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Sandra Bland recorded her arrest at 2015 traffic stop - family never saw video, wants investigation into arrest and death reopened


WFAA
Fri, 10 May 2019 17:00 UTC
sandra bland arrest death traffic stop
© Family photo
Sandra Bland
The family of Sandra Bland -- who died in a Waller County jail cell -- is calling for a re-opening of the criminal investigation into Bland's arrest and death after seeing footage for the first time.

New cellphone footage from the now infamous traffic stop of Sandra Bland shows her perspective when a Texas state trooper points a Taser and yells, "I will light you up!"

Bland, 28, was found dead three days later in her Waller County jail cell near Houston. Her death was ruled a suicide.

The new video -- released as part of a WFAA exclusive in partnership with the Investigative Network -- fuels the Bland family's suspicions that Texas officials withheld evidence in her controversial arrest and, later, her death.

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People 2

Going subterranean: Underground spaces are being propped up as the next place for humans to live

Ella IDE
Yahoo
Fri, 10 May 2019 16:24 UTC
Bourbon Tunnel

Part of the Bourbon Tunnel under Naples
Solutions to the biggest threats facing our planet lie underground, according to experts who insist climate change, overpopulation and food shortages can all be tackled by going subterranean.

"We are coming to a point in our history in which we need to start looking for more space," Han Admiraal, a civil engineer with over two decades of experience in underground space, told AFP on the sidelines of this year's World Tunnel Congress.

Efforts to meet seven of the United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals -- from cleaning up pollution-clogged metropolises to ending world hunger -- could be given a big boost by repurposing spaces below street level, he said.

"We don't seem to realise that we're losing a lot of arable land at an alarming rate each year (to soil degradation, urbanisation and intensive farming), where we should be increasing it to feed the growing world population.
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Eye 1

140 migrants cross into south Texas in 3 hours

Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby
Breitbart
Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00 UTC
Migrants
© Breitbart Border / Cartel Chronicles
In a three-hour span Sunday, 140 Central American migrants crossed into Texas from the cartel-controlled city of Reynosa and surrendered to U.S. authorities with the expectation of being released shortly thereafter. The images of the crossings come at a time when the leaders of U.S. Border Patrol report record-setting apprehensions.

The images were captured by Breitbart News in an area immediately north of the Texas border in a region known as Rincon Village, under the Anzalduas International Bridge. The area has long been considered by law enforcement as a busy corridor used by the Gulf Cartel to move Central American migrants into Texas. Since many migrants are family units or request asylum, they are released in a matter of days.
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Chess

African countries renew push to lift ivory trade ban

Kitsepile Nyathi
The East African
Wed, 08 May 2019 16:19 UTC
elephants
© alliance/Arco Images/F. Scholz
Southern African countries are pushing for the lifting of a global ban on sales of ivory in a bid to address human-wildlife conflict caused by bigger herds.

Leaders from six countries in the region who attended a summit in Botswana on Tuesday resolved to lobby the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) to lift the embargo.

They are advocating for the relaxation of the trade ban to a strictly-controlled form of business.

Zimbabwe will next month host the inaugural African Union/United Nations Wildlife summit which the countries that are part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) want to use to mobilise support for an end to the 30 year-old ban on ivory trade.
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Cross

Global persecution of Christians reaches "near-genocidal levels"

Lucas Holtvluwer
The Post Millenial
Tue, 07 May 2019 16:00 UTC
church
A new report on Christian persecution ordered by the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Jeremy Hunt, finds that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.

The review, led by the Bishop of Truro the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen, found that one in three people suffer from religious persecution globally, with 80% of the persecuted being followers of Jesus Christ.

Hunt felt that given the research consistently showed that Christians are the most persecuted religious group, such a study was warranted to further investigate the nature and scope of the persecution. Hunt also added that "political correctness" played a role in not confronting the issue sooner.

The report, which is not yet finalized, defines persecution as "discriminatory treatment where that treatment is accompanied by actual or perceived threats of violence or other forced coercion."
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Bizarro Earth

Indigenous people, habitats under siege - UN report

Marlowe Hood
Yahoo! News
Thu, 09 May 2019 15:30 UTC
Waipai people crossing river in Brazil
© AFP/Apu Gomes
From Amazon rainforests to the Arctic Circle, indigenous peoples are leveraging ancestral knowhow to protect habitats that have sustained them for hundreds and even thousands of years, according to a landmark UN assessment of biodiversity released Monday.

But these "guardians of nature" are under siege, warns the first major UN scientific report to fully consider indigenous knowledge and management practices.

Whether it is logging, agribusiness and cattle ranching in the tropics, or climate change warming the poles twice as fast as the global average, an unrelenting economic juggernaut fuelled by coal, oil and gas is ravaging the natural world, the grim report found.

A million of Earth's estimated eight million species are at risk of extinction, and an area of tropical forest five times the size of England has been destroyed since 2014.
Disappearing tropical forests
"Indigenous peoples and local communities are facing growing resource extraction, commodity production, along with mining, transport and energy infrastructure," with dire impacts on livelihoods and health, the report concluded.
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NPC

Gender madness continues: Google brings nonbinary emoji to Android Q

Erin Carson
CNet
Wed, 08 May 2019 15:56 UTC
nonbinary emoji
Fifty-three nonbinary emoji are coming to Android Q, Google confirmed Wednesday.

The designs launched Tuesday on Pixel smartphones as a beta release. They'll come to Android Q, the next version of Google's mobile operating system, later in the year.

In the interview with Fast Company, designer Jennifer Daniel said gender is complicated: "It is an impossible task to communicate gender in a single image. It's a construct. It lives dynamically on a spectrum."

In images of the emoji sent from Google, captions note that some emoji, like the judge, only needed a new hairstyle. Others needed more work on clothing, like the vampire. The nonbinary vampire wears a chain instead of a bowtie or necklace.

"All of [the emoji] will force us to look each other in the eye and thin deeply about gender," one caption reads.
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Red Flag

Facebook auto-generates videos celebrating extremist images

Desmond Butler and Barbara Ortutay
Associated Press
Wed, 08 May 2019 20:23 UTC
facebook isis
© Facebook via AP
The animated video begins with a photo of the black flags of jihad. Seconds later, it flashes highlights of a year of social media posts: plaques of anti-Semitic verses, talk of retribution and a photo of two men carrying more jihadi flags while they burn the stars and stripes.

It wasn't produced by extremists; it was created by Facebook. In a clever bit of self-promotion, the social media giant takes a year of a user's content and auto-generates a celebratory video. In this case, the user called himself "Abdel-Rahim Moussa, the Caliphate."

"Thanks for being here, from Facebook," the video concludes in a cartoon bubble before flashing the company's famous "thumbs up."

Facebook likes to give the impression it's staying ahead of extremists by taking down their posts, often before users even see them. But a confidential whistleblower's complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained by The Associated Press alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success. Even worse, it shows that the company is inadvertently making use of propaganda by militant groups to auto-generate videos and pages that could be used for networking by extremists.
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Heart - Black

Detectives: Woman put baby in bag, tossed her in trash bin


ABC News
Fri, 10 May 2019 07:14 UTC
Woman
Detectives say a 35-year-old Florida woman confessed to putting her newborn baby girl in a plastic bag and throwing her into a trash bin outside an apartment complex.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's spokeswoman Therese Barbera said in a news release that Rafaelle Alessandra Carbalho Sousa was arrested late Thursday and will appear in court on Friday. She's charged with attempted felony murder and child abuse.

Officials say two people heard the baby crying and found her in the trash bin on Wednesday. She was taken to a hospital and is expected to be fine.
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Handcuffs

Man convicted in model's death says 'justice was served'


ABC News
Fri, 10 May 2019 09:26 UTC
Man convicted of killing model
A man has been convicted of murder in the strangulation of a model in one of Philadelphia's affluent suburbs.

Jonathan Harris told reporters that he believed "justice was served" as he was led out of the courtroom late Thursday. The verdict carries a mandatory life sentence.
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