Friday, October 5, 2018

Six In The Morning Friday October 5

Brett Kavanaugh: Hundreds arrested in Supreme Court protest

Hundreds of protesters against US President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been arrested in Washington, DC.
Comedian Amy Schumer and model Emily Ratajkowski were among 302 people held for demonstrating against the nominee.
Republicans earlier declared an FBI report had exonerated him of sexual assault allegations.
But Democrats said the five-day inquiry was "incomplete" because it was limited by the White House.
The Senate will hold a procedural vote on the nominee on Friday.



String of own goals by Russian spies exposes a strange sloppiness

The secretive, daring GRU seems to have lost its way in the age of internet search

It must go down as one of the most embarrassing months ever for Russia’s military intelligence.
In the 30 days since Theresa May revealed the cover identities of the Salisbury poison suspects, the secretive GRU (now GU) has been publicly exposed by rival intelligence agencies and online sleuths, with an assist from Russia’s own president.
Despite attempts to stonewall public inquiry, the GRU’s dissection has been clinical. The agency has always had a reputation for daring, bolstered by its affiliation with special forces commando units and agents who have seen live combat.

I watched a Palestinian family lose their land 25 years ago – and this week I returned to find them

‘We don’t eat, drink or sleep. Do we stay in other people’s homes? My husband is crippled, we are both old. This is a tyranny’



A quarter of a century ago, I watched Israel take the Palestinian Khatib family’s land. With a British film director, we filmed the bulldozers closing in on the garden wall of the house of Mohamed and Saida Khatib and their son Sulieman amid their little orchard of olives, grapes, figs, apricots and almonds, beside Saida’s old chicken coop.
“It’s mine – it was my father’s and my father’s father’s,” crippled old Mohamed told me. “What do you expect me to do?” His 35-year-old schoolteacher son was going to the Israeli court to prevent this act of theft, he said. The family had refused compensation. The land belonged to them.

'It's war': French authorities release bear in Pyrenees despite fierce farmer protests

In an effort to bolster dwindling numbers of bears after they were hunted to the point of extinction in the mid-1990s, French authorities have released a brown bear in the Pyrenees. Local sheep farmers are furious.

The move was met with fierce all-night protests by local farmers who blocked roads on which they had painted the words, "It's war," and inspected trucks possibly transporting the animal. The farmers say the bear could pose a risk to their livestock.
French Environment Minister Francois de Rugy was defiant in the face of the protests on Thursday, saying the farmers' attitude was "unacceptable." He condemned people "who feel entitled to set up roadblocks and threaten me with guns." The Environment Ministry said a second female bear from Slovenia would be introduced in the next few days.

Absent frontrunner dominates Brazil's high-stakes presidential debate


The main topic — and target — of Brazil's final and most-watched presidential debate was the absent front-runner, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil's controversial far-right candidate Bolsonaro skipped the TV Globo debate Thursday night, citing doctor's orders after being stabbed during a campaign event on September 6 and only leaving the hospital on Saturday. Instead, he gave an interview to TV Record at the same time.
Second place candidate Fernando Haddad, who was hand-picked by jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, attacked Bolsonaro's record as a lawmaker.
Third place Ciro Gomes said that electing the far-right hopeful would be like dancing near an abyss.

Chicago braces for verdict in trial of cop who killed black teen

Jason Van Dyke, a white officer, is charged with two counts of first degree murder in 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald.


A jury in Chicago began its deliberation on Thursday in one of the most closely-watched murder trials in recent memory, in a city riven by racial divides, gun violence and police brutality.
Jason Van Dyke, a white Chicago police officer, shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on the night of October 20, 2014, as the African American teen, carrying a knife and ignoring police commands, appeared to walk away from him along a roadway.
At first, Van Dyke claimed to have acted in self-defence, but dashboard camera footage of the incident released a year later after a Freedom of Information Act request appears to show otherwise, prompting massive public outcry and protests.



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