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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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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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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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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WHITE HOUSE — President Donald Trump on Tuesday honored another White House tradition where he granted a pardon to “Butter,” the turkey, and his alternate, “Bread,” in the Rose Garden, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.  

Honoring his own tradition of cracking jokes while granting clemency to poultry, Trump said, “I expect this pardon will be a very popular one with the media. After all, turkeys are closely related to vultures.”

The turkeys have been “raised to remain calm under any condition, which will be very important because they’ve already received subpoenas to appear in Adam Schiff’s basement on Thursday,” Trump said, referring to impeachment hearings.

“Bread and Butter, I should note that unlike previous witnesses, you and I have actually met,” the president said in another jab to Democrats and their impeachment inquiry.

The president made a similar subpoena joke during last year’s turkey pardon, saying, “Even though Peas and Carrots have received a presidential pardon, I have warned them that House Democrats are likely to issue them both subpoenas.”

Trump has made political jokes during all of his Thanksgiving turkey pardons since coming to office. In his first turkey pardon in 2017, Trump joked that he has been “very active in overturning” executive actions taken by his predecessor Barack Obama, but would not subject the birds to it.

“I have been informed by the White House counsel’s office that Tater and Tot’s pardons cannot, under any circumstances, be revoked,” Trump said. “So, Tater and Tot, you can rest easy.”

Matthew Costello, assistant director of the David M. Rubinstein National Center for White House History, said that in these events presidents get to lighten up and show “who they are as a person.”

Costello recalled how President Obama used to make what his daughters call “bad dad jokes” during these ceremonies, while Trump is more focused on how he’s covered in the press. “I think he sees it as an opportunity then to sort of tease and make fun of some of those things,” added Costello.

As far as Bread and Butter are concerned, both birds got to stay at a luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., prior to the pardoning, and will spend the rest of their lives at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Turkey tradition

Turkeys are a staple main dish for the American Thanksgiving holiday, which falls on the last Thursday of November. According to the White House Historical Association, pardoning them became a presidential tradition since George H. W. Bush in 1989 but the custom has earlier roots.

“A White House reporter in 1865 published a report about President Lincoln pardoning a turkey that he grew fond of,” said Costello. However, that turkey was headed to become Christmas dinner, not Thanksgiving.

The first turkey pardon on record was in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy received a turkey as a gift for Thanksgiving dinner but decided to let it live on Nov. 19. Three days later, the president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan deflected questions about the Iran-Contra scandal and whether he would pardon the actors involved, Oliver North and John Poindexter.

“If they’d given me a different answer on Charlie and his future, I would have pardoned him,” Reagan said, referring to the bird.

Before its pardoning, turkeys have been sent as gifts to American presidents from as early as the 1870s, said Costello. In the early 1920s, there had been such a huge poultry influx that President Calvin Coolidge discouraged Americans from sending them. He received not only turkeys for dinner, but quail, ducks, geese, rabbits, deer, even a raccoon, which became a Coolidge family pet named Rebecca.

In recent years, the White House has turned the pardon to be a social media event and encouraged people to participate, including voting on the name via the online poll.

After pardoning the turkeys, Trump and first lady Melania Trump departed the White House to spend Thanksgiving holidays at his Florida golf resort, Mar-a-Lago.
 

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Moroccan rapper Gnawi knew the police would come when he and two friends released an unusually outspoken video exposing their country’s problems with migration and drugs and expressing frustration with the king.

And sure enough, they did.

Gnawi, a former military serviceman whose real name is Mohamed Mounir, was handed a one-year prison sentence Monday by a judge for insulting the police in a case that his supporters say is a backlash against growing public anger at authorities and over a lack of economic opportunity.
      
Moroccan authorities have said Gnawi’s arrest was prompted by an earlier video in which he insulted the police, a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

The video he released with rappers Lz3er and Weld L’Griya featured the song “3acha cha3b” (“Long Live the People”). Released Oct. 29, it immediately went viral, and now has more than 15.5 million hits on YouTube.

The five-minute video rages against the powers-that-be and criticizes the country’s widening economic gap, a message aimed at the country’s disillusioned younger generation.

One passage of the song reflects on the Hirak protest movement in Morocco’s impoverished Rif mountain region. Another section profiles a mother whose sons died attempting to migrate to Europe, while another paints a picture of a young generation ruined by hashish and hard drugs.
 

Most shockingly to many Moroccans, the song also directly criticizes Morocco’s king and his adviser, a criminal offense.

“We didn’t do this project to point fingers or create controversy,” Lz3er told The Associated Press. “We voiced what the majority of Moroccans feel but fear to say … and it naturally upset those who do not want change.”

Morocco, a kingdom long known for its stability in the Arab world, adopted constitutional reforms in response to the 2011 Arab Spring protests against corruption and abuse of power and in favor of expanding free speech. But the country is still struggling with poverty, corruption and unemployment. Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the constitution, but with limits.

The 31-year-old Lz3er, whose real name is Yahya Semlali, said he was followed after the song’s release and that “All Morocco knows that Gnawi is arrested because of the ‘3acha cha3b’ song.”

Morocco’s political rap is grounded in poetry and has a rhythm and meter distinct from American rap. The language’s guttural syllables demand fury in delivery, and rap is a welcome outlet for political passions.

“All of us are in the ‘see and be quiet’ mode. But I do this because I don’t want to see and be quiet. That’s why people respond to my music,” Lz3er said in an interview at his house in Fes. The city is prized by tourists for its beauty and royal sites; locals know it as Morocco’s capital of crime.

Lz3er and Weld L’Griya grew up in a world of crime. Both school dropouts, they got their education on the streets from those who turned to prostitution for lack of other opportunity and from young men who slept on the street in cardboard boxes and turned to drugs as an escape.

“We are stuck in a caste system and our rap mirrors exactly that,” Lz3er said.

But for government spokesman Hassan Abyaba, the rap song doesn’t reflect Morocco’s reality.

 “Songs of all kinds must respect the citizens, the constancy of the nation and the principles and values that are part of the Moroccans’ education,” he told a news conference last week.

The Minister of Human Rights, Mustapha Ramid, dubbed the song “provocative and offensive.”

A small group of supporters gathered in front of Sale court to demand Gnawi’s release.

 “The state is always oppressing us,” said protester Youssef Montaser. “The police don’t guarantee our rights, they wrong us.”

Politically engaged rappers are often arrested for “offenses that have nothing to do with music or their artistic production,” said linguistics expert Zineb Harrouchi.

Opposition rapper Mouad Belrhouate, better known as El 7aqed or “the resentful one,” has been arrested three times for his music critical of Morocco’s social ills and ruling elite.

A political refugee in Belgium since 2015, he told the AP: “Though I love my country very much, it suffocated me. I was always followed, watched. I felt in prison outside of prison, and yet I dream of the day I return to my neighborhood, my little bunker in my neighborhood in Casablanca.”

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Pope Francis on Tuesday closed his visit to Japan by telling students at a Catholic university of the need to work toward a “hope-filled future” that is more inclusive by addressing the disconnects in society.

In his address at Sophia University, the pope said he sensed in Japan a desire to create a more humane, compassionate and merciful society.

“The university, focused on its mission, should always be open to creating an ‘archipelago’ capable of connecting realities that might be considered culturally and socially separate,” Pope Francis said.  “The marginalized would be creatively incorporated into the life and curriculum of the university in an effort to bring about an educational approach aimed at reducing distances and disconnects.”

The pope also cited a “love for nature” as a typical aspect of Asian cultures and expressed a need to protect the planet.

Earlier parts of his Japan visit focused on an anti-nuclear message.

The 82-year-old Argentine landed in Tokyo Saturday before traveling to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the sites where more than 100,000 people were killed instantly by U.S. bombs dropped at the end of World War II in 1945.

In Nagasaki Sunday, Pope Francis called on political leaders to renounce nuclear weapons and abandon the arms race.

“I ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security,” he said.

The pope has said it has long been a dream of his to visit Japan, and that he had longed to be sent there as a missionary more than 50 years ago. Out of the country’s 126 million residents, an estimated 440,000 are Catholic.

Before traveling to Japan, the pope visited Thailand to preach a message of religious tolerance and peace.

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The majority of Americans, including a growing share of moderate Republicans, are dissatisfied with U.S. government efforts to curb global warming, researchers said on Monday.

In a survey by the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based non-partisan think-tank, two-thirds of Americans said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was “doing too little” to reduce the effects of climate change. Since taking office, Trump has rolled backed Obama-era rules limiting planet-warming emissions from sectors of the economy such as electricity, transport, and oil and gas.

The Trump administration filed paperwork this month to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, while his opponents have championed a “Green New Deal” that seeks to slash U.S. emissions within a decade.

In the Pew survey, the proportion of people who said the government was taking too little action to tackle climate change was unchanged from a year ago – but unease among moderate Republicans grew significantly, noted the report.

“Previous analysis showed that concern about climate change has gone up over the past several years (since 2013) among Democrats but not Republicans,” said Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew.

But the new survey, which polled more than 3,600 people last month, found that 65% of moderate or liberal Republicans said the federal government was not doing enough to reduce the effects of global warming, up from 53% in 2018.

A divide was also seen by age, with 52% of 18 to 38-year-old Republicans displeased with government climate action, compared with 41% of those from 38-54, and 31% of those aged 55 or above. Among Republicans, 46% of women thought the government was doing too little, compared with 34% of men.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said the recent wave of extreme wildfires, hurricanes and flooding hitting the United States had likely played a part in shifting Republican opinion.

“People are beginning to hear and see that the impacts of climate change are here – now,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Most climate scientists believe a human-produced increase in greenhouse gases is heating the planet but the survey found no change in the longstanding U.S. political divide on that issue.

Just under half of respondents agreed human activity contributes a great deal to climate change, and another 30% said human actions have some role.

“Many people, not just Republicans, underestimate the scientific agreement about this stuff,” noted Leiserowitz.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has pushed a message that climate change is part of natural cycles, he said. Nonetheless, the survey showed most Americans favor adopting renewable energy sources, with 92% of adults supporting the expansion of solar power and 85% backing wind power.

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A strong earthquake struck the area of Albania’s capital early Tuesday, killing at least six people and injuring hundreds.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was a magnitude 6.4 with an epicenter 30 kilometers northwest of the capital, Tirana.

Rescue crews worked to find and free people from damaged and destroyed buildings.

A Defense Ministry spokeswoman said the bodies of three people were found in the rubble of an apartment building in the city of Durres.

Crews found the bodies of two other people in the remains of a collapsed building in the village of Thumane, while another person died after jumping out of a building in Kurbin.

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The holiday season officially began at the White House Monday, as first lady Melania Trump received the 2019 White House Christmas tree.
 
Unlike last year, President Donald Trump did not attend the tree presentation.
 
The tree arrived by jingle bell-adorned horse and carriage, continuing an annual White House tradition to highlight the holiday spirit.
 
“Just a few decades earlier they were still delivering the tree in pick-up trucks,” said historian Matthew Costello from the White House Historical Association. “So it’s nice that they’ve made it more festive, to do it with a Christmas-themed sled and a drawn carriage,” Costello added.
 
This year’s tree, is a 5.6 meters tall Douglas fir grown by Larry Snyder of Mahantongo Valley Farms in Pennsylvania, winner of the National Christmas Tree Association’s Christmas tree contest.

As the winner, Snyder has the honor of presenting a Christmas tree to the White House. He called it, “a memorable experience of a lifetime for our family, especially for our children and grandchildren, who are accompanying us for the presentation.”
 
The first lady chatted with Snyder and took pictures with the Snyder family.
 
Holiday tree tradition
 
The National Christmas Tree Association has presented the official White House Christmas Tree every year since 1966. Each year’s tree has to fit the exact specifications of the White House Blue Room, where it is displayed as part of the holiday décor with a theme selected by the first lady.
 
Jacqueline Kennedy started the tradition of selecting a theme for the official White House Christmas tree in 1961.

Historian Costello said that the choice of themes tells us a little bit about the president and first lady who are living there.  He said it shows “what they see as important to have this representation on the traditional Christmas tree.”
 
Melania Trump is scheduled to unveil the theme of her 2019 White House Christmas décor in early December.
 
Next up in the White House holiday events schedule is the Thanksgiving turkey pardon by President Trump later this week.

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Activists on Monday criticized as insufficient new French government efforts to fight one of Europe’s highest rates of so-called femicides, or the killing of women by their partners.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Monday announced millions of dollars in measures to protect women from spousal killings. They include beefing up shelters and the national hotline for victims, electronic bracelets and firearms seizures targeting abusers, educational programs and stiffer penalties for those convicted. The announcement coincides with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Philippe said he hoped the measures will create an “electric shock” that he says French society needs to fight so-called femicides. Activists say nearly 140 women have been killed by their partners or ex-partners in France so far this year — one of Europe’s highest rates.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Paris Saturday, in the latest protest against femicides. The new measures come after weeks of discussions between authorities and women’s rights groups on the problem.

But, some activists say both the measures and the funds to realize them are not enough. Camille Bernard is a member of #NousToutes, a women’s rights group which organized the demonstrations.

“We are really disappointed about this, because we must have more money to make things [i.e. measures to crack down] for the violence, and the prime minister says it will not be more [new] money. We don’t know how they think they will do more things against violence without more money,” he said.

Domestic violence has also become a hot-button issue elsewhere in Europe. A day after the Paris demonstrations, thousands protested violence targeting women in Brussels. Similar demonstrations also took place recently in Spain, despite a raft of government measures more than a decade ago to address the problem.

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Got secrets? They’ll be safe in here. VOA Explains what a SCIF is.

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