A Turkish court has upheld life sentences for prominent journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Nazli Ilicak and three others, on charges of aiding the plotters of a failed military coup in 2016, according to local media.
The journalists, who were originally sentenced in February, were previously sentenced to life in prison for alleged links to the network of US-based religious leader and businessman Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup attempt.
They had appealed to the high court for their release, but Istanbul’s 2nd Appeal Court upheld their sentence on Tuesday.
Mehmet Altan was later released from prison in June, but his sentence was also upheld on Tuesday, after a penal court rejected the constitutional court’s request for his release.
All six are serving aggravated life sentences, which means they are not eligible for parole and cannot be included in future amnesty decisions.
The Turkish government has been carrying out purges and arrests that affected hundreds of thousands of people in the country after the 2016 coup attempt that killed more than 300 people, including the plotters, wounded hundreds of others.
The government says the purges and detentions are legitimate, aiming at removing Gulen supporters from state institutions and other parts of society.
Local and international rights groups, as well as many of Turkey’s European allies, say the measures are arbitrary, claiming that the government is using the coup attempt as a pretext to silence opposition in the country.
Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about
Tornado reported in northwest Pennsylvania
The confirmed tornado is part of an outbreak of severe weather that was forecast to hit portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday.
Post to Facebook
Sent!
A link has been sent to your friend’s email address.
Posted!
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
A “destructive” tornado has been reported on the ground Tuesday afternoon in northwestern Pennsylvania, the Weather Channel said.
A nursing home has been struck near Conneautville, Pennsylvania, which is about 20 miles southwest of Erie, the Storm Prediction Center reported. There have been no reports of damage or injuries.
The confirmed tornado is part of an outbreak of severe weather that was forecast to hit portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday afternoon.
Several tornado warnings were in effect across northern parts of Pennsylvania.
A tornado watch is in effect for almost the entire state of Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service said. This means conditions are favorable for tornadoes to form.
The watch is in effect in cities such as Pittsburgh, State College, Allentown and Scranton.
Loyalty no longer exists in baseball, and sentimentalism disappeared ages ago.
Major League Baseball has turned cutthroat.
You better win, and better keep on winning, or baby, you are gone.
A year ago, Paul Molitor was winning the American League manager of the year award, taking a team that had lost 103 games the previous season and leading the Minnesota Twins to the wild-card game against the New York Yankees. He was even rewarded with a three-year contract.
The Twins informed Molitor in an emotional meeting Tuesday morning that he was fired. Oh, he was offered a job to stay on as a special assistant, but that’s only a public relations ploy. Molitor is getting paid anyway, so please don’t insult him.
Forget that he’s a Hall of Famer, producing 3,319 hits, the 10th-most in baseball history.
Forget that he’s a native of the Twin Cities, attending Cretin-Durham High School in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota.
It didn’t even matter that he’s owed $3.25 million through 2020.
The Twins, with a severely flawed team, finished with a 78-84 record, 13 games behind the powerful Cleveland Indians, and Molitor is gone.
He is the fifth manager to be shown the door since opening day, joining Bryan Price of Cincinnati, Mike Matheny of St. Louis, Jeff Bannister of Texas, John Gibbons of Toronto and Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels.
Buck Showalter of the Baltimore Orioles, whose contract expired, is expected to be the next manager dismissed, while Jim Riggleman has not been told whether he’ll be back in Cincinnati.
It’s so crazy out there that Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who led L.A. to Game 7 of the World Series a year ago, still doesn’t have a contract for next season. The Dodgers have yet to even exercise his $1.1 million option in 2019. If the Dodgers don’t get out of the first round against the Atlanta Braves, he could be gone.
There are even whispers in Chicago that manager Joe Maddon’s fate could hinge on Tuesday’s wild-card game against the Colorado Rockies. He is owed $6 million next season and wants to stay much longer, but if the Cubs don’t reach the World Series, an extension seems highly unlikely. Former Cubs infielder and MLB analyst Mark DeRosa, who turned down a coaching job on the Cubs’ staff last winter, could be the manager-in-waiting if Maddon doesn’t get his extension.
Welcome to the new and ugly managerial carousel where no one is safe, and more than half of today’s managers aren’t even making out their own lineup. Managers show up to their offices and the lineups are already on their desks, done by the front office. There are managers who not only are being instructed what relievers to bring into games, but which ones to warm up in the bullpen.
It’s the new wave of baseball, leaving managers two choices:
Embrace it, or you’re out.
Follow Nightengale on Twitter and Facebook: @Bnightengale
Sen. John Cornyn, the second-highest-ranking Senate Republican, suggested to reporters Tuesday that the revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, agreed to Sunday night, might not have the votes to make it through Congress.
“I know people are still going through the details, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will get confirmation by the Senate,” Cornyn said.
The Texas Republican also said a congressional vote on the new deal, dubbed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, would definitely not happen until after the November midterm elections and would most likely slip into 2019.
The comment is the first public acknowledgment by a GOP leader that the new trade deal may run into roadblocks.
While the Trump administration is negotiating the NAFTA revision under the fast-track trade promotion authority, any final agreement is still subject to a majority vote in both chambers of Congress.
Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto are expected to sign the agreement shortly before the latter leaves office on November 30. Given the trade promotion authority’s notification requirements, that means Congress would not vote on the deal until 2019, when Democrats could be in control of at least one chamber.
With a majority, Democrats would have much more leverage to scuttle the deal. Party leaders have already said that the new labor and environmental standards in the updated deal will receive close scrutiny.
“The bar for supporting a new NAFTA will be high,” Rep. Richard Neal, the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters on Monday.
“I then will submit it for approval to Congress, where, in theory, there should be no trouble, but anything you submit to Congress is trouble, no matter what, ” Trump said. “If it’s the single greatest agreement ever signed, they’ll say, ‘Well, you know, Trump likes it, therefore we’re not going to approve it, because that would be good for the Republicans, so therefore we can’t approve it.’”
But some Republican lawmakers have also expressed concerns about the details of the deal.
“While the administration’s proposal improves some elements of the existing NAFTA, such as strengthened IP rights, increased market access for US dairy processors, and a new chapter on digital trade, other provisions diminish NAFTA’s economic benefits and create needless uncertainty,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Here’s a quick rundown of the procedure the deal would have to go through:
Before December 1: The deal must be signed by the three leaders.
Within 60 days after the deal is signed: The Trump administration must notify Congress of necessary changes to US law that need to be made to enact the deal.
Within 150 days after the deal is signed: The US International Trade Commission must release a report on the economic impact of the deal.
At least 30 days before the deal is formally submitted as a bill to Congress: The text of the implementing legislation must be released.
The bill is considered by committees in the House and Senate and voted on: The implementing bill would start in the House and be passed in a matter of days or could take months, depending on Congress’ wishes.
Pablo Escobar hasn’t been so alive since the day he died. Twenty-five years after his story came to a notoriously bloody end on a Medellín rooftop, the Colombian drug lord’s grip on the popular imagination only seems to grow: name-checked by rappers, splashed across T-shirts and keychains, lionized in the recent hit Netflix series Narcos — he’s even become the subject of a popular hometown tour, if you have air miles to spare.
And now after long months in release purgatory comes Loving Pablo, a sprawling, violent two-hour biopic starring Javier Bardem as Escobar and Penelope Cruz as his anchorwoman lover Virginia Vallejo. Married for nearly a decade in real life, both actors gamely bring the full heft of their movie-star charisma. But as eminently watchable as their performances are, they feel like diamonds stuck in a tin-plate drama, hamstrung by underdeveloped characters and a telenovela-by-the-numbers script.
As the movie opens, Pablo is already cementing his legend: El Patron with a wife and son and a cocaine empire spreading like gasoline fire across Reagan-era America. (Bardem’s body has also swollen accordingly, his belly heavy and his famous jawline softened to room-temperature butter). But he may not even be as well known as his paramour, a beautiful newscaster with her own bachelorette penthouse and collection of glamorous magazine covers.
Maybe Virginia’s attracted to Pablo’s charitable side; or maybe it’s the sex and the power and the shopping trips to New York. It’s true that her new man does help lift teenage boys out of poverty — mostly by conscripting them in homegrown sicario training camps and paying them to kill his enemies. It doesn’t take long for the couple’s affair to go public, and for another kind of suitor to come around: Peter Sarsgaard’s grim-faced DEA agent.
Escobar’s story hardly lacks for plot points, and director Fernando León de Aronaoa (Mondays in the Sun) hits them all obligingly, if broadly. What he doesn’t carve out much room for is richer character motivations or context. When those moments do come, they live mostly in the margins: Bardem’s carved-granite head half-submerged in pool water, a patient alligator in wait; the expressions that pass across Cruz’s panicked face as she tries desperately to calibrate her next move.
Otherwise, Loving just leaves the viewer with some Dynasty-wardrobe fun, a whole lot of murder-he-wrote (death by Doberman, by chainsaw, by motorbike drive-by), and the specter of a legend whose inner world we’ll never really know. B-
The Odyssey is one of the western world’s first classics. The trials of Odysseus —outwitting a Cyclops, navigating a ship through the harrowing straits of Scylla and Charybdis, getting trapped on an island with a powerful witch-goddess who wants to keep him as her lover — have informed Western storytelling for as long as Western storytelling has been a thing. To call something an odyssey is to attach to it a 3,000-year-old literary tradition that promises storytelling on a scale few projects can reach.
Basically, calling your game Odyssey is ballsy as hell. In order for Ubisoft to pull this off, it had to not only deliver a huge installment in its already stacked franchise, but drape the game in the kind of story and gameplay worthy of Homer himself.
Anyway, Ubisoft nailed it.
A story of Olympic proportions
Like Homer’s Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed is a twist-filled, seafaring adventure that feels truly mythic. The sheer size of the map and the hundreds of quests add to making the world of the game feel big, but what truly blows up the experience of playing is the story itself.
The saga of Alexios/Kassandra (I picked Alexios for my first playthrough and will refer to him as my player character for the rest of this review) is every bit as grand, sweeping, funny, and occasionally sexy as a blockbuster adventure trilogy.
The setup itself is epic — a small-town mercenary with a tragic past is thrust into a warring world alive with mysterious forces to realize his legendary destiny — and the way that story plays out is exactly as exciting as the premise would suggest.
What adds to the scale of Odyssey is the series’ decision to eschew the idea of having a single main quest and instead treating the character’s journey as a true odyssey, with several main objectives to complete in separate, but dovetailing plotlines.
Focusing on one quest might help you finish it faster, but it’s more rewarding to wander in and out of each plot, since they each reveal hidden motivations that inform each other’s storylines.
To say much more would be to spoil some of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s biggest twists and surprises, but simply moving Alexios through the Greek world guarantees a long, exciting journey.
A matter of choice
As we’ve all heard before, the first choice made in Odyssey is whether to play as Alexios or Kassandra. It is by far the least consequential choice in the game. From the moment you pick your misthios (“mercenary” in Greek, you hear it a lot in the game), Odyssey doesn’t stop throwing choices at you — choices that might affect the course of a quest, or the course of the Greek world.
Making decisions like these adds a layer of character-building that Assassin’s Creed has been missing in previous games. Simply having choices makes the gameplay more interesting, as the point of playing becomes less “what did this assassin do” and more “what would my assassin do,” allowing the player’s own values and morals to dictate the fate of Alexios and the characters around him.
For the record, my Alexios hated children, loved taking money from rich people, was half-bonkers with revenge, and had a thing for men and women who could kick his ass. The possibilities are many.
Fight like a god(dess)
Become death from above. Or from a bush. Or from right in front of their face. It’s up to you.
Since the player character of Odyssey is a mercenary and not an Assassin, the combat is suitably updated to accommodate a much wider and sometimes more brutal set of skills. Just as Alexios’ actions were dictated by my choices, so were the moves he used in battle.
Instead of simply having a set of combat moves that get stronger and more interesting as one accumulates skill points, Odyssey introduces new moves like the Spartan Kick, Shield Breaker, Rush Assassination, and many more.
Players can acquire and upgrade these skills and individually map them to buttons, creating an extra d-pad chock full of special attacks that rain Hades on enemies.
The moves are fully interchangeable, so swapping one in for a battle and another in for an assassination sequence is perfectly plausible, and everyone playing will likely have a different custom setup.
When the moves are deployed they look dope as hell, with animation that ranges from a super speed rush that knocks enemies out to a full, pre-animated combo of ducks, swipes, and jabs that look like they really deliver the pain. It’s easy to see why characters comment that Alexios “fights like a god.”
I’d rather be shiny
Of course, no one can fight without a decent set of gear, and Odyssey ups the combat experience by allowing several slots for breastplates, bracers, boots, belts (in true Greek fashion, all of Alexios’ bottom armor pieces are flirty little murder skirts), and helms. As for weapons, there’s an array of types like swords, spears, blunts, axes, and bows.
A weapon or armor piece can be Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary, and can be upgraded at a blacksmith with discoverable engravings that add extra damage, poison, fire, and a number of other bonus goodies. Rare engravings are unlocked via quests, but some show up just as a result of leveling up and exploring.
All of these weapons can be swapped out except for one — the Spear of Leonidas. This spear, a family heirloom for Alexios and Kassandra, functions like the iconic Assassin’s Creed hidden blade but also does much, much more. Alexios whips that sucker out for combos, yeets it directly into the skulls of unsuspecting bandits, and spends one of the game’s longest and more interesting quests trying to unlock its mysteries.
All in all, combat in Odyssey is more customizable than ever before, with dazzling animation and fully viewable cosmetic changes for every tweak in Alexios’s armory. Assassins haven’t looked this fresh since… ever, really.
Bring me that horizon
I like looting ships and I cannot lie.
Assassin’s Creed has taken to the high seas in past games like Black Flag, Rogue, and cursorily in Origins, but Odyssey brings naval combat and exploration back to the front and center of the gaming experience.
Early in the game Alexios takes command of the Adrestia, a trireme outfitted with a crew of arrow-slinging, javelin-throwing badasses who love sinking ships and looting treasure.
Being a misthios, the choice to behave or misbehave is largely left up to the player. I tried to play it straight to avoid racking up a bad reputation (more on reputation, which is thankfully back in the franchise) later, but naval battles are an important part of many questlines and the sea is rife with pirates that don’t care if you’re not up for a fight.
The Adrestia is fully upgradable, with many different aspects of the ship up for customization. In addition to changing cosmetic elements like the color of the sail or what your crew looks like, you can strengthen the hull, train the archers, up the firepower and — in a new mechanic — meet and recruit lieutenants out in the world who add attack and speed bonuses to the Adrestia when equipped.
These lieutenants range from defeated former enemies to quest characters that are looking for a little extra adventure. You can also recruit regular enemies by knocking them out, which seems a little kidnap-y but I haven’t heard any of them complain yet. A lieutenant’s contribution to the ship is determined by their level, which like weapons comes in Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary.
Aside from being another form of combat, the Adrestia is a requirement for navigating the large, island-heavy Greek world of Odyssey. It’s significantly faster (and safer) to take the ship from Athens to Sparta, and many of the game’s most exciting regions (looking at you, Delos Islands) are only accessible by sea. Embrace the journey! There’s often a lot to see on the way to the next objective.
The New New
There are a number of newer elements in Odyssey that add welcome complications to the narrative and gameplay. First of these are the mercenaries, who like Alexios are in the murder game to make a buck. When Alexios misbehaves in the game world — be that by murdering in public, stealing in plain sight, or even talking to the wrong people, these powered-up NPCs put you on their fight-on-sight list.
Laying low for a while removes the bounty on Alexios’s head, but you can also pay off the mercenaries or just kill whoever set the bounty in the first place. Each mercenary has their own backstory and particular bag of tricks. Taking them down is one of the game’s more fun challenges.
There’s also collectible crafting resources scattered around the world of Odyssey. Cutting down olive trees and grabbing chunks of iron ore are essential for engraving weapons and upgrading the Adrestia.
As in Origins, Odyssey also has arena combat, where Alexios can face off against waves of challengers for great rewards and a chance to step up against even bigger enemies.
Another element borrowed from Origins is Alexios’s drone-like eagle companion Ikaros. Alexios uses Ikaros to scout areas, and he gets more perceptive with every synchronization (thankfully, the synchronization points no longer un-fog the game map). Ikaros can tag enemies, treasure, and other points of interest from above, making it easier to plan Alexios’ movements when infiltrating a camp or fortress.
Ikaros can also be used as a fast travel shortcut, as the player can fast travel to any unlocked synchronization point as well as the Adrestia as long as it’s in his sky-high view.
I f*cked my way into this mess and I’ll f*ck my way out
‘Banging A Murderer’ — Coming To Netflix in 2018
Assassin’s Creed has always been about living out the historical fantasy of being a secret, righteous killer in the world’s most turbulent times. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey adds something new to that fantasy — being a walking glob of sexual napalm, gender be damned.
It seems like everyone in classical Greece wants a piece of misthios pie, and it’s a genuinely fun addition to the game deciding who gets dessert. Every romance in Odyssey is optional, with the romantic choices clearly marked with cute little hearts that let players know when they can get their flirt on.
Some of the romances are played for humor — giving a horny old lady the night of her life, or a lonely blacksmith some sugar to get ahead in a quest made sense with the character I was playing, but what surprised me most were some of the lasting romances with characters both historical and fictional.
The writing in some of the longer romances feels genuine and tender in a way I didn’t expect, with beautiful characters seeming to genuinely fall for Alexios’s mercenary swagger. Some of the stories were lusty odysseys unto themselves, like with the insatiable Athenian politician Alcibiades who regularly appears for a bang sesh whenever it suits him.
Others, one in particular, might have been true love. It’s a testament to Odyssey’s storytelling that such a range of romantic possibility is present in the game and a step forward for the franchise that assassin love, queer and straight, is finally an important part of the story.
The Odyssey has only begun
Every Assassin’s Creed game has brought something different to the franchise. Altaïr walked so Ezio could run. Edward ran so Evie could sprint, and so on.
Odyssey of course owes a lot of its larger changes (mercenaries, loot system, pre-Assassin setting) to the great work of Origins, but many of the mechanics have been tweaked and improved to pave a new and exciting future for the franchise.
There will be more Odyssey in the near future — a season pass will bestow at least two full questlines to continue the story of Alexios and Kassandra (and hopefully Alcibiades), but just holding this as the standard upon which further Assassin’s Creed games should keep any gamer hype for what’s to come.
I laughed my ass off playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I gasped. I yelled at the screen. I marked specific NPCs as my personal nemeses and made it my business to make sure they paid in blood for what they’ve done. I fucked around. I fell in love. I sailed the Aegean Sea and got emotional about dolphins.
Odyssey is a masterwork of storytelling and emotion where nothing is true and everything is permitted. I can’t wait to see where Assassin’s Creed goes next, but until then…I’ve got some ships to sink, people to seduce, and marks to murder. Chiare.
The death toll from an earthquake and tsunami on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia has climbed to 1,347, according to the country’s disaster management agency, as rescue teams scramble to search for survivors buried in the rubble from the deadly disaster.
Authorities and aid workers struggled to reach the affected areas made inaccessible by damaged infrastructure on Tuesday, four days after the disaster hit Palu, a small city about 1,500km northeast of the capital, Jakarta, and other parts of Sulawesi Island.
Some remote areas have been largely cut off after Friday’s magnitude 7.5 quake triggered massive tsunami waves, destroying roads and bridges; their losses have yet to be determined.
“The team is racing against time because it’s already D+four,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesperson for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told reporters in Jakarta on Tuesday, referring to four days since the quake.
More than 65,000 homes have been damaged and at least 60,000 people have been displaced and are in need of emergency help, according to the government.
“Experts here say that just by looking at the devastation, one must expect the number of those dead to rise in the coming days because many areas remain unreachable and the full extent of the devastation has yet to be realised,” said Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Makassar, a port city in eastern Sulawesi.
Earlier, President Joko Widodo called for reinforcements in the search for survivors, saying everyone had to be found.
About 1,700 homes in one Palu neighbourhood were swallowed up, with hundreds of people believed buried, the national disaster agency said.
Among those killed in the area were 34 children at a Christian bible study camp, a Red Cross official said.
There was also mounting concern over Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and closer to the epicentre, and two other districts – with a combined population of about 1.4 million.
Initial reports from Red Cross rescuers who had reached the outskirts of Donggala district were chilling.
“The situation in the affected areas is nightmarish,” Jan Gelfand, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) office in Jakarta, said in a statement.
“The city of Palu has been devastated and first reports out of Donggala indicate that it has also been hit extremely hard by the double disaster,” Gelfand said.
Family tracing
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas, reporting from Palu, said there was “a pungent smell of decomposing bodies” in the city.
“Not all the bodies have been buried, I can say that from the smell we encountered as we got down to sea level,” he said. “It’s a very dark city in every sense of the word.”
With roads cut off by landslides and major bridges broken down, physical access remains a “real challenge”, according to Nigel Timmins, Oxfam’s humanitarian director.
“The other one is information,” he told Al Jazeera. “Electricity is down, telecommunication is down. For many people, their first priority is family tracing.”
Local residents affected by the earthquake and tsunami in a temporary shelter in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia [Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
Muzair, a resident of the Petobo neighbourhood in Palu, says five of his relatives are still missing.
“I hope the government can help find them,” he said.
“The soil was churning and then it suddenly rose up and buried the houses. In my heart I said if this is the time I die, what more could I do? I just prayed to God.”
There are also reports of children showing up alone at medical centres, searching for their parents.
‘Desperate for aid’
Commercial airlines have struggled to restore operations at Palu’s quake-damaged airport but military aircraft took some survivors out on Monday, with some 3,000 people thronging the airport, hoping for any flight out.
A navy vessel capable of carrying 1,000 people at a time was due to be deployed to help with the evacuation.
The power company was working to restore electricity while the state oil firm had sent in fuel, officials said.
Teams of police were out on the streets on Tuesday, clearing debris and providing some reassurance to traumatised residents worried about looting.
Police said they had arrested dozens of people for looting in Sulawesi, where survivors have raided shops for water, food and other goods.
On Monday, Widodo authorised the acceptance of international help amid a lack of equipment and aid materials.
The European Union, the US and China are among more than 10 countries who have offered assistance.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Tuesday that his government had given $360,000 to help victims and was in talks with Indonesian authorities about a second round of aid.
The initial funds would go to the Indonesian Red Cross for the most obvious emergency aid needs, such as tarpaulins.
“It is clear that the focus of the Indonesian government would be to send basic fuel, medicine and aid to those who need it and additional personnel because security is becoming a major concern as more people become desperate for aid,” said Al Jazeera’s Alindogan.
“There have been foreign pledges for help but at this point the main issue here is logistics, there is a need to clear the airport and to clear the roads that lead to these devastated areas in order for the humanitarian convoy, volunteers and rescuers to get in and start working,” she added.
Because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” Indonesia is prone to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions and is well versed in responding to disasters.
A massive earthquake off Sumatra Island in 2004 caused a tsunami that killed 230,000 people around the region, the majority of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
That was the last time the country had declared a national disaster.
Hundreds of people joined Massachusetts political officials to rally in Boston ahead of U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake visit to the city, calling on the Arizona Republican to vote against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. (Oct. 1) AP
They scoured their closets and trekked to the stores to get bed sheets.
Armed with markers, they wrote “Believe Women,” “These Kentuckians Believe Dr. Ford,” “Bravery is contagious,” and “Thank you, Dr. Ford.”
Now dozens of homes in Covington are draped in banners with positive messages for women and support for Christine Blasey Ford, who’s accused Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
“It’s about the fact that Dr. Ford came forward and did something incredibly brave and we stand by her,” said resident Annie Hyberger. She hung a bed sheet on her porch that said “Bakewell Believes” in reference to her street, Bakewell Street. The past week was tough for her.
“It brings up a lot of ancestral trauma, deep-seeded trauma, being a young woman remembering things you don’t want to remember.”
Not long after Ford and Kavanaugh began telling their stories before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, MainStrasse resident and restaurant owner Emily Wolff met with her friends. They knew they weren’t the only ones moved by Ford’s testimony.
“We had a great circle of girlfriends in the community, but what about our neighbors?” Wolff said. “What about the people waking up feeling a gut-wrenching trauma being relived?”
They decided on bed sheets as a statement against the sheets with lewd and misogynistic messages that have historically adorned some fraternity facades.
“They’re promoting an unsafe environment,” Wolff said. “We wanted to promote a safe environment.”
Within 24 hours of that conversation late Friday night, dozens of homes in Covington had bed sheets billowing out their windows.
The bed sheet banner phenomenon has spread through word of mouth. A neighbor called JoAnne Handy to ask her if she wanted a bed sheet. The neighbor was at a store buying one to drape across her porch. Handy said she wanted one, too.
Handy’s porch now sports a bed sheet proclaiming “#WeBelieveYou” underneath an American flag.
“I watched the hearing, and I believe Dr. Ford and I felt I was going to get involved,” JoAnne Handy said. “I feel Covington is a close-knit community to begin with, but too see that many people supporting what I believe is uplifting.”
Northern Kentucky is generally a conservative region in a deep red state. President Trump won Kentucky by 30 points. But Covington is a Democratic stronghold right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.
MainStrasse, with its bars and restaurants and proximity to downtown Cincinnati, attracts a mix of millennials, empty nesters, rich business leaders and bohemians.
Wolff and others said they’ve gotten mostly thank you and very few criticisms. People often stop to take photos, several residents told The Enquirer.
The banners have reassured residents in MainStrasse and Covington.
“I just saw them all popping up everywhere,” said resident Adam Ganson after he walked his son to school. “It really reminds me of the Prague Velvet Revolution.”
Ganson, who said he moved to the neighborhood two months ago with his wife and son from Israel, went on to explain about the Velvet Revolution, a series of peaceful protests in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Czechs and Slovaks flooded Wenceslas Square in Prague in 1989 and jingled keys, an act the New York Times story on the event said symbolized the unlocking of doors closed by decades of one-party rule.
“It reminds me of that same idea of bringing out your opinion to the streets and letting everyone know and then you see other people who are aligned,” Ganson said.
Wolff said she didn’t want to make the bedsheets about Kavanaugh. She wanted to send a message that women can come forward with their stories of sexual assault and find support. She said she also hopes it sparks conversations between parents and their children about consent and sexual assault, that you don’t touch someone unless they want to be touched and you don’t have to give someone a hug if you don’t want to.
“Change starts small and grows big,” Wolff said. “If Covington is a community to be looked at how we talk about that, that’s a good thing.”
CHICAGO – Police Officer Jason Van Dyke testified Tuesday in his murder trial for the on-duty shooting death of Laquan McDonald, insisting in his court testimony that he acted in self-defense for the controversial killing of the black teen.
The October 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old McDonald – captured in a chilling police video that was eventually made public – became a touchstone in the larger conversation about policing in African-American communities.
“His face had no expression, his eyes were just bugging out of his head,” Van Dyke said of McDonald. “He had these huge white eyes just staring right through me.”
Police were called to Chicago’s southwest side the night of the shooting on reports of a suspect breaking into trucks and stealing radios. They found McDonald with what they say was a knife with a 3-inch retractable blade.
Police dashboard camera video of the shooting – footage the city was forced by court order to make public 400 days after the incident – appeared to show that McDonald, holding the small knife, was walking away from officers toward a chain-link fence when Van Dyke fired his service weapon. An autopsy later revealed that the teen, who had a history of mental illness, had PCP in his bloodstream.
Van Dyke, who grew emotional and stifled tears during his hour-long testimony, said McDonald raised his knife from his side to his shoulder as the teen approached him and other officers, something that police dashcam video of the incident does not show.
But Van Dyke said the angle of the video simply misses the teen raising his knife.
“The video doesn’t show my perspective,” Van Dyke said. He later added, “I thought the officers were under attack. The whole thing was shocking to me.”
Van Dyke opened fire within six seconds of exiting his police vehicle, he told jurors. Within 1.6 seconds, he said, McDonald was on the ground, never to get up again.
Van Dyke nevertheless continued to fire at McDonald for another 12.5 seconds — firing a total of 16 shots, prosecutors say.
Jody Gleason, the assistant state prosecutor, retorted during her questioning, “You could have ended it all the minute he hit the ground.”
Van Dyke said he kept shooting because he saw McDonald continue to grasp the knife and refused his commands to let it go. The officer said he attempted to shoot at McDonald’s right arm and hand, which was holding the knife.
“He started to push up with his left hand off the ground,” Van Dyke said who teared up through his testimony.
Van Dyke says he and his partner, Joseph Walsh, were getting coffee when they heard a call from dispatchers that reported McDonald had slashed a tire of a police car. He said the two rushed to the scene upon hearing the call of officers in distress.
Laurence Miller, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based psychologist who evaluated Van Dyke at the behest of the officer’s defense team, said Van Dyke told him during an evaluation that he heard the radio traffic about the popped tire and asked Walsh, “Why didn’t (other officers) shoot them if he was attacking them?”
When Van Dyke and Walsh initially approached McDonald in their squad car, Van Dyke said he wanted to try to knock the teen to the ground with his car door. He said Walsh told him they were too close and to close the door and stay in the car.
In his initial account to investigators following the shooting, Van Dyke said he backpedaled as McDonald approached him and other officers. Under cross-examination, Van Dyke acknowledged that wasn’t the case.
“After seeing the video countless times, I know I didn’t backpedal,” Van Dyke said.
Miller said in his testimony that he was confident that Van Dyke was recounting the incident as he recalled it.
“I believe Jason Van Dyke told me the truth as he perceived that truth,” Miller said.
Van Dyke said he never had to shoot his weapon in his 13 years as an officer prior to the McDonald shooting, despite being involved in several incidents where a suspect was armed with a knife or gun.
Amazon is making major changes to how some delivery drivers are paid to “enable transparency and accuracy of pay,” according to a leaked internal email.
Amazon will soon require its courier companies, which manage thousands of delivery drivers for the tech giant, to electronically track and record employees’ hours using “time and attendance tracking” software provided by the payroll company ADP, according to the email, which was seen by Business Insider.
The requirement, which takes effect November 19, follows a Business Insider investigation into Amazon’s delivery system that detailed numerous reports of missing wages and lack of overtime payments.
Amazon will also soon prohibit courier companies from paying drivers a flat daily rate, according to the email. The companies, which Amazon calls “delivery service partners,” must now pay drivers by the hour, the email said.
Amazon and one of its courier companies, TL Transportation, are facing a lawsuit alleging that daily pay rates failed to properly compensate drivers for overtime hours.
“Payroll can be complicated but it’s one of the most important parts of running a business as your employees rely on you and expect you to pay them on time and reliably without error,” said the email, which was sent to delivery service partners on Monday. “That’s why Amazon is making an important change that requires your immediate attention.”
The wage increase will not apply to employees of Amazon’s delivery service partners.
In response to this story, Amazon released the following statement: “Over the years, we have worked with our partners, listened to their needs, and have come to recognize that small businesses sometimes need more support when scaling fast. As a result, we have implemented new programs, such as electronic time-tracking that enables transparency and accuracy of pay for drivers, to ensure small delivery businesses serving Amazon customers have the tools they need to deliver a great customer and employee experience.”
Viral Eyes 