Islamic State Grows Stronger in Libya | Jailed journalist criticises Azerbaijan corruption as European Games begin by Associated Press | Germany drops probe into U.S. spying on Merkel | U.S. and Russia jets come within 10 feet from crashing | What can US trigger-happy cops learn from Britain's gunless police? - Americas - World | Leftist Mayors Surge Into Power in Spain
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Islamic State Grows Stronger in Libya
Jailed journalist criticises Azerbaijan corruption as European Games begin by Associated Press
Jailed dissident criticizes Azerbaijan - seattlepi.com
A former member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot has been arrested in Moscow after staging a brief performance protest in support of women prisoners.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, along with activist Katya Nenasheva, dressed as prisoners and attempted to sew a Russian flag before being dragged away.
Tolokonnikova spent 21 months in jail after a Pussy Riot protest against Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.
The human rights campaigner staged her new protest on Russia's national day.
While under arrest on Friday she posted messages on Facebook (in Russian) saying she wanted to draw attention to the struggles of female prisoners, both while incarcerated and once released.
She said she planned to dress as a prisoner for 30 days.
Russian media reports said the two women had been detained for holding an "unsanctioned rally" in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square - the site of mass anti-government protests that began in 2011.
Since being released last year, Tolokonnikova has focused on campaigning around the world against President Vladimir Putin.
She was jailed along with fellow Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, in August 2012 after being convicted of hooliganism.
They were among five members of the radical group to stage an obscenity-laced "punk prayer" in Moscow's biggest cathedral.
The act was seen as blasphemous by many Russians, and was condemned by the Orthodox Church.
Samutsevich was freed on probation in October 2012, but Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina remained in jail until their release in December 2013.
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 seattlepi.com |
Jailed dissident criticizes Azerbaijan
seattlepi.com MOSCOW (AP) — A jailed journalist has written a letter criticizing Azerbaijan for corruption and human rights violations as the first European Games get underway in the capital, Baku. Khadija Ismayilova was imprisoned last year after investigating corruption ... and more » |
EU Plans To Push Central Asian States Harder On Human Rights by noreply@rferl.org (Rikard Jozwiak)
The European Union plans to step up efforts to address "serious challenges to human rights" in Central Asia, according to a strategy document seen by RFE/RL.
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The machine may eventually become a fully robotic vehicle that could operate autonomously on the battlefield, its designers say.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's top public prosecutor closed a year-long investigation into the suspected tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone by U.S. spies, saying there was a lack of evidence that would stand up in court.
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - At least nine fighters were killed in clashes on Friday between Islamic State and another Islamist force in the eastern Libyan city of Derna, a source in one group said.
Suspected Chinese hackers targeted the Office of Personnel Management, which deals with federal employee data in the US.
Lasting solutions don’t just change statistics, they change the culture that leads to assault
What if rape reduction programs are actually just redirecting assault? A new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that an anti-sexual assault program directed at first year female students in three Canadian colleges lowered women’s risk of being raped by half. For the women who took this course, that kind of reduction is amazing. But what about those who didn’t?
Jaclyn Friedman, former Impact self defense instructor and author of What You Really, Really Want, noted that the chances of permanently deterring a rapist is very low.
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Stéphane Richard, the executive, said his comments were “distorted and misunderstood” as part of a boycott movement targeting companies that operate in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
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A century and a half after his birth, the influence of WB Yeats is greater than ever. But how much do you know about the Nobel laureate's life and work? Find out with our anniversary quiz Continue reading...
ANKARA (Reuters) - The leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party on Friday accused figures within the state of links to violence in the largely Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir this week, which left four dead.
A Russian fighter jet, flying at high speed, came within 10 feet of a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the Black Sea late last month, several U.S. officials told CNN Thursday.
Germany Ends Probe of NSA Monitoringby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
German federal prosecutors say they have closed a year-long probe into the alleged wiretapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone by the U.S. National Security Agency. The German chief prosecutor's office announced Friday that the matter had been closed because investigators could not find evidence that could be legally proven in court. Allegations that the NSA spied on its European allies emerged in late 2013 in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden....
The head of French telecom giant Orange tells Israel's PM he deeply regrets the controversy following comments indicating he wanted to pull out of Israel.
Islamic State Grows Stronger in Libyaby webdesk@voanews.com (Jamie Dettmer)
Libyan militiamen battling the Islamic State’s affiliate in their country say most of the jihadi fighters are not Libyans — the bulk of them, they say, come from neighboring North African nations. But they warn the jihadis are rapidly growing in strength and are being directed by highly experienced commanders. The Islamic State’s new affiliate in Libya last month overran the coastal city of Sirte, the hometown of deposed Libyan strongman Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who was ousted in a...
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Then there is the rigorous selection process — an unforgiving complement of fitness tests, psychological appraisals and marksmanship exams. Finally, there is the training, which involves endless drilling on even the most routine scenarios.
“They rehearse those situations like a SEAL team trying to get into Osama bin Laden’s compound,” Cambridge University criminologist Lawrence Sherman said.
Yet, in a country where the vast majority of police officers patrol with batons and pepper spray, the elite cadre of British cops who are entrusted with guns almost never use them. Police in Britain have fatally shot two people in the past three years.
That’s less than the average number of people shot and killed by police every day in the United States over the first five months of 2015, according to a Washington Post analysis.
As the United States reckons with that toll — and with the constant drip of videos showing the questionable use of force by officers — lightly armed Britain might seem an unorthodox place to look for solutions. But experts say the way British bobbies are trained, commanded and vigorously scrutinized may offer US police forces a useful blueprint for bringing down the rate of deadly violence and defusing some of the burning tension felt in cities from coast to coast.
Of course, British and US police are patrolling different societies. The United States has some of the world’s loosest gun laws and some of the highest rates of gun ownership.
(Getty) Britain is the opposite, with handguns and assault rifles effectively banned.
That inherently changes the way police officers do their jobs.
Phil Palmer was a British police officer for 15 years and was stabbed twice in the line of duty.
“But in all my time, I never expected to have to deal with anyone with a firearm,” he said.
During a year in the United States teaching and working with New York City police officers, he quickly realised that they had a very different expectation.
“They were very professional. But every time they got out of their car to talk to someone, their hand would hover over the gun,” said Palmer, now the co-director of the Institute of Criminal Justice Research at Britain’s University of Southampton. “Police in America are more aggressive, and I think that’s because they have to be.”
“If you fired the kind of rounds we did, you’d be bankrupt,” said Williams, who is now chief executive of the Police Firearms Officers Association. “We can put a lot of effort into the ones who are armed, because there aren’t that many.” (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) But there are also enough similarities that the British model carries special relevance. Like the United States, Britain is large, urbanized, democratic and diverse. Police have to reckon with gang violence, organized crime and Islamist extremists, all amid persistent allegations that they unfairly target minority communities.
That puts Britain in a different class than the handful of other nations that largely forgo firearms when policing, including New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland and Norway.
Few here would argue that the United States should adopt Britain’s nearly firearms-free approach. But as increasingly horrified British officers and commanders have watched videos of American police officers firing on civilians, they say they hope that some of their strategies and practices can be translated across the Atlantic.
Sir Peter Fahy, chief of the Greater Manchester Police, commands 6,700 officers — just 209 of whom are armed. Those authorized to carry guns, he said, face extremely tight protocols governing when they can be deployed and under what circumstances they can fire. Shooting at moving vehicles, at people brandishing knives and at suspects fleeing a scene are all strictly forbidden except under extreme circumstances.
Officers must serve for years before they can apply to carry a gun, and the selection of those deemed worthy is intensely competitive. (Getty) “It’s very controlled,” he said. “There’s a huge emphasis on human rights, a huge emphasis on proportionality, a huge emphasis on considering every other option.”
All officers, he said, are taught to back away from any situation that might otherwise escalate and to not feel that they have to “win” every confrontation.
“I constantly remind our officers that their best weapon is their mouth,” he said. “Your first consideration is, ‘Can you talk this through? Can you buy yourself time?’ ”
That mantra helps explain why, across England and Wales over the past decade, there has been an average of only five incidents a year in which police have opened fire.
(AP) So, too, does the stringent screening process. Officers must serve for years before they can apply to carry a gun, and the selection of those deemed worthy is intensely competitive.
When Mark Williams applied to be a firearms officer in 1995, he was among a group of 16 who started the grueling regimen of physical and psychological trials. Three made it.
Williams was among them, but that wasn’t the end of the testing. He and his fellow firearms officers faced regular drills challenging them to find creative ways out of confrontations and spent long nights at the shooting range to upgrade their marksmanship.
“If you fired the kind of rounds we did, you’d be bankrupt,” said Williams, who is now chief executive of the Police Firearms Officers Association. “We can put a lot of effort into the ones who are armed, because there aren’t that many.”
Every police killing here is subject to an independent inquiry, and even nonfatal shootings are meticulously tracked and evaluated. (Getty) Some aspects of British policing are more easily transferrable. Sherman, the Cambridge criminologist, recently told a White House task force that the United States should create a national college of policing, that states should set up police inspectors general to provide oversight and that local police forces should merge to achieve a minimum standard of 100 officers per department. All are steps, he said, that have worked in Britain.
Of course, police shootings here can still arouse intense debate. One of the most prominent came in 2005, when a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, was mistakenly identified as a would-be suicide bomber and shot nine times in the head by elite officers in a Tube station in London.
Prosecutors chose not to charge anyone with his killing, a decision his family is challenging this week at the European Court of Human Rights.
Mark Duggan, who was killed by police in 2011 In 2011, police shot dead a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, prompting several nights of riots across London. An inquest later ruled the killing had been lawful because police had ample reason to believe that Duggan was armed. But rights groups say the killing, and others like it, raise questions about police practices that echo concerns in the United States.
“They may well be fewer here, but they raise similar issues,” said Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest, an advocacy group.
Still, there is little doubt that Britain has a more uniform and transparent process for reviewing such cases.
Every police killing here is subject to an independent inquiry, and even nonfatal shootings are meticulously tracked and evaluated.
Read more: Police hunt men armed with asparagus
US police kill unarmed man through car window
Thousands of armed police dispatched to routine incidents
Sir Denis O’Connor, a former police chief who later served as a royally appointed independent overseer of British police work, said cops here take seriously the idea of “policing by consent.” They see themselves as working for the public, he said, rather than for the state itself.
They also know that someone is always looking over their shoulder.
“The cops here tend to fear getting it wrong and being criticized by a judge,” he said. “Cops in the U.S. fear getting shot. Those are two very different worlds.”
Copyright: Washington Post
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UK's fast-track asylum system ruled unlawfulby Press Association
Government appeal system for processing asylum seekers’ applications, which has been in use for a decade, must be quashed, high court rules
A fast-track immigration appeals procedure under which thousands of asylum seekers have been locked up each year has been declared unlawful by the high court.
Mr Justice Nichol said the process under which rejected asylum seekers arriving in Britain are detained and given seven days to appeal
Photographer Alex Potter captures images of neighbors and families searching for survivors after airstrikes hit in the old city of Sanaa in Yemen.
 NBCNews.com |
Twitter's chief steps down
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European Council President Donald Tusk said the political crackdown in Venezuela had been a big topic behind closed doors of a recent summit between European and Latin American leaders earlier this week.
Customers are seen running for their lives from the explosion at a cafe in Australia, which claimed the life of the manageress.
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A new wave of leftist leaders is taking office in city halls across Spain on Saturday, replacing career politicians hobbled by economic crises and corruption scandals.
US troops at Taqaddum to help Iraqis plan fight for Ramadi
Reuters Canada WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has said American forces being sent to a new operations center in the heart of the war against Islamic State will not engage in combat, but they will do almost everything but fight to support the beleaguered ... and more » |
Governor: "Several people" who may have had role in killers' prison escape being interrogated;report: prison worker to be charged as accomplice
The future of a key part of the government's system to remove failed asylum seekers is in doubt after the High Court rules it is contrary to law.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and coalition forces conducted 13 air strikes targeting Islamic State in Iraq on Thursday, as well as 10 strikes against the militant group in Syria, the U.S. military said.
 USA TODAY |
Why the British offered the US a copy of the Magna Carta during WWII
USA TODAY The Magna Carta , which turns 800 years old on Monday, established the principle that no man was above the law, not even the king. The charter is revered as a cornerstone of democracy, with famous principles like the right to justice and a fair trial stemming ... Magna Carta versus the French: Key pointsTelegraph.co.uk British royals return to Runnymede, where Magna Carta sealed 800 years agoReuters India Magna Carta at 800The Economist ChronicleLive -Sleaford Today all 119 news articles » |
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• Khadija Ismayilova says there is a ‘human rights crisis’ in country
• ‘Things have never been worse,’ she says in letter smuggled out of prison
• ‘Things have never been worse,’ she says in letter smuggled out of prison
A journalist jailed in Azerbaijan has criticised the country for corruption and human rights violations on the day the first European Games get under way in the capital, Baku.
Khadija Ismayilova was imprisoned last year after investigating corruption allegedly involving President Ilham Aliyev. Activists say the jailing was part of a wider crackdown on opposition in thelead-up to the event, the continent’s version of the Olympics.
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A former member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot is arrested in Moscow after a brief protest in support of women prisoners.
The body of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and close associate of Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, has reportedly been located after it went missing at Baghdad International Airport.
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In Prague, activists staged a demonstration to draw attention to human rights violations in Azerbaijan – where the European Games have begun. They held a mock boxing match in which a civil society activist was about to defeat a policeman – but then reinforcements arrived. The commentator said this was in breach of the Olympic spirit. Azerbaijan has been widely criticized for a harsh crackdown in the run up to the games. Dozens of dissidents and journalists are being held in Azerbaijani jails, including RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova.
ABU DHABI (Reuters) - A Saudi citizen was killed and another injured near the Yemen border on Friday by shelling from forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Houthi rebels, Saudi civil defense forces said.
Members of the Azov Brigade train in Kulykivske, Ukraine, on March 7.(Photo: Brendan Hoffman for USA TODAY)
MARIUPOL, — A volunteer brigade with self-proclaimed Nazis fighting alongside government troops against Russian-backed separatists is proving to be a mixed blessing to its cause.
Though the 900-member Azov Brigade adds needed manpower to repulse the rebels, members who say they are Nazis are sparking controversy, and complaints of abuses against civilians have turned some residents against them.
A drill sergeant who would identify himself only as Alex wore a patch depicting Thor's Hammer, an ancient Norse symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, according to the .
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