Queen Anne’s County Library has been expanding efforts to get more services to incarcerated individuals at Queen Anne’s County Detention Center. This project, funded by an $11,000 grant from the Library Services and Technology Act. Since September 2023, when the first order was submitted, the library has delivered approximately 650 new books, replacing a large... Read more

A camper went up in flames Thursday morning in Chestertown. WBOC reports at approximately 4:45am, a fire broke out at 500 Double Creek Pt. Road. The incident was described as a fire in a “30′ aluminum camper with attached living quarters”. According to state fire officials, the fire, which was discovered by the owner, took... Read more

Three out-of-state men were charged by the Chestertown Police Department for the theft of Pride flags and other rainbow-themed items taken from the Emmanuel Church on Cross Street during the weekend of the Juneteenth celebration, June 15, 16. The Kent County News reports in all, nine victims of theft were identified. The crimes occurred on... Read more

In Rock Hall, Ferry Park Beach Boardwalk will be closed Monday, July 29th through Thursday, August 1st (daytime only) for the Boardwalk to be replaced thanks to the Parks & Recreation Beach Grant from 2021. If you have any questions, please call the Town Office at 410-639-7611.

A man is charged in Queen Anne’s County with driving under the influence. Authorities say 43 year old Steven Lunczynski was pulled over late at night on July 18th for failing to maintain his lane. The deputy who made the stop detected alcohol on the driver’s break and administered a field sobriety test, which he... Read more

Heron Point’s riverfront garden has met the criteria of a Certified Wildlife Habitat® as established by the National Wildlife Federation. The Evening Enterprise reports the area has been transformed into a sustainable native garden that supports a variety of wildlife, including birds, butterflies, bees and frogs. According to a news release, the National Wildlife Federation... Read more

The Queen Anne’s County Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve “re-including” 101 acres of property on Piney Creek Road owned by Chesterhaven Beach Partnership, LLP back into the Chester Growth Area. The Bay Times & Record Observer reports Chesterhaven Beach Partnership, LLP submitted a Reconsideration Comprehensive Rezoning Request to add to the Chester Growth Area and... Read more

Queen Anne’s County has now accumulated upwards of 90,000 acres of preserved agricultural land, pending the settlement of an additional 1,830 acres. County Commissioners have made land preservation a top priority in recent years, dedicating over $1 million this year to the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation program, which, after the state match, resulted in... Read more

A Chestertown pediatrician surrendered his license to practice in Maryland. The Kent County News reports Julio Ramirez, formerly head of his private practice at 6602 Church Hill Road in Chestertown, is being sued by a Kent County woman seeking relief from the court for physical, psychological and emotional injuries she said she incurred while seeking... Read more

Schools across Queen Anne’s County Public Schools have raised more than $16,000 during recent fundraising efforts for the American Heart Association. Seven schools took part in the efforts including Kent Island Elementary School, Bayside Elementary School, Centreville Elementary School, Grasonville Elementary School, Kennard Elementary School, Centreville Middle School and Sudlersville Middle School.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A new era is coming for Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel in the wake of the capture by U.S. authorities of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the last of the grand old Mexican drug traffickers.

Experts believe his arrest will usher in a new wave of violence in Mexico even as Zambada could potentially provide loads of information for U.S. prosecutors.

Zambada, who had eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison, was known for being an astute operator, skilled at corrupting officials and having an ability to negotiate with everyone, including rivals.

Removing him from the criminal landscape could set off an internal war for control of the cartel that has a global reach — as has occurred with the arrest or killings of other kingpins — and open the door to the more violent inclinations of a younger generation of Sinaloa traffickers, experts say.

With that in mind, the Mexican government deployed 200 members of its special forces Friday to Culiacan, Sinaloa state’s capital.

There is “significant potential for high escalation of violence across Mexico,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution. That “is bad for Mexico, it’s bad for the United States, as well as the possibility that the even more vicious (Jalisco New Generation cartel) will rise to even greater importance.”

For that reason, Zambada’s arrest could be considered a “great tactical success,” but strategically problematic, Felbab-Brown said.

While details remain scarce, a United States official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Zambada was tricked into flying to the U.S., where he was arrested along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of the infamous Sinaloa leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The elder Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the United States.

A small plane left Hermosillo in northern Mexico on Thursday morning with only an American pilot aboard, bound for the airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas. Mexican Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Friday that while one person left Hermosillo, three people arrived in New Mexico.

The flight tracking site Flight Aware showed the plane stopped transmitting its elevation and speed for about half an hour over the mountains of northern Mexico before resuming its course to the U.S.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a vocal critic of the strategy of taking down drug kingpins, said Friday that Mexico had not participated or known about the U.S. operation, but said he considered the arrests an “advance.”

Later, López Obrador, while talking about where the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels are battling for control of smuggling routes along the Guatemala border on Friday, downplayed the violence that had driven nearly 600 Mexicans to seek refuge in Guatemala this week.

He said, as he often has, that it’s his political adversaries who are trying to make Mexico’s violence appear to be out of control. But those cartels were already fighting each other in many locations throughout Mexico before Zambada’s arrest.

Frank Pérez, a lawyer for Zambada, told The Associated Press that his client “did not come to the U.S. voluntarily.”

It appeared the sons of “El Chapo” Guzmán were somehow in on the trap for Zambada, said José Reveles, author of a number of books about the cartels. The so-called Chapitos, or Little Chapos, make up a faction within the Sinaloa cartel that was often at odds with Zambada even while trafficking drugs.

Guzmán López, who was also arrested Thursday, “is not his friend nor his collaborator,” Reveles said.

He is considered to be the least influential of the four brothers who make up the Chapitos, who are considered among the main exporters of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to the United States. Joaquín Guzmán López is now the second of them to land in U.S. custody. Their chief of security was arrested by Mexican authorities in November.

Guzmán López has been accused of being the cartel’s link for importing the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl from Asia and for setting up the labs that produce the drug, Reveles said.

Anne Milgram, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief, said that Zambada’s arrest “strikes at the heart of the cartel that is responsible for the majority of drugs, including fentanyl and methamphetamine, killing Americans from coast to coast.”

During the current Mexican administration, which ends Sept. 30, Mexico has been unable to control the country’s violence. López Obrador’s decision to focus on alleviating what he sees as the root causes of violence instead of head-on confrontation with the cartels has caused tensions with the U.S. authorities, in particular the DEA.

Felbab-Brown said it has also allowed the cartels to accumulate power that “is unprecedented in Mexico’s history.”

Zambada could now offer reams of information about the cartel’s operations if he decides to cooperate. He faces charges in multiple U.S. federal courts.

He was the cartel’s most skilled agent of corruption and the most influential trafficker who “has been running extensive corruption networks across many administrations in Mexico, across vast geographic spaces, from the top of the Mexican government to municipal institutions,” Felbab-Brown said.

“The most important thing to watch is how much intelligence El Mayo will now provide and how much evidence in exchange for better terms,” she said.

___

Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Christopher Sherman, Alexis Triboulard and Martín Silva in Mexico City contributed to this story.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In a fresh broadside against one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department late Friday accused TikTok of harnessing the capability to gather bulk information on users based on views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion and religion.

Government lawyers wrote in a brief filed to the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to enable TikTok employees to speak directly with ByteDance engineers in China.

TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that has wound up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China, federal officials said.

One of Lark’s internal search tools, the filing states, permits ByteDance and TikTok employees in the U.S. and China to gather information on users’ content or expressions, including views on sensitive topics, such as abortion or religion. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported TikTok had tracked users who watched LGBTQ content through a dashboard the company said it had since deleted.

The new court documents represent the government’s first major defense in a consequential legal battle over the future of the popular social media platform, which is used by more than 170 million Americans. Under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, the company could face a ban in a few months if it doesn’t break ties with ByteDance.

The measure was passed with bipartisan support after lawmakers and administration officials expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or sway public opinion towards Beijing’s interests by manipulating the algorithm that populates users’ feeds.

The Justice Department warned, in stark terms, of the potential for what it called “covert content manipulation” by the Chinese government, saying the algorithm could be designed to shape content that users receive.

“By directing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate that algorithm; China could for example further its existing malign influence operations and amplify its efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions,” the brief states.

The concern, they said, is more than theoretical, alleging that TikTok and ByteDance employees are known to engage in a practice called “heating” in which certain videos are promoted in order to receive a certain number of views. While this capability enables TikTok to curate popular content and disseminate it more widely, U.S. officials posit it can also be used for nefarious purposes.

Justice Department officials are asking the court to allow a classified version of its legal brief, which won’t be accessible to the two companies.

Nothing in the redacted brief “changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement.

“The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the 1st Amendment,” Haurek said. “As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”

In the redacted version of the court documents, the Justice Department said another tool triggered the suppression of content based on the use of certain words. Certain policies of the tool applied to ByteDance users in China, where the company operates a similar app called Douyin that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.

But Justice Department officials said other policies may have been applied to TikTok users outside of China. TikTok was investigating the existence of these policies and whether they had ever been used in the U.S. in, or around, 2022, officials said.

The government points to the Lark data transfers to explain why federal officials do not believe that Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle, is sufficient to guard against national security concerns.

In its legal challenge against the law, TikTok has heavily leaned on arguments that the potential ban violates the First Amendment because it bars the app from continued speech unless it attracts a new owner through a complex divestment process. It has also argued divestment would change the speech on the platform because a new social platform would lack the algorithm that has driven its success.

In its response, the Justice Department argued TikTok has not raised any valid free speech claims, saying the law addresses national security concerns without targeting protected speech, and argues that China and ByteDance, as foreign entities, aren’t shielded by the First Amendment.

TikTok has also argued the U.S. law discriminates on viewpoints, citing statements from some lawmakers critical of what they viewed as an anti-Israel tilt on the platform during its war in Gaza.

Justice Department officials disputes that argument, saying the law at issue reflects their ongoing concern that China could weaponize technology against U.S. national security, a fear they say is made worse by demands that companies under Beijing’s control turn over sensitive data to the government. They say TikTok, under its current operating structure, is required to be responsive to those demands.

Oral arguments in the case is scheduled for September.

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