🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Pressure is growing on US President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to use West-supplied weapons to strike Russian territory.
Russia's Vladimir Putin has warned of "serious consequences", especially for what he called "small countries" in Europe.On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington’s stance on the matter would "adapt and adjust" based on changing battlefield conditions.
He is currently in the Czech capital, Prague, for a meeting of Nato foreign ministers.White House national security spokesman John Kirby said late on Wednesday that even though US support for Kyiv had evolved, "right now, there's also no change to our policy".
Ukraine has been struggling to counter a Russian offensive in the east of the country, while the city of Kharkiv has suffered weeks of deadly attacks, often launched by Russia from military outposts near the Ukrainian border.Mr Blinken’s statement, during a trip to Europe, followed more direct comments made earlier this week by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who said Ukraine should be “allowed” to use weapons supplied by the West against military sites on Russian territory - although strictly not on civilian targets.
Mr Macron has for some time advocated for more direct intervention in the Ukraine war – but other Western leaders also appear to be softening to the idea.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has remained cautious in public but a spokesman in Berlin said that "defensive action is not limited to one's own territory, but also includes the territory of the aggressor".Last week, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg told the Economist that the West should allow Ukraine to defend itself by striking military bases in Russia.
And that includes striking targets on Russian territory,” he said.UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said earlier this month that it was up to Ukraine to decide how to use British weapons, while this week the Polish Deputy Defence Minister said that Ukrainians could use Polish weapons “as they see fit”.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has previously said it was "unfair" for Western countries to impose limits on the use of their weapons, while acknowledging that Ukraine could not risk the support of its partners.
And the cops all will be able judge 25 feet down to the inch, it's like their amazing ability to know exactly how fast you're driving with just their Spidey sense. With their super selective hearing, though, they can only hear gunshots from hundreds of miles around so they're always scared, it's why they need their safety circle and emotional support gun.
if you're so terrified of everyone and everything that, even fully-armed and with full body armor, countless backup, and military-grade armored vehicles, you still can't feel unsafe to the point that you need to criminalize citizens even approaching you, then you just may not be psychologically fit to be a cop. or outside of a mental hospital.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Jeff Landry signed into law Tuesday, fear the measure could hinder the public’s ability to film officers, which has increasingly been used to hold police accountable — including in high profile cases, such as the killing of George Floyd.
“This is part of our continued pledge to address public safety in this state,” Landry, who has a law enforcement background, said during the bill signing.
Author of the legislation state Rep. Bryan Fontenot, like his fellow Republican lawmakers, said the new law provides officers “peace of mind and safe distance to do their job.”
“The twenty-five-foot buffer legislation fundamentally seeks to curtail Louisianians’ ability to hold police accountable for violence and misconduct,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana said in a statement Tuesday.
“At 25 feet, that person can’t spit in my face when I’m making an arrest,” state Rep. Fontenot said while presenting his bill in a committee earlier this year.
Language in the measure appears to put in some safety nets, stating that an acceptable “defense to this crime” includes establishing that the “lawful order or command was neither received nor understood by the defendant.”
I kind of wish this would just...happen faster. Obviously, it would be bad. But I'm hoping if enough people had a cold water shock of inflation that hit hard and fast, maybe people would be more likely to protest and push for political change that would help the average person.
It's all likely more complicated than that. It would be nice to see positive change in my lifetime though. It makes me laugh when the economy can be simultaneously "good" but the general population is spending less. Obviously someone is doing well out there. It's just not us
One of those cases that really should unite literally everyone behind police reform, but will sadly be lost among the noise of all the other horrible shit going on.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
A California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.
A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.
The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.
Officer Joanna Piña, who took the call, reported Perez Jr’s demeanor as “suspicious”, claiming he seemed “distracted and unconcerned with his father’s disappearance”.
Perez Jr sat for hours of initial questioning while officers obtained additional search warrants allowing them to access devices they had seized.
During the interrogation, Perez Jr started pulling out his hair, hitting himself and tearing off his shirt, nearly falling to the floor, at which point the officers laughed at him and told him he was stressing his dog, the judge summarized.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
These microscopic plastic particles show up in the deepest parts of the ocean, at the top of Mount Everest, and are in everything from the dust in your home to your food and water.
Victoria Ou and Justin Huang, both 17, hope to prevent that one day with their award-winning device that removes microplastics from water using ultrasonic — or high-frequency — sound waves.
The Texas duo received first place in their Google-sponsored category, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and they also snagged the $50,000 prize from the Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations.
Though the ultrasonic technique is in its very early stages, the high schoolers hope that one day it could filter the plastic out of your drinking water and from the industrial and wastewater that humans dump into the environment.
While it's unclear how microplastics affect human health, many common chemicals in plastic have been linked to increased risk of cancer, fertility and development issues, and hormone disruption.
One solution is to use chemical coagulants, such as aluminum hydroxide, that — when added to water — clump microplastics together into larger, more easily filtered chunks.
This is a difficult subject, but the inclusion of Meta pushes this towards frivolous litigation, and then over the cliff entirely with Activision.
“Instagram creates a connection between …an adolescent …and the gun and a gun company,”
Instagram sees what someone is looking at and shows them more of it; it's an amplification chamber. My wife gets ads for Harvest Moon-likes, and I get ads for socialist laptop stickers. For this kid to be getting gun ads, he was looking up and liking posts about guns (I train people in firearm safety, and post pictures from range days, but I've never gotten a single ad for a gun on IG), and that starts making this lawsuit about whether it is the job of parents or companies to monitor their kids' online activities. If he is seeking something out that he shouldn't be, whose job is it to stop him?
Call of Duty, a war-based video game with a rifle similar to the one used in the shooting...
...conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems.
Including Activision is the real indicator of intent here; the rhetoric of violent video games making kids do violence has been debunked time and time again, but Activision and Meta do have much deeper pockets than DD.
So what is the goal of this suit?
Suing DanielDefense could ostensibly be in order to shut them down as a business, thus decreasing the supply of firearms readily-available for purchase.
Suing Meta for money, without actually asking the court to prohibit them from allowing firearms-related content, seems like it wouldn't do anything to prevent this elsewhere unless Meta decides the risk of firearms ads just aren't worth it.
Suing Activision is going to... make them stop making Call of Duty games? One of their flagship franchises? No.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting are suing the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack, the maker of a video game and Instagram parent company Meta.
In two new lawsuits, they claim the companies helped promote dangerous weapons to a generation of “socially vulnerable” young men, including the 18-year old gunman.Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the attack at Robb Elementary School.
The dual lawsuits - filed in Texas and California - are against Activision, the developer of the military video game series “Call of Duty”; Daniel Defense, the gun manufacturer known for its high-end rifles; and Meta.
The companies are accused of being responsible for “grooming” a generation of young people who live out violent video game fantasies in the real world, with easily accessible weapons of war.
The gunman, Salvador Ramos, used an AR-15 style rifle in the attack.The lawsuits contend that Meta and Activision "knowingly exposed" him to the gun he used at Uvalde and conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems.
Additionally, the families announced that they will be taking new legal action against 92 individual officers from the state's Department of Public Safety for "shocking and extensive failures" during the shooting response.With files from Peter Bowes
U.S. News
Hot