Chandra Levy murder mystery

Chandra Levy murder mystery deepens as prosecutors drop case

In this April 22, 2009, file photo, Ingmar Guandique is escorted from the Violent Crimes Unit in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin AP

WASHINGTON
In another stunning reversal, federal prosecutors on Thursday abruptly dropped murder charges against the Salvadoran immigrant previously convicted of killing former intern and Modesto, California, resident Chandra Levy.

The unexpected decision casts back into mystery the question of what really happened to Levy more than 15 years ago when she disappeared while apparently jogging through the capital’s Rock Creek Park. It follows years of defense lawyers’ investigation into the prosecutors’ chief witness, who claimed Ingmar Guandique confessed to the crime while the two shared a jail cell.

Mom of slain Florida teen warned son of nightclub shootings

Mom of slain Florida teen warned son of nightclub shootings

In this frame from video, people gather near the scene of a fatal shooting at Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. (WBBH via AP)

FORT MYERS, Fla. — With the Orlando massacre still fresh on everyone's mind, the mother of a young man who was slain at a nightclub early Monday had warned her son about what to do if there were a shooting: "hit the floor, find a table."

But when gunfire erupted at the Club Blu parking lot, 18-year-old Stef'an Strawder didn't have anywhere to hide. He was killed along with a 14-year-old boy, and 17 other people ranging in age from 12 to 27 were wounded during a swimsuit-themed party for teens.

Shots Fired at Munich Shopping Center

Shots Fired at Munich Shopping Center, German Police Say

Shots have been fired at a shopping center in Munich, Germany, according to police, with a local newspaper reporting multiple deaths.

Munich police would not confirm any casualties, but told NBC News the situation "is over." A leading German newspaper based in Munich, Sudduetsche Zeitung, reported multiple people had been killed and injured, but NBC News could not immediately confirm that.

Images and video on social media showed frenzied activity outside the Olympia Einkaufszentrum area.

Shooting in #Munich shopping mall #OEZ!! People running away to seek shelter!! pic.twitter.com/PB189s6RQy

— Thamina Stoll (@thaminastoll) July 22, 2016

"People running away to seek shelter!" posted one Twitter user, along with a video that appeared to show streams of people filing past the building.

A major police operation was underway at the mall, Munich police tweeted, urging people to avoid the area.

The sprawling two-story Olympia Einkaufszentrum opened in 1972 during the Summer Olympics in Munich, according to the mall's website.

The shooting is the second attack in Germany's Bavaria region this week. On Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan injured four people with an ax on a German train near Wuerzburg-Heidingsfeld, before he was shot dead.





source: nbcnews

Woman in custody after standoff at Oklahoma Air National Guard base

Woman in custody after standoff at Oklahoma Air National Guard base

A woman has been taken into police custody Monday afternoon following a standoff at the Oklahoma Air National Guard base.
Tulsa Police Bomb Squad officers were called to the scene after police received a report indicating a woman was driving around the complex with an unknown device, an official said Monday.
Police Sgt. Shane Tuell said officers were dispatched to the Air National Guard, near 46th Street North and U.S. 169, a little before noon because the Guard notified them of the woman's claims.
"She hasn't gone on the base itself, but she's claiming to have some type of a device in the vehicle," he said.
Police were involved with a standoff with the woman at the base's entrance, Tulsa police spokeswoman Demita Kinard said.
"She's claiming there is a war and the war is here," Kinard said of the woman.

Kinard said police received a call from a woman — believed to be the same person involved in the standoff — about 9:30 a.m., who claimed she was being kidnapped and was singing nursery rhymes, Kinard said.
Shortly later, police got a call from the Guard base saying there was a woman at the front gate.
Officers have not been able to confirm what type of device, if any, was in the woman's vehicle.
Police have identified the woman but aren't releasing her name yet because she is a "mentally ill individual," Kinard said.

source: tulsaworld

Baton Rouge Shooting Reaction

Police tighten security after 3 officers killed in Baton Rouge

(CNN)Officers Montrell Jackson, Matthew Gerald and Brad Garafola were killed Sunday after being ambushed and shot by a lone gunman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Their deaths have kept the spotlight on a region where the July 5 shooting death of Alton Sterling at the hands of police began what has been two weeks of national turmoil.
"We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement," President Barack Obama said after Sunday's attack. "Attacks on police are an attack on all of us, and the rule of law that makes society possible."
Now police across the country are taking precautions.
The New York Police Department is doubling up all foot patrols and security posts, according to a memo obtained by CNN. Officers are also being instructed to take all meals and personal breaks in pairs.

In Cleveland, the police union is asking Gov. John Kasich to restrict the state's open carry laws temporarily for the Republican National Convention in light of the events in Baton Rouge.
To better protect its officers, the Boston Police Department is requiring that two officers be in every patrol unit.
Although Baton Rouge is "hundreds of miles away from Boston, the pain and suffering caused by the loss of these officers in the line of duty is felt deeply by the men and women of the BPD," Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said Sunday. "This all too common trend we are seeing of violence against law enforcement officers who are out there each day serving and protecting neighborhoods across the country is alarming and disheartening."
Obama urged a stop to the bloodshed.
"Only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided," the President said Sunday. "And we're going to have to keep on doing it again and again and again. That's how this country gets united."

'No talking, just shooting'

The shooting Sunday took place around 8:40 a.m. (9:40 a.m. ET) in the city of about 230,000 people, already tense after the high-profile police shooting of Sterling, an African-American man.
On Sunday, police received a call of a "suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle," a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN.
Killer Gavin Long "ambushed" the officers, said Col. Michael D. Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police.
Long's "prey was those police officers," Edmonson said Monday morning on CNN. "He drew them to the scene."
After the first set of officers were attacked, more responded to the scene and killed Long, authorities said. He had been carrying an AR-15-style, semi-automatic rifle, law enforcement sources told CNN.
At a Sunday afternoon news conference, local and state authorities, including Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, said Long was thought to be the lone gunman. Earlier reports had said authorities believed there might have been more than one attacker. Edwards described the shooting as an "absolutely unspeakable heinous attack."
The Louisiana State Police said they questioned and released two people in relation to the attack, and no charges were filed.
Authorities are interviewing people that Long was speaking to while he was in Baton Rouge, Edmonson said. "We want to know what brought him here, what kept him here" and why he killed police, the superintendent said.
Edwards, also appearing Monday on CNN, reflected on the pain that officers' relatives and co-workers endured at the hospital until late Sunday. "Emotions are raw," the governor said. "There's a lot of hurting people."

The victims

Officers Jackson, 32, and Gerald, 41, both worked for the Baton Rouge Police Department.
Gerald had been serving for less than a year and, like Jackson, was assigned to the uniform patrol bureau, according to the department.
Jackson had posted on Facebook on July 8 how physically and emotionally drained he had been since protests had erupted in Baton Rouge after the killing of Sterling by police.
"I swear to God I love this city, but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty, hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat. ... These are trying times. Please don't let hate infect your heart."
Garafola, 45, worked for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office for 24 years, according to Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.
The gunman also critically wounded a deputy who is "fighting for his life," said East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux. Another wounded deputy and police officer have wounds not considered life-threatening, law officers said.

Authorities later identified 41-year-old Nicholas Tullier as an officer in critical condition.
Bruce Simmons, a 51-year-old with 23 years of service, sustained non-life threatening injuries, authorities said.

The shooter

Long, a black man from Kansas City, Missouri, was a Marine who was discharged as a sergeant in 2010.
CNN has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the military to obtain records about Long's service. Under Defense Department rules, health records that might include any information on Long's mental health are considered protected even though he is dead. The records are part of the criminal investigation.
CNN has filed a similar request for the records of Micah Johnson, also formerly a military member. He killed five police officers in Dallas, and a criminal investigation is ongoing about his military record.
Long served from August 22, 2005, to August 1, 2010, according to the little information the military has released. He was a data network specialist who received the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, Navy Unit Commendation Medal and others. He signed up for the service in Kansas City and deployed to Iraq from June 2008 to January 2009.
The releasable record on Long doesn't indicate where he worked in Iraq.
He left a long trail of information online about his beliefs under the pseudonym Cosmo Setepenra.



source: CNN

US Declassifies Secret 9/11

US Declassifies Secret 9/11 Documents Known as the '28 Pages'

A New York Firefighter amid the rubble of the World Trade Centre following the 9/11 attacks.

The U.S. intelligence community has officially lifted the veil on 28 classified pages from the first congressional investigation into the 9/11 terror attacks that some believe, once exposed, could demonstrate a support network inside the United States for two of those al-Qaeda hijackers.

Today, the Obama administration declassified those documents -- closely held secrets for over 13 years -- and Congress is expected to make them the public this afternoon. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies had kept the information secret until now, citing reasons of national security.

According to sources familiar with the documents, the information in the pages lays out a number of circumstances that suggest it's possible two of the 9/11 hijackers living in California in the months leading up to the attack were receiving operational support from individuals loyal to Saudi Arabia.

But intelligence officials say the information was preliminary, fragmented and unfinished data that was subsequently investigated along with more complete information in subsequent 9/11 investigations.

Saudi Arabia, an ally to the U.S. in the Middle East, has strongly denied any involvement in the attacks and these accusations, and believes the 2004 9/11 Commission Report, Congress's final investigation into the attacks, serves to completely exonerate Saudi Arabia.

"It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al Qaeda sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al Qaeda's fundraising activities," the 9/11 Commission report reads. "Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. (This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda.)"

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Former Sen. Bob Graham, one of the authors of the report produced by the Joint Congressional Inquiry in December of 2002, had been pushing for the classified pages to be released since the day they were made secret. He said he still harbors suspicion that these men were being helped by senior Saudi connections and told CBS News in April it is "implausible" to believe these two hijackers "could've carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States."

The declassified documents are also of great interest to the lawyers representing family members of 9/11 victims who have brought a lawsuit against the Saudi government, alleging it provided financial support to al-Qaeda. They feel unseen evidence in these documents pointing to Saudi involvement could bolster their case.

In turn, Congress has introduced legislation called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that would limit the sovereign immunity of other countries, including Saudi Arabia, that if passed would allow the victims' families to sue Saudi Arabia -- something they currently can't do.

The Saudis have threatened to sell off billions of dollars in U.S. assets if such a law is enacted. And although it has passed the Senate and is pending in the House, the White House doesn't favor it and worries that it could set a dangerous precedent that would open up the U.S. government to similar liabilities and litigation.



source: abcnews

US Drone Kills Mastermind

US Drone Kills Mastermind of 2014 Pakistan School Attack

FILE - A mother mourns her son Mohammed Ali Khan, 15, a student who was killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen on the army-administered Public School, at her house in Peshawar, December 16, 2014.

ISLAMABAD—
The United States has confirmed that a drone strike in Afghanistan has killed a top Pakistani Taliban leader who was responsible for planning the 2014 attack on a Pakistani school, one of the country's worst terror attacks.

A Pakistan military spokesman said Wednesday that the U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, telephoned his Pakistani counterpart, General Raheel Sharif and “confirmed death of terrorist Umar Narai through drone strike” in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.

Narai was wanted in Pakistan for masterminding the Taliban attack on an army-administered school in Peshawar in December 2014. Nearly 150 people, mostly young students, were massacred in what was condemned as one of the worst militant attacks in the country’s history.

The slain Taliban commander was also blamed for plotting the September 2015 deadly raid an Air Force base near Peshawar and the attack on a university not far from the city in January this year. Around 50 people were killed in the two attacks

A Pakistani security official requesting anonymity told VOA Islamabad welcomes Narai’s elimination, saying it shows that Pakistani militants fleeing security operations have taken refuge in Afghanistan.

On May 21, the U.S. military reported that a drone strike killed chief of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Mansoor in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Both Afghan and Pakistani officials accuse each other of sheltering militants involved in terrorist activities on their respective territory.

Authorities cite the long porous border dividing their countries for being unable to completely stop illegal movement on both sides.

On Wednesday, General Sharif chaired a meeting of his top commanders to discuss security along the Afghan border.

“To scrutinize cross border movement and ensure strict check on terrorist’s movement, the forum reviewed progress of measures being taken for effective border management,” an army statement said after the meeting.

Afghan and U.S. officials have lately increased pressure on Pakistan to stop Taliban and their allies, including the lethal Haqqani network, from using Pakistani soil for plotting insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.




source: voanews

David Cameron to resign

David Cameron to resign Wednesday as Theresa May to become British PM

London (CNN)British Prime Minister David Cameron is to resign Wednesday, paving the way for Home Secretary Theresa May to take the reins.

May was officially named Conservative Party leader and successor to Cameron "with immediate effect" Monday, said Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, a collection of Conservative members of Parliament key to electing the party leader. She will replace Cameron on Wednesday evening.

In remarks shortly after her leadership was affirmed, May said her priorities will be to administer Britain's exit from the European Union, a move approved by voters last month, to unite the country and to create a "strong, new, positive vision for the future," not just for the privileged few, but for everyone.

Cameron had already announced he would step down by October after failing to convince the country to remain in the EU in the divisive June 23 referendum that sent shockwaves through Britain's political establishment.

But Monday, May's only remaining rival to replace Cameron -- Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom -- pulled out of the race following controversy over comments she made about motherhood and leadership.

"Obviously, with these changes, we now don't need to have a prolonged period of transition. And so tomorrow I will chair my last Cabinet meeting. On Wednesday I will attend the House of Commons for Prime Minister's questions," Cameron told reporters Monday outside 10 Downing Street.

"And then after that I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation. So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening."

The vote between May and Leadsom was supposed to go to the wider Conservative Party of 150,000 people, but being the sole candidate, May sidestepped the party rule.

Cameron welcomed Leadsom's decision to drop out of the race and said he was confident May would steer the country in the right direction, calling her strong and competent, and offering her his full support.


source: CNN

Dallas Shooting Suspect

Dallas Shooting Suspect, Micah Johnson, ‘Upset at White People’

A military veteran who said his goal was to kill white police officers opened fire Thursday night in downtown Dallas, leaving five officers dead and seven wounded before the police killed him with a remote-controlled explosive delivered by a robot, officials said.

During a standoff that lasted for hours after the attack, the sniper claimed — apparently falsely — to have planted explosives in the area, and told police negotiators that “he was upset about Black Lives Matter,” the Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, said on Friday.

“He said he was upset about the recent police shootings,” Chief Brown said. “The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

The officers who were shot were patrolling a peaceful demonstration by thousands of people protesting the fatal shootings earlier in the week of black men by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana. The gunfire, starting just before 9 p.m., sent terrified marchers, including families with children, running for cover, while police officers ran the other way, guns drawn and toward the shooting, and returned fire. Two civilians were wounded by gunfire.

The police arrested three people, but there was some uncertainty about the number of gunmen. At first, officials said that multiple snipers had carried out a coordinated ambush of the officers — some of whom were shot in the back, the chief said — but later, a senior law enforcement official said it appeared that the suspect killed by the police, identified as Micah Johnson, 25, was the sole gunman.

Mr. Brown declined to identify the people who were arrested, or to say if there might have been others involved, either as snipers or in other roles. The gunman claimed he acted alone, he said, but “we’re not satisfied that we’ve exhausted every lead.”

Mr. Johnson, an Army Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan and lived in the Dallas area, apparently had no criminal record in Texas. Investigators have not turned up any evidence that Mr. Johnson, who was black, had ties to the Black Lives Matter movement or to other political groups.

The sequence of events this week tore at a nation already deeply divided over questions of policing and race, pivoting from anger and despair over shootings of black men by the police to officers being targeted in apparent retaliation. It dealt a blow both to law enforcement and to peaceful critics of the police, who have fended off claims that the outcry over police shootings foments violence and puts officers’ lives in danger.

“All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” Chief Brown said.

Just hours after President Obama, reacting to video recordings of the shootings in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn., spoke in anguished terms about the disparate treatment of the races by the criminal justice system, he felt compelled to speak again, this time about the people who attacked officers.

“We will learn more, undoubtedly, about their twisted motivations, but let’s be clear: there are no possible justifications for these attacks or any violence towards law enforcement,” he told reporters Friday morning in Warsaw, where he was attending a NATO summit meeting, after speaking by phone with Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas. “There has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who was in Washington, said: “After the events of this week, Americans across our country are feeling a sense of helplessness, of uncertainty and of fear. Now, these feelings are understandable and they are justified. But the answer must not be violence. The answer is never violence.”

“To our brothers and sisters who wear the badge, I want you to know that I am deeply grateful for the difficult and dangerous work that you do every day to keep our streets safe and our nation secure,” she said. To the protesters, she said, “Do not be discouraged by those who would use your lawful actions as a cover for their heinous violence.”

The attack appeared to be the deadliest for law enforcement officers in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

“Our profession is hurting,” Chief Brown said. “Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are not words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city.”

The shootings, only a few blocks from Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, transformed an emotional but peaceful rally into a scene of carnage and chaos, and they injected a volatile new dimension into the anguished debate over racial disparities in American criminal justice.

Bystanders captured extraordinary video of the shootout on downtown streets, with officers taking shelter behind patrol cars and pillars, and tending to their fallen comrades.

After Mr. Johnson was cornered on the second floor of a parking garage, negotiators spent hours trying to get him to surrender, Chief Brown said, but he “told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown.”

“The negotiations broke down, and we had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect,” the chief said. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.”

The three other suspects were a woman who was taken from the garage and two others who were taken in for questioning after a traffic stop, but they were not providing much information, the chief said.

“We just are not getting the cooperation we’d like, to know that answer of why, the motivation, who they are,” he said. They “planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could.”

The police said that four of the dead were Dallas police officers and that one was from the Dallas Area Rapid Transit force. The transit agency identified him as Brent Thompson, 43. He joined in 2009 and was the first DART officer to be killed in the line of duty.

Another of the officers killed was identified by his family, on social media, as Patrick Zamarripa. “Need prayers to get through this,” Mr. Zamarripa’s father, Rick Zamarripa, said in a Facebook post from Parkland Hospital on Friday.

Mr. Johnson served as a private in the Army Reserve from March 2009 to April 2015, according to records released by the Pentagon. He was listed as a carpentry and masonry specialist, assigned to the 420th Engineer Brigade, and served in Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014.

The F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting in the investigation.

Jane E. Bishkin, a Dallas lawyer who represents five of the wounded officers, said they were expected to recover, but that one of the five, a woman, had suffered a serious injury to her left arm and may be disabled as a result.

The shooting unfolded near one of the busiest parts of the city’s downtown, filled with hotels and restaurants as well as Dallas County government buildings. Videos of the scene circulated widely on social media. In many of them, gunshots could be heard ringing out against a city illuminated by flashing police lights. Teams of armed officers could be seen running through the area.

The are was on lockdown during the night, and remained off-limits to civilians through the day Friday, as investigators combed through a crime scene that stretched for blocks.

Chief Brown said it was too early in the investigation to say whether there was any connection between the gunman and the demonstration. He suggested that whoever was involved had some knowledge of the march route.

“How would you know to post up there?” he said. “So we’re leaving every motive on the table of how this happened and why this happened.” He added, “We have yet to determine whether or not there was some complicity with the planning of this, but we will be pursuing that.”

Jeff Hood, a minister who said he was one of the protest organizers, said he had seen two officers felled by gunfire.

“I grabbed my shirt because I was close enough, I thought I might have been shot,” he said. “I was screaming, `Run, run!’”

In one section of downtown, officers asked an African-American man wearing a bulletproof vest to walk toward them. The man slowly approached with his hands up, and a crowd of onlookers became angry and shouted and cursed at the police. An officer had his gun pointed at a black woman, and many in the crowd quickly began filming the scene with their cellphones. The tension eased as people in the crowd chanted, “Black lives matter.”

The shootings occurred after Mr. Obama, reacting with the same horror as many Americans to a video of a dying man in Minnesota who was shot by the police, implored the nation to confront the racial disparities in law enforcement while acknowledging the dangers that officers faced.

Mayor Rawlings said: “It is a heartbreaking morning to lose these four officers that proudly served our citizens. To say that our police officers put their life on the line every day is no hyperbole, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a reality.”


The protest was planned by Dominique R. Alexander, an ordained minister and the head of the Next Generation Action Network. He said that the organization “does not condone violence against any human being, and we condemn anyone who wants to commit violence.”

“I was right there when the shooting happened,” Mr. Alexander said.

source: nytimes

Minnesota police shooting

Aftermath of deadly Minnesota police shooting caught on video as protest grows

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. – A Minnesota officer fatally shot a man in a car with a woman and a child, an official said, and authorities are looking into whether the aftermath was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video, which shows a woman in a vehicle with a man whose shirt appears to be soaked in blood telling the camera "police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason."

St. Anthony Police interim police chief Jon Mangseth said the incident began when an officer pulled over a vehicle around 9 p.m. Wednesday in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb that Mangseth's department serves. Mangseth said he did not have details about the reason for the traffic stop, but that at some point shots were fired. The man was struck but no one else was injured, he said.

As word of the shooting and video spread, relatives of the man joined scores of people who gathered at the scene of the shooting and outside the hospital where the man died and identified him as Philando Castile of St. Paul, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school.

Speaking to CNN early Thursday, Castile's mother said she suspected she would never learn the whole truth about her son's death.

"I think he was just black in the wrong place," Valerie Castile said, adding that she had underlined to her children to that they must do what authorities tell them to do to survive. Police have not released details on the ethnicity or service record of the police officer involved but to say he has been placed on paid administrative leave.

"I know my son ... we know black people have been killed ... I always told them, whatever you do when you get stopped by police, comply, comply, comply."

Police use of force, particularly against minorities, has returned to the national spotlight since the video-recorded fatal shooting earlier this week of 37-year-old Alton Sterling by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday launched a civil rights investigation into the shooting, which took place after Sterling, who was black, scuffled with two white police officers outside a convenience store.

Castile's cousin, Antonio Johnson, told the Star Tribune that he believed that because Philando Castile was a black man driving in Falcon Heights, a largely middle-class suburb, he "was immediately criminally profiled and he lost his life over it tonight."

The site of the shooting in Falcon Heights is close to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and not far from a clutch of fields associated with the University of Minnesota's agricultural campus.

Late Wednesday, protesters moved to the governor's mansion in nearby St. Paul, where around 200 people chanted and demanded action from Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. By daybreak Thursday, around 50 protesters remained outside the mansion despite a light rain.

The video posted Wednesday night on Facebook Live appears to show the aftermath of a shooting like the one described by Mangseth. It shows the woman in a car next to a bloodied man quietly slumped in a seat. The woman describes being pulled over for a "busted tail light" and her boyfriend being shot as he told the officer that he was carrying a pistol and was licensed. A clearly distraught person who appears to be an armed police officer stands at the car's window, telling the woman to keep her hands where they are and intermittently swearing.

The Associated Press couldn't immediately verify the authenticity of the video. Mangseth said he was "made aware there was a livestream on Facebook" but that he had not yet seen the video and didn't know anything about its contents.

The woman in the video says the man she identified as her boyfriend was reaching for his ID and wallet when the officer shot him. Police said in a statement that a handgun was recovered from the scene.

The officer tells her to keep her hands up and says: "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out."

"You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir," the woman responds.

The video goes on to show the woman exiting the car and being handcuffed. A young girl can be seen and is heard saying at one point, "I'm scared, Mommy."

The woman describes being put in the back seat of the police car and says, "The police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason."

Clarence Castile spoke to the Star Tribune from the Hennepin County Medical Center, where he said his nephew died minutes after arriving.

He said Philando Castile had worked in the J.J. Hill school cafeteria for 12 to 15 years, "cooking for the little kids." He said his nephew was "a good kid" who grew up in St. Paul.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called to investigate, Mangseth said. A spokesman for that agency couldn't immediately be reached.

The president of the Minneapolis NAACP, Nekima Levy-Pounds, told the crowd she has no faith in the system in the wake of this and other police shootings of black men, including last year's killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. Levy-Pounds was a leading voice during the protests outside a police station that followed Clark's death, as well as during a renewed wave of protests after prosecutors decided not to charge the officers involved.

"I'm tired of the laws and policies on the books being used to justify murder," Levy-Pounds, a civil rights attorney, told the crowd as rain began to fall. "This is completely unacceptable. Somebody say, `Enough is Enough."'



source: foxnews

Abner Mikva, ex-congressman,dies at 90

Abner Mikva, ex-congressman, judge from Illinois, dies at 90

FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2014, file photo, President Barack Obama awards former Illinois Rep. Abner Mikva the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Mikva, a former congressman, Illinois legislator, federal appellate judge and presidential adviser, died Monday, July 4, 2016. He was 90 years old. (Jacquelyn Martin, File/Associated Press)

CHICAGO — Abner Mikva, a liberal stalwart from Illinois who served in all three branches of the federal government, mentored a young Barack Obama and famously learned firsthand the brazen nature of Chicago’s political machine, has died.

The 90-year-old died of bladder cancer Monday at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Steven Cohen, who is married to Mikva’s oldest of three daughters, told The Associated Press.

Counterterrorism operations under Obama

White House releases its count of civilian deaths in counterterrorism operations under Obama

In this 2010 photo, an unmanned U.S. Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The United States has inadvertently killed between 64 and 116 civilians in drone and other lethal air attacks against terrorism suspects in non-war zones, the Obama administration said Friday.

In releasing only aggregate figures that did not include when or where the strikes occurred, the administration shielded those claims from meaningful public scrutiny, even as it sought to bolster its own assertions about the accuracy and effectiveness of the operations.

Independent groups, whose own tracking of civilian deaths have produced far higher numbers, said they appreciated the administration’s effort. But they said it fell far short of President Obama’s repeated promises of greater transparency about his administration’s extraordinary reliance on armed drones in overseas counterterrorist operations.

The unintentional deaths, according to previously unreleased administration figures, came in a total of 473 CIA and military counterterrorism strikes between 2009 and the end of 2015. Those attacks, it said, killed between 2,372 and 2,581 “combatants” in countries where the United States is not at war.

Although it did not name the countries, they include Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The figures do not include deaths in ground operations, such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden and four others in Pakistan in 2011, or operations in the administration-designated war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The release was accompanied by an executive order, signed by Obama, that would require future presidents — unless he or she supplanted or amended it with an order of their own — to annually release similar lists. It also says that the families of civilians killed by the United States should receive condolence payments. And it orders U.S. government agencies to consult with non-government groups and conduct regular reviews of casualty trend lines.

The order is “a very deliberate attempt to ensure that the architecture . . . is durable, sustainable and lasting well beyond the next seven months or so,” said one of four senior administration officials who jointly briefed reporters on conditions of anonymity set by the White House.

“To undo it,” the official said, “any successor administration would need to take an affirmative action,” an indication of expectations that the use of drone killings will continue under Obama’s successor. Both the executive order and the casualty statistics, this official said, are also intended to “set a positive example” for other countries using drone technology for targeted killings.

Release of the non-combatant casualty counts provoked a flood of reaction from groups who questioned the value of the numbers.

“Unless details are provided on specific incidents, it’s not possible to determine if individuals killed were civilians, and thus whether the U.S. is complying with its own policy and with international law,’ said Laura Pitter, senior U.S. national security counsel at Human Rights Watch.

In speeches in 2013 and 2016, President Obama stressed that the U.S. tries to avoid civilian deaths as a result of drone strikes – but doesn't always succeed. (The Washington Post)

The New America Foundation and the Long War Journal, which have tracked drone strikes since the George W. Bush administration, each put the number of civilians killed under the current administration at just over 200. A third group, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, says the number is far higher, estimating that as many as 325 civilians have died in U.S. counterterrorism operations since Obama took office.

The administration’s figures were cast as a rebuke to those claims, which U.S. officials have said are often inflated by erroneous press reports, terrorist propaganda, or even efforts by Pakistan and Yemen to pass off their own military miscues as U.S. drone strikes.

Officials said the administration took non-government assessments into account, as well as reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and others that may have more access on the ground to what the government described as “non-permissive” environments.

But the office of the Director of National Intelligence, in a statement accompanying the newly released figures, said its numbers were better because it had access to more and better information before, during and after a strike, including “video operations, human sources and assets, signals intelligence, geospatial intelligence, [and] accounts from local officials on the ground,” as well as “open source reporting.”

Officials responded somewhat testily to questions about how outsiders could judge the veracity of the data. “We didn’t have to do this in the first place,” said one. “We do believe we’re trying to go the extra mile here.”

The administration’s figures were largely drawn from post-strike analyses done by the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command, both of which have conducted drone strikes and, in the case of the military, attacks by manned aircraft. Although even critics acknowledge these entities have become more accurate in their use of armed drones but say they nevertheless have institutional incentives to undercount the number of civilians they kill.

Administration officials sharply denied allegations that they indiscriminately target “military-aged males” and then label them terrorists for counting purposes. But they acknowledged the continuing use of so-called “signature strikes,” in which they may not know the identities of those they target.

“An individual may be lawfully targeted if they are formally or functionally a member of an armed group with which we are engaged in an armed conflict,” a senior official said. Functional membership, another official said, includes the extent to which “the individual performs functions to the benefit of a particular terrorist group that are analogous to those traditionally performed” by a military organization.

But “there’s no hard and fast rule that anyone killed in a particular strike within X many feet of a known combatant is therefore a combatant.” This official and others acknowledge the possibility of mistakes, which they said accounts for the range of numbers for both civilians and militants killed.

Even with the highest standards, one official said, “you’re not always right, tragically.” The lower number of 64 civilians killed counts those conclusively determined to be non-combatants; the higher number of 116 includes those whose status remained in doubt.

Issuance of the casualty figures and executive order completes a process Obama began in May 2013, when he issued a still-secret document called the Presidential Policy Guidance, or PPG, for military actions “outside areas of active hostilities.

The guidance said that “lethal force will be used only to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons” when capture is not feasible, according to a public summary released at the time. Such force was to be used only when there was a “near certainty” that “the terrorist target is present” and that “non-combatants will not be injured or killed.”

The administration agreed earlier this year, as part of a court case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, to release a redacted version of the PPG document. That release has been delayed by ongoing discussions between the court and the administration over what portions can be legitimately blacked out.

To ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, the limits on information released Friday were part of a long-standing pattern.

“While we welcome today’s disclosures, transparency about the drone campaign should not be a matter of executive grace,” he said. “The executive branch should not be able to dictate the scope of the public’s ‘right to know.’ It should not be up to executive officials alone to decide what the public knows about the killings they’ve authorized.”



source: Washington post

FBI recommendations on Clinton emails

Loretta Lynch to accept DOJ, FBI recommendations on Clinton emails

(CNN)Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept the "determinations and findings" of the FBI and career prosecutors who are investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, a Justice Department official said Friday.

Lynch is expected to discuss her handling of the case at an event Friday morning in Aspen, Colorado.
The news of Lynch's decision was first reported by The New York Times.
The assurances from the official follow criticism stemming from a private meeting Lynch had with former President Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport earlier this week.
Clinton joined Lynch aboard her plane while both were on the tarmac. Lynch said the pair mostly talked about grandchildren and a little golf.

But the meeting itself instantly drew criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats, who said that just the decision for the two to interact was a mistake while the Justice Department is conducting an investigation of Clinton's private email server.

The No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, called for a special counsel to take over the investigation into the private server, citing the appearance of impropriety.

"This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that's why a special counsel is needed now more than ever," Cornyn said in a statement.

The conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch that has led the charge in suing for access to Hillary Clinton's email records also jumped on the news, calling for an investigation into what transpired between Lynch and Clinton.

"Attorney General Lynch's meeting with President Clinton creates the appearance of a violation of law, ethical standards and good judgment," the group said in a statement. "Attorney General Lynch's decision to breach the well-defined ethical standards of the Department of Justice and the American legal profession is an outrageous abuse of the public's trust."

And Democratic Sen. Chris Coons also joined the fray, expressing confidence in Lynch's objectivity but decrying the meeting, even if innocuous, as sending the wrong signal.

"I think she should have said, 'Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime, but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election is over, I'd welcome your advice,'" Coons told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day" Thursday.

The White House has maintained that the Justice Department is keeping politics out of the investigation, which is happening at the same time as Hillary Clinton's run for office.

Without commenting directly on Lynch's meeting, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest reiterated Thursday that President Barack Obama is committed to avoiding "political interference" in Department of Justice investigations, and said Lynch understands investigations should be "conducted free of political influence and consistent with the facts."

CNN's Eli Watkins contributed to this report.

source: CNN