Diario de Noticias

Buffalo shooter let some people see plans just before attack – The Associated Press

Shortly before he opened fire, the white gunman accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket allowed a small group of people to see his detailed plans for the attack, which he had been chronicling for months in a private, online diary.

Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Payton Gendron kept the diary, confirmed Wednesday that an invitation to access his private writings was sent to the group about a half-hour before Saturday’s attack at Tops Friendly Market, which he live-streamed on another online service. Some of them accepted.

Gendron’s diary and its racist, anti-Semitic entries dated to last November included step-by-step descriptions of his assault plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the store that he drew by hand.

“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” a Discord spokesperson said in a written statement. “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”

It wasn’t clear if any of the people who accessed Gendron’s diary or saw his livestream did anything to alert the authorities or attempt to stop the attack. Discord said it removed Gendron’s diary as soon as the platform became aware of it, in accordance with the company’s policies against violent extremism.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Monday that investigators were working to obtain, verify and review Gendron’s online postings.

Copies of his Discord diary — essentially a transcript of his postings to his private chat log — briefly surfaced elsewhere online after the shooting, along with a 180-page screed attributed to him. Both were laced with white supremacist beliefs echoing a baseless extremist conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish the influence of white people.

President Joe Biden, visiting Buffalo on Tuesday, repudiated such beliefs, saying: “Now’s the time for people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority … and reject white supremacy.”

Gendron was arraigned over the weekend on a murder charge; a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf and he remains jailed under a suicide watch. He is scheduled to appear in court in Buffalo again Thursday.

Tech companies like Discord and Twitch, which authorities say Gendron used to livestream the supermarket attack, are under scrutiny for their role as vectors of hate speech.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday authorized the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, to investigate social media platforms used by Gendron to determine if they have “civil or criminal liability for their role in promoting, facilitating, or providing a platform to plan and promote violence.”

Discord said it planned to cooperate with James’ probe and is continuing to assist law enforcement in the ongoing investigation into the shooting.

“Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families,” the company said. “Hate has no place on Discord and we are committed to combating violence and extremism.”

Messages seeking comment were left with Twitch. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear told the Harvard Business Review in an interview earlier on Wednesday that the Amazon-owned platform would continue to “invest heavily in ensuring the safety of everyone on Twitch.”

“I think this is an example of one of those places where we’ve done a lot of work, but there is obviously still work to be done,” Shear said.

Attempts to reach representatives of two other tech platforms James is investigating, 8kun and 4chan, were unsuccessful. Gendron wrote in his diary that those boards were where he started reading up on the racist ideologies that set him on a path to killing nonwhite, non-Christian people.

When reached for comment, Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of 8kun and its predecessor, 8chan, said he resigned from the organization last year and has “no idea what’s going on with that.”

Gendron wrote in his Discord diary that he started reading 4chan a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and that he was heavily influenced by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in a shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. Gendron wrote that he originally planned his attack for March 15, the three-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attack.

Copies of Gendron’s diary postings were shared with The Associated Press by Marc-André Argentino, a research fellow at the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. He said it was possible but unlikely the diary could have been altered by someone other than the author.

Gendron, in the diary, said he specifically targeted a store with a predominantly Black clientele, researching spots in Rochester, Syracuse and on Long Island before settling on Buffalo. Prosecutors say he showed up Saturday wearing body armor and armed with an AR-15-style rifle as a helmet-mounted camera streamed to the internet.

Problems with his gun and then a bout with COVID-19 — which he theorized he contracted from a fast-food chicken sandwich poisoned by government agents — prevented him from attacking earlier, he wrote in the diary.

Gendron wrote that he started thinking about “a personal attack against the replacers” a few weeks prior to an episode in a high school class about a year ago. That episode led to him being taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

A few weeks before the attack, Gendron wrote that neither his parents nor his brothers were aware of his plans, but that he feared they would find out.

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Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Haleluya Hadero in New York, Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed to this report.

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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak

Source Article from https://apnews.com/article/buffalo-supermarket-shooting-covid-health-shootings-new-york-8da5e408485e9699f866a89da7ac6067

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US weighs more military support for Ukraine to resist Russia if it invades – CNN

By Natasha Bertrand, Jim Sciutto, Katie Bo Williams, Barbara Starr and Alex Marquardt, CNN

Updated 9:40 PM ET, Tue January 18, 2022

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/us-military-support-ukraine-russia/index.html

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Trump caps Pennsylvania campaign: ‘The only way we can blow it is if you blow it’ – The Hill

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Federal judge warns of Trump’s attacks in extraordinary rebuke – CNN

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Late Night Gives the Lowdown on CPAC – The New York Times

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‘They shouted Jewish, IDF’: Israeli football fans describe attack in Amsterdam – BBC.com

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Special counsel Jack Smith asks the Supreme Court to rule quickly on whether Trump can be prosecuted – The Associated Press

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Western New York is forecast to get even more snow after more than 5 feet falls – NPR

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Israeli military airstrikes hit Houthi targets in Yemen in retaliation to attacks – CBS News

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Secret Service director, grilled by lawmakers on the Trump assassination attempt, says ‘we failed’ – The Associated Press

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‘Powerful’ storm dumps heavy rain over East Coast with 59M under flood alerts – NBC News

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Putin and Xi call for halt to NATO expansion during show of unity at Beijing Olympics – CNN

By CNN’s Beijing Bureau and Anna Chernova, CNN

Updated 12:23 PM ET, Fri February 4, 2022

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/world/china-russia-xi-putin-meeting-nato-intl/index.html

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FBI were seeking classified presidential records at Trump’s home | First Thing – The Guardian US

Good morning.

Federal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday bearing a warrant that broadly sought presidential and classified records that the justice department believed the former president unlawfully retained, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The criminal nature of the search warrant executed by FBI agents, as described by the sources, suggested the investigation surrounding Trump is firmly a criminal inquiry that comes with potentially far-reaching political and legal ramifications for the former president.

And the extraordinary search, the sources said, came after the justice department grew concerned – as a result of discussions with Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks – that presidential and classified materials were being unlawfully and improperly kept at the Mar-a-Lago resort.

Meanwhile, Republican and rightwing groups have swiftly used the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago to raise money from their supporters by bombarding them with fundraising emails and appeals for donations.

Could the Mar-a-Lago raid benefit Trump politically? Trump is widely believed to be pursuing a presidential run in 2024. Some suggested that it would fuel his supporters’ suspicion of federal law enforcement officials, whom Trump and his allies have long disparaged as corrupt and biased.
Why didn’t the FBI just use a subpoena? The fact that the FBI sought a search warrant rather than a subpoena implies it did not trust Trump to hand over or preserve official documents in his possession.
What else has the FBI done? Federal investigators seized the cellphone of the Republican congressman Scott Perry on Tuesday, his office said. Perry is a close ally of Trump.

Biden administration ends Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

A US border patrol looks on as people wait to have their identities checked and taken to a processing center in Yuma, Arizona, in June. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that it had ended a Trump-era policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in US immigration court, hours after a judge lifted an order, in effect since December, that the so-called Remain in Mexico rule be reinstated.

The timing had been in doubt since the US supreme court ruled on 30 June that the Biden administration could end the policy.

Homeland security officials had been largely silent, saying they had to wait for the court to certify the ruling and for a Trump-appointed judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, in Amarillo, Texas, to then lift his injunction.

The supreme court certified its ruling last week and critics of the policy had been increasingly outspoken about the Biden administration’s reticence on Remain in Mexico, calling for an immediate end to it.

What will happen now? The program now will be unwound in a “quick, and orderly manner”, DHS said in a statement. No more people are being enrolled and those who appear in court will not be returned to Mexico when they appear in the US for their next hearings.
Why did the Biden administration decide to end the policy? The policy “has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border”, the department said.

‘This is about striking fear’: China’s Taiwan drills the new normal, analysts say

Chinese People’s Liberation Army warplanes conduct what it described as a combat training exercise around Taiwan on Sunday. Photograph: Wang Xinchao/AP

China’s military drills targeting Taiwan have set a new normal, and are likely to “regularise” similar armed exercises off the coast or even more aggressive action much closer to the island, analysts have said.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been conducting live-fire exercises and other drills in the seas around Taiwan’s main island for almost a week, in a purported response to the controversial visit to Taipei by the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing claims Taiwan as a province. It has not ruled out taking it by force and objects to any and all foreign shows of support for its sovereignty. Taiwan has accused Beijing of using Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to prepare for an invasion.

While some drills are continuing, the big show put on last week has ended, and observers are now trying to assess how the dynamics of the region have changed, and what the future holds for cross-strait relations.

What does Taiwan think? Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said yesterday there was concern the PLA would “routinise” crossing the median line. He urged the international community to push back, saying Beijing clearly aimed to control the strait.

In other news …

In an article for Vogue, Serena Williams explained her intention to further expand her family was one of the main reasons she was retiring. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Serena Williams, one of the greatest athletes of all time and a 23-time grand slam singles champion, has announced that she is retiring from professional tennis, indicating she could step away after the upcoming US Open. Here’s how how Serena Williams became a rare legend.
Elon Musk has sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in Tesla after admitting that he could need the funds if he is forced to buy the social media platform. The Tesla chief executive walked away from a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in July but the company has launched a lawsuit demanding that he complete the deal.
China is racing to stamp out Covid-19 outbreaks in the tourist hubs of Tibet and Hainan, with the authorities launching more rounds of mass testing and closing venues to contain the highly transmissible Omicron variant as Beijing presses ahead with its Covid zero strategy.
A former Twitter employee has been found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents using the social media platform and passing their personal information to a close aide of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A jury found Ahmad Abouammo had acted as an unregistered agent of the Saudi government.

Don’t miss this: A rebel fighter who risked his life for love was murdered, and part of me died too

Naxalite fighters in the forests of Chhattisgarh in 2007: Korsa Joga had been a member of the revolutionary group for many years. Photograph: Mustafa Quraishi/AP

“As a journalist in a conflict zone I was used to covering deaths. But then a young insurgent who had laid down his weapons and become a friend was killed,” writes Ashutosh Bhardwaj. “I was sent photographs on WhatsApp, of his corpse lying on a road in a puddle of blood. In that moment a man deep inside me, who loves, who yearns for love, a part of that man was also murdered. A journalist often lives in bewildering haste, in a frenzied endeavour to locate news in every element around … Imperceptibly, but profoundly, reporting begins to mutate your being. You find yourself ineligible for writing on topics that don’t involve blood or sorrow.”

Climate check: Can citizen scientists turn the tide against America’s toxic algal blooms?

An aerial view of red tide off Florida’s south-west coast. Photograph: Mote Marine Laboratory’s Manatee Research Program

As climate change heats the oceans, predictions of a dangerous phenomenon known as “red tides” are on the rise. Red tides occur a type of rust-colored alga known as Karenia brevis grows, which produces toxic compounds that are harmful to humans as well as dolphins, manatees and other sea life. In an effort to address the threat, the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast was launched. It’s an online map that shows the presence and severity of red tide at select locations, which community of citizen science volunteers contribute to.

Last Thing: The transatlantic battle over a 7ft Frankenstein figure

Schoolchildren get up close with Frankenstein’s monster. Photograph: Getty

Measuring almost 7ft tall, a Frankenstein’s monster mannequin and costume is one of the largest – and strangest – costumes owned by the V&A museum in London. The only problem? The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) thinks it owns it too. The NHM said it was given the monster, and the costume, by Universal Studios in 1935. It in turn lent it to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where it was reported as being destroyed in 1967. So the NHM was a bit surprised when it showed up in London.