It is an achievement of the people of Bangladesh. I think the country's people are the main source of all power. They can achieve anything,” she said.The PM was addressing a reception accorded to her at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) for the government's achievement of meeting the eligibility criteria for the country's graduation from the LDC group.The event was organised as part of the government's five-day programme to celebrate the achievement.Hasina said it was an achievement of those people who worked together and contributed to the country's development. She stressed the need for maintaining the pace of development.She urged all to work for the country so that people can live with their heads held high. “We want to live as a proud nation.... We liberated our country through a struggle and we have proved that we can stand on our own feet.”The PM said had the people not stood by her and brought the Awami League to power, it would not have been possible for her and the government to work for the country and make this remarkable achievement.
“To me, power is nothing but an opportunity to serve the country and its people. I never believed that power is for personal gain.”Bangladesh's eligibility to graduate to a developing country has opened up the door of its potential to emerge as a developed and prosperous nation, she added.Hasina said after assuming office in 1996, the AL government undertook various people-oriented development projects in a planned way, and such steps made it possible to meet the eligibility criteria to graduate from the LDC group.Due importance was given to starting the development process from the grassroots level, she said, adding that such efforts helped ensure sustainable progress towards eliminating poverty.She remembered with gratitude Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, saying he had struggled throughout his life to change the people's fate.
New Currency of BD
Greeting the people, Hasina said her government showed the way while all the others concerned, including the government officials, private organisations and the business community, made the impossible possible.She expressed gratitude to the development partners and foreign friends for providing and continuing support to the government's development efforts.Terming Bangalee a heroic nation, she said they do not want to live as a nation of beggars; rather they want to live with dignity and with their heads held high.UN Under-Secretary General Fekitamoeloa Katoa also spoke at the programme, chaired by Finance Minister AMA Muhith. A written statement of UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner was read out.The finance minister handed over the UN's certificate of recognition to the PM.Hasina unveiled a commemorative stamp and a commemorative note on the occasion.The UN secretary general and the chiefs of the World Bank, ADB, USAID and Jica delivered speeches of appreciation through video messages.Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, State Minister for Information Tarana Halim and Information Secretary Abdul Malek handed over a photo album on “Ten Special Initiatives of Sheikh Hasina” to the premier.Hasina was greeted with bouquets on behalf of President Abdul Hamid, Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury and Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain. Officials from the respective offices handed over the bouquets.Flower bouquets were also presented to the PM on behalf of the AL, 14-party alliance and other political parties. Leader of the Opposition Raushan Ershad greeted the PM by presenting her with a flower bouquet.Civil and military officials, freedom fighters, educationists, journalists, businessmen, artistes and singers, NGOs, labour, sports and women organisations also greeted the PM.A documentary was screened at the function highlighting the country's progress and the ongoing development projects.Ministers, PM's advisers, lawmakers, civil and military officials, political leaders, diplomats, representatives of the civil society and different professional bodies were present.Earlier, on her arrival at the BICC, Hasina paid her profound respect to the Father of the Nation by placing a wreath at the portrait of the great leader.The UN's Committee for Development Policy (CDP) on March 15 officially declared Bangladesh eligible for graduating from the LDC and handed over a letter in this regard to Bangladesh's Permanent Representative to the UN Masud Bin Momen the following day.According to the UN's graduation thresholds set at the triennial review in 2015, gross national income (GNI) per capita of a country has to be $1,242 or above to be grouped within the “developing country” category. Bangladesh's GNI per capita rose to $1,610 at the end of 2016-17 fiscal.The GNI per capita is the value of a country's final income in a year divided by its population. It reflects the average income of a country's citizens.On the other two indexes, human assets and economic vulnerability, a country has to score 66 or above and 32 or below respectively.Bangladesh's score in the human assets index stood at 72.9 and the economic vulnerability index at 24.8, meaning the country met all the criteria.
In the wake of a privacy scandal
involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
embarked on a rare media mini-blitz in an attempt to take some of the public
and political pressure off the social network.But it’s far from clear whether
he’s won over US and European authorities, much less the broader public whose
status updates provide Facebook with an endless stream of data it uses to sell
targeted ads.On Wednesday, the generally reclusive Zuckerberg sat for an
interview on CNN and gave another to the publication Wired, addressing reports
that Cambridge Analytica purloined the data of more than 50 million Facebook
users in order to sway elections. The Trump campaign paid the firm $6 million
during the 2016 election, although it has since distanced itself from
Cambridge.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg embarked on a rare media
“I am really sorry that happened,” Zuckerberg said on CNN. Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data, he added, noting that if it fails, “we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.”
I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation -- including the steps we've already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.
We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years a...
His mea culpa on cable television came a few hours after he acknowledged his company’s mistakes in a Facebook post , but without saying he was sorry.Zuckerberg and Facebook’s No 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, had been quiet since news broke on Friday that Cambridge might have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections. Cambridge’s clients included Donald Trump’s general-election campaign.Facebook shares have dropped some 8%, lopping about $46 billion off the company’s market value, since the revelations were first published.While several experts said Zuckerberg took an important step with the CNN interview, few were convinced that he put the Cambridge issue behind him. Zuckerberg’s apology, for instance, seemed rushed and pro forma to Helio Fred Garcia, a crisis-management professor at NYU and Columbia University.
“He didn’t acknowledge the harm or potential harm to the affected users,” Garcia said. “I doubt most people realized he was apologizing.”Instead, the Facebook chief pointed to steps the company has already taken, such as a 2014 move to restrict the access outside apps had to user data. (That move came too late to stop Cambridge.) And he laid out a series of technical changes that will further limit the data such apps can collect, pledged to notify users when outsiders misuse their information and said Facebook will “audit” apps that exhibit troubling behavior.
That audit will be a giant undertaking, said David Carroll, a media researcher at the Parsons School of Design in New York — one that he said will likely turn up a vast number of apps that did “troubling, distressing things.”But on other fronts, Zuckerberg carefully hedged otherwise striking remarks.In the CNN interview, for instance, he said he would be “happy” to testify before Congress — but only if it was “the right thing to do.” Zuckerberg went on to note that many other Facebook officials might be more appropriate witnesses depending on what Congress wanted to know.At another point, the Facebook chief seemed to favor regulation for Facebook and other internet giants. At least, that is, the “right” kind of rules, such as ones requiring online political ads to disclose who paid for them. In almost the next breath, however, Zuckerberg steered clear of endorsing a bill that would write such rules into federal law, and instead talked up Facebook’s own voluntary efforts on that front.
“They’ll fight tooth and nail to fight being regulated,” said Timothy Carone, a Notre Dame business professor. “In six months we’ll be having the same conversations, and it’s just going to get worse going into the election.”Even Facebook’s plan to let users know about data leaks may put the onus on users to educate themselves. Zuckerberg said Facebook will “build a tool” that lets users see if their information had been impacted by the Cambridge leak, suggesting that the company won’t be notifying people automatically. Facebook took this kind of do-it-yourself approach in the case of Russian election meddling, in contrast to Twitter, which notified users who had been exposed to Russian propaganda on its network.In what has become one of the worst backlashes Facebook has ever seen, politicians in the US and Britain have called for Zuckerberg to explain its data practices in detail. State attorneys general in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey have opened investigations into the Cambridge mess. And some have rallied to a movement that urges people to delete their Facebook accounts entirely.Sandy Parakilas, who worked in data protection for Facebook in 2011 and 2012, told a UK parliamentary committee Wednesday that the company was vigilant about its network security but lax when it came to protecting users’ data.He said personal data including email addresses and in some cases private messages was allowed to leave Facebook servers with no real controls on how the data was used after that.Paul Argenti, a business professor at Dartmouth, said that while Zuckerberg’s comments hit the right notes, they still probably aren’t enough. “The question is, can you really trust Facebook,” he said. “I don’t think that question has been answered.”
House and Senate negotiators reached tentative agreement
House and Senate negotiators reached tentative agreement Wednesday on a $1.3-trillion bill that would boost both defense and domestic spending, but at the same time put off solutions to other contentious issues, such as the fate of young immigrants in the country illegally.The announcement of the deal late Wednesday came two days before the federal government would have been forced to shut down. The House and Senate now face a narrow opening to approve the 2,232-page measure by Friday.The appropriations bill stemmed from a February deal in which leaders agreed to add tens of billions of dollars to both defense and nondefense spending over the next two years. The new spending levels, if approved by both chambers, will extend through September.Republicans pushed the bill as a way of boosting defense spending to make up for cutbacks under budget deals formed during the Obama administration.
"This legislation fulfills our pledge to rebuild the United States military," House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday .
Democrats, meanwhile, heralded increases in domestic spending. Those allowances for education, housing, opioid addiction efforts and other federal programs were prompted by the need for Democratic votes to offset expected opposition by fiscal conservatives.
"Every bill takes compromise, and there was plenty here, but at the end of the day we Democrats feel very good because so many of our priorities for the middle class were included," Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said. "From opioid funding to rural broadband, and from student loans to child care, this bill puts workers and families first."The deal was initially expected to be announced no later than Monday night, but was delayed due to disagreements over immigration, healthcare, abortion rights and a long-stalled effort to strengthen the background check system for gun purchasers.On Wednesday afternoon, Ryan left the Capitol to travel to the White House, where President Trump was said to be waffling over whether to back the deal. Afterward White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement of support:
"The president had a discussion with Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell, where they talked about their shared priorities secured in the omnibus spending bill. The president and the leaders discussed their support for the bill, which includes more funds to rebuild the military, such as the largest pay raise for our troops in a decade, more than 100 miles of new construction for the border wall and other key domestic priorities, like combating the opioid crisis and rebuilding our nation's infrastructure."Despite Sanders' words, the immigration and border component of the spending bill fell far short of what Trump had promised voters en route to the presidency. It included less than $2 billion in border security funding — much of it restricted, and in any case, below Trump's $25-billion request.The deal did lean in the president's direction in a few key areas, omitting specific funding for the Gateway project, an underwater rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey. The president had demanded that the funding be stripped in what Democrats saw as a slap at one of its strongest supporters, New York Sen. Schemer. Among the included elements, according to legislators and others, were three that touched on the national outcry after recent mass shootings: the measure to strengthen the nation's background check system, another that provides money for schools to tighten security and train workers to spot potential assailants before they act, and a statement that gives the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention permission to research the impact of gun violence. Since 1996, a spending measure had been interpreted as banning gun research.Left out, however, were several of the items that were unable to be thrashed out in the final days before the spending bill's release. Also not included was an initially bipartisan measure to help buttress the Obamacare health insurance markets.Also left out was a solution to the fate of the young immigrants in the country illegally because of their parents' actions. Until September, they were protected under an Obama administration program, which Trump canceled. Several attempts to craft a deal merging support for the border wall and protection for the "Dreamers" failed. Many of them are now protected by a court stay which could be lifted at any time.
"For all of the talk from Republicans and Democrats since September about rescuing the Dreamers and preventing their deportation, the final omnibus budget gives Trump money for his wall and we get nothing for it," said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.). "Immigrants and Latinos got run over by the omnibus [spending bill] and we have nothing in return."As Latino members discussed their options, the spending bill also came under fire from conservative Republicans over its content and the need to rush it through Congress to prevent a government shutdown.
"Congress is about to vote on a $1.6-trillion funding bill, privately written by congressional leaders ... giving members and the public around 24 hours to read its 2,000 pages," said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. "This is the total opposite of what Americans voted for. When will we learn?"The House and Senate are due to leave Washington at the end of the week for a two-week
Tuesday has come bearing gifts for those waiting for more scoop on Avengers: Infinity War. Joe Russo, one half of the director duo of Russo Brothers, has revealed details on the upcoming, highly anticipated film to Fandango. From the official run time to who gets the most screen time, he has shared it all for fans get even more excited about the film.The third Avengers film will be 156 minutes long (2 hours 36 minutes). It is the longest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, followed closely by Captain America: Civil War (2 hours 28 minutes), Avengers (2 hours 23 minutes) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2 hours 22 minutes). The run time also includes the post credits.
The longest runtime ever makes sense as Avengers: Infinity War will be bringing in several different storylines of the intergalactic guardians, the Asgardian refugees, the Wakandan tribes, the teenager from Queens, the business manganate from New York, the time traveller from Himalayas and more.
Russo didn’t give any concrete figures but took two names when asked which character will have the most screen time. The frightful villain, whose arrival was built up for years in the films, Thanos will take centre stage in the movie. “I think Thanos has an incredible amount of screen time,” Russo said, called Infinity War Thanos’ movie. The film will be told from his perspective, a new trick that worked quite well for last month’s blockbuster, Black Panther.
“(We) tell a story that [audiences] weren’t expecting, and the story is told from the point of view of a villain, which I think is also really unique and risky for a commercial film that will surprise the audience,” Russo said in the interview.Apart from Thanos, Russo also took Thor’s name as one of the pivotal characters of the film. “(He) has a really interesting arc in the film. He hasn’t been at the forefront of other Avengers movies but he certainly has a very important role in this film,” he said.What about Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov or Bruce Banner? Sadly, one of the series veterans are likely to be killed off in the film.
As for the unlikely pairings that show a lot of promise, Russo suggested it’d be fun to watch the two ex-Sherlock Holmed together. “I think Tony Stark and Doctor Strange is a really interesting pairing and a really compelling pairing. It’s a bit of an odd couple, and we used to reference DeNiro and Grodin from Midnight Run, so it’s a somewhat contentious clash of egos, but very interesting and it has a big impact on the story,” he said.
Avengers: Infinity War releases on April 27 and stars Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Josh Brolin, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, Bradley Cooper, Tom Holland, Zoe Saldana, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan and more.
When you do politics only for sensationalism, and not for balance, then this going to be the consequence
Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal’s “apology spree” to end a string of defamation cases filed against him has come under attack from his political opponents.The Congress has advised the chief minister to change his name while the BJP said the “anarchic character” of the “NGO politics” practised by the AAP leader stood exposed.
“He should change his name to Arvind Sorry Kejriwal. This is just the beginning of his trail of saying sorry, and not the end,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said on Monday.A few hours earlier Kejriwal had apologised to senior BJP leader and Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Congress leader Kapil Sibal for accusing them of corruption.Both the leaders have withdrawn their defamation suites but the AAP leader still faces more than 30 court cases, including 11 for defamation, across the country.Kejriwal should apologise to the people of Delhi and the country for deceiving them and poor governance, Surjewala said.
“When you do politics only for sensationalism, and not for balance, then this going to be the consequence,” he said, accusing Kejriwal of colluding with the BJP to target the Congress-led UPA government.BJP’s Manoj Tiwari, too, took a dig, saying Kejriwal was a regular violator of law and had misused the right to information act against his political opponents in connivance with “a section of media which prefers to run anti-establishment news”.
“The anarchic character of NGO politics practiced by Arvind Kejriwal and his compatriots today stands exposed before the people of the country,” the North-East Delhi MP said.Kejriwal had last week apologised to Shiromani Akali Dal leader and former Punjab minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia for calling him a “drug lord”.The move came as a shock to the AAP’s Punjab unit that had made drug abuse and alleged involvement of SAD leaders in the illegal trade the main issue in the 2017 state election.AAP’s Punjab unit president Bhagwant Mann and co-president Aman Arora quit their posts in protest, forcing Kejriwal into damage-control mode. The party seems to have managed to buy peace with the Punjab unit, for now.
Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena said on Sunday he had lifted a nationwide state of emergency imposed on March 6 after Buddhist-Muslim clashes.
“Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the State of Emergency from midnight yesterday,”
Sirisena said on his Twitter feed.He declared a state of emergency to rein in the spread of communal violence after Buddhists and Muslims clashed in the Indian Ocean island’s central district of Kandy.Two people were killed and hundreds of Muslim-owned properties and more than 20 mosques were damaged, media reported.Tension has been growing between the two communities over the past year, with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites.Some Buddhist nationalists have also protested against the presence in Sri Lanka of Muslim Rohingya asylum-seekers from mostly Buddhist Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has also been on the rise.
Valentina D’Alessandro was at a
party with a few girlfriends in 2013 when one of them got sick. They accepted
another teenager’s offer to drive the girls home in his red Mustang.In a
commercial area of Wilmington, at the intersection of two four-lane boulevards,
a car pulled up alongside the Mustang.The race began.Minutes later, Valentina,
16, was dead, her body wedged in a passenger side window following a crash.
Police found her high school identification card at the scene.She was one of at
least 179 people who have died in Los Angeles County since 2000 in accidents
where street racing was suspected, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of
coroner’s records, police reports and media accounts from 2000 to 2017.Southern
California has long been an epicenter of high-speed car culture. Wild police
pursuits dominate television newscasts. The “Fast & Furious” film
franchise, which many cops blame for hyping street racing, was set in Los
Angeles.Police say incidents of street racing are on the rise, driven by
popular culture and the use of social media to draw contestants and evade
authorities. In what racers call “takeovers,” participants use their cars to
block off streets or intersections to stage races.In recent years, car clubs
from neighboring areas, including Orange County and the Inland Empire, have
begun traveling to Los Angeles to compete against local racing crews,
increasing the number of dangerous drivers in the county, investigators say.
“We have the locations. We have
lots of flat street. We have industrial parks. And the Hollywood connection,”
said Chief Chris O’Quinn, who leads the California Highway Patrol’s Southern
Division in L.A. County. “This is the place to be.”The deadliest year on record
was 2007, with 18 fatal crashes. After a period with relatively few recorded
deaths, the count grew in recent years, with 15 fatalities in 2015, 11 in 2016
and 12 deaths in 2017, the Times analysis shows.The dead were overwhelmingly
male and young: More than half were 21 or younger, including two children, ages
4 and 8, killed along with their mother. Slightly less than half of the
victims— 47% — were behindOne of the few law enforcement agencies tracking
street racing incidents is the CHP, and it has only been doing so since 2016.
From July 2016 to July 2017, the CHP has recorded nearly 700 racing incidents
in L.A. County. Those races involved roughly 17,000 vehicles and 22,000 people,
according to the CHP data. The data did not include fatalities.The Times
examined street racing deaths since 2000. Its tally of 179 killed is a
conservative estimate, because few law enforcement agencies track street racing
fatalities and the incidents themselves are difficult to classify.Authorities
say many of the races that lead to fatalities are, like the crash that killed
Valentina, spontaneous.Valentina’s mother, Lili Trujillo D’Alessandro, didn’t
know what street racing was before her daughter’s 2013 crash.When she dropped
Valentina off at a friend’s house that day, she remembered, “she looked
amazingly adorable. I can’t even explain the love I felt in that moment.” Her
daughter was wearing combat boots and mismatched socks, her brown hair tucked
under a beanie.
“Maybe something inside of me
told me I was never going to see her again,” Trujillo D’Alessandro, 53, said.
the wheel. The rest were either passengers in the speeding vehicles, spectators
or people simply walking on a sidewalk or driving home.
“When you look at a takeover, you
have a very large concentration of people, out of their vehicles, in a small
area, and again you’ve got that 3,000-pound machine that is semi in control at
best,” said Sgt. Jesse Garcia, one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s top street
racing investigators. “You have the potential of a much higher number of
victims should that vehicle lose control.”
Racers at takeover scenes have
grown more aggressive toward police in recent years as well, according to
O’Quinn, the CHP chief. Officers once were able to scatter racers with a flash
of their cruisers’ lights. Now, some in the car scene fight back, either
blocking a roadway to allow friends to escape or, at times, physically
confronting officers.A fire engine and ambulance responding to a medical
emergency near downtown last year came across a takeover and were “surrounded
by a large group in the hundreds, possibly more,” said Peter Sanders, a
spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. The crew put out a distress call
after some racers leaped into the emergency vehicle, Sanders said.No one was
injured, but another ambulance needed to be dispatched to help the subject of
the original emergency call, who was struggling to breathe.
“That activity placed somebody’s
life in danger,” said Capt. Al Lopez, of the LAPD’s Central Traffic bureau,
whose investigators are searching for suspects in that incident.\Three of those
deaths occurred in the fiery 2016 collision. A suspected street racer doing 100
mph lost control of his Dodge Charger on the 5 Freeway and slammed into a UPS
truck, which went airborne, landed on the center divider and collided with two
other vehicles before exploding. Two passengers in one of the cars — Brian
Lewandowski, 18, and Michelle Littlefield, 19 — were killed, along with the
driver of the UPS truck, Scott Treadway, 52. Four others were injured.
“My every day, my every move with
my wife, was about my daughter,” said Willy Littlefield, Michelle’s father.
“When we wake up, we have to remind ourselves that our daughter is not here,
that this is the new reality.”Dealio Lockhart, 37, was charged with three
counts of murder in connection with the incident. He is still awaiting trial. A
second driver remains at large.A few law enforcement agencies have assigned
officers to the task force. But some agencies say they lack manpower. The CHP
has assigned two-full-time detectives, O’Quinn said.At least a dozen officers
in the LAPD’s Central Bureau investigate street racing, focusing on organized
meet-ups since spontaneous racing is nearly impossible to deter. Efforts to
place a similar unit in the Valley, another racing hot zone, were abandoned for
lack of staff, a street racing investigator said.Los Angeles City Councilman
Mitchell Englander, whose district includes a stretch of the San Fernando
Valley that is infamous for racing, is an outspoken critic of the scene’s
culture and the department’s response. Three years ago, the city council
approved an ordinance he authored that requires the LAPD to incorporate a wide
array of data regarding street racing into the department’s crime tracking
system. After a fiery racing-related crash claimed the lives of four young
people in Northridge last October, LAPD officials admitted during a public
hearing that they still weren’t doing so.
“You can’t solve a problem that
you don’t measure,” Englander said.
Late last year, the LAPD began
tracking fatalities, injuries, crashes and the number of citations related to
races, according to Josh Rubenstein, a department spokesman. The information
was added to the department’s crime tracking system in January, he said.The
Times’ analysis found that at least 60 people died in crashes related to street
racing in the city of Los Angeles between 2000 and 2017. Only two other cities
in the county — Long Beach and Commerce — saw more than 10 deaths during that
period.Neither the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department nor the Long Beach
Police Department, two of the largest agencies in the region, have officers
assigned to the county task force.County deputies are being trained to
recognize vehicles that have been modified for racing, but, Det. Christine
Ostrander said, “our deputies are just overworked, understaffed.”When Benny
Golbin, 36, didn’t show up to play saxophone for a Steely Dan cover band in
Seal Beach on a Friday night in January 2016, his family knew something was
wrong.Hours later, they got the news: Golbin, a musician and teacher, was dead.
That afternoon, as he was heading between jobs, a silver Chevrolet Cobalt flew
over a median on Crenshaw Boulevard in Hawthorne and landed on his Honda CR-V.
He was killed instantly.Police said at the time that the Cobalt was racing a
red Camaro. The driver of the Cobalt wasn’t seriously injured. The driver of
the Camaro fled and was later arrested.For Golbin’s family, the loss is only
made worse by the outcome of the criminal prosecution in his death. The drivers
of the Cobalt, Alfredo Perez Davila, and the Camaro, Anthony Leon Holley, were
initially charged with murder but ultimately accepted plea deals. Davila
pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to four years
in prison. Holley pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run and was sentenced to three
years probation after an emotional and contentious court hearing last July. The
prosecutor declined to comment.Benny Golbin’s wife pleaded with the judge for a
stiffer sentence, saying that she would not call the incident a “car accident.”
“It is a murder,” said Anchesa
Bunyasai.
When Golbin’s mother, Sheri
Kessel, hears a saxophone playing on the radio, she turns it off.“This isn’t
just going out and driving fast and having fun with your friends,” she said.
“People get killed. This is life and death.”
The Trump administration on Thursday announced sanctions against 19 Russian individuals and five organizations for meddling in the 2016 election and for other "destructive cyber-attacks" still targeting the U.S. electrical grid and water systems.While the sanctions were the strongest against Russia to date by this administration, President Trump declined to personally criticize Russia directly for its attacks against the country, or even mention the sanctions, when he briefly met with reporters after the Treasury Department's announcement.He simply acknowledged, only when asked by reporters, that he agreed with British Prime Minister Theresa May that Russia was culpable for a separate nerve-agent attack March 4 in Salisbury, England, that targeted a Russian-born double agent and his adult daughter and injured other British citizens.
"It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it — something that should never, ever happen," Trump said, adding, "We're taking it very seriously."
The poisoning in Salisbury was "a very sad situation," the president added, as he sat down to meet with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
The president's comment was far less condemnatory on the poisonings than a separate statement that his administration issued on Thursday with Britain, France and Germany. That joint statement called Russia's use of the military-grade nerve agent a "clear violation" of international law and said that Moscow's failure to respond to Britain's charge "further underlines Russia's responsibility."
"Our concerns are also heightened against the background of a pattern of earlier irresponsible Russian behavior," the four nations said, presumably in reference to Russian aggression against Ukraine and in Syria, its annexation of Crimea and its past attacks on other Russian expatriates in foreign nations.Trump has not criticized Russia for its election meddling, which included spreading fake news stories and hacking the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, according to the U.S. intelligence community. He has, however, repeatedly criticized the federal investigation of that interference, and possible Trump campaign involvement, as a "witch hunt."Yet the new Treasury sanctions echo indictments in that inquiry. They include measures against 13 individuals and three entities, including the Internet Research Agency, that have been charged as part of the ongoing Russia investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.The sanctions also target six other individuals and two entities that are described as "cyber actors" operating on behalf of the Russian government.Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said the new sanctions are part of a broad effort to address "ongoing nefarious attacks" by President Vladimir Putin's government.
"The Administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyber-attacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure," Mnuchin said in a statement.A national security official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe intelligence matters, that Russian military hackers were behind both the destructive "NotPetya" malware attack last year that did billions of dollars in damage across Europe and the United States — disrupting shipping, banking and medicine production — and attempts to infiltrate U.S. electrical grids, nuclear facilities, aviation and water services that are "long-term and still ongoing."The United States and Britain last month jointly blamed Russia for the NotPetya attack, which the Treasury Department on Thursday called "the most destructive and costly cyber-attack in history."
One of the most prominent individuals sanctioned was Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of the Internet Research Agency, the sanctioned entity based in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is a close associate of Putin known in Russia as "Putin's chef" because of his lucrative government catering contracts.According to Mueller's indictment, the Internet Research Agency created fake social media accounts to sow discord during the 2016 presidential campaign, orchestrated pro-Trump rallies from afar and hired actors to dress as Hillary Clinton in cages at demonstrations, among other provocations.Many of the new sanctions were issued to comply with a bipartisan law passed by Congress last summer that required the Trump administration to add sanctions to those imposed by the Obama administration in late 2016. Trump signed the law reluctantly, with a statement that he believed the legislation was "seriously flawed," and his administration is months late in meeting the law's deadline for action.In Congress, lawmakers of both parties endorsed the sanctions, though Democrats and some Republicans complained that the administration's actions were tardy and should go further.
"Vladimir Putin is trying to put the West on the defensive, and he doesn't much care whether he puts innocent lives at risk," Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who speaks regularly to Trump, said in a statement praising the sanctions. He called for more steps against Russia's "reckless" actions.Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican who is friendly with Trump but has criticized the president's friendliness toward Putin, said of Putin, "His aim is to disrupt every aspect of our lives — right down to having the ability to shut off the power in Americans' homes or businesses."Typical of Democrats' reactions was a statement from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who said the new sanctions are "long overdue" and "just a first step."
"Unless we impose a real price, Russia will continue to try to undermine our democracy and threaten our critical infrastructure," Brown said in a statement.Mnuchin, in the Treasury announcement, suggested additional sanctions are coming — "to hold Russian government officials and oligarchs accountable for their destabilizing activities by severing their access to the U.S. financial system."Some lawmakers have called on the Trump administration to press the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to respond collectively to Russia's use of a military-grade nerve agent. Republican Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Trump's national security advisors urging them to press NATO countries to expel some Russian diplomats, as Britain did on Wednesday, and freeze more Russian assets.The United States has not taken such action unilaterally, though on Wednesday the White House endorsed Britain's expulsions.The administration's sanctions come three days after Republicans in control of the House Intelligence Committee announced that they were closing the panel's investigation into Russian meddling and that they had found no evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russians. Democrats disputed that conclusion and complained the panel's work was incomplete.Although Trump has been reluctant to blame Russia for election meddling, he has suggested that the government would take steps to prevent interference in the upcoming midterm election. "Whatever they do, we'll counteract it very strongly," he said during a March 6 news conference.White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders demurred on Thursday when asked at her briefing whether Putin is a friend or foe of the United States. She said Russia will have to decide whether "to be a good actor or a bad actor," adding, "We're going to be tough on Russia until they decide to change their behavior."Top intelligence officials have said Russian political interference remains an ongoing problem as the midterm election approaches, with control of Congress at stake.In repeated hearings on Capitol Hill, the president's top national security advisors have testified that Moscow is poised to use similar tactics. They have also told Congress that the president has not directed them to take any action in response.
"I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that 'there's little price to pay here and therefore I can continue this activity,'" Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the outgoing director of the National Security Agency and leader of the U.S. Cyber Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this month.During a confirmation hearing Thursday, Trump's nominee to replace Rogers, Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, echoed those concerns. "Unless the calculus changes, we should expect continued issues," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Andrew McCabe, a former top FBI official who fell into the crosshairs of President Trump's angry tweets, has been fired less than two days ahead of his planned retirement Sunday after Justice Department officials concluded he had made misleading statements during an internal investigation.McCabe was sacked Friday night by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who acted on a recommendation from the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles allegations of improper conduct.The last-minute dismissal is likely to reduce or delay McCabe's ability to take his government pension despite nearly 22 years of service at the FBI. He was planning to retire on March 18, when he turns 50, the minimum age to draw the pension.Sessions said in a statement that McCabe "made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions."
"The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity and accountability," he said.McCabe had stepped down as deputy director, the No. 2 position at the FBI, in January because of the internal inquiry at the Justice Department, but took leave until he could claim his retirement benefits.His ouster follows an extraordinary series of harsh jabs by Trump, who said that McCabe had a partisan bias against him. The president began attacking McCabe by name on Twitter last summer and exhorted Sessions to get rid of him.At issue was McCabe's role supervising FBI investigations into how Democrat Hillary Clinton handled government emails while she was secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, an issue that dogged her presidential campaign. Trump appeared to blame McCabe for the decision not to charge Clinton with a crime.Trump and other Republicans also accused McCabe of an ethical conflict because McCabe's wife had accepted $700,000 from a political action committee controlled by a close Clinton ally, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, when she unsuccessfully ran for public office in the state.That made McCabe a lighting rod in the partisan battles over the special counsel's Russia investigation and the politically charged inquiries into Clinton and her family foundation. McCabe's supporters said he was a victim of a vindictive president who blamed the Justice Department and FBI for his Russia-related problems.Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary who frequently declines to discuss personnel matters, had no such reluctance when it came to McCabe this week.
"We do think it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor and should have some cause for concern," she said Thursday.Lawyers who specialize in workplace cases for FBI agents and other federal employees say the handling of the McCabe case is highly unusual — starting with the rush to fire him before he could retire. Most disciplinary cases take months or even years to resolve, they said.Longtime federal employees facing disciplinary action toward the end of their careers typically are allowed to resolve the issue by leaving, said Wynter Allen, an attorney with Alden Law Group in Washington.
"I've never seen that and we've handled all sorts of cases. There have been pretty bad things that happen," she said. "Usually if they want you out, they will allow you to retire."Even with the firing, lawyers said, McCabe probably will not lose his entire pension — but it may be reduced, and he may face years of delay before he can begin collecting the pension payments.
His dismissal came after the Justice Department inspector general reportedly concluded that McCabe had inappropriately allowed two FBI officials to brief a Wall Street Journal reporter on a 2016 investigation into Clinton's family foundation, and then misled the inspector general's team about his actions.That led the Office of Professional Responsibility to recommend McCabe be dismissed. He has denied misleading anyone, and his defenders note that background briefings for reporters are common in the White House and other parts of government.In a statement after his dismissal, McCabe said that he and his family had been "the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country.… The president's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all."He said his ouster is "a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people."He called the attack on his credibility part of a larger effort "to taint the FBI, law enforcement and intelligence professionals" in what he called the administration's "ongoing war on the FBI" and the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the election.McCabe said he spent half his FBI career investigating Russian organized crime in New York and the other half focusing on national security and terrorism. "I served in some of the most challenging, demanding investigative and leadership roles in the FBI," he said.
Over the last year, the inspector general has been examining how FBI agents and prosecutors handled the Clinton investigation in the heat of the bitter 2016 presidential campaign.Clinton has blamed her loss in part on the decision by James B. Comey, then-director of the FBI, to announce to Congress that he was restarting the investigation 11 days before the election. Like the earlier inquiry, it closed without finding evidence of wrongdoing.
How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?
McCabe started at the FBI as a field agent in New York and rose to the No. 2 job under Comey. He stepped down as deputy director in late December but had planned to stay at the FBI until Sunday to fulfill requirements for his pension.But Trump was not happy about that either. "McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!" he tweeted at the time.
After Trump fired Comey last May, McCabe ran the FBI for several months until the Senate confirmed Trump's nominee, Christopher A. Wray, as the new director.During that time, McCabe publicly pushed back against Trump's claims that Comey had left the FBI in "tatters." In a Senate hearing, McCabe said Comey had "broad support" among rank-and-file agents and staffers.
