Georgia police officer shoots and kills man who wrongly spent 16 years in prison
Police in Georgia have shot and killed a man who spent 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction.
Leonard Allen Cure, 53, died on Monday after a police deputy pulled him over as he drove along Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida line, authorities said.
Mr Cure was previously sentenced to life in prison in 2003 for the armed robbery of a drug store in Florida. He had prior convictions for robbery and other crimes.
He was released in April 2020 after a judge ruled that Mr Cure had solid alibis that were previously disregarded, and there was no physical evidence or strong witness testimony to put him at the scene.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said Mr Cure was killed at around 7.30am on Monday after he got out of his car at the deputy’s request and complied with the officer’s commands, until learning that he was under arrest.
Leonard Allen Cure on the floor of the Florida Senate on the day his compensation bill was passed in April. Pic: AP
The deputy tasered Mr Cure, who then assaulted the deputy, the GBI added, before the officer used the Taser again, along with a baton.
The deputy then pulled out his gun and shot Mr Cure as he “still did not comply”, the GBI said.
Emergency services treated Mr Cure, but he later died.
The bureau did not say what prompted the deputy to pull over Mr Cure’s vehicle.
A non-profit group, The Innocence Project of Florida, represented Mr Cure in his exoneration case.
Its executive director, Seth Miller, said after speaking to the Cure family: “I can only imagine what it’s like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and… then be told that once he’s been freed, he’s been shot dead.”
Read more from Sky News:
Boy, 6, dies after being stabbed 26 times in Illinois
Driver gets $1.4m speeding fine after going 35mph over limit
Earlier this year Mr Cure, who lived in a suburb of Atlanta, was given $817,000 in compensation for his wrongful conviction.
Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor, who described the 53-year-old as “smart, funny and kind”, said at the time: “No amount of money will get those years back for Mr Cure or give him peace but it is a small gesture that recognises Mr Cure was wronged and that we, in the State of Florida and in the justice system, will help him and compensate him.
“After he was freed and exonerated by our office, he visited prosecutors at our office and participated in training to help our staff do their jobs in the fairest and most thorough way possible.”
Broward assistant state attorney Arielle Demby Berger added: “I’ve gotten to know Mr Cure, ‘Lenny’, these past years and he has encouraged our work as well as helped us train future generations of prosecutors.
“Lenny has shared with me that his dream was one day to work in a cubicle instead of doing manual labour. Now, Lenny can go to college and surpass his dreams.”
The GBI says it is conducting an independent investigation into the shooting.
It could be diplomatic dynamite.
The first meeting between a sitting US and Russian president in more than four years, following one of the bleakest periods in the history of their countries’ bilateral relations.
But a Putin–Trump summit does not necessarily mean there will be a ceasefire.
Ukraine war latest: Kremlin aide’s full statement on Trump-Putin talks
On the one hand, it could signal that a point of agreement has been reached and a face-to-face meeting is needed to seal the deal.
That has always been Russia’s stance. It’s consistently said it would only meet at a presidential level if there’s something to agree on.
On the other hand, there might not be anything substantive. It might just be for show.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘Good chance’ Trump will meet Putin soon
It might just be the latest attempt by the Kremlin to diffuse Donald Trump’s anger and dodge his deadline to end the war by Friday or face sanctions.
It would give Trump something that can be presented as progress, but in reality, it delivers anything but.
After all, there has certainly not been any sign that Moscow is willing to soften its negotiating position or step back from its goals on the battlefield.
Tellingly, perhaps, it’s this latter view which has been taken by some of the Russian press on Thursday.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have not met face to face since the US president returned to the White House. File pic: Reuters
“Putin won” is the headline in Moskovsky Komsomolets regarding the Kremlin leader’s meeting with Witkoff.
The state-run tabloid quotes a political scientist, Marat Bashirov, who claims Putin “bought time” ahead of Friday’s deadline.
“It is noteworthy that in his rhetoric [on sanctions] Trump did not mention Russia at all,” the paper notes.
Komsomolskaya Pravda is similarly dismissive.
“Donald Trump has two simple interests in connection with Ukraine: to earn money for America, and political whistles and the Nobel Peace Prize for himself,” it says.
“Russia has its own interests,” it adds, “securing them is what Vladimir Putin will seek at a meeting with Trump.”
At this stage, the most likely location is the United Arab Emirates. Putin met the country’s president in the Kremlin today, and afterwards said it would be a “suitable location”. It felt like a strong hint.
And the UAE certainly makes sense.
It’s played mediator for a number of the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine; it has good relations with the US (and was one of Trump’s stops on his recent Middle East tour); and most importantly for Moscow, it’s not a member of the International Criminal Court. So Putin doesn’t have to worry about being arrested.
But if NBC’s reports are correct, that a Putin-Trump summit is conditional on the Russian president meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then the summit may not happen at all.
Read more on Russia and Ukraine:
Trump went from frustration to a possible Putin meeting in hours
What could a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine involve?
India hints it will keep buying Russian oil – despite Trump threats
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Until now, Putin has refused to meet Zelenskyy, despite numerous demands from Kyiv, because he views him as illegitimate.
The Kremlin said the prospect of a trilateral meeting between the leaders was mentioned by Witkoff on Wednesday, but the proposal was left “completely without comment” by Russia.
GPT-5, the long-awaited upgrade to the ChatGPT AI chatbot, has been released by its maker OpenAI.
It has been one of the most highly anticipated launches in Silicon Valley after OpenAI’s first offering ChatGPT – powered by its GPT-3 model – kick-started the current AI boom in late 2022.
“GPT-3 sort of felt like talking to a high school student,” said Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive.
“GPT-4, maybe it was like talking to a college student. But with GPT-5, now it’s like talking to an expert, a PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand.”
At the launch event, OpenAI claimed the new chatbot, which will be released to all ChatGPT users on Thursday, was more than a simple upgrade to its previous offerings.
According to OpenAI, the new model exceeds the chatbot competition from the likes of Google, X and Antropic on “benchmarks” – standardised tests used to rank models.
OpenAI claims it has been designed to be easier and more natural to communicate with, better at writing prose and advanced computer code, solving academic questions from mathematics to law, assisting with healthcare-related questions, as well as being safer than its predecessors.
“It’s an incredible superpower on demand,” claimed Mr Altman.
GPT-5. Pic: OpenAI
The model is also more intelligent in how it uses its own brain power – and therefore an expensive computing resource – according to OpenAI.
It is a hybrid of previous chatbots and slower, more computing-intensive “reasoning” models like OpenAI’s Deep Research.
Based on a user’s request, the model will decide how much “thinking” is required before answering, rather than requiring the user to switch between different models.
GPT-5. Pic: OpenAI
Although AI enthusiasts who had been expecting GPT-5 to represent “artificial general intelligence [AGI]” will be disappointed.
Despite this being OpenAI’s stated goal, Mr Altman billed GPT-5 as a “major upgrade” to GPT-4 and a “significant step along the path to AGI”.
But they’re clearly not there yet.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
July: ‘ChatGPT is the partner I always wanted’
A real test of GPT-5 will be whether it sells.
OpenAI is projected to spend $8bn (£6bn) this year, on top of $5bn (£3.7bn) last year, and while it is expected to make a profit this year, the business case for increasingly powerful AI models is still not clear to many investors.
Given a single training run for GPT-5 is rumoured to have cost $500m (£373m), there will be an expectation the new model is significantly more useful to business users.
Despite a very slick demonstration of its coding skills at the launch presentation, where it built an online language learning game in seconds, GPT-5 will have to prove its worth for professional coding.
Many in the tech industry prefer Anthropic AI’s Claude model to write code. OpenAI and its investors will be hoping GPT-5 changes that.
AI experts will also be testing GPT-5’s tendency to “hallucinate”, an issue OpenAI claims to have improved with GPT-5.
But erroneous or bizarre answers are a problem that dogs all large generative AI models.
“Shiny things are always fun to play with, and I fully expect GPT-5 to be the shiniest so far,” said Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist at New York University and AI commentator.
“But that doesn’t mean that it is a critical step on the optimal path to AI that we can trust,” Mr Marcus added in a post.
Dean Cain has been branded the “worst superman ever” as he announced he will join the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “ASAP”.
The 59-year-old, who was cast as Superman in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, announced he had joined the team amid the federal agency’s unprecedented immigration raids.
He told Fox News on Wednesday his recruitment video on Instagram had gone viral and since then, “I have spoken with some of the officials over at ICE and I will be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP”.
“You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,” he said in the Instagram post where he appealed for his followers to join ICE.
Speaking with the Superman theme song in the background, he said “hundreds of thousands of criminals” had been arrested since US President Donald Trump took office.
He then told his followers they would get a series of benefits if they joined ICE, including a $50,000 (£37,407) signing bonus and student loan repayment.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Who is being targeted in Trump’s immigration raids?
Read more:
Farmer becomes first person to die during Trump’s ICE raids
Meet the volunteers leading the fight against Trump’s immigration raids
“If you want to help save America ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America’s streets,” he said, before adding: “I voted for that.”
ICE agents are under pressure from the White House to boost their deportation numbers in line with Mr Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
Cain’s post on Instagram received some backlash, with one user commenting: “Worst superman ever”.
Another said: “Shame on you Dean – that’s the most un-Superman thing you could possibly advocate.”
One fan turned against him and said: “Until I saw this I was such a fan. What a sad human being you must be.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike