.
OTHER NEWS: Justice John Roberts went against his 40-year record to deliver win for voter rights: report
The Times reportedly asked about that process, and was told by the clerk that "normal procedures were followed" for the assignment.
"Mar-a-Lago is in the West Palm Beach division, between the Fort Lauderdale division and the Fort Pierce division, where Judge Cannon sits," the outlet reported on Saturday. "The district court’s website shows that seven active judges have chambers in those three divisions, as do three judges on senior status who still hear cases."
Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly surprised everyone and went against his own personal mission when he authored a ruling finding that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition on racial gerrymandering by packing most of the state's Black voters into a single congressional district.
The ruling, which was joined by all three liberal members of the court along with a partial agreement from the conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was a surprise to legal observers, who had expected the country's top court to weaken the Voting Rights Act protections and find Alabama's map satisfactory.
That was the expectation in part because of Roberts' "40-year battle to whittle down racial equality protections enshrined in the crowning glory of the civil rights movement," according to a report from The Guardian's Ed Pilkington on Saturday.
"The chief justice’s decision to cling closely to precedent and avoid a sweeping reframing of voting rights law took supreme court observers by surprise," Pilkington wrote. “'Speechless!' was how Robyn Sanders, an elections lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, described her reaction. 'An amazing victory for voting rights, Black voters, and the Voting Rights Act.'"
The report continues:
"The chief justice has demonstrated a consistent desire to dilute or destroy elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in so doing has opened the floodgates to a torrent of voter suppression measures from Republican states that continues today. This time, though, Roberts reined himself in."
OTHER NEWS: Lauren Boebert says the Pentagon has labeled her a 'security threat'
Roberts was able to do so by focusing on the Court's precedent, as opposed to trying to rewrite the law, Pilkington added. And his intentions are reportedly more about the long game.
"A key to understanding Roberts’s intentions is that he plays the long game," the article states. "He likes to present himself as a bridge-builder who represents the moderate center of American jurisprudence. He is also highly sensitive to the slump in public trust in the supreme court that has followed embarrassing revelations about Clarence Thomas’s luxury holidays paid for by a Texan billionaire."
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