| Woman sexually assaulted outside bar ‘while bouncers watched,’ lawyer says Posted: 30 Nov 2019 07:00 AM PST  A woman is suing a bar claiming bouncers stood by and watched as she was sexually assaulted in an alley.Video footage shows a man dressed in black opening the back door of the El Hefe bar and restaurant, in Chicago, followed by another man who appears to be holding the woman by the neck as he leads her out into the alleyway.
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| China's accuses UN rights chief of 'inapppropriate' inteference Posted: 30 Nov 2019 01:13 PM PST  China on Saturday accused UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet of "inappropriate" interference in the country's affairs after she called for investigations into alleged excessive use of force by police in Hong Kong. The article contains "inappropriate comments on the situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ... (and) interferes in China's internal affairs," said the Chinese mission's statement.
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| Trump to decide if he wants lawyers at impeachment hearings Posted: 29 Nov 2019 11:58 AM PST  The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee asked President Donald Trump on Friday to say whether he'll send his attorneys to participate in impeachment proceedings before the panel. Rep. Jerrold Nadler also is asking Republicans on his committee which witnesses they plan to ask permission to subpoena. The letters from the New York Democrat came as the House impeachment probe enters a new phase with a hearing next week on whether Trump's actions might constitute impeachable offenses.
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| This Is America's Role in Saudi Arabia's Power Struggle Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:00 PM PST  Did you know that Saudi-Iranian oil rivalry was shaped by American power?
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| U.S. Rebukes Zambia for Jailing Two Men for Homosexuality Posted: 30 Nov 2019 04:27 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. ambassador to Zambia said a high court ruling sentencing two men to 15 years in prison for homosexuality was horrifying.Ambassador Daniel Foote urged the government to reconsider laws that punish minority groups."I was personally horrified to read yesterday about the sentencing of two men, who had a consensual relationship, which hurt absolutely no one, to 15 years imprisonment," he said in an emailed statement Friday. "Decisions like this oppressive sentencing do untold damage to Zambia's international reputation by demonstrating that human rights in Zambia" are "not a universal guarantee."The constitution stipulates that the southern African nation is Christian, and laws dating back to Britain's colonial rule of the country that ended in 1964 forbid gay sex."This is the will of the Zambian people, we have to be with the people by abiding by the law," Chanda Kasolo, permanent secretary in the ministry of information, said by phone. "We respect the opinion of the American ambassador. We have to do things the way the people want."The sentencing of the men was particularly disturbing given that "government officials can steal millions of public dollars without prosecution," Foote said. He didn't give detail on which officials allegedly steal funds."Zambia takes great exception to the remarks," both on the court ruling and about government officials, Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Malanji said in a video distributed on social-media websites. The minister will present a formal démarche to Washington by Monday, he said.Zambia is ranked 105 out of 180 countries tracked by Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018.(Updates with comment from foreign affairs ministry in final paragraph.)\--With assistance from Vernon Wessels.To contact the reporters on this story: Taonga Clifford Mitimingi in Lusaka at tmitimingi@bloomberg.net;Matthew Hill in Maputo at mhill58@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net, Gordon Bell, Helen RobertsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| We Aid the Growth of Chinese Tyranny to Our Eternal Shame Posted: 29 Nov 2019 03:30 AM PST  We can't say we didn't know.Reports of the repression of Muslims living in northwestern China have been leaking out for years in drips and drabs. Satellite photos picked up the construction of massive prison facilities in the Xinjiang province. The BBC was even invited into one of the "thought transformation camps," from which inmates are released a few hours a week, to see the program of patriotic re-education. Inmates were frank with the Beeb's reporters that religious activity — including prayer — was banned inside the building.Now, in the last week, a more complete picture of Beijing's repression campaign has emerged. Leaked memos have revealed some of the details of China's modernized and tech-supported religious persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang. These are the first Venona cables of our generation. They make certain what sharp observers must have guessed: China uses cutting-edge technology to identify, classify, and detain Muslims for re-education in the old-school argot of totalitarian Communism. President Xi Jinping has instructed the party members and public officials involved in this repression to show "absolutely no mercy" and make ample use of the "organs of dictatorship" to accomplish their mission.The leaked memos include lines that will be cited as exculpatory in the future — they show Xi counseling against proposals to "eradicate" Islam entirely. But the larger picture painted by the documents is one of state apparatus mobilized in the service of repression, aiming to make up for lost time in which Uighurs and Kazaks were allowed to worship, practice, and believe as they pleased. "The weapons of the people's democratic dictatorship must be wielded without any hesitation or wavering," Xi is quoted as saying.Distressingly, Xi could occasionally sound like some of the West's "New Atheists" when talking about his fellow citizens. "People who are captured by religious extremism — male or female, old or young — have their consciences destroyed," he says. They "lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye."There really isn't any mistaking the strategy here: The ethnic balance of southern Xinjiang is to be transformed through the state-aided resettlement of Han Chinese in the region. While there are token concessions to the idea of allowing Uighurs to retain their religion, the use of Turkic languages has been discouraged. China is attempting to deprive Uighurs of their ethnolinguistic identity, the very rudiments of their nationality. These efforts have unsurprisingly inspired intermittent riots and violence in recent years, which have in turn been used to justify the expansion of the re-education camps.The most chilling aspect of this repression is the use of information technology. An incredible, Orwellian surveillance system is used to monitor the movements of Xinjiang's people. The cameras are placed prominently throughout cities such as Kashgar and surrounding towns to remind people that they are being watched. Algorithms are deployed to facilitate the classification and selection of Uighurs for the camps.It's a tyranny that we have helped to enable. China's prosperity and technological progress, generated in no small part by its ability to trade in such high volume with the United States, have empowered its government to do this. Our desire to keep trading with China obliges the president of the United States to remain silent about this barbarity.In short, the leaked documents make clear that the West desperately needs to recover its ability to privilege political and moral aims over the immediate exigencies of the market, which can tolerate even this kind of repression and in fact may operate more smoothly alongside it. The power of China's tyranny grows in parallel with our fatalism about it, and our determination to be consoled by its economic upside. But enough is enough.
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| Unhappy Thanksgiving: Explosions at Texas chemical plant keep more than 50,000 out of their homes Posted: 29 Nov 2019 01:12 PM PST  More than 50,000 people in southeast Texas remain under evacuation orders on Thanksgiving after two powerful explosions at a chemical plant.
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| Indian protesters demand justice for vet's murder, suspected rape Posted: 30 Nov 2019 07:19 AM PST  Thousands of protesters gathered outside a police station on the outskirts of the Indian city of Hyderabad on Saturday demanding four men accused of raping and murdering a 27-year-old woman be handed over to them. Some protesters clashed with police, hurling slippers, after the charred body of the woman, a veterinarian, was found in the town of Shadnagar, near Hyderabad, on Thursday. Police said medical evidence would be hard to obtain given the state of the body but that they were working on the assumption the victim had been raped.
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| Ilhan Omar's Republican opponent was banned from Twitter after suggesting the congresswoman should be tried for treason and hanged Posted: 29 Nov 2019 09:00 AM PST  The Republican campaign promoted a wild conspiracy theory that Omar had illegally shared sensitive government information with Qatar and Iran.
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| Trump impeachment: What to expect as hearings begin next week Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:03 PM PST  The next phase of Donald Trump's impeachment hearings begins next week, when members of Congress will discuss whether the president's alleged abuses of power constitute "high crimes and misdemeanours".The phrase, as outlined in the US Constitution, has primed the debate between Democrats leading the investigation and the Republicans who argue that despite several witness testimonies corroborating Mr Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate his political rivals in exchange for receiving military aid, none of it resembles either a high crime or a misdemeanour.
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| The China Challenge Continues to Mount Posted: 29 Nov 2019 01:00 PM PST  This is why the West must ensure the maintenance of peace, security of borders, and world trade.
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| Hundreds march in Sudan capital seeking justice for martyrs Posted: 30 Nov 2019 05:56 AM PST  Hundreds of protesters marched Saturday through downtown Khartoum to demand justice for those killed in demonstrations against Sudan's now ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir. More than 250 people were killed and hundreds injured in the months-long protests that erupted in December 2018, according to umbrella protest movement Forces of Freedom and Change. Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for 30 years, was deposed by the army in a palace coup on April 11 after the demonstrations triggered by an acute economic crisis.
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| Germany to make anti-Semitism a specific hate crime as Jews 'no longer feel safe' Posted: 29 Nov 2019 09:02 AM PST  Germany is to tighten its laws against anti-Semitic hate crimes in the wake of last month's failed attack on a synagogue by a far-Right gunman. "I am ashamed that Jews no longer feel safe in Germany and that so many are even thinking of leaving the country," Christine Lambrecht, the justice minister, told German MPs. "We have to send a clear signal against anti-Semitism." Under the planned changes, crimes with an anti-Semitic motive will attract heavier sentences. The move comes after a synagogue in east Germany narrowly escaped becoming the scene of a massacre last month. Stephan Balliet, a German national who released a far-Right "manifesto" before the attack, failed in his attempts to break into the synagogue which was packed with 51 people marking Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He later turned his gun on bystanders, killing two people. While the Halle attack was the highest profile incident, it was by no means an isolated case. Just days before, a Syrian man was stopped by security guards as he tried to enter Berlin's best known synagogue armed with a knife and shouting "Allahu akbar" and "F*** Israel". Anti-Semitic crimes across Germany rose by 10 per cent to a total of 1,646 last year, but it is the figures for violence that are most alarming. Violent anti-Semitic crimes rose by 60 per cent, with 62 offences leaving 43 people injured. More than 50 people were trapped inside the synagogue while the gunman tried to gain entry Credit: Craig Stennett for the Telegraph They include the case of an Israeli man who was attacked and whipped with a belt while wearing a Jewish kippah skullcap in central Berlin in April last year. Adam Armoush, an Israeli Arab who lives in Berlin, is not Jewish but was wearing the kippah in an attempt to prove Berlin was safe for Jewish people. In the wake of that incident felix Klein, the German government's anti-Semitism commissioner, issued a warning to Jewish men not to wear skullcaps in public for their own safety. Mr Klein later retracted his warning after a public outcry. In another case in July last year, a Jewish Syrian man wearing a Star of David pendant was attacked and beaten by a group of people when he stopped to ask for a light for his cigarette in central Berlin. Anti-Semitic incidents last year also include one an attack on a Jewish restaurant in the east German city of Chemnitz. Masked men broke surrounded the entrance to the restaurant and broke the windows with stones while the owner was trapped inside. Current German laws recognise discrimination against a particular group of people as an aggravating factor in any crime that can lead to a heavier sentence. But the planned changes will explicitly name anti-Semitism for the first time. The change is part of a package introduced after the Halle synagogue attack. Other measures include laws obliging social media networks to inform the authorities of online threats and incitement to hatred. "This is an important step towards consistent punishment of anti-Semitic crimes," said Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. "With the planned amendment to the law, the federal government is living up to its commitment to fight anti-Semitism resolutely and protect Jewish life." "Anti-Semitic offences are not just attacks on individual people of the Jewish faith, they always an attack on our values, on our constitutional state, and on our democracy as a whole," said Georg Eisenreich, the regional justice minister for Bavaria, where prosecutors recently announced they will prioritise anti-Semitic crimes.
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| North Korea may deploy ‘super-large’ rocket launcher soon Posted: 29 Nov 2019 08:01 AM PST  North Korea said Friday the latest test-firing of its "super-large" multiple rocket launcher was a final review of the weapon's combat application, a suggestion that the country is preparing to deploy the new weapons system soon.
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| Trump's antics leaving Republicans 'disgusted and exhausted', says former GOP congressman Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:14 PM PST  A former Republican congressman said he would "probably vote to impeach" Donald Trump if he were still serving in the US House of Representatives while suggesting the president's scandals are "infuriating" current GOP House members.Charlie Dent, a frequent critic of Mr Trump who resigned from Congress last year, said he has heard from several of his former Republican colleagues who are "absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the president's behaviour".
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| Suit claims Boy Scouts overlooked leader’s alleged abuse Posted: 30 Nov 2019 01:19 PM PST ![Suit claims Boy Scouts overlooked leader's alleged abuse]( "Suit claims Boy Scouts overlooked leader's alleged abuse") The Boy Scouts of America is facing another lawsuit in a wave of litigation over decades-old allegations of sexual abuse. The men claim they were sexually abused on scouting trips in Arkansas in 1979 and 1980, when they were between 9 and 11, by a leader who the Boy Scouts had deemed "ineligible" to volunteer with boys following accusation of sexually abuse in Georgia two years earlier. The suit claims the Boy Scouts did not report the leader to police in either state.
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| The Wrong Response to Gun Violence: Are Lockdown Drills a Bad Idea? Posted: 30 Nov 2019 08:00 AM PST  Are we teaching our kids to fear school?
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| Giraffes among 10 animals killed in 'tragic' Ohio safari wildlife park fire Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:12 PM PST  Officials said ten animals were killed at the African Safari Wildlife Park in Port Clinton, Ohio, in the Thanksgiving Day fire.
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| Brother of convicted terrorist faces deportation despite US citizenship Posted: 29 Nov 2019 11:30 PM PST  Brother of man who detonated a pipe bomb in a New York subway and four relatives are fighting efforts to strip their residency status 'You can play everything by the book and they'll still get you,' said Sherin Ullah. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesA New Yorker who gained US citizenship as a child is suddenly facing deportation, along with several green card-holding members of his family, after apparent targeting by the Trump administration in what the family believes is a clear case of anti-Muslim bias.None of the individuals have a criminal record, and say the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) only raised questions about the validity of their immigration status after another relative was arrested following a terrorist incident in the city. The government's actions have alarmed advocates and led to them accusing officials of meting out unfair "collective punishment".Ahsan Ullah, 32, an electrician from Brooklyn, was placed in immigration detention in Kearny, New Jersey, on 22 October. He spent about four weeks separated from his American wife and three children before being released on bond last Tuesday pending the outcome of his case.Four of his relatives, who all hold green cards, are also fighting government efforts to strip them of their US residency status. Since Trump came into office, the number of such denaturalization and citizenship revocation cases filed by DHS has surged.Sherin and Ahsan Ullah. Photograph: Courtesy family"Citizenship is permanently conditional for many people who were not born here," said Fahd Ahmed, executive director of the advocacy group Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum), which has been providing support to the Ullah family."At a time when we are seeing a white nationalist current in government and society that wants to depopulate communities of color from this country, these cases are an indication of how their tactics and attacks are evolving."Ahsan was born in Bangladesh and adopted by his uncle at a young age, the family said.After the uncle won a US visa through the diversity lottery program, Ahsan was granted a green card. He migrated to the US at eight years old and became a citizen several years later.Meanwhile, his uncle successfully petitioned to bring his sister, Ahsan's biological mother and four siblings to the country as permanent residents in 2011.The family assumed their future in the US was secure. They focused on going to school, building careers and starting families. Ahsan became an electrician, got married and had three children.But everything changed in December 2017, when one of Ahsan's brothers, Akayed, was arrested for detonating a homemade pipe bomb in a crowded New York City subway station. He was the only person injured, in what was seen as a botched attack.Family members both in the US and Bangladesh were questioned and none was found to have assisted the 27-year-old or to be supportive of terrorist organizations. Akayed was convicted of several terrorism offenses in 2018 and will be sentenced in February.Sherin, Ahsan's wife, 30, said that the day Akayed was arrested the rest of the family was utterly shocked to learn what he had done."For at least three, four months we were in disbelief," she said. "We didn't think [Akayed] was capable of this."From the moment of Akayed's arrest, other family members say that despite being cleared by law enforcement, they began to see consequences.Ahsan recounted receiving a letter from the bank notifying him that his personal and business banking accounts would be closed, and that the FBI put his business license on hold.Wary clients cancelled their contracts, he said. His mother and siblings would see New York police department squad cars parked regularly near their building and other places they frequented, including their mosque, which they had never remembered seeing before.Then, in April 2019, Ahsan received a letter out of the blue from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), part of the DHS, stating that the agency planned to cancel his US citizenship on the grounds it was not lawfully obtained.In a panic, his mother and siblings applied for citizenship but soon received news that not only had their application d been denied but that the DHS intended to revoke their green cards. On 6 November, Ullah's mother and one of his sisters were detained for two days."After all this time, we [had] mentally and physically bonded with this country, and love this country so much," said Ayfa, Ahsan's 22-year-old sister, the day she was released from detention. "How can you disown a person just like that?"The family is now trying to fight the agency's orders.In paperwork issued to the family, which was reviewed by the Guardian, the DHS claims that Ahsan, his mother and siblings have no legal or biological relationship to the uncle whose original success in the green card lottery facilitated the others' settling in the US. Lawyers for the family said they are gathering the paperwork to prove their relationships.The family and their advocates said the treatment amounts to collective punishment. "This is retribution for sharing the same DNA" as someone accused of terrorism, Ahsan said in a phone call from the Hudson county correctional facility in New Jersey, just before his release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention."I've been here [in the US] since I was a kid – my school is here, my college is here, my family is here, my business is here, my friends are here, my career is here," he said . "This is where my everything is."DHS declined to comment on the family's case.fundraiserWhat's happening to the Ullah family is not an isolated case. A report by the Open Society Justice Initiative in September found that the Trump administration has filed three times more civil denaturalization cases, about 30 a year – stripping Americans of their citizenship – than the average annual number pursued under the eight preceding presidents.Nearly half of all persons targeted for denaturalization in 2017 and 2018 came from "special interest" countries, a label used to identify nations with presumed links to terrorism, including Bangladesh, the report said, which amounted to a policy of "collective suspicion".Manar Waheed, senior legislative and advocacy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the data indicates that "the same communities that this administration has targeted over and over again" are being singled out.Ahsan said that while he was in detention, he missed the moment when his seven-month-old son said "Baba" for the first time."I'm just surprised by all this," Ahsan said, speaking from the detention facility before he was released on bond. "I pay my taxes, I've never done anything wrong, I try to be a model citizen, and I'm here [in detention]."The administration has threatened to deport the family members unless they can prove their relationships are what they have long claimed and had not been challenged by the authorities before.The family is hoping they can reverse the Trump administration action by submitting challenges to the USCIS appeals office, contesting their deportation orders in immigration court and, if necessary, filing civil motions in federal court.But they are dismayed by the turn of events, and very nervous.Sherin said: "You can play everything by the book and they'll still get you."
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| Europe becomes cocaine exporter as countries overflow with drug Posted: 30 Nov 2019 06:31 AM PST  European countries have become so saturated with cocaine that the region has now become a hub for exporting the drug to markets such as Australia, Turkey and Russia, according to new data. Record levels of production of the drug in South America and new smuggling routes opening up into the continent means that Europe is now a transit area for the export of cocaine. The phenomenon is outlined in a new Europol analysis of the drug market, and comes after Spain seized a submarine carrying cocaine from Colombia in a European first this week. New trafficking routes are also being developed through war-torn west African states. Les Fiander, one of the authors of the 2019 Drugs Market Report, said there were a number of reasons why South American production has soared in recent years. "Organised crime groups have been able to expand their production, because authorities in source countries are not able to use anymore pesticides to fight it." Spanish officials seized the submarine earlier this week Credit: LALO R. VILLAR/AFP He added that the ongoing peace process in Colombia is another factor, as the vacuum left by the Farc has been rapidly filled by coca farmers looking to make quick money. According to the report, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain remain main entry points and distribution hubs for cocaine in the EU. Smuggling operations are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. The European Union's law enforcement agency's 2019 Drugs Market Report, shows that the value of the drugs trade in Europe is roughly €30 billion. Cannabis, accounting for 39% of the total market, is the most consumed illicit drug followed by cocaine at 31%. It is estimated that four million European citizens used cocaine this year. Last week's submarine was carrying three tonnes of cocaine valued at €100 million when it was detained off the north-west coast of Spain. The submarine had travelled from South America and it is believed the cocaine was destined for the British market. West and North Africa appears to be emerging as a more significant transit point for both air and maritime shipments of cocaine destined for the European and possibly other markets. The report found that heroin production, mainly in Afghanistan, is also on the rise and consequently there is likely to be a much greater availability of the drug in Europe over the coming years. The use of heroin and other opioids still accounts for the largest share of drug-related harms. The retail value of the heroin market in 2017 was estimated to be at least €7.4 billion. The report also highlighted how the illicit drug industry in Europe is increasingly contaminating river water, drinking water and wastewater. The adverse effects of leaking acidic chemicals are now more widespread and no longer an issue limited to local governments, the report found. Compounding the problem is the array of chemical substances that can be used to produce synthetic drugs, meaning that the amount abandoned and dumped often varies greatly.
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| Airlines are joining in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday with major flight sales — here's how you can save Posted: 29 Nov 2019 01:52 PM PST  Delta, American Airlines, Southwest, Emirates, and more have posted Black Friday and Cyber Monday flight deals. We expect more sales, too.
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| The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born Posted: 30 Nov 2019 02:00 PM PST |
| Nuclear Nightmare? Russia’s Avangard Hypersonic Missile Is About to Go Operational. Posted: 29 Nov 2019 10:00 PM PST  Russia's Avangard hypersonic boost-glide missile is about to operational.
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| Indian Bishop goes on trial for raping nun Posted: 30 Nov 2019 01:15 AM PST  A Roman Catholic bishop went on trial in southern India on Saturday accused of repeatedly raping a nun. Franco Mulakkal arrived in court in Kottayam, Kerala state, with a group of supporters after attending morning prayers. While the Catholic church has been rocked by sexual assault and abuse cases in many countries, Mulakkal is the first Indian clergy to go on trial.
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| Starbucks worker loses job after police chief said officer was served cups labeled 'PIG' Posted: 30 Nov 2019 01:01 PM PST ![Starbucks worker loses job after police chief said officer was served cups labeled 'PIG']( "Starbucks worker loses job after police chief said officer was served cups labeled 'PIG'") A social media post claimed a worker served an on-duty Kiefer, Oklahoma officer cups labeled "PIG" instead of the officer's name
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| Behind in polls, Taiwan president contender tells supporters to lie to pollsters Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:32 AM PST  The main opposition contender for Taiwan's Jan. 11 presidential election said on Friday people should lie to pollsters to trick the ruling party into thinking they were going to win. Han Kuo-yu, standing on the presidential ticket for the Kuomintang party which favors close ties with China, is running a double-digit deficit in opinion polls behind President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Han told reporters late on Thursday there were "many really strange polls" and even "fake polls" and people should refuse to answer calls from pollsters.
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| Who is 'Elizabeth Warren' the politician, and what has she done with the nonpartisan wonk? Posted: 30 Nov 2019 02:00 AM PST  Her own books show how Elizabeth Warren moved away from careful analysis to rhetoric, biography and boilerplate once she became a politician.
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| Commissioner James O’Neill as He Exits NYPD: ‘We’re Going to Have to Speak the Truth’ Posted: 29 Nov 2019 07:43 AM PST  Drew Angerer/GettyNo decision seems to have defined the tenure of NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill more than firing of Daniel Pantaleo, the plain clothes officer captured on video putting his arm around the neck of Eric Garner as he repeatedly pleads, "I can't breathe." Garner's death at the hands of police would become a flashpoint in the national uproar over police-community relations. For police-reform advocates, the move was portrayed as the last opportunity for justice. The city's 43rd police commissioner made a decision few NYPD leaders before him have been willing to make, firing a police officer who was absolved of a crime, but found guilty of violating department policy. To the 36,000 officers he oversees, O'Neill's decision was as an act of betrayal, that even the commissioner admitted he can understand: "If I were still a cop," O'Neill said on the day he announced Pantaleo's termination, "I would be mad at me."For O'Neill, who after 36 years in uniform was seen as a cop's cop when he took the job, it was simply the right decision as the NYPD and police around the country try to mend relationships with communities they serve."When something bad happens, you have to own it. It's important that you do," O'Neill said in an interview with The Daily Beast during his final days in office. "If we're going to build trust, we're going to have to speak the truth. It comes at a cost, but that's OK. You take this job knowing there are difficult decisions that are going to have to be made and you have to stand up for what's right."At some point on Friday, O'Neill will leave NYPD headquarters after more than three years as police commissioner. After 36 years in policing, he'll join the private sector at credit-card giant Visa as a senior vice president and global head of security.O'Neill has said he is "not particularly concerned about my legacy," but adversaries and allies who've worked closely with him believe time will prove that he leaves behind a favorable one.If Pantaleo is how O'Neill be remembered, his legacy could one day be as the architect of neighborhood policing program where officers duties include setting aside time to develop relationships with people in their communities.Councilman Donovan Richards, who as chair of the public safety committee, has clashed with the commissioner during his years at the department said O'Neill's decision on Pantaleo is "something I will always remember because that was not an easy decision to make. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders."Commissioner O'Neill is a man of integrity, a man who even through differences, has always been willing to have an open ear on those differences," Richards continued. "One thing I appreciate about him, is his willingness to hear the other side."But he quickly pivots to neighborhood policing program (also known as NCO), crediting O'Neill with redefining "what community and police should look like. He's leaving a legacy behind. He set this department on the trajectory that people will celebrate in the future. The chicken is being baked or the turkey is being baked. We still have a ways to go, but I get to see how far we have come. The NCO programs is reaching the depths of communities who feel their voices have not been heard."For Richard Aborn, who heads the Citizens Crime Commission, a nonprofit organization focusing on crime and public safety policies in the city, O'Neill understood that while the NYPD succeeded in bringing crime to historic lows, "it had been less successful in the equally critical mission of achieving a trusting relationship with communities in New York—and he set out to repair that breach.""His legacy will be neighborhood policing, a carefully calibrated realignment of policing designed to build trust and develop robust, real relationships between police officers and neighborhood residents resulting in a mutually aligned effort to maintain safe neighborhoods," Aborn said. "Once fully embedded, Neighborhood Policing will alter for the better the face of policing in NYC and Commissioner O'Neill will rightfully get the credit."Now part of all police precincts in the city including every subway station, officers in the NCO program aren't evaluated on the number of arrests they make, but on how they deal with controlling crime conditions."We are asking police officers, you're job is not just to answer 911 jobs and to do proactive policing... a big part of that is to create relationships, to maintain relationships to identify problems and be able to solve problems," O'Neill says on handicapping where community policing stands today. "Is it perfect? I don't think policing anywhere is going to be perfect. There's too many variables. There's 8.5 million people, there's 60 million visitors, there's 36,000 cops, 18,000 civilians. Who knows how many people come to work a day in New York City. We strive for perfection, but I don't think that's the nature of humanity. I don't think we're ever going to reach it."To judge the NCO program's success and long term impact, O'Neill says the department has contracted with the Rand Corporation, a non-profit think tank, on a two-year study of neighborhood policing to "make sure it's what we think it is.""Anecdotally, we are getting really positive feedback from the cops, really positive feedback from the community," he said. "I think we are in a good place, but it needs to be reinforced with some research too."That O'Neill, 62, became NYPD police commissioner was a dramatic change in fortunes that began when former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton took over as leader of the nation's largest police force under Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014.In the months leading up to Bratton's appointment, O'Neill was weighing retirement after falling out of favor with then Commissioner Ray Kelly in 2008 when he was head of the narcotics division. O'Neill was one of three people transferred from the unit after officers were caught in a scandal for paying informants with drugs instead of cash.O'Neill would end up as head of the fugitive enforcement division, an abrupt shift to a career in which he had a fast rise up the ranks. During a banishment that lasted six years, O'Neill called Bratton in 2013 asking about jobs in the private sector. Bratton encouraged O'Neill to stick around, telling him that he had been talking with several mayoral candidates about returning to the NYPD. In January 2014, Bratton was sworn in as police commissioner under de Blasio and he hired O'Neill to join his executive staff. That summer O'Neill was installed as the NYPD's chief of patrol. And that November, O'Neill was promoted to chief of the pepartment, the NYPD's top uniformed commander. And when Bratton announced his retirement in August 2016, O'Neill was tapped by de Blasio to be the next police commissioner.Asked if he could remember the day he agreed to take this job if he could remember he wanted it, O'Neill pauses and jokes, "Are you still recording?"Then he continues, simply stating, "I knew it was going to be an opportunity to make the NYPD a better place and to make the city a better place."It's a sleepless job with the task of keeping one of the world's biggest terrorist targets safe. O'Neill learned this less that 24 hours into the job when a pressure cooker bomb exploded in Manhattan, the worst terrorist attack on the city since September 11. He would experience two more terrorist attacks during his tenure.He would also become the commissioner who earlier this year finally took the step of apologizing for the NYPD raid on Stonewall Inn on the 50th anniversary of the riots there. "What happened should not have happened," O'Neill said during an event at NYPD headquarters. "The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple. The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize. I vow to the LGBTQ community that this would never happen in the NYPD in 2019. We have, and we do, embrace all New Yorkers."Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum says this kind of leadership and compassion helped O'Neill "emerge as one of the toughest most forward thinking police commissioners in New York history.""Jimmy O'Neil's legacy will be that of a humble transit cop who went on to become police commissioner and faced with making with making gut wrenching personnel decisions while bringing crime down to historic levels," Wexler said. "For his decisions in the Garner, [Deborah] Danner and Stonewall cases proved he had the courage and self assurance to rule in the best interests of both the community and the department."In keeping with his keep-your-head-down, cop's cop persona, O'Neill doesn't need any ceremonial send off to mark his achievements. He's happy to leave quietly, passing the baton to NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea, who on December 1 will be officially sworn in as the new police commissioner. "I walked in alone," says O'Neill, adding, "I'm going to walk out alone."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| 2 Men Stockpiled Guns and Far-Right Propaganda in New Jersey. Are They Alone? Posted: 29 Nov 2019 12:06 PM PST  NEWTON, N.J. -- New Jersey investigators were looking into a routine complaint from a woman who said her ex-boyfriend was harassing her when they uncovered something far more dire: The 25-year-old man had stockpiled weapons and far-right propaganda and had talked about shooting up a hospital.Two months later, New Jersey State Police responding to a crash in the same county discovered illegal assault weapons in the back seat of a van. Later, they found 17 more firearms, a grenade launcher and neo-Nazi paraphernalia in the driver's home.The arrests of the two men rocked law enforcement officials in Sussex County, raising fears that far-right extremism had crept into this sleepy, rural area in New Jersey.It is impossible to know if the two arrests so close together are a fluke or signal of a growing white supremacist movement in the county, law enforcement officials said. The two men appear to have no connection to each other.Sussex has lately been seeing ugly signs of increasing racism and anti-Semitism. Vandals have scrawled swastikas in schools, and in a highly publicized incident last fall, supporters of a Jewish congressman found their Sussex County home vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.Bias-related crimes rose from four in 2016, when President Donald Trump was elected, to seven in 2018, prosecutors said. Although the numbers are small, officials say the general upward trend is troubling in a county of only 141,000 people and reflects similar increases across the state."One hundred percent certainty, the numbers of reports have increased," said New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. "I can't say that belief system is isolated to Sussex. We've seen it in all parts of the state."At the same time, there has been a rise in right-wing extremism across the country. White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed more people than any other category of domestic extremist in the past 18 years. In August, for example, a white supremacist targeting Mexicans killed 22 in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.Only recently have federal law enforcement officials come to grips with that threat, and local prosecutors like those in Sussex County have often found themselves doing investigations they are ill-equipped to undertake.Law enforcement officials said neither of the men arrested in Suffolk County had contact with other white supremacists in the area. Instead, they appear to have been independently radicalized.Gregory Mueller, an assistant prosecutor in Newton, New Jersey, said it is highly likely there are others with a similar ideology in Sussex County, but he is not sure how to find them. His investigators lack the expertise to ferret them out.Until recently, for instance, Mueller and his team were not familiar with an image found on one suspect's social media profiles: Pepe the Frog, a widely recognized, racist meme used by the far right.For now, the county has just one computer forensics expert, Detective Marty Lewis, who spends nights and weekends trawling far-right internet forums for clues."City departments get so many resources from the feds to track these groups," Mueller said. "We have Marty down in the basement."Sussex as a case studyTucked along New Jersey's western border, Sussex County is rural and mostly white, although over the past five years there has been a small but steady increase in the number of immigrants living there. Trump easily carried the county in 2016.For roughly a century, the county was a conservative stronghold, the anchor of New Jersey's reliably Republican 5th Congressional District. But redistricting in 2010 added towns from the heavily Democratic eastern part of the state, and in 2016, the district elected a moderate Democrat, Josh Gottheimer, to Congress.He is the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1933. Not long after he was elected, his office was spray-painted with swastikas. The incident was part of a troubling rise in anti-Semitic, racist and far-right graffiti, county officials said.The phenomenon tracked with what was happening across the country after the 2016 election in counties with similar demographics.In the first two quarters of 2019, there was a 40% increase in anti-Semitic incidents compared with the same period in 2016, according to statistics provided by the Anti-Defamation League."I think the national rhetoric is not helping," said Jared Maples, the director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security. "That discourse leads to people feeling disenfranchised and on the fringe and again, empowered, maybe, to make their voices heard about the hate that they kind of espouse and believe in."Gottheimer has been repeatedly targeted with graffiti -- during the midterm election a supporter's lawn sign was covered in Nazi symbols -- but the most frequent targets have been the district's schools: Swastikas have been found at schools in Glen Rock, Ridgewood, Emerson and the Pascack Valley.Gottheimer noted that other hate groups like the Oath Keepers and the Ku Klux Klan were gaining a foothold in his district. "The concern is those acts of hate are the embers and then they begin to get radicalized," he said.'They're there. We just don't know who they are.'Law enforcement officials said that Michael Zaremski, the 25-year-old arrested after his ex-girlfriend complained of harassment, appears to be a prime example of the self-radicalized threat they fear may cause damage in the future."They're there," said Lewis, the computer forensics expert. "We just don't know who they are."Zaremski was an emergency medical technician who frequented white supremacist forums online and had a trove of neo-Nazi literature. He was caught only because he sent a photo of his ex-girlfriend wearing parts of a Nazi uniform to her employer, officials said.The police later discovered that he had made videos set in New Jersey that mimicked, shot-by-shot, the first minutes of the live-streamed massacre of Muslims by a right-wing terrorist in Christchurch, New Zealand. He had also stockpiled automatic weapons, each with the same markings on the gun magazines as those of the Christchurch shooter, according to sources familiar with the investigation.Indeed, Zaremski was so obsessed with the mass shooting in New Zealand that he made his former girlfriend watch the video of the shooting repeatedly, investigators said. He also affixed a "Right Wing Death Squad" patch to his EMT jacket.Law enforcement officials discovered material on his computer that suggested he was curious about committing a mass shooting at a hospital.The way Zaremski became radicalized has become the new normal, law enforcement officials and experts on hate groups said. More and more alienated young people are adopting extreme ideologies in online forums and chat rooms, rather than joining traditional groups like the Ku Klux Klan."The online world is just as important to us as looking at real world activities," said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's intelligence project, which tracks hate groups. "There's essentially no distinction. And rooting people out from an online perspective is a very difficult thing for law enforcement, because you don't have a group to infiltrate."An intelligence gapUnlike Zaremski, Joseph Rubino, the 57-year-old man arrested after he crashed his van on a country road, appeared to have been on the radar of federal law enforcement for some time before he was taken into custody in August, one law enforcement official said.A lapsed member of a motorcycle gang, Rubino was believed to be selling homemade semi-automatic guns and handing out far-right propaganda at gun shows in the region, officials said.Still, Rubino was never arrested by federal agents.Instead, he was picked up by the state police, who arrived at the scene of the crash in August and spotted banned firearms in the back seat of the wrecked van, according to court documents. A subsequent search of Rubino's home turned up a grenade launcher, 17 semi-automatic weapons and racist and anti-Semitic materials.Rubino was charged in federal court with possessing illegal weapons. Had he not wrecked his car, Mueller said, Rubino might still be frequenting gun shows."If you look at how we were able to arrest Zaremski and Rubino, they were both by happenstance," said Mueller. "It's not like we had this massive yearlong investigation and these were the two that we found."A wider problemSussex County's quandary is a symptom of a bigger issue, years in the making: The FBI no longer has a deep reservoir of intelligence on far-right threats, current and former law enforcement officials say.For years, there was a de facto policy within the Justice Department to defer prosecutions of far-right groups to state and local authorities, as the FBI shifted resources toward Islamic terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Michael German, a former FBI officer who worked undercover inside white supremacist groups in the 1990s and early 2000s.It was not until recently, as the threat from right-wing extremism flourished and the threat from Islamic extremism waned, that the flaws in that strategy became clear. Deferring those cases to local authorities meant there was no longer a national repository of data and information on far-right groups, German said."It means the federal government loses all that intelligence," he said. "If there was a crime in Des Moines, Iowa, and a crime in Springfield, Illinois, and a crime in Minnesota, they might never know that those crimes are actually connected."Zaremski was engaging regularly with other far-right ideologues, Mueller said, but none of them appeared to be within Sussex County's jurisdiction, or even the state's. Pursuing such cases would require help from federal law enforcement."They do assist," Mueller said of the FBI and other agencies. "But it typically will take us reaching out to them on a case or person."Grewal, the state attorney general, has revised bias and hate crime standards and is encouraging prosecutors to report any suspicious activity. Since that directive, the reports have increased by 300% across the state."In the wake of Parkland, we saw that there were gaps in reporting," he said, referring to the school shooting near Miami that left 17 dead.But local law enforcement is still behind in infiltrating right-wing groups, Grewal said. It is essential, he said, to "empower people who might come into contact with these individuals" to report them. It was a tip from a girlfriend, he noted, that led to Zaremski's arrest."I definitely feel for these prosecutors," German said. "The lack of attention the FBI has put on this has created a deeper intelligence deficit where even the FBI doesn't understand these groups anymore."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Lebanese rally against Iraq's crackdown on protesters Posted: 30 Nov 2019 08:57 AM PST  Dozens of people in protest-swept Lebanon staged a candlelit vigil outside Iraq's embassy on Saturday to denounce the excessive use of force against demonstrators there. Participants at the Beirut observance raised pictures of Iraqi protesters who have been killed in an unprecedented anti-government movement. Some raised the Lebanese flag, while one woman wrapped the Iraqi tricolour around her shoulders.
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| Indonesian gymnast dropped after told 'she's no longer a virgin' Posted: 29 Nov 2019 03:13 AM PST ![Indonesian gymnast dropped after told 'she's no longer a virgin']( "Indonesian gymnast dropped after told 'she's no longer a virgin'") An Indonesian female gymnast training for a major sport event has been sent home on grounds she was no longer a virgin, her family said on Friday, a claim rejected by officials who insisted it was over disciplinary issues. "The coach said my daughter always goes out late with her male friends and their interrogation showed she was no longer a virgin," her mother Ayu Kurniawati told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Indonesia's East Java province. Indonesia's sports ministry denied the claim on Friday, saying the dismissal was due to performance and disciplinary issues.
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| Million-gallon raw sewage leak shuts down miles of California coastline Posted: 30 Nov 2019 09:10 AM PST  A broken pipe leaked more than a million gallons of raw sewage into the sea off the California coast, shutting down miles of Orange County beaches as authorities scrambled to fix it.The spill was first reported on Wednesday afternoon, and the source of the leak was later tracked down to a valve on a 24-inch city sewage main near the Aliso and Woods Canyon Wilderness Park.
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| A bear got stuck in a tree over a tiger enclosure and refused to climb down for 5 days Posted: 29 Nov 2019 08:25 AM PST  The CARE Foundation in Florida posted photos and videos showing the bear clinging to the tree, unaware that the tigers were really enclosed in cages.
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