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Heart - Black

Virginia cop arrested for beating his 6-month-old daughter to death

Jason Colley
A Fairfax County Police officer turned himself in to authorities this week and was arrested after being charged with multiple counts of child abuse involving the death of his 6-month-old daughter.

According to the State's Attorney for Frederick County, officer Jason Colley, 38, was indicted on August 24, 2018 and charged with First Degree Child Abuse - Death, First Degree Child Abuse - Sever Physical Injury, and First Degree Assault. The charges are a result of investigation by the Maryland State Police into injuries sustained by his infant daughter, Harper Colley, on September 19, 2017, which resulted in her death.

The statement says that the defendant is being held on $100,000 secured bond. However, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that he has posted this bond.

In April, the Fairfax police department was notified that Colley - who had been with the department for 10 years - was the lead suspect in the investigation into his daughter's death. When he reported for his next shift, the department relieved him of his duties and all law enforcement powers.

Heart - Black

Body of Russian climber missing for 31 years found preserved in ice like a 'wax doll'

Elena Bazykina
© Komsomolskaya Pravda
Elena Bazykina
The frozen body of a Russian climber who went missing 31 years ago on Europe's highest mountain has been found. Elena Bazykina reportedly looked like a "wax doll" as her body was pulled from Mount Elbrus in southern Russia.

The mountaineer was 36 when she died alongside another six of her friends after they were hit by an avalanche back in 1987.

The body of the woman was found encased in ice by a group of tourists at an altitude of about 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet). Her USSR passport was found on the remains, as well as her Aeroflot air ticket from Moscow, dated 10 April 1987.

Handcuffs

Israel may criminalize lap dancing as form of prostitution

lap dance
© Marcelo del Pozo / Reuters
Lap dancing may soon become a criminal offense in Israel after new guidelines from the state attorney's office called on police to crack down on strip clubs that cultivate the practice.

While prostitution is legal in Israel, its organized forms such as running brothels and pimping are not. Strip-club lap dancing is now being added to that list. A new directive by Israel's state attorney takes aim at the owners of clubs that allow the practice, which the office links to the sex industry.

A statement by the deputy state attorney, as cited by the Jerusalem Post, describes lap dancing as "the activity that in certain circumstances constitutes prostitution." The dance "as such... shall be considered a criminal offense against which extensive measures can be taken."

Comment: These Israeli politicians don't give a damn about protecting women:


Handcuffs

Leading Belgian football TV presenter Stephane Pauwels arrested for involvement in armed robbery

Stephane Pauwels arrested robbery
© LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ / AFP
His detention is part of an operation into armed robberies, burglaries and drug dealing.
Leading Belgian football TV personality Stephane Pauwels has been arrested amid claims he was involved in an armed robbery in an affluent town near Brussels in 2017.

Pauwels was taken in for questioning earlier this week in Mons, on suspicion of "possible complicity" in the armed raid in Lasne, south of Brussels, a federal prosecutor's spokeswoman told AFP.

Pauwels, 50, has been a presenter on Belgian channel RTL-TVI, and has also hosted shows in France.

Binoculars

What the media isn't showing you from inside the New Mexico terror compound

wahhaj
© Daily Mail / YouTube
New evidence revealed in a court filing on Friday further suggests that the five adults arrested earlier this month on charges of child abuse at a rural New Mexico compound were running a terrorist training camp. Those arrested include Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, his sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhannah Wahhaj, Subhannah's husband, Lucas Allen Morton, and a woman an FBI agent involved in the case identified as Wahhaj's "Islamic wife," Jany Leveille.

Officials also took custody of the Wahhajs' 11 children, placing them with the state's child protective services. A few days later, agents discovered, in a tunnel on the sprawling property, the corpse of Siraj Ibn Wahhaj's three-year old son, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, whom he had kidnapped in Georgia late last year from his estranged wife, Hakima Ramzi.

The Wahhaj siblings' father is the senior Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, who according to National Review Online's Andrew McCarthy is "a well-known (some would say notorious) sharia-supremacist imam who runs a mosque in Brooklyn (Masjid al-Taqwa)." In January, following the kidnapping of his three-year-old grandson, the imam made an appeal on Facebook for information on the whereabouts of his children and 12 grandchildren.

Later, according to the senior Wahhaj, one of his daughters asked for help from a man in Atlanta, saying they were starving at the New Mexico compound. The Atlanta contact passed the information to the imam, who told the authorities, resulting in the early-August raid.

Comment: And yet this is what happens: !?


Stock Down

Argentina hikes interest rate to 60% to control rampant inflation as peso plummets to record low

Argentine peso crash
© Reuters
Currency exchange office in Buenos Aires' financial district, Argentina August 30, 2018.
Argentina's central bank yanked higher its benchmark interest rate to a dizzying 60 percent on Thursday in a bid to control rampant inflation as the peso currency plummeted 15.6 percent to a record low 39 pesos per U.S. dollar.

Latin America's third biggest economy is expected to shrink this year, weighed down by inflation running at 31 percent, while already-scare credit gets choked off by increasingly onerous borrowing costs. The central bank raised the rate from 45 percent.

The central bank issued a statement saying it called a special meeting of its monetary policy committee, which voted unanimously to hike its key interest rate "in response to the foreign exchange rate situation and the risk of greater inflation."

The moves came a day after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called for the government to institute stronger monetary and fiscal policies in response to the meltdown of the peso, which has lost 52.2 percent of its value against the greenback so far this year and is the world's worst-performing currency.

Comment: See also:


Eye 1

Child abuse charges dropped against New Mexico 'Muslim extremists' after local DA fails to indict them

new mexico compound
Thanks to an error by the Taos, New Mexico District Attorney's office, 11 counts of felony child abuse charges against three of the five suspects who ran a New Mexico "Jihadi" compound where a dead child was found were dropped on Wednesday.

After Judge Sarah Backus recused herself from the case, District Judge Emilio Chavez was forced to drop the charges against Lucas Morton, Subhanna Wahhaj and Hujrah Wahhaj after the state failed to indict them within a 10-day window, forcing the frustrated judge to admonish the DA for placing him in such a position.

"The rule for dismissal without prejudice reads if the preliminary hearing is not held within the time of this rule, the court shall dismiss the case without prejudice and discharge the defendants," Judge Emilio Chavez said.

Comment: There's much that doesn't add up in this case. The previous Judge Sarah Backus, who recused herself, had apparently accepted the defense's argument that these suspects are 'victims of discrimination', ignoring the crimes committed. And now we have the local DA mucking things up. Perhaps there is more to the FBI involvement in the case and their destruction of evidence that is not exactly on the up and up?

Further background:


Ambulance

2 injured in stabbing at Amsterdam railway station, suspect shot by police

Central station in Amsterdam
© Reuters
Central station in Amsterdam, FILE PHOTO.
Dutch police have shot and injured a suspect following a stabbing which left two people wounded at Amsterdam railway station.

The victims, as well as the suspected attacker, were sent to a local hospital, Dutch police tweeted on Friday. Commuters are advised to avoid the area and the station was partially closed for a time, however it has since been fully reopened.

Local television station AT5 reported that the incident followed an argument that got out of hand, and ended in the stabbing attack. Armed police then shot the suspect at around 12pm local time.

All train traffic was shut down following the incident but all services are now operating as normal. The police said it is investigating "all possible scenarios" following the incident.

"It was major chaos in the station," eyewitness Jaime van Gastel told De Telegraaf. "It was teeming with police. I saw something like 15 cars and a lot of agents. There was also a central police helicopter circling above. That is now gone."

Map

New York renamed 'Jewtropolis' on Snapchat map, Jewish New Yorkers respond with humor

Jewtropolis New York Snap Map
© OpenStreetMap
A screenshot from the tampered map
Users of Snapchat's Snap Map feature saw New York renamed 'Jewtropolis', in an apparent act of online vandalism. The apparent hack triggered cries of anti-Semitism, but also top-quality jokes from New York's Jews.

The Snap Map feature, which allows Snapchat users to discover content from a certain location and see the movements of their friends, uses mapping software from a third-party company called Mapbox. Jumpbike, StreetEasy and Zillow also use Mapbox's maps for their bike sharing and apartment rental apps.

Somebody managed to make the change by tampering with Mapbox's software, and the digital vandalism was spotted by Twitter users on Thursday morning.

Satellite

US anti-Russia sanctions mean US astronauts can no longer travel to ISS on Russian spacecraft

Russia carry US astronauts ISS

NASA has relied on Russia to ferry crews since retirement of U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011
Russia's contract with NASA to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) will expire in April next year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov has said.

Under the current contract, American astronauts avail of seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft in order to reach the ISS and return home. The US lost its capacity for manned space missions after the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, and is about to finalize a replacement in the form of a manned SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The cost of the ISS ferry service has varied over the years, with NASA paying about $81 million per seat in 2018, up from the cheapest price of $21.8 million in 2007 and 2008.

Comment: The law of unintended consequences. Oops.