The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday that it would scrap plans to carry out reviews of three Navy SEALs that could have led to their ouster from the elite force, after President Donald Trump’s extraordinary intervention in a related case. 

“I have determined that any failures in conduct, performance, judgment or professionalism exhibited by these officers be addressed through other administrative measures as appropriate,” acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said in a statement. 

The decision followed Trump’s order on Sunday that Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher keep his status as a Navy SEAL, even after he was convicted of battlefield misconduct. The review of the three other SEALs was connected to the Gallagher case. 

Critics say the actions undermine military justice and send a message that battlefield atrocities will be tolerated. Trump’s former Navy secretary, Richard Spencer, who was fired on Sunday over the case, has spoken out against the president on the issue. 

“The president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices,” Spencer wrote in a piece published Wednesday by The Washington Post.

Trump: I’m defending fighters

Trump has argued that the Navy mishandled Gallagher’s case and has said that he is defending America’s combat fighters from unfair and unfounded prosecution. 

The now-terminated reviews of the three remaining SEALs — Lieutenant Jacob Portier, Lieutenant Commander Robert Breisch and Lieutenant Thomas MacNeil — had received far less attention than the Gallagher case. 

A military jury in July convicted Gallagher of illegally posing for pictures with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter while deployed to Iraq in 2017, but acquitted him of murder in the detainee’s death. Gallagher also was cleared of charges of attempted murder in the wounding of two civilians, a schoolgirl and an elderly man, shot from a sniper’s perch. 

Portier, Breisch and MacNeil were under scrutiny in the Gallagher affair as his superiors. 

Modly said his decision to scrap the reviews should not be interpreted as a diminishment of the SEAL ethos, which he quoted. It says the elite fighters serve with honor “on and off the battlefield.” 

“The United States Navy, and the Naval Special Warfare Community specifically, have dangerous and important work to do,” he said in his statement. “In my judgment, neither deserves the continued distraction and negative attention that recent events have evoked.” 

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. prosecutors have arrested a Hawaii man they accuse of sending hundreds of unwanted service providers and others to a Utah home, including plumbers and prostitutes.

Loren Okamura was arrested Friday in Hawaii following his indictment last month on charges of cyberstalking, interstate threats and transporting people for prostitution, court documents show.

Okamura, 44, targeted a father and her adult daughter, sending the woman threatening messages and posting her picture and address online, authorities said. One posting said the homeowner wanted drugs and prostitutes at the house in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in a Salt Lake City suburb.

The Gilmore family was “tormented” during the year-plus that the “extreme cyberstalking” endured, U.S. Attorney John Huber said Tuesday at a news conference.

Investigators had been focused on Okamura as the suspect since January when the Gilmores were granted a protective injunction in Utah. It took investigators time to gather enough evidence to charge Okamura because of his use of encryption and apps that made him appear anonymous, Huber said.

“For all the good that technology offers us in our modern lifestyles, there is also a darker, seedier side to it,” Huber said. “That’s what you have here.”

Huber declined to disclose the relationship between the victim and Okamura, but said it was not random. He noted that most stalkers had a previous intimate relationship with their victims and said, “those dynamics are present in this case.”

A sealed indictment was issued on Oct. 2, but Okamura wasn’t arrested until Friday as police struggled to find him because he doesn’t have a permanent address or job and is “savvy” with technology he used to mask his phone’s location.

A team of Utah officers flew to Honolulu and teamed with FBI agents on a 15-hour search Friday for Okamura that ended when they arrested him without incident at a supermarket, said Sgt. Jeff Plank of the Utah Department of Public Safety, who was assigned to the FBI’s cybercrime task force.

Okamura’s federal public defender, Sharron Rancourt, didn’t immediately return a phone message and emails seeking comment.

Okamura is scheduled to be in court in Hawaii on Wednesday for a detention hearing.

Prosecutors say Okamura’s online stalking began sometime in 2018 and led as many as 500 unwanted people to go to the house, according to Gilmore. Okamura sent food deliveries, repair services, tow trucks, locksmiths, plumbers and prostitutes to “harass and intimidate” the family, costing the service providers thousands of dollars in lost business, according to the charging documents.

Utah police went to the North Salt Lake house more than 80 times over a four-month period from November 2018 to February 2019. The activities affected the entire neighborhood, prosecutors say.

Okamura sent the woman extensive and repeated texts and voicemails.

In May, the woman received a threatening email telling her she should “sleep with one eye open and keep looking over her shoulder.” The email told her, “You should just kill yourself and do your family a favor,” charging documents show.

Prosecutors say they have records from Okamura’s cellphone and Apple ID to support the charges. His arrest was first reported by Hawaii News Now.

Walt Gilmore didn’t immediately return messages Tuesday. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Pennsylvania enacted legislation Tuesday to give future victims of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges.

Gov. Tom Wolf signed new laws he said will help repair “faults in our justice system that prevent frightened, abused children from seeking justice when they grow into courageous adults.”

The legislative package was based on recommendations in last year’s landmark grand jury report about the cover-up of hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses over much of the 20th century.

However, Republicans with majority control of the state Senate blocked the two-year window, which was a top priority of victim advocates, victims and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

They all want the state to temporarily lift time limits that currently bar now-adult victims of child sexual abuse from suing their perpetrators and institutions that may have helped hide it.

About two dozen states have changed their laws on statutes of limitations this year, according to Child USA, a Philadelphia-based think tank that advocates for child protection.

Wolf, a Democrat, signed bills to invalidate secrecy agreements that keep child sexual abuse victims from talking to investigators, and to increase and clarify penalties for people who are required to report suspected child abuse but fail to do so.

Wolf signed the bills at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, the home district of state Democratic Rep. Mark Rozzi, a champion of the legislation and who has spoken publicly about being raped as a 13-year-old boy by a Roman Catholic priest.

“We know our work is not done today, it’s going to continue,” Rozzi said.

The grand jury report prompted a lengthy battle in the Legislature that pitted victims and their advocates who sought the two-year window to file claims over past abuse against top Senate Republicans, who argued it would be unconstitutional and instead offered the slower alternative of amending the state constitution.

The multi-year amendment process has begun, but the bill must again pass both the House and Senate in the 2021-22 legislative session before voters will decide its fate.

Shapiro, a Democrat, said the eliminated time limits means prosecutors could file charges against only two priests after the report was issued. Shapiro said that if the new legislation had applied, some 100 priests could have been charged.

Wolf and Shapiro urged lawmakers to take up the two-year window for lawsuits rather than wait for the constitutional amendment process to play out.

“By waiting, we are robbing the very victims who made this day possible, we are robbing them of the only closure before them,” Shapiro said. “Think about the many Pennsylvanians who have a story to tell about sexual abuse. Why should anyone who’s been a victim of sexual abuse or its cover-up be made to suffer while others get three or four more years of a free pass?”

The main bill in the legislative package ends any statute of limitations, in future cases, for criminal prosecution of major child sexual abuse crimes. Current law limits it to the victim’s 50th birthday.

Victims would have until they turn 55 to sue, compared to age 30 in current law. Young adults ages 18-23 would have until age 30 to sue, where existing law gives them just two years.

Police could file criminal charges up to 20 years after the crime when young adults 18-23 years old are the victims, as opposed to 12 years after the crime for victims over 17 in current law.

Other state have previously amended their laws.

In New Jersey, lawmakers expanded the civil statute of limitations from two years to seven years. The bill opened a two-year window, which starts on Dec. 1, to victims who were previously barred by the statute of limitations. It also allows victims to seek damages from institutions.

New York raised the victim’s age for which prosecutors can seek a felony indictment from 23 to 28. The law also gave anyone a year starting in August to file child sex abuse lawsuits against individuals and institutions, and civil lawsuits going forward can be filed until the victim is 55, up from 23.

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From: MeNeedIt

Donald Trump on Tuesday followed a White House Thanksgiving tradition by pardoning “Butter,” the turkey, and his alternate, “Bread.” The president also honored his own tradition of cracking jokes while granting clemency to the poultry. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

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From: MeNeedIt

Rescuers were pulling survivors and dead bodies from piles of rubble in Albania on Tuesday after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s coastal area. The U.S. Geological survey placed the quake’s epicenter about 30 kilometers north of the capital Tirana and at a depth of about 20 kilometers. The earthquake was followed by about 100 aftershocks, including three with preliminary magnitudes of about 5. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the death toll is rising.

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From: MeNeedIt

Many new refugees in America experience culture shock when they first arrive in the United States.  Many have to deal with a new language, culture, and even holidays. But settled refugees can play a big role in helping new arrivals adapt to life in the U.S. One example is the Ethiopian Community Center, which hosts a Thanksgiving meal every year for new refugees.  VOA’s Shahnaz Nafees has more on the event.

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From: MeNeedIt

Critics say the widespread African tradition of giving cash and gifts to a bride’s family before marriage, known as a “bride price,” degrades women by putting a required, monetary value on a wife. In Nigeria, the financial pressure in a recent case ended in suicide, underscoring those concerns. But supporters of the bride price tradition uphold it as a cherished cultural and religious symbol of marriage, as Chika Oduah reports from Yola, Nigeria.

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From: MeNeedIt

Thousands of Palestinians marched throughout the West Bank on Tuesday in what they call “a day of rage” over the recent change in U.S. policy regarding Jewish settlements.

Protesters set tires on fire and threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Demonstrators burned an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump dressed in Israeli flags and held up a banner declaring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a partner in war crimes.

No serious injuries were reported. Later Tuesday, two rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza. There was apparently no damage.

Last week, the Trump administration abandoned a 40-year U.S. policy that declared Israeli Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”

Pompeo said the old policy has not “advanced the cause of peace.”

He also said this does not mean the United States is making up its mind at this time about the status of the West Bank, saying that question is part of a final peace deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Trump administration is righting a “historical wrong” by supporting “truth and justice.”
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Turkish riot police used force to break up a march by thousands of women calling for what they call an “end to impunity” for men guilty of violence against women.

Police stopped more than 2,000 from marching up Istikal Street in Istanbul’s main shopping district.

Police fired pepper spray at the protesters with some witnesses reporting the use of tear gas and plastic bullets. No casualties or arrests were reported.

March organizers say they are tired at what they believe are the relatively light sentences handed out to husbands and boyfriends who murder or abuse women.

Women at the front of Monday’s march spread out a banner reading “We cannot tolerate the loss of one more woman.”

A Turkish women’s rights group says nearly 380 women have been killed so far this year.

A Turkish court recently sentenced a man to life in prison for slashing his ex-wife’s throat in front of their 10 year-old daughter in August.

The murder was caught on video and sickened nearly everyone who saw it.

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From: MeNeedIt

A Lebanese-born business tycoon says he is donating Hitler’s top hat and other Nazi memorabilia he won at an auction to an Israeli Jewish group to keep the stuff out of the hands of neo-Nazis.

Abdallah Chatila, who made his fortune in diamonds and Swiss real estate, paid $660,000 for the items last week.

He says he bought the the hat and memorabilia intending to destroy it, but decided it was better to hand it over to the Keren Hayeson-United Israel Appeal.

Along with the Nazi dictator’s hat, the items include a silver plated edition of “Mein Kampf,” and a typewriter used by Hitler’s secretary.

Although Chatila says some Lebanese are criticizing him for helping the so-called enemy, his act was totally non-political. He said he “wished to buy these objects so that they could not be used for the purpose of neo-Nazi propaganda.”

The European Jewish Association, which had originally protested the auction, is now applauding Chatila.

“Such a consequence, such an act of selfless generosity to do something that you feel strongly about is the equivalent of finding a precious diamond in an Everest of coal,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin wrote in a letter to Chatila.

It is unclear what the Jewish group plans to do with the objects.

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From: MeNeedIt

Officials in India say troops have destroyed a live mortar shell that villagers discovered in their Kashmiri border town.

Indian police in the Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir said Monday they coordinated with the army after villagers alerted them to the live mortar.

They said army troops brought in a bomb-disposal squad to set off a controlled explosion to deactivate the device.

Mortars are often fired in the region between troops of neighboring rivals India and Pakistan. If the mortars do not explode on impact they can lie hidden in fields or hills and will pose a danger to passerby, especially children.

Indian-administered Kashmir remains tense and continues to have a heavy military presence three and-a-half months after India’s central government abruptly stripped the region of its autonomy, cut off internet service and censored media coverage of the situation.

Pakistan, which also lays claims to Kashmir, protested the move, downgrading its diplomatic ties with India and suspending trade.

New Delhi blames Islamabad for fomenting a violent three-decade separatist insurgency in the Himalayan region.

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From: MeNeedIt

Feature films on slavery have been part of Hollywood since the beginning of the film industry in United States. However, only recently, movies on slavery have been told from the perspective of the slaves, and now, with the film “Harriet” from the perspective of a female slave.  “Harriet”, the latest of antebellum dramas, focuses on Harriet Tubman a female runaway slave.  Tubman played a significant role in the so called “Underground Railroad”, a human network helping enslaved African – Americans to flee to free American states and Canada. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.

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From: MeNeedIt