A Colorado shooter who killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub was sentenced to life in prison Monday after victims called the suspect a “monster” preying on patrons in a targeted attack.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, wearing a blue plaid shirt and blue tie in court, pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder – one for each person at Club Q on the night of the shooting. Aldrich also claimed he had no objection to two hate crimes, one a felony and the other a misdemeanor.

Those in the courtroom wiped away tears as the judge explained the charges and read the names of the victims.

“You are targeting a group of people for their simple existence,” Judge Michael McHenry told Aldrich.

The admission of guilt comes just seven months after the shooting, sparing the victim’s families and survivors a long and potentially painful process.

Aldrich will serve five consecutive life sentences, plus 48 years for each attempted murder, for a total of another 2,208 years.

Anderson Aldrich pleaded guilty during his arraignment in El Paso County District Court Monday in connection with the November 19 attack on Club Q

Those killed in the shooting were Kelly Loving, 40; Daniel Aston, 28; Derrick Rump, 38; Ashley Paugh, 34; and Raymond Green Vance, 22

On November 19, 2022, Aldrich in body armor opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub. Aside from those killed, nearly two dozen others were shot or otherwise injured before being stopped by “heroic” well-wishers.

Those killed in the shooting were Kelly Loving, 40; Daniel Aston, 28; Derrick Rump, 38; Ashley Paugh, 34; and Raymond Green Vance, 22.

“This thing sitting in this courtroom isn’t human, it’s a monster,” said Jessica Fierro, whose boyfriend was killed that night. “The devil is waiting with open arms.”

Heartbroken loved ones spoke at Aldrich’s hearing on Monday, including Sabrina and Jeff Aston, the parents of Daniel Aston – one of the bartenders at Club Q.

“Losing him has brought us incredible grief and sadness,” said Jeff Aston. “We’ll never hear another of his stories.” “I’ll never hear him laugh at my father’s jokes again.”

Aston’s mother, Sabrina, was among those who said she would not forgive the crimes.

Another forgave Aldrich without excusing the crime.

“I forgive that person because they are a symbol of a broken system, of hate and hate being shown to us as a community,” said Wyatt Kent, Aston Partner. “What brings me joy is that this hurt person will never see the joy and light that has come into our community as a result.”

Aldrich mostly looked down while the victims spoke, sometimes glancing at a screen showing photos of the victims.

Adriana Vance, mother of Raymond Green Vance, told the court, “Somehow the families have to find a way to move on.” This man didn’t deserve to move on. What matters now is that he sees neither a sunrise nor a sunset.’

Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado – where the shooting took place

Aldrich, then 22, was formally indicted on December 6 and charged with 323 felonies, but did not file a plea deal at the time

The Club Q shooting was reminiscent of a 2016 massacre when a gunman killed 49 people at Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., before being shot dead by police.

Aldrich, then 22, was formally indicted on December 6 and charged with 323 felonies, but did not file a plea deal at the time.

The most serious charges carry a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.

However, Aldrich could face the death penalty in federal court if prosecutors choose to press charges under US law, which still provides the death penalty for certain crimes.

Monday’s hearing followed a series of phone calls from prison to The Associated Press by Aldrich, expressing his remorse and intention to face the consequences at this court hearing.

Before Aldrich committed the fatal shooting, the suspect had threatened to kill his grandparents in 2021 for getting in the way of a plan to become “the next mass killer.”

Aldrich is pictured last year showing up at the house where her mother rented a room after she threatened to blow up her grandparents’ basement

Several survivors told the AP about the consent form after being approached about Aldrich’s comments to the publisher.

They said prosecutors told them that Aldrich, who is non-binary and uses the pronouns “the” and “them,” would plead guilty, which would carry a life sentence.

Aldrich was initially charged in more than 300 states, including murder and hate crimes.

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering filing federal hate crime charges, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing case.

The Club Q attack came over a year after Aldrich was arrested for threatening her grandparents and vowing to be “the next mass killer”. However, the charges were ultimately dropped in that case.

Aldrich was then arrested after a confrontation with SWAT officers, which was livestreamed on Facebook, and after the evacuation of 10 nearby homes. He told officers, “If they break through, I’m going to fucking blow it up!” Aldrich finally surrendered.

However, the charges against Aldrich were dropped in July 2022 after Aldrich’s mother and grandparents, victims of the case, refused to cooperate with prosecutors and evaded efforts to serve subpoenas for testimony, court documents said.

Other relatives told a judge they feared Aldrich would hurt their grandparents if they were released, painting the picture of an isolated, violent person who didn’t have a job and was paid $30,000, mostly to buy 3D printers spent on making weapons, the records said.

Aldrich was subsequently released from prison and authorities seized two guns upon arrest – a Ghost pistol and an MM15 rifle.

But nothing prevented Aldrich from buying more firearms legally, which immediately after the shooting raised questions about whether authorities should have obtained a red flag order to prevent such purchases.

Club Q victim Kelly Loving, 40, a trans woman, was among the five people killed in the shooting

Derrick Rump, 38, was “active in the local LGBTQ community” and was popular with friends and family

Raymond Green Vance, 22, was tragically killed during the club massacre

Daniel Aston, 28, was one of the innocent victims killed by the lone gunman

Ashley Paugh, 35, a married mother, was one of five victims

The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said it could not have obtained a court order stopping Aldrich from purchasing or possessing guns because the 2021 arrest file was sealed after the charges were dropped.

There is no new evidence they could use to prove Aldrich poses a threat “in the near future,” the sheriff’s office said.

Investigators later revealed that the two weapons Aldrich possessed during the Club-Q attack — the rifle and a handgun — appeared to be ghost guns, which are homemade firearms with no serial number and no background check required for the owner.

Aldrich told AP in one of the prison interviews that they were on “very large amounts of drugs” and abusing steroids at the time of the attack. However, they did not directly respond to the hate crime allegations.

Candles, flowers and cards stand outside Club Q to commemorate the five victims who lost their lives

Investigators at the Club Q nightclub crime scene, where Aldrich arrived with an AR-15 rifle

When asked if the attack was motivated by hate, Aldrich simply replied that it was “completely off the mark.” Aldrich’s attorneys, who have not disputed Aldrich’s role in the shooting, also indicate that hatred is the cause.

Some survivors who overheard the recorded phone calls viewed Aldrich’s comments as an attempt to avoid the death penalty, which still exists in the federal system.

Colorado abolished it in 2020 and life without prison is now the prescribed penalty for first-degree murder in the state.

They objected to Aldrich’s unwillingness to discuss motive and the use of passive, general language such as “I just can’t believe what happened” and “I wish I could turn back time.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, launched a surprise attempt to stage a military uprising on Friday evening. Prigozhin declared his armed campaign, which he called a “march of justice,” to hold the country’s military leaders to account.

In a rapid series of events, Wagner’s forces advanced toward Moscow the following day after seizing control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a key command center in the war in Ukraine.

In times like these, sometimes all you can do is make a few memes.

Here’s a look at some of our favorite memes from Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny:

Before founding the Wagner Group, Prigozhin had experience in gastronomy. He was nicknamed “Putin’s Chef” for his involvement in the food supply for the Kremlin and various Russian elites.

Another meme related to Prigozhin’s culinary past.

Ratatouille: The rat turns out to be a cook

Russia:

Translation: Рататуй: крыса оказалась поваром
Russia:

— Харик Оханисян (@Garik_R_O) June 24, 2023

Iosif Prigozhin, a well-known music producer who shares the same last name as Yevgeny Prigozhin but has no family connection with him, figured prominently in many of this weekend’s memes.

These memes playfully switched roles and used imagery of Iosif Prigozhin to humorously depict him taking control of Dubai, alluding to a hypothetical military coup scenario.

The photo shows Iosif Prigozhin with his wife, the singer Valeriya.

Iosif Prigozhin shared his thoughts on the memes confusing him with the head of Wagner:

“It’s not even laughter through tears. It was a big worry. And the fact that I was kind of trapped in that situation – I don’t even know how to react. It’s like a new role for me, reminiscent of some kind of fiction.” Movie. It’s a strange fusion I’ve been living in lately,” said Iosif Prigozhin.

After the Wagner group arrived in Rostov-on-Don, some residents shared photos of the fighters and jokingly expressed interest in finding potential love partners among them.

“Please find me, we were on Budennovsky [Prospekt]/Pushkinskaya [Ulitsa] at 4:43!! You are sweet.”

After the negotiations between Prigozhin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that led to the end of the rebellion, Lukashenko was portrayed in a meme as Michael Jackson “lowering” a gun pointed at himself.

Lukashenko pic.twitter.com/oi5dDgjZY9

— El Suco (@EISuco) June 24, 2023

Meme makers also showed Lukashenko rescuing the ill-fated submersible Titan from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

– After 6 days, the passengers of the Titan submarine were rescued!

– But how?!?!

– …

Some ridiculed the Moscow mayor’s tendency to declare a citywide day of rest whenever something goes wrong.

“Some cops***: *happens*

Sobyanin: Let’s rest!”

• By Richard Gray
• BBC future

5 hours before

picture description,

Around the wreck of the Titanic, sunlight is quickly absorbed by the water and cannot penetrate more than 1,000 meters to the surface.

In the fall of 1911, a huge chunk of ice broke off a glacier southwest of the vast Greenland Ice Sheet. Over the next few months, it slowly drifted southward, gradually being melted by ocean currents and winds.

Then, on the cold, moonless night of April 14, 1912, a 125-meter-long iceberg—all that remained of the roughly 500-meter-long chunk of ice that had left a Greenland fjord the previous year—collided with the ocean liner RMS Titanic, which was sailing on its maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York, USA. The ship sank in less than three hours, taking more than 1,500 passengers and crew with it. The wreck now lies nearly 3.8 km below the waves, nearly 400 miles (640 km) southeast of the Newfoundland coast.

Icebergs still pose a hazard to shipping: In 2019, between March and August, 1,515 icebergs drifted south enough to enter transatlantic shipping lanes. But Titanic’s final resting place comes with its own perils, making tours of the world’s most famous wreck a daunting challenge.

After a five-person submersible carrying fare-paying passengers on a trip to the wreck of the Titanic went missing, the BBC has taken an interest in this region of the seabed.

Navigate the depths

The depths of the ocean are dark. Sunlight is absorbed very quickly by water and cannot penetrate more than 1,000 meters from the surface. Beyond, the ocean has plunged into perpetual darkness. Because of this, the Titanic is located in an area known as the “Midnight Zone”.

Previous expeditions to the wreck site have described a descent of more than two hours in total darkness before the seabed suddenly appeared in the light of the submersible.

Because line of sight is limited beyond the few meters illuminated by the truck-sized submersible’s edge lights, navigating at this depth is a real challenge, and it’s easy to get disoriented on the seabed. .

However, detailed maps of the Titanic wreck, compiled through decades of high-resolution scanning, can provide landmarks when objects are visible. The sonar also allows the crew to see features and objects beyond the small area of ​​light illuminated by the submersible.

Dive pilots also rely on a technique called inertial navigation, which uses a system of accelerometers and gyroscopes to track their position and orientation relative to a known starting point and speed. OceanGate’s Titan submersible is equipped with a state-of-the-art autonomous inertial navigation system, which it combines with an acoustic sensor called Doppler Velocity Log to estimate the craft’s depth and speed relative to the seabed.

Nonetheless, passengers on previous Titanic voyages using OceanGate have described how difficult it is to navigate once you’ve landed at the bottom of the ocean. Mike Reiss, a TV comedy writer who worked on The Simpsons and took part in a voyage on OceanGate on the Titanic last year, told the BBC: “When you hit rock bottom you don’t know where you are. We must have that.” tossed blindly at the bottom of the ocean, knowing full well that the Titanic was somewhere, but it was so dark that the biggest thing under the ocean was only 500 meters away from us and we spent ninety minutes with it spent looking for her.”

crushing depths

The deeper an object sinks in the sea, the more the water pressure around it increases. On the sea floor, at a depth of 3,800 m, the Titanic and everything around it is subjected to a pressure of about 40 MPa, which is 390 times higher than on the surface.

“To put that in perspective, it’s about 200 times the pressure of a car tire,” Robert Blasiak, an oceanography researcher at Stockholm University’s Stockholm Resilience Center, told Stockholm’s Today show. BBC Radio 4. “That’s why you need a very thick-walled submersible.” The titanium sub’s carbon fiber and titanium walls are designed to allow it to operate at a maximum depth of 4,000 metres.

We are probably more familiar with the strong surface currents that can throw boats and swimmers off course, but the depths of the ocean are also riddled with underwater currents. Although generally not as powerful as those found at the surface, they can still displace large amounts of water. They can be fed by surface winds affecting the water column below, by tides in the deep sea, or by differences in water density due to temperature and salinity, called thermohaline currents. Rare events called benthic storms, which are usually associated with surface eddies, can also produce strong, sporadic currents that can wash materials onto the seafloor.

picture description,

The thick, reinforced walls of their submersible protect the crews from the crushing pressures of the deep.

The available information on the underwater currents surrounding the Titanic, which is divided into two main parts after the separation of the bow and stern during the sinking, comes from studies of the shapes of the seabed and the movement of the squid around the wreck.

Part of Titanic’s wreckage is known to lie near a section of seabed affected by a southward-flowing cold-water current known as the Western Boundary Undercurrent. The flow of this “undercurrent” creates shifting dunes, ripples and ribbon-like patterns in seafloor sediment and mud that have allowed scientists to understand their strength. Most of the formations observed on the seabed are associated with relatively weak or moderate currents.

The sand waves at the eastern edge of Titanic’s debris field — the scattered personal belongings, accessories, fittings, coal and parts of the ship itself that were buried during the sinking — indicate the existence of an east-west bottom current within the main wreck site, they claim the scientists, the currents are trending from northwest to southwest, possibly due to larger debris changing direction.

South of the front, the currents appear to be particularly erratic, running northeast-northwest-southwest.

Many experts believe that the wreckage of these currents will eventually bury the wreckage of the Titanic in the sediment.

Gerhard Seiffert, a deep-sea marine archaeologist who recently led an expedition to scan the Titanic wreckage in high resolution, told the BBC he didn’t think the currents in the area were strong enough to pose a threat to a submersible – assuming that was the case with electricity.

“I am not aware of any currents that could pose a hazard to a functioning seagoing craft on the Titanic site,” he said. “In our mapping project, the currents posed a challenge to mapping accuracy and did not pose a safety risk.”

sediment flows

After more than a hundred years at the bottom of the sea, the Titanic gradually fell into disrepair. The initial impact of the two main parts of the ship upon impact with the seabed caused large parts of the wreck to be twisted and deformed. Over time, microbes that feed on the ship’s iron have formed icicle-like “resilience” abilities, accelerating the wreck’s decay. In fact, scientists estimate that the higher bacterial activity at the stern of the ship — which is due in large part to the greater damage it sustained — is causing the ship to deteriorate 40 years faster than the front.

“The wreck keeps collapsing, mainly due to corrosion,” says Mr. Seiffert. A little every year. But as long as you keep a safe distance – no direct contact, no penetration through the openings – no damage should be feared.

Although extremely unlikely, sudden sediment flows to the seabed have damaged and even washed away man-made objects on the seabed.

The most important events – like the severing of the transatlantic cable off Newfoundland in 1929 – are triggered by seismic phenomena such as earthquakes. Awareness of the danger posed by these events is growing, although there is no evidence that such an event was associated with the disappearance of the Titan submarine.

picture description,

The Titanic is slowly collapsing as ocean pressure, moving sediments, and iron-eating bacteria erode its structure.

Over the years, researchers have identified evidence that the seabed surrounding the Titanic wreck was affected by massive underwater landslides in the distant past. Huge amounts of sediment appear to have tumbled down the continental slope from Newfoundland, creating what scientists call the “corridor of instability.” They estimate that the last of these “destructive” events occurred tens of thousands of years ago, forming layers of sediment up to 100 meters thick. But these events are extremely rare, says David Piper, a marine geology researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada, who spent many years surveying the seabed around Titanic. He compares these events in frequency to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or Mount Fuji – on the order of once every tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

Other phenomena known as turbidity currents — where water picks up sediment and flows along the continental slope — are more common and can be triggered by storms. “We show a repeat interval of about five hundred years,” says Piper. However, the topography of the seabed in the area is expected to direct sediment flows toward a structure known as “Titanic Valley,” which would mean they would not reach the wreck at all.

According to Seiffert and Piper, it is unlikely that such an event could have played a role in the disappearance of the Titan submersible.

Other geological features surrounding the wreck site have yet to be explored. On a previous Titanic expedition with OceanGate, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French Navy diver and dive pilot, visited a mysterious anomaly he discovered with sonar in 1996. It turned out to be a rocky reef covered in marine life. He hoped to visit another site he had discovered on previous expeditions near the wreck of the Titanic.

As the search for the missing ship continues, few clues exist as to what may have happened to the Titan and her crew. But in such a harsh and inhospitable environment, the risks of visiting Titanic’s wreckage are just as relevant today as they were in 1986, when the first people to set eyes on the ship from its wreckage embarked on the journey below.

Laboratory meat – www.iPaddisti.it

Synthetic meat derived from animal cells grown in the lab is gaining popularity as a sustainable alternative to traditional meat.

Its production reduces the environmental impact of intensive livestock farming and raises ethical concerns related to meat consumption. A recent event could convince even more people to change their eating habits.

This particular type of meat is made through a process that includes: Cultivation of animal cells in the laboratory. The cells are taken from a healthy animal (pigs, steers, chickens, sheep, etc.) and then grown in a controlled environment where they develop into muscle tissue that can be used to produce meat that resembles traditional beef in appearance and taste resembles. .

Synthetic meat production delivers results numerous advantages over conventional meatsuch as significantly reducing the environmental impact of intensive livestock farming.

Raising livestock requires large amounts of land, water and forage and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and the depletion of natural resources. Synthetic meat, on the other hand requires less land, water and resources, reducing the ecological footprint entire food industry.

Synthetic meat allowed, here you can eat the first laboratory chicken meat

One of the main advantages of producing synthetic meat is that it is lab grown eliminates the need to raise and kill animals for food. Thanks to this innovation, more and more people will be able to do this Ethical considerations on animal welfare and the emotional impact of meat consumption.

Synthetic meat approved in the USA – www.iPaddisti.it (source: freepik)

The most recent approval of the USDA for the sale of synthetic chicken meat Good meat and quality food represents a major breakthrough for the synthetic meat industry in the United States United States. Both companies have proven that they adhere to strict food safety standards and deliver a high quality product that meets the required standards. USDA approved confirms the safety and legality of synthetic chicken meat manufactured by these companies and paved the way for its commercialization in the US market and subsequently in the rest of the world.

Good Meat and Upside Foods use innovative methods to create synthetic chicken meat, and just like Good Meet founder Josh Tetrick said, “Announcing the ability to produce and sell lab-grown meat It’s a great time for our company, our industry and our food systemAnd”.