A day after deaf advocacy groups criticized a sign language interpreter, saying her signing made no sense during a press conference announcing the arrest of an alleged Tampa serial killer, there's a new twist.
Derlyn Roberts, 53, - who signed alongside Tampa police officials - has a criminal past. Records show Roberts was released from state prison last year after being convicted in 2012 for organized fraud over $50,000 and fraudulent use of personal information. It seems like she misses her friends there.
More irony? The Tampa Police Department was the arresting agency.
Just who sent Roberts to interpret at the press conference is still a mystery.
According to Tampa police spokesman Stephen Hegarty, law enforcement officials did not request an interpreter for the news conference, which started around 11 p.m. Nov. 28.
"As we were getting ready to start, I was told that a sign language interpreter was outside," Hegarty told the Miami Herald. "My reaction was: 'I didn't call an interpreter, but great that someone did.' It appeared that she was very well known in Tampa, but I just didn't ask enough questions. There was a lot going on but it was my responsibility, so shame on me."
Added Hegarty: "We did the public a disservice and I am very sorry."
The department is investigating.
During the press conference, Roberts was supposed to relay what Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan was saying about Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, who was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of four people in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa since October.
Rachelle Settambrino, a sign language teacher at the University of South Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times that when Dugan said his agency received around 5,000 tips about the four murders, Roberts signed something along the lines of "fifty-one hours ago, zero 12 22 [gibberish] murder three minutes in 14 weeks ago in old [gibberish] four five 55,000 plea 10 arrest murder bush [gibberish] three age 24."
The killings began on Oct. 9 with the shooting death of Benjamin Mitchell, 22, who was at a bus stop in front of his home. The second victim, Monica Hoffa, 32, was killed on Oct. 11. Her body was found two days later by a city employee in a vacant parking lot near where Mitchell was slain.
On Oct. 19, Anthony Naiboa, a 20-year-old with autism who had just graduated from high school, was found shot to death about 50 feet away from the bus stop where Mitchell died. Ronald Felton, 60, was the fourth victim. He was found Nov. 14.
[PRESSTV] Thirteen people were killed in Colombia in a clash between National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and FARC dissidents, the country's ombudsman said Tuesday.
The firefight, which comes as the ELN is observing a three-month ceasefire with the government in Bogota, happened last week in a remote area of the country's southwest, the official, Carlos Negret, told news hounds.
Negret said ELN guerrillas had gone to a municipality near the Ecuador border to disarm a local farmers' resistance group, made up of alleged FARC dissidents, when the fighting occurred "resulting in the killing of 13 citizens."
He said the confrontation "totally goes against" the ELN's ceasefire with the government.
The dead included a pregnant woman and a man with a mental disability, as well as dissident members of the FARC -- the rebel group that signed a November 2016 peace deal with the government.
Negret said the ELN had also kidnapped a member of the farmers' resistance group.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2017 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] Russia's justice ministry on Tuesday named nine US media outlets including Voice of America as "foreign agents" after President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... signed a law last month allowing international media to be slapped with the controversial label.
The ministry on its website posted a statement saying that US-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty and seven of their media affiliates have been recognised as "carrying out the functions of a foreign agent."
Russia last month hastily issued legislation allowing the measure to target media in a retaliatory move after Kremlin-funded RT television registered itself as a "foreign agent" in the United States under official pressure.
Radio Free Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... and Voice of America had already been formally warned by the justice ministry that they risked recognition as "foreign agents."
The justice ministry has now formalised this, naming them and their affiliates, including Radio Free Europe's news sites dedicated to regions including Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine, and the Caucasus and a television channel run jointly by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America called Telekanal Nastoyashchyeye Vremya.
The 2012 law previously applied only to non-governmental organizations that had international funding.
Those branded "foreign agents" have to present themselves as such on all paperwork and submit to intensive scrutiny of their staffing and financing.
Many NGOs have closed down as a result, saying the measure made it too difficult for them to operate.
Rights groups fear the measure applied to media could have a chilling effect on the ability of outlets to carry out independent reporting.
I'll bet they didn't see that one coming.
• The US responded to North Korea's latest missile launch with a simulated bomb run from a B-1B Lancer bomber and an F-22 in a marked escalation in military signaling.
• North Korea hates the B-1 bomb runs and have threatened to shoot the plane down.
• The US's F-22 is fully stealth and North Korea likely can't hope to down it.
• With the US's most lethal planes doing the signaling, it's unclear how much higher tensions can rise.
The US carried out another simulated bomb run with a supersonic B-1B bomber on Wednesday, but this time it included the US's top-of-the-line air superiority fighter, the F-22, according to Yonhap.
B-1 flights represent the US's go-to response for North Korean provocations, such as missile tests, and the bomber flights draw a strong, sometimes dangerously escalating response from Pyongyang.
Previously, North Korea threatened to shoot down B-1s flying even outside its airspace and to loft missiles at Guam, where the B-1s are based.
But North Korea has a problem there. It apparently can't track the B-1 in flight because of its outdated radar and air-defense systems, according to NK News.
The F-22 is the world's stealthiest aircraft, meaning it's extremely unlikely North Korea could see it coming.
The combined B-1 and F-22 drill represents a step up in the normal tit-for-tat between the US and North Korea. It also comes during the Vigilant Ace aerial exercise that China and Russia warned the US about.
"Through the exercise, the South Korean and US air forces have demonstrated the alliance's strong will and capability for strong retaliation against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats," South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, according to Yonhap.
But with the US using its best planes to message North Korea, and Pyongyang demonstrating missiles that experts assess can hit anywhere in the US, it's unclear just how much higher tensions on the Korean Peninsula could escalate. Feeling a little squeezed lately, Kimmie?
#1
Heretofore, our resources expended on The Process™, now in its 6th decade, has given little in return. Theater, mostly, with occasional "Presidents Peering Across the Border" Photo-Ops.
Delays of the inevitable consume resources, all the while grinding forward to the unavoidable; we now have a President who recognizes this and, for our common benefit, wants it to stop.
The definition of "politics" will, owing to Mr. Trump, have to be changed a bit.
[Bus Insider] As the US and South Korean militaries worked together on the largest-ever version of their annual air-power exercise on the Korean Peninsula, China did something that suggests it would consider backing up North Korea in the event of war.
On Monday, the same day the exercise started, a spokesman for China's air force said it had staged exercises along "routes and areas it has never flown before" with surveillance aircraft over the Yellow and East seas near the Korean Peninsula, according to the South China Morning Post.
While China needs to exercise its constantly expanding and modernizing military, this exercise most likely had another purpose.
"The timing of this high-profile announcement by the PLA is also a warning to Washington and Seoul not to provoke Pyongyang any further," Li Jie, a military expert based in Beijing, told the Post, using the abbreviation for the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
With a record 24 US stealth aircraft in South Korea for the Vigilant Ace exercises, China's move sends a clear message.
#1
China's latest military exercise may serve as a reminder to the US that the two military powers could find themselves on opposite ends once again should conflict break out with North Korea.
Might as well add the Russians to the "opposite ends" equation also. Who could have known ?
#4
Has anyone considered these are the same flights and reconnaissance that China needs if they are to be ready to "impose their will" over a failed state in North Korea to prevent chaos at their own border and maritime areas?
#9
The West has pulled the wool over its own eyes for many decades now. But the unchanging truth is that China has always stood in North Korea's corner. Over the ages, Korea's standing in Chinese eyes has varied between tributary state and province. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. The real long term question is whether we're willing to fight China to keep Korea (either one) independent. Because IMO, China's long term goal is the enlargement of the Yanbian prefecture to include all of the Korean peninsula, at which point it might become a full-fledged province.
#12
China needs to grow the hell up and realize that nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them in the hands of that nutjob in North Korea is a clear and present danger to the very existence of the US, and will have to be either be removed by sanctions - or by force.
China's playing politics with this is bullshit, and it will lead to a nuclear war - or at least as severe a military strike as we can put together. Either that, or we arm the South Koreans and Japanese with nukes of their own.
Wake up and stop playing games China - you can topple the regime peacefully if you enforce sanctions that have already been called for.
If you do not, then we will be forced to act. And China will pay huge consequences if we do.
[DW] At a time when the United States is calling for more restrictions on fuel exports to North Korea, Russia may be attempting to avoid the total collapse of the regime in Pyongyang.
#4
I assume this oil will be come in via oil tankers.
I remember during the Cuban missile crisis the US blockaded Cuba.
If only we had enough patrol ships and submarines to enforce a blockade of all contraband.
#5
As with all EM devices, range and intensity are the key issues. An arc light that causes sunburn at a range of 1 meter is merely harsh at 10 and annoying at 20. Inverse-square distance relationship and all. It would have to get close enough to work.
Now, a MASER unit (microwave laser) could work at a greater distance, but the same tracking and targeting issues as a laser come in.
I was once told about a project that planned a long loiter time drone loaded with high speed heat seekers ...
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/06/2017 8:36 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Yeah, I think I've seen an old Marshall or Fender tube amp deliver an EMPTY on occasion...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2017 8:36 Comments ||
Top||
#7
EMP. Spellchecker begone...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2017 8:38 Comments ||
Top||
#8
A small airburst nuke (that is one in which the fireball does NOT touch the ground) properly deployed could knock out all of NORK's command and control and weapons systems in a millisecond.
I don't think anyone would care given the number of nukes that suet face has set off in recent years.
#11
Got to consider the target arena.
Fun article from the Guardian.
Enough juice to blackout city blocks, sure. Maybe just target cell towers to knock out phones.
Or a beamfront intended to explode lithium batteries. Maybe just enough to make it painful to use a phone.
Not quite. US military systems are for the most part hardened now.
The civilian power grid, etc. are not, however, and an EMP attack in one place could cascade across a lot of systems, with (impossible to predict in detail due to the high number of variables) effects far from the attack.
WRT such effects, consider the impact on food supplies on the east coast if transportation, communications and the power/communications grids were fried in central California.
[AnNahar] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... on Tuesday began the hugely controversial trial of a group of academics charged with terror offences for signing a petition calling for peace in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Over 1,120 Ottoman Turkish and also foreign academics signed the petition which emerged in January 2016 calling for an end to the military's crackdown on outlawed Kurdish rebels in the southeast that had begun six months earlier.
The academics say the petition was an apolitical call for peace but prosecutors charged 146 of the signatories with making propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The first 10 -- from Istanbul University and Galatasaray University -- went on trial in Istanbul on Tuesday with the hearing attended by EU diplomats including the French ambassador.
Each suspect had a 10-minute hearing at the start of a marathon process expected to continue until at least April. The prosecution has chosen not to stage a mass trial involving all the suspects in the same case.
In the first hearings, the defence argued that the petition was "within boundaries of freedom of expression" and demanded their immediate acquittal, an AFP journalist in the court said.
Their next hearings will take place on April 12. Ten more academics will appear in court on Thursday with further sessions scheduled throughout December and January.
Outside the court, students gathered in support of their lecturers, brandishing banners with slogans, including: "Don't touch my professor!"
If convicted, the suspects face up to seven-and-a-half years in jail. None of those who went on trial on Tuesday is currently being held behind bars.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/06/2017 00:00 ||
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[Free Beacon] A top federal prosecutor who is now a deputy in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation praised then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she was fired in January by President Donald Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban.
In a Jan. 30 email obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, "I am so proud," Fox News reported.
"And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects," the content of the email read, referring to Yates' refusal to defend the first version of Trump's travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries.
The email was sent from Weissmann’s government account before he was assigned to Mueller’s Russia probe and was still working in the DOJ’s criminal division.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the new Weissmann email is an "astonishing and disturbing find."
The email's release comes after it was recently confirmed another Mueller investigator, FBI official Peter Strzok, was removed from the investigation over the summer after sending anti-Trump texts to an FBI lawyer he was romantically involved with.
The allegations against Strzok brought up old concerns about the objectivity of the FBI, especially in the probes of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Russian election meddling.
"Andrew Weisman (sic), a key prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team, praised Obama DOJ holdover Sally Yates after she lawlessly thwarted President Trump," Fitton said in a statement. "How much more evidence do we need that the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans?"
#3
Please remember PED research is multifaceted.
Trials for performance don't offer real world value lab assessment of strength and speed like the Olympic competitions.
Trials for detectability cannot simulate objective multi-national lab evaluation.
Months of Olympic training also measures 'subject survivability' for long term saturation exposure to substances under test.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital city, changing decades of U.S. policy in a brief afternoon speech and casting the move as a bid to preserve, not derail, aspirations for regional peace.
Appearing in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room against an elaborate backdrop of Christmas decorations, He also said the United States embassy in Israel would, over time, be moved there from Tel Aviv.
Israel is the only country where the United States has an embassy in a city that the host nation does not consider its capital.
'I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,' Trump said. 'While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering.'
'When I came into office I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking,' he said, leaning heavily on a mid-1990s federal law that demanded the embassy's relocation.
'We have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital – at all,' Trump added. 'But today we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality.'
'It is also the right thing to do. It is something that has to be done.'
'This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement,' the president insisted. 'We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.'
We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders,' he continued.
'Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.'
Trump said the United States will continue to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, 'if agreed to by both sides.'
'In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites,' he said.
'Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross and where Muslims pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque,' Trump added.
America's friends and foes unleashed fierce criticism before Trump made official what the White House previewed for reporters Tuesday night.
But Trump stuck to his guns, calling his decision an act of political courage.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2017 13:38 ||
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#2
It's been talked about for nearly as long as Israel has been a State. Naming Jerusalem as the site of the U.S. embassy is an act of political courage. In the past no one has wanted to run the risk of ticking-off the Muslims.
#3
no one has wanted to run the risk of ticking-off the Muslims.
they could get all violenty then? Unlike their current peaceful status...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2017 20:33 Comments ||
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#4
70 years after Israel becomes a state a Christian nation recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital. 2000 years ago Jerusalem lost capital status 70 years after the crucifixion of Christ.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A day after deaf advocacy groups criticized a sign language interpreter, saying her signing made no sense during a press conference announcing the arrest of an alleged Tampa serial killer, there's a new twist.
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
The F-22 is the world's stealthiest aircraft, meaning it's extremely unlikely North Korea could see it coming. 
North Korea
[Free Beacon] A top federal prosecutor who is now a deputy in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation praised then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she was fired in January by President Donald Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban.
