Covington

Germany raises 2020 growth forecast slightly to 1.1%

The German government on Wednesday modestly raised its economic growth forecast for the country this year to 1.1%. Germany's economy, Europe's biggest, has grown for 10 consecutive years but last year's 0.6% growth was the weakest since 2013. “The economy will develop better this year than was expected last year,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said of the new forecast.

RIGHT AT HOME: Reclaimed wood’s past adds character to decor

In their new book, ``Reclaimed Wood: A Field Guide’’ (Abrams, 2019), woodworkers Alan Solomon and Klaas Armster close with an imagined recounting of one tree’s story from sprout to salvage. The tale begins in the 1500s, when longleaf pine covered a vast area from North Carolina down to the tip of Texas and the Florida Panhandle — “the largest forested lands in North America,” the authors say. The tree is then brought to a mill, shipped to New York, and taken by horse cart along cobblestone streets to lower Manhattan.

CIA Interrogator Testifies That He Threatened to Kill Prisoner's Son

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- It started out as questioning about CIA policy, contracts and cables. Then it shifted to a more visceral examination of what happened to the men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks while they were held in secret prisons, with a former interrogator testifying about chains, shackles, hoods and threats to kill one prisoner's son.In a pretrial hearing on Tuesday, David Nevin, the lawyer for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 plot, held up various pieces of evidence collected at one of the CIA's now-closed overseas detention and interrogation sites. He asked the witness, James E. Mitchell, a former CIA contract psychologist who worked in the secret prisons and helped devise the torture program, what they were.Shown a chain with a red lock and built-in blue metal device, Mitchell said it looked like something you could "cinch up like a horse collar" but declared the device "completely unfamiliar to me."His answers were much the same as he was confronted with questions about other accounts of how the prisoners were treated. Mitchell said he did not recognize a screeching rendition of the heavy metal song "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," which detainees claimed was blasted at them in isolation. He disputed the fictional portrayal in the recent film "The Report" of Mohammed being violently waterboarded.Mohammed "didn't scream, grunt or do anything," Mitchell said, citing his recollection of the 183 times he waterboarded him in March 2003. Nevin responded to Mitchell's account by reading from a CIA cable that described Mohammed letting out a "whimper, whine and moan" as guards led him to the waterboard.It was the sixth day of testimony by Mitchell in a pretrial hearing focused on the torture of the defendants during their three and four years of CIA captivity, before they were sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.For much of last week, lawyers questioned Mitchell about documents, intelligence and alphanumeric codes used to mask the identities of people who worked at the black sites and obscure the locations of the prisons.But the tone changed dramatically on Monday, when Mitchell testified that he threatened to kill one of Mohammed's sons if there was another attack on America.He said he did so after he consulted a lawyer at the agency's Counterterrorism Center about how to make the threat without violating the Torture Convention.He said he was advised to make the threat conditional.So, before telling Mohammed "I will cut your son's throat," Mitchell said, he added a series of caveats. They included "if there was another catastrophic attack in the United States," if Mohammed withheld "information that could have stopped it" and "if another American child was killed."Mitchell said he made the threat in March 2003 as "an emotional flag" as he was transitioning from waterboarding and other violent "enhanced interrogation techniques" to more traditional questioning of Mohammed.Pakistani security forces reportedly seized Mohammed's sons, Abed, 7, and Yusuf, 9, in September 2002 in a joint raid with U.S. forces that apprehended Ramzi bin al-Shibh, another defendant in the 9/11 war crimes case. Mohammed would be captured in Pakistan six months later. He was at a CIA black site in Poland later that month when Mitchell made the threat.The boys were subsequently released and are believed to be living in Iran with their mother, but Mohammed apparently did not know their fate until many years later, after his transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.It was one of the most emotional moments in the testimony by Mitchell on the question of torture to help the judge decide what evidence will be allowed at the death-penalty trial, which is scheduled to start next year.Mitchell was unapologetic.He said that eight children died in the 9/11 hijackings that killed 2,976 people in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. Then he gestured toward Mohammed, who was sitting with his lawyers 25 feet away and declared, "He's smirking."The smirk, or any emotion, was not visible from a spectator's gallery at the back of the court. Mohammed appeared impassive throughout the testimony, occasionally fingering his long, orange-dyed beard, while his lawyer questioned Mitchell."Do you think that telling someone that might instill fear in that person?" Nevin asked."Yes, I do," Mitchell replied. "That was the only time that I made that threat to him."Mitchell said he also invoked Mohammed's children during interrogations again that same month, March 2003, in pressing for details on the whereabouts of Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. Mitchell quoted himself as telling Mohammed that it would be "safer" for his family if he helped the United States find al-Baluchi rather than "have him running around and the U.S. dropping a missile on him."Al-Baluchi, who is charged in the same case with helping the 9/11 hijackers with money transfers and travel arrangements, was captured in Pakistan in April 2003 in a vehicle with another defendant in the case, Walid bin Attash.Zeke Johnson, a program director for Amnesty International who was watching the proceedings, said the threat to kill one of Mohammed's children no doubt broke the law."Threatening to kill a detainee's child would violate the Convention Against Torture and be illegal," Johnson said. "Anyone who broke the law must be held accountable -- from those at the top who ordered it to those who carried it out."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Man who killed nine at South Carolina black church appeals conviction, death sentence

"This Court should vacate Roof's convictions and death sentence," says his appeal, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Tuesday. After Roof represented himself at trial and presented no evidence, a jury found him guilty of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes resulting in death, for the mass shooting at the landmark Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in June 2015.

Exclusive: HSBC considering exit from Turkey - sources

DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC is considering exiting Turkey as part of broader cost-cutting measures under interim Chief Executive Noel Quinn, sources familiar with the matter said. The bank is also seeking to sell or shrink its business in other markets where it has small-scale operations that struggle to compete with local players, including Armenia, Greece and Oman, the sources said. A spokeswoman for HSBC declined to comment.

Charleston church shooter appeals death sentence, lawyers say Dylann Roof is delusional

Roof was sentenced to death in the massacre of nine black people at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Hialeah mayor: City’s handling of cop busted in sex assault probe was ‘great’

Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández said Tuesday that what led to the arrest of a now federally charged cop accused of sexually assaulting several women was the “great investigation” led by his own city.

I track murder cases that use the 'gay panic defense,' a controversial practice banned in 9 states

On January 21, New Jersey became the ninth state in the nation to ban the gay panic defense, a strategy that the governor said is “rooted in homophobia.” W. Carsten Andresen, a criminal justice scholar, has been building a database of murder cases that use the gay panic defense. We asked him to tell us more about these cases, and what sets them apart from other murder trials.What is the gay panic defense?This is when a man kills someone and claims that he was protecting himself from a same-sex pass or an attempted sexual assault. The offender uses the gay panic defense as an excuse or justification to try to evade punishment for the crime of murder.What’s an example of this in practice?One well-known case occurred in 2015, when Daniel Spencer, a guitarist, invited another musician, James Miller, to his Austin apartment to play music together. Later that night, Miller stabbed Spencer four times, killing him. Miller then cleaned Spencer’s apartment, went back to his own home, changed clothes and contacted the police to report killing Spencer. While there was no physical evidence to suggest an attempted sexual assault, the defense attorney argued at the trial in 2018 that, since Miller had never been in trouble with the police before, the only thing that could explain his committing murder was that Spencer had tried to sexually assault him.In this instance, the gay panic defense was successful. The jury convicted Miller of criminally negligent homicide, the lowest grade of felony in Texas. Ultimately, the court punished Miller with only a six-month jail term and a 10-year probation sentence. How did you first become interested in this subject?Two events put me on a path to researching the gay panic defense. First, my wife is a family attorney in Austin who does a lot of work with LGBTQ+ clients. Shortly after the birth of our son, I attended a conference with her to help with our son. At the conference, my eyes opened to the obstacles that the LGBTQ+ community faces in a state like Texas, where there is history of homophobia that continues to the present day. I started to think about what it would be like if Texas didn’t recognize my marriage, if Texas didn’t respect my right to be a parent. The second event involved an old friend, a wonderful person, who committed suicide. A few days after his death, I learned for the first time that he was gay, and realized that he had lived an almost completely closeted life. To think that he kept this secret, that he spent his life alone, was a terrible realization. Both of these things disquieted me and set the stage for my future research on the gay panic defense.How common is the gay panic defense?This is a difficult question to answer, because these cases are not tracked in a systematic way by the government.While the FBI tracks several details about homicides that occur annually in the U.S., it does not collect information about the sexual orientation or sexual identity of homicide victims. It is also difficult to get information about murders where offenders use a gay panic defense in court. I could not find any federal source, or any individual states, that tracked how often defendants used this defense during their murder trials.To investigate the frequency of these defenses, I had to collect these cases myself and enter them into a database. I read legal articles, social science research and advocacy reports; talked with other people, such as lawyers, to see if they could tell me about specific cases; and searched online for legal appeals and media accounts.The most recent case I heard about, for example, came to my attention when I was talking with a lawyer about my data. She mentioned a case that she had prosecuted in 1997, which had not shown up in my initial searches. While I have currently identified 104 cases, I am certain that there hundreds of cases that I have yet to identify.Is this defense effective in court?Based on my early analysis, defense attorneys who enter gay panic defenses can reduce a defendants’ murder charges 32% of the time, even though the majority of these homicides involve incredible violence. The court case resulted in a conviction, but, since the charge was lower, the prison sentence was lower, generally around 18 years. In the remaining cases, the offender received a more severe sentence, including the death penalty, life in prison and non-life prison sentences that averaged about 31 years. Four cases resulted in acquittals, which suggests that juries might have balked at higher charges. What else do your data show?My data are consistent with data from prior research examining LGBTQ+ homicide victims in several ways. First, the offenders in these cases killed the victims in particularly violent ways, a level of violence that distinguishes them from the majority of homicides. In these murders, the offenders used firearms only about 26% of the time. In the majority of homicides, firearms are used 46% of the time. This is consistent with a 2012 study that examined 120 anti-LGBTQ+ murders, finding that many offenders used a knife or their hands to kill, instead of a gun. Additionally, in my data, offenders engaged in what experts might call overkill, stabbing the victim several times. In at least 22 cases, offenders stabbed the victim 10 or more times.Victims who live a closeted gay life are especially vulnerable. The offenders in these cases seemed to take advantage of this “secret” after they were arrested to ultimately construct a nefarious portrait of these victims in their gay panic defense in court.Finally, consistent with previous research into murders of LGBTQ people, the homicides in my data set fit into one of two patterns. In 54% of cases, after the murder, the offender purposefully stole cash, credit cards, jewelry, computers, stereo equipment or automobiles. In New Orleans in 1977, for example, Warren Harris Jr., who posed as a prostitute, killed at least four men and stole their cash.In the the remaining 46% of homicides, the offender engaged in expressive homicidal violence to kill and mutilate the victim. In 2009, Joseph Biedermann met Terrence Hauser in a bar in Hoffman, Illinois, went home with him, and ultimately stabbed him to death 61 times. In Denton, Texas in 2005, Joshua Abbott went home with David Morrison and stabbed him to death 38 times.Based on my research, these killings seem to have no other purpose to them beyond inflicting violence.Is this sort of defense permitted nationwide?In 2013, the American Bar Association called in a proclamation for states to prohibit the gay and trans panic defenses. Since then, nine states have passed legislation prohibiting the gay panic defense.In 2018, Representative Joe Kennedy of the U.S. House and Senator Edward Markey also proposed a nationwide ban. Yet, this legislation does not necessarily signal an end to homophobia in the courtroom. First, defense attorneys, who have argued that legislation is an unconstitutional violation of a client’s due process rights, may ultimately get these laws overturned. Second, this legislation also does not ban murderers from arguing that they killed in self-defense in response to an attempted sexual assault. In California, the first state to pass this legislation, Gage McCartney – who strangled a man and claimed self-defense – was recently given a lenient plea deal: manslaughter and a 12-year prison sentence. Finally, the legal scholar Cynthia Lee has written about how offenders can go around prohibitions issued by judges to introduce gay panic defense strategies. In the Matthew Shepard murder trial, the defense attorney introduced two witnesses to testify that the victim was sexually assertive, even though the judge had prohibited them from using a gay panic defense. [ Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day. ]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * The constitutional right to dignity: from gay marriage to Black Lives Matter * How much credit should corporations get for the advancement of LGBTQ rights?W. Carsten Andresen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Futures gain as Apple earnings take some focus off virus concerns

Apple Inc gained 1.9% in premarket trading after reporting earnings for the holiday shopping quarter above analysts' expectations, even as it braced for more supply disruptions in virus-hit China. U.S. equities stabilized on Tuesday on hopes of strong corporate earnings reports, helping them recover from a selloff earlier this week on fears of fallout from the coronavirus outbreak on global growth. China's President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that preventing and containing the new coronavirus remains a grim and complex task, the state television reported.

Super Bowl 2020: How to pick the right TV and get the best deal

With the Super Bowl just around the corner, it turns out the big game day is one of the best times -- next to Black Friday -- to get a deal on big screen TVs. While Black Friday offers rock-bottom doorbuster prices on all sets, including off-brand models that are much cheaper than known brands, quality TV sets at amazing prices are the best bang for your buck at this time of the year, too.

'The Mighty Ducks' former child star Shaun Weiss arrested for meth, burglary

Former child actor and star of “The Mighty Ducks” Shaun Weiss has been arrested after breaking into a car in a garage while under the influence of methamphetamine. The incident occurred on Sunday at approximately 7 a.m. in Marysville, California, when a call was made to the Marysville Police Department by a man reporting that an unknown male was inside his garage that did not belong there and that a burglary was in progress. “The homeowner said he was the only person that lived at this residence and no one had permission to be inside,” said the Marysville Police Department in a statement.

Leader of Spain's Catalonia to call early regional election

The regional president of Spain’s conflict-riven Catalonia says he will soon call an early election amid splits in his government's unity. President Quim Torra, who leads a pro-Catalan independence administration, said Wednesday that he would set a date for the election once a new regional budget is approved. The regional government is expected to present the budget to parliament later in the day.

CVS to offer diabetes drugs at no out-of-pocket costs for PBM members

The company said the program would not raise costs for health insurers and employers, and eliminating out-of-pocket costs would ensure better adherence by diabetic patients to their drug regimens. PBMs act as middlemen in the drug supply chain who negotiate prices for employers and health insurers.