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Nima Momeni guilty of murder in killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee

Jury finds Nima Momeni responsible of second diploma homicide for deadly stabbing of Bob Lee

Jury finds Nima Momeni guilty of second degree murder for fatal stabbing of Bob Lee

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Nima Momeni has been discovered responsible of second-degree homicide in the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee, a verdict reached by a San Francisco jury after seven days of deliberations.

The decision of second-degree homicide carries a 15 years to life sentence and consists of an enhancement for utilizing a knife within the crime. Momeni was discovered not responsible of the extra critical cost of pre-meditated first-degree homicide.

Prosecutors Dane Reinstedt and Omid Talai had been current within the courtroom for the decision, as was Sgt. Brent Dittmer – who testified within the trial – and a handful of members of the District Lawyer’s workplace. The Lee household together with his ex-wife Krista and brother had been additionally there with different members of the family, associates and supporters.

Protection attorneys Tony Brass and Zoe Aron had been additionally current together with Momeni’s mom Mahnaz Momeni. The defendant’s sister Khazar Momeni was not in attendance when the decision was learn in courtroom Tuesday morning.

The choose issued a stern warning within the courtroom for these current to not have any audible response to the decision because it was learn. Momeni was seen dabbing his eyes as he listened to the decision.

Nima Momeni verdict sketch — Nima Momeni wipes his eyes as he listens to the decision in his homicide trial for the killing of Money App founder Bob Lee, December 17, 2024.

Sketch by Vicki Behringer

A preliminary listening to to set the sentencing date for Momeni has been scheduled for Jan. 10, 2025.

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Bob Lee household speaks

Outdoors the courtroom, Lee’s brother Timothy Oliver Lee mentioned the household was happy with the decision.

Family of Bob Lee reacts to 2nd degree murder verdict in Nima Momeni trial

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“We’re proud of the end result immediately. We’re completely satisfied that Nima Momeni will not be on the streets, not has the chance to hurt anybody else on this world,” he mentioned. “The decision of homicide two will put him away for a very long time.”

He additionally famous that apart from Momeni being discovered responsible of the homicide, the proceedings confirmed that his household was complicit within the crime by making an attempt to assist him cowl it up and had “blood on their arms.” He mentioned the Momeni household had a number of dozen associates and supporters within the courtroom when the decision was learn.

“We’re extraordinarily grateful to the District Lawyer’s Workplace, we’re extraordinarily grateful for the juries. I feel justice was completed right here immediately,” he added.

San Francisco DA Jenkins defends metropolis

San Francisco District Lawyer Brooke Jenkins was available for the decision and thanked the attorneys who prosecuted the case exterior the courtroom after the responsible verdict was learn.

“I knew was assured that we had the perfect two dealing with this case,” Jenkins mentioned. “And I feel the decision was a testomony to the laborious work they put in, to the good legal professionals that they’re, and to their dedication to justice and to creating certain that this household acquired justice.”

San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins reacts to 2nd degree murder verdict in Nima Momeni trial

02:16

She additionally pushed again on what Elon Musk and others mentioned after the stabbing occurred when critics claimed San Francisco is lawless and uncontrolled as a part of the favored “doom loop” narrative generally aired on social media.

“I feel that hopefully now, we have now as soon as once more established what really occurred right here. Everyone knows that after Bob Lee was murdered, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make an effort to really shame San Francisco, and to make it appear to be this was about lawlessness in San Francisco and about what is going on on in our streets,” Jenkins mentioned.

She famous that legislation enforcement early felt the deadly stabbing of Lee was not a random crime.

“And we knew it was one thing completely different. And I feel immediately proved as soon as once more, that we’re a metropolis dedicated to accountability, we’re a metropolis dedicated to public security,” she added. “And that when one thing unhealthy occurs, which we will not at all times management, that legislation enforcement at each degree will reply to guarantee that there may be justice and accountability in each scenario.”

Jenkins mentioned her workplace would put together for an enchantment to be filed by Momeni’s protection group.

Deadly stabbing of Money App founder

Momeni was accused of fatally stabbing tech executive Lee in a secluded a part of San Francisco’s East Lower neighborhood beneath the Bay Bridge in April 2023.

Court docket officers announced late Monday afternoon that the jury had reached a verdict shortly earlier than 4 p.m.

Prosecutors accused Momeni of stabbing Lee with a kitchen paring knife following a heated dialogue concerning his sister’s relationship with Lee as well as their ongoing drug use. In the course of the trial, Momeni’s legal professionals claimed that their client acted in self-defense, alleging that Lee lunged at Momeni with a knife in his hand whereas excessive on ketamine and cocaine. The protection said Lee became erratic and aggressive after Momeni made a “bad joke” on the expense of Lee’s household.

Intense trial

The six-week trial was punctuated by dramatic testimony, together with an look on the stand of Momeni’s sister, Khazar Momeni. She testified as a witness for the prosecution and insisted during her first day of testimony that her brother didn’t kill Lee. She also detailed consuming a number of medicine with Lee and others within the days main as much as the deadly stabbing.

Throughout cross-examination by protection attorneys, Khazar Momeni described Lee as “all over the place” and “aggressive” while high on drugs. Her testimony was criticized exterior the courtroom by Lee’s ex-wife Krista Lee, who accused her of trying to “make herself a victim.”

The testimony turned contentious when Nima Momeni took the stand, because the defendant sparred with the prosecution during cross-examination after earlier describing how Lee allegedly attacked him whereas his protection group questioned him concerning the confrontation.

Difficult Nima Momeni’s story

San Francisco Assistant District Lawyer Omid Talai challenged Momeni’s model of the story and centered on his actions instantly after Lee’s loss of life, together with his calls to attorneys and textual content messages together with his sister.

The case wrapped up within the first week of December with prosecutors trying to tear down Momeni’s defense in their closing arguments and asking why he didn’t call police or tell anyone about Lee allegedly attacking him.

The protection confirmed a bombshell video throughout their closing arguments, presenting surveillance footage they claimed confirmed Lee doing cocaine on the road exterior a personal membership with the identical knife used to kill him hours later. Protection lawyer Saam Zangeneh used a cardboard cutout of the knife in courtroom so the jury may see the dimensions of the paring knife he mentioned the video proved Lee had in his possession all alongside.

That video sparked a tense trade between Zangeneh and Lee’s former spouse, who let loose a loud, mocking snicker as he confirmed the footage.

Zangeneh turned to instantly tackle her, saying it wasn’t humorous. Prosecutors rapidly objected and the choose intervened to revive order within the courtroom.

The jury began deliberations on the morning of Dec. 4.

Who’s Nima Momeni?

Nima Momeni, 40, was described as a “tech entrepreneur” when he was arrested for the murder of Bob Lee back in April of 2023. Momeni was taken into custody at his house in Emeryville on April 11, days after the lethal stabbing.

In keeping with his Linkedin web page, Momeni is the proprietor of Increase IT. His profile describes the corporate as offering IT options within the Bay Space since 2010.

Neighbors who lived close to Momeni were shocked to hear of his arrest. After Momeni was taken into custody, Bay Space public relations veteran Sam Singer who labored subsequent door to him mentioned he had by no means had any points with the defendant past listening to music being performed a bit too loudly.

“Heat, welcoming, very good fellow, like another tech marketing consultant right here within the Bay Space, lives in a live-work house,” Singer mentioned. “He handed us a stack of playing cards and mentioned, ‘In the event you ever want something let me know.'”

It later emerged that Khazar Momeni had launched Lee to her brother, considering that the profitable Money App founder would possibly work with him on one in every of Nima’s tasks.

Who was Bob Lee?

A profitable Bay Space know-how government, Bob Lee was finest referred to as one of many creators and founders of the digital pockets Money App. Lee had additionally labored at Google as a employees software program engineer within the 2000s, serving to to develop the cell working system utilized by Android cell telephones.

In 2010, he was recruited by the San Francisco e-commerce firm Sq., Inc., the place he turned chief know-how officer earlier than finally transferring on to Money App. On the time of his loss of life, Lee was working because the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin.

Lee was dwelling in Mill Valley together with his household together with his now ex-wife Krista and two kids, however the couple separated in 2019. Lee had subsequently moved to Miami in 2022 to stay together with his father and was visiting San Francisco on enterprise when he was fatally stabbed.

The Wall Avenue Journal reported Lee and Khazar Momeni belonged to a sex and drugs-fueled underground party scene identified in rich Bay Space tech circles as “The Life-style.” The medical examiner’s report revealed the tech government died on the working desk and was discovered to have alcohol, cocaine and ketamine in his system.

Dave Pehling

Dave Pehling is web site managing editor for CBS Bay Space. He began his journalism profession doing freelance writing about music within the late Nineties, finally working as an online author, editor and producer for KTVU.com in 2003. He started his position with CBS Bay Space in 2015.

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Spring-loaded Robot Could Explore the Asteroid Belt Almost Indefinitely

The asteroid belt beckons – it incorporates sufficient sources for people to increase into the whole remainder of the photo voltaic system and has no biosphere to talk of. Basically, it’s a large mine simply ready to be exploited. So, a scholar workforce from the College of Texas at Austin has devised a plan to use it as a part of the Revolutionary Aerospace System Ideas – Educational Linkage (RASC-AL), a contest sponsored by NASA to encourage undergraduate and graduate college students to develop modern concepts to unravel a few of area exploration’s challenges. UT Austin’s submission to the competitors final yr, often known as the Autonomous Exploration By Extraterrestrial Areas (AETHER) undertaking, definitely matches that invoice.

AETHER was submitted to the AI-Powered Self-Replicating Probes sub-section of RASC-AL 2024, which solicited concepts that might advance John von Neumann’s thought of a self-replicating area probe. AETHER addresses these challenges in two distinct methods.

First, it combines a spring-loaded touchdown system and a metal-burning rocket engine to hop between totally different asteroids within the belt. To gasoline its rocket, it makes use of a system to reap water and metallic (particularly aluminum) from the floor of the asteroid it’s at the moment on, splits it into its parts, after which dumps them right into a gasoline tank that can be utilized to energy its subsequent journey to a unique asteroid. All of that is powered by a Kilowatt Reactor Utilizing Stirling TechnoloY (KRUSTY) nuclear reactor that has been present process NASA and DoE testing for over a decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo863_0SI_o

How Close Are We To Self-Replicating Robots Conquering Space? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo863_0SI_o)

Fraser discusses the idea of von Neumann probes.

The springs in AETHER’s legs have a two-fold goal. First, they permit for a tender touchdown on the floor of the gravitationally weak asteroid and might switch a number of the vitality created by that touchdown into saved vitality, which can be utilized to launch the system from its touchdown place later. It additionally has a set of wheels to navigate across the asteroid’s floor. When it’s time to leap off once more, it replants its legs and is derived again into area – with slightly assist from its rocket engine.

The rocket engine designed as a part of AETHER can burn metallic, corresponding to aluminum, that the craft harvests from the asteroid to make use of as gasoline. It’s the major system designed to take the craft from asteroid to asteroid, and it’s meant to be a high-delta-v choice for doing so rapidly.

AETHER additionally tries to imitate a von Neumann probe by utilizing a machine-learning algorithm to enhance its resource-harvesting efforts. It could take knowledge from varied sensors, together with artificial aperture radar and a spectrometer, and estimate the place the perfect spot could be to land to refuel. Whereas accumulating that extra gasoline materials, it will talk again with Earth by way of a high-speed optical communication hyperlink, permitting an Earth-based server to replace the machine studying parameters and enhance the algorithm’s consequence for the following hop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeTRH_fHxI

Fraser Cain pitches Self-Replicating Robots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeTRH_fHxI)

Fraser’s curiosity with self-replicating robots goes again a good distance – right here’s his clarification on HeroX in regards to the idea.
Credit score – HeroX YouTuBe Channel

The unique mission design for AETHER has it stopping at two particular asteroids earlier than shifting on to as-yet-unnamed ones. The primary, which might be no shock, is Psyche, the large metallic asteroid that’s about to be visited by its personal devoted probe. Information from that probe will assist inform the primary iteration of AETHER’s studying algorithm, and the enter the sensors present from its go to will replace it earlier than its subsequent step – Themis. That asteroid, although smaller, is predicted to comprise a considerable amount of water ice, which is a mandatory element for AETHER’s rocket engines.

After visiting the primary two asteroids, the mission strikes on to locations unknown, as finishing these steps could be thought of a hit. However given the longevity of the KRUSTY reactor and the craft’s capability to refill its personal gasoline tank, it’s potential, and even possible, that AETHER would contemplate working effectively previous its rendezvous with Themis.

The UT Austin workforce was comprised solely of undergraduate college students, although it’s unclear what yr of research they had been in. However, given their expertise with the 2024 model of RASC-AL, they would appear well-placed to submit a undertaking proposal for the just lately introduced 2025 model. In the event that they do, hopefully, their thought shall be simply as modern as AETHER’s.

Be taught Extra:
Flores et al – AETHER
UT – Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity
UT – NASA Funds the Development of a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon That Would Last for 10 Years
UT – Engineers Design a Robot That Can Stick To, Crawl Along, and Sail Around Rubble Pile Asteroids

Lead Picture:
Touchdown and take-off depiction of AETHER.
Credit score – Flores et al.

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Two earthquakes near Malibu, one in Inland Empire rattle L.A. region

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Two small earthquakes rattled the Malibu space Friday and Saturday, adopted by one other one within the Inland Empire.

The primary Malibu quake was reported round 11:44 p.m. Friday and was registered as a magnitude 3.7, with an epicenter about 6.8 miles northwest of Malibu, in line with the U.S. Geological Survey. It was felt throughout the Westside, San Fernando Valley and Ventura County in addition to within the Los Angeles Basin and South Bay.

A second quake, which was measured as a magnitude 3.5, struck in roughly the identical space at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Residents in Ventura County reported feeling a pointy jolt, and the shaking triggered some automobile alarms.

A 3rd quake, measured at magnitude 3.5, was recorded close to the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County at 2:16 p.m. Saturday, with an epicenter a number of miles south of Idyllwild.

There have been no reviews of harm from any of the quakes.

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Heavy Rain Strikes Kentucky and Tennessee

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Uncommon downpours in February started to pound a broad swath of the Decrease Mississippi Valley, from western parts of Kentucky and Tennessee and increasing to southwestern Virginia, officers and residents reported on Saturday.

Flooding in these areas could possibly be “life-threatening,” the Nationwide Climate Service stated on Saturday. It additionally stated that widespread flash flooding was anticipated over components of the decrease Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

“That is unprecedented for mid-February, at the least within the final 20 years,” stated Phil Baker, a meteorologist with the Nationwide Climate Service in Memphis, of the rain in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Whereas there have been no fast stories of deaths or catastrophic property harm, officers warned residents to be ready for the heavy rain, and not to drive by way of floodwaters as a result of the water can change into electrified.

Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said on Saturday afternoon {that a} landslide would preserve Freeway 160 in Knott County closed for a number of hours. Mr. Beshear additionally stated that the water in Elizabethtown, a metropolis of 33,000 residents, was reaching document ranges. Some houses in Perry County had been evacuated, he stated.

In Tennessee, officers stated that some roads, principally within the western a part of the state, had been flooding, together with State Route 210 in Lauderdale County.

For the remainder of the jap United States, frost, ice or snow was anticipated to coat a lot of the jap United States on Saturday into Sunday. However the uncommon springlike surge of hotter, wetter climate into Sunday morning might imply that components of the area will even face flooding rains, extreme storms, freezing rain and, within the far north, heavy snow.

Listed here are the hazards to observe for.

Flooding rain: From northeastern Arkansas to southwestern West Virginia, there’s a average threat of extreme rainfall that would trigger rivers to rise or result in flash flooding. One to a few inches of rain fell over northwest Arkansas to northwest Tennessee on Friday evening.
Extreme storms: Within the Deep South, primarily in northern Louisiana and Mississippi, an outbreak of extreme storms that would embrace tornadoes and damaging winds is feasible from Saturday afternoon into the night.
Heavy snow: Average to heavy snow has been hitting the Midwest, which might stand up to 13 inches of snow by Sunday. It was anticipated on Saturday to maneuver towards the Nice Lakes by way of New England. Maine might see as much as 19 inches of snow by Monday.
Wintry combine: New York and different cities alongside the Northeast coast will see snow first on Saturday afternoon, earlier than heat air strikes in, turning the precipitation to a large number of sleet, freezing rain after which rain. Some areas, particularly near the coast, will transition shortly from snow to rain. Some average snow might fall throughout the upper elevations of the Appalachians.

The rainfall is the rarity of this mid-February storm.

The area most susceptible to flooding — together with Tennessee and Kentucky — is already soaking wet, with some rivers close to or at flood stage after having seen weeks of latest rainfall.

This uncommon quantity of moisture surging north is extra intense than the rain that has already fallen. And a few locations, like Lexington, Ky., the place three to 5 inches of rain is forecast, might break their February document for each day rainfall. (Over three inches of rain was measured there on Feb. 13, 1989.)

“A part of the issue is earlier than this rain occasion even began this morning, the grounds have already been saturated from earlier rainfall,” stated Mr. Baker, the forecaster. “There’s going to be river flooding that’s going to persist for days.”

As of Saturday, the heaviest rainfall was anticipated over northwest Tennessee and western Kentucky, Mr. Baker stated, with 4 to 6 inches of rain anticipated. As much as eight inches of rain might fall in some remoted areas, he stated.

With the bottom already saturated, forecasters in locations like Paducah, Ky., are particularly involved by a few of the outlier rainfall quantities of as much as seven inches.

“It received’t take a lot to provide flooding,” one forecaster there wrote, warning that the area “could have a major flooding occasion on our fingers.”

Forecasters within the mountainous areas within the jap areas of the locations most in danger for flooding warned that the bottom had produced situations ripe for landslides and particles flows on steep slopes across the space.

Forecasters in Charleston, W.Va., reminded residents who stay on or on the base of hillsides to observe for indicators of potential floor motion: timber leaning in uncommon orientations, or water and dust seeping in the place they aren’t anticipated.

The hotter, springlike storm is predicted to maneuver off the Atlantic seaboard by Sunday night, and winter will return on Monday.

Temperatures will plunge to under common throughout the jap United States. Snow is prone to return on Tuesday and Wednesday, coating the identical areas that will probably flood this weekend in Tennessee and Kentucky — all as a coastal storm presumably returns heavy snow again to northeast coastal cities.

Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.