Chron briefs for Aug. 26

Pennsylvania man who beat officer with a Trump flag at Jan. 6 riot sentenced to nearly four years

PHILADELPHIA – A Pennsylvania man who beat a Washington, D.C., police officer with a Trump flag during the Capitol riot was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison Friday – one of the harshest punishments imposed for a person accused in the Jan. 6 attack.

Howard Richardson, 72, of King of Prussia, apologized to the court during a sentencing hearing in Washington saying “there’s no excuse” for his behavior that day. Still, he stressed that the officer involved hadn’t been seriously hurt and pleaded with the court for mercy.

“I’m a good citizen,” he told U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during a hearing in Washington. “I’ve been a good neighbor. … I went down (to Washington) as a patriotic citizen to celebrate. I allowed myself to be dragged into this mob mentality.”

He noted he is a Vietnam veteran and that his son has been a police officer for nearly two decades. But Kollar-Kotelly said that, if anything, Richardson’s military service and his family ties to police should have made him even more keenly aware that his actions that day were indefensible.

“Violence is an unacceptable way of resolving political differences,” she said. “Your presence and actions in joining other insurrectionists was an inexcusable attack on our democracy. … You should appreciate what an extraordinary country you live in.”

The 46-month prison term Kollar-Kotelly handed down Friday is the longest yet imposed against the 21 Pennsylvania defendants who have been sentenced so far for playing a role in the Capitol attack, which caused millions of dollars in damage, injured scores of officers, and threatened the peaceful transition of power.

More than 70 people from the state have been charged to date, most with misdemeanors for illegally entering the Capitol building. Trials for those facing more serious charges – like assaulting police officers or planning the attack that day – remain pending.

Unlike many of those charged, Richardson never entered the building. But prosecutors said Friday his attack on a Washington D.C. police officer outside the building set his case apart and made him a candidate for a lengthy prison term.

Body camera footage from several officers showed Richardson – sporting a “Brigantine Beach” windbreaker and a red baseball cap – at the front of a mob that had burst through police barricades on the Capitol’s west plaza.

He approached a police officer in riot gear, yelled “Here it comes!” and bashed the officer three times with the metal flagpole he was carrying. He only stopped swinging after the flagpole broke in two.

Though Richardson pleaded guilty to charges of assaulting an officer earlier this year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily W. Allen noted that he has continued to try to minimize his actions – first saying he acted in self-defense after the officer struck him with a baton and later saying he lost his temper after the officers mistakenly accused him of being part of a group that used a metal billboard to break through police lines.

Both stories, Allen noted, were later proven false by the video evidence.

“Mr. Richardson was front and center,” she said. “There is no way looking at that video to see it as him protecting himself.

What’s more, she added, at the time of the riot, Richardson was out on bail for two earlier cases in Montgomery County – one for carrying a firearm without a license, and another stemming from an incident in which he attacked a motorcyclist outside his home just months before the Capitol attack.

Richardson’s attorney, Thomas C. Egan III, who also represents him in those cases, maintained that the attack on the motorcyclist was not what prosecutors had made it out to be and that in that situation, too, his client was acting in self-defense.

He painted Richardson as a valued member of his community who frequently volunteers as a poll watcher and judge of elections and who had built a successful pest-control business in Montgomery County.

“He didn’t go there with the intention of hurting anybody,” Egan said. “He was an elderly man who went there as a President (Donald) Trump supporter who believed right or wrong that the election had been taken from him.”

Kollar-Kotelly didn’t buy it and again noted that his previous work in elections should have given him a better understanding than most people of how democracy works.

“He went from helping his fellow citizens exercise one of the fundamental rights of democracy to attacking the ideals of democracy by his criminal actions on Jan. 6,” she said.

In addition to his prison term, Richardson was ordered to serve three years under court supervision after his release and to pay $2,000 in restitution.

Powell’s new guidance includes Higher rates for longer to beat inflation

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the U.S. central bank is likely to keep raising interest rates and leave them elevated for a while to stamp out inflation, and he pushed back against any idea that the Fed would soon reverse course.

“Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time,” Powell said Friday in remarks prepared for the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy.”

He said restoring inflation to the 2% target is the central bank’s “overarching focus right now” even tho ugh consumers and businesses will feel economic pain. He reiterated that another “unusually large” increase in the benchmark lending rate could be appropriate when officials gather next month, though he stopped short of committing to one.“Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook,” he said.

Two-year Treasury yields. rose as investors digested the remarks, pushed as high as 3.44% while the 2- to 10-year yield curve resumed its flattening. Equities were lower.

Prior to Powell’s speech, investors saw the odds of a half-point or another three-quarter point hike at the Fed’s Sept. 20-21 gathering as roughly even. They remained in that vicinity after he spoke, but the amount of reductions in fed rates priced for 2023 briefly retreated.

Booster shots protect against severe COVID for at least six months, study finds

A COVID-19 vaccine booster shot protects people from becoming severely ill or dying and its efficacy lasts for six months, according a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, underscoring the importance of additional jabs as the world moves to coexist with the virus.

The mRNA booster vaccines – made by drugmakers Pfizer and BionTech, or Moderna – were most effective in cutting the rate of people with severe COVID, scoring an estimated 87%, and there was no evidence of their effect waning within six months, the study found.

Inactivated booster vaccines by Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm Group also cut the chance of severe illness by about 70%. Severe COVID was defined in the research as requiring oxygen supplementation, intensive care or death.

The study suggests that a fourth mRNA vaccine isn’t required in the six-month period after a booster dose has been administered, the authors wrote. Longer follow-up data are required to determine if severe COVID protection wanes beyond six months, they said.

study shows polypill helps ensure Heart Patients Take Their medication

Heart disease kills more people than any other condition, but despite advances in treatment and prevention, patients often do not stick to their medication regimens. Now researchers may have found a solution: a so-called polypill that combines three drugs needed to prevent cardiovascular trouble.

In what is apparently the largest and longest randomized controlled trial of this approach, patients who were prescribed a polypill within six months of a heart attack were more likely to keep taking their drugs and had significantly fewer cardiovascular events, compared with those receiving the usual assortment of pills.

The participants also experienced one-third fewer cardiovascular deaths, although their overall risk of death from all causes was not significantly changed.

The study of more than 2,000 heart patients, who were followed for three years, was published Friday morning in The New England Journal of Medicine, as the findings were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

The study is the culmination of 15 years of work by researchers led by Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and general director of the National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Spain.

“Combination pills are easier for the physician and for the patient, and the data are pretty clear – it translates into a benefit,” said Dr. Thomas J. Wang, chair of the department of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the research but wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

“It’s easier to take one pill versus multiple pills, and it’s easier to take them once a day than multiple times a day.”

The availability of a polypill also appears to nudge physicians to write prescriptions more in line with practice guidelines, Wang added: “Under ordinary circumstances, physicians often under-prescribe medications that should be given.”

The polypill combines a blood-pressure medication, a cholesterol-lowering drug and aspirin, which helps prevent blood clots. The idea was first floated two decades ago in a more radical form: Advocates proposed giving a daily polypill to everyone once they turned 55, saying it would slash cardiovascular events globally by 80%.