FILE - In this July 23, 2018, file photo, posters of Justine Ruszczyk Damond are displayed at a news conference by attorneys for her family in Minneapolis. The judge overseeing the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor who fatally shot the unarmed Australian Ruszczyk Damond, is restricting media and public access. Thirty-three-year-old Noor goes on trial Monday in the July 2017 death of Ruszcyzyk Damond. Judge Kathryn Quaintance ruled Friday, March 29, 2019, that potentially graphic evidence would be seen only by the jury, not the public or media. One media attorney says her ruling could be unconstitutional. (AP Photo/Amy Forliti, File)
MINNEAPOLIS – A judge and attorneys have excused three more people from the jury pool for the murder trial of a former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed woman who had called 911 to report a possible rape near her home.
Mohamed Noor is charged with murder in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Noor shot the 40-year-old dual Australian-U.S. citizen after she approached his squad car.
Noor has declined to speak to investigators. His attorneys plan to argue he acted in self-defense.
The three jurors excused Thursday include a man who said he wanted to hear Noor's side of the story and one woman who was a crime victim as a child.
That brings the total number of excused jurors to 19, out of a pool of 75.
Swedish Left Party MP Linda Snecker asserted that women “assume all men are rapists” and demanded that all men take collective responsibility during a parliamentary debate.
Snecker said that “men’s violence against women governs the entire world structure” and that “the struggle of feminism” was to put a stop to “the violence of men.”
“We women adapt our lives and our behavior to men’s potential threats of violence. Because we cannot see whether you are a rapist or not, we assume that all men are rapists. That is the brutal truth. That’s how a structural problem looks. That is why men must take their collective responsibility. All men,” she said.
Sweden Democrat’s Katja Nyberg hit back, claiming that Snecker was ignoring the true source of the problem – mass immigration.
“The Left Party claims that they stand up for women’s equal value. But why then insist on hiding the main causes of today’s problems with threats and violence against women? They desperately deny the consequences of their own mass immigration policy and instead blame all men, only to hide the facts of rape”, Nyberg said, adding, “If I were to stand in parliament and say that all Muslims are terrorists, I would be charged directly.”
Sweden does have a massive rape problem, which just by coincidence has become notably worse since the country began importing migrant men from countries where respect for women’s rights is somewhat different than in the west.
A study by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet found that 88 per cent of gang rapists in the Scandinavian country over the last six years have had a migrant background.
Other figures show that migrants from Muslim-majority nations commit 84 per cent of “very violent” rapes in Sweden.
A private study of 4,142 rulings regarding sex-related crimes passed by 40 Swedish courts between 2012 and 2014 found that 95.6% of rapes were committed by men of foreign descent.
AUSTIN, Texas – Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blamed the various claims he's made over the years, including that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, on "psychosis," according to a deposition the "Infowars" host has given as part of a Texas lawsuit.
Jones described his conspiracy thinking as a kind of mental disorder during the deposition taken earlier this month for the lawsuit filed against him by the family of a 6-year-old who was among the 20 children and six adults killed in the Newtown, Connecticut, attack, the Austin American-Statesman reported .
Jones said during the deposition that he "almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I'm now learning a lot of times things aren't staged."
Jones blamed his mental state on "the trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins — you don't trust anything anymore, kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don't know what reality is."
The defamation lawsuit was filed in Travis County, Texas, where Jones' media company is based. In August, the judge presiding over the lawsuit denied Jones' request to dismiss the case .
Jones' attorneys have defended his speech in court as "rhetorical hyperbole," but denied it was defamation.
During the deposition, Jones continued to voice conspiratorial suspicions about the shooting.
"I still think that there was a man in the woods in camo ... and just a lot of experts I've talked to, including retired FBI agents and other people and people high up in the Central Intelligence Agency, have told me that there is a cover-up in Sandy Hook," Jones said.
A similar lawsuit against Jones has also been filed in Connecticut. Several families in that suit say that Jones' comments on Infowars have tormented them and subjected them to harassment and death threats by his followers, some of whom have accused them of being actors.
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Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com
Mexican troops questioned two U.S. soldiers along the two countries’ border earlier this month. The American soldiers were on the U.S. side of the border conducting a routine surveillance operation, defense officials say.
Military officials from the U.S. Northern Command said that “five to six Mexican military personnel questioned two U.S. Army soldiers who were conducting border support operations.”
The soldiers were in an unmarked Customs and Border Protection vehicle near the southwest border in the vicinity of Clint, Texas.
Officials confirmed that the Mexican troops were armed with what seemed to be assault riffles. They drew their weapons when they saw the two U.S. soldiers and ordered the U.S. troops to return their weapons to a military vehicle.
According to officials, the two Americans obliged “in an attempt to de-escalate a potential volatile situation.”
“Throughout the incident, the U.S. soldiers followed all established procedures and protocols,” Northern Command said in a statement.
The crisis at America’s southern border has reached unprecedented levels with human/drug trafficking and violence on the rise. Former heavyweight champion David “Nino” Rodriguez joins Alex to discuss the realities of illegal immigration you won’t hear about on any other network!
Laleh Shahravesh, a British woman detained in Dubai, is facing 2 years in prison for two Facebook posts disparaging her ex-husband's new wife in 2016. (Detained in Dubai)
A British woman’s disparaging Facebook posts about her ex-husband’s new wife reportedly may land her in a Dubai jail for up to two years.
Laleh Shahravesh, 55, of London was arrested along with her teenage daughter at the airport in Dubai last month after visiting the United Arab Emirates for her ex-husband’s funeral.
According to Detained in Dubai, she was taken into custody for two Facebook posts made while living in the United Kingdom in 2016 that discussed her husband's remarriage. Her daughter, 14, was eventually allowed to leave and is staying with relatives in London.
Shahravesh, however, faces up to two years in prison or a $652,000 fine.
The United Arab Emirates' cybercrime laws say that a person can be jailed or fined for making defamatory statements on social media. (istock)
The group said Shahravesh and her ex-husband were married for 18 years and lived in Dubai for an eight-month period while he worked for HSBC there.
At some point, she returned to London with their daughter, 14, allegedly with the understanding that he would join them at a later date, after his work commitments ended.
Months later, however, the couple divorced. Shahravesh apparently discovered her ex-husband was remarrying when she saw posts of the new couple on Facebook.
She posted two comments in Farsi, including one that said: “I hope you go under the ground you idiot. Damn you. You left me for this horse.”
The second comment said: “You married a horse you idiot.”
Now, the 55-year-old has been accused of breaking the UAE’s cybercrime laws, which states a person can be jailed or fined for making defamatory statements on social media.
Detained in Dubai says Shahravesh’s ex-husband’s widow, who is Tunisian and lives in Dubai, reported the comments to authorities.
Radha Stirling, the chief executive of Detained in Dubai, which is helping Shahravesh, said her client has been bailed out of jail, but authorities have confiscated her passport.
She said Shahravesh is “absolutely distraught” about the entire ordeal and has checked into a hotel in Dubai to await trial.
In comments released by the campaign group, Shahravesh acknowledged she “reacted badly” when she lashed out on Facebook.
“I know I shouldn't have. I should have behaved better, but I felt angry, betrayed and hurt,” Shahravesh told the group. "After 18 years of marriage, such a small amount of time apart, he was getting married so quickly. He didn't even have enough respect for me to tell me in advance."
Shahravesh, who was born in Iran but moved to the U.K. as a child and holds a British passport, said she traveled to Dubai because her daughter wanted to say goodbye to her father, who died March 3.
A Foreign Office spokesman told reporters its staff is supporting a British woman and her family following her detention in the United Arab Emirates, but the woman was not identified.
“We are in contact with the UAE authorities regarding her case,” the spokesman said.
FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of containers at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg, Germany August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo
April 8, 2019
BERLIN (Reuters) – German exports and imports both fell more than expected in February, data showed on Monday, in the latest sign that Europe’s largest economy is likely to post meager growth in the first quarter.
The Federal Statistics Office said seasonally adjusted exports dropped by 1.3 percent on the month while imports were down 1.6 percent. That meant the trade surplus edged up to 18.7 billion euros ($20.99 billion) from a revised 18.6 billion euros the previous month.
A Reuters poll of economists had pointed to a 0.5 percent decrease in exports and a 0.7 percent decline in imports. The trade surplus was expected to narrow to 18.0 billion euros.
(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle Martin)
Mar 28, 2019; Arlington, TX, USA; Chicago Cubs shortstop Javier Baez (9) circles the bases after hitting a three-run home run in the fifth inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Park in Arlington. Mandatory Credit: Ray Carlin-USA TODAY Sports
March 28, 2019
Javier Baez hit two homers and drove in four runs to lead the Chicago Cubs to a 12-4, season-opening win against the Texas Rangers on Thursday afternoon in Arlington, Texas.
Baez became the first Cubs player with a multi-homer game in the season opener since Corey Patterson in 2003.
David Bote, Jason Heyward and Albert Almora Jr. had two hits each, and Kris Bryant drove in two of his three runs with an eighth-inning homer for Chicago.
Cubs left-hander Jon Lester (1-0) went six innings, allowing two runs and four hits with three strikeouts and two walks.
Elvis Andrus and Nomar Mazara each hit two-run homers for the Rangers.
Texas left-hander Mike Minor (0-1) pitched 4 2/3 innings, allowing six runs and five hits with three strikeouts and two walks.
Minor breezed through the first 3 2/3 innings before giving up a solo home run to Baez with two outs in the fourth to cut Texas’ lead to 2-1.
Minor started Chicago’s six-run fifth by hitting Bote with a pitch. He then gave up a single to Ben Zobrist, moving the runner to third. Heyward drove in Bote with an infield single to second base to tie the score, and No. 9 hitter Mark Zagunis followed with a double to center, scoring Zobrist and putting runners on second and third.
After Almora fanned, Bryant’s groundout to short made it 4-2. Anthony Rizzo then walked to end Minor’s day. Jesse Chavez entered and gave up a three-run homer to Baez on his first pitch for a 7-2 lead.
The Cubs tacked on two more runs in the sixth, another in the seventh and two more in the eighth on the home run by Bryant.
Lester, who went 11-2 with a 2.87 ERA in road games last season to tie a career high for away wins, only faced trouble in the first and third innings, both after two were out.
After Texas’ Rougned Odor doubled down the right field line with two outs in the third, Andrus hit a two-run homer for a 2-0 lead.
“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.
Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.
Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.
“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow.”
The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.
“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”
President Trump on Friday blasted liberal billionaire activist Tom Steyer for his continued push to impeach Trump — with Trump claiming Steyer is “trying to remain relevant” and doesn’t have the “guts” to run for the White House himself.
“Weirdo Tom Steyer, who didn’t have the ‘guts’ or money to run for President, is still trying to remain relevant by putting himself on ads begging for impeachment,” the president tweeted. “He doesn’t mention the fact that mine is perhaps the most successful first 2 year presidency in history & NO C OR O! [Collusion or Obstruction]”
Trump and his allies have pointed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report’s conclusions that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and its decision not to make a conclusion on obstruction of justice as a vindication for the president.
Steyer has been one of the leaders backing a push to impeach Trump and founded “Need to Impeach” and has kept up that push since the report’s release. He announced on Thursday that he was calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to support impeachment proceedings.
On Friday he responded to Trump’s tweet, calling him “angry and scared.”
“I know you want it all to go away. But for the sake of the country you must face your transgressions. Rage away, but that anger doesn’t matter,” he said in a tweet. The truth and the people will prevail.”
Impeachment hearings have been backed by a number of House Democrats, as well as 2020 presidential hopefuls Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. However, Pelosi has long been skeptical of impeachment proceedings against Trump.
“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi told The Washington Post in an interview last month. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”
A Florida measure that would ban sanctuary cities is set for a vote Friday in the state’s Senate after clearing its first hurdle earlier this week.
The bill would effectively make it against the law for Florida’s police departments to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
“The Governor may initiate judicial proceedings in the name of the state against such officers to enforce compliance,” a draft version of the Senate bill reads.
A House version of the bill, which passed by a 69-47 vote Wednesday, adds that non-complying officials could be suspended or removed from office and face fines of up to $5,000 per day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign off on the measure, although it’s not clear which version.
Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), during a press conference at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, speaks out against bills in the House and Senate that would ban sanctuary cities in the state. (AP)
Florida is home to 775,000 illegal immigrants out of 10.7 million present in the United States, ranking the state third among all states.
Nine states — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas — already have enacted state laws requiring law enforcement to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Florida doesn’t have sanctuary cities like the ones in California and other states. But Republican lawmakers say a handful of their municipalities — including Orlando and West Palm Beach – are acting as “pseudo-sanctuary” cities, because they prevent law enforcement officials from asking about immigration status when they make arrests.
“There are still people here in the state of Florida, police chiefs that are just refusing to contact ICE, refusing to detain somebody that they know is here illegally,” Florida Republican Rep. Blaise Ingoglia said earlier this month. “So while the actual county municipality doesn’t have an actual adopted policy, they still have people in power within their sheriff’s department or police department that refuse to do it anyway.”
Florida’s Democratic Party has blasted the anti-Sanctuary measures, while the Miami-Dade Police Department says it should be up to federal authorities to handle immigration-related matters.
“House Republicans today sold out their communities to Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis by passing this xenophobic and discriminatory bill,” the state’s Democratic Party said Wednesday after the House passed their version of the bill. “It’s abhorrent that Republican members who represent immigrant communities are now turning their backs on their constituents and jeopardizing their safety.
“Florida has long stood as a beacon for immigrant communities — and today Republicans did the best they could to destroy that reputation,” they added.
Fox News’ Elina Shirazi contributed to this report.
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain’s far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville, Spain April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By John Stonestreet and Belén Carreño
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Vox party, aligned to a broader far-right movement emerging across Europe, has become the focus of speculation about last minute shifts in voting intentions since official polling for Sunday’s national election ended four days ago.
No single party is anywhere near securing a majority, and chances of a deadlocked parliament and a second election are high.
Leaders of the five parties vying for a role in government get final chances to pitch for power at rallies on Friday evening, before a campaign characterized by appeals to voters’ hearts rather than wallets ends at midnight.
By tradition, the final day before a Spanish election is politics-free.
Two main prizes are still up for grabs in the home straight. One concerns which of the two rival left and right multi-party blocs gets more votes.
The other is whether Vox could challenge the mainstream conservative PP for leadership of the latter bloc, which media outlets with access to unofficial soundings taken since Monday suggest could be starting to happen.
The right’s loose three-party alliance is led by the PP, the traditional conservative party that has alternated in office with outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
The PP stands at around 20 percent, with center-right Ciudadanos near 14 percent and Vox around 11 percent, according to a final poll of polls in daily El Pais published on Monday.
Since then, however, interest in Vox – which will become the first far-right party to sit in parliament since 1982 – has snowballed.
It was founded in 2013, part of a broader anti-establishment, far-right movement that has also spread across – among others – Italy, France and Germany.
While it is careful to distance itself from the ideology of late dictator Francisco Franco, Vox’s signature policies include repealing laws banning Franco-era symbols and on gender-based violence, and shifting power away from Spain’s regional governments.
TRENDING
According to a Google trends graphic, Vox has generated more than three times more search inquiries than any other Spanish political party in the past week.
Reasons could include a groundswell of vocal activist support at Vox rallies in Madrid and Valencia, and its exclusion from two televised debates between the main party leaders, on the grounds of it having no deputies yet in parliament.
Conservative daily La Vanguardia called its enforced absence from Monday’s and Tuesday’s debates “a gift from heaven”, while left-wing Eldiario.es suggested the PP was haemorrhaging votes to Vox in rural areas.
Ignacio Jurado, politics lecturer at the University of York, agreed the main source of additional Vox votes would be disaffected PP supporters, and called the debate ban – whose impact he said was unclear – wrong.
“This is a party polling over 10 percent and there are people interested in what it says. So we lose more than we win in not having them (in the debates),” he said
For Jose Fernandez-Albertos, political scientist at Spanish National Research Council CSIC, Vox is enjoying the novelty effect that propelled then new, left-wing arrival Podemos to 20 percent of the vote in 2015.
“While it’s unclear how to interpret the (Google) data, what we do know is that it’s better to be popular and to be a newcomer, and that Vox will benefit in some form,” he said.
For now, the chances of Vox taking a major role in government remain slim, however.
The El Pais survey put the Socialists on around 30 percent, making them the frontrunners and likely to form a leftist bloc with Podemos, back down at around 14 percent.
The unofficial soundings suggest little change in the two parties’ combined vote, or the total vote of the rightist bloc.
That makes it unlikely that either bloc will win a majority on Sunday, triggering horse-trading with smaller parties favoring Catalan independence – the single most polarizing issues during campaigning – that could easily collapse into fresh elections.
(Election graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ENugtw)
(Reporting by John Stonestreet and Belen Carreno, Editing by William Maclean)
LANCASTER, Pa. – The Amish population in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County is continuing to grow each year, despite the encroachment of urban sprawl on their communities.
The U.S. Census Bureau says the county added about 2,500 people in 2018. LNP reports that about 1,000 of them were Amish.
Elizabethtown College researchers say Lancaster County’s Amish population reached 33,143 in 2018, up 3.2% from the previous year.
The Amish accounted for about 41% of the county’s overall population growth last year.
Some experts are concerned that a planned 75-acre (30-hectare) housing and commercial project will make it more difficult for the county to accommodate the Amish.
Donald Kraybill, an authority on Amish culture, told Manheim Township commissioners this week that some in the community are worried about the development and the increased traffic it would bring.
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