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Tag: Political issues

  • Mexican congress approves keeping military in police work

    Mexican congress approves keeping military in police work

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    MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Congress has approved a constitutional reform that allows the armed forces to continue performing domestic law enforcement duties through 2028.

    Putting soldiers on the streets to fight crime was long viewed as a stopgap measure to fight drug gang violence, and legislators had previously said civilian police should take over those duties by 2024.

    But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador supports relying on the military indefinitely because he views the armed forces as more honest. The president has given the military more responsibilities than any Mexican leader in recent memory.

    The reform backed by López Obrador passed the lower house late Wednesday, and must still be approved by a majority of Mexico’s 32 state legislatures.

    Most experts agree that Mexico needs better-paid, trained and equipped civilian police. The army and marines were called in to aid local police forces in 2006 in fighting the country’s well-armed drug cartels. Mexico’s state and municipal police are often corrupt, poorly trained and unprofessional.

    But López Obrador has relied almost exclusively on the military for law enforcement. He eliminated the civilian federal police and created the National Guard, which he now wants to hand over completely to the Defense Department.

    López Obrador has relied on the armed forces for everything from building infrastructure projects to running airports and trains.

    The reform extending the military mandate also promises to restore some funding to improve state and local police forces, which López Obrador cut soon after he took office in December 2018.

    However, new measure — which was already approved by the Senate — does not specify how much funding will be provided to improve civilian police other than saying it cannot be less than the annual increase in funding given to the military and National Guard.

    In fact, under a bill passed this week by the lower house, much of that funding would come from the government confiscating domestic bank accounts if they have laid untouched for six years or more.

    But on Thursday, López Obrador said he opposed giving even that money to police, saying “it should be for disabled people, the elderly, health care.”

    Starved for money, many local police forces are in a precarious state, with ill-paid cops working 24-hour shifts and having to buy their own equipment or uniforms.

    “We have seen in the south, southeast of Mexico a lot of them don’t even wear uniforms; they wear a white T-shirt and boots they have to buy themselves,” said Magda Ramírez, a researcher at the civic group Mexico Evalua.

    “There isn’t funding even to buy indispensable things like bulletproof vests or equipment,” she noted. Even in better-funded police departments — and there are some, especially in northern Mexico — police officers often must fix their own patrol vehicles.

    “Okay, maybe you have a uniform and a bulletproof vest, but you are fixing your own patrol car. You’re a policeman, not a mechanic,” Ramírez said.

    Critics note the military is not trained for police work and does little investigation. The armed forces have been accused of human rights violations while performing law enforcement duties.

    But polls have found most Mexicans trust the military more than local police and want the army and navy to continue in law enforcement tasks. That is not surprising, given the poor state of most of the police forces they have seen; but most Mexicans have never been given the choice between good, efficient police and soldiers.

    The problems with law enforcement in Mexico are unlikely to be solved by the army or the militarized National Guard, said security expert Alejandro Hope.

    “Crimes aren’t reported. When they are reported, they aren’t investigated. When they are investigated, they aren’t prosecuted properly,” said Hope, noting that none of that will be solved by “a military force that carries out patrols, but doesn’t investigate.”

    For example, the National Guard has about 118,000 officers and the Mexican army and navy have about 140,000 deployable troops. “There are 400,000 local police: That is where the efforts should be concentrated,” Hope said.

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  • South Carolina judge upholds activist’s 4-year prison term

    South Carolina judge upholds activist’s 4-year prison term

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    COLUMBIA, S.C. — A pregnant Black activist serving four years in prison over comments she made to police during racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 will not receive a lesser sentence, a judge in South Carolina has ruled.

    A jury this spring found Brittany Martin, 34, of Sumter, South Carolina, guilty of breaching the peace in a high and aggravated manner. Martin’s attorneys pushed for the sentence to be reconsidered and expressed concern about her pregnancy and health. Racial justice groups also got involved.

    In an Oct. 5 order, Judge R. Kirk Griffin pointed to Martin’s prior criminal convictions that he said contributed to her original sentence.

    In November 2020, an Iowa judge sentenced Martin to probation for leaving the scene of an injury and willfully causing bodily harm after her teenage son accused her of purposely hitting him with her SUV and driving away. Griffin also noted previous convictions across multiple states for shoplifting, public disorderly conduct and possession of a short-barreled shotgun.

    Sumter County Assistant Solicitor Bronwyn McElveen said in a September filing that Martin has been on probation at least six times.

    “Probation has not been a deterrent to further criminal activities for the Defendant,” Griffin wrote in his order. “An active prison sentence was appropriate in this instance.”

    Breach of the peace is a misdemeanor charge in South Carolina punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment when elevated to a “high and aggravated manner.”

    Police body camera recordings presented in court and shared with the Associated Press show Martin addressing police officers during multiple days of demonstrations.

    “Some of us gon’ be hurting. And some of y’all gon’ be hurting,” Martin told officers in one video. “We ready to die for this. We tired of it. You better be ready to die for the blue. I’m ready to die for the Black.”

    McElveen also said in the filing that Martin’s actions prompted the city to impose a curfew and a local business lost profits because it had to close early.

    The jury in May acquitted Martin of inciting a riot and reached no verdict on pending charges that she threatened public officials’ lives.

    Martin’s lawyers argued that the sentence was inconsistent with similar cases in South Carolina and stiff compared to those doled out for Jan. 6 rioters. In a Wednesday statement, Bakari Sellers, her attorney and a former state lawmaker, said four years is “excessive” and that he intends to appeal.

    Griffin said it was difficult to compare federal convictions from the Jan. 6 riots and the specifics of the case.

    “The sentence in this case was based on the crime committed, the nature and classification of the offense, the Defendant’s prior criminal history/recidivism, and the seriousness of the crime,” Griffin wrote.

    ———

    James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • 91-year-old civil rights activist stabbed in Boston park

    91-year-old civil rights activist stabbed in Boston park

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    BOSTON — A 91-year-old civil rights activist and education advocate was stabbed multiple times while walking her dog in a Boston park, authorities said.

    Jean McGuire, the first Black woman to serve on the Boston School Committee, was stabbed in Franklin Park at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said Wednesday after visiting McGuire at the hospital.

    McGuire’s stabbing, as well as the recent fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy in the city, is unacceptable, said Hayden, whose family has been close to McGuire’s for years.

    “I’m certainly outraged, and I think we have to be at the point where we have an entire community that is equally as outraged and will not stand for this sort of random violence any further,” he said.

    The good news is that McGuire is “as spunky and as vibrant as ever and is going to be just fine, praise the Lord,” he said.

    McGuire’s sister, Jeriline Brady McGinnis, told multiple news outlets that her sister has been walking dogs in the park for decades.

    “What did he want? Dog walkers don’t carry money. We carry poop bags and ID. That’s all he’s going to get. Unless he felt the urge to just beat up somebody who’s defenseless,” McGuire’s sister told WFXT-TV.

    McGuire was unconscious when officers found her. She was taken to a hospital with injuries that aren’t considered life-threatening, police said in a statement.

    “I am disgusted and angry to know that an elder in our community had to fear for her safety going about her daily routine, walking her dog,” Mayor Michelle Wu said.

    The suspect remains at large but might have been injured during the attack, police said.

    In addition to being the first Black woman to serve on the school committee, where she served for a decade starting in 1981, McGuire in 1966 helped found METCO, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, which sends students of color from Boston to predominantly white suburban schools. She became the program’s executive director in 1973 and served in the position until 2016, according to a biography posted by Northeastern University.

    Milly Arbaje-Thomas, the current president and CEO of METCO, called McGuire a trailblazer.

    “We’re all very saddened by this news, very shocked,” she said. “She’s a woman who has dedicated her life to educational equality.”

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  • Ex-NSA worker accused of selling secrets ordered detained

    Ex-NSA worker accused of selling secrets ordered detained

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    DENVER — A former National Security Agency employee from Colorado accused of trying to sell classified information to Russia will remain behind bars while he is prosecuted, a magistrate judge ruled Tuesday.

    Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 30, is facing a possible life sentence for allegedly giving the information to an undercover FBI agent whom prosecutors say he believed was a person working for the Russian Federation. He pleaded not guilty through his lawyer during a hearing in Denver federal court before a hearing to determine if he should be released from jail.

    Dalke was arrested Sept. 28 after authorities say he arrived at Denver’s downtown train station with a laptop and used a secure connection set up by investigators to transfer some classified documents.

    Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews said Tuesday the stiff penalty Dalke could face makes him a flight risk along with the sympathies he has allegedly expressed for Russia. Crews also said he was not sure that Dalke, who is accused of sharing the documents after promising not to disclose information he obtained while working at the NSA, would honor any conditions he could impose that would allow Dalke to live with his wife and grandmother in Colorado Springs while the case proceeds. He was also concerned about authentic-looking but counterfeit badges for government agencies, including the NSA, allegedly found during a search of Dalke’s home.

    Dalke’s lawyers had proposed that his wife, who was in court for the hearing, could supervise the Army veteran and report any violations of his bond. However, Crews was concerned whether she would be able to do that, describing Dalke as her “caretaker.”

    One of Dalke’s federal public defenders, David Kraut, said Dalke supported the household with Veterans Administration benefits and had been “supportive” of his wife in difficulties in her life. He said Dalke would not want to put her at risk by not complying with bond conditions. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia K. Martinez said he already had by taking her with him when he went to scout out a public location to transmit the documents.

    Public defender, Kraut, downplayed Dalke’s access to classified information since he only worked at the NSA for less than a month this summer.

    Shortly after he left the agency, citing a family illness, and signed the non-disclosure agreement, he allegedly began talking with the undercover agent using encrypted email.

    Martinez argued that the government does not know whether Dalke obtained more information from the NSA that is stored somewhere else or possibly memorized. She said he has the motivation to sell more secrets if he were to be released.

    “He knows how to make money. Sell secrets to Russia,” said Martinez, who alleged Dalke took the job at the NSA with the intent of selling secrets.

    The information Dalke is accused of providing includes a threat assessment of the military offensive capabilities of a foreign country which is not named. It also includes a description of sensitive U.S. defense capabilities, a portion of which relates to that same foreign country, according to his indictment.

    The Army veteran allegedly told the undercover agent that he had $237,000 in debts and that he had decided to work with Russia because his heritage “ties back to your country.”

    Before Dalke transfered the classified documents, he first sent a thank you letter, which opened and closed in Russian, in which he said he looked “forward to our friendship and shared benefit,” according to court filings.

    Dalke worked for the NSA, the U.S. intelligence agency that collects and analyzes signals from foreign and domestic sources for the purpose of intelligence and counterintelligence, as an information systems security designer. After he left and allegedly provided documents with the undercover agent, prosecutors say he re-applied to work there.

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  • NFL keeping watch on return of HBCUs to national prominence

    NFL keeping watch on return of HBCUs to national prominence

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    KANSAS CITY, Mo. — During their original heyday in the 1960s, when much of the nation was still coming to grips with the end of Jim Crow, the Kansas City Chiefs and their visionary coach, Hank Stram, realized more quickly than perhaps any team in the AFL or NFL that players from historically Black colleges and universities were good.

    Really good.

    They were fast and strong and talented, just like the players produced by Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma or Bear Bryant at Alabama. So the Chiefs drafted them, and Buck Buchanan and Willie Lanier and Otis Taylor went on to form the backbone of powerful teams that reached two Super Bowls and beat the Vikings for their first championship.

    So it made poetic sense in April when the Chiefs, on the clock in the fourth round of the draft and trying to revamp their aging secondary, turned in a card with Joshua Williams’ name on it. The cornerback from Fayetteville State was the first of four HBCU players chosen this year after none were selected in 2021 and just one went off the board in 2020.

    “I’m very proud of where I came from,” said Williams, who went seven spots before the Los Angeles Rams picked South Carolina State defensive back Decobie Durant. “It just speaks to the exposure we’ve been getting and also to the hard work that I’ve been putting in. I’m glad it all paid off. I’m glad all of these things are coming to fruition.”

    It might not be a one-year fluke, either. The talent level at HBCUs has improved recently, one of many byproducts of widespread societal changes. There is more exposure through television and streaming services. New bowls and showcase games are giving HBCU players an opportunity to earn coveted invitations to the scouting combine.

    As a result, NFL teams are once more mining those small colleges for hidden gems. When training camps opened this fall, 33 players from HBCUs were on rosters for 17 teams.

    “Having opportunities to go to bowl games, the (NFL) combine — now you’re getting kids motivated,” Prairie View A&M coach Bubba McDowell said. “They’re seeing kids prior to them leaving and going to the combine and all the all-star games, now you’re just increasing their ability (to say), ‘It can really happen in the SWAC.’”

    There are 33 players from HBCUs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but many of the biggest stars played during the 1960s and ‘70s. That’s when Eddie Robinson’s Grambling State juggernaut produced future Packers star Willie Davis, Bears offensive tackle Ernie Ladd and Buchanan, whom the Chiefs picked first overall in the 1963 AFL draft. And when rivals such as Southern, Tennessee State and Texas Southern had players capable of playing anywhere.

    The biggest reason many of them chose to play at HBCUs: It was one of their few options, and often the best.

    Sure, some progressive colleges had been fielding Black athletes for years. But others were painfully slow to integrate — the Crimson Tide didn’t have their first Black scholarship football player until Wilbur Jackson in 1969. And with racism still running rampant on many college campuses, talented recruits — particularly those in the Deep South — simply felt safer and more comfortable attending historically Black colleges and universities.

    They were coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement, and it became a point of pride to play for such schools.

    “I was determined,” Buchanan said years later, “to prove that players from small schools could play in the big leagues.”

    Indeed, during a five-year period in the late ‘60s, about 70 players from HBCUs were drafted each year, though that figure is somewhat inflated compared to today’s standard by the dueling AFL and NFL drafts and the fact that each had more rounds than today.

    As major Division I colleges integrated, though, Black players inevitably signed on with traditional powers such as Alabama and Texas. There were still outliers, of course — Walter Payton was a Mississippi prep legend who received no SEC offers and wound up at Jackson State, playing alongside another future NFL star, Jackie Slater. But by the mid-1980s, HBCUs were producing fewer than 20 draft picks in an average year, a third of the total a decade earlier.

    Every once in a while, generational talents would capture NFL attention, such as Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State) and Michael Strahan (Texas Southern). But for the most part, HBCUs became an afterthought for professional scouts.

    Until recently, that is.

    The Black Lives Matter movement coupled with a national reckoning in terms of social injustice, one largely led by young people, appears to have sparked renewed interest in HBCUs, just like the Civil Rights Movement a generation earlier.

    And when it came to the gridiron, the decision by Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders to coach Jackson State in the fall of 2020 gave the longtime SWAC powerhouse — and other HBCU programs — a certain “cool factor” among recruits. That was evident last December, when five-star prospect Travis Hunter switched his commitment from mighty Florida State to the Tigers; other talented Division I prospects have followed suit and signed with HBCUs.

    “He’s changing the landscape of not only SWAC football but FCS football,” Florida A&M coach Willie Simmons said.

    That includes the MEAC, the other HBCU conference in the Football Championship Subdivision, but also smaller leagues such as the CIAA. That’s the Division II conference where Fayetteville State plays, and where Williams — the Chiefs’ draft pick this past April — did enough to warrant an invitation to the Senior Bowl.

    It was there that Williams shined against players from powerhouses such as Texas A&M and Michigan, putting him on NFL radars and earning him a spot at the draft combine, where his workout sent him climbing up draft boards.

    Including the one in Kansas City, where players from HBCUs flourished decades ago.

    “We’re just looking for football players, and it doesn’t matter where you come from, what your story is,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said. “If you can help us win games, and be a positive influence in the community, you know, we’re going to find a way to make you a part of this roster. Josh was the same. He falls into that category.”

    Williams and Durant were joined by fellow draft picks James Houston, the Jackson State linebacker who went in the sixth round to Detroit, and Southern offensive lineman Ja’Tyre Carter, who went in the seventh to Chicago.

    “If I see the burst and the acceleration, I see the change in direction, that translates if you’re at Alabama or if you’re at Fayetteville State,” explained David Hinson, the Chiefs’ co-director of college scouting. “If he’s got quick feet, if he has good hips and can change direction, if he can track the ball, that doesn’t change no matter the field you’re playing on.”

    Turns out there’s quite a few draft prospects playing on HBCU fields this season.

    Florida A&M pass rusher Isaiah Land is a potential Day 2 pick. Wide receiver Shaquan Davis could be the next star out of South Carolina State, which in recent years produced Shaq Leonard and Javon Hargrave. Bethune-Cookman tight end Kemari Averett, who began his career with Lamar Jackson at Louisville, could soon join the Ravens quarterback in the NFL, and wide receivers Abdul-Fatai Ibrahim of Alabama A&M and Hampton’s Jadakis Bonds also could get a shot.

    Where they’re coming from? That doesn’t matter anymore.

    The only thing that matters is what they can do.

    “I’m a firm believer what you put in you’re going to get out of it,” said Ibrahim, who would be the first Alabama A&M draft pick since Frank Kearse in 2011. “If I put in hard work day-in, day-out, the results are going to show eventually.”

    ———

    More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP—NFL

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  • Calls mount for Filipino ex-senator freedom after jail riot

    Calls mount for Filipino ex-senator freedom after jail riot

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    MANILA, Philippines — Human rights activists pressed their call Monday for the immediate release of a former Philippine opposition senator after she was taken hostage in a rampage by three Muslim militants in a failed attempt to escape from a maximum-security jail.

    Police killed three Islamic State group-linked militants behind Sunday’s violence in which a police officer was stabbed and former Sen. Leila de Lima was briefly taken hostage. The militants tried to escape from the jail for high-profile inmates at the national police headquarters in metropolitan Manila, police said.

    National police chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr. acknowledged there were security lapses in the detention center and said its commander has been removed as part of an investigation.

    Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch separately expressed deep alarm over the violence and the hostage-taking of de Lima. The groups call for her immediate release.

    “That she has had to endure this traumatizing and frightening experience on top of being arbitrarily detained for over five years now is the height of outrage, negligence and injustice,” Amnesty International Philippine director Butch Olano said.

    About two dozen supporters held a protest for de Lima, who was brought to a metropolitan Manila trial court Monday for a hearing, which was postponed.

    “We condemned what happened yesterday,” said protester Charito del Carmen. “It’s painful for us because if she got killed what would happen to the fight for justice that we’ve been waging for her?”

    One of the three inmates stabbed a police officer who was delivering breakfast after dawn in an open area, where inmates can exercise outdoors. A guard in a sentry tower fired warning shots then shot and killed two of the prisoners when they refused to yield, police said.

    The third inmate ran to de Lima’s cell and briefly held her hostage, Azurin said.

    De Lima, 63, told investigators the hostage-taker tied her hands and feet, blindfolded her and pressed a pointed weapon to her chest and demanded access to journalists and a military aircraft to take him to southern Sulu province, where the Muslim militant group Abu Sayyaf has long had a presence.

    The man continually threatened to kill her until he was gunned down by a police negotiator, she told investigators.

    Following the jail violence, Filibon Tacardon said he and other de Lima lawyers were hoping the court would now grant her appeal for bail. There have also been appeals to place de Lima under house arrest.

    De Lima has been detained since 2017 on drug charges she says were fabricated by former President Rodrigo Duterte and his officials in an attempt to muzzle her criticism of his deadly crackdown on illegal drugs. It left thousands of mostly petty suspects dead and sparked an International Criminal Court investigation as a possible crime against humanity.

    She has been cleared in one of three cases, and at least two witnesses have retracted their allegations against her.

    Duterte, who has insisted on de Lima’s guilt, stepped down from office on June 30 at the end of his turbulent six-year term.

    Newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. talked to de Lima, who was confined in a hospital, by telephone and asked if she wanted to be transferred to another detention site but she rejected the offer, Azurin said.

    Even before the jail violence, the European Union Parliament, some American legislators and United Nations human rights watchdogs have demanded that de Lima be freed immediately.

    ———

    Associated Press journalist Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

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  • Gunfire, blasts in western Iran amid Mahsa Amini protests

    Gunfire, blasts in western Iran amid Mahsa Amini protests

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The sound of apparent gunshots and explosions echoed early Monday through the streets of a western Iranian city, one of the hot spots of protests over the death of a 22-year-old woman. At least one man reportedly was killed by security forces in a village nearby, activists said.

    The incidents come as demonstrations rage on in cities, towns and villages across Iran over the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police in Tehran.

    Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

    From Tehran and elsewhere, online videos have emerged despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos showed some women marching through the streets without headscarves, while others confronted authorities and lit fires in the street as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.

    The violence early Monday occurred in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as well as in the village of Salas Babajani near the border with Iraq, according to a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Amini was Kurdish and her death has been particularly felt in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there.

    Hengaw posted footage it described as smoke rising in one neighborhood in Sanandaj, with what sounded like rapid rifle fire echoing through the night sky. The shouts of people could be heard.

    There was no immediate word if people had been hurt in the violence. Hengaw later posted a video online of what appeared to be collected shell casings from rifles and shotguns, as well as spent tear gas canisters.

    Authorities offered no immediate explanation about the violence early Monday in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran. Esmail Zarei Kousha, the governor of Iran’s Kurdistan province, alleged without providing evidence that unknown groups “plotted to kill young people on the streets” on Saturday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Monday.

    Kousha also accused these unnamed groups that day of shooting a young man in the head and killing him — an attack that activists roundly have blamed on Iranian security forces. They say Iranian forces opened fire after the man honked his car horn at them. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience — an action that has seen riot police in other videos smashing the windshields of passing vehicles.

    In the village of Salas Babajani, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Sanandaj, Iranian security forces repeatedly shot a 22-year-old man protesting there who later died of his wounds, Hengaw said. It said others had been wounded in the shooting.

    It remains unclear how many people have been killed in the demonstrations and the security force crackdown targeting them. State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. In the over two weeks since, there’s been no update from Iran’s government.

    An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed in violence in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan.

    The London-based group Amnesty International said security forces killed 66 people, including children, in a bloody crackdown on Sept. 30, and that more people were killed in the area in subsequent incidents. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.

    Meanwhile, a prison riot has struck the city of Rasht, killing several inmates there, a prosecutor reportedly said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the riot at Lakan Prison was linked to the ongoing protests, though Rasht has seen heavy demonstrations in recent weeks since Amini’s death.

    The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Gilan provincial prosecutor Mehdi Fallah Miri as saying, “some prisoners died because of their wounds as the electricity was cut (at the prison) because of the damage.” He also alleged prisoners refused to allow authorities to access those wounded.

    Miri described the riot as breaking out in a wing of a prison housing death penalty inmates.

    ———

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • ‘A time bomb’: Anger rising in a hot spot of Iran protests

    ‘A time bomb’: Anger rising in a hot spot of Iran protests

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    SULIMANIYAH, Iraq — Growing up under a repressive system, Sharo, a 35-year-old university graduate, never thought she would hear words of open rebellion spoken out loud. Now she herself chants slogans like “Death to the Dictator!” with a fury she didn’t know she had, as she joins protests calling for toppling the country’s rulers.

    Sharo said that after three weeks of protests, triggered by the death of a young woman in the custody of the feared morality police, anger at the authorities is only rising, despite a bloody crackdown that has left dozens dead and hundreds in detention.

    “The situation here is tense and volatile,” she said, referring to the city of Sanandaj in the majority Kurdish home district of the same name in northwestern Iran, one of the hot spots of the protests.

    “We are just waiting for something to happen, like a time-bomb,” she said, speaking to The Associated Press via Telegram messenger service.

    The anti-government protests in Sanandaj, 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the capital, are a microcosm of the leaderless protests that have roiled Iran.

    Led largely by women and youth, they have evolved from spontaneous mass gatherings in central areas to scattered demonstrations in residential areas, schools and universities as activists try to evade an increasingly brutal crackdown.

    Tensions rose again Saturday in Sanandaj after rights monitors said two protesters were shot dead and several were wounded, following a resumption of demonstrations. Residents said there has been a heavy security presence in the city, with constant patrols and security personnel stationed on major streets.

    The Associated Press spoke to six female activists in Sanandaj who said suppression tactics, including beatings, arrests, the use of live ammunition and internet disruptions make it difficult at times to keep the momentum going. Yet protests persist, along with other expressions of civil disobedience, such as commercial strikes and drivers honking horns at security forces.

    The activists in the city spoke on the condition their full names be withheld fearing reprisals by Iranian authorities. Their accounts were corroborated by three human rights monitors.

    THE BURIAL

    Three weeks ago, the news of the death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in Tehran spread rapidly across her home province of Kurdistan, of which Sanandaj is the capital. The response was swift in the impoverished and historically marginalized area.

    As the burial was underway in Amini’s town of Saqqez on Sept. 17, protesters were already filling Sanandaj’s main thoroughfare, activists said.

    People of all ages were present and began chanting slogans that would be repeated in cities across Iran: “Woman. Life. Freedom.”

    The Amini family had been under pressure from the government to bury Mahsa quickly before a critical mass of protesters formed, said Afsanah, a 38-year-old clothing designer from Saqqez. She was at the burial that day and followed the crowds from the cemetery to the city square.

    Rozan, a 32-year old housewife, didn’t know Amini personally. But when she heard the young woman had died in the custody of the morality police in Tehran and had been arrested for violating the Islamic Republic’s hijab rules, she felt compelled to take to the street that day.

    “The same thing happened to me,” she said. In 2013, like Amini, she had ventured to the capital with a friend when she was apprehended by the morality police because her abaya, or loose robe that is part of the mandatory dress code, was too short. She was taken to the same facility where Amini later died, and fingerprinted and made to sign a declaration of guilt.

    “It could have been me,” she said. In the years since then Rozan, a former nurse, was fired from the local government health department for being too vocal about her views about women’s rights.

    After the funeral, she saw an elderly woman take a step forward and in one swift gesture, remove her headscarf. “I felt inspired to do the same,” she said.

    SUPPRESSION

    In the first three days after the burial, protesters were plucked from the demonstrations in arrest sweeps in Sanandaj. By the end of the week, arrests targeted known activists and protest organizers.

    Dunya, a lawyer, said she was one among a small group of women’s rights activists who helped organize protests. They also asked shopkeepers to respect a call for a commercial strike along the city’s main streets.

    “Almost all the women in our group are in jail now,” she said.

    Internet blackouts made it difficult for protesters to communicate with one another across cities and with the outside world.

    “We would wake up in the morning and have no idea what was happening,” said Sharo, the university graduate. The internet would return intermittently, often late at night or during working hours, but swiftly cut off in the late afternoon, the time many would gather to protest.

    The heavy security presence also prevented mass gatherings.

    “There are patrols in almost every street, and they break up groups, even if its just two or three people walking on the street,” said Sharo.

    During demonstrations security forces fired pellet guns and tear gas at the crowd causing many to run. Security personnel on motorcycles also drove into crowds in an effort to disperse them.

    All activists interviewed said they either witnessed or heard live ammunition. Iranian authorities have so far denied this, blaming separatist groups on occasions when the use of live fire was verified. The two protesters killed Saturday in Sanandaj were killed by live fire, according to the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights network.

    Protesters say fear is a close companion. The wounded were often reluctant to use ambulances or go to hospitals, worried they might get arrested. Activists also suspected government informants were trying to blend in with the crowds.

    But acts of resistance have continued.

    “I assure you the protests are not over,” said Sharo. “The people are angry, they are talking back to the police in ways I have never seen.”

    DISOBEDIENCE

    The anger runs deep. In Sanandaj the confluence of three factors has rendered the city a ripe ground for protest activity — a history of Kurdish resistance, rising poverty and a long history of women’s rights activism.

    Yet the protests are not defined along ethnic or regional lines even though they were sparked in a predominantly Kurdish area, said Tara Sepehri Fars, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It’s been very unique in that sense,” she said.

    There have been waves of protest in Iran in recent years, the largest in 2009 bringing large crowds into the streets after what protesters felt was a stolen election. But the continued defiance and demands for regime change during the current wave seem to pose the most serious challenge in years to the Islamic Republic.

    Like most of Iran, Sanandaj has suffered as U.S. sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy and spurred inflation. Far from the capital, in the fringes of the country, its majority Kurdish residents are eyed with suspicion by the regime.

    By the third week, with the opening of universities and schools, students began holding small rallies and joined the movement.

    Videos circulated on social media showing students jeering school masters, school girls removing their headscarves on the street and chanting: “One by one they will kill us, if we don’t stand together.”

    One university student said they were planning on boycotting classes altogether.

    Afsanah, the clothing designer, said that she likes wearing the headscarf. “But I am protesting because it was never my choice.”

    Her parents, fearing for her safety, tried to persuade her to stay home. But she disobeyed them, pretending to go to work in the morning only to search for protest gatherings around the city.

    “I am angry, and I am without fear — we just need this feeling to overflow on the street,” she said.

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  • Today in History: October 8, Don Larsen’s perfect game

    Today in History: October 8, Don Larsen’s perfect game

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    Today in History

    Today is Saturday, Oct. 8, the 281st day of 2022. There are 84 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Oct. 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.

    On this date:

    In 1914, the World War I song “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” by Ivor Novello and Lena Guilbert Ford, was first published in London under the title ”‘Till the Boys Come Home.”

    In 1945, President Harry S. Truman told a press conference in Tiptonville, Tennessee, that the secret scientific knowledge behind the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.

    In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5, 2-0.

    In 1982, all labor organizations in Poland, including Solidarity, were banned.

    In 1985, the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (ah-KEE’-leh LOW’-roh) killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a wheelchair, and threw his body overboard.

    In 1997, scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life.

    In 1998, the House triggered an open-ended impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton in a momentous 258-176 vote; 31 Democrats joined majority Republicans in opening the way for nationally televised impeachment hearings.

    In 2002, a federal judge approved President George W. Bush’s request to reopen West Coast ports, ending a 10-day labor lockout that was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 to $2 billion a day.

    In 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake flattened villages on the Pakistan-India border, killing an estimated 86,000 people.

    In 2010, British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who’d been taken captive in Afghanistan, was killed during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, apparently by a U.S. grenade.

    In 2016, Donald Trump vowed on Twitter to continue his campaign; many Republicans were calling on Trump to abandon his presidential bid in the wake of the release of a 2005 video in which he made lewd remarks about women and appeared to condone sexual assault.

    In 2020, authorities in Michigan said six men had been charged with conspiring to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in reaction to what they viewed as her “uncontrolled power.” (Two of the six pleaded guilty, two others were acquitted and the remaining two were convicted at a retrial in August 2022.) Democrat Joe Biden said President Donald Trump’s tweet earlier in the year to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” may have encouraged the alleged kidnapping plot.

    Ten years ago: President Barack Obama designated the Keene, California, home of Cesar Chavez, the late founder of the United Farmworkers Union, as a national monument.

    Five years ago: Harvey Weinstein was fired from The Weinstein Company amid allegations that he was responsible for decades of sexual harassment against female actors and employees. Vice President Mike Pence left the 49ers-Colts game in Indianapolis after about a dozen San Francisco players took a knee during the national anthem; Pence tweeted that he wouldn’t “dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag or our National Anthem.”

    One year ago: The White House said President Joe Biden would not block the handover of documents sought by a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Federal prosecutors announced that they would not file charges against a white police officer who shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in Wisconsin in August 2020. A federal appeals court allowed the nation’s toughest abortion law to go back into effect in Texas; the order came just one day after a lower court sided with the Biden administration and suspended the law. Journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their fight for freedom of expression in countries where reporters faced persistent attacks, harassment and even murder.

    Today’s Birthdays: Entertainment reporter Rona Barrett is 86. Actor Paul Hogan is 83. R&B singer Fred Cash (The Impressions) is 82. Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson is 81. Comedian Chevy Chase is 79. Author R.L. Stine is 79. Actor Dale Dye is 78. Country singer Susan Raye is 78. TV personality Sarah Purcell is 74. R&B singer Airrion Love (The Stylistics) is 73. Actor Sigourney Weaver is 73. R&B singer Robert “Kool” Bell (Kool & the Gang) is 72. Producer-director Edward Zwick is 70. Actor Michael Dudikoff is 68. Comedian Darrell Hammond is 67. Actor Stephanie Zimbalist is 66. Actor Kim Wayans is 61. Rock singer Steve Perry (Cherry Poppin’ Daddies) is 59. Actor Ian Hart is 58. Gospel/R&B singer CeCe Winans is 58. Rock musician C.J. Ramone (The Ramones) is 57. Actor-producer Karyn Parsons is 56. Singer-producer Teddy Riley is 56. Actor Emily Procter is 54. Actor Dylan Neal is 53. Actor-screenwriter Matt Damon is 52. Actor-comedian Robert Kelly is 52. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is 52. Actor Martin Henderson is 48. Actor Kristanna Loken is 43. Rock-soul singer-musician Noelle Scaggs (Fitz and the Tantrums) is 43. Actor Nick Cannon is 42. Actor J.R. Ramirez is 42. Actor Max Crumm is 37. Singer-songwriter-producer Bruno Mars is 37. Actor Angus T. Jones is 29. Actor Molly Quinn is 29. Actor/singer Bella Thorne is 25.

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  • Europe praises, Belarus scorns Nobel for rights defenders

    Europe praises, Belarus scorns Nobel for rights defenders

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    BERLIN — Officials in Europe and the U.S. praised the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to activists standing up for human rights and democracy in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine while authorities in Belarus scorned the move.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year has pushed Moscow’s relationship with its Western neighbors to a new low. Even before that, ties had been fraught over President Vladimir Putin’s backing for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, his support for authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Syrian leader Bashar Assad, and his repression of political opponents, such as dissident Alexei Navalny at home.

    “I hope the Russian authorities read the justification for the peace prize and take it to heart,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said after the Nobel Committee awarded the 2022 prize to imprisoned Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian rights group Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which is focusing on documenting war crimes.

    “It sends a signal that keeping civil society down is protecting one’s own power. It is seen from the outside and it is criticized,” he said.

    French President Emmanuel Macron was among the world leaders who quickly hailed the laureates, tweeting that their prize ”pays homage to unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe.”

    “Artisans of peace, they know they can count on France’s support,” the French leader said.

    U.S. President Joe Biden said the winners “remind us that, even in dark days of war, in the face of intimidation and oppression, the common human desire for rights and dignity cannot be extinguished.”

    “The brave souls who do this work have pursued the truth and documented for the world the political repression of their fellow citizens — speaking out, standing up, and staying the course while being threatened by those who seek their silence,” Biden said in a statement.

    NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg congratulated the winners, tweeting that “the right to speak truth to power is fundamental to free and open societies.”

    Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said the award needs to be seen against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

    “There is war in Europe. Your work for peace and human rights is therefore more important than ever before,” he said to the winners. “Thank you for that.”

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the three groups “fully deserved” the awards.

    “The bravery, passion and clarity with which (they) are fighting for freedom and justice deserves the highest respect,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of European Union leaders in Prague.

    In Paris, exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press that the award was “recognition of all the people who are sacrificing their freedom and lives for the sake of (Belarus).”

    Over the last two years, the government of Belarus has waged a violent crackdown on journalists and protesters who say that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, beating thousands, detaining tens of thousands and charging rights defenders with cases that the opposition calls politically motivated. Many have fled the country for their own safety.

    “Physically, you know, this prize will not influence their situation but I am sure it (will) influence the moods and intentions of other countries to help those people who are behind bars,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

    Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist and writer who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, called Bialiatski “a legendary figure.”

    “What Viasna, founded by him, has done and is doing in the current circumstances, is in his spirit, in his philosophy,” Alexievich told reporters Friday.

    She added that Bialiatski is “seriously ill” and needs medical treatment, but is “unlikely to be freed from behind bars.”

    Belarus’ Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, denounced the Nobel committee’s decision to award the prize to Bialiatski as “politicized.”

    Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said “in recent years, a number of important decisions — and we’re talking about the peace prize — of the Nobel committee have been so politicized, that, I’m sorry, Alfred Nobel got tired of turning in his grave.”

    Olav Njølstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, dismissed the criticism.

    “I’m quite sure we understand Alfred Nobel’s will and intentions better than the dictatorship in Minsk,” he said.

    Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also took issue with the award, saying the Nobel Committee “has an interesting understanding of (the) word ‘peace’ if representatives of two countries that attacked a third one receive (the prize) together.”

    “Neither Russian nor Belarusian organizations were able to organize resistance to the war,” Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted. “This year’s Nobel is ‘awesome.’”

    But Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian lawyer who heads the Center for Civil Liberties, said the award was for the groups, not the countries they were based in. In an interview with German weekly Der Spiegel, she said her co-laureates had spoken out clearly against Russia’s hostility toward Ukraine since 2014.

    “They always called things by their name,” she said. “That’s why Ales Bialiatski is in prison now and Memorial is banned.”

    “It’s not about the countries, but about the people who are jointly standing up to evil,” she said.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • UK’s Truss vows to listen as she reels from policy U-turns

    UK’s Truss vows to listen as she reels from policy U-turns

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    BIRMINGHAM, England — British Prime Minister Liz Truss has insisted she is leading “a listening government” that learns from its mistakes, as she tries to restore her shaky authority and reassure financial markets spooked by her government’s see-sawing economic pledges.

    Truss told the BBC in an interview broadcast Tuesday that she and her ministers were determined to “reflect on how we could have done things better.”

    “Is everything the government (has) done absolutely perfect? No it’s not,” she said. “I fully acknowledge that. And we have learned from the feedback we’ve received.”

    That “feedback” has been dramatic: Truss’ four weeks in office have seen the pound plunge to record lows against the dollar, the Bank of England take emergency action and the opposition Labour Party surge to record highs against her Conservatives in opinion polls.

    Now Truss also faces a battle with her party over her economic plans, with some lawmakers warning they will oppose any attempt to slash welfare benefits to help pay for lower taxes.

    Truss is on a mission to reshape Britain’s economy through tax cuts and deregulation in a bid to end years of sluggish growth. But she is trying to ride out a series of U-turns over her first big policy: a stimulus package that includes 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts, to be paid for by government borrowing. Its announcement on Sept 23 sent the pound tumbling to a record low against the dollar and increased the cost of government borrowing.

    The Bank of England was forced to intervene to prop up the bond market and stop a wider economic crisis. Fears that the bank will soon hike interest rates caused mortgage lenders to withdraw their cheapest deals, causing turmoil for homebuyers.

    Under political and financial pressure, the government on Monday scrapped the most unpopular part of its budget package, a tax cut on earnings above 150,000 pounds ($167,000) a year.

    Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng has also promised to publish a fully costed fiscal plan, alongside an economic forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Initially that was due to come Nov. 23, but mounting pressure means it’s likely to arrive weeks sooner.

    What Kwarteng on Monday called the “hullabaloo” over the government’s plans has cast a shadow over the Conservatives’ annual conference in the central England city of Birmingham, where many delegates express fears that the party, in power since 2010, is headed for defeat in the next election.

    The party has a commanding majority in Parliament but is fractious after three years of scandal under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, followed by a divisive leadership contest between Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak. Sunak warned during his losing campaign that Truss’ plan to fund tax cuts through borrowing would undermine both the government’s economic credibility and the nation’s finances.

    Truss says her policies will bring economic growth, higher wages and eventually more tax revenue for the government to spend. But critics say the plans do little to help millions of people who are struggling right now with a cost-of-living crisis fueled by soaring energy prices.

    Truss said she was “very committed to supporting the most vulnerable,” pointing to a cap on energy prices that took effect Oct. 1.

    However, she refused to promise benefits and state pensions would increase in line with inflation, which has been the practice for years.

    “We are going to have to make decisions about how we bring down debt as a proportion of GDP in the medium term,” Truss said. “We have to be fiscally responsible.”

    Conservative lawmakers — including government ministers — warned Truss that they would oppose a real-terms cut in welfare benefits.

    “I have always supported, whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system, keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so,” said Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons.

    “That’s what I voted for before and so have a lot of my colleagues,” Mordaunt told Times Radio.

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  • The Onion and the Supreme Court. Not a parody

    The Onion and the Supreme Court. Not a parody

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    WASHINGTON — The Onion has some serious things to say in defense of parody.

    The satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd has filed a Supreme Court brief in support of a man who was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of police on social media.

    “As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists,” lawyers for the Onion wrote in a brief filed Monday. “This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.”

    The court filing doesn’t entirely keep a straight face, calling the federal judiciary “total Latin dorks.”

    The Onion said it employs 350,000 people, is read by 4.3 trillion people and “has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”

    The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.

    The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be “removed from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.”

    After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have “qualified immunity” and threw out the lawsuit.

    One issue is whether people might reasonably have believed that what they saw on Novak’s site was real.

    But the Onion said Novak had no obligation to post a disclaimer. “Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original,” the Onion said, noting its own tendency to mimic “the dry tone of an Associated Press news story.”

    More than once, people have republished the Onion’s claims as true, including when it reported in 2012 that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man alive.

    The brief concludes with a familiar call for the court to hear the case and a twist.

    “The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied. The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first,” lawyers for the Onion wrote.

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  • S. Korean activists clash with police over anti-Kim balloons

    S. Korean activists clash with police over anti-Kim balloons

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    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean activists say they clashed with police while launching balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda materials across the North Korean border, ignoring their government’s plea to stop such activities since the North has threatened to respond with “deadly” retaliation.

    Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector-turned-activist, said he his group had launched about eight balloons from an area in the South Korean border town of Paju Saturday night when police officers arrived at the scene and prevented them from sending their 12 remaining balloons. Park said police confiscated some of their materials and detained him and three other members of his group over mild scuffles with officers before releasing them after questioning.

    Officials at the Paju police and the northern Gyeonggi provincial police agencies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

    The balloons flown toward North Korea carried masks, Tylenol and Vitamin C tablets along with propaganda materials, including booklets praising South Korea’s economic wealth and democratic society and hundreds of USB sticks containing videos of U.S. Congress members denouncing the North’s human rights record, Park said.

    One of the balloons carried a placard that read, “Entire humanity denounces Kim Jong Un who threatens to preemptively strike (South Korea) with nuclear missiles,” referring to the North Korean leader’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that’s raising tensions with neighbors.

    Saturday’s launch came weeks after South Korea’s government pleaded for activists to stop their balloon launches, citing concerns related to the safety of border area residents. Lee Hyo-jung, spokesperson of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, then said that the South would also “sternly respond” to any North Korean retaliation over the balloons.

    Animosity between the Koreas has worsened this year as North Korea ramped up its missile testing activity to record pace and punctuated those tests with warnings that it would preemptively use its nukes in a broad range of scenarios where it perceives its leadership has come under threat.

    North Korea is extremely sensitive to outside criticism about the Kim family’s authoritarian rule of its people, most of whom have little access to foreign news. It has berated South Korea’s current conservative government for letting South Korean civilian activists fly anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other “dirty waste” across the border by balloon, even dubiously claiming the items caused its COVID-19 outbreak.

    For years, Park has floated helium-filled balloons with leaflets and other propaganda material harshly criticizing the Kim family. He also began sending masks, medicine and vitamins following the emergence of COVID-19.

    Last year, South Korea, under its previous liberal government that sought to improve inter-Korean ties, enforced a contentious new law criminalizing civilian leafleting campaigns. Park still kept launching balloons, becoming the first person to be indicted over that law, but his trial has basically been put on hold since he filed a petition requesting the Constitutional Court to rule whether the new law is unconstitutional, according to his lawyer, Lee Hun.

    Opponents of the law say it’s sacrificing South Korea’s freedom of speech in attempting to improve ties with North Korea. Supporters say the law is aimed at avoiding unnecessarily provoking North Korea and promoting the safety of frontline South Korean residents.

    In 2014, North Korea fired at balloons flying toward its territory, and in 2020 it destroyed an empty South Korean-built liaison office in the North to express its anger over leafleting. In a failed assassination attempt in 2011, South Korean authorities captured a North Korean agent who tried to kill Park with a pen equipped with a poison needle.

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  • Vegas survivors signal hope even as mass shootings persist

    Vegas survivors signal hope even as mass shootings persist

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    LAS VEGAS — It’s been five years since carnage and death sent his family running into the night, leaving them separated and terrified as a gunman rained bullets into an outdoor country music festival crowd on the Las Vegas Strip.

    The memories don’t fade, they sharpen, William “Bill” Henning said as he prepared for ceremonies in Las Vegas marking the date of the Oct. 1, 2017, massacre.

    “Chaotic and unreal,” he recalled. “A human stampede. People were bleeding and screaming and running. We all got separated. We didn’t know who was alive. That was the most difficult.”

    He’s now part of a survivor community thousands strong, one that’s helped him sort through the horror of what happened during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 850 were injured among a crowd of 22,000.

    In the years since, the grim drumbeat of mass shootings has continued: schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida; grocery stores in Buffalo, New York, and Boulder, Colorado; bars in Dayton, Ohio, and Thousand Oaks, California; a city building in Virginia Beach, Virginia; a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Meanwhile, the debate over gun laws in the U.S. rages on, including a renewed challenge to the federal regulation sparked by the Las Vegas shooting.

    Nevada U.S. Rep. Dina Titus on Saturday called again for a federal law banning bump stocks, the devices used by the Las Vegas shooter that allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire repeatedly with just one pull of the trigger. They were outlawed by rule by the Trump Administration but face court challenges.

    And President Joe Biden also called for renewed efforts to tighten firearms laws Saturday while mourning the victims and praising residents who came together in the aftermath of the shooting.

    The president noted executive action he’s taken to crack down on ghost guns and rogue gun dealers and the passage of the first significant firearms legislation in 30 years. That bipartisan law signed by Biden in June in part boosts protections for domestic violence victims, funnels cash to states for firearms crime prevention and has money for mental health services.

    “But, we’re not stopping there,” Biden said in a statement. “I am determined to seize this momentum and work with Congress to enact further commonsense gun violence prevention legislation, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which have enabled shooters to slaughter so many innocents.”

    The Las Vegas massacre is part of a horrifying uptick of shootings with especially high numbers of people killed, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University in Boston. Five of the nine mass shootings in modern U.S. history with more than 20 people killed have taken place since 2016, starting with the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and continuing through the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

    “The severity of public mass shootings has increased in the past few years. That’s clear,” Fox said. “And worrisome.”

    Fox oversees a database maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks mass killings involving four or more people slain, not including the perpetrator. The information is drawn from media reports, FBI data, arrest records, medical examiners’ reports, prison records and other court documents.

    Watching the steady stream of shootings in the U.S. is tough for survivors, said Tennille Pereira, director of a Clark County recovery and support program called the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center.

    “I know when it keeps happening, people often express feelings of hopelessness,” Pereira said. “I think the big thing for Las Vegas is to be able to share with those other communities that healing does occur, and that there is hope.”

    For people like Henning, part of that hope has been the bond formed with other survivors. The retired computer technician was celebrating his 71st birthday at the Route 91 Harvest Festival with friends, his wife, daughter and three teenage grandchildren when the gunfire began. He suffered a knee injury while escaping that required surgery, but his group made it out without being struck by gunfire.

    “At first, the first few years, it’s not really sinking in,” he said. “The more we organize ourselves, the more that we see each other, it actually brings us back to how serious this situation was.”

    Many in Las Vegas who won’t name the man who police said fired 1,057 bullets from 32nd floor windows of the Mandalay Bay resort during a span of time now memorialized in a Paramount+ streaming service documentary called “11 Minutes.”

    “We don’t want to give him any more power, credibility, infamy,” Pereira said. “In this survivor population, words matter. We don’t use the word ‘anniversary.’ We use ‘remembrance.’ We try not to use the word ‘victims.’ We try to use the word ‘survivor.’”

    Police and the FBI spent months investigating and concluded that gunman Stephen Paddock acted alone, meticulously planned the attack and intentionally concealed his actions. He amassed an arsenal of 23 assault-style rifles in his hotel room, including 14 fitted with bump stock devices that help the weapons fire rapidly.

    Caches of weapons also were found at Paddock’s homes in Reno and Mesquite, Nevada. But he killed himself before police reached him, and local and federal officials said they never identified a clear motive for the attack.

    Shortly after the shooting, the administration of then-President Donald Trump banned bump stocks under the same federal laws that prohibit machine guns. Gun-rights advocates sued, saying the weapons didn’t qualify as machine guns and it would take an act of Congress to ban them.

    The ban has survived several court challenges. But a federal appeals court in New Orleans revived a case there in June, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling expanding gun rights. That case marked the high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade and has sparked a wave of court challenges to gun laws around the country.

    Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, survivors are working toward a permanent memorial on a corner of the former Las Vegas Strip festival ground.

    A sunrise remembrance ceremony is scheduled Saturday at the Clark County Government Center, and the names of those killed will be read 10:05 p.m. — the time the shooting started — at a downtown Las Vegas Community Healing Garden.

    Survivor Sue Nelson, 67, said she fled from her front-row seat and hid for hours on the Las Vegas Strip, forming deep bonds with others who escaped. She declared she has “survivor sorrow, not survivor guilt” because she didn’t do anything wrong.

    Nelson drives two hours to Las Vegas from her home in Lake Havasu, Arizona, for memorial events and gives out lapel pins shaped like little guitars and rubber wrist bands stamped with: “We Remember 10.1.17 #Honors58.”

    “I’m not afraid anymore,” she said. “It makes a big difference in healing when you’re not afraid anymore.”

    ———

    Whitehurst reported from Washington.

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  • Pay bumps coming for more farmworkers, long denied overtime

    Pay bumps coming for more farmworkers, long denied overtime

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    STUYVESANT, N.Y. — Harvest season means long days for U.S. farmworkers — but usually no overtime pay. Federal law exempts farms from rules entitling most workers to 1.5 times their regular wage when they work more than 40 hours in a week.

    New York is now joining several states that have begun to change the rule.

    The state’s labor commissioner on Friday approved a recommendation to phase in a 40-hour threshold for farmworker overtime over the next decade. Right now, farmworkers in New York qualify for overtime pay only after they have worked 60 hours in a week.

    Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon called the plan “the best path forward” for farmworker equity and success for agricultural businesses.

    Washington, Minnesota, Hawaii and Maryland have also granted forms of overtime entitlements to agricultural workers. California, an agricultural giant, this year began requiring farms to pay overtime to employees who work more than 40 hours in a week.

    The changes have excited workers, who say they sorely need the extra money, but alarmed some farm owners, who say extra labor costs could wipe out thin profits.

    Some labor movement advocates fear workers’ hours will be capped.

    That’s what Elisabeth Morales says happened at the grape vineyard where she works in California’s Central Valley. After the state’s overtime rules changed, the vineyard cut her hours to no more than 40 per week, and hired more laborers so it could get needed work done without having to pay overtime.

    Morales, a mother of four, said she had to take on a second job at McDonald’s to supplement her wages at the vineyard, which are $15 per hour for tasks like weeding plus 40 cents for every box of grapes she picks.

    “I would prefer to work the extra hours even though they don’t pay us overtime,” Morales, 43, said in Spanish.

    There isn’t much national data yet to say for sure whether lowering the overtime threshold will be as bad for farms’ bottom line as agribusiness predicts, or as good for workers as the labor movement hopes.

    Farm workers were excluded from overtime pay in the federal 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, and some labor advocates say its a legacy of Jim Crow.

    The overtime rule change is aimed at people like Doroteo, a farmhand at a Long Island vineyard who works almost 60 hours a week during harvest season, supplementing his pay with landscaping jobs on the side.

    Doroteo prunes and weeds crops for $15 an hour. His pay peaks at $800 a week in the summer, when the most work needs to be done. He makes less in the fall, making it tougher to send money to his three children in Guatemala. He asked that his last name not be published because of worries he might be fired for talking about his job.

    But farm owners say agriculture has been exempt from overtime rules for a reason.

    “There has to be some common sense about what people expect when they go to work on a farm, and that it’s quite unique from other areas of work. It’s not something that can be done 40 hours a week and have weekends off,” said Nate Chittenden, the owner of a midsize dairy farm in Stuyvesant, New York.

    Besides members of his family, his farm has 10 full-time employees.

    “No farm wants to see people taken advantage of. We value people working on our farms. We want to provide for them a living while they work on our farm,” said Chittenden.

    New York state government created a tax credit intended to defray the cost of overtime for farm employers, which Chittenden said would help somewhat.

    In Washington state, this year saw the first harvest where farm workers could qualify for overtime pay after 55 hours worked. That threshold will drop in a phase-in that will make workers eligible for overtime after 40 hours worked by 2024.

    In California, as more workers became eligible for overtime, some farms have switched to less labor-intensive crops like walnuts and almonds, which can be harvested efficiently using man-operated equipment, said Brian Little, the director of employment policy at the California Farm Bureau, which represents farmers.

    He also said some growers are moving towards machines, rather than people, to do things like prune trees.

    “It can run for hours. It doesn’t care if it’s 95 degrees outside. It doesn’t take a lunch break, and it doesn’t care if it’s working nine and a half hours in a workday,” Little said.

    ———

    Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.

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  • Amnesty: Iran ordered forces to ‘severely confront’ protests

    Amnesty: Iran ordered forces to ‘severely confront’ protests

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Leaked government documents show that Iran ordered its security forces to “severely confront” antigovernment demonstrations that broke out earlier this month, Amnesty International said Friday.

    The London-based rights group said security forces have killed at least 52 people since protests over the death of a woman detained by the morality police began nearly two weeks ago, including by firing live ammunition into crowds and beating protesters with batons.

    It says security forces have also beaten and groped female protesters who remove their headscarves to protest the treatment of women by Iran’s theocracy.

    The state-run IRNA news agency meanwhile reported renewed violence in the city of Zahedan, near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan. It said gunmen opened fire and hurled firebombs at a police station, setting off a battle with police.

    It said police and passersby were wounded, without elaborating, and did not say whether the violence was related to the antigovernment protests. The region has seen previous attacks on security forces claimed by militant and separatist groups.

    Videos circulating on social media showed gunfire and a police vehicle on fire. Others showed crowds chanting against the government. Video from elsewhere in Iran showed protests in Ahvaz, in the southwest, and Ardabil in the northwest.

    The death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was detained for allegedly wearing the mandatory Islamic headscarf too loosely, has triggered an outpouring of anger at Iran’s ruling clerics.

    Her family says they were told she was beaten to death in custody. Police say the 22-year-old Amini died of a heart attack and deny mistreating her, and Iranian officials say her death is under investigation.

    Iran’s leaders accuse hostile foreign entities of seizing on her death to foment unrest against the Islamic Republic and portray the protesters as rioters, saying a number of security forces have been killed.

    Amnesty said it obtained a leaked copy of an official document saying that the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces ordered commanders on Sept. 21 to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries.” The rights group says the use of lethal force escalated later that evening, with at least 34 people killed that night alone.

    It said another leaked document shows that, two days later, the commander in Mazandran province ordered security forces to “confront mercilessly, going as far as causing deaths, any unrest by rioters and anti-Revolutionaries,” referring to those opposed to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought the clerics to power.

    “The Iranian authorities knowingly decided to harm or kill people who took to the streets to express their anger at decades of repression and injustice,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

    “Amid an epidemic of systemic impunity that has long prevailed in Iran, dozens of men, women and children have been unlawfully killed in the latest round of bloodshed.”

    Amnesty did not say how it acquired the documents. There was no immediate comment from Iranian authorities.

    Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday that at least 28 reporters have been arrested.

    Iranian authorities have severely restricted internet access and blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp, popular social media applications that are also used by the protesters to organize and share information.

    That makes it difficult to gauge the extent of the protests, particularly outside the capital, Tehran. Iranian media have only sporadically covered the demonstrations.

    Iranians have long used virtual private networks and proxies to get around the government’s internet restrictions. Shervin Hajipour, an amateur singer in Iran, recently posted a song on Instagram based on tweets about Amini that received more than 40 million views in less than 48 hours before it was taken down.

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  • Water crisis tests Mississippi mayor who started as activist

    Water crisis tests Mississippi mayor who started as activist

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    JACKSON, Miss. — The mayor of Mississippi’s capital was 5 years old when his parents moved their family from New York to Jackson in 1988 so that his father, who had been involved in a Black nationalist movement in the 1970s, could return to the unfinished business of challenging inequity and fighting racial injustice.

    “Instead of shielding their most precious resource, their children, from the movement or movement work, they felt that they would give us to it,” said Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, now 39.

    Lumumba describes himself as a “radical” who is “uncomfortable with oppressive conditions.” A Democrat in his second term as mayor, he faces a high-pressure leadership test as Jackson struggles to consistently produce a basic necessity of life — safe, clean drinking water.

    The city has had water problems for decades. Most of Jackson was recently without running water for several days after heavy rains exacerbated problems at a water treatment plant. For a month before that happened, the city was under a boil-water notice because state health officials found cloudy water that could cause illness. Thousands of people lost running water during a cold snap in 2021.

    Jackson’s population and tax base eroded as mostly white middle-class residents started moving to the suburbs about a decade after public schools integrated in 1970. More than 80% of Jackson’s 150,000 residents are Black. The city’s poverty rate of 25% is almost double the national rate.

    “I see a community that has often been left out of the equation, that has been treated disproportionately in terms of equity of resources,” Lumumba told The Associated Press. “And so I believe that it is imperative that someone stand up for them and someone speak to those issues.”

    Emergency repairs are being done at Jackson’s two water treatment plants. Water pressure has been restored. And although Republican Gov. Tate Reeves announced Sept. 15 that people can once again drink water from the tap after seven weeks of the boil order, the state health department says pregnant women or young children should take precautions because of lead levels previously found in some homes on the Jackson water system.

    Lumumba’s supporters say the mayor cares deeply for Jackson but faces opposition from Republican state leaders, and he inherited extensive problems from previous city administrations, including an unreliable billing system that has undercut revenue for repairs and maintenance.

    Critics, though, say Lumumba has failed to provide clear leadership — allowing dangerous levels of understaffing at the treatment plants, obscuring concerns raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and not providing detailed budget proposals for fixing the water system.

    Othor Cain, a Jackson radio host, is among the critics. Cain taught Lumumba in Sunday school at a Methodist church when Lumumba was young. He described the mayor as “a nice guy” and a talented orator. But he said Lumumba has not surrounded himself with strong managers and has faltered in building work relationships with other elected officials.

    “You can’t blame him for the age-old water system and the age-old infrastructure,” Cain said. “But you can blame him from 2017, when he was elected, for doing nothing.”

    Robert Luckett, a civil rights historian, was appointed by Lumumba to serve on the Jackson school board. Luckett said he respects the mayor and believes he’s doing a good job. Like many friends and acquaintances, Luckett calls Lumumba by his middle name.

    “When Antar first ran for mayor and lost, and then ran and won, there was an idealism to his campaign that was the hallmark of early-career politicians,” Luckett said. “In his first term as mayor, the shine on that idealism was kind of taken off a little bit.”

    Republicans control the Mississippi Legislature and all statewide offices. Lumumba and most other Jackson officials are Democrats. The mayor and Gov. Reeves rarely talked before Jackson’s latest water crisis, and they’ve only made a few appearances together since it started.

    The day after announcing the end of the boil-water notice in Jackson, the governor spoke at the opening of a business in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

    “I’ve got to tell you, it is a great day to be in Hattiesburg. It’s also, as always, a great day to not be in Jackson,” Reeves said. “I feel I should take off my emergency management director hat and leave it in the car, and take off my public works director hat and leave it in the car.”

    Lumumba is an attorney and has been a community organizer. He said he’s able to work with people who have different vantage points.

    “If you can only organize people who think like you, you’re not much of an organizer,” he said.

    Lumumba is the second person in his family to be mayor of Jackson. The man he calls his hero, his father Chokwe Lumumba, was elected mayor in 2013 after serving four years on the city council. Chokwe Lumumba persuaded Jackson voters to approve a 1% local sales tax to fund infrastructure improvements. He died in 2014, after less than nine months in office.

    The elder Lumumba, a Michigan native, had lived in Mississippi in the 1970s and was active in a Black nationalist organization, the Republic of New Afrika. After he practiced law in the North for several years, he and his wife, Nubia, moved their family back to Mississippi.

    The younger Lumumba said he spent part of his childhood working at Jackson’s Malcolm X Grassroots Center for Self-Determination and Self-Defense. He said the center had summer programs for young people, offering them political lessons and leisure activities such as swimming.

    “I’m grateful to my parents for giving me that value system in my work today,” Lumumba said.

    After his father died, the younger Lumumba ran unsuccessfully in a special mayoral election in 2014.

    He won his first term as mayor in 2017 and easily won a second term in 2021. Lumumba said as he was growing up and earning a law degree, he did not aspire to become mayor but prayed God would use him to do big work.

    “I believe that the Lord keeps our prayers stored up in vials and they’re like a sweet-smelling aroma to him,” said Lumumba, who attends a nondenominational Christian church. “So, the prayer that I made at like around 8 years old, He remembered and I think that is why I’m in position here.”

    Corey Lewis of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he and Lumumba are best friends. They met in 2001 when Lewis was a student at Tougaloo College and Lumumba was graduating from Jackson’s Callaway High School.

    “He cares about the city of Jackson — like, that is a passion,” Lewis said. “We could be out having fun or going on a trip and he’d be like, ‘Man, I just don’t know what I’m going to do about this situation.’”

    Cain, though, said he thinks leading a city is a larger job than the current Mayor Lumumba anticipated.

    “I just believe there is a difference between a politician or an elected official than an advocate or an activist,” the radio host said. “I don’t think this guy has been able to make the transition.”

    In a 2017 speech at Millsaps College in Jackson, Lumumba said that as a child of two activists, he tends to talk about big issues like social justice and self-determination.

    “But as I quickly learned on the campaign trail,” he said, “when you knock on a gentleman or a lady’s door and you talk about these great big ideas, you’re confronted with a brother or sister who says, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s good, young brother, but how are you going to fix that pothole in the middle of my street?’”

    ————

    Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

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  • Civil rights lawyer John Burris confronts police narratives

    Civil rights lawyer John Burris confronts police narratives

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    OAKLAND, Calif. — Before John Burris became the go-to lawyer for Northern California families grieving a loved one killed by police, the civil rights legend was a child suspicious of the Santa Claus narrative.

    He didn’t understand why Santa was white. He was confused by Santa’s modus operandi — landing on rooftops to slide down chimneys to deliver presents? The Burris family had no chimney.

    “I could not accept it,” he said, “because it didn’t make sense to me.”

    For nearly 50 years, the San Francisco Bay Area native has poked holes into narratives that did not add up, namely those of law enforcement accused of using excessive force. He estimates he has represented more than 1,000 victims of police misconduct, in California and elsewhere.

    He helped win a civil jury verdict of $3.8 million for the late Rodney King, a Black motorist whose 1991 beating by four Los Angeles police officers — captured on grainy camcorder video — shocked a public unaware of the brutality routinely inflicted on Black people. His practice also negotiated nearly $3 million for the family of Oscar Grant, a young Black man killed by a Bay Area transit officer in 2009 in one of the first police shootings recorded on cellphone.

    But Burris prides himself on the smaller cases that have made up his career, and even at 77, he still travels to stand with clients at news conferences. Video evidence has helped enormously in altering public opinion, legal observers say, but so have attorneys like Burris who refuse to stop pushing, one police department at a time.

    “The police were untouchable,” said retired U.S. Northern California Judge Thelton Henderson. “John was a part of changing all of that, changing and showing what the police department is like.”

    As Burris prepares to hand the reins of his practice to a younger generation, he sat for interviews with The Associated Press and reflected on a career that started with accounting before landing on police accountability as a way to improve his community.

    Burris grew up in the working-class city of Vallejo, the oldest of six.

    DeWitt Burris was a tool room mechanic at a naval shipyard with side businesses in landscaping and fruit-picking, which John Burris did not enjoy. Imogene Burris was a psychiatric nurse technician at a state hospital who taught her children that everyone deserved fair treatment.

    John Burris was a big reader and as the Civil Rights era progressed, a speech class at Solano Community College showed him that people listened to what he had to say. He later graduated with advanced degrees in business and law from the University of California, Berkeley, yearning to do more.

    It bothered him that the proud men he admired, including his father and uncles, had served in the U.S. Navy but in menial roles because of their race. It burned him to learn, as a lawyer, that police beat and belittled Black fathers in front of their children.

    “Police didn’t have to do certain things,” Burris said. “I could see how Black men were treated in the criminal justice system. I understood it was the destruction of the African American family that was taking place.”

    San Francisco Mayor London Breed, 48, grew up in public housing and recalled Burris as someone the Black community could go to for help.

    “There were certain attorneys that had a solid reputation, and he was one of them,” she said. “It was a big deal that he was African American.”

    Now, prospective clients crowd into the small waiting area of his law firm before they’re ushered into a conference room with expansive views of west Oakland.

    The walls are studded with news articles chronicling legal achievements, proclamations of honor, and court illustrations of significant trials. One section is dedicated to Rosa Parks, the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, and other civil rights heroes.

    “I cannot be tired, I cannot quit,” Burris said, “because they did not quit.”

    Rodney King’s first pick to represent him in his civil case was Johnnie Cochran, but the assistant who took the call at Cochran’s office said the lawyer was tied up for several months. (“Obviously he was furious when he found out about this,” Burris said.) The case went to Milton Grimes, who pulled in Burris for his expertise in police brutality.

    Burris recalls King as a regular guy unable to handle a media frenzy that relentlessly cast him in a negative light. Close friends called him by his middle name, Glen.

    “He never got to the point of being able to handle being Rodney King,” Burris said. “He wanted to be Glen.”

    He represented Tupac Shakur in a lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department after two officers stopped him for jaywalking and mocked his name, infuriating the late rapper. (“Tupac was a difficult guy to handle because he didn’t follow directions well,” Burris said.)

    His profile grew throughout the 1990s, with regular appearances on television as a commentator during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

    In 1996, Burris received his only disciplinary mark with the State Bar of California when his license was suspended for 30 days over ethical violations. He said he should have maintained closer supervision of a growing staff that sent out misleading mailers to victims of mass disasters. He also admitted to bouncing a check to another lawyer and failing to file lawsuits on time for two clients.

    Perhaps his greatest achievement was in reforming the Oakland Police Department, the result of a class-action lawsuit he and attorney Jim Chanin filed in 2000 against a rogue unit that planted drugs and made false arrests. The Oakland “Riders” case resulted in the department coming under federal oversight for nearly two decades as it slowly implemented dozens of reforms.

    The reforms included collecting racial data on stops of motorists, and reporting and investigating when officers used force. Burris met with the police department and federal monitor at least once a month, and in recent years without pay — “a testament to his not being in this just for money,” said Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong.

    Lawyers trained or mentored by Burris say he uses a different scale than other attorneys when weighing potential cases.

    “He’s like, ‘What is the principle of this?’” said Oakland attorney Adante Pointer. “There might not be a bunch of money. But you know you’re going to make a world of difference in someone’s life.”

    Not everyone appreciates his knack for publicity, even if they admire his legal skills.

    “I think it stirs up public sentiment unfairly. If he feels he has a viable civil case, the courtroom is where it should play out,” said Michael Rains, a Bay Area attorney who regularly defends police.

    But Robert Collins is among clients who say the attorney provides invaluable guidance in a world where police usually dictate the narrative.

    In December 2020, Collins’ stepson Angelo Quinto died after Antioch police rolled him on his stomach, pressed a knee to his neck and cuffed him. Police said that Quinto, who was in psychological distress, was combative and on drugs when he was neither, the family said.

    At a recent news conference, Burris blasted Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton’s decision not to criminally charge the officers. He comforted family members with hugs.

    “Having somebody of John’s caliber, with that much experience, is really, really helpful. Because it lets you know that you’re not going crazy,” Collins said.

    Burris has promised to slow down and this summer, reorganized his solo practice to add law partners.

    His wife of two decades, Cheryl Burris, recently retired from teaching at the School of Law at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black university. Both are active in mentoring Black youth.

    He marvels at the changes, from a time when the public insisted Rodney King was the villain to George Floyd, whose death sparked global outrage. But shootings, racial profiling, and inadequate response to mental health emergencies will continue without pressure for reform, he said.

    “I know they don’t have a lot of people who speak for them,” he said of his clients. “I feel very fortunate that I can be their champion, if you will, and be their go-to person.”

    ———

    AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

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  • House approves scaled-down bill targeting Big Tech dominance

    House approves scaled-down bill targeting Big Tech dominance

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    WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved sharply scaled-down legislation targeting the dominance of Big Tech companies by giving states greater power in antitrust cases and increasing money for federal regulators.

    The bipartisan measure, passed by a 242-184 vote, pales in comparison with a more ambitious package aimed at reining in Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple and cleared by key House and Senate committees. That proposal has languished for months, giving the companies time for vigorous lobbying campaigns against it.

    The more limited bill would give states an upper hand over companies in choosing the location of courts that decide federal antitrust cases. Proponents say this change would avert the “home-court advantage” that Big Tech companies enjoy in federal court in Northern California, where many of the cases are tried and many of the companies are based.

    Many state attorneys general have pursued antitrust cases against the industry, and many states joined with the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in their landmark lawsuits against Google and Meta (then called Facebook), respectively, in late 2020.

    The bill also would increase filing fees paid by companies to federal agencies for all proposed mergers worth $500 million or more, while reducing the fees for small and medium-sized transactions. The aim is to increase revenue for federal enforcement efforts.

    Under the bill, companies seeking approval for mergers would have to disclose subsidies they received from countries deemed to pose strategic or economic risks to the United States — especially China.

    “We find ourselves in a monopoly moment as a country,” Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said before the vote. “Multibillion-dollar corporations have grown into behemoths, eliminating any real competition in their industries and using their dominance to hurt small businesses and consumers. Meta’s monopoly power has enabled it to harm women, children and people of all ages without recourse. Amazon has used its dominance to copy competitors’ products and run small businesses into the ground.”

    The Biden administration, which has pushed for antitrust legislation targeting Big Tech, endorsed the bill this week.

    Even in reduced form, the legislation drew fierce opposition from conservative Republicans who split from their GOP colleagues supporting the bill. The conservatives objected to the proposed revenue increase for the antitrust regulators, arguing there has been brazen overreach by the FTC under President Joe Biden.

    Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., described the FTC’s leader, Lina Khan, as a “a radical leftist seeking to replace consumers’ decisions with her own.”

    Another California Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, told his colleagues: “If you want to stifle innovation, vote for this.”

    If Republicans win control of the House or Senate in the November elections, they are certain to try to crimp the activism of the FTC and to challenge its broader interpretation of its legal authority.

    The broader antitrust package would restrict powerful tech companies from favoring their own products and services over rivals on their platforms and could even lead to mandated breakups separating companies’ dominant platforms from their other businesses. It could, for example, prevent Amazon from steering consumers to its own brands and away from competitors’ products on its giant e-commerce platform.

    The drafting of that legislation marked a new turn in Congress’ effort to curb the dominance of the tech giants and anti-competitive practices that critics say have hurt consumers, small businesses and innovation. But the proposal is complex and drew objections to some provisions from lawmakers of both parties, even though all condemn the tech giants’ conduct.

    Lawmakers have faced a delicate task as they try to tighten reins around a powerful industry whose services, mostly free or nearly so, are popular with consumers and embedded into daily life.

    So with time to act running out as the November elections approach in about six weeks, lawmakers extracted the less controversial provisions on antitrust court venues and merger filing fees, putting them into the new bill that passed.

    Lawmakers added the provision targeting foreign subsidies to U.S. companies. Republicans especially have vocally criticized the Chinese ownership of popular video platform TikTok.

    In the Senate, Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar is sponsoring similar legislation with Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah.

    “Effective antitrust enforcement is critical to ensuring consumers and small businesses have the opportunity to compete,” Klobuchar said in a statement Thursday. “Enforcers cannot take on the biggest companies the world has ever known with duct tape and Band-Aids.”

    I

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