Page 33 - Florida Sentinel 12-25-20

National
Mich. Man Imprisoned For 37 Years
UPS Finally Ends Ban On Natural Black Hairstyles And Beards
UPS
On Murder Conviction Is Exonerated
After Witness Admits She Lied
A Michigan man was freed last month after being wrong- fully convicted of a crime and spending more than 37 years in prison.
Walter Forbes, 63, was re- leased on November 20. His release came after the prosecu- tion's star witness admitted to fabricating her story, the De- troit Free Press reports.
Forbes was arrested in 1982. He was convicted of arson and murder the following year and sentenced to life in prison.
According to the Free Press, the case began when Forbes broke up a bar fight in 1982. One of the men involved in the fight, Dennis Hall, shot Forbes the following day. But then, on July 12, 1982, Hall died in a fire that appeared to be deliberately set.
During trial, a woman testi- fied that she had seen three men, including Forbes, burn down Hall's apartment. The
WALTER FORBES
United Parcel Service (UPS) finally is lifting several strict rules on how employees who interact with the public — mostly the delivery drivers — can wear their facial hair and hairstyles.
The changes relax the strict limits on facial hair (no beards for most employees, and mustaches limited to above the crease of the lip), how long men could wear their hair (nothing longer than collar length) and hair-
styles (no Afros or braids). While styles still must be business-appropriate and not pose a safety concern, those specific limits have been eliminated.
The UPS changes also in- clude the lifting of gender- specific regulations, including rules like the length of the uniform’s shorts. The new rules, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, were posted on an internal com- pany web site for employees.
woman, Annice Ken- nebrew, was the prosecu- tion's star witness and the cornerstone of their case.
But in 2017 — 34 years after the trial — Kennebrew ad- mitted that she had lied during her testimony, according to court documents obtained by the Free Press.
In a February 2020 eviden-
tiary hearing, Kennebrew testified “that she had falsely implicated Mr. Forbes be- cause she had been intimi- dated into doing so by two local men who knew her from around the neighborhood and who had threatened to harm her and her family if she did not implicate Mr. Forbes,” according to court documents.
U. S., States Crack Down On Scams Bilking Desperate Americans
WASHINGTON — Here They Come !!!! Federal and state authorities say they are cracking down on a wave of illegal schemes that have pro- liferated during the pan- demic and prey upon the desperation of people who have lost jobs in the out- break’s economic upheaval.
The scams have ranged from the work-from-home reselling of luxury products, to pyramid schemes soliciting cash and that play on cultural norms in immigrant commu- nities, to fraudulent invest- ment rackets promising quick profits.
Regulators on Monday un- veiled what they are calling “Operation Income Illusion,”
a yearlong nationwide law- enforcement sweep targeting the scammers. Consumers lost an estimated $1 billion in the schemes since the start of 2020.
Especially vulnerable tar- gets are seniors and retirees,
immigrants, Black and Latino people, students and military families.
Losses reported by con- sumers from the schemes rose to the highest level on record in the first nine months of the year at more than $150 million, Andrew Smith, director of the Fed- eral Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau, told reporters in a conference call. Officials estimate only a small fraction of the burned consumers report their losses to authorities.
“These scammers are tak- ing advantage of a desperate situation to rip money from the hands of those who most need it,” Smith said.
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