A ceremony in Blackstone, VA., Friday began the U.S. Army initiative to rename nine military bases honoring Confederate generals.

The first to fall ― Fort Pickett — is now Fort Barfoot, named for Col. Van T. Barfoot, a Native American World War II hero credited with capturing 17 Nazis and killing several more during a single battle in 1944.

The fort, a National Guard base, was previously named for Gen. George Pickett, a Confederate general who led a failed charge of Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Col. Barfoot died in Richmond, Va. in 2012.

“Having his service to this nation memorialized by this re-designation is a tribute to a man who epitomized what is great about our American Soldiers,” Barfoot’s daughter Margaret Nicholls said at Friday’s ceremony.

Barfoot reportedly spoke of training at Camp Pickett during an interview with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. He was a Choctaw Indian, and was born in Mississippi.

The Army also announced Friday that Texas’ Fort Hood, named for Confederate leader Gen. John Bell Wood, will be christened Fort Cavazos on May 9, according to Stars and Stripes. Gen. Richard Cavazos was the nation’s first Hispanic four-star general. The Texas native fought in Korea and Vietnam.

A Federal law passed in 2021 requires bases named for Confederate leaders to begin 2024 with a new name.

[ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene visits jailed suspects in Jan. 6 attack on Capitol ]

Virginia’s Fort Lee — honoring top-Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee — becomes Fort Gregg-Adams on April 27. The Army is dedicating that base to Black officers Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams.

Gregg, 94, will be the first living person in modern Army history to receive such a distinction, the Army said. Adams was the the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps’ first Black officer.

The Department of Defense said some Southern military bases were named after leaders who fought to secede from the United States as a a conciliatory measure.

“Some Army bases, established in the build-up and during World War I, were named for Confederate officers in an effort to court support from local populations in the South,” the deparment says..

Gwyneth Paltrow testified Friday afternoon that it didn’t occur to her to ask the man she collided with on a Utah ski slope if he was OK.

“I think you have to keep in mind when you’re the victim of a crash, right, your psychology is not necessarily thinking about the person who perpetrated it,” the actor and Goop founder said on the stand.

Paltrow is being sued for slamming into Terry Sanderson while they were on a ski slope at Deer Valley Resort in 2016. The retired optometrist said in a 2019 lawsuit filing he was left “seriously injured” by an “out of control” Paltrow, according to ABC News.

Jurors heard Wednesday the 76-year-old man “deteriorated abruptly” due to his wounds, which included a brain injury and broken ribs. He’s asking for $300,000.

Paltrow, however, blames the collision on Sanderson, who she accused of exploiting her wealth and status. She told the court she feels “very sorry for” the plaintiff.

“It seems like he’s had a very difficult life, but I did not cause the accident,” Paltrow testified.

Attorneys also brought up the topic of Paltrow filing a $1 “symbolic” counterclaim against Sanderson. It was the same move made by Taylor Swift in 2017 when a radio DJ claimed the singer tried to get him fired after he allegedly groped her.

Sanderson’s attorney asked if Paltrow had been influenced by Swift’s countersuit, which she won, and asked if they were friends.

“I would not say we’re good friends,” Paltrow told the court. “We are friendly. I’ve taken my kids to one of her concerts before, but we don’t talk very often.”

Friday’s testimony concluded at 5 p.m. local time and will resume Monday.

This isn’t the first time Paltrow has faced legal trouble. In 2021, her Goop lifestyle company was sued by a man in Texas who claimed the brand’s $75 “This Smells Like My Vagina” exploded, causing a room to fill with smoke. Goop’s lawyers called the $5 million lawsuit a “frivolous” effort targeting “an outsized payout from a press-heavy product.”

Mayor Adams joined labor leaders and elected officials Friday to call on Gov. Hochul and Albany lawmakers to renew a set of popular low-income tax credits as part of this year’s state budget — which is due in just one week.

Speaking at the Manhattan headquarters of the 32BJ SEIU union, Adams said the two tax breaks, the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, helped thousands of New York City families climb the economic mobility ladder during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The goal is to lift families out of poverty. That’s what my mother wanted to do,” said Adams, who often recounts being raised in Brooklyn and Queens by a single mom who worked as a housecleaner. “If she would have had [these tax credits], we would have been on a different path.”

The child credit instituted during the pandemic has given families at least a $2,000 break on their annual tax levy per kid, regardless of income. The earned income credit, meanwhile, has offered upwards of a $11,000 break for low-income families, such as a couple with kids earning less than $60,000.

However, both credits are set to expire this year. As a result, a variety of stakeholders have lobbied Hochul and Albany legislators on folding in provisions to renew the credits in some form in this year’s state government budget, which is due April 1.

Brooklyn state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who joined Adams at Friday’s rally, has introduced a bill that would provide families a $500 tax credit per child regardless of income. The bill would give upwards of a $1,500 per child credit for low-income families, like those earning less than $50,000.

Gounardes’ proposal would provide families a $500 break per child regardless of income, and up to a $1,500 break per child for single parents making under $25,000 or couples earning under $50,000.

“In Albany, there are few issues that are black and white … but the [Earned Income Tax Credit] and the child tax credit are not gray issues,” Gounardes, a Democrat, said at the rally. “It is an indisputable fact: You give working people money, they are able to lift themselves out of poverty.”

Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union and a prominent political supporter of Adams, noted that inflation, rising rents and a variety of other economic factors are already putting immense burden on low-income families.

“It’s squeezing working families to the breaking point, which is why I’m here to support Mayor Adams’ initiative to provide relief for working families,” Maroko said.

Hochul did not include a renewal of the tax credits in her first draft of the state budget, released last month. She hasn’t ruled out including the credits in the budget, though, and negotiations are heating up in Albany ahead of next week’s deadline.

In a jab at Hochul, Manhattan Assemblyman Tony Simone suggested it should be a no-brainer for the governor to back the renewals of the credits given that she offered a massive tax break to the Buffalo Bills for the construction of their new football stadium.

“If we can afford to give tax breaks for big stadiums, we can afford to extend tax credits for working families,” he said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Friday went to the Washington, D.C., jail to visit detainees accused of participating in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, saying the facility “violates human rights.”

The far right-wing firebrand says she wants to focus attention on the plight of those charged or convicted in connection with the insurrection aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

“The DC Jail is mismanaged and violates human rights,” Greene tweeted. “I’ll … see Joe Biden’s two-tiered justice system first hand.”

Greene asserted that some of the Jan. 6 defendants had been forced to spend hours cleaning up the jail in the days leading up to the visit, apparently to cover up their previous dire conditions.

Greene has portrayed herself as one of the staunchest backers of the so-called “J6″ defendants, whom she calls political prisoners.

Although Republicans typically spend little time advocating for the rights of prisoners, Greene has made an exception for the Jan. 6 extremists, regularly suggesting that they are being treated too harshly.

“No prisoner in the United States should be treated in this fashion,” Greene wrote in a March 9 letter requesting permission for the visit.

An estimated 20 defendants tied to Jan. 6 are being held in Washington jails, all but three of whom have been charged with assaulting police officers.

Of those, two have already been convicted of assaulting police and six others have pleaded guilty to those charges.

They are among about more than 1,000 people, including white nationalists and other extremists, who have been charged in connection with Jan. 6, the worst attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years.

Trump demanded that the right-wing extremists “fight like hell” to keep him in power by blocking Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. in the 2020 presidential election.

Greene has long made it a top priority to defend those who have been arrested in connection to the Capitol riot and expose what she considers to be inhumane treatment inside the jail.

After a 2021 visit to the same facility, Greene releasing a report detailing what she called “abuse and neglect.”

Advocating for the Jan. 6 defendants is a key plank in the far right-wing effort to whitewash the history of the insurrection.

GOP lawmakers have bizarrely claimed that the raging mob was actually no more than a group of “tourists” visiting the Capitol.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met Thursday with the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter killed by a police officer as she sought to break into a congressional chamber where lawmakers where sheltering from the mob.

In an unusual twist, two progressive Democrats planned to accompany Greene and her Republican-led delegation on the latest visit.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) and Rep. Robert Costa (D-Calif.) say they want to spotlight the serious crimes that the Jan. 6 defendants are accused of committing.

Notable human rights activist Paul Rusesabagina will be released from prison Saturday after having his 25-year sentence commuted, Rwandan authorities said Friday.

Rusesabagina, whose story was the subject of the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” is credited with saving more than 1,000 lives during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

His sentence was commuted by presidential order after requests for clemency, said government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo. Nineteen other individuals also had their sentences commuted.

The Rwandan-born humanitarian and “real-life hero,” according to the Human Rights Foundation, was “arbitrarily imprisoned” in 2020 after falling victim to a kidnapping orchestrated by [the Rwandan government].”

Rusesabagina, an outspoken critic of President Paul Kagame, was kidnapped during a visit to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, according to his supporters and family. They say he would never knowingly have boarded a plane to go to Rwanda, a country he hadn’t lived in since 1996.

In 2021, the 68-year-old Belgian citizen and U.S. resident was convicted on eight charges — including murder and terrorism — over his ties to an organization opposed to Kagame’s regime.

Rusesabagina denied all charges and refused to take part in the trial, which was slammed as a sham by his supporters. He also had limited contact with lawyers following his arrest.

Stephanie Nyombayire, Kagame’s press secretary, wrote on Twitter Friday afternoon that the commutation was the “result of a shared desire to reset the U.S.-Rwanda relationship” and that “the close relationship between Rwanda and Qatar was key” in doing so.

A spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry, Majid Al-Ansari, said in a statement that Rusesabagina’s transfer to Qatar is currently underway and that he would then head to the U.S.

“This issue was discussed during meetings that brought together Qatari and Rwandan officials at the highest levels,” he said.

“Under Rwandan law, commutation of sentence does not extinguish the underlying conviction,’” Rwanda’s justice ministry said in a statement. “If any individual benefitting from early release repeats offenses of a similar nature, the commutation can be revoked and the remainder of the prison sentence will be served in accordance with the conditions specified in the Presidential Order.”

In 2005, Rusesabagina was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom for saving the lives of at least 1,200 people during the genocide.

Around 800,000 people, mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group, were slaughtered by extremists from the Hutu community during the genocide, which lasted 100 days.

At the time, Rusesabagina worked as a hotel manager and protected those who sought shelter in the building.

With News Wire Services

The teen student suspected of gunning down two administrators inside his Denver high school was previously arrested for possessing a ghost gun and remained on probation in connection with the 2021 incident, according to reports.

Austin Lyle allegedly shot and wounded two deans at East High School Wednesday morning. His body was found hours later in a remote mountain area in Park County, about 50 miles southwest of Denver, near the small town of Bailey, police said.

Some two years before the shooting, Lyle was arrested on a weapons charge after classmates flagged posts about guns on the teen’s social media, law enforcement sources told CBS Colorado. In response, officers with the Aurora police department searched Lyle’s family home, where they discovered a rifle with a “high capacity magazine and a silencer” in his room.

The firearm also had its serial number filed off, sources said.

It’s illegal for a minor to possess a gun in Colorado, and a judge later placed Lyle on probation, which was reportedly still in effect this week.

The teen had been attending Overland High School in Aurora at the time of his arrest. Lyle was “disciplined for violating board policy” during the 2021-2022 school year and consequently “removed from Overland High School,” a representative for Cherry Creek School District told NBC News.

It’s not clear whether his expulsion was tied to his weapons charge.

Lyle then enrolled at East High School, where he was forced to adhere to a “safety plan” with requirements including that he get patted down every morning. He opened fire on two school staffers, both of them male, during the mandated search on Wednesday, and then he fled the scene.

One of the victims was listed in stable condition on Friday while the other has since been released from the hospital.