Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalArizona man sentenced for leaving granddaughter in desert with loaded gun
An Arizona man was sentenced to six months in jail for abandoning his five-year-old granddaughter in the desert and instructing her to 'shoot any bad guys,' prosecutors said.
Paul Armand Rater, 54, of Buckeye, pleaded guilty to one count of felony child abuse under a plea agreement stemming from the November 2015 incident, county Attorney Bill Montgomery said.
The girl was reported missing by family members four hours after Rater took her for a ride in his newpickup truck, authorities said.
She was found holding a .45-caliber pistol during a search of the area by her mother and an off-duty firefighter,court records said.
She told sheriff's detectives that she had been told to 'shoot any bad guys' and added: 'I don't know why papa left me.'
Rater was located at a store and he admitted to leaving the girl under a tree with his gun after his vehicle apparently had broken down and he left to seek help.
But he then proceeded to go into an establishment where he had drinks and ate a cheeseburger, court records showed.
'There still has been no satisfactory explanation for why that happened,' Montgomery said at a news conference on Wednesday. 'I can't tell you why.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3585692/Arizona-grandfather-jailed-leaving-5-year-old-desert-gun.html
Am I the only one who thinks this was an attempted murder and six months is WAY too short?
Court Papers Reveal Qaeda Operative’s Work as Trainer and Bomb Expert
WASHINGTON — The Qaeda bomb-making instructor carefully demonstrated for his student how to mix the chemicals to make a volatile powder, then supervised a test explosion and added a sinister final tip: tape bolts around the homemade bomb to produce lethal shrapnel.
The explosive expert’s identity, revealed by a Qaeda operative facing sentencing next week, came as a surprise: He was Anwar al-Awlaki, the American imam who had joined Al Qaeda in Yemen and become the terrorist network’s leading English-language propagandist.
Mr. Awlaki had long been known for public oratory on behalf of Al Qaeda before he was killed in a drone strike in 2011 on President Obama’s orders, making him the first American citizen killed without criminal charges or trial in the campaign against terrorism.
But new court filings in New York offer the most detailed account yet of a hidden side of Mr. Awlaki’s work inside Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen — as a hands-on trainer who taught recruits how to make bombs, gave them money for missions and offered suggestions about how to carry out suicide attacks.
The papers, part of a sentencing memorandum submitted by the government, were filed Tuesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan in the case of Mr. Awlaki’s former bomb-making student, Minh Quang Pham, a Vietnamese-British convert to Islam. He has pleaded guilty to three terrorism-related counts and is to be sentenced Monday.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-qaeda.html?referer=
Remember the good old days when DUers used to argue he had nothing to do with AQ and was completely innocent?
These West Point cadets are being investigated, mostly for being black
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York is investigating a photo showing 16 black female cadets in uniform with their fists raised in a salute that critics are calling a gesture of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, the Army Times reports.
"We can confirm that the cadets in this photo are members of the U.S. Military Academy's Class of 2016," West Point’s director of public affairs, Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, said in a statement. "Academy officials are conducting an inquiry into the matter."
According to the Army Times, not many details are known about the photo, although it has since been shared wildly in military circles, along with the claim that the women are supporting BLM. Critics are reportedly concerned that the photo violates the Department of Defense Directive 1344.10, which cautions against "partisan political activity" when in uniform.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/05/united_states_military_academy_at_west_point_investigates_photo_of_black.html?
Cops Tried To Memory-Hole Hasidic Jews' Beating Of Black Man In Williamsburg
Police seem to have tried to deep-six an investigation into the brutal beatdown of a gay black man in Williamsburg, allegedly by Hasidic Jewish neighborhood watch members, and only reopened the case after the victim's mother made a fuss in the media. The Daily News reports that within a day of the December 2013 attack on then-fashion student Taj Patterson that left him with a broken eye socket and blind in one eye, the NYPD had marked the case a misdemeanor assault and labeled the case closed, with no arrests made.
Patterson was walking home along Flushing Avenue early in the morning when a group of men pounced on him, according to prosecutors. Five men accused him of damaging cars in the area and surrounded him, then were joined by another 10 people, and when Patterson tried to flee, they held him down and kicked and punched him, prosecutors allege.
The pummeling only ceased when a bus driver pulled over and started to take photos.
"That wasn’t a misdemeanor," the driver told the News.
He continued:
"They were actually stomping and kicking him. One of his eyes was closed and so swollen. He was saying, 'My eye. I can’t see.'"
Somehow, the initial police report only mentioned one attacker, and called Patterson, "highly intoxicated, uncooperative and incoherent," according to the tabloid.
The NYPD wouldn't discuss the News's findings.
http://gothamist.com/2016/05/06/taj_patterson_coverup.php
Shootings reported at Westfield Montgomery Mall, Giant grocery; at least 3 injured
Source: WJLA-TV//ABC 7
BETHESDA, Md. (WJLA) - Two men and one woman were injured in a shooting at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda Friday morning, according to police.
Montgomery County Police responded to 7101 Democracy Blvd. at approximately 11:30 a.m.
A second shooting was reported shortly after the first at a Giant grocery store located in the 13700 block of Connecticut Avenue at approximately 11:50 a.m.
There was speculation that the suspect in both of the shootings was 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil, who was already wanted in connection with the shooting death of his estranged wife Gladys Tordil Thursday, sources told ABC7.
Nearby Walter Johnson High School, Tilden Middle School and Bells Mill Elementary were all on "shelter in place" status while the incidents were under investigation.
The condition of the victims was not yet known.
Read more: http://wjla.com/news/crime/report-shooting-at-westfield-montgomery-mall-in-bethesda
Vladimir Putin’s Newest Target: Children
Russia’s transparency is gone. Pro-Putin radicals now attack independent journalists, famous intellectuals, politicians, and civil society activists, and the violence remains unpunished.
On Thursday, dozens of nationalists wearing ribbons of Saint George poured a bottle of green disinfectant over the face of internationally acclaimed novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The well-organized attackers cursed high school children and their teachers—visitors to Moscow who arrived from Russia’s regions to participate in a history contest devoted to memories of Stalin’s political repression.
One of the contest’s jury members, Irina Yasina, witnessed the attacks. The wheelchair-bound Yasina said that the radical activists scared her and the students she was working with. “Police did not stop the criminals, that means the state approves of this shameful, ugly attacks on children and women,” Yasina told The Daily Beast. “Russia is closing, withdrawing into some brutal self-isolated world, where young people do not want to remember their own history,” she said.
One part of the country, the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, has already closed its doors for outside observers. Moscow reporters described the republic as “hell,” where locals suffer constant abductions and arrests but can find no sympathy or support from the Russian authorities. A dark new trend is the abduction of Chechen intellectuals who have a different opinion from the republic’s authoritarian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. The most recent cases include a university professor, a well-known poet, and two book publishers.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/03/vladimir-putin-s-newest-target-children.html
Can't wait to read Snowden's next hot take about this in the Guardian... Yeah, right...
Have at it, Snowdenistas...
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