Taliban suspend university education for women in Afghanistan.

The Taliban government has suspended university education for all female students in Afghanistan, the latest step in its brutal clampdown on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women.

A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education confirmed the suspension to CNN on Tuesday. A letter published by the education ministry said the decision was made in a cabinet meeting and the order will go into effect immediately.

Girls were barred from returning to secondary school in March, after the Taliban ordered schools for girls to shut just hours after they were due to reopen following months long closures imposed after the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

Human Rights Watch criticized the ban on Tuesday, calling it a "shameful decision that violates the right to education for women and girls in Afghanistan."

"The Taliban are making it clear every day that they don't respect the fundamental rights of Afghans, especially women," the rights watchdog said in a statement.

After seizing power in Afghanistan last year, the Taliban attempted to project a more moderate image to gain international support.

But while it has has made numerous promises to the international community that it would protect the rights of women and girls, the Taliban has been doing the opposite, systematically clamping down on their rights and freedoms.

Women in Afghanistan can no longer work in most sectors, require a male guardian for long-distance travel and have been ordered to cover their faces in public.

Originally reported by: Ehsan Popalzai and Ivana Kottasová on December 20, 2022 via CNN.

‘Nothing short of shocking.’ Miami woman gets 5 years for wild DUI crash, carjacking, chase.

The facts of the case were bizarre and largely undisputed: Alexis Facey, a single mother, attended a friend’s birthday party at Tootsie’s strip club in Miami Gardens. After a free shot of liquor and many drinks, she climbed into her car and drove off.

“All I remember is waking up in a police car,” Facey, 35, told a Miami-Dade judge in a hearing earlier this fall.

Facey had caused a trail of mayhem on April 10, 2019: crashing alongside Interstate 95, then carjacking the truck of a man who stopped to help — his 63-year-old mother, an infant baby and two dogs in the back. That led to a frantic chase which ended when Facey plowed the stolen truck into two other vehicles in Miramar. The driver of one of those vehicles had to be extricated from her mangled SUV, her knee and ankle shattered, her liver lacerated.

For that fateful night, Facey is now going to prison. A Miami-Dade judge on Thursday sentenced Facey to five years in prison, followed by one year of “community control” and five years of probation.

“Ms. Facey’s actions cannot go unpunished,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer wrote in her 13-page order. “Her behavior on the evening was nothing short of shocking.”

But Venzer also rejected prosecutors’ request to sentence Facey to 20 years in prison, and went below the bottom of the sentencing guidelines of 15 1/2 years.

She pointed out the state routinely accepts minimum-mandatory plea deals of four years in prison for DUI manslaughter cases in which someone dies.

The judge also pointed out several egregious traffic cases involving deaths in which prosecutors offered less prison time than what they were asking for in Facey’s case. One example: The case of Shikenna Hasty, who killed three people in a Miami-Dade car crash in 2016 — she accepted a 10-year sentence.

Without a plea deal, Facey had earlier pleaded guilty to felony charges include robbery carjacking, kidnapping and driving under the influence involving serious property damage and serious bodily injury.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer, pictured here in 2017, sentenced Alexis Facey to five years in state prison, to be followed by one year of community control and five years of probation.
A Tearful Hearing

Her sentencing hearing, featuring emotional testimony on both sides, took place over two days in August.

The judge heard how when Facey left Tootsies, she crashed her car near Ives Dairy Road, her blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit. And she heard from the two drivers who pulled over on the northbound lanes of I-95 to offer assistance.

One of them, Jose Seijo, drove a black pickup truck. While he inspected Facey’s car and searched for any other passengers in what remained of her vehicle, Facey jumped in Seijo’s truck — his 63-year-old mother and an infant son were still in the cab.

“My life has had a before and after the accident,” said Emma Rosa Perez Ortega, the woman in the stolen truck, saying she has since suffered “a lot of panic attacks, a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. And I’m constantly obsessed about watching my grandson, I don’t want him to get lost, not even for a minute.”

Seijo and Roselene Tur Perez, the parents of the baby, testified feeling like their family had fallen apart because of what they believed was a good deed.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen with my son, I didn’t know what was going to happen with my mother. I could have lost my whole family that night, just for stopping to help someone,” said Perez, who fell on the side of the highway while trying to open the door of the truck as it drove off.

The carjacking left more than more than emotional wounds.

Originally reported by: Natalia Galicza, David Ovalle for the Miami Herald. Fri, December 2, 2022

Florida formally dismisses QB Kitna amid child porn charges.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Florida has formally dismissed quarterback Jalen Kitna from the team following his arrest on five child pornography charges that police said included an image of a man having sex with a young girl.

The Gators scrubbed Kitna's name from their roster and his biography from their website late Thursday, just hours after Kitna's first court appearance. Kitna was released from jail on an $80,000 bond and ordered to have no unsupervised contact with minors and no internet access.

Kitna, 19, returned with his parents, retired NFL quarterback Jon Kitna and wife Jennifer, to Burleson, Texas.

Although Kitna remained enrolled in classes Friday, the University Police Department issued him a trespass warning that bars him from campus for three years, pending the outcome of his court case. Kitna also would need to have to go through a student code of conduct hearing to be eligible to return, an unlikely outcome given the severity of the allegations.

Kitna sobbed into his hands during his 75-minute court appearance, which included attorneys on both sides arguing bond details and conditions of his release. He wore a solid green smock typically given to inmates being kept under close watch because of welfare concerns.

The Gainesville Police Department released Kitna’s arrest report Thursday, providing graphic details about the complaints filed against him.

Police said Kitna shared two mages of young girls being sexually abused via a social media platform, including one of a man having sex with a young girl.

Police later searched his phone and found three more images of two nude young girls in a shower — photos that had been saved to Kitna's phone in December 2021. The report did not estimate the ages of the girls.

Kitna’s lawyer Caleb Kenyon argued those three images could be considered child erotica instead of child porn.

Two of the five arresting charges, which still need to be formalized by the state attorney’s office, are second-degree felonies that could result in a prison term of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000. The other three are third-degree felonies.

The Gators suspended Kitna following his arrest on Wednesday and took the step of dismissing him a day later.

Originally reported by: Mark Long for AP on December 2, 2022

Trump claims minorities thrived during his presidency. Advocates disagree.

Last week, while announcing his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump said minorities thrived during his time in office.

“Two years ago, when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and prestige, towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striding into the future confident and so strong,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where his campaign will be headquartered.

“In four short years, everybody was doing great: men, women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans — everybody was thriving like never before,” he added.- ADVERTISEMENT -

But advocates and experts say otherwise. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that was created in 2020 after a rise in anti-Asian hate, believes that people of color were put in harm’s way during the Trump administration.

“During the pandemic, in 2020, [Trump’s] systematic use of [anti-Asian-and-Pacific-Islander] rhetoric really drove a sharp rise in hate incidents, unjust racial profiling and overall deeper divisions across our nation,” Manjusha Kulkarni, the executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, told Yahoo News.

The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that anti-Asian hate crimes increased in 16 of the largest U.S. cities by 145% in 2020, during Trump’s time in office.

“Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World. Chinese Americans are the most angry of all. I don’t blame them!” Trump tweeted on May 12, 2020.

In 2020, Trump posted at least two dozen tweets that used negative rhetoric against Asian Americans, and the tweets were shared over 1 million times, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

“I feel like we’re still really paying for the cost of Trump’s presidency and his extreme rhetoric and dehumanizing of communities of color,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, told Yahoo News.

However, Kulkarni said it’s not just Trump’s rhetoric that harmed minorities, but also the policies implemented during his administration.

“The immigration ban that suspended visas from China, [the] ban on Chinese students and researchers, policies targeting the use of WeChat and even the ban on federal racial sensitivity training — those were some of the ones that had a truly devastating impact on our communities,” she said.

Nearly two years after the end of Trump’s term in office, Asian American communities say they are still dealing with the impact of his decisions.

“Many of our community members are being targeted, whether it’s violence in the streets or some sort of discrimination, but we’re still facing that. So that’s like a very in-our-face, still-present threat to our safety,” Choimorrow said.

In the 2020 presidential election, Black Americans largely voted for Joe Biden, with over 90% voting against Trump. Four in 10 of Biden’s votes came from Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters, though Trump did make gains among Hispanic voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

“We know who’s good for us, we know what’s best for us. We feel like Trump did not represent our values and did not help our communities,” Svante Myrick, president of People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy organization, told Yahoo News.

Some minority voters have expressed support for Trump. Mateo Mokarzel, a graduate student in Texas, told BBC News in 2020 that Trump’s policies and ideals protect the United States. “He has a strong nationalist stance, and they try to portray that as racist,” he said. “Protecting your borders and building up your economy is something most Americans want. I don't see how that’s racist or some kind of dog whistle.”

Others have argued that Trump made key strides in the right direction for minorities and criminal justice reform. In 2018, the Trump administration commuted Alice Johnson’s sentence and signed into law the First Step Act, which increased prisoner rehabilitation efforts and gave judges more leeway with the sentencing of drug offenders.

Actor Isaiah Washington praised Trump at the time for passing the legislation. “I voted for 44 [Barack Obama, the 44th president] twice. I even checked my emails in his Senate Office while lobbying for Salone [Sierra Leone] to be given another chance to rebrand. Not once in 8 years was I given any support regarding Africa or the Black Agenda, but 45 [Trump] invites me to the WH to celebrate the #FirstStepAct,” Washington tweeted.

But advocates say the First Step Act had overwhelming support before Trump got involved. “He’s trying to take credit for something that would have happened with or without him, which is, you know, frankly, typical Trump,” Myrick said.

Myrick says Trump left a lasting impact on marginalized communities after he confirmed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court during his tenure.

“Ethnic minorities did not thrive. In fact, [Trump] was able to nominate no Black individuals to any appellate federal court in the country,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told Yahoo news.

“We’ve already seen those effects: abortion, health care, voting rights, all of those areas where he did things that helped himself and the Republican Party.”

Advocates say they are still working to reverse the damage from Trump’s time in office. “I think if he were to get reelected, it’s going to give him the megaphone, the microphone, again, to reignite that kind of racism and bigotry. As if we don’t already have enough of it in this country. I just think it’s going to be worse,” Choimorrow said.

As potential candidates prepare for the 2024 presidential race, minorities say they are depending on each other to show up to the polls and vote.

“I think the greatest evidence of accountability [for Trump] is the fact that he was not reelected [in 2020]. Seven million more people voted for his opponent than for him across the United States,” Kulkarni said.

Originally reported by:

Jayla Whitfield-Anderson

National Reporter

Tue, November 22, 2022 at 3:14 PM

Florida man's voter fraud charges dismissed in blow to DeSantis.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the 20 people arrested for voting illegally as part of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' effort to crack down on voter fraud had his charges dismissed on Friday.

A Miami state judge threw out the case against Robert Lee Wood, ruling that the statewide prosecutor, who is overseeing all 20 cases, had no jurisdiction because the alleged crime did not occur in at least two judicial circuits.

The decision could pave the way for similar findings in some or all of the other cases, though local prosecutors could still choose to refile the charges. The governor's office said the state would appeal the ruling.

DeSantis, a Republican who is running for re-election as governor on Nov. 8 and is widely thought to be weighing a 2024 presidential campaign, touted the arrests in August as the "first salvo" from his newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security.

The agency, which includes state law enforcement officers, was established amid a nationwide push by Republicans to tighten voting laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The ruling on Friday came two days after the Tampa Bay Times published police body camera footage taken during the arrests that showed several defendants appearing baffled by the charges.

All 20 are former inmates convicted of murder or felony sex crimes. A 2018 constitutional amendment restored voting rights for many ex-convicts but specifically excluded people who committed those offenses.

In the videos, several defendants said they had been allowed to vote by election officials and did not understand why they were being arrested. Under state law, voter fraud requires intent.

In Wood's case, prosecutors argued that his ballot, cast in Miami, was eventually sent to Tallahassee to be tallied, thus fulfilling the requirement for the crime to occur in two separate locations.

But Judge Milton Hirsch agreed with Wood's defense attorney that Wood had nothing to do with the transfer of ballots from one place to another.

"Here, all the criminal misconduct, if there was any, was performed by one man in one county," the judge wrote in his order.

Wood's attorney, Larry Davis, said prosecutors should abandon the case. Wood registered to vote after being told he was allowed, received a voter card and cast a ballot, all without any objection, Davis said.

"There's no way he would have done so without being told it was OK," Davis said in a phone interview. "My client had absolutely no intent to break the law."

In a statement, a DeSantis spokesperson, Bryan Griffin, said, "The state will continue to enforce the law and ensure that murderers and rapists who are not permitted to vote do not unlawfully do so."

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Wallis)

Reposted by Ricardo Martinez

Jury reaches decision on sentence of Parkland school shooter.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A jury said Thursday that it has reached a decision on whether to recommend that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz be executed for the 2018 massacre that killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The recommendation was not immediately released and came in the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used.

The decision promises an end to a three-month trial that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of the still blood-spattered building.

The jury’s decision must be unanimous if it intends to recommend the death penalty, and if that happens, it will be up to Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer to make a final decision. If all jurors can’t agree on recommending death, then Cruz would get life in prison.

The jury of 12 people had asked late Wednesday to see the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, but the Broward County Sheriff's Office security team objected, even though the gun has been made inoperable and Cruz's ammunition would be removed from the jury room.

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who has more the five decades of experience, pointed out that in every murder case he has tried or knows, jurors got to examine and handle the weapon in their room — and he said a knife or machete is more dangerous than a gun without a firing pin. Security has never been an issue, he said.

Cruz's attorneys had no objection to jurors seeing the gun.

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine's Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again. The jury will determine only if Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole. For Cruz to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous.

During the prosecution's rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz's smooth movements with the gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological disorders, as claimed by his attorneys.

Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they say his birth mother's excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.

The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

As reported by Terry Spencer on Oct 13th, 2022

Los Angeles Councilwoman Nury Martinez resigns following her leaked racist remarks.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Embattled Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez has resigned, days after a recording of her making racist comments against the city's Black and Oaxacan communities was leaked.

"It is with a broken heart that I resign my seat for Council District 6, the community I grew up in and my home," she said in a statement.
The recorded conversation involving Council-members Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León captured the now-former councilwoman describing the Black son of a white council-member in crude and racist language. She also described Oaxacan immigrants in Koreatown as "short little dark people."

The resignation comes hours after protesters disrupted a scheduled Wednesday city council meeting inside Los Angeles City Hall. With no resignation, there would be no meeting, they said in chants.

Prior to her resignation, Martinez had stepped down as president of the council, but stopped short of leaving the council altogether. Cedillo and de León have issued apologies, but haven't resigned.

Council-member Mike Bonin, whose son was the subject of Martinez's comments, earlier in the day tweeted a call for the three to step down.
It's unlikely that just Martinez's resignation will satisfy the L.A. community.

Dozens of protesters inside the meeting room on Wednesday shouted over President Pro Tempore Mitch O'Farrell as he attempted to speak and call for order. The protesters held signs that demanded members resign and chanted for an hour, as the meeting sputtered along.

O'Farrell attempted to order the group to quiet down, but finally called the meeting to an end after losing a quorum before anything on the agenda was addressed.

As reported by: Jaclyn Diaz & Vanessa Romo for NPR News on September 13th, 2022