Man grabs 4-year-old’s buttocks on subway, tells child’s mother he’s going to shoot her
THE BRONX — Police are looking for a man who grab a 4-year-old girl’s buttocks and when confronted, told the child’s mother he was going to shoot her.
It happened around 11:30 p.m. Thursday on the southbound No. 4 train.
A 33-year-old mother told police the man walked onto the subway car at Jerome Avenue and West 183rd Street in the Bronx and sat down on the left side of her daughter. He then proceeded to put his right hand under her daughter’s buttocks.
The mother confronted the man about his actions and he stated he was going to shoot her.
She proceeded to move down the train car with her daughter and captured the man’s photo with her cell phone. He fled the train at Grand Central Station.
The man is described as 6 feet tall, medium build, with dreadlocks, and a beard. He was last seen wearing green overcoat, gray sweatpants and white sneakers.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, on Twitter @NYPDTips or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
All calls are strictly confidential.
Man goes on burglary spree, locks himself in bathroom of home
Portland, OR (KPTV) — He’s accused of going on a burglary spree this week in northeast Portland, breaking into an elementary school twice and into someone’s home.
Court documents say 25-year-old Michael Xavier started his burglary spree on Dec. 21 at Woodlawn Elementary, when he broke a window and tried to get into the school.
Court documents also say a security officer caught him in the act and called police.
Then on Dec. 24 Xavier broke into the school again.
Court documents say Xavier admitted to breaking a window with a brick saying he broke into the school to smoke marijuana and use the internet.
Earlier that same day court papers say police responded to a burglary call at a home in the 7000 block of Northeast 10th Avenue.
FOX 12 spoke with the homeowner Rose Lynn Scott who says she’s renovating the house to sell.
She says she came by to check on it on December 27 and found Xavier inside the house.
Court papers say Xavier pushed Scott’s chicken coop in the backyard to the side of the house and used it to climb on her roof to break in but was unsuccessful.
Court documents also say Xavier admitted to locking himself in the bathroom of the home and broke a window to get out which confirms his alleged involvement in two break-ins this week.
Scott says she hopes the break-ins stop.
“It’s like what is going on here I mean it’s every day, every day there’s something. And they’re destroying something, and this is a 120-year old house I’ve been working on,” Scott said. “It’s really looking good and so for someone to come and damage it kind of hurts me.”
Xavier faces several charges for burglary, criminal mischief and trespass.
via: https://pix11.com/2018/12/29/man-goes-on-burglary-spree-locks-himself-in-bathroom-of-home/
Tekashi 6ix9ine Online Bail Petition Blows Up With Signatures Within Hours
Tekashi 6ix9ine in being held behind bars while he awaits trial for racketeering charges. His date is set for September, leaving the rapper to serve close to a year of prison time before receiving an official conviction. His legal team is said to have been preparing a second attempt to secure bail, gathering materials to present to the judge including $1.5 million. It seems like other avenues are being explored as well. A petition was launched via Change.org asking Judge Paul A. Engelmayer to allow the entertainer to be released at least temporarily.
The campaign, initiated by a group named TWG Inc., describes its intention as follows:
This petition is made in regards to Hip Hop international Artist Daniel Hernandez stage name (Tekashi 69) His Family , Fans , Friends & Supporters hope that the judge can grant this young man bail so he can get back with his family & continue to make great music for his fans while he fights this legal battle. Let’s show that this Rainbow hair rapper is a non threat to any community but is loved for all that he has done & the positive impact he has on others. We thank everyone for your love & support
An hour after the petition became active, 6ix9ine’s girlfriend Jade hopped on social media to inform her following of its existence. Her Instagram post garnered a similar number of engagements to those of the actual petition, which brought in over 21k signatures within 13 hours.
Article via HotNewHipHop
Fake-porn videos are being weaponized to harass and humiliate women: ‘Everybody is a potential target’
“Deepfake” creators are making disturbingly realistic, computer-generated videos with photos taken from the Web, and ordinary women are suffering the damage.
The video showed the woman in a pink off-the-shoulder top, sitting on a bed, smiling a convincing smile.
It was her face. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else’s body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd of unknown users had been passing it around online.
She felt nauseous and mortified: What if her co-workers saw it? Her family, her friends? Would it change how they thought of her? Would they believe it was a fake?
“I feel violated — this icky kind of violation,” said the woman, who is in her 40s and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she worried that the video could hurt her marriage or career. “It’s this weird feeling, like you want to tear everything off the Internet. But you know you can’t.”
Airbrushing and Photoshop long ago opened photos to easy manipulation. Now, videos are becoming just as vulnerable to fakes that look deceptively real. Supercharged by powerful and widely available artificial-intelligence software developed by Google, these lifelike “deepfake” videos have quickly multiplied across the Internet, blurring the line between truth and lie.
But the videos have also been weaponized disproportionately against women, representing a new and degrading means of humiliation, harassment and abuse. The fakes are explicitly detailed, posted on popular porn sites and increasingly challenging to detect. And although their legality hasn’t been tested in court, experts say they may be protected by the First Amendment — even though they might also qualify as defamation, identity theft or fraud.
Disturbingly realistic fakes have been made with the faces of both celebrities and women who don’t live in the spotlight, and the actress Scarlett Johansson says she worries that “it’s just a matter of time before any one person is targeted” by a lurid forgery.
Johansson has been superimposed into dozens of graphic sex scenes over the past year that have circulated across the Web: One video, falsely described as real “leaked” footage, has been watched on a major porn site more than 1.5 million times. She said she worries it may already be too late for women and children to protect themselves against the “virtually lawless (online) abyss.”
“Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else’s onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired,” she said. “The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the Internet and its depravity is basically a lost cause. . . . The Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.”
In September, Google added “involuntary synthetic pornographic imagery” to its ban list, allowing anyone to request the search engine block results that falsely depict them as “nude or in a sexually explicit situation.” But there’s no easy fix to their creation and spread.
A growing number of deepfakes target women far from the public eye, with anonymous users on deepfakes discussion boards and private chats calling them co-workers, classmates and friends. Several users who make videos by request said there’s even a going rate: about $20 per fake.
The requester of the video with the woman’s face atop the body with the pink off-the-shoulder top had included 491 photos of her face, many taken from her Facebook account, and told other members of the deepfake site that he was “willing to pay for good work :-).” A Washington Post reporter later found her by running those portraits through an online tool known as a reverse-image search that can locate where a photo was originally shared.
It had taken two days after the request for a team of self-labeled “creators” to deliver. A faceless online audience celebrated the effort. “Nice start!” the requester wrote.
“It’s like an assault: the sense of power, the control,” said Adam Dodge, the legal director of Laura’s House, a domestic-violence shelter in California. Dodge hosted a training session last month for detectives and sheriff’s deputies on how deepfakes could be used by an abusive partner or spouse. “With the ability to manufacture pornography, everybody is a potential target,” Dodge said.
Videos have for decades served as a benchmark for authenticity, offering a clear distinction from photos that could be easily distorted. Fake video, for everyone except high-level artists and film studios, has always been too technically complicated to get right.
But recent breakthroughs in machine-learning technology, employed by creators racing to refine and perfect their fakes, have made fake-video creation more accessible than ever. All that’s needed to make a persuasive mimicry within a matter of hours is a computer and a robust collection of photos, such as those posted by the millions onto social media every day.
Read more via Washington Post
Brace yourself for a brutal winter: Experts say disruptions in the polar vortex could cause temperatures to plummet in parts of the US
- Polar vortex is an atmospheric circulation pattern that sits high above the poles
- Warm air moving into the Arctic can cause it to weaken and split into vortices
- These can bring colder temperatures and extreme weather to mid-latitudes
- Experts say split at the end of this month could cause severe weather in US
- The effects would likely come later in January and early February, experts say
The Eastern United States could be in for a blast of frigid weather.
Activity in an Arctic climate pattern could send the polar vortex barreling towards more southern latitudes to envelop parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.
The phenomenon has led to extreme winter weather in recent years, including record low temperatures in the US back in 2014 and last year’s ‘Beast from the East’ in the UK.
While there’s still time for things to change, the models currently suggest a split in the high-altitude polar vortex will ring in the New Year, creating the potential for ‘more severe winter weather’ in the Eastern US in the weeks to follow.
The latest predictions come from Dr Judah Cohen, of Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), and are supported by models from several other researchers shared in the last few weeks.
The polar vortex is an atmospheric circulation pattern that sits high above the poles, in a layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere.
This structure can weaken as a result of abnormal warming in the poles, causing it to split off into smaller ‘sister vortices’ that may travel outside of their typical range.
As of the end of December, the models show the polar vortex situated above Scandanavia could break apart to become two or even three vortices, bringing colder weather to the mid-latitudes and warmer weather in the Arctic.
An animation shared on Twitter by meteorological scientist Michael Ventrice shows just what this might look like.
According to Cohen, ‘a stratospheric PV displacement or split is looking more and more likely during the last week of December and into the first week of January.’
As of the end of December, the models show the polar vortex situated above Scandanavia could break apart to become two or even three vortices, bringing colder weather to the mid-latitudes and warmer weather in the Arctic
Read more via DailyMailUK
Former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal Granted Right Of Appeal After Decades In Prison
A judge in Philadelphia has reinstated appeal rights to former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal — convicted of killing a city police officer more than 30 years ago — who has long maintained his innocence as his case gained international attention.
Advocates of Abu-Jamal praised the decision by Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker as a significant development toward winning the freedom of a man whose case generated decades of protest and thousands of supporters in the “Free Mumia” movement.
“This is an unheard of legal victory,” said Rachel Wolkenstein, former lawyer and longtime activist for Abu-Jamal. “This is the best opportunity we have had for Mumia’s freedom in decades.”
Abu-Jamal has been incarcerated since his 1982 conviction for killing white Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in a racially charged case. The judge who issued the latest decision called the case one of the most polarizing shootings in the city’s history. In 2011, prosecutors dropped the execution case against Abu-Jamal because of flawed jury instructions and instead agreed to a sentence of life in prison.
For years, Abu-Jamal’s attempts at securing a new trial were denied. In the latest legal argument, his lawyers argued that Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille should not have presided over Abu-Jamal’s appeals battles. Castille was formerly Philadelphia’s district attorney whose office fought to keep the activist and prolific writer behind bars.
Castille refused calls from Abu-Jamal’s supporters to recuse himself from hearing the appeal, saying he never directly worked on the case. In 2012, Abu-Jamal’s advocates thought he lost his final appeal when the state Supreme Court rejected a claim challenging the validity of forensic evidence that was used to convict him.
In his legal opinion on Thursday, Tucker said Castille made the wrong choice, because even the appearance of being biased can be damaging to the judicial system.
Mumia Abu-Jamal leaves Philadelphia’s City Hall after a July 1995 hearing. His conviction of the murder of a police officer has gained national attention.
Chris Gardner/AP
“The claim of bias, prejudice and refusal of former Justice Castille to recuse himself is worthy of consideration as true justice must be completely just without even a hint of partiality, lack of integrity or impropriety,” Tucker wrote.
Jamal may be confined to a prison, but we are in a prison in our own mind, because we never know when we’re going to get telephone calls saying something like we heard last night.
Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner
Tucker’s ruling has breathed new life into the hopes of Abu-Jamal’s supporters that he may one day be granted freedom.
‘An eye for an eye’
But the family of Faulkner, the slain officer, sees that outcome as a nightmare. They plan to plead with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to challenge the ruling in favor of Abu-Jamal. Krasner, through a spokesman, said he was reviewing the decision and had not yet decided whether to oppose it.
“Does it affect me physically? It does. Am I sick to my stomach? Absolutely. I feel like going and throwing up,” said Maureen Faulkner, the widow of the slain officer.
“Jamal may be confined to a prison, but we are in a prison in our own mind, because we never know when we’re going to get telephone calls saying something like we heard last night,” she told NPR on Friday.
Faulkner, who now lives in California, said she has always believed in the principle of “an eye for an eye,” saying she wishes the original sentence of capital punishment had been carried out.
“And that way, 37 years later, you do not have the family members grieving over the loss of a loved one because the case keeps coming up in court and reminding them,” she said.
The jury convicted Abu-Jamal on evidence including three eyewitnesses who did not know one another. Authorities also recovered five empty shell casings from the scene of the crime that prosecutors said were fired from a gun registered to Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal, though, said others fled the murder scene and were never located. Perhaps one of those people killed Faulkner, his supporters have maintained.
A Supreme Court reprieve
The possibility of a new hearing for Abu-Jamal arose after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision. That ruling found that Castille improperly took part in an appeal from a different death row inmate whose prosecution he oversaw when he was the city’s top prosecutor. The defendant in that case was Terrance Williams. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Williams case applied to other cases Castille heard as a Pennsylvania justice, including Abu Jamal’s.
If a judge served as prosecutor and then the judge, there is a finding of automatic bias and a due process violation.
“If a judge served as prosecutor and then the judge,” wrote Tucker, summarizing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Williams case, “there is a finding of automatic bias and a due process violation.” – Judge Leon Tucker
Judith Ritter, Abu-Jamal’s lead attorney, said the judge’s reinstatement of Mumia’s right to appeal shows that the state Supreme Court — in its 2012 decision — was biased with the presence of Castille.
“Judge Tucker recognized the unconstitutional bias involved with Justice Castille’s sitting on the prior post-conviction appeals, and the need for a new appeal untainted by such bias,” Ritter said in a statement.
The movement to “Free Mumia” reverberated around the world over the decades, with thousands donating to his legal defense fund. Buttons and posters bearing his face became the symbols of a criminal justice system that critics view as being rigged and treating African-American with indifference.
“Mumia has made the point clear from the very beginning that he is innocent,” Wolkenstein said. “This opens the door, legally, to him finally getting his freedom.”
Tucker, in his opinion, said Abu-Jamal should be given another chance to argue his innocence in front of the state’s high court, now that Castille is no longer a sitting judge.
“The court finds that recusal by Justice Castille would have been appropriate to ensure the neutrality of the judicial process in [Abu-Jamal’s appeals] before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,” Tucker wrote.
Abu-Jamal’s lawyers have 30 days to inform Pennsylvania’s courts of their intent to pursue an appeal.
Article vie NPR
