Daily Mail – A hazardous drug that eliminates free will and can wipe the memory of its victims is currently being dealt on the streets of Colombia. The drug is called scopolamine, but is colloquially known as ‘The Devil’s Breath,’ and is derived from a particular type of tree [The borrachero plant: Datura stramonium] common to South America. Stories surrounding the drug are the stuff of urban legends, with some telling horror stories of how people were raped, forced to empty their bank accounts, and even coerced into giving up an organ. Read article
AFP – He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found. Even “all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them,” and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman. Read Article
AFP – The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor on Monday sought new war crimes charges against Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda and another notorious Democratic Republic of Congo warlord. Ntaganda and Sylvestre Mudacumura are two of the “most dangerous” men in a region where millions have been killed in the past 20 years, chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in announcing the charges. Read Article
PressTV – Amnesty International has expressed concerns over the British government’s plans, introduced in the Queen’s speech this week, to expand secret hearing into civil courts. The proposal submitted by the British government, confirmed in the British Queen’s speech during Wednesday’s state opening of the UK Parliament, allows certain court evidence to be heard from behind closed doors. Read Article
Reuters – Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput stripped five priests of their duties and apologized to their victims on Friday following an investigation into a pedophilia scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic archdiocese. The sanctions come as the archdiocese nears the end of its investigation into 27 priests who were put on leave when a January 2011 grand jury report raised questions about their possible involvement in abusing children. Read Article
NY Times – Police officers stopped people on New York City’s streets more than 200,000 times during the first three months of 2012, putting the Bloomberg administration on course to shatter a record set last year for the highest annual tally of street stops. Data on the 203,500 street stops from January through March — up from 183,326 during the same quarter a year earlier — was sent to the City Council from 1 Police Plaza late on Friday under a legal requirement spawned by public outrage over the 1999 fatal police shooting in the Bronx of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black street peddler. Read Article
Guardian – When Alex Aan picked up a copy of Karen Armstrong’s Holy War from his local library in west Sumatra in 2005, he had little inkling of his own religious battle to come. But after posting “God doesn’t exist” on Facebook, the soft-spoken civil servant, 30, faces up to 11 years in jail for what is considered blasphemy in Indonesia. His case has stoked a debate in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, whose 240 million citizens are technically guaranteed freedom of religion but protected by law only if they believe in one of six credos: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism. Those who question any of those face five years in prison for “insulting a major religion”, plus an additional six years if they use the internet to spread such “blasphemy” to others. Read Article
PressTV – UK police mistreatment of people held in their custody has come under spotlight as a new incident captured on CCTV emerges of County Durham police “torture” assault. Two British police staff who twisted and grabbed the arms of a man in order to make him answer their questions after his arrest at Peterlee Police Station in March 2011, have been ordered to pay him £50 each in compensation, with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) condemning the violent act as “a form of torture”. Read Article
Wired – Since the Patriot Act broadly expanded the power of the government to issue National Security Letters demanding customer records, more than 200,000 have been issued to U.S. companies by the FBI. But the perpetual gag orders that accompany them are rarely challenged by the ISPs and other recipients served with such letters. Just how rare these challenges are became more evident following the recent release of a 2010 letter from the Justice Department to a federal lawmaker. Read Article
NY Times – Regulators are investigating potential civil violations surrounding the $2 billion loss that JPMorgan Chase disclosed on Thursday, raising further questions about trading activities at the nation’s biggest bank. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently opened a preliminary investigation into JPMorgan’s accounting practices and public disclosures about the trades, according to people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is not public. Read Article
Forbes – If the world’s largest surveillance agency has a working relationship with the world’s largest Internet firm, that’s no one’s business but theirs, according to an appeals court in the DC Circuit. In the ruling issued Friday, (PDF here ) the court decided that the National Security Agency doesn’t need to either confirm or deny its relationship with Google in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, ruling that a FOIA exemption covers any documents whose exposure might hinder the NSA’s national security mission. Read Article
Daily Mail – A Georgia policeman has come under fire for kicking a pregnant woman so hard she was forced to have an emergency C-section. Raven Dozier said that when officer Jerad Wheeler came to her house to quell her brother’s dispute with her mother, Wheeler used a Taser on him. She cried out and Wheeler pounced, kicking the nine-month pregnant woman in the stomach and charging her with obstruction. Read Article
Newser – An Iranian cartoonist has been sentenced to 25 lashings for drawing a member of parliament wearing a soccer jersey, reports MSNBC’s Cartoon Blog. Mahmoud Shokraiyeh illustrated a caricature of the politician as part of a news story involving the relocation of a soccer team to a different city. It could be the sign of a heightening of Iran’s already strict censorship. Read Article
Guardian – Police in New York City disproportionately stop black and Latino people even in low-crime areas, leading to a “two-tiered” policing system that divides along racial lines, according to civil rights campaigners. A new analysis of NYPD figures by the New York Civil Liberties Union challenges the police’s assertion racial disparities in stop-and-frisks reflect the geography of New York’s high-crime areas. Read Article
Guardian – The home secretary, Theresa May, is to make a renewed attempt to deport Abu Qatada after judges at the European court of human rights rejected his appeal to the Strasbourg court. May said: “I am pleased by the European court’s decision. The Qatada case will now go through the British courts. I am confident the assurances we have from Jordan mean we can put Qatada on a plane and get him out of Britain.” Read Article
BBC – South Africa must investigate Zimbabwean officials over allegations they tortured opposition figures in 2007, a Pretoria high court has ruled. Under international law, South Africa has a duty to investigate crimes against humanity, the judge said. Prosecutors had previously refused to investigate the officials, who had travelled to South Africa. Read Article
AAP – Twitter is challenging a court order to turn over to law enforcement data on one of its users involved in Occupy Wall Street in a case described by a civil liberties group as a major test of online freedom of speech. The motion filed on Monday in a New York state court said the order would require Twitter to violate federal law and denies the user the ownership rights to his Twitter messages. Read Article
Guardian – Twitter has moved to quash a court order issued by the Manhattan district attorney that would require it to hand over the tweets of a writer and Occupy Wall Street protester arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last October. In a motion filed in the criminal court in New York on Monday Twitter argued that it should not be forced to give the prosecutor three months worth of tweets by Malcolm Harris, who was arrested on the bridge along with 700 other activists. Read Article
RT – Ten months after Fullerton, California police officers beat a 37-year-old homeless man to death, video footage of Kelly Thomas’ last few minutes of consciousness were showed in a Santa Ana, CA courtroom on Monday. Monday marked the first day of a preliminary hearing that will go on to determine if there is enough evidence for two Fullerton cops — Officers Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli — to be ordered to stand trial for the May 5, 2011 beating of Thomas. Read Article
Reuters – U.S. healthcare group Allergan has received a subpoena from the U.S. government over its gastric banding system that is used to treat obesity. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday Allergan said the subpoena from the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, requests the production of documents relating to its Lap-Band gastric banding system. Read article
Reuters – Bahrain began a civilian trial of 13 protest leaders on Tuesday but adjourned the session because hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and another defendant were too ill to attend, lawyers and witnesses said. Last week the Gulf Arab state’s highest appeals court ordered a re-trial after a military court convicted the men last year of using violence in protests led by majority Shi’ites in an effort to topple the Sunni monarchy. Read Article
Reuters – Scientists who scanned the brains of men convicted of murder, rape and violent assaults have found the strongest evidence yet that psychopaths have structural abnormalities in their brains. The researchers, based at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, said the differences in psychopaths’ brains mark them out even from other violent criminals with anti-social personality disorders (ASPD), and from healthy non-offenders. Read article
Telegraph – A panel of five judges will hold talks on whether the case should be heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. Qatada’s appeal, lodged on April 17, prompted a row with Home Secretary Theresa May over whether the three-month appeal deadline from the court’s original decision on January 17 expired on the night of April 16 or 17. Read Article
AFP — A coalition of green groups in Indonesia on Thursday criticised a moratorium on deforestation as “weak”, saying the year-long ban still excludes large tracts of the country’s carbon-rich forests. Greenpeace, which is leading the coalition, said government maps that mark protected areas exclude 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) of peatland — biodiverse swamp-like forests that hold rich carbon reserves. Greenpeace said the government must review all existing logging permits on the country’s natural forests and peatland, and improve governance based on an accurate set of maps. Read article
The Eagle 100.9 FM – The Town of Okotoks is taking the Fluoride out of it’s drinking water. In a 6-1 vote council agreed to repeal the existing fluoridation bylaw and direct administration to apply to Alberta Environment to stop putting it into the town’s water.
Councillor Florence Christophers, who originally brought the motion forward, was pleased that it passed. Read article
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