Handcuffs, assaults, and drugs called 'vitamins': Children allege grave abuse at migrant detention facilities
Updated 0159 GMT (0959 HKT) June 22, 2018
A year before the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy resulted in more than 2,300 children being separated from their families at the border in a mere five-week period, a ninth-grader in McAllen, Texas, was taken from his mother.
He was riding in a car with friends last spring when the car was pulled over. The teenager, brought illegally to the country by his mother as a baby, was unable to show identification. Police called immigration officials, who arrested the boy and sent him to a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children.
John Doe 2, as he is referred to in current legal filings challenging his detainment, became one of thousands caught in a network of shelters and higher-security facilities that house undocumented minors, now gaining attention as newly separated children have been streaming in.
China: new rules to prevent sex-selective abortions raise fears
Measures in Jiangxi province prompt concerns over state control and rights of women
New rules restricting abortions in a Chinese province have prompted concern from citizens and activists over state control of women’s bodies.
Jiangxi province issued guidelines last week stipulating that women more than 14 weeks pregnant must have signed approval from three medical professionals confirming an abortion is medically necessary before any procedure. The measures are meant to help prevent sex-selective abortions, which are illegal in China. The sex of a child is usually discernible after 14 weeks.
“Your womb is being monitored,” said one comment on the Weibo microblogging website. “What is the purpose and basis of this policy? The reproductive rights of women in this country seem to be a joke,” said another. One user wrote simply, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” referring to the TV series set in a dystopian future where women’s reproductive functions are tightly controlled by the state.
Nicaragua: Bishops travel to besieged city of Masaya to 'prevent a massacre'
The death toll in Nicaragua keeps climbing after dialogue failed to halt a resurgence of government-led violence against protesters. The Nicaraguan clergy went to Masaya to provide support to the locals.
As government forces have reportedly descended on Masaya, Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Baez traveled to the city on Thursday to "avert another massacre." Baez, who has been a leading voice in efforts to mediate the crisis, was accompanied on the trip by Vatican Ambassador Walter Sommertag.
Rights groups estimate that up to 215 people have died in the ongoing violence in Nicaragua. The government of President Daniel Ortega has only acknowledged 46 deaths.
With Twitter, Google, YouTube, Turkey’s opposition overcomes media blackout
With most Turkish TV stations controlled by the government or its supporters, the opposition has been forced to find ingenious, often funny, ways to beat the media blackout and bias ahead of Sunday’s vote. But will the jokes work?
When the giant screen lit up with an image of a clean-shaven man in a crisp black suit, the crowd at a campaign rally in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir went mad. Waving purple-and-green flags of the pro-Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democracy Party), they screamed, “Selo! Selo!” – the nickname for Selahattin Demirtas, the party’s candidate in Sunday’s presidential race.
With the faintest hint of a smile, Demirtas began his videotaped address. “Dear brothers and sisters, the beautiful people of my country. I greet you with my warmest feelings, with love, yearning and longing,” he said. “I am unfortunately forced to address you from Edirne F-type High Security Prison,” he continued with a slight, resigned smile.
Lee Fang, Nick Surgey
SCANDAL-PLAGUED ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has now spent more than $4.6 million from public coffers on security, according to documents obtained by The Intercept and Documented under the Freedom of Information Act. The amount represents a $1.1 million increase from Pruitt’s total security costs as released in another disclosure just a month ago.
Pruitt’s high spending on security has become the subject of mounting criticism and a host of official investigations: Several EPA inspector general investigations have been opened, as well as an ongoing investigation by the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee.
Records released under the Freedom of Information Act list expenditures totaling $288,610 on a range of security-related items. The EPA, according to three expense line items for April, spent a total of $2,749.62 on “tactical pants” and “tactical polos.”
Kobe gov't official's pay docked for repeatedly taking lunch 3 minutes early
Today 05:55 am JST
A Japanese city official has been reprimanded and fined for repeatedly leaving his desk to go out to a bento (boxed lunch) store during work hours -- but only for around three minutes.
The official, who works at the waterworks bureau in Kobe, began his designated lunch break early 26 times over the space of seven months between September 2017 and March 2018, according to a city spokesman. These trips to the bento store took three minutes each time.
"The lunch break is from noon to 1 p.m. He left his desk before the break," the spokesman told AFP on Thursday.
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