| International police body Interpol elected Kim Jong-yang of South Korea as president early Wednesday morning, beating the Russian frontrunner whose candidacy sparked concerns across the Western world about the risk of Kremlin interference. Kim will succeed China’s Meng Hongwei, who disappeared in September and later resigned after authorities in Beijing said he was being investigated for bribery. Serious concerns had been raised in Europe and the U.S. about Russia’s Alexander Prokopchuk, a police major-general and one of Interpol’s four vice presidents who had been widely tipped to win. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators accused Russia of exploiting the global body to settle scores and harass dissidents. Upon his election, Kim said: “Our world is now facing unprecedented changes which present huge challenges to public security and safety. To overcome them, we need a clear vision: We need to build a bridge to the future.” |
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| A federal judge has blocked a Mississippi state law that sought to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, issuing his judgment alongside a stinging rebuke of “controlling” male lawmakers who “gaslight” the public into believing they care about women’s health. The proposed law made exceptions for medical emergencies or cases in which there’s a “severe fetal abnormality,” but there were no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. Judge Carlton Reeves, district judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, said the law “unequivocally” infringed upon a woman’s 14th Amendment due-process rights and defies Supreme Court precedents. He called the legislature’s supposed interest in women’s health “pure gaslighting,” saying: “Its leaders... choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room, such as high infant and maternal mortality rates... No, legislation like [the abortion ban] is closer to the old Mississippi—the Mississippi bent on controlling women and minorities.” |
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| A district judge in Michigan has declared a federal law banning female genital mutilation unconstitutional, and dropped charges against two doctors accused of subjecting girls to the cutting procedure. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman concluded that “as despicable as this practice may be,” Congress did not have the authority to pass a law that criminalizes female genital mutilation, and said that it should be a matter for a state to decide. “Congress overstepped its bounds by legislating to prohibit FGM... FGM is a ‘local criminal activity’ which, in keeping with longstanding tradition and our federal system of government, is for the states to regulate, not Congress,” the judge wrote. Jumana Nagarwala, a physician and the lead defendant in the case, in no longer facing charges of conspiring to commit and committing female genital mutilation—but still faces charges of conspiring to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding. |
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| President Donald Trump lashed out at the performer from this past year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Twitter on Tuesday night after the organization behind the event announced it would not be hosting a comedian in 2019. “So-called comedian Michelle Wolf bombed so badly last year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that this year, for the first time in decades, they will have an author instead of a comedian,” the president wrote. “Good first step in comeback of a dying evening and tradition! Maybe I will go.” A little over an hour later, Michelle Wolf shot back, “I bet you’d be on my side if I had killed a journalist,” in response to Trump’s latest comments about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, adding first lady Melania Trump’s anti-bullying hashtag #BeBest. Trump declined to attend the event during his first two years in office, leaving the comedian hosts to roast him in absentia. Following the decision to hire historian Ron Chernow instead of the traditional comedian, Wolf tweeted, “The @whca are cowards. The media is complicit. And I couldn’t be prouder.” View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
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| Italy’s famous leaning tower of Pisa is not leaning so much anymore. The tower has self-corrected 4 centimeters, or 1.575 inches, over the last 20 years. Amid fears the ancient bell tower would fall flat in the mid-1990s, an international team of experts installed a system consisting of 750 metric tons of lead weights that not only helped save it from collapsing onto the grass below, but also immediately corrected 2 inches of its famous lean, which made it stable enough to allow visitors inside by 2008 after it had been closed for centuries. The weights apparently have continued to stabilize the structure. The tower started leaning almost immediately after construction began in 1173, when the soft ground below the structure started to settle. The architects in charge of the project started correcting the lean by building the columns slightly taller on the north section about a third of the way up the 186-foot tower, which created a slight curve. The same trick was used on the eighth floor. Prior to the intervention, the tower moved at a rate of about 1.2 millimeters, or .05 inches, each year. |
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| A judge declared a mistrial late Tuesday in the trial of a Brooklyn man accused of killing and sexually assaulting Queens jogger Karina Vetrano in 2016. Judge Michael Aloise declared the mistrial in Queens Supreme Court at the defense team’s request after the jury informed him it was unable to come to a consensus on whether the accused, Chanel Lewis, was guilty or not guilty. Lewis, 22, had pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and sexual abuse despite a taped confession and DNA evidence. His lawyers have argued that the confession was coerced, and they also called into question the DNA evidence. “After deliberating for the entire day we are split. It doesn’t seem like we can make progress. We feel that we have exhausted all of our options,” the jury wrote in a note to the judge, the New York Post reports. Prosecutors say they will move to retry Lewis, who will remain in custody. He is due back in court on Jan. 22. Vetrano was killed in August 2016 after going out for a jog in Howard Beach. Investigators said she appeared to have been struck over the head with a rock before being raped and strangled. View this cheat in a browser to see this video. |
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| An American tourist is believed to have been killed by an isolated Indian island tribe that has a reputation for attacking outsiders with bows and arrows, police said Wednesday. The tribe on North Sentinel Island resists all contact with outsiders, often attacking anyone who comes near, and is virtually untouched by modern civilization, the Associated Press reports. Seven fishermen have reportedly been arrested for helping to arrange the American’s visit to the island where the killing is said to have happened Saturday. Indian media reports said the American was on an adventure trip to the islands and his body was found by the fishermen, but police said they were in the process of recovering the body. He has not been named and police have not revealed any further details of the alleged killing. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a group of islands at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. |
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| Homeless people in Los Angeles were reportedly offered cigarettes and cash in return for false and forged signatures on voter-registration forms and ballot petitions, prosecutors have alleged. Nine people face felony charges stemming from the “large-scale voter-fraud scheme,” which allegedly took place during both the 2016 and 2018 elections. Hundreds of fraudulent signatures were allegedly gathered by “offering homeless people $1 and/or cigarettes for their participation” on the city’s Skid Row, according to a release from prosecutors. No homeless people have been charged. Three defendants—named as Kirkland Kauzava Washington, Harold Bennett, and Louis Thomas Wise—reportedly face eight counts and as much as six years and four months in state prison if convicted. State officials said they don’t believe that such scams are widespread in California. |
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| A brawl broke out at Pusha T’s concert in Toronto on Tuesday night after several men tried to attack the rapper on stage. Video of the incident showed unidentified members of the audience throwing drinks at Pusha T before apparently trying to storm the stage. Chaos erupted as security forced the men back, with multiple fights breaking out both on and off stage. Pusha T later reappeared on stage and claimed people had been “paid” to “throw beer” at him. Many of his fans were quick to point fingers at Drake, who has a long-running feud with Pusha T and is one of Toronto’s most famous residents. Toronto police said three people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries as a result of an assault at the venue. View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
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