London police arrested four teenagers Friday in the “homophobic” attack on a lesbian couple who were beaten bloody on a double decker bus. One of the victims, Melania Geymonat, described her harrowing experience of last Sunday’s incident on social media, saying a group of young men demanded she kiss her girlfriend, Chris, for their entertainment.
Metropolitan Police said the couple was riding on a top deck of a night bus to West Hempstead when the teens, aged 15 to 18, began to harass them with “lewd and homophobic” comments. According to Geymonat, even as the couple tried to defuse the situation, the youths attacked them anyway.
“They started behaving like hooligans, demanding that we kissed so they could enjoy watching, calling us ‘lesbians’ and describing sexual positions,” she wrote on Facebook Wednesday. “Chris even pretended she was sick, but they kept on harassing us, throwing us coins and becoming more enthusiastic about it. The next thing I know is that Chris is in the middle of the bus fighting with them.”
She added, “On an impulse, I went over there only to find her face bleeding and three of them beating her up. The next thing I know is I’m being punched.” Geymonat said she became dizzy and fell back; later she realized police had arrived on the bus and she had blood all over her. A picture she uploaded with her Facebook post shows the two women sitting on the bus with bloodied faces and blood stains on their clothing.
The teens ran away, and a phone and bag were stolen during the assault, police said. Both women were taken to hospital for treatment to facial injuries and later released.
In an update on Friday, police said the four were arrested on suspicion of robbery and aggravated hate crime. They were taken to separate police stations for further questioning. Police also said they were reviewing surveillance video footage of the attack.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the assault a “disgusting, misogynistic attack” on Twitter early Friday, while asking the public’s help to find the perpetrators.
“Hate crimes against LGBT+ people will not be tolerated in London,” he tweeted. The @metpoliceuk are investigating. If you have any information about this call 101 to report it.”
New documentary explores the state of gay pride in America
As people take part in celebrations of LGQBT rights around the world for Pride Month, Geymonat expressed disappointment in having to be in fear of being attacked for being gay.
“I’m tired of being taken as a SEXUAL OBJECT, of finding out that these situations are usual, of gay friends who were beaten up JUST BECAUSE,” she said. “We have to endure verbal harassment AND CHAUVINIST, MISOGYNISTIC AND HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE because when you stand up for yourself sh*t like this happens. I just hope that in June, Pride Month, stuff like this can be spoken out loudly so they STOP HAPPENING!”
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters speaks alongside Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien (right) and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac (left) during a news conference to discuss cases linked to Samuel Little.
John Minchillo/AP
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John Minchillo/AP
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters speaks alongside Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien (right) and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac (left) during a news conference to discuss cases linked to Samuel Little.
John Minchillo/AP
A man considered by federal law enforcement to be perhaps the deadliest serial killer in U.S. history was charged on Friday over the strangling deaths of two women in Ohio, charges that come after he admitted last week to killing three others in the state.
The five new victims of Samuel Little, 79, originally from Lorain, in northeastern Ohio, are believed to be among the more than 90 women he has confessed to killing. Little is already serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
The latest charges filed by prosecutors in Cincinnati are part of what authorities say was Little’s murderous rampage, killing women across 19 states over nearly half a century ending around 2005.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters told reporters that serial killers like Little are difficult for most people to comprehend.
“The reality is, they have a compulsion to kill people. They’re not insane,” Deters said. “They’re nothing but evil.”
Samuel Little, seen in an undated file photo, is serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles.
Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP
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Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP
Samuel Little, seen in an undated file photo, is serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles.
Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP
The Ohio prosecutors named Anna Lee Stewart, 33, who was strangled to death in October 1981, and an unidentified woman also thought to have been murdered by Little more than 30 years ago as victims in the case.
Deters said Little has agreed to plead guilty to the murders, which he is set to do in August. The cooperation, Deters said, came in exchange for sparing Little the death penalty.
Little, who is ill with diabetes and heart disease and is imprisoned in a Los Angeles facility, has drawn haunting sketches of many of the women he says he killed decades ago and remembers details about the crimes, but he has trouble remembering the names of his victims, investigators say. His method, though, follows a similar pattern.
“He strangled them. That is the way he enjoyed his pleasure,” Deters said. “He specifically looked for girls with a certain neck type,” he said. “That’s how twisted this guy is.”
Prosecutors say Little was a shoplifter by day who moonlighted as a violent attacker who spied on troubled neighborhoods and targeted women who were homeless, prostitutes or addicted to drugs. Targets, prosecutors said, Little deemed “no one would miss.”
In 2012, police arrested Little at a Louisville, Ky., homeless shelter. Authorities then extradited him to California on drug charges, only to have his DNA quickly matched to three unsolved murders in the 1980s, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Little was then convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole. Over time, the scope of his murders came into sharper focus.
Gary Ridgeway, the man known as the Green River Killer, pleaded guilty to killing 48 women in 2003 but confessed to murdering 71, which would make him the deadliest serial killer in American history.
But Deter, the Ohio prosecutor, said federal officials believe that Little was even more deadly.
“The FBI has told us that he’s the most prolific serial killer in the history of America,” Deter said.
Biden quickly “respond[ed] to a mob” in his party very quickly when he was pressed about his past support for the Hyde Amendment, Hemingway claimed Friday on “Special Report.”
Named for its chief sponsor, former Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the amendment prohibits federal funding of abortion except in special cases like a concern for the mother’s help or in the case of rape.
“This was Joe Biden’s big claim to fame, that he was a moderate, that he wasn’t beholden to the activist base of his party,” the Federalist senior editor claimed. “That’s kind of the whole point of his candidacy, that he’s not someone who has to answer to their beck and call, but he can appeal to a broader audience.”
“The question is, if he is going to respond – after decades upon decades of having a position claiming he is pro-life, claiming he opposed abortion – to flip within 24 hours, it forces the question – what is the point of his candidacy if he is going to acquiesce to whatever their demands are?”
Host Mike Emanuel played a clip of Biden from a 2012 vice presidential debate, in which the former Delaware senator said his Catholic faith guided his position on abortion.
Emanuel asked Hemingway how an apparent change in tone would affect his four-decade record in government.
“It’s not just abortion,” Hemingway responded. “It’s a whole host of issues on he’s been moderate or willing to compromise on all sorts of things.”
“The progressive left is not going to stop with just demanding full acquiescence on abortion up through nine months of pregnancy, there are a whole host of issues they’re going to demand acquiescence to.”
The State Department has rejected at least four requests from different U.S. embassies to fly LGBTQ pride flags during the month of June.
U.S. embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil, and Latvia have each made requests to fly rainbow flags on the embassy’s flag pole, and the Trump administration has rejected each request, according to NBC News. Pride flags are still allowed to be displayed elsewhere in each facility.
Under President Barack Obama, embassies were given blanket permission to fly LGBTQ pride flags throughout the month of June. The Trump administration altered that policy and now requires each embassy to get special permission to display the flag on the embassy flag pole.
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is openly gay, is leading the Trump administration’s campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in the roughly 70 countries around the world where it is illegal.
“The pride flag will be on as many places as it can at the embassy,” embassy spokesman Joseph Giordono-Scholz said.
“The President’s recognition of Pride Month and his tweet encouraging our decriminalization campaign gives me even more pride to once again march in the Berlin Pride parade, hang a huge banner on the side of the Embassy recognizing our pride, host multiple events at the Embassy and the residence, and fly the gay pride flag,” Grenell said in a statement.
The head of the Colorado school district where Columbine High School is located has a drastic proposal aimed at thwarting would-be mass killers and tragedy pilgrims who have a “morbid fascination” with the massacre that happened there — tear the building down.
“The tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999 serves as a point of origin for this contagion of school shootings,” Superintendent Jason Glass wrote in a letter to parents and others in the Jefferson County School District. “School shooters refer to and study the Columbine shooting as a macabre source of inspiration and motivation.”
Glass said troubled people known as “Columbiners” are drawn to the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton.
“Most of them are there to satisfy curiosity or a macabre, but harmless, interest in the school,” he wrote. “For a small group of others, there is a potential to do harm.”
Case in point: 18-year-old Sol Pais who traveled in April to Colorado and had a suspicious fascination with the massacre forced Denver-area schools to close before taking her own life.
“In 1999, no guidance existed on what to do with a building such as Columbine High School,” Glass’ letter reads. “Today, school safety experts recommend tearing down buildings where school shootings take place. Since the morbid fascination with Columbine has been increasing over the years, rather than dissipating, we believe it is time for our community to consider this option for the existing Columbine building.”
Glass’ proposal came less than two months after the 20th anniversary of the April 20, 1999, massacre that was planned by two troubled students who murdered a dozen classmates and a teacher before they killed themselves.
Since then, experts have said, the Columbine killings have become a source of sick inspiration to other mass killers. The Washington Post, using police reports, published articles and various data bases, has calculated that as of Friday, more than 228,000 students “have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine.”
The tragedy at Columbine also changed the way new schools are built. Now things like buzzers, security cameras and bulletproof glass are as common as books and laptops at newly constructed schools.
Glass said they are “exploring the concept of asking voters for an additional $60 million to $70 million at the polls at some point in the future to construct a new high school for Columbine.”
Under Glass’ proposal, the existing building would be demolished and replaced with fields with “controlled entry points.” The Hope Memorial Library, which was built after the massacre, could be preserved and perhaps serve as the “cornerstone” for the new building, which would be built to the west of the current building.
The name Columbine High School would be retained and the “current school mascot and colors would be unchanged,” Glass wrote.
Tearing down the scene of a horrible crime is not a new idea.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School, where in 2012 a gunman killed 26 children and staffers with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle before killing himself, was demolished two years later and a new school was built.
So was the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 people were shot dead in November 2017.
As was the West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania where five Amish girls were murdered in 2006. That was replaced with another one-room schoolhouse.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said Friday his panel will vote next week on holding Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt after the pair of top Trump administration officials failed to cooperate with a probe into adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
“We gave Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross every opportunity to produce the documents the Committee needs for our investigation, but rather than cooperate, they have decided that they would rather be held in contempt of Congress,” Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.
“They produced none of the documents we asked for, they made no counter-offers regarding these documents, and they seem determined to continue the Trump Administration’s cover-up,” he added.
Cummings’ committee had, in April, issued subpoenas for documents related to an investigation into the Trump’s administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The subpoena was for all 2017 documents, both from within the Department of Justice and with outside entities, regarding the administration’s request to add a citizenship question to the census. That list included a memo from James Uthmeier, who served as an attorney to Ross, to John Gore, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in the fall of 2017.
The deadline to comply with subpoenas was Thursday.
But the Department of Justice said in a letter to Cummings on Thursday night that it would not meet the deadline and said his committee should not vote to hold Barr in contempt because the agency had been accommodating with some document requests and offering staff to appear for transcribed interviews.
In the letter, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote that a contempt vote would be “premature” and halt any ongoing cooperation with the committee.
Cummings, in his letter Friday, ripped Boyd’s letter and rationale for not complying.
“The letters last night were case studies in double-speak. They claim that fighting witness interviews for months under threat of subpoena is evidence of a ‘good faith accommodations process,’ they suggest that Secretary Ross’ refusal to meet demonstrates that the Department ‘is eager to continue its cooperation with the Committee,’ and they argue that withholding every single one of the key unredacted documents we subpoenaed somehow proves that ‘there is no information to hide,'” Cummings wrote.
After rejecting the idea publicly, Mexico eventually went along with it. And then, after vowing to limit the numbers and locations of those sent back to Mexico, the nation bowed to pressure on that as well.
Most Mexicans think agreeing to be a first country of asylum for migrants would be the wrong move — in part because doing so would not guarantee there would be no new demands in the future.
“Trump lives off confrontation and conflict,” added Mr. Poiré, the former Mexican interior secretary. “That is his core political strategy and when there is concession, he will immediately look for the next agenda and excuse to pick a fight with Mexico.”
Mr. López Obrador has, for the moment, maintained his friendly, optimistic tone. He has said he believes an agreement will be reached, and has insisted on amicable relations with the United States. But the consistent provocation of Mexico by Mr. Trump has long worried experts.
The nationalism and suspicion felt by an older generation of Mexicans toward the United States — which gave way to a strong bilateral relationship and economic cooperation in the post-free trade era — could easily be stoked.
“Up until two generations ago, most Mexicans, like myself, grew up accustomed to feeling deeply suspicious of the United States,” said Héctor Villarreal, a professor at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. “We were experiencing a new generational shift and a really positive era of considering the U.S. our neighbor and our partner.”
The May 30 attack in London shocked the world for its brutality. Now four teenagers between ages 15 and 18 have been arrested for what appears to be a hate crime against a lesbian couple. In a photo taken by one of the victims, Melania Geymonat, the couple are shown bloodied and shocked after suffering a brutal assault.
The story became global news following widespread publication of that photo by the BBC on Friday. Still, it is welcome news that the police have arrested four suspects. And it is right that more resources were probably afforded to that investigation than others.
This incident is shocking for the capricious nature of what apparently motivated it: hate of two young ladies because they are gay. For a city that is heavily reliant on tourism for revenue generation and economic prosperity, this incident could not stand without investigation. Were the suspects to remain undetected, the attack might deter gay tourists from visiting in the future. In turn, London’s Metropolitan Police would have diverted significant investigative resources into tracking down those who carried out this attack. That likely entailed assigning officers to review CCTV footage, to track the bus passes used, and to trace the goods that were stolen from the two ladies. Specialist detectives in anti-hate units would also have been allocated to the task.
Fortunately, it seems the police are confident they have found the culprits. They are under suspicion of aggravated grievous bodily harm. That means the police are confident that the couples’ sexual orientation was a decisive factor in motivating the assault and that the couple suffered significant physical harm by it. Putting my English law school hat on, the nature of the injuries and the motive would appear to indicate a Category 2 sentencing guideline under English law. I would thus assume that, if charged and found guilty, at least some of the gang responsible will face more than a year in prison or a youth offenders institution.
Hopefully that sentence will discourage at least some others from carrying out a similar attack in the future.
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns reporter, reporters and lawyers start searching for clues.
In a purportedly just-the-facts speech Friday to the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, Ginsburg gave plenty to dissect.
She teased pending decisions in cases about whether the census may contain a question on citizenship, and if the court would for the first time decide that a state’s electoral maps are so influenced by partisan gerrymandering that they violate voters’ constitutional rights.
Be prepared for sharp disagreements as the court finishes its work this month, she said.
So far, only a quarter of the court’s decisions have been closely divided, she noted. “Given the number of most-watched cases still unannounced, I cannot predict that the relatively low sharp divisions ratio will hold.”
With the court set to finish its work the last week of June, the justices by now know the outcomes and are writing and delivering opinions. The next batch will come on Monday.
Ginsburg didn’t give anything away, but she offered what could be interpreted as clues to her own thinking.
On the citizenship question, for instance, she laid out the facts of what she called “a case of huge importance.”
The Trump administration wants to ask everyone who receives the census form whether or not they are a citizen, something that hasn’t been done since 1950. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said the information would be useful in protecting minority voting rights.
Challengers — some states and civil rights groups — have said it would result in an undercount, because respondents would fear reporting noncitizens in their households. The motive of enforcing voter rights is pretext, they say, and the Justice Department has never before asked for such information.
Ginsburg noted census experts agree about the undercount, and that three lower-court judges have said the question cannot be added.
Then she noted legal similarities to a case from last term, in which she was in dissent.
“Speculators about the outcome [in the census case] note that last year, in Trump v. Hawaii, the court upheld the so-called ‘travel ban,’ in an opinion granting great deference to the executive,” Ginsburg said.
“Respondents in the census case have argued that a ruling in Secretary Ross’s favor would stretch deference beyond the breaking point.”
Ginsburg also mentioned the partisan gerrymandering cases — “very high on the most-watched cases list.” One involves congressional district maps drawn by the Republican leadership of North Carolina, and the other by Democrats in Maryland.
“Given modern technology, a state legislature can create a congressional delegation dramatically out of proportion to the actual overall vote count,” Ginsburg said, adding “however one comes out on the legal issues, partisan gerrymandering unsettles the fundamental premise that people elect their representatives, not vice versa.”
Ginsburg’s remarks on the topic are hardly a surprise. The Supreme Court has wrestled for decades with the question of whether courts have a role in policing partisan gerrymandering, and Ginsburg has said in previous cases that they do.
The 86-year-old justice noted other facts about the court. With Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh hiring an all-female staff of four clerks, she said, the court for the first time in history had more women than men serving as clerks.
“Women did not fare nearly as well as advocates,” she said. “Only about 21% of the attorneys presenting oral argument this term were female; of the thirty-four attorneys who appeared more than once, only six were women.”
Because people track such things, Ginsburg noted Justice Stephen G. Breyer spoke more than any other justice during oral arguments, and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the first question more than anyone else.
Ginsburg told her audience that the most important thing that had happened to the court since her address to them last year was the resignation of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who for years had been the most influential member of the court.
His retirement “was, I would say, the event of greatest consequence for the current term, and perhaps for many terms ahead,” she said.
Former vice president and 2020 Democratic primary candidate Joe Biden this week performed the rarely seen flip-flop-flip maneuver, opposing and then supporting and then opposing again an amendment barring federal funds for abortion.
Even Magic 8-Balls are more consistent than this.
Worse, however, than having the resilience of a Ritz Cracker, and cowering in the face of progressive criticism, is the fact that Biden lacks even the courage to take full responsibility for this shameful and clumsy about-face. Instead, he faults conservatives for his supposed come-to-Jesus moment on his decades-long support for the Hyde Amendment, transforming what began as an act of mere political gutlessness into one of supreme cowardice.
“I’ve been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents,” Biden said Thursday evening. “If I believe healthcare is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code.”
“Circumstances have changed,” Biden said. “We’ve seen state after state including Georgia passing extreme laws. It’s clear that [pro-life conservatives] are going to stop at nothing to get rid of [Roe v. Wade].”
He added, “Folks, times have changed. I don’t think these guys are going to let up.”
It is worth mentioning here that the former vice president has just abandoned a position that most Americans support (against taxpayer-funded abortion) for the one that all the other 2020 Democratic candidates have embraced.
It is also worth mentioning that when Biden served in the Senate, he voted for the Hyde Amendment and similar provisions against taxpayers’ funding abortion (he even made his own proposal to that end) throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In fact, he supported this position as recently as two days ago.
Yet Biden would have us believe that he is not a soulless opportunist who will say and do whatever it takes to finally — finally! — secure the Democratic nomination. He wants us to believe that within the span of a week, pro-lifers forced him to flip, and then flop, and then flip again on a position he has supported for more than 40 years.
I am starting to understand why this is Biden’s third attempt at running for president.
Mexico also ranks as a major buyer of U.S. beef, pork, soybeans and wheat. Mexico, however, has looked to other global suppliers for its soybeans and wheat, especially Argentina and Brazil.
But the U.S. is a major importer of Mexican tomatoes, strawberries and avocados. It has led some U.S. farmers in the Southeast region to complain that Mexico is “dumping” fresh produce into the U.S. market.
“On the import side, there are a number of producer groups who would like protection against Mexico products,” said Glauber. “Florida tomato growers. Sugar producers. Some Southeast specialty crop growers.”
Last year, Florida specialty crop producers urged the Trump administration to negotiate a special anti-dumping provision in the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that would have allowed anti-dumping and so-called countervailing duty cases to be filed. The Southeast growers argued that an anti-dumping provision in a new trade deal would give U.S. farmers more leverage to hold Mexico accountable for not playing by the rules.
Yet some producer groups in California and in other U.S. Western states cautioned against including an anti-dumping provision in the replacement trade pact for NAFTA. They warned it could be used by Canada or Mexico to make a “dumping” case against U.S.-grown seasonal crops such as apples. In the end, an anti-dumping provision was left out of the negotiated USMCA.
After the Trump administration last year imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from Mexico and other nations, Mexico retaliated with levies on $3 billion of U.S. goods, including cheese, pork, whiskey and certain fruits. Still, Mexico retained its position as the top buyer of U.S. cheese in 2018 although the EU has been pushing to increase its sales of cheese to the Mexican market.
Through April, U.S. ag exports to Mexico were up a scant 2% to $6.1 billion, according to the USDA. The weak growth is due largely to a decline in the value of pork exports south of the border. Still, sales of corn, wheat and soybeans were up by double-digit percentage levels, while dairy products were up by 6%.
President Trump must respond to the aggressive action by a Russian Udaloy-class destroyer in the Philippine Sea on Friday. U.S. Navy video proves the Russians maneuvered towards the USS Chancellorsville in an unsafe manner. The Russians will attempt to flood the Navy’s YouTube page with troll comments, but the video speaks for itself.
The Russians clearly found their activity hilarious: In another video recorded by the U.S. Navy, Russian sailors are shown sunbathing on their helicopter deck just prior to the closing incident. Regardless, Trump cannot let this stand.
For a start, it sits alongside increasingly regular incidents of similar kind. The overriding Russian intent here is intimidation: Moscow wants to foster an American understanding of strategic challenge and vulnerability. But it is also notable that the USS Chancellorsville incident occurred in the Philippine Sea and follows a summit between Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Philippine Sea is the epicenter of China’s effort to dominate the West Pacific and subjugate the U.S.-led international order under Beijing. This Russian harassment thus allows Putin to show Xi that he can be a powerful strategic ally. Putin wants Chinese investment.
Trump must act here. As with China, where the U.S. military rightly ignores Chinese demands that it suspend operations in international waters, Trump should make clear to Putin that his escalation will meet American resolve. Trump should double down on recent U.S. military activities that overmatch the Russians. The president should also order more regular U.S. Navy deployments into the Black Sea. This will upset the Russians in a strategic manner.
Yet Trump should also make clear that the Chinese-Russian relationship, and Russian aggression as in this video, are threats to international order, threats to a system that has made nations richer and people more free. This is how the U.S. can win great democracies such as India and Pacific nations such as Vietnam to our cause.
Let China and Russia be friends, and let us be friends with everyone else.
A WOMAN and her girlfriend were left bruised and bloodied by a gang of men on a London bus after refusing kiss.
Melania Geymonat and her girlfriend Chris were confronted on the N31 bus headed to Camden on Thursday, May 30th, after a night out when a group of men began taunting them and throwing coins.
However, the situation turned violent when the women refused to heed to the men’s demands to kiss.
Geymonat, a Ryanair stewardess, took to Facebook to detail the attack, which left her unable to work as a result of the injuries she sustained.
Writing on Facebook, the 28-year-old said: “They started behaving like hooligans, demanding that we kissed so they could enjoy watching, calling us ‘lesbians’ and describing sexual positions.
“I don’t remember the whole episode, but the word ‘scissors’ stuck in my mind. It was only them and us there. In an attempt to calm things down, I started making jokes. I thought this might make them go away.
“Chris even pretended she was sick, but they kept on harassing us, throwing coins and becoming more enthusiastic about it. The next thing I know is Chris is in the middle of the bus fighting with them.
“On an impulse, I went over there only to find her face bleeding and three of them beating her up. The next thing I know is I’m being punched. I got dizzy at the sight of my blood and fell back. I don’t remember whether or not I lost consciousness. Suddenly the bus had stopped, the police were there and I was bleeding all over. Our stuff was stolen as well.”
“What upsets me the most is that VIOLENCE HAS BECOME A COMMON THING, that sometimes it’s necessary to see a woman bleeding after having been punched to feel some kind of impact,” she added.
“I’m tired of being taken as a SEXUAL OBJECT, of finding out that these situations are usual, of gay friends who were beaten up JUST BECAUSE. We have to endure verbal harassment AND CHAUVINIST, MISOGYNISTIC AND HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE because when you stand up for yourself shit like this happens.
“By the way, I am thankful to all the women and men in my life that understand that HAVING BALLS MEANS SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I just hope that in June, Pride Month, stuff like this can be spoken out loudly so they STOP HAPPENING!”
The Metropolitan Police have issued an appeal for any witnesses with information regarding the incident to contact them on 101 or tweet @MetCC.
The incident is being treated as a homophobic attack.
The only revolving door more insufferable than that between Congress and K Street is between Media Matters and left-wing activism parading as “journalism.” And that national problem is best exemplified by Vox’s Carlos Maza, who was once described by the Columbia Journalism Review as “Brian Stelter meets NowThis,” and his histrionic war against independent content creators on YouTube.
Taking cues from Maza’s online meltdown over conservative comedian Steven Crowder, the tech giant hasn’t just demonetized one guy. Mob rule dictates both dangerous and ineffective guidelines for censorship, and YouTube’s attempts to silence Crowder are the ones generating most of the headlines. But even worse than the video platform’s submission to Maza’s specific demand is its expansion of censorship by algorithm.
Sure, Crowder makes off color, unfunny, and, at times offensive jokes. But YouTube also purged multiple accounts that do absolutely nothing objectionable yesterday. YouTube banned “Mr Allsop History Clips,” a since-restored and purely educational channel that shared videos about historical events. It also started pulling down videos from Ford Fischer, an objective news journalist who covers white supremacists. Rational Disconnect also had a video debunking far-right propaganda pulled from the site.
Maza’s meltdown posited two grave errors: one strategic and one moral. First, the only way YouTube could cave to his categorical demands and de-platform those he disagrees with was to do so by algorithm. A channel as innocuous — if not comically adorable — as “Mr Allsop History Clips” isn’t pulled down because of human error. It’s pulled down because algorithms are bad at discriminating between content. They often target the wrong accounts while the ones that actually violate terms of service learn how to game them. How bad are YouTube’s algorithms? They currently promote content for pedophiles without intending to.
More importantly, censorship is more than just impractical. It’s also a bad way of combating social ills in general.
Sunlight has and always will be the best disinfectant. Truly virulent racists and bigots will always have homes at 8chan and the Daily Stormer. But push non-bigoted dissenters off all the mainstream platforms, and they’ll join the actual bigots. From Owen Benjamin to James Allsup, we’ve seen time and time again fairly mainline but intentionally provocative conservatives get radicalized as they get pushed out of mainstream discourse by the censorious Carlos Mazas of the world. If Maza really wants to fight bigotry, he ought to be putting it in the spotlight instead of forcing it into the shadows.
Meanwhile, when Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., finally join forces to nationalize Big Tech, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
William Montanez is used to getting stopped by the police in Tampa, Florida, for small-time traffic and marijuana violations; it’s happened more than a dozen times. When they pulled him over last June, he didn’t try to hide his pot, telling officers, “Yeah, I smoke it, there’s a joint in the center console, you gonna arrest me for that?”
They did arrest him, not only for the marijuana but also for two small bottles they believed contained THC oil — a felony — and for having a firearm while committing that felony (they found a handgun in the glove box).
Then things got testy.
As they confiscated his two iPhones, a text message popped up on the locked screen of one of them: “OMG, did they find it?”
The officers demanded his passcodes, warning him they’d get warrants to search the cellphones. Montanez suspected that police were trying to fish for evidence of illegal activity. He also didn’t want them seeing more personal things, including intimate pictures of his girlfriend.
So he refused, and was locked up on the drug and firearms charges.
William MontanezCourtesy of William Montanez
Five days later, after Montanez was bailed out of jail, a deputy from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office tracked him down, handed him the warrants and demanded the phone passcodes. Again, Montanez refused. Prosecutors went to a judge, who ordered him locked up again for contempt of court.
“I felt like they were violating me. They can’t do that,” Montanez, 25, recalled recently. “F— y’all. I ain’t done nothing wrong. They wanted to get in the phone for what?”
He paid a steep price, spending 44 days behind bars before the THC and gun charges were dropped, the contempt order got tossed and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor pot charge. And yet he regrets nothing, because he now sees his defiance as taking a stand against the abuse of his rights.
“The world should know that what they’re doing out here is crazy,” Montanez said. The police never got into his phones.
While few would choose jail, Montanez’s decision reflects a growing resistance to law enforcement’s power to peer into Americans’ digital lives. The main portals into that activity are cellphones, which are protected from prying eyes by encryption, with passcodes the only way in.
As police now routinely seek access to people’s cellphones, privacy advocates see a dangerous erosion of Americans’ rights, with courts scrambling to keep up.
“It’s becoming harder to escape the reach of police using technology that didn’t exist before,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, the associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “And now we are in the position of trying to walk that back and stem the tide.”
While courts have determined that police need a warrant to search a cellphone, the question of whether police can force someone to share a passcode is far from settled, with no laws on the books and a confusing patchwork of differing judicial decisions. Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court heard arguments on the issue. The state supreme courts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are considering similar cases.
As this legal battle unfolds, police keep pursuing new ways of breaking into cellphones if the owners don’t cooperate — or are enlisting help from technology firms that can do it for them. This has put them at odds with cellphone makers, all of whom continually update their products to make them harder for hackers or anyone else to break into.
But the hacking techniques are imperfect and expensive, and not all law enforcement agencies have them. That is why officials say compelling suspects to unlock their cellphones is essential to police work. Making the tactic more difficult, they say, would tilt justice in favor of criminals.
“It would have an extreme chilling effect on our ability to thoroughly investigate and bring many, many cases, including violent offenses,” said Hillar Moore, the district attorney in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who got the FBI’s help in breaking into a cellphone belonging to a suspect in a deadly Louisiana State University fraternity hazing ritual. “It would basically shut the door.”
In the part of Florida where Montanez lives, authorities are guided by a case involving an upskirt photo.
A young mother shopping at a Target store in Sarasota in July 2014 noticed a man taking a picture of her with his phone while crouching on the floor. She confronted him. He fled. Two days later, police arrested Aaron Stahl and charged him with video voyeurism.
Authorities got a search warrant for Stahl’s iPhone, but he wouldn’t give them the passcode, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. A trial judge ruled in his favor, but a state appellate court reversed the decision in December 2016, saying Stahl had to provide the code. Facing the possibility of getting convicted at trial and sentenced to prison, Stahl agreed to plead no contest in exchange for probation.
While Stahl did not provide the passcode in the end, prosecutors still rely on the precedent established by the appellate ruling to compel others to turn over their passcodes under the threat of jail.
“Up until that point you could be a pedophile or a child pornogropher and carry around the fruits of your crime in front of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges and taunt them with fact that they couldn’t get the passcode,” said Cynthia Meiners, who prosecuted Stahl at the 12th Judicial Circuit State’s Attorney’s Office. “You could say, ‘I’m a child pornographer and it’s on my phone but I’m not giving you my passcode because I would be incriminating myself.’”
But that ruling only holds in a few counties of Florida. Elsewhere in the country, skirmishes remain unresolved.
In Indiana, police officials are trying to force a woman to share her passcode as they investigate her for harassment, saying she was making it impossible for them to obtain key evidence. The woman’s lawyer says authorities haven’t said what evidence they think is in the phone, raising concerns about a limitless search.
Her appeals reached the state Supreme Court, whose ruling could influence similar cases around the country. Attorneys general in eight other states filed a brief in support of the police, warning against a ruling that “drastically alters the balance of power between investigators and criminals.”
The stakes are similar in New Jersey, where a sheriff’s deputy accused of tipping off drug dealers to police activities has refused to hand over passcodes to his iPhones. The state Supreme Court agreed in May to hear the case.
These clashes aren’t limited to the use of passcodes. Police have also tried to force people to open phones through biometrics, such as thumbprints or facial recognition. Legal experts see the Fifth Amendment argument against self-incrimination as more of a stretch in those cases. The law has generally been interpreted as protecting data that someone possesses — including the contents of their mind, such as passcodes — but not necessarily their physical traits, such as thumbprints. Still, some judges have refused to sign warrants seeking permission to force someone to unlock their phone using their face or finger.
“Depending on where you are in the country, there is different case law on what police can do,” said Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties nonprofit.
In some states, there is no authoritative court ruling, leaving law enforcement authorities to decide for themselves. Virginia falls into that category. Bryan Porter, the prosecutor in the city of Alexandria, said he has told local police it’s OK to try to force someone under the threat of jail to open a cellphone by thumbprint or face. But demanding a password seems to go too far, he said.
Criminals shouldn’t be able to inoculate themselves from investigations, Porter said. “But it kind of rubs me the wrong way to present a piece of paper to someone and say, ‘Give us your passcode.’”
In Tampa, Florida, where Montanez was arrested last year, judges still rely on the 2016 ruling against Stahl by the Second District Court of Appeals. That is what prosecutors cited when they tried to force Montanez to give up his passcodes.
But Montanez’s lawyer, Patrick Leduc, argued that, unlike Stahl’s case, police had no reason to search the phone, because it had no connection to the offenses he was charged with. The “OMG, did they find it?” text message — which turned out to be from Montanez’s mother, who owned the car and the gun in the glove box — was meaningless, Leduc said. He warned of a police “fishing expedition” in which authorities could search for anything potentially incriminating on his phone.
While sitting in lockup for contempt, Montanez’s resolve not to give up his passcodes hardened. “What they were doing to me was illegal and I wasn’t going to give them their business like that,” he said.
“They told me I got the key to my freedom,” he added. “But I was like, ‘F— that.’”
But the experience shook him. “I ain’t the toughest guy in the world, but I can protect myself. But it was crazy,” he said. “Bad food, fights here and there, people trying to take your food.”
At the same time, the drugs and gun case against Montanez was crumbling. Laboratory tests on the suspected THC oil came back negative, voiding that felony charge and the gun charge related to it. That left prosecutors with only minor pot charges. But he remained in jail on the contempt charge while his lawyer and prosecutors negotiated a plea deal.
In August 2018, after Montanez had spent more than five weeks in jail for refusing to provide the passcode, an appellate court dismissed the contempt case on a technicality. The court invited prosecutors to try again, but by then the passcode’s value had diminished. Instead, prosecutors allowed Montanez to plead no contest to misdemeanor drug charges and he was freed.
When he was released, Montanez carried a notoriety that made him feel unwelcome in his own neighborhood. He noticed people looking at him differently. He was banned from his favorite bar.
The police keep pulling him over, and he now fears them, he said. He finally left Tampa and lives in Pasco County, about an hour away.
“Yeah, I took a stand against them,” he said. “But I lost all that time. I gotta deal with that, going to jail for no reason.”
The panel weighs in on an email uncovered by Judicial Watch that suggests Fusion GPS employee Nellie Ohr and her husband DOJ official Bruce Ohr attempted to cover-up a plot against Trump.
Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official whose connection to the opposition research firm responsible for the anti-Trump “dossier” led to his eventual demotion, was awarded a $28,000 performance bonus while the Russia probe was ongoing, according to newly released DOJ documents.
The records do not indicate why Ohr was given the bonus in November 2016, though they show he also received a $14,520 bonus a year earlier, totaling $42,520 over a two-year period.
A Justice Department spokesman on Friday did not immediately return an inquiry from Fox News about the bonuses.
The conservative group Judicial Watch, known for suing for public records, released the documents related to Ohr’s salary Friday, saying they obtained them from the Justice Department through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Steele to be interviewed about dossier by U.S. investigators; panel reaction and analysis on ‘Hannity.’
Ohr’s actions during that time have been of interest to investigators, as it’s believed Ohr was the back channel between Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and the FBI. It was also revealed that his wife, Nellie Ohr, conducted opposition research on Trump for the firm Fusion GPS – the same company that commissioned the dossier – raising conflict of interest questions.
Judicial Watch is questioning why Ohr, who was later demoted at DOJ, was given a bonus.
“These documents will raise questions as to whether the conflicted Bruce Ohr, who the FBI used to launder information from Christopher Steele was rewarded for his role in the illicit targeting of President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Even though Ohr was removed from his position as Associate Deputy Attorney General in 2017, he later received a $2,600 pay increase in 2018, the records indicate, showing Ohr earned $189,000 that year.
Leading U.S. automakers are making an 11th-hour push to stop the Trump administration from dramatically weakening Obama-era fuel efficiency standards, warning doing so would bring “untenable” uncertainty and lead to drawn-out litigation.
In a letter to President Trump, 17 companies including Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Volvo, asked him to return to the negotiating table with California, which, with more than a dozen other states, is poised to sue the administration in order to enforce stricter auto pollution rules to limit carbon emissions from transportation, the highest-emitting economic sector. The companies also sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, requesting the same thing.
The Trump administration has proposed revoking a Clean Air Act waiver that California has, and more than a dozen other states follow, allowing it to set vehicle emission standards tougher than federal rules.
“Automakers share the environmental idealism of California and the economic pragmatism of the administration in Washington,” Gloria Bergquist, a vice president at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing major automakers, told the Washington Examiner. “Choosing one or the other is neither necessary nor prudent. It’s a false choice. Somewhere between the two is a workable compromise that appropriately balances both of these crucial obligations.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler previously told the Washington Examiner the Trump administration won’t compromise on its final proposal to be introduced this summer, and will move to revoke the waiver granted to California and other states to set tougher fuel efficiency rules.
The EPA, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, last August proposed freezing Obama-era fuel efficiency rules for cars and light trucks, instead of raising them each year, between model years 2020 and 2026.
The Trump administration argued the tougher Obama rules would make newer cars unaffordable, forcing drivers to use older, less safe, and environmentally unfriendly vehicles.
But the administration and California still sought to reach a compromise before the rule was finalized.
The White House, however, broke off negotiations with California on Feb. 21, and has since tried to convince skeptical automakers to back its plan.
Automakers, who prefer flexibility in the Obama rules, not an outright rejection, consider the Trump plan too extreme. Auto groups have said they hope to maintain a common set of rules with year-over-year increases in efficiency that California would agree to follow, allowing automakers to sell the same models in every state, and avoiding the uncertainty of prolonged litigation.
Raw video: U.S. Navy says the USS Chancellorsville warship was forced to maneuver to avoid a collision with a Russian destroyer in the Philippine Sea.
The U.S. Navy has released footage of the dramatic moment one of its warships almost collided with a Russian destroyer in the Philippine Sea.
The USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, nearly struck the Udaloy I DD 572 when it made an “unsafe maneuver”, coming within 50 to 100 feet, according to the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement.
“This unsafe action forced Chancellorsville to execute all engines back full and to maneuver to avoid collision,” said the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement.
The Navy subsequently released video and a satellite image showing the two vessels sailing perilously close to one another.
A still image of the incident released by the Department of Defense shows both ships clearly side by side (Department of Defense)
The incident happened at 11:45 am Friday in the Philippine Sea, according to the statement.
Russian state media had claimed that the U.S. cruiser had “hindered the passage” of the Admiral Vinogradov anti-submarine destroyer about 160 feet in front of it, forcing them to perform a dangerous maneuver in the southeastern part of the East China Sea. But the U.S. dismissed their version of events as “propaganda”
It’s the second time in three days the U.S. Navy has accused Russian forces of dangerous maneuvers after a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a Navy reconnaissance aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean.
The USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, nearly collided with the Udaloy I DD 572 when it made an “unsafe maneuver”, coming within 50 feet, according to the Navy’s 7th Fleet in a statement<br data-cke-eol=”1″> (AFP/Getty)
The near collision between American and Russian warships comes days after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Chinese counterpart at the Kremlin.
“We consider Russia’s actions during this interaction as unsafe and unprofessional and not in accordance with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS), ‘Rules of the Road,’ and internationally recognized maritime customs,” the 7th Fleet said.
President Trump’s acting defense secretary said Friday the U.S. government would lodge a formal protest over the incident with the Russian Navy.
“We’ll have military to military conversations with the Russians, and of course we’ll demarche them. To me, it’s safety that is most important. It will not deter us when conducting our operations,” Patrick Shanahan told reporters on the Pentagon steps ahead of a meeting with his Greek counterpart.
The latest incident comes just days after the Navy accused a Russian fighter jet of buzzing a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Mediterranean Sea three times.
The U.S. P-8A Poseidon aircraft was flying in international airspace at the time of the intercepts Tuesday, Navy officials added.
The developments come as the U.S. Navy is set to kick off a series of war games in the Baltic Sea with other NATO nations.
The Pentagon had mulled over pulling thousands of Marines from the exercise – known as BALTOPS – to send to the Middle East in a warning to Iran, but in the end, top officials thought the American forces were needed to send a message to Russia.
Fox News’ Chris Irvine contributed to this report.
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