Let's look under the fold at those ballot boxes:
"These women of color are running politics in S.C." by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, June 20, 2019
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Jalisa Washington-Price landed her dream job at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C., but now, with the largest field of presidential candidates ever and South Carolina’s primary looming as a crucial early contest.
Washington-Price is part of what Democrats call an extraordinary new era in South Carolina politics.
This new generation of political leaders, which includes other top campaign officials as well, matters not only because African-Americans make up nearly two-thirds of all Democrats in the state. Younger voters across the country are the most diverse generation in history and expected to be more than a third of all voters in the 2020 election.....
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You can call South Carolina for Kamala Harris right now.
Better grab your guns:
"New NRA lawsuit implicates group’s second-in-command" by Danny Hakim New York Times, June 20, 2019
NEW YORK — The palace intrigue at the National Rifle Association deepened Thursday as the gun group suspended its second-in-command and top lobbyist, accusing him of complicity in the recent failed coup against its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre.
The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Wednesday night in New York state Supreme Court against Oliver North, the NRA’s former president, who led the attempt to oust LaPierre shortly before the group’s annual convention in April. The complaint provides fresh detail about the effort against LaPierre, but it is the involvement of the organization’s number two official, Christopher W. Cox, that will reverberate.
In the suit, the NRA said that text messages and emails demonstrated that “another errant NRA fiduciary, Chris Cox — once thought by some to be a likely successor for LaPierre — participated” in what was described as a conspiracy.
The court filing includes text exchanges in which Cox and a board member appear to be discussing an effort to oust LaPierre, though the full context is unclear. Cox, in a statement, said: “The allegations against me are offensive and patently false. For over 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization. My efforts have always been focused on serving the members of the National Rifle Association, and I will continue to focus all of my energy on carrying out our core mission of defending the Second Amendment.”
The suit — the latest in a series of legal actions stemming from the gun group’s internal turmoil — is likely to send new shock waves through the NRA.
Together, Cox, 49, and LaPierre, 69, have been the public faces of the NRA, the twin architects of its strategy, but they have had an uneasy relationship, and their staffs are somewhat siloed from each other. Cox runs the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, which has a separate media relations team from the NRA’s, and his choice of consultants has also sometimes diverged from LaPierre’s.
As North’s coup attempt played out at the convention this spring, some people inside the NRA said Cox largely kept quiet and appeared to be hedging his bets.
The genesis of the dispute between the NRA and North is a related legal battle between the NRA and its most prominent contractor, the Oklahoma-based advertising firm Ackerman McQueen, which employed North. The NRA has sued Ackerman, claiming it withheld documents and records from the gun group, and some officials have suggested the company may also have been overbilling. Ackerman, which has said it did nothing improper, filed a countersuit claiming that it was smeared by the NRA.....
The U.S. Senate is inquiring into it.
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So that is what was behind the leadership battle in which I wasn't much interested.
"A federal appeals court said Thursday new Trump administration rules imposing additional hurdles for women seeking abortions can take effect while the government appeals decisions that blocked them. A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said the lower courts appeared to have gotten the rulings wrong....."
They brought someone back from the dead, and after her husband had retired.
I'm glad I got another look at Hope Hicks even if she didn't make print.
"The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, said the GOP-majority chamber won’t back a bipartisan plan by House leaders to give lawmakers their first cost-of-living pay hike in a decade. McConnell said ‘‘we’re not doing a COLA adjustment in the Senate,’’ a position that’s likely to kill the $4,500 pay raise. Lawmakers are supposed to get an automatic inflationary increase each year but it has been blocked since 2009. House leaders in both parties, led by majority leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, and minority leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, have been trying to orchestrate a maneuver to bless a cost-of-living increase. Rank-and-file lawmakers make $174,000 per year, but rising housing and college costs are making it more difficult for members who aren’t well off to remain in Congress. In the past, McConnell has supported an annual COLA. But the practice of blocking the increase became regimented after the Tea Party-fueled 2010 GOP takeover of the House. The Kentucky Republican is up for reelection next year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said it’s not worth talking about going forward with a pay raise unless the effort is bipartisan."
Agree for once, and they take the $$$ here.
Trump adversary Jeff Flake will be a fellow at Harvard
Won't that be a bit of a problem?
It'll be war in the streets!
"A rookie Sacramento police officer was shot during a domestic violence call and lay wounded for about 45 minutes as the gunman kept officers at bay with bursts of fire, authorities said Thursday. She was finally rescued with an armored vehicle but died at a hospital. ‘‘We are devastated,’’ Deputy Chief Dave Peletta said. ‘‘There are no words to convey the depth of sadness we feel or how heartbroken we are for the family of our young, brave officer.’’ Officer Tara O’Sullivan, 26, was shot Wednesday evening while helping a woman collect her belongings to leave her home. As officers swarmed the area, the gunman continued firing in a standoff that lasted about eight hours before he surrendered. Stephen Nasta, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former inspector with the New York Police Department, said taking 45 minutes to reach a wounded officer is ‘‘unacceptable.’’ If officers couldn’t immediately get an armored police vehicle to the scene, he said, they should have commandeered an armored bank vehicle, bus or heavy construction equipment. ‘‘If there’s somebody shot, lying on the ground, you have to do everything you can,’’ Nasta said."
I'm not sure what to think of that, seeing as it could be another drill(?) at bottom -- and if not, awful, awful -- but one has to wonder why no one bothered to call it in.
Guess they were too busy on social media:
"The Philadelphia police commissioner pulled 72 officers from the streets and the top prosecutor in St. Louis said she would no longer accept cases from 22 officers as outrage grew this week over a catalog of bigoted social media posts by members of several US police departments. The benching of the Philadelphia officers, announced Wednesday by Commissioner Richard Ross Jr., comes as his department and others struggle to confront the disturbing trove of social media posts released this month by the Plain View Project, a database of officers’ social media activity. The posts, compiled from accounts believed to belong to current or former officers in eight departments, included racist and Islamophobic material, as well as celebrations of officers who use excessive force....."
This country is looking more and more like Israel every day, and why not? They train 'em!
From what I've seen checking my traffic stats (rare, I admit), this blog has been shadowed in at least half-a-dozen if not more foreign countries so I guess I'm out there forever in some form or fashion (I view it as intelligence agency shadowing, to be honest, but who knows?).
American people are literally all wet:
Chris Smith makes his way through floodwaters to the Macedonia Baptist Church in Westville, N.J., Thursday, June 20, 2019. Severe storms containing heavy rains and strong winds spurred flooding across southern New Jersey, disrupting travel and damaging some property. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Yup, you can't doubt the $cience and look out for the sharks.
So how is the water at the school these days?
EDITORIAL
School spending is more about ‘how’ than ‘how much’
Globe will get right on it:
"The Boston Globe will launch an investigative team focused on public education in Massachusetts, an expansion of the Globe’s editorial staffing that is being partially financed for the next two years by a $600,000 grant from the Barr Foundation....."
Yes, the “economic turmoil that has engulfed journalism with the ascendancy of the Internet has forced news organizations like the Globe to search out new funding mechanisms as the digital age has been a mixed blessing for places like the Globe — allowing for greater reach and more immediacy, but far less revenue.”
Honestly, the lies, agenda-pu$hing, and $elf-$erving whining need to stop. Serve the people and not corporate power and war promotion if the Fourth Estate is the only in$tituion capable of saving us. I would gladly step aside and finally start enjoying life again.
"The Boston Police Department is adding an additional unit that will investigate unsolved homicides, officials announced Thursday. The unit, which will begin work in coming months, will be comprised of one sergeant and three detectives. The new unit will allow the department to take on more cases, according to authorities......"
I suspect they will be search DNA files to reverse engineer cases (many innocent guys probably still in jail) in what will be a future CSI: Bo$ton -- if they don't have one already -- because they “don’t consider any cases cold” in Bo$ton.
Didn't the alleged 9/11 hijackers go through there on that fateful morning (still waiting for the collapse)?
Time to get to work, 'eh, and what more is there to talk about?
The getaway car was an Uber?
State lawmaker charged campaign for $900 in Uber rides already covered by taxpayer funds
State Representative Sean Garballey agreed to forfeit $10,000 he loaned his campaign after state officials said he broke several campaign finance laws.
The Uber thing being the lea$t of them?
Would have left 'em a $our review?
"Conductor Stephen Lord, the former music director of Boston Lyric Opera and a major opera figure nationwide, has resigned from positions in Detroit and St. Louis and withdrawn from planned performances in the wake of recent allegations of sexual harassment published in the Minneapolis-based online Twin Cities Arts Reader. The allegations, which came from “more than two dozen individuals” according to the report, included accusations that Lord sent sexually explicit messages to performers and offered career opportunities in exchange for sexual favors. The accusers were anonymous, reportedly telling the Arts Reader that they were afraid of career repercussions if they spoke out publicly....."
I had no desire to continue reading that, and whole ruling cla$$ barrel is bad.
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"Standoff at Manchester, N.H., hotel ends with three suspects dead" by John R. Ellement and Travis Andersen Globe Staff, March 28, 2019
An armed standoff at a Manchester, N.H., hotel ended Thursday morning, leaving two men and a woman dead and capping a long ordeal in which SWAT officers were shot at throughout the previous night, the authorities said.
“We’re truly blessed that none of [the] officers were hurt today,” Manchester Police Chief Carlo T. Capano said during a news conference shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday, some four hours after the standoff at the Quality Inn on John E Devine Drive had ended.
Capano said the “senseless, unwarranted attack” on his officers was “an attack on all law enforcement agencies across the country.” At an earlier morning briefing, he had said, “This type of behavior we cannot and we will not tolerate.”
The violence erupted around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the authorities said, when Manchester police and DEA agents went to the hotel with a warrant to arrest Stephen Marshall, 51, and another man, whose name was withheld.
Why withheld?
An instigator, 'er, informant?
Marshall “engaged” two DEA agents and a Manchester officer, New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald said, and “the crime scene at the Quality Inn is complex, and it is expected to take several days to complete processing.”
Really?
Police at the Quality Inn in Manchester, N.H., were faced with two people who remained barricaded inside after a third suspect had been killed; they were later found dead. (Charles Krupa/Associated Press)
How and who killed them?
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Time to March South:
"The first details about the woman’s stabbing death in December were shocking. Police said Jacquelyn Smith had rolled down her window on a dark Baltimore street just after midnight to give a woman, who was panhandling in the cold, money for her baby, only to be stabbed in the chest after a scuffle ensued for her wallet. Her husband, who was in the car, had called 911 to report the attack and rushed Smith to a hospital where she died, police said. The killing drew national headlines, its horror underscored by the story of the selflessness that had preceded it; Oprah Winfrey commented, saying it had prompted her to reconsider donating to panhandlers, but on Sunday, Baltimore police announced arrest warrants for Smith’s husband, Keith Smith, 52, and his daughter, Valeria Smith, 28. The story about the panhandler appeared to have been concocted to cover up a premeditated murder, police said. The case’s unraveling drew widespread condemnation and criticism from officials in Baltimore about the way the apparently phony cover story had played on stereotypes of the city as crime-ridden and dangerous....."
Take it to the mayor's office:
F.B.I. Raids Baltimore City Hall and Mayor Catherine Pugh's Homes
New details continued to emerge, including that vast the vast majority of the books never reached school children and could not be located.
One wonders were they ever written at all, and Globe quickly closed the book:
"Baltimore’s mayor resigned Thursday, ending a city leadership tenure that unraveled amid a scandal over payments for a self-published children’s book series she sold to customers including a $4 billion hospital network she once helped oversee and companies with business before the city. Mayor Catherine Pugh’s resignation came exactly a week after her City Hall offices, homes and multiple other locations were raided by FBI and IRS agents. She is the second mayor in less than a decade to step down because of scandal. She came to office contrasting her clean image with her main opponent, ex-mayor Sheila Dixon, who was forced to depart office in 2010 as part of a plea deal for misappropriating about $500 in gift cards meant for needy families....."
The previous mayor (and both women, was) $ettled for chump change!
Related: Anna Sorokin, Who Swindled N.Y.'s Elite, Is Sentenced to 4 to 12 Years
That was tens of thousands worth of $windle.
F.B.I. Raids Baltimore City Hall and Mayor Catherine Pugh's Homes
New details continued to emerge, including that vast the vast majority of the books never reached school children and could not be located.
One wonders were they ever written at all, and Globe quickly closed the book:
"Baltimore’s mayor resigned Thursday, ending a city leadership tenure that unraveled amid a scandal over payments for a self-published children’s book series she sold to customers including a $4 billion hospital network she once helped oversee and companies with business before the city. Mayor Catherine Pugh’s resignation came exactly a week after her City Hall offices, homes and multiple other locations were raided by FBI and IRS agents. She is the second mayor in less than a decade to step down because of scandal. She came to office contrasting her clean image with her main opponent, ex-mayor Sheila Dixon, who was forced to depart office in 2010 as part of a plea deal for misappropriating about $500 in gift cards meant for needy families....."
The previous mayor (and both women, was) $ettled for chump change!
Related: Anna Sorokin, Who Swindled N.Y.'s Elite, Is Sentenced to 4 to 12 Years
That was tens of thousands worth of $windle.
Females, face-front, chest out!
"Specialists weigh breast implant safety amid new concerns" by Matthew Perrone Associated Press, March 25, 2019
SILVER SPRING, Md. — US medical authorities are revisiting the safety of breast implants used by millions of American women, the latest review in an ongoing debate about their potential health effects.
A panel of specialists assembled by the Food and Drug Administration opened a two-day meeting Monday to discuss the latest evidence about the risks of illness and complications with the devices, which have been sold since the mid-1960s.
Breast augmentation is the most popular form of cosmetic surgery in the nation, with roughly 300,000 women undergoing the procedure each year.
The panel will hear from researchers, plastic surgeons, patients, and manufacturers and then recommend next steps. The FDA is not required to follow the group’s advice, though it often does.
For now, the FDA isn’t proposing any new restrictions or warnings. The agency’s longstanding position is that implants are essentially safe as long as women understand they have complications, including scarring, pain, swelling and implant rupture.
The FDA and other regulators around the world have been grappling with how to manage a recently confirmed link to a rare cancer and thousands of unconfirmed claims that the implants can contribute to other chronic ailments.
‘‘It is essential we try to understand breast implant illness,’’ said Stephanie Manson Brown, an executive with implant maker Allergan, but she added that there is no medically recognized definition of the problem or standardized way to diagnose it.
Most confirmed cases of the cancer, known as breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, have involved a particular style of implants with a textured surface, designed to reduce scar tissue and slippage.
The FDA has said it is unclear if the cancer is solely linked to textured implants or also involves smooth implants, which make up most of the US market. Lack of data on the total number of implants in use makes it almost impossible to determine how frequently the cancer occurs, the agency notes.
Thousands of women have also blamed their implants for a host of chronic ailments, including rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue and muscle pain. The panel will hear from dozens of women; many of them have called on the agency to place new warnings and restrictions on the implants.
In 1992, the FDA temporarily pulled silicone gel implants from the market because of fears they might cause breast cancer, lupus and other disorders, but when studies seemed to rule out most of the disease concern, regulators returned them to the market in 2006, but critics of that research noted its shortcomings at Monday’s meeting.
‘‘The studies at that time were not very good and did not have the statistical power to determine rare diseases,’’ said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit, National Center for Health Research, which published an analysis of more than 20 breast implant studies last year.
The FDA says on its website there is no ‘‘apparent association’’ between breast implants and chronic, debilitating diseases, however, earlier this month the FDA appeared to signal a shift in its thinking.
The agency said it would begin studying whether certain materials used in breast implants can trigger health problems in patients.
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I'm not trying to powder you ladies up, but it looks like another talc $candal.
Time to tentatively cross into Virginia before making a full sprint to Florida:
"A man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for raping and killing a Muslim teenager in Virginia as she walked to a mosque with friends for religious services. The life sentence without possibility of parole imposed Thursday on Darwin Martinez-Torres of Sterling was a formality after his guilty plea last year in the June 2017 slaying of 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen of Reston. That plea bargain required a life sentence but eliminated the death penalty. Martinez-Torres, a native of El Salvador who federal immigration authorities said is in the country illegally, was caught shortly after the attack....."
The Globe quickly buried that with other secrets, and it's okay because he is just a hoarder!
"A woman accused of stabbing her daughter to death told investigators she killed the 11-year-old to keep her from having sex, authorities in Florida said. Rose Alcides Rivera, 28, pulled up to a hospital in Orlando asking for help for her daughter on Sunday morning, but the girl was already dead from multiple stab wounds, sheriff’s investigators said. Then, they say Rivera pulled a knife on hospital workers before being arrested. She later told investigators she killed her daughter to ‘‘prevent her from having sex’’ with men, authorities said. Orange County Sheriff’s investigators said the incident started early Sunday when the mother took her daughter to the home of a man and accused him of having sex with the child. Witnesses told detectives the child denied having sex with anyone. An arrest report said Rivera first denied stabbing the girl but eventually admitted to killing her....."
"A Florida jury found a fired police officer guilty of manslaughter and attempted murder in the October 2015 shooting death of Corey Jones, a 31-year-old stranded motorist. It is the first time in 30 years that an officer in Florida has been convicted of an on-duty shooting. Nouman Raja, 41, faces life in prison. The former Palm Beach Gardens police officer was fired shortly after the shooting. Jones, a well-known musician in the South Florida community, had been on his way home from a Saturday night gig with his band when his car broke down on an Interstate 95 off-ramp. His brother and a band mate tried to help fix the car, but when they were unsuccessful, Jones waited alone for a tow truck. Around 3:15 a.m., Raja drove the wrong way up the ramp in an unmarked white van. He was wearing plain clothes, and prosecutors said an audio recording showed Raja approaching aggressively and not identifying himself. Raja thought he was investigating an abandoned car, officials said at the time. Jones thought he was being robbed, prosecutors said. Jones pulled out a handgun he had legally purchased just three days earlier, police said. Raja shot him multiple times. Raja’s attorneys argued at his trial in Palm Beach County that the shooting was justified because he feared for his life."
Then anyone is justified shooting anybody, and the conviction must have been rare sweet music for the family and friends (if the cop had been white he would have gotten off).
"An uncle and nephew who had been imprisoned for 42 years for a Florida murder were vindicated on Thursday when prosecutors asked a judge to vacate their convictions, saying they no longer believed in the men’s guilt. Clifford Williams, 76, and Hubert ‘‘Nathan’’ Myers, 61, wiped away tears after the judge said she was vacating their convictions. They are the first men cleared since the state attorney’s office in Jacksonville started an initiative last year reviewing claims of wrongful conviction. The men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1976 fatal shooting of Jeanette Williams and the attempted murder of her girlfriend, Nina Marshall. Williams died instantly, but Marshall was able to flag down a car that drove her to a hospital. She identified Williams and Myers as the shooters. The men claimed they had been at a birthday party a block from the shooting and other party-goers backed up their alibis....."
Here is how they are solving all the cold cases:
"Police in Florida allege officer used database to gets dates" by Kyle Swenson Washington Post, March 11, 2019
What did Maury have to say to him about being the father, and into the database go the results!
"Police in Florida allege officer used database to gets dates" by Kyle Swenson Washington Post, March 11, 2019
What did Maury have to say to him about being the father, and into the database go the results!
There was a policeman at the door. It was June 2018, in Bradenton, Fla., a Gulf Coast community south of Tampa. The couple who answered the officer’s knock quickly realized something was off.
Bradenton police Sergeant Leonel Marines asked the couple if he could speak to their adult daughter. As Bradenton Police Chief Melanie Bevan revealed to reporters last Thursday, Marines had briefly encountered the young woman earlier that day in a parking lot, then followed her home.
Now, at the parent’s door, Marines, 36, said he needed to speak to the daughter because of a ‘‘domestic incident,’’ Bevan told reporters.
The parents knew their daughter was not involved with any type of situation that required her to speak with police. They refused Marines’s request, then asked for his name and supervisor’s information. When Marines refused to answer and left, the parents immediately called the station to report the incident.
That phone call would eventually tip off police to a pattern of behavior that Bevan said ‘‘cast a dark shadow on our law enforcement profession.’’ According to the chief, her department learned that Marines basically used a sensitive database to mine information for his own personal dating service.
‘‘To get right to the root of the matter, Leonel Marines was not utilizing this data for law enforcement purposes whatsoever,’’ Bevan said. ‘‘Instead he was using it in a variety of ways — from social media, cold telephone calls, visits to their home under the guise of being there for police business, you name it — trying to get dates with these women. He was very persistent and successful at times in his efforts to do so.’’
Marines, a 12-year veteran of the Bradenton police department and a supervisor, was taken off patrol once the initial complaint was made last summer. In October, he resigned. The investigation continued, however, with five detectives eventually contacting 150 women Marines allegedly inappropriately contacted.
‘‘This behavior may have been going on for years, stretching as far back as 2012,’’ Bevan said.
Bevan said the FBI is currently reviewing the case for possible criminal charges against Marines. The former police officer has yet to respond publicly to the allegations, and could not be reached for comment.
Bevan credited the unidentified parents of the young woman for sparking the inquiry.
‘‘They were heroes, as far as I’m concerned,’’ the chief told reporters. ‘‘In this day and age, it takes a little bit of courage to tell a police officer standing at their door . . . ‘No, we don’t want to let you talk to our daughter because we don’t get the right feeling about this,’ ’’ but the recent episode was not the first time Marines had landed in administrative hot water over his use of a police database.
According to the Bradenton Herald, in March 2012 a woman filed a complaint with the department over an encounter with Marines the previous November. She told the department Marines had come to her home several times, ‘‘asking her personal questions that seemed unrelated to any police investigation and she didn’t know him personally,’’ the Herald reported, citing an internal affairs report.
Investigators determined Marines had accessed the woman’s personal information twice using the Driver and Vehicle Information Database, a storehouse of driver and vehicle information that police can only access for official purposes. The officer told investigators ‘‘that there was no particular reason, that they had mutual friends and it was out curiosity,’’ according to the report.
Investigators then learned Marines had also accessed the information of eight other people. The officer said he could not remember if he had accessed the data for police business or not. According to the Herald, Marines misuse of police data in 2012 resulted in a three-day suspension, but that administrative slap on the wrist did not apparently dissuade Marines from allegedly continuing to access information about women.
Last June, after Marines’s unsuccessful attempt to talk to the couple’s adult daughter, the family contacted his watch commander about Marines’s concerns about a ‘‘domestic’’ incident.
The watch commander then quizzed his officer about why he had knocked on the family’s door, Bevan told reporters on Thursday. The officer replied that he had followed the woman because one of her headlights was out, and because he suspected she was driving while impaired.
‘‘The two stories really didn’t match up, and when it was brought to my attention, I ordered a further investigation of the incident, which ultimately led to an audit of Marines’s . . . records use, as well as his patrol activity,’’ Bevan explained. ‘‘The results of this audit heightened my concerns even greater due to the discrepancies of the subjects he was conducting queries on.’’
According to Bevan, investigators noticed Marines’s searches showed ‘‘a very, very clear trend of focusing on female versus male names,’’ she told reporters. Marines also allegedly focused on Hispanic women who did not speak English.
Investigators contacted around 150 women he had contacted as part of the investigation, Bevan said.
They also determined he had sex with some of the women while on duty. The chief would not go into specifics of how many sexual relationships Marines allegedly had from the information he accessed. She also would not specify what charges the FBI was pursuing as part of the investigation, but the chief said they do believe there are more women out there who may have had contact with the former officer.
‘‘As far as I’m concerned, he betrayed the oath he swore to,’’ she told reporters.
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What he did was flee to the docks and escape to Africa -- and when they got there, the cupboard was..... full of corpses?
"Prosecutors: He helped commit genocide, then tried to claim asylum" by Maria Cramer Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
In 2014, a border patrol agent found Jean Leonard Teganya walking down a road in Maine, carrying a backpack and filthy from a journey through the dense Canadian woods.
The Rwandan national had crossed the border into the United States to seek asylum, Teganya told the agent. His father was a leader in the Hutu political group responsible for the 1994 genocide that took the lives of at least 800,000 Tutsis, Rwanda’s ethnic minority, over 100 days. Teganya said he feared he would be killed if he returned to his native land, but what he truly feared was facing justice for his own crimes, federal prosecutors said Monday. Two decades ago, Teganya ordered the killings, rapes, and beatings of innocent Tutsis during a horrific raid of a hospital in the city of Butare, where he was a medical student, the prosecutors said.
“The defendant had a problem,” Assistant US Attorney Scott L. Garland told a jury in US District Court in Boston during opening arguments in the trial against Teganya. “His problem was that his application for asylum would be denied if the US found out what he had done in Rwanda, because persecutors cannot claim asylum.”
Teganya, 47, is charged with five counts of fraud and perjury for lying on his asylum application and at an immigration hearing. Under federal law, a person who participated in genocide is barred from obtaining asylum in the United States. If convicted, Teganya would face a maximum sentence of five years.
He is not on trial for his alleged actions in Rwanda 25 years ago, but the massacre of the Tutsi minority will serve as the backdrop for the trial. Prosecutors will focus in particular on the attack at the Butare hospital, where Tutsis had fled seeking safety from Hutu extremists. Their hopes were misplaced, said Phil Clark, an assistant professor at the University of London who has studied the Rwandan genocide and was the first witness called by prosecutors.
“Many Tutsis sought refuge in places that they trusted. . . churches, schools, and hospitals,” Clark said in court. “In the vast majority of recorded cases of the genocide, when Tutsis tried to seek refuge in these places, more often than not they were killed.”
About 20 witnesses are expected to testify about the attack at the hospital, many of them survivors who saw Tutsis dragged from their hospital beds and beaten to death, Tutsi girls and women raped, and nurses killed, prosecutors said.
Teganya ordered Hutus to commit some of these acts, pointing out the Tutsis who should be targeted, prosecutors said. He himself killed and raped Tutsis, they said. One of his alleged rape victims is slated to testify, prosecutors said.
Teganya’s lawyers portrayed an entirely different image of the suspect, who entered the courtroom wearing thick, black glasses and a dark suit and tie.
Now a married father of two, Teganya fled Rwanda after the genocide because any Hutu could be implicated in the violence, said Scott Lauer, one of his lawyers. He became a medical assistant in the Congo, moved to Kenya, and obtained a master’s degree in economics in India, Lauer said.
His father was arrested and imprisoned without a trial and Teganya knew he could not return to Rwanda, so he moved to Canada and settled in Montreal, Lauer said.
When Canadian authorities denied him asylum, he went to the United States for help, said Lauer, who told the jury that the defense would present witnesses who knew Teganya as a student in Rwanda.
“What do they remember about Jean Teganya?” asked Lauer. “He was studious. He was someone who got along with people. He was mainly known for studying . . . He was not someone who had problems with Tutsis. He was not someone who was an extremist.”
Teganya’s mother was Tutsi, Lauer said.
“The woman who brought him into the world, the woman who raised him is Tutsi,” Lauer said. “The idea that he was raised to hate Tutsis is false.”
When his father was attending political rallies against the Tutsis, Teganya was studying at a Catholic seminary school where Tutsi and Hutu students studied together.
Teganya was elected vice dean, a leadership position reserved for well-respected students, Lauer said.
Lauer urged the jury to scrutinize prosecutors’ witnesses to make sure they truly saw and heard what they claimed. He told jurors to question the motives of witnesses who could have an incentive to lie about Teganya’s actions.
Prosecutors acknowledged there is no fingerprint or surveillance evidence of what happened in the hospital that implicates Teganya, and the passage of time could make witness recollections murky, said Garland, the assistant US attorney, but testimony will come not only from people who knew Teganya well before the attack at the hospital but also from Hutus who perpetrated violence alongside him, Garland said. Most importantly, he said, Teganya’s own statements to immigration authorities will implicate him.
“When he was asked if he saw any atrocities at the hospital, he said no,” Garland said. “He did that even though some of the atrocities that occurred at the hospital were at his own hands.”
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Related:
Asylum trial portrayed a monster. The defense aims to change the narrative
After two weeks of harrowing testimony from prosecution witnesses who implicated Teganya in sexual assaults, beatings, and killings at the hospital, his defense is seeking to portray him in an entirely different light: as a man who was devoted to his studies and seemingly uninterested in the Hutu political parties that called for violence against the Tutsis.
Rwandan national on trial tells of being a victim during ’94 warfare
The case of a Rwandan man accused of genocide could hinge on witness credibility
Federal jury convicts Rwandan man accused of lying about role in 1994 genocide
The five-week trial was marked by harrowing accounts from survivors of the ethnic violence, which killed an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis in just 100 days.
Macron Wants France to Commemorate Rwanda Genocide
Why not?
They had a hand in it, and ‘another Rwanda’ must be prevented at all costs.
Maybe we should just let the Rwandans handle it themselves, hmmm?
Related:
"One of four people interviewed in eastern Congo last year believed Ebola wasn’t real, according to a new study, underscoring the enormous challenges health care workers are facing in what has become the second-deadliest outbreak in history. The survey released late Wednesday found that a deep mistrust of the Ebola response resulted in those people being 15 times less likely to seek medical treatment at an Ebola health center, according to the study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. The study was based on interviews conducted last September, about a month after the outbreak began. It comes as the number of probable and confirmed cases has exceeded 1,000. At least 639 people have died from Ebola since August, according to the World Health Organization. This is the first time the region has experienced an Ebola outbreak. Researchers said their study showed more precisely how individuals’ misinformed views about Ebola were undermining the response and helping to spread the deadly virus."
And crimping vaccine revenues.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Meanwhile, back to the war front in America:
Suspect in Louisiana church fires charged with hate crimes
He's the son of a sheriff’s deputy, and he also threatened a Texas lawmaker as the Union moves up the Mississippi:
"Feb. 10, 2019, was a Sunday evening, the cold Chicago night sinking down into the low 20s. Friends and family had gathered in the basement apartment where 4-year-old TJ Jackson Jr. lived with his parents and 7-year-old sister Samari in the city’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood. Around 10 adults chatted and played cards. TJ, Samari, and two other kids were playing Duck, Duck, Goose. The children’s mother, Stephanie Bures, had run to the store for ice cream. When she got back, it would be time for cake and presents, but according to a recently filed federal lawsuit, at 7:15 p.m. that night, the house’s unlocked back door smacked open. Plainclothes men with guns filled the room, some hefting crowbars, sledge hammers and a battering ram. ‘‘Get your [expletive] hands up!’’ the men screamed, according to the complaint. ‘‘We are doing a [expletive] raid!’’ While the four childrenwailed in panic, 17 officers tore the apartment to pieces. When the adults realized the men were police officers, they say they asked to see a warrant. Instead, they were allegedly screamed at or handcuffed. Forty-five minutes into the raid, the officers realized the man they were looking for — a suspected ecstasy dealer — was not in the apartment. They made no arrests. The suspect actually had not lived in the apartment for five years before the family moved in. The family filed a lawsuit this week in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging the Chicago police officers used excessive force and violated their civil rights during the raid....."
Got some bad intel there, and one front often forgotten in the history books was the Western Front, for that is what the war was about -- the admission of California as a free state, thus upsetting the balance of power in the Senate against the slave South for all time:
Cache of more than 1,000 guns seized from Los Angeles mansion
They were found in a Bel Air mansion in a posh area of town not far from the Playboy Mansion.
"A California man was arrested in a spa explosion that killed his ex-girlfriend last year after authorities painstakingly analyzed remnants of a bomb they traced to the suspect, his home, and his car, federal prosecutors said Monday. Stephen Beal, 59, had been arrested shortly after the bombing last year for investigation of possessing explosives, but was freed when prosecutors questioned whether material found at his home met the legal definition of a ‘‘destructive device.’’ Now, after further testing of evidence, Beal is being held on a charge of malicious destruction of a building that included a death, a charge that could carry a life sentence....."
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
South heads North with reinforcements:
"Suffolk DA names ‘discharge integrity team’ to probe fatal police-involved shooting" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
In a break with tradition and in keeping with a campaign promise, Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins Monday named a four-person team to oversee the investigation into the use of deadly force by Boston police officers last month.
The four-person panel will meet monthly to assess the law enforcement inquiry into the death of 36-year-old Kasim Kahrim who was shot after he exchanged gunfire with two uniformed patrol officers on Feb. 22 in Roxbury, wounding one of the officers.
“These cases are incredibly complex, emotionally charged, and extremely important to both law enforcement and the community at large,” Rollins said in a statement. “They will bring a fresh set of eyes and a variety of experiences to an issue of great public concern.”
Kahrim allegedly opened fire on the officers after they encountered him while he was driving a minivan near the intersection of Allerton and Pompeii streets in Roxbury around 2:20 a.m., according to police. The officers returned fire, striking Kahrim, who drove away before crashing on George Street. Police said they found a gun inside the minivan. During the incident, Officer Mark Whalen was shot several times in the upper torso, police said.
Nothing good ever happens after midnight.
Nothing good ever happens after midnight.
Sergeant Detective John Boyle, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department, said that “as the district attorney goes about familiarizing herself on police-involved shootings, the police commissioner is confident the individuals on her team who have a wealth of knowledge will represent themselves in a fair and impartial manner.”
The district attorney’s office said it may be the first time in Massachusetts that an outside panel plays an active role in a deadly force investigation.
Rollins was elected last year to succeed Conley and during the campaign said she saw a need for a new way to investigate deadly force cases to increase public confidence in their validity.
The panel “will assess the state of the evidence, monitor the direction of the investigation, and examine the procedural steps undertaken by investigators on the ground,” Rollins said in a statement. “They will make inquiries, offer insights, and present objective opinions based on their thorough review.”
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"Mother of Sharon High student says school slow to act on report of harassment by teacher" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
The mother of a Sharon High School student says she first reported to the principal in October 2017 that her daughter had been sexually harassed by a teacher, more than a year before science teacher Brad Lengas was suspended from the school.
Lengas was suspended in December and then fired in February after he was criminally charged with indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 and accosting/annoying a person of the opposite sex. He was arraigned last week in Stoughton District Court and a not guilty plea entered on his behalf.
“The school has known for years about this and didn’t do anything about it,” said the mother, who says her teenage daughter was verbally harassed by Lengas. “This school put students at risk for years.”
Jose Libano, the school’s principal, has been placed on administrative leave, school officials confirmed Monday, as the school investigates the principal’s handling of Lengas’s removal from the high school.
See: Sharon high school principal placed on administrative leave
See: Sharon high school principal placed on administrative leave
In 2017, after she reported that Lengas had used sexually inappropriate language with her daughter, the mother said Libano switched the girl out of Lengas’s chemistry class.
When she followed up by e-mail about the school’s response to the allegation, she said, Libano told her it was a union matter and he could not comment about it.
In November 2018, Lengas appeared in the girl’s math class as a substitute, [and] the mother said, “I was really upset. How could they let Mr. Lengas substitute in [her daughter’s] class?”
“I will not rest until this whole thing is aired and until the administration takes responsibility,” she said.
The mother said she is unaware of the circumstances behind the indecent assault and battery charge against Lengas; that charge is not related to his alleged behavior towardher daughter, she said.
Lengas’s next date in court is April 29 for a pretrial conference, according to the Norfolk district attorney’s office. He has been ordered to stay away from those who accused him and from Sharon High School, and not to work with people under the age of 18.....
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It's a form of bullying:
"Girl sought relief from bullying. In exchange, teacher’s aide demanded massages, she says" by Maria Cramer Globe Staff, March 18, 2019
It's a form of bullying:
"Girl sought relief from bullying. In exchange, teacher’s aide demanded massages, she says" by Maria Cramer Globe Staff, March 18, 2019
Hazel could not stand the bullying anymore.
At lunch, the other children at her school in Lawrence mocked her weight and the way she ate. One time a boy threw an apple at her thighs to make them jiggle, she said. Gym class was especially unbearable.
The 13-year-old, a student at the School for Exceptional Studies in Lawrence, told the teachers’ aides she didn’t want to participate, and they allowed her and another girl to sit on the bleachers instead, but one of the aides later had a demand, Hazel said: She wanted the girls to give her a massage.
I guess she saw you as a little slave girl.
Hazel told investigators with the state’s child-protection agency that last fall she felt forced to give the aide half a dozen massages, contact that began as back rubs but progressed to the woman’s legs and inner thighs. This happened as a second aide, a man, watched and encouraged the massages, the girl alleged.
Now it is super gross.
“I feel bad about myself,” Hazel said, weeping as she recalled the experience during an interview with the Globe. “I feel like it’s my fault.”
Hazel’s parents have removed her from the public school, an alternative program for children with behavioral issues and special needs, and the federal Department of Education has agreed to investigate whether Hazel was discriminated against on the basis of her sex and her disabilities.
The state Department of Children and Families investigated Hazel’s complaint and concluded the interactions between the girls and the two aides did not “appear to be of a sexual nature,” according to an agency report provided by Hazel’s parents.
Well, they got a lot to do over there.
The report stated that the school aides denied any physical contact with the students even though both girls told DCF investigators that they were asked to massage the female aide.
The second student partially corroborated Hazel’s allegations, telling a DCF investigator that she was asked to massage the female aide’s neck and back. However, the girl said the massages took place at lunchtime and she could not recall seeing another student massage the female aide.
In an interview with investigators, the second child said that “one day she came to school and [the female aide] said they can’t hug because the principal said they can’t touch students.”
The aides’ “denial of any activity is concerning, given that both girls describe some degree of contact,” the DCF report stated.
A spokeswoman for the DCF declined to comment on the incident. Christopher Markuns, a spokesman for the Lawrence School District, said that the school took Hazel’s allegations seriously.
“We conducted a thorough investigation into all of these concerns immediately upon receiving them, at the conclusion of which we took appropriate action,” he said. “We additionally requested and cooperated with an investigation by an outside agency, and to this date have received findings consistent with our own.”
According to the DCF report, the female aide was given a written warning for an “inappropriate interaction with a student.”
Neither of the two aides could be reached for comment.
Both aides remain employed by the district, a fact that infuriates Hazel’s parents, who question whether other children have been mistreated at a school designed to help vulnerable students.
Hazel reads at a kindergarten level and is prone to severe tantrums, her parents said. When she was 5, she tried to commit suicide by walking into a busy street. Her alleged mistreatment has compounded her emotional troubles, they said.
“This is a child who already had issues and then you put so much more stress on top of this little girl,” said Hazel’s mother, Sharon Bimbo, 34. “I’m upset and I want answers.”
Because of Hazel’s age and sensitive circumstances, the Globe is withholding her last name, which is different from her parents’.
I do feel bad for the girl.
Carrie Kimball, a spokeswoman for the Essex County district attorney’s office, which investigated the family’s complaints, said “at this point in time we have not identified sufficient evidence for a criminal charge,” but Hazel said she and the other girl would spend gym period with the two aides in the bleachers, behind a curtain that divided them from the rest of the class.
One day, the female aide told Hazel that she needed to give her a back massage so she would not lose any more points in the school’s reward system. The male aide rolled up her sleeve and rubbed Hazel’s hand “to show her how to massage [the female aide’s] hand correctly,” according to the account Hazel gave the DCF.
The teenager told the Globe she was disgusted.
“ ‘Why do I have to do this?’ “ she recalled asking him. “ ‘This is nasty bro.’ ”
The aide told her not to disrespect them, she said.
The sessions became more uncomfortable, and in early November, Hazel came home with her fingers swollen and bloodied, according to her mother. The school had suspended her for one day.
Hazel told DCF that she saw the female aide in the hallway. The aide grabbed her and took her into a room, where staffers got so close to her face they accidentally spit on her, according to what Hazel and her family told investigators. Hazel said she spit back.
The encounter became so physical, Hazel said, some of the acrylic nails her mother had given her for Halloween ripped off. She then told her mother about the massages.
Markuns said school officials investigated the incident in the hallway and found there was no physical contact initiated by any school employee. The principal acknowledged that Hazel’s fingernails “popped off” but “denied any injury to Hazel’s fingers,” according to the report.
The DCF did not make a determination that Hazel was ordered to give any massages and noted that she reported the incidents only after she was suspended. But the second student backed up some of her claims, the report found.
“The other student’s disclosure was unsolicited, and without any precipitating or motivating influence,” the report stated. “There is no reason to raise question [about] her credibility.”
Hazel, who is now being home-schooled while her parents look for a new school, said she wants accountability.
“I cried about the story so many times, but now I’m just mad about it,” she said. “Now, I’m just done. Done.”
Me, too!
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Related:
No progress in the achievement gap in 50 years, new study says
Calif. mom and dad allegedly used Facebook stock holdings to help pay bribe in college admission plot
Davina Isackson, 55, and, Bruce Isackson, 61, are among dozens of wealthy parents alleged to have paid William “Rick” Singer.
They all have one thing in common.
They were advised to ‘be stupid,’ and that is what we have here:
"Man charged with secretly recording boys in Boston Latin bathroom" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
A 36-year-old Dorchester man was arrested Monday on federal charges that he secretly filmed several boys in a bathroom at Boston Latin School.
Prosecutors allege that Eric Tran Thai made 45 illicit recordings of male students at the school between February and December 2017 and recorded “individuals in numerous public restroom locations throughout greater Boston and elsewhere.”
Thai is a former Boston Latin student, school officials said.
Thai is charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of children. Each charge carries a sentence of at least 15 years in prison, prosecutors said.
On Monday, Thai appeared in US District Court in Boston and was released on $10,000 bail. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Prosecutors said Thai was arrested after he was caught recording students at Boston College in February 2018.
“According to court documents, on Feb. 6 and Feb. 27, 2018, two separate Boston College students reported to the police that they had been videotaped without their knowledge or consent while they were using the men’s restrooms on the Boston College campus,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Thai admitted to “taking some pictures” of a man in the stall next to him and that he had been taking such videos for about a year. Thai was arrested and in his bag police found several covert camera devices, including faux smoke detectors, a water bottle containing a small cube recording device, and sunglasses outfitted with a built-in camera.
During a search of Thai’s home in March 2018, “law enforcement seized approximately 26 computer hard drives, 20 thumb drives, 27 covert and regular cameras, 14 computers, iPads, and cell phones, and multiple SD and Sim cards,” prosecutors said.
Investigators found several folders labeled BU, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Bunker Hill, Boston Latin High School, and several different malls, airports, and foreign country locations, prosecutors said.....
So which government agency was he working for?
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That was the last I saw of the report:
"General manager Charlie Kravetz to leave WBUR" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
That was the last I saw of the report:
"General manager Charlie Kravetz to leave WBUR" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, March 11, 2019
Charlie Kravetz, who over eight years as general manager of WBUR-FM led the station through a period of significant growth and some tumult, is stepping down from his job to “pursue new options,” according to a joint statement released Monday by Kravetz and the station’s parent, Boston University.
The statement said Kravetz’s departure was a mutual decision, though it was announced at a staff meeting without him present. It came shortly after the January opening of the station’s CitySpace community and cultural events venue on Commonwealth Avenue, and the recent decision by newsroom staffers to unionize.
In a statement e-mailed to the Globe, Kravetz said that his “eight years at WBUR [were] the best in my 40-year career. I’m enormously grateful to so many colleagues who have contributed to the growth and transformation of the station.”
“At a time of great challenge for journalism and media,” he wrote, “WBUR has essentially doubled in impact, revenue and service to the community. . . . Now it is time for a change for me and for WBUR. I know the station will thrive because of the exceptional talent there. I will be listening and rooting for WBUR’s continued success.”
Later Monday, former WBUR general manager Paul LaCamera said he was also leaving the station in support of Kravetz, his colleague and friend for 40 years. He said in an e-mail to friends that Kravetz was leaving the station “under unfortunate circumstances.’’ LaCamera said he was an “in-station consultant’’ at WBUR.
Staffers said they were shocked by the development. Kravetz, 66, was known to many for his hands-on management style. He paid attention to the little things, stopping reporters in the hall to ask about their word choice in a broadcast or to make suggestions about the direction of a story. He interviewed prospective employees at all levels. He even helped pick out the crimson-colored chairs at CitySpace. (He was pleased that they were so comfortable, staffers say).
Some of the station’s journalists wondered whether the union organizing effort had a direct implication on Kravetz’s departure, and why he did not personally address the newsroom.
“I’m shell-shocked. Where did this come from?” asked Bruce Gellerman, a senior correspondent at the station. “This is the house that Charles Kravetz has transformed. We’ve grown in ways that were almost unimaginable. We’re a powerhouse of news and information in really difficult times, and we’re growing. Why would you want to disrupt that?”
Kravetz was known for making bold decisions, and sharing his opinions openly about the direction of the station.
“Charlie was a leader who really cared about this station, he listened to everything that we did and really put his heart and soul into being sure that WBUR is a place that’s thriving,” said Meghna Chakrabarti, the cohost of “On Point.” “He brought an editorial mind-set that sometimes involved telling me straight that something didn’t work, but he always treated me with respect and kindness. Even when I lost battles with him, I always felt like he treated me with care, support, and respect.”
Kravetz was a veteran of the Boston news industry for more than three decades, he previously worked at NECN and WCVB-TV. He pursued multiple revenue streams and increasingly national reach. His tenure coincided with the revolution of the audio economy through podcasts, and he established partnerships with The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Globe, but he also oversaw a tumultuous period for the past 14 months, as the station conducted an internal analysis of its culture in the wake of the dismissal of one of its stars, Tom Ashbrook, the former host of the nationally syndicated show “On Point.”
Ashbrook had been determined to have created a hostile work environment where employees were subject to “verbal assaults, intimidating actions, consistent bullying, and unwanted touching,” according to an internal review.
That review was followed by an internal “climate survey” conducted over several months and released last year by the Longpoint consulting firm. Its report identified a need for the station’s general manager to have “better communication within the organization, greater accountability on the part of the WBUR leadership team, improved performance management oversight, and a greater awareness of the impact of the leadership style on station culture.”
Some in the newsroom said that Kravetz acknowledged his failings in the Ashbrook case, and tried to address them.
“Charlie was contrite in the way that the Ashbrook scandal played out,” said reporter Max Larkin. “He was candid that he thought that he had failed, and there was a real effort and that it hadn’t panned out,” but Larkin and others in the newsroom said that the situation led to introspection and contributed to the decision to unionize.
Larkin said he remained optimistic about the station’s future. “I don’t see a lot of people losing faith in what we can accomplish as a station.”
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They reimagined public radio, and who knows what’s next?
