The Department of Justice is considering reopening the investigation into the infamous murder of Emmett Till — an African-American teen whose brutal killing charted the course of the civil rights movement — after meeting with the boy’s family.
Till’s cousin, Deborah Watts, said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told her “no one gets a pass,” adding that he would like to look into more unsolved civil rights crimes during a meeting with her and civil rights activist Alvin Sykes, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.
In 1955, 14-year-old Till was savagely beaten and shot in the head by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam after Bryant’s wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham, said the boy whistled at her and touched her in a Mississippi store.
Three days later Till’s badly disfigured body was found attached to a cotton gin fan floating in the Tallahatchie River.
A former White House ethics adviser says that a sales pitch by Jared Kushner’s sister to potential Chinese investors that was centered on a controversial visa program came “very, very close to solicitation of a bribe.”
“This is corruption, pure and simple,” said Richard Painter, who was an attorney for President George W. Bush and is now a University of Minnesota law professor.
The latest conflict-of-interest uproar to roil President Donald Trump’s administration arose this weekend as the Kushner Companies invited wealthy foreigners to sink cash into a New Jersey real estate project via the EB-5 program.
. Nicole Meyer poses at a promotional event in Shanghai on Sunday. Albee Zhang / AFP – Getty Images
Is your smartphone really a phone or just a tinier computer? It’s a question that’s getting increasingly harder to answer as the people engage with their handheld devices more in areas that were traditionally reserved for desktop or notebooks. To support a wealth of rich features and technologies like sharp graphics and tactile feedback, smartphones have grown to be very well equipped with all sorts of sensors. The more complex the machine, however, the greater the security risk.
Case in point: British researchers from Newcastle University showed that simply by monitoring and interpreting data recorded by a phone’s sensors like the accelerometer, gyroscope, or magnetometer, they could infer a person’s four-digit PIN. When people tap in their PIN, the phone has a distinct orientation and motion which can be used to guess the code.
The team led by Maryam Mehrnezhad developed an artificial neural network — algorithms loosely modeled after the neuronal structure of the human brain — to guess the PIN from input sensor data. The team proved last year that they could access it by attacking the phone through a javascript exploit delivered through the phone’s browser. A user only had to click on a link for an attacker to get hold of all the sensor data, and this worked even if the phone was locked after the link was clicked on for some browsers like Apple’s Safari.
What’s the latest on the Russia investigation and where does fired FBI Director James Comey fit in?
President Donald Trump’s decision to terminate Comey sent shockwaves through Washington on Tuesday, with many senior Democrats accusing the White House of undermining the agency’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to prevent Hillary Clinton’s election.
There are, in fact, multiple ongoing storylines and investigations related to Russia so it’s worth taking a moment to break them out individually and see how Comey’s ouster intersects with them.
FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department for more resources for the agency’s investigation into Russian meddling of the US election and ties to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, just the week before the President fired him.
Comey told the heads of the Senate intelligence committee that he went to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last week and pushed for more resources to be devoted to the Russia investigation, according to two sources familiar with the discussion.
Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Flores denies Comey asked Rosenstein for more resources. She called reporting to the contrary “100% false,” and told reporters she spoke directly with Rosenstein about the reports.
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Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia met Monday with Comey and urged him to speed up the Russia investigation. Comey acknowledged in this discussion that things were moving slowly.
In a medical first, surgeons have used a robot to operate inside the human eye, greatly improving the accuracy of a delicate surgery to remove fine membrane growth on the retina. Such growth distorts vision and, if left unchecked, can lead to blindness in the affected eye.
Currently, doctors perform this common eye surgery without robots. But given the delicate nature of the retina and the narrowness of the opening in which to operate, even highly skilled surgeons can cut too deeply and cause small amounts of hemorrhaging and scarring, potentially leading to other forms of visual impairment, according to the researchers who tested out the new robotic surgery in a small trial. The pulsing of blood through the surgeon’s hands is enough to affect the accuracy of the cut, the researchers said.
In the trial, at a hospital in the United Kingdom, surgeons performed the membrane-removal surgery on 12 patients; six of those patients underwent the traditional procedure, and six underwent the new robotic technique. Those patients in the robot group experienced significantly fewer hemorrhages and less damage to the retina, the findings showed.
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The technique is being called “a vision of eye surgery in the future.” air009/Shutterstock
A 23-year-old Phoenix man has been charged with killing nine people in a series of shootings last year that stoked fear across the city and stymied police.
A tip from the community led investigators to Aaron Saucedo, 23, and detectives were able to link him to the string of attacks by analyzing surveillance video and witness statements and ballistics evidence — including a handgun he pawned, police said.
“Today is a good day in the city of Phoenix,” said Mayor Greg Stanton, praising the law enforcement task force that hunted the shooter for nearly a year.
“They had a clear mission: bring this killer to justice and get it right.”
The gunman’s targets included men, women and children, many of them ambushed near their homes in a working-class neighborhood from August 2015 to July 2016. A woman and her 12-year-old daughter were shot dead in one incident; a man and his 4-year-old nephew escaped unhurt in another.
Prosecutors have dropped rape charges against two immigrant high school students in Maryland whose case had been used by the White House as evidence of the need to crack down on undocumented immigrants.
Henry Sanchez-Milian, 18, and Jose Montano, 17, both students at Rockville High School, were accused in March of raping a 14-year-old schoolmate in a bathroom stall at school. They were arrested and charged as adults with first-degree rape and two counts each of first-degree sexual offense.
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The case drew national attention due to the nature of the crime and because Sanchez-Milian, a citizen of Guatemala, was in the US illegally. Montano, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, was living under “special immigrant juveniles status,” according to his attorney.
But on Friday, prosecutors dropped the rape and sexual offense charges against both students, citing the “lack of corroboration and substantial inconsistencies from the facts.”
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A Dallas-area police officer who was fired after he shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy will face a murder charge, authorities said Friday.
An arrest warrant for murder was issued for former Balch Springs officer Roy Oliver, who officials said fatally shot Jordan Edwards while the teenager was a passenger in a vehicle. The shooting occurred Saturday night and Oliver was fired Tuesday.
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“The warrant was issued due to evidence that suggested Mr. Oliver intended to cause serious bodily injury and commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that caused the death of an individual,” said Melinda Urbina, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.
Oliver was booked at the Parker County Jail on Friday but was released after posting bail, jail records show.
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His bond was set for $300,000.
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Fired Texas cop to face murder charge in shooting of boy, 15
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Emmett Louis Till AP
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Fired Texas cop to face murder charge in shooting of boy, 15
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