Covington

From tusks to tails, nations eye trade in endangered species

From guitars to traditional medicines and from tusk to tail, mankind's exploitation of the planet's fauna and flora is putting some of them at risk of extinction. Representatives of some 180 nations are meeting in Geneva to agree on protections for vulnerable species, taking up issues including the trade in ivory and the demand for shark fin soup. The World Wildlife Conference on trade in endangered species, known as CITES, which takes place every three years, aims to make sure that global trade in specimens of wild animals and plants doesn't jeopardize their survival.

Italy's Salvini agrees to disembark minors on migrant ship

Italy's hard-line interior minister appeared to buckle under pressure Saturday to ease the political standoff over a migrant rescue ship with 134 people aboard, saying he would allow minors to disembark after being at sea for two weeks. Premier Giuseppe Conte had written a second letter to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini demanding that minors be allowed off the boat. Salvini wrote back Saturday with a three-page missive of his own saying he would do so but made clear it was Conte's choice and that it didn't set a precedent.

New York City subway scare suspect taken into police custody

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Person of interest in New York City pressure cooker scare taken into custody: Police source

The person of interest related to the abandoned rice cookers that caused a bomb scare in New York City has been taken into custody, a police source told ABC News Saturday morning. Larry Griffin, of West Virginia, was apprehended by police early Saturday.

Judge blasts Georgia officials' handling of election system

Georgia election officials have for years ignored, downplayed and failed to address serious problems with the state's election management system and voting machines, a federal judge said in a scathing order this week. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said those problems place a burden on citizens' rights to cast a vote and have it reliably counted. Despite those findings, Totenberg ruled Thursday that Georgia voters will use that same election system this fall because of the short time before the next election.

Chance the Rapper on why he donated $1M for mental health: 'We all can be affected by it'

Chance the Rapper is known for being a high-profile advocate of public schools in his hometown of Chicago, but he is also using his platform to take on the issue of mental health. The artist, whose real name is Chancelor Bennett, committed last year to donating $1 million to health services in Chicago through SocialWorks, his nonprofit organization. SocialWorks also launched its own mental health initiative, My State of Mind, which provides grants to mental wellness service providers and is working to create an "inclusive guidebook" of mental health services in the Chicago area, according to SocialWorks.

Meet the Journalist Who Exposed the Jeffrey Epsteins of Victorian London

Wealthy men soliciting underage girls for sex. Girls lured to expensive homes by promises of good-paying jobs. Captains of commerce and heads of state reveling in debauchery. Officials looking the other way.A newspaper exposé written by British journalist W.T. Stead, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” sounds just like the sordid sex ring of Jeffrey Epstein, who died of an apparent suicide in prison on Aug. 10.The difference is that Stead’s account appeared over a century ago, in London’s Pall Mall Gazette in the summer of 1885.In the four-part series, investigative journalist W.T. Stead graphically detailed the ways that wealthy Victorian men procured young girls for sex. Ironically, Stead was the only one who ended up in jail.Lured by the Promise of a Better LifeOn July 6, 1885, the first article in Stead’s exposé was published. Stead revealed how thousands of girls, most of whom were between 13 and 15 years old, were bought for sex by prominent London men, including a “well-known member of Parliament,” a cabinet minister, a doctor and a clergyman who obtained a 12-year old virgin for £20.As soon as it hit London’s newsstands, the story went viral. Stead already had a reputation as a fearless editor who advocated “Governmentby Journalism” and didn’t shy from sensationalism. The Gazette’s reporting was front-page news in the U.S., with The New York Times covering the scandal and the reaction by Englishauthorities.Instead of working to swiftly shut down the illicit sex trade and identify those involved, London’s city solicitor ordered police to seize copies of the Gazette and to arrest vendors for selling copies of the paper. Despite – or because of – the attempted censorship, copies sold well above their cover price. Thousands waited outside newspaper offices for their chance to buy each new installment.Those who could get their hands on a copy learned about how women recruited young girls, and how the authorities who knew about it failed to intervene.Stead interviewed women who explained how they enticed girls to enter the homes of wealthy men with promises of meals, money and jobs. Looking out for “pretty girls who are poor,” brothel keepers and professional procurers recruited orphans, shop girls, servants and nursemaids to “visit” gentlemen.“The police knew all about them long ago,” Stead added, noting that officers were discouraged from pursuing leads, while prosecutors intimidated potential witnesses.Stead interviewed some of the men who paid for the girls. They assured him that the maidens willingly – sometimes eagerly – consented. As the member of Parliament told Stead, “I doubt the unwillingness of these virgins … it is nonsense to say it is rape.”The victimized girls told a different story: They were lured with the promise of a better life. They had no idea that the employment agencies they used were actually fronts for prostitution.Once the girls consented to go into the gentleman’s house, there was no going back. According to Stead, those who resisted were told that they could choose either to be raped and paid, or raped “and then turned into the streets without a penny.”Powerful Predators Remain in the ShadowsThe “maiden tribute” in the series’ title was a reference to the Greek myth in which virgins were sacrificed to theminotaur of Crete, the half-man, half-bull so brutal that a labyrinth was built to contain him. But Stead points out that, unlike the mythic narrative, which required the sacrifice of seven virgins every nine years, modern London was witnessing an exponential number of girls being sacrificed each day.The abuse wouldn’t stop, Stead insisted, until people started believing the girls.“When a woman is outraged,” he wrote, “her sworn testimony weighs nothing against the lightest word of the man who perpetrated the crime.”The Victorian men in Stead’s account were never publicly named. Nor did they ever face criminal prosecution. As a journalist, Stead refused to reveal his sources. And once public attention waned, officials declined to pursue Stead’s leads.In an ironic twist, Stead himself served three months in prison for abduction. In order to prove how easy it was, he had a procurer deliver a 13-year-old girl named Eliza Armstrong to him. Even though it was done for the sake of his reporting, the authorities pounced.Stead’s reporting did have one desired effect: It mobilized support for a parliamentary bill that raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16. But none of the women who recruited the girls and none of the men who sexually molested them were held accountable.Different Century, Same Story?In some ways, the parallels between the men of Victorian London and Epstein are striking.Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, allegedly acted as Epstein’s procurer. According to The New York Times, one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, fingered Maxwell as the one who approached her and invited her to Epstein’s home, promising that she could learn how to give massages and “earn a lot of money.” Maxwell has also settled several civil suits with Epstein accusers who named her as his accomplice. Too often, it seems the law serves the interests of powerful men. We saw this in Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement proffered byAlexander Acosta, who was, at the time, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.As the Sentencing Project noted in a 2018 report submitted to the United Nations, “The United States in effect operates two distinct criminal justice systems: one for wealthy people and another for poor people and people of color.” Epstein emerged relatively unscathed during his first brush with the law. Rarely do the authorities haul the same powerful men before the courts a second time, as they did with Epstein.We can thank the dogged reporting of journalists, who, over the past few years, have been exposing patterns of male sexual abuse, making sure to keep the story in the public eye until justice is served. Ronan Farrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker articles exposing Harvey Weinstein’s decades of predation and his articles detailing Les Moonves’ sexual harrassment played a big role in holding both powerful men to account.Julie Brown and Emily Michot of the Miami Herald revealed the secret Acosta deal and uncovered more than 80 of Epstein’s alleged victims. Due in part to their reporting, Epstein was indicted in July.With the continued persistence of journalists, victims and the public, perhaps the labyrinths that shield the other minotaurs in our midst will be permanently razed.This story first appeared in The Conversation on August 12.Image: Reuters

Father charged with homicide after 12-year-old daughter kills neighbor in car crash

The father of a 12-year-old girl who allegedly got behind the wheel of a car and accidentally ran down her neighbor has been charged with criminally negligent homicide. Tomas Mejia Tol, 42, was arrested on Friday after his daughter allegedly was driving in the parking lot outside their home and killed a man who was walking his three dogs and then crashed into a tree. Enrique Vazquez, 47, was killed in the accident.

Kilroy was here: Athens walls awash in painted squiggles

Kilroy was here, and lots of his friends too. In Athens, illicit spray-painting forays leave an often-indelible mark on the Greek capital's public and private buildings, street signs and bus stops, while public artworks and even ancient ruins are not spared. Some parts of central Athens are so afflicted with graffiti — largely undecipherable squiggles in bold, broad strokes — that few facades remain untouched and property owners give up on repainting.

Jeffrey Epstein's death ruled suicide by hanging, medical examiner says

New York City's medical examiner has ruled Jeffrey Epstein's death in a Manhattan jail cell suicide by hanging. The disgraced financier, who was facing federal sex trafficking charges, was found unresponsive in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan on the morning of Aug. 10. Epstein, 66, was set to stand trial next year for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of girls in New York and Florida.

Crews reopen Denali park road, tourist buses begin to return

Road crews have cleared one lane in Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve, and buses are beginning to return about 300 stranded tourists back to the park entrance. Park spokesman Paul Ollig told The Associated Press that all the stranded passengers are expected back at the park entrance Friday night, but he didn't have an exact time of when they would arrive. "Our team did an outstanding job responding to multiple debris slides along a pretty remote section of road," said Erika Jostad, Denali's chief ranger.

‘It's techno-racism’: Detroit is quietly using facial recognition to make arrests

Critics in the majority-black city point out that the technology is flawed and often misidentifies people of color and womenA display shows a facial recognition system for law enforcement during a technology conference. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesFor the last two years, Detroit police have been quietly utilizing controversial and unreliable facial recognition technology to make arrests in the city.The news, revealed in May in a Georgetown University report , has shocked many Detroiters and sparked a public debate in the city that is still raging and mirrors similar battles playing out elsewhere in America and across the world. Among other issues, critics in the majority-black city point out that flawed facial recognition software misidentifies people of color and women at much higher rates.Detroit also now has the capability to use the technology to monitor residents in real time, though Detroit’s police chief claims it won’t.Willie Burton, a black member of the civilian Detroit Police Commission that oversees the department, noted Detroit’s population is 83% black and that made using the technology especially worrying.“This should be the last place police use the technology because it can’t identify one black man or woman to another,” he said. “Every black man with a beard looks alike to it. Every black man with a hoodie looks alike. This is techno-racism.”At a July meeting on the issue held by the police commission, arguments got so heated over facial recognition that officers arrested and temporarily jailed Burton as he loudly objected to its use.The technology presents obvious questions over whether police are violating residents’ privacy protections. Detroit’s facial recognition software makes it much easier for the city to track people’s movements across time while efficiently and secretly gathering personal information, said Clare Garvie, an author of the report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology.“It can betray information about sensitive locations – who someone is as a person, if they’re going to church, an HIV clinic, and the supreme court has said we have a right to privacy even if we are in public,” she said.Garvie conservatively estimates that a quarter of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies now use facial recognition technology, and over half of American adults’ photos are available for investigation.Chicago runs a similar program as that in Detroit, while the Los Angeles police department may be operating a small number of cameras that track the public in real time.Meanwhile, some local governments are proposing regulations to limit it. San Francisco and Oakland in California and Cambridge and Sommerville in Massachusetts have recently banned the technology. Florida’s Orlando scrapped a pilot real-time surveillance program after the software proved to be unreliable, and New York governor Andrew Cuomo is attempting to implement facial recognition software in New York City with no success, so far.At the federal level, Congress in May held hearings on the issue. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes parts of Detroit, recently introduced legislation that would prohibit its use at public housing.“Policing our communities has become more militarized and flawed,” Tlaib said during the 22 May hearing. “Now we have for-profit companies pushing so-called technology that has never been tested in communities of color, let alone been studied enough to conclude that it makes our communities safer.”But facial recognition software is just the latest in Detroit’s development of a comprehensive public surveillance apparatus that includes multiple camera programs.As part of its Project Green Light, the city installed nearly 600 high definition cameras at intersections, schools, churches, public parks, immigration centers, addiction treatment centers, apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, and other businesses around the city.Police pull still images from those and thousands of other private cameras, then use facial recognition software to cross-reference them with millions of photos pulled from a mugshot database, driver’s license photos, and images scraped from social media.Were Detroit to start using the software in real time, it could continually scan those entering any location covered by its cameras, or motorists and pedestrians traveling through an intersection, for example.Though there’s no oversight, Detroit police chief James Craig insists the department won’t use real time software and only runs still images as an “investigative tool” for violent crimes.Police say any match requires “sufficient corroboration” before an arrest can be made. But Garvie notes the software has already lead to false arrests elsewhere in the country.Facial recognition technology’s premise “flips on its head” the idea of innocent until proven guilty, Garvie said at a recent Detroit forum on the topic.“Biometrically identifying everyone and checking them against a watch list or their criminal history assumes they’re guilty until they prove they’re innocent by not having a record,” she said. “That’s not going to make us more secure. It’s going to make us more afraid.”A Detroit police spokesperson couldn’t say how many arrests involved the technology, though Craig told the Guardian no false arrests have been made. He acknowledged issues with accuracy, but stressed that matches are treated as a lead and go through a rigorous review process. “Facial recognition is only part of methodical investigation to identify and confirm that the suspect is involved in that crime,” he said. Some residents say the technology is already sowing more distrust in Detroit as civil rights advocates accuse the city of intentionally muddying the waters. Georgetown’s report noted police did not mention on the Green Light website that cameras would be used with facial recognition software, and property owners who installed them weren’t made aware of it.“There’s been no transparency and we won’t stand for it,” Burton said. “We don’t want it here, and we are going to fight back because we deserve better.”