The European Union Times |
- Activists rally in Chicago to close black site, end disappearing of civilians
- US company unveils robot to help autistic children
- Bio-Weapon Escapes Tulane Lab
- 6th suspect in Nemtsov killing has blow himself up
- 5 Muslims arrested over Nemtsov murder, 1 ‘confessed’
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Posted: 08 Mar 2015 03:58 PM PDT
 Protesters in Chicago have held a rally to demand the police shut down a formerly abandoned warehouse that is reportedly being used to interrogate suspected criminals without recourse to legal representation. The detention facility, which was first brought to public attention in a report by the Guardian in February, is a plain warehouse located on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, which has “long been the scene of secretive work by special police units,” the paper revealed. While many Americans are aware of the ongoing militarization of their police departments, with the federal government backing programs that allow local police forces to receive military equipment, including armored vehicles and powerful firearms, news that interrogation methods are also occurring has attracted shock and scorn. Activist Brian Jacob Church, who claims to have been detained at the facility in 2012, addressed a crowd that assembled at Homan Square on Saturday. “For too long, we as Americans have been subject to brutality at the hands of the police…” Church said as cited by The Guardian. “This building needs to be shut down.” A similar rally previously took place on March 1. The controversial facility does not appear to operate like a regular police precinct where criminal suspects are registered into a publicly accessible registrar. At Homan Square, there are no apparent records, therefore, individuals like Church who find themselves at the facility for all intent and purposes ‘disappear’ without any accountability. “Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian last month. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.” “They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”  At least one watchdog group has blamed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, presently involved in a tough reelection campaign, for failing to address the issue of possible human rights violations at the site. “It’s a hot issue now because the current mayor is up for reelection in a few weeks and he has not been willing to make any statement about the situation at Homan. Neither the hiding of arrestees nor the potential torture in the interrogations,” Donald Goldhamer, Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights treasurer said as cited by Sputnik. Goldhamer said the issue of abusive interrogations at the Homan facility has been addressed by lawyers for years, but the city has failed to act on it. “Police hiding of arrestees has been looked at and discussed with the [Chicago] police department, the superintendent, and the police board, but these efforts have not had an effect,” Goldhamer said. The CPD has denied its involvement in the alleged interrogations and detentions at Homan Square. Source           |
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Posted: 08 Mar 2015 03:53 PM PDT
 US company, Robokind, presented a robot named Milo during the National Press Club conference in Washington on Wednesday, saying it had been built with the aim of interacting with elementary and middle school children with ASD. Milo is capable of verbal communication and equipped with a set of 32 facial expressions, the robotics manufacturer said. Studies showed that children who first interacted with Milo are subsequently more open and responsive with humans. “Our research found that children with ASD are more engaged with Milo, than the therapist, especially when it is a robot led condition, especially when the robot is giving a child and describing social information to the child. And children who are more engaged learn better and this is really good news for our children with autism,” said Associate Professor of Communication Disorders at the University of Texas Pamela Rollins. The friendly-looking device (pictured below) also plays videos and music to the children, as well as provides data helping to monitor the progress of the therapy.  Autism disorder symptoms Autism is characterized by three distinctive behaviors, difficulty with social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors or narrow and obsessive interests. Impaired social interaction is the most atypical feature. Autistic children develop normally at first but soon become isolated and avoid social engagement. As early as infancy, they are often unresponsive and pay special attention to a single item for long periods of time. They do not respond when they are called by name and fail to establish eye contact with others. The prevalence of ASD has increased ten-fold in the United States in the past 40 years, with an estimated 1 in 68 American children affected by the disorder. Source      |
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Posted: 08 Mar 2015 03:43 PM PDT
 As the public began to wake up to the absurdity and brutality of the militarized police state, isn’t it serendipitous that we have a militarized terror strike in a major Western city? FOX commentator Eric Bolling wastes no time in calling for a hyper-militarized police response, in his words, “over-militarized.” As laughable as his statements are, they’re not satire and they’re not funny. Are we being played by the military industrial complex and their mainstream media propagandists yet again? What do we know so far about the suspects? What is the real satire here? Source      |
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Posted: 08 Mar 2015 03:18 PM PDT
 Beslan Shavanov blew himself up after throwing a grenade at police forces who had come to arrest him in the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Grozny, on Saturday, state-run news channel Russia 24 reported on Sunday. According to CNN, the report emerged as Russian authorities announced five other arrests related to the Nemtsov killing. Meanwhile, Zaur Dadayev, a former deputy commander for the Chechen police, admitted to his role in Nemtsov’s murder after a Russian court indicted him and Anzor Gubashev, who worked for a private security company in the Russian capital, Moscow. “The participation of Dadayev is confirmed by his confession,” said presiding judge, Nataliya Mushnikova. Gubashev has denied any manner of involvement in the case. On February 27, Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead as he was walking across a bridge in full view of the Kremlin and Red Square. Source      |
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Posted: 08 Mar 2015 02:59 PM PDT
 Moscow’s Basmanny district court has arrested five Muslims from Russia’s Islamic North Caucasus region in connection with the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent opposition figure, who was gunned down last week. Two judges are reviewing the charges against the five people brought before the court by the prosecutors on Sunday. Two of them are Zaur Dadaev and Anzor Gubashev, who were identified as key suspects in the killing of Nemtsov after their detention on Saturday. The prosecutors asked the court to arrest the duo by April 28, the current deadline for the investigation, saying that otherwise they may flee or interfere with the investigation. According to the judge, who ordered Dadaev’s arrest as requested by the prosecution, he confessed his involvement to the police. The accused didn’t comment on this during the court session. Gubashev pleaded not guilty to the crimes he is charged with. The other individuals, who may have had a hand in the crime, are Gubashev’s brother Shagit and two identified as Ramzat Bakhaev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov. The request for their arrest has been reviewed separately by another judge. “The suspects denied their ties to the crime, but we have evidence of their guilt. It includes forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts,”an investigator told the court.  Eskerkhanov and Bakhaev have been remanded until May 8 and Shagit Gubashev – until May 7. The sixth suspect, Beslan Shavanov, 30, reportedly committed suicide on March 7, when police came to his apartment in Chechnya’s capital Grozny. The man, according to LifeNews channel, had barricaded himself in the apartment. “In response to the police’s demand he surrender, he [the suspect] threw a hand grenade [at police forces],” a law enforcement source told the news channel. Shavanov then detonated another grenade, killing himself. The President of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, commented on the arrest of the five suspects on his Instagram account on May 8. He specifically spoke about Dadaev, saying he knew him “as a patriot of Russia” who used to serve as deputy regiment commander in one of the Chechen Republic’s interior ministry units. Kadyrov has ordered a “thorough investigation” of Dadaev’s retirement from the unit, saying that he “does not understand true reasons and motives” behind his decision. However, the Chechen leader noted that the suspect, as a deep believer, had been “shocked” by the Charlie Hebdo scandal and all the “comments in support of printing the cartoons.” Kadyrov has also confirmed Shavanov “died during attempts to detain him”. Nemtsov was killed by a gunman a few meters from the Moscow Kremlin, triggering a flurry of condemnations and calls for a swift investigation. The assassination happened two days ahead of an opposition rally, which Nemtsov helped to organize. While political motive is considered the most likely in the killing, the investigators said they were considering other scenarios, including a business or personal conflict. Likely political motives behind the killing according to the investigators include a provocation aimed at destabilizing the situation in Russia, possibly by Ukrainian radicals, and revenge by Islamists for Nemtsov’s support of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo following an extremist attack. Source     |
