Robbers held up a television crew at gunpoint during an interview with the director of violence prevention in Oakland amid the city’s huge wave of violence, police have said.
The attack took place outside City Hall on Monday just hours after the police chief blasted his city’s decision to defund its police department by $18.5million despite a 90 per cent increase in murders.
The NBC Bay Area news crew was interviewing Guillermo Cespedes at around 3pm when two armed men tried to take their camera, the Oakland Police Department said.
Competence was never the criterion
There is dysfunction inside the VP’s office, aides and administration officials say. And it’s emanating from the top.
Iran shells US positions
In the late afternoon, around dusk, reports emerged that pro-Iranian groups had shelled areas in eastern Syria across from Deir Ezzor, ostensibly targeting US forces near the Omar oil fields. This is an important and strategic area and US forces who support the Syrian Democratic Forces, have been reported to have a facility or base in this area. The attack was linked to airstrikes the US had carried out in Syria targeting pro-Iranian groups on Monday.
Nokor Covid teaser trailer
Mysterious ‘grave incident’ may lead to unspecified crisis Nokor leader warns.
North Korea Warns of ‘Grave’ Coronavirus Incident
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says a “grave incident” has threatened his country’s coronavirus prevention efforts — a rare admission by Pyongyang, which claims to be free of COVID-19. During a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim chastised senior officials for unspecified carelessn…
Bill Cosby
The basic issue in Bill Cosby’s shocking release from prison is whether the ends justify the means. The PASC held Cosby had been technically deprived of his 5th Amendment rights by a prosecutorial legal maneuver the court thought was improper.
Into the land of Nod, east of Eden
Shame bullets bounce off Burma generals
The military dictatorship now ruling the Southeast Asian nation has brushed aside the entreaties and threats, even as the country of 54 million people hurtles toward paralysis and possibly civil war that could destabilize the region.
US airstrikes on Iran drone attack bases
U.S. Carries Out Airstrikes in Iraq and Syria
The attacks were against weapons storage facilities used by Iranian-backed militias to conduct drone strikes against locations where the American military is.
Green is Slave Labor and Biden weeps -WaPo
Most Americans likely don’t know that approximately 40 percent of the world’s polysilicon, a key component of solar panels, is manufactured in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, where the United States has determined the Chinese government is perpetrating a genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. As evidence amassed in recent months that the Chinese solar industry was employing these minorities without giving them any say in the matter, pressure mounted on the Biden administration to act.
Opinion | We can’t fight climate change using forced labor in China
The Biden team is trying to avoid falling into the trap of ignoring Chinese human rights abuses in exchange for smooth relations.
Virus is coming through the shield
More than 4,100 people have been hospitalized or died with Covid-19 in the U.S. even though they’ve been fully vaccinated, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Climate change critic fired for “failing to act in the collegial and academic spirit”
His comments included telling Sky News that bodies like the Australian Institute of Marine Science “can no longer be trusted” and saying that many scientists examining the health of the Great Barrier Reef were “emotionally attached” and “not objective”.
He was also accused of “failing to act in the collegial and academic spirit”, and of denigrating the university and one of his colleagues.
What a surprise
If CRISPR germline is banned in the West it will be offshored to China
The 2018 announcement in China by He Jianqui who genetically altered human embryos via CRISPR—producing twins known as Lulu and Nana—helped strengthen policies about germline gene editing. Despite the worldwide scorn leveled against him for conducting a brazen act of human experimentation, his research also helped usher in a more moderate point of view regarding the manipulation of germline genes. Policy makers followed with a softer tone in guidelines on the feasibility of research involving the genes of heredity. As it turned out, a bourgeoning number of scientists were expressing interest in developing potential cures by manipulating genetic sequences in germline DNA.
Are we ready? Advances in CRISPR means the era of germline gene editing has arrived
Quick, accurate and easy-to-use, CRISPR-Cas9 has made genomic editing more efficient—but at the same time has made human germline editing much more feasible, erasing many of the ethical barriers erected to prevent scientists from editing the genes of heredity.
Who was it who said: ‘politics is where the real money is’?
Beware the hippo
A defining human characteristic
Walkback to two-track
WASHINGTON—President Biden walked back comments tying the fate of a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a separate, Democratic effort to pass a broad antipoverty plan, recommitting to the bipartisan deal after Republicans threatened to withdraw their support.
Biden Walks Back Threat on Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal
President Biden walked back comments tying the fate of a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a separate, Democratic effort to pass a broad antipoverty plan, after Republicans threatened to withdraw their support for the bipartisan plan.
The serpent in revolutionary Eden
Twenty-four years ago, while in charge of a small television operation at Al Quds University, my team and I decided to broadcast live sessions of the Palestinian Legislative Council dealing with corruption in the newly established Palestinian Authority. The broadcast angered people in Yasser Arafat’s entourage and I was arrested and jailed for seven days without any explanation.
Op-Ed: How the autocratic rule of Mahmoud Abbas fails Palestinians
The killing of a critic of the Abbas government has enraged Palestinians who want free elections and political reform.
What if social media users owned their data?
(Bloomberg) — Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps.
The undercurrent to Project Liberty is a fear of the power that a few huge companies — and specifically Facebook Inc. — have amassed over the last decade. “I never thought I would be questioning the security of our underlying systems, namely democracy and capitalism,” McCourt said.
A Real Estate Mogul Has a $100 Million Plan to Save the Internet
(Bloomberg) — Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessibl…
As we were going to say …
The Gettysburg Address speech that no one gives before it turns into a pie fight
The best political speech in many years was not delivered. Instead, incoming Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid set it aside and reprimanded members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s departing coalition for their nonstop heckling of incoming Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which was outrageous even by the standards of the Knesset. Several members were hauled out of the parliament’s chambers.
Opinion | Lessons From an Israeli Crack-Up
A new government strikes a conciliatory tone that American politicians should emulate.