[1/2]Actor Kevin Spacey walks outside the Southwark Crown Court on the day of his trial over charges related to allegations of sex offences, in London, Britain, June 30, 2023. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Actor Kevin Spacey charged with 12 sex offences
Oscar-winner denies all accusations
Alleged victim says he felt ashamed
LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) – An alleged sex assault victim of Kevin Spacey said the “slippery” Hollywood actor had tried to “groom” him, and the repeated groping assaults had left him feeling physically sick, a London court heard on Monday.
Spacey, 63, is on trial at Southwark Crown Court accused of a dozen allegations of historic sex offences committed against four men, then aged in their 20s and 30s, which are said to have taken place between 2001 and 2013.
He has denied all the charges and his lawyer Patrick Gibbs said last week at the start of the trial the jury were going to hear some “damned lies”.
On Monday, the court was shown a recorded police interview with the first of the alleged victims. The man said the actor had assaulted him on up to 12 occasions over a period of about four years in the early 2000s, grabbing his “private areas” when they were alone, such as in a car or an elevator.
After two to three weeks of being with Spacey, the actor made him feel uncomfortable, rubbing the man’s legs and neck while he was driving, before later starting to grope him or force the man’s hand onto his genitalia, he said.
“He was almost, from the get go, grooming me,” the man said in the interview.
The alleged victim, who cannot be identified, said the “touchy feely” actor had on one occasion aggressively grabbed his crotch so hard when he was driving him to a party hosted by singer Elton John in about 2004 that he almost crashed the car.
Describing himself a “man’s man”, the accuser recounted that he had threatened to knock the actor out if he did it again, to which Spacey had replied “that’s such a turn on to me”.
He described the Oscar-winner as a “slippery snaky, difficult person”, a “mixed-up individual” who was very confused about his sexuality. The man said Spacey’s behaviour was an open secret at the London Old Vic theatre where he worked for more than a decade.
“It was well-known that he was obviously up to no good so to speak,” the man said.
‘SICK’
Giving evidence in person in court from the behind a screen, the man said he felt shocked, embarrassment and ashamed about what had happened to him, saying the alleged assaults made him feel physically sick.
He rejected suggestions from Spacey’s lawyer Gibbs that he had been flirtatious himself with the actor, had appeared to enjoy the interaction and that he had questioned his own sexuality.
Gibbs quizzed him about why he had kept a “warm and jolly” letter Spacey had sent him ahead of a charity event the man was involved in, and a “cosy” photo he posted on social media showing him with the actor.
“It’s just a normal photo, two men standing next to each other,” the witness replied.
Gibbs also put it to him the allegation regarding the incident prior to the Elton John party was completely untrue, pointing out that Spacey had only attended one such gathering which was in 2001. The man replied he might have got the dates wrong as it had been so long ago.
Asked why he had only come forward to the police last year, he said it was the “right time”, and then when questioned whether it had occurred to him he might be able to sue Spacey, he agreed it had.
Asked how much he thought he might receive, he replied: “Whatever it would be, it wouldn’t be enough for somebody who had been assaulted and abused.”
The trial is due to last about four weeks.
Reporting by Michael Holden, Editing by William Maclean
[1/2]A view shows a residential building destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 14, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS/Pavel Klimov/File Photo
July 3 (Reuters) – Russia has brought some 700,000 children from the conflict zones in Ukraine into Russian territory, Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said late on Sunday.
“In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine,” Karasin wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion on its western neighbour Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow says its programme of bringing children from Ukraine into Russian territory is to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
However, Ukraine says many children have been illegally deported and the United States says thousands of children have been forcibly removed from their homes.
Most of the movement of people and children occurred in the first few months of the war and before Ukraine started its major counter offensive to regain occupied territories in the east and south in late August.
In July 2022, the United States estimated that Russia “forcibly deported” 260,000 children, while Ukraine’s Ministry of Integration of Occupied Territories, says 19,492 Ukrainian children are currently considered illegally deported.
(This story has been refiled to fix typographical errors in paragraph 3)
Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry
July 3 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s move to temporarily cap how many posts Twitter users can read on the social media site could undermine efforts by new CEO Linda Yaccarino to attract advertisers, marketing industry professionals said.
Musk announced Saturday that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read, to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation.
Users posted screenshots in reply, showing they were unable to see any tweets, including tweets on the pages of corporate advertisers, after hitting the limit.
Ad industry veterans said the move creates an obstacle for Yaccarino, the former NBCUniversal advertising chief who started last month as Twitter’s CEO.
Yaccarino has sought to repair relationships with advertisers who pulled away from the site after Musk bought it last year, the Financial Times reported last week.
The limits are “remarkably bad” for users and advertisers already shaken by the “chaos” Musk has brought to the platform, Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday.
“The advertiser trust deficit that Linda Yaccarino needs to reverse just got even bigger. And it cannot be reversed based on her industry credibility alone,” he said.
Lou Paskalis, the founder of advertising consultancy AJL Advisory and former marketing boss at Bank of America, said Yaccarino is Musk’s “last best hope” to salvage ad revenue and the company’s value.
“This move signals to the marketplace that he’s not capable of empowering her to save him from himself,” he said.
Under the new cap, unverified accounts were initially limited to 600 posts a day with new unverified accounts limited to 300. Verified accounts could read 6,000 posts a day, Musk said in a post on the site.
Twitter logo and a photo of Elon Musk are displayed through magnifier in this illustration taken October 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Hours later, he said the cap was raised to 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 per day for unverified and 500 posts per day for new unverified users.
A Twitter spokesperson did not reply to requests for comment and inquiries about how long the restrictions will last on Sunday.
Capping how much users can view could be “catastrophic” for the platform’s ad business, said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence.
“This certainly isn’t going to make it any easier to convince advertisers to return. It’s a hard sell already to bring advertisers back,” she said.
Olivia Wedderburn, an executive at creative agency TMW Unlimited, said she was advising her clients to “stop investing in Twitter immediately,” because the platform was turning away heavily engaged users, which she said is the “sole reason” to advertise on Twitter.
The limit came soon after Twitter began requiring users to log into an account on the social media platform to view tweets, which Musk called a “temporary emergency measure” to combat data scraping.
Musk had earlier expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models.
Platforms including Reddit and major news media organizations have complained about AI companies using their information to train AI models as some have sought fees.
Kai-Cheng Yang, researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, said that the limits appeared to be effective in blocking third parties, including search engines, from scraping Twitter data like before.
“It might still be possible, but the methods would be much more sophisticated and much less efficient,” he said.
Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York, Sheila Dang in Dallas, Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Martin Coulter in London; editing by Burton Frierson, Nick Zieminski and Marguerita Choy
DUBAI, July 3 (Reuters) – Pope Francis said the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, has made him angry and disgusted and that he condemned and rejected permitting the act as a form of freedom of speech.
“Any book considered holy should be respected to respect those who believe in it,” the pope said in an interview in the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad, published on Monday. “I feel angry and disgusted at these actions.
“Freedom of speech should never be used as a means to despise others and allowing that is rejected and condemned.”
A man tore up and burned a Koran in Sweden’s capital Stockholm last week, resulting in strong condemnation from several states, including Turkey whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the NATO military alliance.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, courts have over-ruled those decisions, saying they infringed freedom of speech.
On Sunday, an Islamic grouping of 57 states said collective measures are needed to prevent acts of desecration to the Koran and international law should be used to stop religious hatred.
Reporting by Maha Eldahan; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Raju Gopalakrishnan
Hundreds of Israeli troops in one of biggest operations in years
Drone strikes target building in Jenin refugee camp
Gunfire and explosions heard for hours as drones circle
JENIN, West Bank, July 3 (Reuters) – Israeli forces hit the city of Jenin with drone strikes on Monday in one of the biggest West Bank operations in 20 years, killing at least eight Palestinians and involving hundreds of troops in sporadic gun battles that continued into the evening.
Gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the day as clashes continued between Israeli troops and fighters from the Jenin Brigades, a unit made up of militant groups based in the city’s crowded refugee camp.
“What is going on in the refugee camp is real war,” said Palestinian ambulance driver Khaled Alahmad. “There were strikes from the sky targeting the camp, every time we drive in, around five to seven ambulances and we come back full of injured.”
At times during the morning, at least six drones could be seen circling over the city and the adjoining camp, a densely packed area housing around 14,000 refugees in less than half a square kilometre.
The camp has been at the heart of an escalation of violence across the West Bank that has triggered mounting alarm from Washington to the Arab world, without so far opening the way to a resumption of political negotiations that have been stalled for almost a decade.
For more than a year, army raids in cities such as Jenin have become routine, while there have been a series of deadly attacks by Palestinians against Israelis and rampages by Jewish settler mobs against Palestinian villages.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed at least eight people had been killed and more than 50 wounded in Jenin, while another man was killed in Ramallah overnight, shot in the head at a checkpoint.
The Israeli military said its forces struck a building that served as a command centre for fighters from the Jenin Brigades with what it called “precise” drone strikes using small payloads. It described the operation as an extensive counter-terrorism effort aimed at destroying infrastructure and disrupting militants from using the refugee camp as a base.
As the operation proceeded, Israeli armoured bulldozers ploughed up roads in the camp to dig up concealed improvised explosive devices, cutting water and electricity supplies, the Jenin municipality said as residents described soldiers breaking through the walls to pass from house to house.
“Nothing is safe in the camp. They dug up the roads with bulldozers. Why? What did the camp do?” said Hussein Zeidan, 67, as he recovered from his wounds in hospital.
In Washington, the State Department said it was closely tracking the situation in Jenin. A State Department spokesperson said it was imperative that all possible precautions be taken to prevent the loss of civilian lives.
An Israeli military spokesman said the operation would last as long as needed and suggested forces could remain for an extended period. “It could take hours, but it could also take days. We are focused on our goals,” he said.
Until June 21, when it carried out a strike near Jenin, the Israeli military had not used drone strikes in the West Bank since 2006. But the growing scale of the violence and the pressure on ground forces meant such tactics may continue, a military spokesman said.
[1/12]Palestinians run for cover during clashes with Israeli forces amid an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank July 3, 2023. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
“We’re really stretched,” a spokesman told journalists. “It’s because of the scale. And again, from our perception, this will minimize friction,” he said, adding that the strikes were based on “precise intelligence”.
‘HORNETS NEST’
Monday’s operation, involving a force described as “brigade-size” – suggesting around 1,000-2,000 troops – was intended to help “break the safe haven mindset of the camp, which has become a hornets nest,” the spokesman said.
Its apparent scale underlined the importance of the Jenin camp in violence that has further exposed the impotence of the Palestinian Authority to impose its writ over towns in the West Bank, where it holds nominal governance powers.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was suspending contacts with Israel and called for “international protection for our people”. UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said he was talking with all parties to de-escalate and ensure humanitarian access.
Hundreds of fighters from militant groups including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah are based in the camp, which was set up 70 years ago to house refugees in the aftermath of the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of Israel. The fighters have an array of weapons and a growing arsenal of explosive devices.
The Israeli military, which regularly accuses militant groups of basing fighters in civilian areas, said troops seized an improvised rocket launcher and hit a weapons production and explosives storage facility with hundreds of devices ready to be used as well as radios and other equipment.
It said it had also found weapons in a mosque where fighters had barricaded themselves inside in an underground section.
It was unclear whether the incursion would trigger a wider response from Palestinian factions, drawing in militant groups in the Gaza Strip, the coastal enclave controlled by militant Islamist group Hamas.
Saleh Al-Arouri, accused by Israel of leading the Hamas military wing in the West Bank, told Aqsa TV that fighters in Jenin should try to capture Israeli soldiers.
“Our fighters will rise from everywhere, and you will never know where the new fighter will come from,” he said.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said his forces were “closely monitoring the conduct of our enemies,” with the defence establishment “ready for all scenarios.”
Following the last major raid in Jenin in June, Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. That led to a rampage by mobs of settlers in Palestinian villages and towns.
Israel captured the West Bank, which the Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, in the 1967 Middle East war. Following decades of conflict, peace talks that had been brokered by the United States have been frozen since 2014.
Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, James Mackenzie, Dan Williams, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Rami Ayyoub in Washington and Arshad Mohammed in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Frank Jack Daniel, William Maclean
July 3 (Reuters) – Three civil rights groups filed a complaint against Harvard on Monday, claiming its preferential policy for undergraduate applicants with family ties to the elite school overwhelmingly benefits white students, days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its race-conscious admissions policies.
The groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education claiming that Harvard’s preferences for “legacy” applicants violates a federal law banning race discrimination for programs that receive federal funds, as virtually all U.S. colleges and universities do.
Last week, the Supreme Court said race-conscious policies adopted by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to ensure that more non-white students are admitted are unconstitutional. The decision was a major blow to efforts to attract diverse student bodies and is expected to prompt new challenges to admission policies.
Harvard College is the undergraduate school of Harvard University.
The groups in Monday’s complaint said the Supreme Court ruling had made it even more imperative to eliminate policies that disadvantage non-white applicants.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The groups are represented by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit that describes itself on its website as working with “communities of color and immigrants to fight discrimination.”
Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the group’s executive director, said the Supreme Court last week made clear that any policies that disadvantage racial groups are unlawful by noting that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
“Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process,” he said in a statement.
Students and pedestrians walk through the Yard at Harvard University, after the school asked its students not to return to campus after Spring Break and said it would move to virtual instruction for graduate and undergraduate classes, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
Legacy policies, which are common at U.S. colleges and universities, have become increasingly controversial
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in remarks following las week’s Supreme Court ruling, said schools should consider eliminating legacy policies because they “expand privilege instead of opportunity.”
Several prominent lawmakers from both parties made similar comments. Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, called legacy policies “affirmative action for white people” in a tweet.
According to Monday’s complaint, nearly 70% of Harvard applicants with family ties to donors or alumni are white and are about six times more likely to be admitted than other applicants.
About 28% of Harvard’s class of 2019 were legacies, the groups said in the complaint. That means fewer admissions slots were available for non-white applicants who are far less likely to have family ties to the school, they said.
The groups are asking the Department of Education to investigate Harvard’s admission practices and order the school to abandon legacy preferences if it wants to continue receiving federal funding. Michael Kippins, one of the lawyers who filed the complaint, said in an email that Lawyers for Civil Rights has not ruled out filing a lawsuit against Harvard in the future.
When the Supreme Court heard the Harvard and UNC cases last October, a lawyer for the group that had sued the schools argued that eliminating legacy preferences “would make Harvard far less white, wealthy, and privileged.”
Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas appeared to agree, pressing Harvard’s lawyer on why the school could not get rid of the legacy policy instead of granting separate preferences to non-white students.
The lawyer, Seth Waxman, told the court that there was no evidence that ending legacy preferences would lead to a more diverse student body.
Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler
Dan Wiessner (@danwiessner) reports on labor and employment and immigration law, including litigation and policy making. He can be reached at daniel.wiessner@thomsonreuters.com.
BUCHAREST, June 23 (Reuters) – Internet personality Andrew Tate will remain under house arrest in Romania for another 30 days from the end of June pending trial on charges of human trafficking, a Bucharest court ruled on Friday.
Tate was indicted on Tuesday along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian female suspects for human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
They are under house arrest pending an investigation into abuses against seven women whom prosecutors say were lured through false claims of relationships, accusations the suspects have denied.
The four suspects were held in police custody from Dec. 29 until March 31 before a Bucharest court put them under house arrest, which prosecutors on Tuesday sought to extend.
The Tate brothers are citizens of the United States and Britain. Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist, built up a following of millions on social media, promoting his own lavish lifestyle in posts which critics say denigrate women.
The court needs to approve preventative restrictive measures such as house arrest every 30 days. It held a hearing on Wednesday and said it would rule on Friday.
“We’re not the first affluent wealthy men who have been unfairly attacked,” Tate told reporters on Wednesday after the hearing. “I love this country, I’m going to stay here regardless no matter what and I look forward to being found innocent at the end of everything.”
The trial will not start immediately. Under Romanian law, the case gets sent to the Bucharest court’s preliminary chamber, where a judge has 60 days to inspect the case files to ensure legality.
Trafficking of adults carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, as does rape.
Prosecutors also said they were investigating the four suspects in a separate ongoing case on allegations of money laundering, witness tampering, and child and adult trafficking.
Reporting by Luiza Ilie and Octav Ganea; Editing by Alan Charlish and Peter Graff
MEXICO CITY, June 12 (Reuters) – Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said she will step down on Friday to pursue the ruling party’s candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, bidding to become the country’s first female leader.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) on Sunday agreed that on Sept. 6 it would announce the winner of its internal selection process. Sheinbaum is one of the two favorites.
MORENA is heavily favored to win the June 2024 presidential election, lifted by Lopez Obrador’s personal popularity.
He cannot seek re-election because Mexican presidents are restricted by law to a single six-year term. Close aides to Lopez Obrador have told Reuters they believe he would like Sheinbaum to succeed him. He denies having any favorite.
Announcing her resignation plan at a press conference on Monday, the 60-year-old Sheinbaum underlined her credentials as a scientist and environmentalist, saying she would continue Lopez Obrador’s “transformation” of Mexico with her “own stamp.”
“I have made the decision to leave the post definitively on June 16, with the goal of becoming the first woman in the history of Mexico to lead the fate of the nation,” she said.
MORENA’s leadership at the weekend agreed that the contenders should step down this week to compete.
[1/3] Outgoing Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, one of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination of the ruling MORENA party, gestures during a press conference in Mexico City, Mexico June 12, 2023. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha
Most opinion polls have tended to give Sheinbaum a slight advantage in the race over her rival Marcelo Ebrard, who stood down as foreign minister earlier on Monday to compete.
Sheinbaum highlighted that past polling had put her ahead and said she was confident it would remain that way.
Five polls open to the general public are due to determine MORENA’s presidential nominee.
Sheinbaum also cited a study published last month by the national statistics agency showing that over two-thirds of Mexicans strongly backed a woman holding the presidency.
“It’s time for women,” she said.
Ebrard had argued that prospective candidates should leave their posts to ensure a level playing field. Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez, another contender, is also expected to resign.
Ebrard, speaking to reporters after his resignation, said improving security was his first priority, and stressed the need to beef up public healthcare and education.
In an earlier radio interview, he argued that Mexico had a “golden opportunity” to double “or more” economic growth, spurred by companies’ bringing manufacturing capacity to the country due to economic tensions between China and the United States.
Reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Writing by Sarah Morland and Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Leslie Adler
NEW YORK, June 13 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms (META.O) said on Tuesday that it would provide researchers with access to components of a new “human-like” artificial intelligence model that it said can analyze and complete unfinished images more accurately than existing models.
The model, I-JEPA, uses background knowledge about the world to fill in missing pieces of images, rather than looking only at nearby pixels like other generative AI models, the company said.
That approach incorporates the kind of human-like reasoning advocated by Meta’s top AI scientist Yann LeCun and helps the technology to avoid errors that are common to AI-generated images, like hands with extra fingers, it said.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is a prolific publisher of open-sourced AI research via its in-house research lab. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that sharing models developed by Meta’s researchers can help the company by spurring innovation, spotting safety gaps and lowering costs.
“For us, it’s way better if the industry standardizes on the basic tools that we’re using and therefore we can benefit from the improvements that others make,” he told investors in April.
The company’s executives have dismissed warnings from others in the industry about the potential dangers of the technology, declining to sign a statement last month backed by top executives from OpenAI, DeepMind, Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) that equated its risks with pandemics and wars.
Lecun, considered one of the “godfathers of AI,” has railed against “AI doomerism” and argued in favor of building safety checks into AI systems.
Meta is also starting to incorporate generative AI features into its consumer products, like ad tools that can create image backgrounds and an Instagram product that can modify user photos, both based on text prompts.
Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by David Gregorio
MOSCOW, June 2 (Reuters) – Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous opposition leader, on Friday shared letters showing how he has poked fun at prison authorities for several months with a host of bizarre requests for a kimono, a balalaika, a beetle and even to keep a kangaroo.
The requests were turned down by the maximum security IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 250 km (115 miles) east of Moscow, according to the Russian documents he posted online.
“When you are in a punishment cell and don’t have much entertainment, you can always amuse yourself by corresponding with the prison administration,” Navalny said.
Navalny is serving combined sentences of 11-1/2 years for fraud and contempt of court on charges that he says were trumped up to silence him.
The letters showed that Navalny asked for an eclectic range of items, including, variously, a bottle of moonshine, a balalaika, a staff, two pouches of cheap tobacco, a kimono and a black belt.
The correspondence also reveals the conditions of the Russian prison system: Navalny asked for a megaphone to be given to a mentally ill convict in a cell opposite so that “he could shout even louder”, and for prison authorities to award the 10th dan in Karate to a prisoner who apparently killed a man with his bare hands.
Both requests were refused. The prison declined comment.
The prison’s replies, written in the stilted administrative Russian of officialdom, complete with serial numbers, acronyms and references to various laws and rules, give a satiric insight into the sometimes absurd world of Russian bureaucracy, a theme writer Nikolai Gogol satirised in the 19th Century.
“The question of awarding eastern martial arts qualifications is not handled by the administration,” the prison wrote back on April 28.
In response to Navalny’s request for a permit to keep a kangaroo, the prison wrote: “The animal identified in your request relates to the double crested-marsupial… Your request is left without satisfaction.”
He asked for a massage chair to be given to an unidentified squad leader, suggesting it might reduce stress. The prison wrote coldly that massage chairs were not provided.
Navalny inquired about the names of the guard dogs.
The prison said it could not give him such information. Navalny said he was told by guards that knowledge of the names of the dogs could allow him to befriend the creatures and then try to escape.
His inquiry about whether he needed a permit to keep a beetle was met with a refusal.
“The insect identified by you in your request belongs to the animal kingdom,” the prison said in a May 3 letter.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Philippa Fletcher
As Moscow bureau chief, Guy runs coverage of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Before Moscow, Guy ran Brexit coverage as London bureau chief (2012-2022). On the night of Brexit, his team delivered one of Reuters historic wins – reporting news of Brexit first to the world and the financial markets. Guy graduated from the London School of Economics and started his career as an intern at Bloomberg. He has spent over 14 years covering the former Soviet Union. He speaks fluent Russian.
Contact: +447825218698
[1/3] Members of the University of North Carolina’s diverse student body mingle and make their way across campus as the Supreme Court weighs the issue of race-conscious admissions to colleges, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., March 28, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo
WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) – In 1998, the year a voter-approved measure barring the use of race-conscious admissions policies for public colleges and universities in California took effect, the percentage of Black, Hispanic and Native American students admitted at two of the state’s elite public schools plummeted by more than 50%.
Those figures for UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley offer a cautionary tale as administrators at schools around the United States await a Supreme Court decision due by the end of June that is expected to prohibit affirmative action student admissions policies nationwide.
That potential outcome in cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina has brought new urgency to efforts by schools to maintain or increase racial and ethnic diversity in their student populations, according to interviews with senior administrators at a dozen colleges and universities.
“We cannot afford as a nation to regress on our goals to create an educated and equitable society,” said Seth Allen, head of admissions at Pomona College in California. “So it’s incumbent on higher education to figure out how to work collectively together to ensure that we’re not furthering the enrollment gap among different groups of students.”
Many selective U.S. colleges and universities for decades have used some form of affirmative action to boost enrollment of minority students, seeing value in having a diverse student population not only to offer educational opportunity but to bring a range of perspectives onto campuses.
Affirmative action refers to policies that favor people belonging to certain groups considered disadvantaged or subject to discrimination, in areas such as hiring and student admissions.
Schools are exploring numerous options. Administrators said they are drafting strategies to expand their recruitment of diverse applicants, remove application barriers and increase the rate of minority students who accept their admissions offers.
An official at Rice University in Houston said the school will lean on student essay responses to ensure it admits students from diverse backgrounds. The U.S. Air Force Academy will focus on recruiting more students from diverse congressional districts.
The president of Skidmore College in New York said connecting with high school counselors will become “more important than ever” to broaden the school’s applicant pool.
Many schools said they already have waived fees, made standardized testing optional and are looking to improve financial aid offers – steps that could help boost minority enrollment.
All of the administrators said their plans could change to comply with the scope of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the Harvard and UNC cases. Some acknowledged that whatever steps schools take to circumvent a ban on race-conscious admissions policies might face legal challenges of their own.
“We’re likely to see a whole new generation of lawsuits arise from the new admission standards that will be adopted by colleges and universities,” said Danielle Holley, current dean of Howard University School of Law in Washington and incoming president of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
Lawsuits backed by an anti-affirmative action activist accused Harvard and UNC of unlawful discrimination in student admissions either by violating the U.S. Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law or a federal law barring discrimination based on race and other factors.
UNC was accused of discriminating against white and Asian American applicants. Harvard was accused of bias against Asian American applicants. The schools denied these allegations.
GOING LOCAL
Many of the school administrators said they plan to focus resources on recruitment, a part of the admissions cycle they do not expect the court will restrict.
Admissions officers said they were broadening their outreach to high schools and community-based organizations in neighborhoods with lower incomes and educational attainment – places often populated by racial minorities.
Yvonne Berumen, vice president of admissions at Pitzer College in California, said her team might run essay workshops at high schools in those targeted zip codes – postal regions – in hopes of generating applications.
Chris George, dean of admissions at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, said high school data from national organizations like the College Board, which offers information on neighborhood income and housing stability, will help guide which high schools the college sends representatives to visit and the recruitment events they attend.
Community-based organizations that identify local students who show academic promise and help them apply to college will be crucial partners for identifying and recruiting potential applicants from diverse backgrounds, the administrators said.
“They become extensions of our recruiting and admissions team in many ways, and we’re seeing each year a bigger and bigger percentage of our students come from those community-based organizations,” said Kent Devereaux, president of Goucher College in Maryland.
Administrators at schools located in or near major cities, including Pomona College near Los Angeles and Sarah Lawrence College in New York, said they would hope to draw more students from racially diverse local high schools and take more transfer students from local community colleges.
Colonel Arthur Primas Jr., the U.S. Air Force Academy’s admissions director, said his racially diverse recruiting team will continue to visit schools in U.S. congressional districts with heavy concentrations of minorities and will try to encourage more students to seek nominations to the academy from their local members of Congress.
“The Air Force Academy has had a long tradition of actively recruiting diverse candidates,” Primas said. “But we’re going to have to really be expansive.”
Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Donna Bryson; Editing by Will Dunham and Colleen Jenkins
Gabriella Borter is a reporter on the U.S. National Affairs team, covering cultural and political issues as well as breaking news. She has won two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York – in 2020 for her beat reporting on healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2019 for her spot story on the firing of the police officer who killed Eric Garner. The latter was also a Deadline Club Awards finalist. She holds a B.A. in English from Yale University and joined Reuters in 2017.
Hit finance ministry, president’s office, spy agency and others
Sources believe Beijing was seeking info on debt
NAIROBI, May 24 (Reuters) – Chinese hackers targeted Kenya’s government in a widespread, years-long series of digital intrusions against key ministries and state institutions, according to three sources, cybersecurity research reports and Reuters’ own analysis of technical data related to the hackings.
Two of the sources assessed the hacks to be aimed, at least in part, at gaining information on debt owed to Beijing by the East African nation: Kenya is a strategic link in the Belt and Road Initiative – President Xi Jinping’s plan for a global infrastructure network.
“Further compromises may occur as the requirement for understanding upcoming repayment strategies becomes needed,” a July 2021 research report written by a defence contractor for private clients stated.
China’s foreign ministry said it was “not aware” of any such hacking, while China’s embassy in Britain called the accusations “baseless”, adding that Beijing opposes and combats “cyberattacks and theft in all their forms.”
China’s influence in Africa has grown rapidly over the past two decades. But, like several African nations, Kenya’s finances are being strained by the growing cost of servicing external debt – much of it owed to China.
The hacking campaign demonstrates China’s willingness to leverage its espionage capabilities to monitor and protect economic and strategic interests abroad, two of the sources said.
The hacks constitute a three-year campaign that targeted eight of Kenya’s ministries and government departments, including the presidential office, according to an intelligence analyst in the region. The analyst also shared with Reuters research documents that included the timeline of attacks, the targets, and provided some technical data relating to the compromise of a server used exclusively by Kenya’s main spy agency.
A Kenyan cybersecurity expert described similar hacking activity against the foreign and finance ministries. All three of the sources asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of their work.
“Your allegation of hacking attempts by Chinese Government entities is not unique,” Kenya’s presidential office said, adding the government had been targeted by “frequent infiltration attempts” from Chinese, American and European hackers.
“As far as we are concerned, none of the attempts were successful,” it said.
It did not provide further details nor respond to follow-up questions.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Britain said China is against “irresponsible moves that use topics like cybersecurity to sow discord in the relations between China and other developing countries”.
“China attaches great importance to Africa’s debt issue and works intensively to help Africa cope with it,” the spokesperson added.
THE HACKS
Between 2000 and 2020, China committed nearly $160 billion in loans to African countries, according to a comprehensive database on Chinese lending hosted by Boston University, much of it for large-scale infrastructure projects.
Kenya used over $9 billion in Chinese loans to fund an aggressive push to build or upgrade railways, ports and highways.
Beijing became the country’s largest bilateral creditor and gained a firm foothold in the most important East African consumer market and a vital logistical hub on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast.
By late 2019, however, when the Kenyan cybersecurity expert told Reuters he was brought in by Kenyan authorities to assess a hack of a government-wide network, Chinese lending was drying up. And Kenya’s financial strains were showing.
The breach reviewed by the Kenyan cybersecurity expert and attributed to China began with a “spearphishing” attack at the end of that same year, when a Kenyan government employee unknowingly downloaded an infected document, allowing hackers to infiltrate the network and access other agencies.
“A lot of documents from the ministry of foreign affairs were stolen and from the finance department as well. The attacks appeared focused on the debt situation,” the Kenyan cybersecurity expert said.
Another source – the intelligence analyst working in the region – said Chinese hackers carried out a far-reaching campaign against Kenya that began in late 2019 and continued until at least 2022.
According to documents provided by the analyst, Chinese cyber spies subjected the office of Kenya’s president, its defence, information, health, land and interior ministries, its counter-terrorism centre and other institutions to persistent and prolonged hacking activity.
The affected government departments did not respond to requests for comment, declined to be interviewed or were unreachable.
By 2021, global economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic had already helped push one major Chinese borrower – Zambia – to default on its external debt. Kenya managed to secure a temporary debt repayment moratorium from China.
In early July 2021, the cybersecurity research reports shared by the intelligence analyst in the region detailed how the hackers secretly accessed an email server used by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Reuters was able to confirm that the victim’s IP address belonged to the NIS. The incident was also covered in a report from the private defence contractor reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters could not determine what information was taken during the hacks or conclusively establish the motive for the attacks. But the defence contractor’s report said the NIS breach was possibly aimed at gleaning information on how Kenya planned to manage its debt payments.
“Kenya is currently feeling the pressure of these debt burdens…as many of the projects financed by Chinese loans are not generating enough income to pay for themselves yet,” the report stated.
A Reuters review of internet logs delineating the Chinese digital espionage activity showed that a server controlled by the Chinese hackers also accessed a shared Kenyan government webmail service more recently from December 2022 until February this year.
Chinese officials declined to comment on this recent breach, and the Kenyan authorities did not respond to a question about it.
‘BACKDOOR DIPLOMACY’
The defence contractor, pointing to identical tools and techniques used in other hacking campaigns, identified a Chinese state-linked hacking team as having carried out the attack on Kenya’s intelligence agency.
The group is known as “BackdoorDiplomacy” in the cybersecurity research community, because of its record of trying to further the objectives of Chinese diplomatic strategy.
According to Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET, BackdoorDiplomacy re-uses malicious software against its victims to gain access to their networks, making it possible to track their activities.
Provided by Reuters with the IP address of the NIS hackers, Palo Alto Networks, a U.S. cybersecurity firm that tracks BackdoorDiplomacy’s activities, confirmed that it belongs to the group, adding that its prior analysis shows the group is sponsored by the Chinese state.
Cybersecurity researchers have documented BackdoorDiplomacy hacks targeting governments and institutions in a number of countries in Asia and Europe.
Incursions into the Middle East and Africa appear less common, making the focus and scale of its hacking activities in Kenya particularly noteworthy, the defence contractor’s report said.
“This angle is clearly a priority for the group.”
China’s embassy in Britain rejected any involvement in the Kenya hackings, and did not directly address questions about the government’s relationship with BackdoorDiplomacy.
“China is a main victim of cyber theft and attacks and a staunch defender of cybersecurity,” a spokesperson said.
Reporting by Aaron Ross in Nairobi, James Pearson in London and Christopher Bing in Washington
Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing
Editing by Chris Sanders and Joe Bavier
West & Central Africa correspondent investigating human rights abuses, conflict and corruption as well as regional commodities production, epidemic diseases and the environment, previously based in Kinshasa, Abidjan and Cairo.
Reports on hacks, leaks and digital espionage in Europe. Ten years at Reuters with previous postings in Hanoi as Bureau Chief and Seoul as Korea Correspondent. Author of ‘North Korea Confidential’, a book about daily life in North Korea. Contact: 447927347451
Award-winning reporter covering the intersection between technology and national security with a focus on how the evolving cybersecurity landscape affects government and business.
DHAKA, May 14 (Reuters) – Storm surges whipped up by a powerful cyclone moving inland from the Bay of Bengal inundated the Myanmar port city of Sittwe on Saturday, but largely spared a densely-populated cluster of refugee camps in low-lying neighbouring Bangladesh.
Some 400,000 people were evacuated in Myanmar and Bangladesh ahead of Cyclone Mocha making landfall, as authorities and aid agencies scrambled to avert heavy casualties from one of the strongest storms to hit the region in recent years.
Vulnerable settlements in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where more than one million Rohingya refugees live, were left relatively unscathed by the storm that is now gradually weakening.
“Luckily, we could escape the worst of the cyclone,” said Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees. “We are getting some reports of huts damaged but there are no casualties.”
Myanmar appears to have borne the direct impact of Cyclone Mocha, as winds of up to 210 kph (130 mph) ripped away tin roofs and brought down a communications tower.
Parts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, were flooded and the ground floors of several buildings were under water, a video posted on social media by a witness in the city showed.
An ethnic militia that controls swathes of Rakhine said a large number of structures in Sittwe and Kyauktaw had been damaged, and schools and monasteries where people had been sheltering were left without roofs.
“The whole northern Rakhine has suffered severe damage,” Arakan Army spokesperson Khine Thu Kha said. “People are in trouble.”
Communication networks in Rakhine had been disrupted after the cyclone made landfall, the U.N. and local media said.
Across Rakhine state and the north west of the country about 6 million people were already in need of humanitarian assistance, while 1.2 million have been displaced, according to the U.N. humanitarian office (OCHA).
[1/4] People move from their homes to take shelter in the nearest cyclone shelter at Shah Porir Dwip during the landfall of cyclone Mocha in Teknaf, Bangladesh. REUTERS/Jibon Ahmed
“For a cyclone to hit an area where there is already such deep humanitarian need is a nightmare scenario, impacting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people whose coping capacity has been severely eroded by successive crises,” U.N. resident coordinator Ramanathan Balakrishnan said.
Myanmar has been plunged into chaos since a junta seized power two years ago. After a crackdown on protests, a resistance movement is fighting the military on various fronts.
A junta spokesperson did not immediately answer a telephone call from Reuters to seek comment.
FOOD AND SUPPLIES
In Bangladesh, where authorities moved around 300,000 people to safer areas before the storm hit, Rohingya refugees inside densely-populated camps in the Cox’s Bazar in the south east of the country hunkered down inside their ramshackle homes.
“Our shelter, made of bamboo and tarpaulin, offers little protection,” said refugee Mohammed Aziz, 21. “We’re praying to Allah to save us.”
Many of the Rohingya refugees, half-a-million children among them, live in sprawling camps prone to flooding and landslides after having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
Hundreds of thousands of the Muslim Rohingya minority remain in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where many are confined to camps separated from the rest of the population.
“The state government has moved many Rohingya from Sittwe camps to higher grounds area,” Zaw Min Tun, a Rohingya resident in Sittwe said, adding that the evacuation took place without any warning.
“They also didn’t provide any food to them, so people are starving.”
Ahead of the storm, the World Food Programme said it was preparing food and relief supplies that could help more than 400,000 people in Rakhine and surrounding areas for a month.
Reporting by Ruma Paul in DHAKA and Reuters staff; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
Challenge ahead for opposition parties to form government
Move Forward comes close to sweep of capital Bangkok
No alliances with dictator-backed parties – Pita
Military parties down, but not out
Too soon to discuss alliances – Pheu Thai
BANGKOK, May 14 (Reuters) – Thailand’s opposition secured a stunning election win on Sunday after trouncing parties allied with the military, setting the stage for a flurry of deal-making over forming a government in a bid to end nearly a decade of conservative, army-backed rule.
The liberal Move Forward party and the populist Pheu Thai Party were far out in front with 99% of votes counted, but it was far from certain either will form the next government, with parliamentary rules written by the military after its 2014 coup skewed in its favour.
To rule, the opposition parties will need to strike deals and muster support from multiple camps, including members of a junta-appointed Senate that has sided with military parties and gets to vote on who becomes prime minister and form the next administration.
Sunday’s election was the latest bout in a long-running battle for power between Pheu Thai, the populist juggernaut of the billionaire Shinawatra family, and a nexus of old money, conservatives and military with influence over key institutions at the heart of two decades of turmoil.
But the staggering performance by Move Forward, riding a wave of support from young voters, will test the resolve of Thailand’s establishment and ruling parties after it came close to a clean sweep of the capital Bangkok on a platform of institutional reform and dismantling monopolies.
Move Forward came top, followed closely by Pheu Thai, the preliminary results showed. According to a Reuters calculation, both were set to win more than triple the number of seats of Palang Pracharat, the political vehicle of the junta, and the army-backed United Thai Nation party.
Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old former executive of a ride-hailing app, described the outcome as “sensational” and vowed to stay true to his party’s values when forming a government.
“It will be anti- dictator-backed, military-backed parties, for sure,” he told reporters. “It’s safe to assume that minority government is no longer possible here in Thailand.”
He said he remained open to an alliance with Pheu Thai, but has set his sights set on being prime minister.
“It is now clear the Move Forward Party has received the overwhelming support from the people around the country,” he said on Twitter.
Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics
MAJOR BLOW
[1/15] Move Forward Party leader and prime ministerial candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, waves to the crowd during the general election in Bangkok, Thailand, May 14, 2023. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
The preliminary results will be a crushing blow for the military and its allies. But with parliamentary rules on their side and influential figures behind them and involved behind the scenes, they could still have a role in government.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a retired general who led the last coup, had campaigned on continuity after nine years in charge, warning a change in government could lead to conflict.
On Sunday, he slipped away quietly from his United Thai Nation party headquarters, where there were few supporters to be seen.
A handful of staff sat beside plates of uneaten food as a giant television screen showed a live speech by Move Forward’s leader.
“I hope the country will be peaceful and prosper,” Prayuth told reporters. “I respect democracy and the election. Thank you.”
Pheu Thai had been expected to win having won most votes in every ballot since 2001, including two landslide victories. Three of its four governments have been ousted from office.
Founded by the polarising self-exiled tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, Pheu Thai remains hugely popular among the working classes and was banking on being swept back to power in a landslide on nostalgia for its populist policies like cheap healthcare, micro-loans and generous farming subsidies.
Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn, 36, has been tipped to follow in the footsteps of her father and of her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra, and become prime minister. Yingluck and Thaksin were both overthrown in coups.
Paetongtarn said she was happy for Move Forward, but it was too soon to discuss alliances.
“The voice of the people is most important,” she said.
Move Forward saw a late-stage rally in opinion polls and was betting on 3.3 million first-time voters getting behind its liberal agenda, including plans to weaken the military’s political role and amend a strict law on royal insults that critics say is used to stifle dissent.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, said Move Forward’s surge demonstrated a major shift in Thai politics.
“Pheu Thai fought the wrong war. Pheu Thai fought the populism war that it already won,” he said.
“Move Forward takes the game to the next level with institutional reform. That’s the new battleground in Thai politics.”
Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by William Mallard
WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) – A fresh push for a bipartisan immigration overhaul, coupled with enhanced border security, is emerging in the U.S. Congress, as thousands of migrants amass across the border in Mexico ahead of the end of COVID-era border restrictions next week.
The latest among those efforts is a last-minute legislative push that would grant U.S. border authorities similar expulsion powers allowed under the expiring COVID restrictions – known as Title 42 – for a period of two years, according to a congressional office involved in the talks.
Title 42 began under Republican former President Donald Trump in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and allows U.S. authorities to expel migrants to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum. The order is set to lift on May 11 when the COVID health emergency officially ends.
But many Republicans and some Democrats, particularly in border areas, fear the end of the order will lead to a rise in migration that authorities are poorly equipped to face. A top border official recently told lawmakers that migrant crossings could jump to 10,000 per day after May 11, nearly double the daily average in March.
Senators Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, are leading the effort to temporarily extend border expulsions. The pair view it as a short-term fix while they work on broader immigration reform, Sinema spokesperson Hannah Hurley said.
“This is squarely about the immediate crisis with the end of Title 42,” Hurley said.
Separately, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives plans to pass a package of border security measures next week to place tougher constraints on asylum-seekers, resume construction of a wall along the southwest border with Mexico, and expand federal law enforcement.
Many are seeking more sweeping change – but their hopes have been dashed in the past.
It has been 37 years since Congress passed significant immigration reform, but a persistently high volume of migrants and an acute labor shortage have galvanized lawmakers. Republicans also cite the flow of illegal drugs into the United States through ports of entry as reason to harden border security.
While some Democrats characterize the House border legislation as inhumane, several Democratic and Republican senators said they eagerly await such a bill.
Tillis, who is pushing both the short-term legislative fix for Title 42’s end and a wider package of reforms, said a House-passed bill would be “something we can build on.”
“It gives us some room to gain the support we need in the Senate” for broader legislation, he said, adding it could take two to three months to construct a compromise. But senators had no illusions this would be an easy task.
Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the House bill would provide clues on Republicans’ intent. He added that in conversations with fellow senators, “One of the first things they say is ‘well if the House starts the conversation I think we can get somewhere.’ We’ll see.”
Since a 1986 immigration reform package, which resulted in some 3 million immigrants winning legal status, Congress repeatedly has failed to update the nation’s policies.
Around 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States could have a stake in the outcome of this latest effort, along with U.S. businesses hungry for workers.
To succeed in the Democrat-controlled Senate, it would need 60 senators from across both parties to back it, as well as win the support of the Republican-controlled House.
“A high-wire act,” is how Republican Senator John Cornyn from border state Texas portrayed it, adding it was “the only path forward.”
STARS ALIGNING
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business association, has launched a campaign urging Congress to act. It was endorsed by 400 groups, ranging from the American Farm Bureau Federation to the U.S. Travel Association.
Republican-controlled states see their farming, ranching, food processing and manufacturing businesses begging for workers, a void that immigrants could fill if not for Washington’s clunky visa system.
Finally, passage of an immigration bill coupled with beefed-up border security could boost President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and give Republican candidates something to cheer, too.
The House bill would deal with some of the five “buckets” in the Tillis-Sinema effort, according to a Senate source familiar with their work.
Overall, they include a modernization of the plodding asylum system, improvements to how visas are granted, and measures to more effectively authorize immigrants, be they laborers and healthcare workers or doctors and engineers, to fill American jobs.
There is also the fate of 580,000 “Dreamers” enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who were brought illegally into the United States as children.
Republicans have blocked their path to citizenship for two decades, arguing that would encourage more to take the dangerous journey to the border.
Senators acknowledge some of their goals might have to be abandoned to achieve a “sweet spot.” But which ones?
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who won passage last year of the first major gun control bill in about three decades, did so in part by recognizing that a too ambitious bill is a recipe for failure.
Murphy was asked how the difficulty of winning immigration legislation stacks up to other recent battles, such as gun control, gay marriage and infrastructure investments.
“It’s an 11 on a scale of 10.”
Reporting by Richard Cowan; additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Mary Milliken and Diane Craft
May 3 (Reuters) – Texas authorities have arrested the wife and a friend of a man accused of killing five of his neighbors, saying the two helped the suspect evade capture for four days, a local prosecutor said on Wednesday.
Francisco Oropesa was apprehended on Tuesday after a manhunt conducted by local, state and federal officials. He was found in a closet under some laundry in a home in Montgomery County.
The bloodshed erupted on Friday in nearby San Jacinto County after neighbors asked the suspect to stop firing his semiautomatic rifle in his yard because it was keeping their baby awake. Instead, the 38-year-old man reloaded, entered the home of the neighbors and killed five, including an 8-year-old boy, officials said.
The suspect’s wife, identified as Divimara Nava, 52, was arrested Wednesday morning and was being held in Montgomery County, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said at a news conference.
“We believe that Nava was providing him with material aid and encouragement, food and clothes, and had arranged transport to this house,” Dillon said.
Nava was facing a felony charge of hindering apprehension and prosecution of a known felon, according to jail records.
[1/2] Francisco Oropesa, 38, suspected of shooting five Texas neighbors to death and leading multiple agencies on a four-day manhunt, is seen in an undated photograph released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). FBI/Handout via REUTERS
A friend of the suspect was also arrested on a marijuana charge and will be charged with helping the suspect flee the neighborhood in Cleveland, Texas, where the crime took place, Dillon said.
A $5 million bond will be set for the suspected gunman when he appears later Wednesday before a judge in a local jail where he is being held on five counts of murder, San Jacinto County Chief Deputy Tim Kean said at an earlier news conference on Wednesday.
The suspect was arrested in the town of Cut and Shoot, Texas, roughly 17 miles (27 km) west of Cleveland. Both are about 50 miles (80 km) north of Houston.
Officials acted on a tip from an unidentified person who was eligible for an $80,000 reward offered for information leading to the arrest, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said on Tuesday.
Most of the victims were shot in the head. All were from Honduras and among the 10 people living at the address, but they were not all family members, Capers said.
The suspect is a Mexican national who was deported from the United States four times since 2009, U.S. immigration officials said.
Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Mark Porter
ATLANTA, May 3 (Reuters) – Police have arrested a former U.S. Coast Guardsman suspected of killing one person and wounding four, all of them women, in a shooting on Wednesday at a medical building in Atlanta, then carjacking a vehicle to flee the scene, authorities said.
The suspected gunman, identified as Deion Patterson, 24, was taken into custody without incident after an undercover officer spotted him north of the city in suburban Cobb County several hours after the 12:30 p.m. shooting at the Northside Medical facility, police said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an emailed statement that the woman killed was one of its employees, but did not identify her. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper identified the slain woman as Amy St. Pierre, citing her husband Julian St. Pierre.
The motive for the shooting, and whether the suspect knew or targeted any of his victims, had yet to be determined, police said.
“We know that he had an appointment at the facility, but why he did what he did, all of that is under investigation,” Atlanta’s deputy police chief of criminal investigations, Charles Hampton, said at a news briefing after the arrest.
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told an earlier press conference that it was too early in the investigation to determine if the five women who were shot were patients or employees.
The woman who died was 39. The four wounded women ranged in age from 25 to 71, media reported. Three of them were in critical condition and underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, officials said. The fourth was treated at the hospital’s emergency room.
Schierbaum described them as “fighting for their lives.”
[1/5] Deion Patterson, who Atlanta Police describe as the suspect in a lunchtime mass shooting at a medical building, poses in an undated photograph. Atlanta Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
Hampton said the gunman opened fire with a pistol and was only inside the medical center for about two minutes, then fled on foot and headed to a nearby gasoline station, where he commandeered a pickup truck that had been left running unattended and drove away.
At one point during the hunt, police searched a building under construction that the suspect had entered near Battery Atlanta, a commercial complex being developed adjacent to Truist Park stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer told reporters. But that search came up empty-handed, he said.
The suspect’s apparent proximity to the Battery “was a concern to us because many people would be at that location,” the chief said.
Police analyzed a barrage of surveillance camera images and telephone tips from the public on sightings to ultimately narrow down the suspect’s location, VanHoozer said.
The gunman arrived at the medical center with his mother, Schierbaum said, but she was not injured. Police said she and other family members were cooperating with investigators.
Little was immediately known about the suspect’s background.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson joined the force in July 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January, after having last served as an electrician’s mate second class. No reason for his discharge was given.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens decried the shooting as the latest act of carnage in what has become “a national epidemic of gun violence” turning schools, workplaces, churches and doctors’ offices into potential killing zones.
He said active-shooter drills have become so common that a business in the area of Cobb County where Patterson was arrested happened to be conducting such an exercise as police closed in on the suspect nearby.
Reporting by Rich McKay and Tyler Clifford; Editing by Doina Chiacu
LISBON, April 23 (Reuters) – Government officials from Brazil are using their president’s first visit to Europe since being elected to raise awareness and fight against the racial discrimination faced by the Brazilian community in Portugal and elsewhere.
Brazil’s minister of racial equality, Anielle Franco, was one of the officials who travelled with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Her mission was to bring discussions about racism to the table.
“We’re not going to be able to solve 523 years of problems in just one visit but I hope we can move forward because that’s why we’re here,” Franco told reporters on Sunday, referring to centuries of oppression faced by Black people.
Franco is the sister of Marielle Franco, a Black councilwoman in Rio de Janeiro who fought for racial justice and was shot dead in 2018.
When elected, Lula said he aimed to attack racism and Brazil’s legacy of slavery. Portuguese vessels carried nearly 6 million enslaved Africans into slavery. Most went to Brazil.
Europe’s top human rights group previously said Portugal had to confront its colonial past and role in the transatlantic slave trade to help fight racism and discrimination in the country today.
“Let’s build a future without forgetting the debts of the past,” Franco wrote on Instagram. “Let’s build a future where cooperation is mutual between countries to seek justice and reparation.”
In a letter addressed to Lula on Sunday, Lisbon-based migrant association Casa do Brasil said cases of discrimination against Brazilians in Portugal were on the rise.
A study by Casa do Brasil showed 91% of Brazilians in Portugal, a community of around 300,000, have faced some sort of discrimination in access to public services.
Franco met Portuguese parliament affairs minister Ana Catarina Mendes on Saturday to discuss policies to tackle racial injustice.
Both governments agreed on a national strategy to combat racism.
“We need to make it happen,” said Franco.
Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Christina Fincher
Portugal-based multimedia correspondent reporting on politics, economics, the environment and daily news. Previous experience in local journalism in the UK., co-founded a project telling the stories of Portuguese-speakers living in London, and edited a youth-led news site.
NAIROBI, April 23 (Reuters) – Kenyan police have now exhumed the bodies of 47 people thought to be followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death.
Police near the coastal town of Malindi started exhuming bodies on Friday from the Shakahola forest.
“In total, 47 people have died at the Shakahola forest,” detective Charles Kamau told Reuters on Sunday.
The exhumations were still ongoing, Kamau said.
[1/4] Kenya police officers stand guard as Forensic experts and homicide detectives exhume bodies of suspected members of a Christian cult named as Good News International Church, who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death, in Shakahola forest of Kilifi county, Kenya April 22, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer
Earlier this month, police rescued 15 members of the group — worshippers at the Good News International Church — who they said had been told to starve themselves to death. Four of them died before they reached hospital, police said.
The leader of the church, Paul Mackenzie, was arrested following a tip-off that suggested the existence of shallow graves belonging to at least 31 of Mackenzie’s followers.
Local media, citing police sources, reported that Mackenzie has refused to eat or drink while in police custody.
Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said the entire 800 acre forest had been sealed off and declared a scene of crime.
“This horrendous blight on our conscience must lead not only to the most severe punishment of the perpetrator(s) of the atrocity on so many innocent souls, but tighter regulation (including self-regulation) of every church, mosque, temple or synagogue going forward,” he said.
Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Ayenat Mersie
Editing by Christina Fincher
President Ruto calls cult leader “terrible criminal”
NAIROBI, April 24 (Reuters) – Kenyan police have recovered 73 bodies, mostly from mass graves in a forest in eastern Kenya, thought to be followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves, a police officer said on Monday.
The death toll, which has repeatedly risen as exhumations have been carried out, could rise further. The Kenyan Red Cross said 112 people have been reported missing to a tracing and counselling desk it has set up at a local hospital.
The cult’s leader, Paul Mackenzie, was arrested on April 14 following a tip-off that suggested the existence of shallow graves containing the bodies of at least 31 of his followers.
“The death toll now stands 73 people,” Charles Kamau, head detective in Malindi, Kilifi County, told Reuters via telephone.
He said three more people had been arrested, without giving details. Privately-owned NTV channel reported that one of those arrested was being held on suspicion of being a close associate of the leader of the cult.
Followers of the self-proclaimed Good News International Church had been living in several secluded settlements in an 800-acre area within the Shakahola forest.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations said on Twitter that 33 people had so far been rescued.
[1/4] Body bags are seen arranged as forensic experts and homicide detectives exhume bodies of suspected members of a Christian cult named as Good News International Church, who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death, in Shakahola forest of Kilifi county, Kenya, April 22, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer
Earlier on Monday, the country’s police chief Japhet Koome, visiting the scene, said most of the people were found in mass graves as well as eight who were found alive and emaciated, but later died.
Koome said 14 other cult members were in police custody.
Mackenzie was arraigned on April 15 at Malindi Law Courts, where the judge gave police 14 days to conduct investigations while he was kept in detention. Kenyan media have reported that he is refusing food and water.
Reuters was not able to reach any lawyer or representative for Mackenzie.
President William Ruto said Mackenzie’s teachings were contrary to any authentic religion.
“Mr Mackenzie … pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal,” said Ruto, who was delivering a speech at an unrelated public event just outside Nairobi.
He said he had instructed relevant agencies to get to the root cause of what had happened and to tackle “people who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology in the Republic of Kenya that is causing unnecessary loss of life”.
Reporting by Hereward Holland; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Alexander Winning
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