Elementary school reports first grader to police over ‘sexual assault’ incident. “The dean of students had phoned (the boy’s mother) at work to say a girl told them her son had touched her inappropriately in their first-grade classroom that morning…. later, a Somerville (police) detective left a message on (her) voicemail…. (her son) now has a paper trail at several… governmental agencies: the police department, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, and the state Department of Children and Families, whose intake report from the school system describes the incident as ‘sexual assault’ and her son as the ‘alleged perpetrator’.” https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/02/20/metro/somerville-mother-is-stunned-how-can-school-officials-accuse-her-6-year-old-son-sexual-misconduct-report-him-police-charges-racism-ensue/ When did elementary schools start having a ‘dean of students’?
Former U.S. Capitol security officials blame faulty intelligence for January 6th invasion. “Former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving testified that intelligence assessments before the January 6 attack incorrectly concluded that there was only a ‘remote’ to ‘improbable’ chance of a civil disturbance that day, according to prepared testimony.” https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/23/politics/us-capitol-attack-senate-hearing/index.html The CBS Evening News reported today that the Capitol Police did not have sufficient riot helmets that day, because the helmets they had ordered did not arrive in time for the rally. This discrepancy was simply mentioned in passing and not commented on. “An FBI office in Virginia issued an explicit warning that extremists were planning to travel to Washington, D.C., to commit violence and ‘war’, the day before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to an internal report obtained by The Washington Post, directly contradicting the bureau’s previous claim that it had no intelligence to predict last Wednesday’s siege.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/12/report-fbi-office-warned-of-war-at-us-capitol-despite-claim-attack-was-unknown/
No charges for Rochester, New York police officers who put ‘spit hood’ and handcuffs on man having mental health crisis. “(Daniel) Prude died of ‘complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint’, with the drug PCP listed as a contributing factor, according to an autopsy report released by the family from Monroe County Medical Examiner Nadia Granger.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-grand-jury-declines-charge-rochester-officers-daniel-prude-n1258664
Hitman pleads guilty to murder of investigative journalist in Malta. “(Vince) Muscat and two other men were arrested in December 2017 and accused of having planned and executed the murder. Muscat’s alleged accomplices continue to plea not-guilty…. (Anti-corruption blogger Daphne) Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb in October 2017…. Multimillionaire businessman Yorgen Fenech, who had high-level political connections, is suspected of having masterminded the crime and has been accused of being an accomplice to murder (which he denies)…. Fenech was close friends with (former premier Joseph Muscat’s) chief of staff Keith Schembri, who has denied any wrongdoing and any knowledge of the murder or its perpetrators.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malta-daphne/man-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-malta-anti-corruption-journalist-idUSKBN2AN1EU?il=0
More than 6,500 migrant workers have reportedly died over a decade in Qatar, most of whom probably came to build infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Doha. “Data from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka revealed there were 5,927 deaths of migrant workers in the period 2011–2020. Separately, data from Pakistan’s embassy in Qatar reported a further 824 deaths of Pakistani workers, between 2010 and 2020. The total death toll is significantly higher, as these figures do not include deaths from a number of countries which send large numbers of workers to Qatar, including the Philippines and Kenya.” https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022
Mother files lawsuit over killing of son and botched police investigation. “The suit says (three local white men) ‘willfully and maliciously conspired to follow, threaten, detain and kill Ahmaud Arbery’. The court filing also names law enforcement officials and local prosecutors and alleges they were intimately involved with an alleged cover-up in the investigation…. Ten weeks passed between Arbery’s death and the first arrests in the case. Those arrests happened two days after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation from local authorities.” https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970598539/mother-of-ahmaud-arbery-files-civil-lawsuit-on-anniversary-of-sons-death
Retired NYPD officer charged in connection with Capitol invasion. “Federal prosecutors alleged Tuesday in court that the man, Thomas Webster, wore a bulletproof vest and was prepared for ‘armed conflict’ during the Jan. 6 attack on the federal building. Prosecutors alleged that Webster attacked a Capitol Police officer using a flagpole…” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/retired-nypd-cop-charged-capitol-riot-accused-attacking-officer-flag-n1258638 “A police source said Webster joined the NYPD in 1991 and retired in 2011 after working the security detail at City Hall and the mayor’s residence at Gracie Mansion.” https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-retired-nypd-cop-capitol-20210223-zfmmkaowmbh4pm76iot7rbzl24-story.html Can’t find his rank when he retired.
Republican party official from Queens, New York charged in Capitol invasion. “(Phillip) Grillo, a leader in Queens Republicans’ 24th District, was identified by two people who saw him in CNN coverage and said they’d known him for decades in Glen Oaks, a neighborhood on the borough’s Nassau County border…. Grillo was released by Federal Judge Robert Levy on a $100,000 bond…. He will be staying at his mother’s house, where he was living before his arrest.” https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-queens-district-leader-arrest-fbi-capitol-riots-siege-trump-20210223-k2jn3yirgzg2piqddnitfcrqre-story.html
Gov. of Florida rescinds state-wide order to fly flags at half-staff on Wednesday in honor of Rush Limbaugh. “(Gov. Ron) DeSantis announced Tuesday that he was directing the U.S. and Florida flags to be flown at half-staff at the Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach, the City Hall of Palm Beach and the State Capitol in Tallahassee from sunrise to sunset on Wednesday. The order states that flags will be lowered ‘to honor the memory of Rush Limbaugh and his service to our nation and state’.” https://www.wesh.com/article/flags-florida-rush-limbaugh/35606317
Poet, publisher and bookstore founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti dead at 101. “The spiritual godfather of the Beat movement, Mr. Ferlinghetti made his home base in the modest independent book haven now formally known as City Lights Booksellers & Publishers…. In a significant First Amendment decision, he was acquitted (of charges for publishing indecent writings), and (Allen Ginsburg’s) ‘Howl’ became one of the 20th century’s best-known poems.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/obituaries/lawrence-ferlinghetti-dead.html
Fourteen year-old girl who fatally stabbed her older sister to be tried as an adult, district attorney releases her mug shot and confession. “Claire Miller, of Manheim Township, was being charged with criminal homicide as an adult in the death of her 19-year-old sister Helen, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office said…. Officers responded to the home just after 1 a.m. Monday after the teen called to report that ‘she had killed her sister’, the district attorney’s office said…. Officers (who responded) said they heard her repeatedly say, ‘I stabbed my sister’, and watched as she appeared to try washing her hands in the snow.” https://www.foxnews.com/us/pennsylvania-teen-charged-murder-sister-parents-slept I wonder what her attorney or the judge is going to say about this?
Federal judge rules in favor of California ‘net neutrality’ law. “California’s law was spurred by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 decision to repeal net-neutrality rules that applied nationwide…. The law seeks to ban internet providers from slowing down customers’ data streams based on the content they are viewing. It also bars providers from speeding up access to websites willing to pay extra for special treatment.” https://www.marketwatch.com/story/california-can-enforce-its-net-neutrality-law-federal-judge-rules-01614132938
Gang war in prisons in Ecuador results in at least 62 deaths. “As security forces battled to regain control, distraught family members waited desperately for news outside the prison in Ecuador’s western port city of Guayaquil, where officials said 21 died. Another 33 died at the prison in Cuenca in the south and eight in Latacunga in the center of the South American country, according to Edmundo Moncayo, director of the government’s SNAI prisons management body.” https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210224-at-least-62-inmates-dead-in-ecuador-prison-riots
Israel to export vaccine to its allies instead of to its occupied territories. “On Tuesday, the governments of the Czech Republic and Honduras confirmed that Israel had promised them each 5,000 vaccine doses manufactured by Moderna. The Israeli news media reported that Hungary and Guatemala would be sent a similar number…. But the move has angered Palestinians because it suggests that Israel’s allies are of greater priority than the Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied territories, almost all of whom have yet to receive a vaccine.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/world/middleeast/israel-palestinians-vaccine-diplomacy.html
Russian ships able to make first February trans-arctic journey thanks to climate change. “The melting in the region is already in line with the worst-case climate scenarios outlined by scientists, with 28 trillion metric tons of (ice) lost globally between 1994 and 2017…. That compares with the traditional June to October (arctic) navigation season.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-22/first-arctic-navigation-in-february-sends-a-worrying-climate-signal
Apple forces Gmail and YouTube to disclose information they collect on iPhone and iPad users. “Data Linked to You. The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Purchases, Location, Contact Info, Contacts, User Content, Search History, Identifiers, Data Usage, Diagnostics, Other Data. An App Store screenshot of Gmail’s summary App Privacy label in iOS 14.” https://bgr.com/2021/02/23/gmail-app-privacy-label-iphone-user-tracking/
Twitter adds ‘hacked material’ warning to news stories based on hacked information. “The Grayzone’s story sources recently hacked and leaked documents which allegedly show that the BBC and Reuters participated in a program created by the UK government to ‘weaken Russia’s state influence’…. It should be stressed again that these warning labels are being added to tweets sharing links to news stories based on hacked materials, not tweets sharing raw leaked or stolen materials themselves…. some Twitter users have pointed out that the New York Times story on Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun was based on leaked text messages from the senator’s wife. Yet, they point out, there is no warning label placed on tweets linking to that story even though it appears to fall under Twitter’s own ‘distribution of hacked materials’ policy.” https://mashable.com/article/twitter-hacked-materials-warning-label/ Well, there’s a difference between ‘hacked’ and ‘leaked’, but if you’re going to flag news stories based on hacked information, then you’ll be flagging stuff like the UK hacker who found pictures of alien spacecraft and a list of ‘Non-terrestrial officers’ on NASA’s servers.
When a NATO exercise spooked the Soviet Union into scrambling its nuclear forces in 1983, an Air Force general with a cool head helped avert disaster. “At the time, the Soviet Air Forces were reacting to NATO military exercises in the region, but when they saw NATO did not escalate further (in response), as a result of (Lt. Gen. Leonard) Perroots’ recommendation, the Soviet military backed down as well, thereby avoiding a possible (nuclear) war.” https://taskandpurpose.com/news/lt-gen-leonard-perroots-able-archer/ This is no way to run a planet. One of these days millions of people are going to get killed. And THEN you’ll be sorry!
Protests in former Soviet republic of Georgia after conservative party leader arrested. “Georgian police stormed the party’s headquarters in the early hours to arrest its chairman Nika Melia. A Tbilisi court last week ruled to place Melia, who is accused of organizing ‘mass violence’ during anti-government protests in 2019, in pre-trial detention. The political situation in Georgia has been tense amid allegations of voter fraud in the country’s fall parliamentary election. The opposition is demanding a rerun of the vote.” https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/23/georgian-police-raid-opposition-hq-arrest-leader Hmm, this story sounds familiar…
Making ‘ecocide’ a crime would help fight against climate change, say activists. “The pristine areas that ecocide targets – virgin forests, wetlands and our oceans – are precisely the places that have value far beyond mere extractive industries, including in sustainably developing new pharmaceuticals that may help in the current Covid-19 pandemic and in future pandemics.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/24/climate-crisis-ecocide-international-crime
Movie tells the story of Guantanamo Diary terror suspect imprisoned for 14 years without a trial. “Kevin Macdonald’s film (The Mauritanian) tells of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s 14-year imprisonment without charge in the facility now emblematic of human rights abuses, as well as the violent and sexual torture he experienced at the hands of his interrogators. It dramatizes the legal battle that led to his eventual release in 2016.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/24/guantanamo-film-denial-human-rights-the-mauritanian
Former Syrian intelligence official found guilty of crimes against humanity by German court. “Eyad al-Gharib, a 44-year-old former colonel in the Syrian intelligence service, carried out orders in one of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons…. ‘Gharib is one man but he was part of an organized machine with orders to arrest peaceful civilians, disappear them, torture them, kill them and hide their bodies in mass graves.'” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/germany-convicts-former-assad-regime-agent-in-historic-syria-torture-verdict