Tamir Rice shooting: ‘Until cops start being jailed for killing black children like Tamir, they will continue killing us and hiding behind the legal system’
Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun. It also so happened he was black
Listening to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J McGinty explain why a Cleveland police officer opened fire on a 12-year-old boy playing in a public park within two seconds upon arriving on the scene, reminded me of Elaine Rothenberg, a 66-year-old white woman who brandished a toy gun at cops in Torrington, Connecticut, just two days ago.
Yelling that she hated the police, Rothenberg then screamed. “What are you doing? Shoot me!” she shouted at them. “What are you, scared?”
Apparently, they weren’t scared enough to be “in fear of their lives”, as was the case for the cop who shot and killed Tamir Rice. Rothenberg was eventually taken into custody. Alive.
Guinea declared free of Ebola virus that killed over 2,500
Announcement leaves Liberia as only country awaiting to be declared free of epidemic
Guinea was declared free of Ebola on Tuesday after more than 2,500 people died from the virus in the West African nation, leaving Liberia as the only country still awaiting a countdown for the end of the epidemic.
People in the capital, Conakry, greeted the declaration by authorities and the UN World Health Organization with mixed emotions given the number of deaths and the damage the virus did to the economy and the country’s health and education sectors.
“Several of my family are dead. This situation has shown us how much we must fight for those who are survivors,” Fanta Oulen Camara, who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium (Doctors Without Borders), told Reuters.
More than 100 journalists killed in 2015, most in ‘peaceful’ countries
A total of 110 journalists have been killed around the world in 2015, with an increasing number being targeted by “non-state groups” such as the “Islamic State.” The findings hail from two independent reports.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published a report saying that 67 journalists had died in the line of duty this year, while another 43 died under circumstances that remained unclear. The organization added that another 27 non-professional “citizen-journalists” and seven other media workers were also killed.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the number of confirmed murders was actually 69. CPJ also included the case of reporter Alison Parker and video-journalist Adam Ward from Virginia in its report, who were fatally shot in August by former co-worker Vester Lee Flanagan II during a live broadcast. RSF did not account for them in their own study.
The annual RSF report highlighted the growing role of “non-state groups” – such as the self-styled “Islamic State” (IS) – in committing violence against journalists.
The organization said that, while in 2014 two-thirds of the journalists killed had died in war zones, almost the same number were killed in countries considered to be “at peace” in 2015.
Islamic State ruling aims to settle who can have sex with female slaves
Reuters | Dec 29, 2015, 09.26 AM IST
Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.
The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State’s previous known utterances on the subject, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.
The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by US Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.
Early intervention? Why Montreal has an anti-radicalization center
Montreal is the latest city in Canada to try to spot vulnerable people at risk of radicalization before they potentially commit a terror attack. The US government is reportedly mulling a similar program.
MONTREAL — In the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Montreal’s mayor asked parents who were worried about their children being radicalized to call someone — but not the police.
“You’re watching the news and you see your son, your daughter going through something, and being totally disconnected from the world,” Mayor Denis Coderre said last month. “What are you going to do about it? Now you have a center. You have a phone call.”
At the other end of that call is the Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence. The idea is to spot people who could be radicalized and rehabilitate them before they fly to Syria or plot an attack at home, and it’s an approach that’s already gained currency in Canada and Europe, and may yet have traction in the United States.
Cuban migrants stuck in Costa Rica allowed US passage
Central American countries reach breakthrough to allow thousands of migrants to continue their journey to the US.
| Cuba, Humanitarian crises, Latin America, United States, Migrants
Central American countries have reached a deal to allow some of the thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica for over a month to continue onward to the United States.
The agreement, which was reached in Guatemala City on Monday, will come into effect in January.
Under the deal, an undisclosed number of Cuban migrants will be flown to El Salvador and then ferried to Mexico by bus.
“The solution emerging is an absolute exception and only for those people who entered national territory legally,” said Manuel Gonzalez, Costa Rica’s foreign minister.
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