Drug laws should be designed to minimise damage. This might sound obvious. But the UK’s drug laws – along with those of most other countries – arguably do not have this effect. Indeed there is a strong argument that in many respects the blanket prohibition, under criminal statutes, of substances from cannabis to heroin along with the myriad synthetic substances now widely used to mimic their effects, does more harm than good.This is not a novel point of view. Drug experts in the UK and around the world have been pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies in current policies for ages, with former Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, among those who have argued for a new approach focused on human rights and public health. In the UK, polls show a majority supports liberalisation of the law on cannabis, following the example of countries including Portugal. But since this shift in public attitudes has so far been ignored by the Home Office, which instead brought in a sweeping ban on so-called “legal highs” in 2016, this week’s call for reform by a cross-party trio of MPs is refreshing.Two former ministers, Lib Dem Norman Lamb and Conservative Jonathan Djanogly, along with Labour’s David Lammy, have been to Canada to report on the legalisation of cannabis there for a short BBC documentary. The answers they have come back with are mixed. Regulation, it turns out, is no miracle cure, with a black market still thriving. But the MPs have shown it is possible to think about this subject in a nuanced way, and to learn new things.To say that such openness to change is overdue is an understatement. Evidence of the vicious and destabilising effects of the illegal drugs business on both producer and consumer countries is not new. Drug cartels, blamed for up to 200,000 deaths in Mexico over the past decade, have now branched into the synthetic opioids that caused an American addiction epidemic. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has overseen the killing of 5,000 people in his uniquely murderous version of the global “war on drugs”.While the impact in the UK is less extreme, the entanglement of drug dealing with other forms of exploitation is apparent from recent “county lines” cases in which children have been manipulated by traffickers. The rate of drug deaths in Scotland has jumped to among the highest in the world. As in the US, those convicted of drugs offences and incarcerated are disproportionately black men and boys. When Michael Gove, a senior government minister, has admitted taking cocaine multiple times, such disparities leave a particularly bitter taste.Spurred on by the confessions among their own ranks, ministers should bring calm and wise heads together at the earliest opportunity. Policing and sentencing are crucial pieces of the jigsaw. Britain should not have to wait any longer for a rational, evidence-based approach to drugs. Topics Drugs policy Opinion Drugs trade Juan Manuel Santos Norman Lamb Drugs editorials

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has cast doubt on a possible plot to target Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli despite the arrest of a man with suspected links to Islamic State by Turkish police.The suspect, a Syrian national, was arrested after a police operation in Osmaniye and was among several Isis members detained.Turkish police allege the suspect, named in the charge sheet as 25-year-old Abdul Karim Helif, was planning the attack as retaliation for the mass shooting in March at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.Two sim cards, one in a Samsung phone, are central to the case against him.Morrison has confirmed the Gallipoli memorial service on Thursday will go ahead as planned. He has spoken to Australia’s chief of defence force, Angus Campbell, on the phone, who is on the ground and will address the ceremony.“The reports that we are receiving are inconclusive about any link between that arrest and any possible planned event at Gallipoli itself,” Morrison told reporters in Townsville on Thursday. “In fact to make that assumption would be, I think, making a very big assumption.”He noted the arrest had taken place three hours away from where the Gallipoli memorial service is held.“It is fairly routine for Turkish authorities to arrest people with suspected terrorist links,” Morrison said.Asked if security had been beefed up, Morrison said normal arrangements were in place.Turkish police assessed the threat to be serious but gave no details about the nature of the proposed attack.Australians and New Zealanders travel to Turkey each year for memorial services commemorating the failed 1915 military campaign by Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and allied forces to drive Ottoman troops from Gallipoli and the Dardanelles region.Soldiers from New Zealand, Australia, Turkey and other countries held services on the peninsula on Wednesday. At dawn on Thursday, Australians and New Zealanders were due to hold a special dawn service marking the landings.The commemorations come a month after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, faced criticism from Australia and New Zealand for comments he made after the Christchurch shooting that invoked Gallipoli.Turkey has said Isis was responsible for bombings in 2015 and 2016 in which 200 people died. Although the militant group has not been active recently in the country, authorities still carry out routine operations against suspected Isis members.The Australian veterans affairs minister, Darren Chester, said the arrest was primarily a matter for Turkish authorities.“We work closely with the local Turkish authorities on security arrangements,” he told ABC Radio National on Thursday. “Obviously the tragic events in Christchurch had nothing to do with the events of 1915 on the peninsula and there’s a great deal of respect between the Turkish people and Australian and New Zealanders.”The Australian War Memorial director, Brendan Nelson, praised Turkish authorities for dealing with the issue.“The Turkish authorities went to extraordinary lengths to see that the Gallipoli peninsula was secure for the Anzac Day services that are being held there.”Turkish nationals were banned from attending the dawn service amid heightened security fears.“Unfortunately we live in a world where there are people – wherever they live, whatever their background, whatever their beliefs – who are fundamentalists intent on disrupting what we do,” Nelson said. “The most important thing we can do is go about living our lives.”Reuters contributed to this report Topics Turkey Islamic State First world war Syria New Zealand Asia Pacific Middle East and North Africa news

Enlarge this image Guards stand in front the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2018, during a ceremony to remember the victims of the attacks in November 2015. On Friday, a man who rented an apartment to two fleeing terrorists received a four-year prison sentence. Benoit Tessier/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Benoit Tessier/AFP/Getty Images Guards stand in front the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2018, during a ceremony to remember the victims of the attacks in November 2015. On Friday, a man who rented an apartment to two fleeing terrorists received a four-year prison sentence. Benoit Tessier/AFP/Getty Images A man who was accused of harboring terrorists in Paris after one of the city's most deadly attacks has been sentenced to four years in prison.The Paris Court of Appeal sentenced Jawad Bendaoud on Friday.Prosecutors argued that in November 2015, he hid two men, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, who were on the run after coordinated bombings and gunfire wreaked havoc at the Bataclan concert hall, cafes, bars and the national stadium.The onslaught of violence in France's capital killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. World Analysis: The End Of The 'Caliphate' Doesn't Mean The End Of ISIS Bendaoud, an admitted drug dealer, was nicknamed the "ISIS landlord" but he denied knowing about the men's actions when he agreed to let them rent an apartment in Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris.It was "a fetid flat with no water or toilet," the Guardian reported.He helped the fugitives through Abaaoud's cousin, a young French woman named Hasna Aitboulahcen. She had called another drug dealer who connected her with Bendaoud.According to the Guardian: "Bendaoud described shaking hands with Abaaoud, who arrived at the squat on 17 November wearing a football shirt of the Paris team PSG and asked which direction to pray in. Bendaoud told the owner of a local pizzeria about the 'dodgy Belgians' he had rented a flat to, but he told the court he had not recognised them as the wanted terrorists because he had been high on crack cocaine after a 19-year-old who he was having an affair with told him she was pregnant. He later said the TV in his bedroom had been broken so he had not seen the news." A friend of Aitboulahcen became aware of the jihadists' hideout and contacted authorities.In a dramatic police raid days after the Paris attacks, Abaaoud, a Belgian member of ISIS believed to have orchestrated the attacks, and Akrouh, were killed. Abaaoud's cousin also died in the siege. Technology New Zealand Mosque Attacks Raise Questions About Internet's Role In Radicalization Around that time, Bendaoud was standing on the street, telling journalists he was unaware of the terrorists' identities, when a police officer arrested him live on camera.A French court acquitted him last year, concluding that prosecutors had not proved that he knew the tenants to be terrorists. The Paris prosecutor's office filed the appeal that ended in a prison sentence.Bendaoud said the ordeal ruined his life, that he wanted compensation and was planning to write a book, according to France 24.The outlet reports that on Friday, he shook his head faintly when the verdict was delivered.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. You've probably heard President Trump say terrifying things about the predominantly Salvadoran gang MS-13 and how it's terrorizing people in some communities in the U.S. Here's the president six months after taking office, speaking at Suffolk County Community College on Long Island.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Since January 16 - think of this - MS-13 gang members have brutally murdered 17 beautiful young lives in this area - on Long Island alone. Think of it. They butchered those little girls. They kidnap. They extort. They rape and they rob. They prey on children. They shouldn't be here. They stomp on their victims. They beat them with clubs. They slash them with machetes, and they stab them with knives. They have transformed peaceful parks and beautiful, quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields. They're animals.GROSS: In Trump's State of the Union address, he said that many MS-13 gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors. That led into his description of his plan to overhaul the immigration system. My guest Jonathan Blitzer writes that the president has become obsessed with MS-13 But he might actually be strengthening the gang by talking about how menacing it is. And the anti-immigration policies Trump's administration is putting into effect are hurting many of the same people who were targeted by MS-13.Blitzer is a staff writer for The New Yorker who covers immigration. We're going to talk about the history of MS-13, who the gang members are, who the victims are and where this gang fits in the current story of American immigration. We're also going to talk about the uncertain future of DACA and this week's Senate debate about overhauling the immigration system.Jonathan Blitzer, welcome to FRESH AIR. Do you know how MS-13 became such an obsession of Donald Trump's?JONATHAN BLITZER: It's an interesting question. I followed Donald Trump on Long Island during the Republican primaries in the spring of 2016. And you'd think that MS-13 would have been an issue for him then if he was so fixated on a gang. I mean, MS-13 has been on Long Island since the '90s. But all throughout the primary campaign and during all of these very dramatic public appearances that he made on Long Island to different towns, he never once mentioned MS-13 at the time. So the question of sort of when it burst onto his consciousness seems to have been with the murder of two girls in September of 2016. It kind of lined up all of Trump's favorite obsessions on the immigration issue. The girls were American citizens. They were sort of sympathetic teenagers. They were brutally, brutally killed.And it wasn't until after the election - there was kind of this very dramatic moment during an interview he gave with Time magazine as the Person of the Year when he was sitting at his desk in Trump Tower and kind of cut away and grabbed a copy of Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. And on the cover of Newsday was more information about this grisly set of murders. And that seems to be the moment when he embraced this issue, the issue of MS-13 violence as a major talking point that would define how he sort of framed the immigration debate from that point forward.GROSS: So how has he used MS-13 to frame the debate on immigration?BLITZER: I mean, MS-13, for him, solves all kinds of rhetorical problems. So first of all, he wants to portray immigrants nationwide as being criminals. And that's obviously empirically untrue. But also statistically, that's wildly inaccurate. Crime in immigrant communities tends to be much lower. Immigrants tend to be much more law abiding than citizens.And so he needs - in order to kind of drum up this menace of immigrant criminality, he needs to just find individual examples that are particularly bracing. And the murders at the hands of MS-13 members are really horrific acts. I mean, people are killed with baseball bats, bludgeoned with machetes. I mean, it really is nightmarish kind of stuff. And so that helps him, for one thing, paint this portrait of rampant criminality at the hands of immigrants; the need to crack down on immigrants generally as an issue of public safety. So MS-13 helps him frame questions about sanctuary cities, which is like a particular bete noire for him. He feels that sanctuary cities threaten to undermine the rule of law. They're an affront to the citizen population.It helps him shape the debate on DREAMers and recipients of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is kind of a big congressional issue now ever since Trump canceled the program in September of 2017. He often mentions the two in the same sentence as a way of trying to sell wholesale draconian overhauls of border security measures and interior enforcement measures. MS-13 is useful for him there.And it also allows him to continue to prop up officers at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, who for years have had a series of guidelines dictating how they do their jobs, who they go after for arrests. And he has systematically removed all of those guidelines. And by mentioning MS-13 and by mentioning the sort of public safety threat that's rampant across America, as he describes it, ICE agents and officers are meant to have more leeway in combating this threat. So it kind - it's sort of a useful - it's a useful talking point for him because it almost touches on every issue that he wants to press.GROSS: OK. So MS-13 is a great talking point for Donald Trump to serve his mission of cracking down on immigration. What is MS-13? It's described as a gang. But it's not like it's a street gang like the Crips or the Bloods. It's much larger than that. Like, what - who are they? What are they?BLITZER: Actually, it is more like the Bloods or the Crips than it is like, you know, Mexican cartels or Colombian cartels that have this transnational reach. The gang began in Los Angeles in the 1980s. And what led to the rise of the gang was that there was a massive civil war in El Salvador. The U.S. weighed in on the side of the military government at the time in El Salvador.A very brutal war - 75,000 civilians were killed. And there was a massive refugee crisis. I mean, close to a quarter of the population of El Salvador fled to the United States. And a lot of these people arrived in inner cities, particularly in Los Angeles on the West Coast. And they found themselves in a climate where there actually were rampant street gangs - black street gangs, Mexican street gangs - and these Salvadoran refugees were brutalized by them.And so they started to form groups of their own, essentially as a kind of self-defense. And with time, these groups grew more and more violent. They were thrown into prisons across the state. And in prison, their identity further coalesced. And eventually, in the mid-1990s, the U.S. started emptying prisons in California and deporting these gangsters en masse back to El Salvador. And this is...GROSS: And how...BLITZER: Yeah.GROSS: ...Did the gang change once these MS-13 members were deported to El Salvador?BLITZER: Well, for one thing, it took a local gang problem that was festering on the streets of Los Angeles, and it turned it into an international crisis. El Salvador, at the time, had been decimated by more than 12 years of civil war. The police force had essentially been dismantled. You had armed ex-guerrillas who were kind of ranging around parts of the country. And these guys start to arrive. They have money because a lot of them had been living in the U.S. They have a sense of style; they listen to rap music; they had a fashion - all of these things that were sort of hallmarks of Los Angeles gang culture at the time.And that culture quickly took root on the streets of El Salvador. And over time - over the next several years, it started to fan out across Central America - so Honduras, Guatemala - and increasingly made those countries very, very dangerous and led to separate refugee crises that were the result of people fleeing violence there.GROSS: So how did the nature of MS-13 change as it became international?BLITZER: I don't know that the character of the gang changed much. And this is a really interesting question about the gang's formation - and its current strength. MS-13 is often portrayed as a kind of transnational criminal organization, and that puts it in the company of Mexican drug cartels, Colombian drug cartels. MS-13 definitely doesn't have that kind of reach. In fact, they don't have that much sway over the drug trade for one thing. They don't do great international business.There was a study recently that looked at the revenues of MS-13 in El Salvador. So there are about 60,000 gang members in El Salvador, and there's no question that the country is sort of routed by this gang. But the gang itself, for the control that it exerts over that entire country, doesn't have revenue streams that are that striking. It's something like $30 million a year. I mean, you compare that to the cartels - the Mexican cartels that are trafficking in tens of billions of dollars a year - I mean, these are sort of small, kind of local territorial kind of mafias.GROSS: Do you know why MS-13's violence is often very gruesome, such as chopping up a body with a machete?BLITZER: I mean, I think dating back to its origins, I think it was a matter of proving their toughness, proving that they could hang with some very violent gangs that at the time were brutalizing Salvadoran refugees in Los Angeles. And I think it's mainly their - it's their strength as a recruitment tool. I mean, the more menacing and dangerous and scary they seem, the more they can pressure people to join its ranks.Recruitment often is a form of coercion. And so the more scared people are of the gang, the more likely they are to join it. And the more brutal its reputation, the more marginalized people whom the gang typically fixates on both to recruit and to victimize, tend to feel like, well, we have no really other choice other than to cooperate with these gang members.GROSS: Let's take a break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jonathan Blitzer, and he writes about immigration for The New Yorker. He's a staff writer there. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF BOMBINO'S "AZAMANE (MY BROTHERS UNITED)")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Jonathan Blitzer, who writes about immigration for The New Yorker. He's a staff writer there. And we've been talking about the gang MS-13, which is one of Trump's big anti-immigration talking points.So you described how MS-13 got started in California, then when a lot of the members were deported back to El Salvador, it became more international. So why does Long Island have such a large - relatively large population of people in MS-13?BLITZER: Well, typically, the gang thrives in areas where there are large enclaves of Central Americans. And there are a lot of Salvadorans on Long Island. You know, it's a funny thing to talk about because in some senses, given how gruesome the violence is and given how much attention the gang is getting now, you'd think that we're talking about huge numbers of people who are involved. The numbers are relatively small when you really dig into them.I mean, in Suffolk County, for example, on Long Island - and this is the county that so obsesses Donald Trump - you're talking about roughly 400 suspected MS-13 members. And so that number is relatively low when you think about the fact that, you know, there are close to 60,000 Salvadorans on Long Island. One of the issues that's come up recently, and this adds a whole layer of complexity, is that over the years, as more and more Central American kids have fled the gangs in Central America, the U.S. has had a kind of refugee crisis. It's known as the unaccompanied minors crisis.And so a lot of these kids - we're talking about kids between the ages of 6 and 17 - have started showing up at the U.S. border seeking some form of asylum essentially. And between, you know, 2014 and the current moment, we're talking about, you know, over 150,000 kids. These are kids who came without their parents who are fleeing violence and trying to reunite with family members who are living in the U.S. And what the U.S. government does when these kids show up at the border is they briefly take them into detention. They do a kind of quick form of vetting, and then they place them with family members across the U.S.And this is where your question gets to kind of how the gang and certain immigrant enclaves kind of tend to come together. A lot of these kids have wound up on Long Island because they have family members there. And so between 2014 and now, there were something like 8,600 unaccompanied kids who were placed on Long Island. And while that's happening, gang violence in the area tends to sort of flare up because you have suddenly more victims, more people who are socially marginalized who have just arrived in towns they don't know. Their parents are working multiple jobs. They feel isolated. They feel scared. They don't speak the language. These are easy targets for the gang both as victims and as recruits.And again, it's complex because the people the gang targets as recruits are often coerced into joining. And so you kind of have all these different overlays now. And it makes it very, very hard to solve this problem when law enforcement and when the federal government use MS-13 as a way of portraying immigrant communities writ large as being crime ridden because the victims are stuck in these communities. And they end up being trapped between law enforcement on the one hand and the gangs that are victimizing them on the other.GROSS: So these are kids who feel they have to protect themselves from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that they have to protect themselves from MS-13, so they're very vulnerable.BLITZER: You think about what these kids face every day. They go to schools where there's some gang members in their classes. They live on streets and in sort of small hamlets where gang members are their neighbors. Everywhere they look, gang members are part of their world. And, you know, they're trapped because, for example, if you look at what standards ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement - uses to arrest someone suspected of gang activity that the standards are extremely nebulous.So we're talking about things like, OK, you were seen in the company of known gangsters. OK, well, if you go to school with someone like that, well, there you are. You're in the company of a known gangster. Oftentimes, clothes that kids wear are used against them as proof that they might be involved in the gangs.So certain kinds of clothes - for a time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, in conjunction with local police, were picking up kids who were wearing Chicago Bulls shirts and jerseys because, for a time, the gang - there was some crossover between gang members and that kind of garb because the horns on the Bulls insignia resembled the gang sign. But imagine showing up at a place not knowing better. The schools don't specify what clothes you can and can't wear. And then the next thing you know, you're wearing a shirt that somehow triggers the suspicion of immigration authorities and you end up in detention.So the standards are extremely low for what gets you on ICE's radar in these kinds of contexts. And oftentimes these are the victims of gang activity. And so they're scared to report crime because they're seeing that immigration authorities are kind of cracking down in general on the undocumented population. So they're scared to come forward. They're scared to share tips that they see. There are probably - people living in these communities alongside these gangsters probably have the best information of anyone as to how the gang is operating, but they're increasingly driven into the shadows by this indiscriminate policing that is the result of all of this political rhetoric and kind of this new fixation on cracking down on the gang.GROSS: So MS-13 is a gang that really is a menace. They really are dangerous. They really are putting other people at risk, most especially Salvadorans who are immigrants here legally or illegally. So what do you think are President Trump's biggest misrepresentations or exaggerations when he's using MS-13 as a talking point for his anti-immigration policies?BLITZER: I think there's a lot of slippage in his language between talking about gang members and talking about immigrants. And so I would say that's the first big misrepresentation, that the president is using MS-13 as a stand in for immigrants generally. And so when he talks about the gang, it is generally understood that he's talking about immigrants. And that obviously completely misrepresents the situation.GROSS: What else?BLITZER: I think that his description of how the gang operates misrepresents the actual structure of the gang and misrepresents the specific ways in which the gang is dangerous. What makes MS-13 so hard to deal with is the fact that it's extremely decentralized. It tends to operate in these kind of almost autonomous local cliques that follow their own directives, that have their own sort of mini leadership structure. And so the more the president acts as though this is a carefully coordinated and highly sophisticated international - transnational operation, I think the more - the law enforcement response tends to misplay the way in which this gang takes root in communities.So it would be a lot more useful, quite honestly, if law enforcement invested money and time in doing anti-gang outreach, improving counseling services at local schools, trying to provide avenues for people who are involved in the gang to transition out of the gang. You know, one thing, for example, that the president is so obsessed with - and this would be another answer to the question - is that the solution to solving the MS-13 problem if you were to believe Trump is you have to deport everyone. You cannot deport away this problem.In fact, deporting gang members in the first place is what created the problem. And second of all, there is a critical mass of MS-13 members in the U.S. who are citizens. And so the gang itself is never going to go away unless you try to address the root causes of it, unless you try to address why certain marginalized members of the community end up joining this gang. You're always going to have this threat. And this threat has existed since well before Trump came into power. And you can watch over the years as the violence has spiked and then kind of ebbed. And oftentimes it's been the quieter, longer-term enforcement strategies that tend to curb the gang's spread.But all of the president's hyperbole about the gang makes it worse. And I will also say that the more the president talks about how brutal and murderous the gang is - and the gang is brutal and the gang is murderous - but he is so obsessed with playing up the violence of the gang, the easier it is for the gang to recruit, the easier it is for the gang to intimidate people into joining or into being acquiescent.GROSS: My guest is Jonathan Blitzer, who writes about immigration for The New Yorker. We'll talk more after a break. And David Edelstein will review the new film "Black Panther." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "NAR-THIS")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration for The New Yorker, where he's a staff writer. He's written extensively about the predominantly-Salvadoran gang MS-13 which carries out gruesome acts of violence and tries to recruit teenagers who are undocumented. But Blitzer says President Trump, who often talks about MS-13 in his speeches, is using the gang as a stand-in for all immigrants, which misrepresents the situation. Blitzer has also been writing about DACA and the president's decision to terminate the program March 5 unless Congress passes legislation extending it. This week, the Senate has been debating overhauling the immigration system.So if DACA is extended or if DACA is totally cancelled, what impact would that have on MS-13?BLITZER: There is no relationship between DACA and MS-13. And that's, you know, that's another thing that the administration has done. And it's interesting. When the Trump administration canceled DACA in September of last year, the person who came out to make the announcement, it wasn't the president, who I think was too nervous about delivering a highly unpopular message because a lot of Americans are behind DACA recipients. And it wasn't the head of DHS - the Department of Homeland Security - which is the department in charge of administering DACA. It was Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, who represents the kind of ideological nerve center of the Trump administration on immigration. And one of the things that Jeff Sessions said was that we are canceling DACA because the program has lured people from Central America, these unaccompanied kids, to the U.S. because they see that there's a chance for them to get legalized through this program.Now, that is wrong. All of the studies, all of the evidence, every form of research on this subject makes the case pretty clearly that people are fleeing to the U.S. not because they're lured by something like DACA, which none of them have ever heard of, but because they're fleeing gangs. But you hear the administration's effort to link the two issues. They're trying because there's really no justification for ending DACA, certainly no justification that, you know, helps the public interest in any way.It's a program that benefits close to a million kids who have no criminal records at all, who have gone to school in the U.S., who have been living in the U.S. since they were small children. There is no connection whatsoever between DACA and MS-13. But the more the administration can kind of create this sort of general haziness over the issue of immigration writ large, I think the more they feel they have political capital to push off this DACA decision further.GROSS: This would be a good time to ask you to explain what DACA is and who it applies to.BLITZER: Sure. In 2012, President Obama issued an executive action creating this policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is DACA. And there were roughly 1.8 million people who were eligible for this program. The idea was to protect people - immigrants - who were undocumented who came to the country as kids, who came illegally with their parents who were too young to have been kind of conscious of what the legal stakes of their entry into the U.S. were and who had made the U.S. their home ever since.And there were very strict eligibility requirements, basically, for how you qualified for DACA. So you couldn't have any sort of criminal record. You had to have either been in school or had graduated from high school. And then there were a series of more specific requirements about how old you were at the time of the program, when you came to the U.S., those kinds of things designed to really hone the population that this protected.And what DACA itself did was it gave its recipients what was called this kind of weird ad hoc legal status known as lawful presence. It established lawful presence for these people. And basically, what that meant was you can get work authorization so you can work legally. Now, that opens up all kinds of doors for people. That means they can qualify for bank loans. That means they can take out mortgages. For kids whose families were partly undocumented or who lived in mixed-status homes where some members were undocumented, others were citizens and some now had DACA, that meant that these kids could help support members of their family.And importantly, it said Homeland Security, which is in charge of ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement - the Department of Homeland Security will not try to arrest you for deportation. So essentially, what DACA was a kind of elaborate form of prosecutorial discretion that the Obama administration created in 2012 to make sure that this population of people who are broadly sympathetic, who are American in every respect except for their legal status, could be sort of left alone and allowed to resume semi-normal lives.GROSS: The reason why we're in this DACA crisis now is because President Trump created a March 5 deadline for DACA legislation, and if legislation isn't passed, the program would just end. It would be terminated. What was his stated goal for doing that?BLITZER: My read on the situation is basically that the president wanted to appease his base in canceling DACA but that he himself had trouble doing something that was so obviously inhumane, for one thing, and that was so obviously unpopular for another. So he tried to kind of defer the decision. And the first thing he did was he canceled the program, but then he tried to force (ph) the issue onto Congress and say, look, this isn't my problem. The reason we're in this bind is because Congress never passed a law in the first place to handle this population. And so the first thing he had to do was...GROSS: This was an executive decision.BLITZER: Exactly. It was an executive action under President Obama. And so he creates this deadline ostensibly as a way to give Congress time to act. But that deadline itself is artificial. I mean, it's totally arbitrary that he's picked March 5. But there are also another set of deadlines that get a lot less publicity that have already passed and that already affect the lives of DACA recipients. So he cancels the program on September 5. He then says, look, for everyone who has DACA and whose DACA status expires before March 5, you now have starting September 5 one month to apply to renew your status.Now, the administration doesn't make this particularly clear. A lot of people are uninformed about how little time they have to renew if their status were to expire before this March 5 deadline. So the first deadline the administration really creates is October 5. There are about 154,000 DACA recipients whose status expires before March 5. So of that population, they had to apply within a month's time to renew their status. It's costly to apply. It's close to $500 to apply to renew your status. Some people don't have that money just off the cuff like that. I think some people were scared that this administration kind of didn't really mean what it said in terms of offering this opportunity to extend. People had problems - I mean, administrative problems having to process their application so quickly.So someone maybe - I spoke to a girl who signed her form in the wrong place. And by the time she got notice that she needed to refile that signature, that October deadline had already passed. So after October 5, there were 20,000 people who had DACA before who now didn't have it. So already you're talking about 120 people a day who are losing status. And what do I mean by status? I mean the ability to work legally. And I also mean the ability to be sort of free of this fear of deportation. And so people are already losing their DACA status every day.GROSS: On Tuesday of this week, a second federal judge ruled that President Trump hadn't offered sufficient legal reasons for ending DACA. What is that ruling about, and how is it affecting DREAMers?BLITZER: Yeah. So right now, because of the injunction by a judge in California in January and now this judge in New York, the cancellation of DACA has been temporarily blocked. And so for DACA recipients who at the time the Trump administration canceled the program had status, they can reapply for the time being. It's unclear exactly what will happen. So later this week on Friday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge brought by the Justice Department to try to lift that injunction and continue with the cancellation of DACA. But for the time being, what it means is if you had DACA before, you know, at the time that it was canceled, you can apply to renew your status.And people are scared at this point of doing so just because, you know, say you changed your address in the last year, I don't know that you want this administration to have all of the details of where you live, especially given how aggressive ICE has been. But I think for the most part, it makes sense for people to apply to renew because every two years, essentially, you have to apply to renew your DACA status. And so this buys people some time. So that's kind of the state of play right now.GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jonathan Blitzer, and he writes about immigration for The New Yorker, where he's a staff writer. We're going to talk more after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN'S "WHEN WAR WAS KING")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration for The New Yorker, where he's a staff writer. So the possible outcomes for DACA are that it will be settled in Congress or in the courts or it will just end on March 5, President Trump's date to end the program. As part of a deal not to shut down the government a second time over the budget, Mitch McConnell agreed to allow one week of debate on DACA in which the Senate could write a bill from scratch. But President Trump has promised to veto any bill that doesn't address what he describes as his four pillars - building the wall, ending what he calls chain migration, which is basically allowing immigrants to bring in family members, ending the diversity visa lottery program and providing a path to citizenship for DREAMers.So President Trump is saying no room for compromise; these four things or nothing; these four things or I veto it. You've said that at this point the debate really isn't about DACA. It's about legal immigration. What do you mean?BLITZER: I think what's so striking about the turn the conversation has taken in Congress is that, you know, we're really no longer talking about whether or not it is fair or makes sense to legalize the so-called DREAMers. We're not talking about whether or not it makes sense to come up with a specific raft of border security measures. Instead, the real sticking point - and this is something the White House has pushed very aggressively from the start - is making major changes to the legal immigration system, a system that's been in place since 1965. And so the cost essentially that's being proposed for any negotiation on the status and future of DREAMers has become how far you're willing to go to overhaul certain aspects of the family-based immigration system.And that's something that I really - I can't overstate how significant a shift that is in how these immigration debates are playing out. That is the result of Donald Trump and hard-liners in the White House really changing the terms of the debate in a profound way. It's a pretty significant revisioning of what immigration is about. And I think it has a lot to do with changing the composition of who comes to this country. I mean, it is nothing less profound than that.GROSS: And how do you think the president wants to change the composition of who comes?BLITZER: Well, I think since 1965, the people who have tended to come to the U.S. have less and less come - tended to come from, say, Western Europe. They tend to have come from Asia, from Latin America. And I think there is a certain racial composition to the new face of immigration to this country. And I think it's something that the White House ideologues and hard-liners have had a really hard time swallowing. And this is - you know, this is a battle that they've fought on the political fringes for years. And they've kind of been left out of the room. Now they actually have their hands on sort of the levers of power, and they can really drive the congressional debate around this issue.So they're teaming up with people in the Senate who - you know, people like Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas, David Perdue of Georgia - who have proposed legislation that would essentially halve legal immigration as we know it. And these guys in the past have proposed things that seemed totally outlandish, that seemed like a total lark to have introduced into Congress because there'd be no support for it in either political party. But now, that really seems to be the kind of centerpiece of this new push. And the Trump administration has effectively taken DREAMers hostage as a way of trying to bargain and negotiate this particular position.GROSS: Are there people in the Trump administration who are behind this no-compromise position that the president has taken?BLITZER: I think this is all pretty clearly leading back to one person in particular, and that is the White House senior adviser, Stephen Miller. This is a vision that Stephen Miller has propounded from the start of his political career. It's something that he - you know, Stephen Miller began working in Jeff Sessions' office back when Jeff Sessions was the senator from Alabama. And the view of Miller, of Sessions, of other people of their ilk - that kind of small cadre of nativists who grew out of the Sessions office - is that, you know, nothing short of redrawing the legal immigration system would be sufficient in the way of reform, that we have to significantly ramp up enforcement measures. The cancellation of DACA leads back to these guys. They're - it's quite incredible the power they now wield.GROSS: So because of DACA hanging in the balance here, because the Senate has a week to debate a bill and because we have the March 5 deadline for DACA that President Trump laid down, the president is basically saying here's a few days to revamp the whole immigration system.BLITZER: Yeah. I mean, it's...GROSS: I mean, it's a huge thing to do in a few days, and there's so much at stake.BLITZER: Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. In the past, the thinking on this was - and this was establishment wisdom in actually the Republican Party most specifically - if you're going to make changes to the immigration system, if you're going to attempt any form of revamping or overhauling the immigration system, particularly with regard to a population as sympathetic as the DREAMers, you need to propose incremental revamping or overhauling the immigration system, particularly with regard to a population as sympathetic as the DREAMers, you need to propose incremental solutions.So in the past, it would be, OK, pair legalization of DREAMers with an increase in border security measures. You know, the idea was, on the one hand, something that sort of seemed more liberalizing, on the other, something that kind of tightened enforcement. It was always very narrowly drawn. Now what's on the table is nothing short of a complete overhaul of our immigration system. And the idea that this would somehow take place in a week's time after months of stalled negotiations on an even narrower question is ridiculous.GROSS: Any guesses what the outcome's going to be?BLITZER: It does not seem likely that any of the proposals on the table have enough support to clear the 60-vote threshold that is necessary for a bill to basically overcome debate in the Senate and move on to the House. I think some of the plans might actually come close to getting that kind of number. I think there is a growing kind of coalition of bipartisan senators who are offering an alternative to the White House plan. It's hard to see that group getting to 60, which is the threshold, precisely because the White House has been so aggressive in denouncing that approach.But I certainly think it's fair to say - in fact, arguably, the surest thing that can be said at this point is that the White House-Chuck Grassley-Tom Cotton plan - this kind of harder-line vision - absolutely does not have enough votes to pass at the Senate. The question is whether by proposing in the first place they've effectively sunk any prospect of a deal.GROSS: So I guess if Congress doesn't move forward with legislation on DACA, then one of two things can happen. The Supreme Court can uphold the two federal judges' injunction against President Trump's termination of DACA, or President Trump's termination of DACA could hold, and, like, that's it on March 5.BLITZER: That's right. And I think the Supreme Court decision this week - it's largely, I think, a procedural question. So the issue before the Supreme Court is, you know, can the Supreme Court issue a stay and lift the injunction of these federal judges? Certainly, the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to say that. I think the Supreme Court most likely will say, look, you have skipped over the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In this case, what kind of gave rise to the Supreme Court's hearing of this issue was that judge in California issuing the injunction, and so the relevant body then that the administration would have to go to in order to reverse that injunction would be a court of appeals, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.The Trump administration tried to skip that step, and so the Supreme Court most likely will say, look, you have to go to the 9th Circuit, and this issue will have to play out kind of in the courts first before we weigh in. That's what I expect will happen. It's conceivable that because Congress has reached this impasse on how to deal with the situation, there will be a kind of temporary measure that, you know, maybe extends DACA for, you know, a few years, probably until after the 2018 midterms. But it's not clear even what the political will is to get behind that. So we really are in a kind of dangerous position with regard to DACA.GROSS: So if DACA ends on March 5, what happens?BLITZER: So if there's no solution, if Congress just strikes out, what will start to happen is on March 6, you'll have every day from that moment forward - people who have DACA will start to lose their status. And so...GROSS: Because they have two-year status, and when that two years expires, they'll lose their status.BLITZER: Exactly. And it wasn't like everyone applied for DACA at the same time, too, so it's all staggered. And so, you know, you'll have roughly the pace of a thousand people a day. You will have people for every day there on out losing their status.GROSS: Jonathan Blitzer, thank you so much for talking with us.BLITZER: Thanks for having me, Terry.GROSS: Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer for The New Yorker who covers immigration. After a break, David Edelstein will review the new superhero film "Black Panther," based on the Marvel comic about an African king. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF DIGABLE PLANETS SONG, "REBIRTH OF SLICK (COOL LIKE DAT)")Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

It's like your living in the last millennium. Nobody, well anybody worth anything, no longer cares about the actors, directors or producers, just entertain me and other than that, well, shut the fuck up. Not only do I binge but I will skip seasonal release in preference to a fully completed series, one season generally doesn't cut it, I prefer at least three. No program is that important any more, there is just so much competing content, tens of billions of pages on the internet, thousands of computer games off-line and online, politics is much more fun and entertaining now, all sorts of news floating about and that leaves only a tiny bit left for well, light fluff entertainment. To be honest, netflix is often just running in the background to light gaming, paying attention to only the interesting bits. One fucking episode, seriously shove it where the sun don't shine, striking back, the concept is laughable. Disney the latest episodes of 'WHAT', I don't know, seen zero advertisements, I have no idea what content Disney wants to try to sell to me and well, to be honest, no interest, how could I, it no longer exists in my world.This article is just another pack of ludicrous bullshit trying to bring back the idiot box with ten minutes of screaming advertisements every twenty minutes, it's a joke, now Disney is trying to pretend like they are special and people love them, what a crock, Disney can crawl into the same hole they dumped star wars in. I have not watched a single episode of any program and I mean ANY program (except news), in years, at least three and probably out to five and that is exactly how little I cared. As far as I am concerned Disney just lost me not even for some months every few years, either they provide full seasons or they can go fuck themselves, done and finished. Prior to Netflix those years before, I bought a season at a time on DVD. No matter how insane their psychopathic greed, there is no going back to one episode at a time, interrupted every 20 minutes with 10 minutes of commercials. Seriously show one episode a week and then what don't show it any more to force people to watch that week, hmm, well fuck Disney, I will simply wait at least five years and subscribe for a few months and then wait another five years, as for waffling about actors and tv shite, that crap is so last millennium. Right now it seems like a bunch of corporate executives and just sitting in a circle jerk telling each other they are geniuses and we are idiots and suckers and they snort coke and play with each others genitals. I have news for you, Netflix just paid attention to what their where streaming and how they were streaming it and filled that desire. Disney, nah, fuck you, you piece of shit customers, you will watch what I want you to watch, when I want you to watch it and pay through the nose for the privilege and watch commercials, yeah right, fuck off.

Apple Inc.’s rise above $1 trillion in stock-market value has enriched billionaires and everyday investors.One of the biggest winners: Warren Buffett. His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the tech giant’s second largest shareholder with a roughly 5% stake.Berkshire first purchased Apple shares in the first quarter of 2016. The company bought...

For years, the devices and services we use have ever more aggressively monitored our activities and mined our data. But as consumers have grown increasingly attuned to privacy concerns, solutions have been appearing to help them evade tracking. Browsers such as Brave and search engines such as DuckDuckGo play up their privacy-first design. When it comes to the dominant mobile operating systems, Google has talked about preserving privacy by providing more transparency and exposing opt-out controls. Apple, on the other hand, has sought to create services that remove the opt-out requirement by not collecting data in the first place, turning privacy preservation into a key differentiator.But many users aren’t comfortable even with Apple’s approach. Recently, two groups have created new platforms that avoid sharing data with Google, Apple, or any other entity behind the scenes. Nevertheless, their product-development approaches parallel the market strategies of Google and Apple, with some striking differences.[Animation: courtesy of e Foundation]One of these is the e Foundation. Its eOS aspires to be a Google-free version of Android that has a wide range of device support. It’s not a new idea: One existing alternative to Google’s flavor of Android is LineageOS, a fork of what had been the leading Google Android alternative, CyanogenMod. However, according to Gaël Duval, head of e Foundation, producing a version of Android that is completely Google-free requires far more effort than just stripping out Google apps such as Gmail; even LineageOS sends some data through Google’s servers or relies on its services.20 years ago, Duval created Mandrake Linux, a more approachable distribution of the open-source operating system. Drawing on this experience, he wants to make replacing Google’s Android with the foundation’s eOS version as simple as clicking a button on an installer app. The software’s current beta version supports about 75 different smartphone models. For now, though, the process is similar to installing any custom ROM on an Android phone—that is, not very convenient. To bridge the gap, e Foundation is gearing up to sell a number of refurbished Android phones with the current version of eOS preinstalled. Next year, it intends to offer its own new, optimized smartphones with the OS preinstalled.With eOS, e Foundation is taking a Google-like approach, by trying to get its software on as many smartphones as possible in order to reach ubiquity. Purism, by contrast, is pursuing Apple-like vertical integration by developing its own operating system, optimizing hardware to run on it, and even launching a group of services under the banner of Librem One.While Purism’s product development approach has similarities to Apple’s, there are some critical differences. Unlike Apple, Purism makes software that’s open and free to be used by other developers. The company’s devices are endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, and it will only bundle apps on its smartphone that are similarly endorsed. Second, Purism has very different design goals than Apple. While Apple is obsessed with integration and sleek design, Purism’s smartphone will include dedicated hardware switches for the camera and microphone, allowing users to swiftly and definitively turn off those features in the interest of privacy. Instead of integrating as many functions as possible onto its CPU, the phone will err on the side of security with distinct CPU, GPU, and modem modules. It will also have a removable battery, a feature that Apple long ago abandoned in the interest of svelte devices.Purism’s design decisions help contribute to the Librem 5’s 14-mm profile, which is thick for a modern smartphone. Dissatisfied with the level of openness from leading smartphone chip vendors, Purism is using a processor from NXP Semiconductors. The Dutch company, which was long an acquisition target of Qualcomm, is generally known for automotive processors and sensors.Librem 5 [Image: courtesy of Purism]Purism plans to start with the basics of phone calls and texting and add functionality from there. One advantage it has is that its smartphone runs the same Pure Linux distribution that its laptops use, so a pipeline of existing apps could be adapted to run on the smartphone once they’ve been rejiggered to work on a smaller display. The company seems unconcerned that its devices’ slow gestation and relatively high prices—it’s taking Librem 5 preorders for $699—will faze consumers. It believes other manufacturers will eventually adopt its open-source platform, but only after it has proven its viability.Both of these startups’ efforts are ambitious and thoughtful, but they’re taking on one of the most daunting challenges in all of consumer technology. From Windows Phone to the enthusiast-backed Sailfish OS, alternative platforms have failed to gain a foothold in the era of the Apple-Google smartphone OS duopoly.Even if Purism and e Foundation achieve all of their platform goals, they will still have to make their case for a mobile experience that lacks virtually all of the most popular apps that consumers use today. While both camps consider Apple an enemy, it’s done more than any other mainstream tech company to advocate for privacy, a move that could help these new entrants. On the other hand, apps that mine our data, such as Facebook and YouTube, remain some of the most popular offerings on iOS. Apple recognizes that it must balance the services consumers know they want with the privacy Apple believes they need. One way or another, these smartphone upstarts will also need to strike that balance, in a way that makes sense to a critical mass of consumers.

Enlarge this image Apple, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, became the first to reach the milestone $1 trillion market value. Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images Apple, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, became the first to reach the milestone $1 trillion market value. Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images Apple became the first private-sector company in history to be worth $1 trillion, after its share price reached an all-time high above $207 on Thursday.The share price jumped by more than 8 percent this week after Apple reported impressive quarterly earnings on Tuesday, driven largely by strong sales for high-priced iPhones. In a call with investors, CEO Tim Cook also touted growth in other areas such as smart home products, wearable and services like the App Store and Apple Pay. Loading... The $1 trillion milestone is largely symbolic, though impressive. Apple's market capitalization — a common financial measure of worth that multiplies the number of shares by the share price — makes the company worth more than the economies of, for example, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Taiwan. Technology Transcript: Apple CEO Tim Cook On Screen Time Controls, Working With China The tech company, launched from a garage in 1976, has been on a steady climb through the years, revolutionizing personal computers and phones with its Macs and iPhones. In recent years, Apple has been working to spread its cult-like following to newer devices like smartwatches, cordless headphones and smart home speakers. Business Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good To Be Believed. They're Paid For Business Facebook's Big Growth Is Slowing, Sending Its Stock Tumbling PetroChina once had a $1 trillion valuation, but only briefly, and most of its shares were owned by the Chinese government.Other technology companies with high-flying, trendy stocks are expected to join Apple in the $1 trillion club before long. In recent years, the financial world considered Amazon and Apple to be in the race toward the milestone. On Thursday, Apple finished first.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The Islamic State has claimed its first attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo, planting a flag in a region already troubled by violence and an outbreak of the Ebola virus.Eight soldiers were killed in the attack, which took place on Tuesday, according to Congolese officials. They initially said that the assailants appeared to have belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group with origins in neighboring Uganda that is accused of killing hundreds of people over the past three years.But on Thursday Islamic State propagandists asserted responsibility and described Congo as the “Central Africa Province of the Caliphate,” according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic State announcements.It was the first time that the Islamic State has asserted responsibility for an attack in Congo, a vast country where the central government has limited reach and where rebel groups have proliferated for many years.The attack came in an area near the border of Uganda that is already beset with an outbreak of Ebola that health workers have struggled to contain because of a range of reasons, including violent attacks on treatment centers. A doctor who worked for the World Health Organization was killed on Friday in an attack on a hospital in Butembo, according to the organization and the town’s mayor, Sylvain Mbusa Kanyamanda.Earlier this month, President Felix Tshisekedi was quoted in news reports as saying he expected that the Islamic State might try to bolster its presence in the region following the destruction of its self-proclaimed caliphate centered in Syria and Iraq.“It’s easy to see how the defeat of Daesh, the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq could lead to a situation where these groups will now come to Africa and take advantage of widespread poverty and chaos,” Mr. Tshisekedi was quoted as saying.In recent years, the Allied Democratic Forces has been “making a tentative attempt to align itself with other jihadist groups,” according to a report last year by the Congo Research Group at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.A book issued by the Islamic State was apparently found in the possessions of a dead Allied Democratic Forces combatant last year, according to the report, which also noted that members of the Allied Democratic Forces had begun to post propaganda messages on social media in recent years, some depicting attacks.The assault claimed by the Islamic State occurred in Kamango, a village near Beni city in North Kivu province.

The mural on the side of the gun store proclaims: “A Savior is Born.” There’s a manger scene below the star of Bethlehem and windows festooned with red, white and blue bunting. And above it all a looming AR-15 assault rifle spewing fire. Yet inside Gun Central on Sunday, barely 24 hours after a terrorist gunman killed 22 people and wounded dozens of others in a local Walmart, the expected white Christian nationalists defending the second amendment were not there. Instead there were terrified El Pasoans, mostly Hispanic, buying firearms for the first time.The scene on Sunday at Gun Central, located along Interstate 10 and two miles from where bodies are still being recovered, was more reminiscent of Black Friday than the wake of a national tragedy. People crowded shoulder to shoulder to consult with harried employees, pondering over pistols and assault rifles, banana clips and ammo. Others lined up for their turn inside the store’s indoor shooting range. Staccato gunfire thundered behind the thin walls.“I’m on high alert,” said April Sanchez, a marketing executive who along with her husband was buying her first weapon. “I never thought I’d carry a gun, but now I want something to defend myself, to defend my fellow El Pasoans.” To that end she picked out a 9mm Taurus and her husband a .40 Ruger; their son had purchased his first handgun the previous evening. They sat near a Coke machine with several others awaiting their background checks. Before that day, Sanchez had never even held a gun. Now she’s registering for classes that will allow her to legally carry her firearm in public.“This isn’t something I’m proud of,” she added. “It makes me sad and angry that I’m even here. I’m heartbroken, but I’m also afraid.”Gun stores elsewhere in El Paso also reported being busy. At the Cabela’s on Desert Boulevard, an employee who didn’t give his name said sales on Saturday and Sunday were very high, many of them first-time purchases. “We were also seeing people who’d previously owned guns and gotten rid of them,” he said, adding that it was right after payday, which is usually hectic anyway. On Sunday an employee at Gun Central said they were too busy to comment; calls on Monday weren’t answered.At Gun Central, people waited in line amid displays of red Maga shirts and a sign that said, “Jesus Has Risen.” Among them were Denzel Oliver and his girlfriend Christabelle Guzman. On Saturday they had been shopping at the Foot Locker next to Walmart, and as they exited the parking lot, a fleet of police cars raced past. “We were shopping while people were being killed,” Guzman said. After they got home and turned on the news, her boyfriend suggested they look for a gun for her. Turns out they were thinking the same thing.“I just want to give us both some peace of mind,” said Oliver, 29, who served in the army and owns his own weapons. “I always tell her that El Paso is a bubble. This kind of thing happens elsewhere in the country, but not here. But now, we need to be better prepared.”“Knowing is better than not knowing,” Guzman adds.When asked if buying guns seems a bit extreme, given one random act, Oliver shakes his head. “It’s random,” he says, “but it’s going to change this community forever.” He points to the crowds as a pop-pop-pop rings out from the range like a soundtrack for a new reality. “Just look,” he says, “it already has.” Topics El Paso shooting El Paso Texas Gun crime US crime news

The logo of Apple company is seen outside an Apple store in Bordeaux, France, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Regis DuvignauMOSCOW (Reuters) - Apple (AAPL.O) is under investigation in Russia following a complaint from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab and may be abusing its dominant market position, Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog said on Thursday. Watchdog FAS said it was investigating why a new version of Kaspersky Lab’s Safe Kids application had been declined by Apple’s operating system, resulting in a significant loss in functionality for the parental control app. It said Apple had released version 12 of its own parental control app, Screen Time, which had similar functions to the Kaspersky program. Parental control apps allow parents to control their children’s phone and tablet usage. Asked about the Russian investigation, Apple referred Reuters to an April 28 statement in which it said it had recently removed several parental control apps from its App Store because they “put users’ privacy and security at risk.” It said several of these apps were using a “highly invasive” technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM) and that its use in a consumer-focused app was a violation of App Store policies. Kaspersky said Apple’s App Store guidelines allowed for a limited use of MDM, but that it was not clear how to obtain Apple’s permission to do so. It also said the requirements reduced the competitiveness of third party developers. Reporting by Maria Kiselyova, Nadezhda Tsydenova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Jason Neely/Keith WeirOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reports that the suspected gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, saw his mass shooting as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” has prompted bipartisan calls for the US to treat the threat of domestic “white terrorists” as seriously as the threat of attacks by supporters of al-Qaida or Isis.But experts who study racist violence say the attack must be understood not just as a domestic problem within the United States, but as part of a global network of white nationalist radicalization and violence.The escalating global death toll from white nationalist attacks puts a spotlight on the social media companies that have allowed white nationalists to organize on their platforms with little interference, as well as on the clear parallels between white terrorists’ justification for their attacks, and the racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric of some mainstream politicians. Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to immigrants and refugees as an “invasion”.A “manifesto” that appeared to be linked to the El Paso attack on Saturday described the growing number of Latinx people in Texas as an “invasion” that threatened the political power of white residents. The shooting, which left at least 22 people dead, is being investigated by federal officials as an act of domestic terrorism.Perpetrators of other recent attacks around the world indicated that they, too, believed that white people were under attack, and that immigrants, refugees and other people of color are “invaders” who put the white race at risk.Many of these attacks inspired even more acts of violence. The suspected Christchurch shooter, who is accused of livestreaming his murder of dozens of innocent people in New Zealand in March, appears to have inspired at least two additional mass shootings in the United States within five months. In April, another young white man opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and injuring three other people. He cited the Christchurch attacks as his model, prosecutors said. On Saturday, the manifesto linked to the El Paso shooting, too, referred to the Christchurch massacre as an explicit inspiration.“Too many people still think of these attacks as single events, rather than interconnected actions,” the historian Kathleen Belew, author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, wrote in an opinion column on Sunday. “We spend too much ink dividing them into anti-immigrant, racist, anti-Muslim or antisemitic attacks. True, they are these things. But they are also connected with one another through a broader white power ideology.”At the center of contemporary white nationalist ideology is the belief that whiteness is under attack, and that a wide range of enemies – from feminists to leftwing politicians to Muslims, Jews, immigrants, refugees and black people – are all conspiring to undermine and destroy the white race, through means as varied as interracial marriage, immigration, “cultural Marxism” and criticism of straight white men.To people who believe in white supremacist conspiracies, demographic change is an “existential threat to white people”, said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor of education and sociology at the American University, and a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.These conspiracy theories refer to demographic shifts in dramatic, violent terms, as a kind of “genocide” or a “great replacement” of one people with another. The idea of “replacement” is central to this movement: “You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!” white nationalists and neo-Nazis chanted as they marched with flaming torches through Charlottesville, Virginia. It has echoed in the manifestos of mass murderers, and the chants of Charlottesville marchers, since being coined by a French white nationalist writer and conspiracy theorist in 2011.But in many of the countries where white nationalist radicalization is a threat – including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – white people are, in fact, not the native population, and are not being displaced.Despite this, recent racist violence in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Europe, is linked by the shared conspiracy that “white people are being displaced from their home countries”, said Heidi Beirich, the intelligence director at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that monitors American hate groups.“At the extreme end of white supremacy you have this group of people who believe that the only way to create change is to create a violent societal collapse, that will lead to apocalyptic end times, and a race war, and then eventually to restoration and rebirth,” Miller-Idriss said.Though antisemitism is at the heart of white nationalist conspiracy theories, many different groups are labeled as enemies. In the past decade, deadly attacks linked to white nationalism have been carried out against Muslims, Jews, African Americans at Bible study in a historic black church, leftwing activists and politicians in the United States and across Europe. More than 175 people have been killed in at least 16 high-profile attacks linked to white nationalism around the world since 2011.And although politicians often label white nationalist violence as “senseless”, analysts suggest that hate crimes often spike alongside political events like elections. Many of these “senseless” attacks have been carried out during key moments of mainstream political debates over immigration and refugee policy.Jo Cox, a British member of parliament, was assassinated by a far-right extremist in June 2016, in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. Pro-Brexit campaigners claimed at the time that voting to remain in the European Union would would result in “swarms” of immigrants entering the UK, and that it would prompt mass sexual attacks. Cox’s killer shouted “Britain first!” as he shot and stabbed her to death.The shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh – the worst antisemitic mass murder in US history – happened during the run up to the midterm elections. At that time, conservative media and Republican politicians were promoting fears of a “caravan” of migrants heading towards the country from Central America. Congressman Matt Gaetz was one of those who suggested that the caravan had been orchestrated by the Jewish financier George Soros.Trump, who spent years questioning the citizenship of America’s first black president, has continuously made public comments that include white nationalist rhetoric. He campaigned on a ban on Muslim immigration, a border wall, and in his campaign announcement suggested that Mexican migrants were rapists. As president, he has characterized migrants as invaders in several tweets. At a rally in May, Trump used the term “invasion” to describe the arrival of immigrants at the southern border. At the same rally he raised the prospect of using weapons on immigrants. When Trump asked “How do you stop these people?” someone in the crowd shouted, “Shoot them!” and Trump laughed.“When you have politicians using language like invasion and infestation, it reinforces extremist beliefs in a way that makes them more legitimate,” Miller-Idriss said.Conservative and even mainstream media outlets have also played a role in mainstreaming white nationalist ideas. Beirich, of the SPLC, said that the concept of demographic replacement is “definitely cropping up in conservative media”, pointing to the Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham as having broadcast programs which “may not use the same language” but which convey the same basic narrative of “replacement”.Although white nationalism is far from a new ideology, today’s racist activists have been adept at using social networks to expand their reach and radicalize a new generation of young white men and women. They have worked under a veil of irony and trolling explicitly designed to create uncertainty in the mainstream public about how serious they are. That effort has been extremely successful.Facebook and Instagram only banned content advocating white nationalism, like “The US should be a white-only nation,” four months ago. Previously, the company suggested in a post announcing the ban, it had considered white nationalism or white separatism valid political viewpoints, and had believed in the arguments, rejected by experts, that “white nationalism” was not necessarily racist.“There is so much material on the web – treatises, tracts, and manifestos – that would have been extraordinarily difficult to get hold of 25 years ago,” said Brian Levin, the director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.Whatever internet platforms do now to crack down on violent white nationalist content, racist activists from across the world have been able to connect and organize online for more than a decade, with little interference, said Joan Donovan, the director and lead researcher of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.That has given them time to share strategies and organize across international borders. “That kind of time, put into this movement, is really dangerous,” Donovan said.While there are no official surveys of hate crimes in the United States, several organizations that monitor them across disparate jurisdictions and reporting standards say that crimes motivated by white supremacy have been rising in recent years.According to a report last week from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at CSU San Bernardino, there were 17 homicides carried out by white nationalists in the US alone in 2018. This constituted the vast majority of the 22 extremist murders that CSHE counted that year.Earlier in the year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that all but one of 50 extremist-linked murders they counted were committed by people with direct links to white supremacist movements or ideologies. The exception was a killing by an Islamic extremist who had previously been involved with white supremacy.Since 9/11, the United States has devoted $2.8tn to counterterrorism, according to the Stimson Center, with almost $500bn going to the Department of Homeland Security in that time period. But the small slice of this devoted to rightwing extremists has been further diminished in the Trump era. Earlier this year DHS disbanded a group of intelligence analysts focused on domestic terror threats, after shutting down programs specifically directed at neo-Nazis and other far right groups.According to the Brookings Institution’s Eric Rosand, when it comes to domestic terrorism, “the United States continues to rely almost entirely on the police”.At the local level, law enforcement officials across the country have faced scrutiny for failing to take seriously the threat of white nationalist violence, and for sometimes devoting more attention to policing anti-fascist protesters than violent neo-Nazis. Some American law enforcement officials have said they were unprepared to deal with white nationalist violence.Beirich says that “the FBI has admitted that this is the number one domestic terror threat, but then at the same time federal agencies have been focused on Islamic extremism for so long they are way behind the eight ball on this”. Topics El Paso shooting Gun crime Christchurch shooting The far right news

Enlarge this image Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud is shown in a Columbus, Ohio, courtroom in 2015. He was arrested after traveling to Syria, then returning to Ohio, where he planned to carry out an attack. According to a new report, he's one of 12 Americans who went to join extremist groups in Syria or Iraq, and then returned back to the U.S. Mohamud was sentenced last month to 22 years in prison. Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP hide caption toggle caption Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud is shown in a Columbus, Ohio, courtroom in 2015. He was arrested after traveling to Syria, then returning to Ohio, where he planned to carry out an attack. According to a new report, he's one of 12 Americans who went to join extremist groups in Syria or Iraq, and then returned back to the U.S. Mohamud was sentenced last month to 22 years in prison. Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP An estimated 300 Americans attempted to join the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups in Iraq and Syria, including a small number who rose to senior positions, according to the most detailed report to date on this issue.So far, 12 of those Americans have returned home, yet none has carried out an attack on U.S. soil, according the report released Monday by George Washington University's Program on Extremism."I think what we were struck with was the few numbers of returnees that we saw," said Seamus Hughes, one of the report's authors. "There was always concern that this wave of what the FBI would call 'the terrorist diaspora' would come back. In many ways it's just a trickle right now."The exact number of Americans who ran off to join the Islamic State — and their fates — has always been fuzzy. The FBI has occasionally offered general numbers, but provided few details.The report covers the period since 2011, when the Syria war erupted. The Islamic State peaked, in terms of power and territory, in the summer of 2014, when it held large parts of Syria and Iraq.The U.S. then began working with local partners to battle ISIS. The extremist group has now lost virtually all territory it once held, though it is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks in those countries, and has established footholds in several other states.One percent of foreign fightersThe 300 or so Americans account for about 1 percent of the estimated 30,000 foreign fighters who joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The majority came from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.The George Washington University team scoured online material, reviewed court records, spoke with government officials and interviewed some of those who returned to the U.S. after joining ISIS. Parallels Where Did The Islamic State Fighters Go? Still, the report could account for just over a third of those who tried or succeeded in joining radical Islamist groups."I know the numbers in the intelligence community are much better than mine, as one would expect," said Hughes. "But we tried to do our best to have the largest public accounting of the phenomenon."Around 50 Americans were arrested as they tried to leave the country, and never made it out of the U.S. The report was able to document 64 individuals who did reach Syria or Iraq.They include Zulfi Hoxha, a New Jersey resident of Albanian descent."He was a bit of loner. High school friends describe him as kind of a geek," Hughes said.He traveled to Syria in 2015, and U.S. authorities have described as a "senior ISIS commander." He appears in two ISIS propaganda videos, including one where he beheads a prisoner, according to Hughes.A dozen return to the U.S.Of the 12 Americans who returned, nine were arrested and remain in custody, the report said. Two others are known to law enforcement, but have not been detained, it added. The 12th man went back to Syria a second time and carried out a suicide bombing, the report said.While no American has returned and carried out an attack, one man, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud of Ohio, planned to do so.He was among a small number of Americans to join al-Nusra in Syria, an extremist group linked to al-Qaida. One of his commanders sent him back to Ohio with orders to attack a U.S. military facility.Mohamud returned to Ohio in 2014, and was arrested the following year. He pleaded guilty to plotting the attacks and last month was sentenced to 22 years in prison.The report did not deal with those who may have been inspired by ISIS and acted inside the U.S. For example, authorities say Sayfullo Saipov, the man charged with ramming a truck into pedestrians, killing eight in New York City last October, was inspired by ISIS. But his case is not included in the report.It's still not clear what's happened to thousands of other ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria as the group lost its self-declared caliphate.Hard-core fighters are expected to remain and keep fighting. Others may be slipping across the border into Turkey. And some have been detained, though the U.S. has given no indication it is holding ISIS fighters.In Iraq, the government is putting ISIS members on trial.In Syria, where the war grinds on, it's more complicated. The Syrian Democratic Forces, militia fighters aligned with the U.S., are holding hundreds of ISIS fighters, according to U.S. military officials.Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.

Islamic State has killed at least 41 people and injured more than 80 others in an attack on a Shia cultural centre and news agency that share a building in Kabul.The bombings were the latest in a particularly bloody year for the Afghan capital, even by the standards of a country inured to decades of conflict.The first explosion was detonated by a suicide bomber sitting among students at a lecture marking the 38th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The death toll rose over the day as hospitals struggled to cope, and may climb further.“The hall was packed with the people when there was a blast at the back,” said Ali Abbas Qul, a university student who had attended the lecture. He wept outside a hospital, in clothes still stained with the blood of two friends.“People started running everywhere. Many lost consciousness. I lost my two friends and picked up their bodies. Many of the university students are still missing.”Two more blasts outside the building targeted security and medical services, and people attempting to put out a fire started by the first bomb.“I was trying to help people who were injured and killed in the first two blasts when the third explosion hit,” said Saed Qasem Rahmati, 35, a former employee at the cultural centre who rushed to help after the first bomb and was still in shock.Many of the victims were badly burned, he said, and he feared that several friends might be among the unidentifiable bodies.The explosions killed at least one journalist working for the Afghan Voice news agency, whose offices were on the floor above the cultural centre.Ali Reza Ahmadi said he had leapt from his second-floor office after seeing flames coming from the building. “I jumped from the roof towards the basement, yelling at people to get water to put out the fire,” he told the AP.Isis’s Amaaq news agency said the cultural centre had been targeted by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the full name of the group’s Afghan affiliate, because it was funded by Iran and used to spread Shia beliefs.It was the latest sectarian attack in a capital that had once been relatively immune to such violence. For all the civilian deaths in Kabul over four decades of civil war, until the rise of Isis very few could be chalked up to the Sunni-Shia tensions that have claimed so many lives from Iraq to Pakistan.Now a group with a strong sectarian agenda appears to have outstripped the home-grown Taliban in inflicting violence on Kabul.“[This is ISKP’s] 7th suicide bombing in the capital since 20 Oct, killing 130 people in total, making ISKP a larger threat in Kabul than Taliban for this period, at least,” Borhan Osman, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, tweeted.The shift in attack rates from the group that has led the insurgency for nearly two decades to Isis, which is relatively new, was once “unimaginable”, Osman said.The trend is worrying because very little is known about Isis operations in Kabul, Osman warned. Fighters in Afghanistan’s east, where Osama bin Laden once hid in the Tora Bora caves, have received far more press and military attention. “With [the] focus on Nangarhar, we know little about ISKP Kabul cell,” Osman wrote.A senior Isis commander, speaking to the Guardian from an undisclosed location, said the group aimed to replace the Taliban, and would continue with its policy of sectarian attacks.“Isis is continuously recruiting Taliban commanders and fighters, and deliberately challenging the Taliban’s dominance,” he said. “The Taliban in the past have negotiated with the US and the government in Kabul, diverting from the jihad. What they are doing is not Islamic jihad.”In November the United Nations warned of a new trend of attacks on Shia Muslims and places of worship that began in 2016. Mostly claimed by Isis, together they have killed or injured hundreds of people.“Beginning in 2016, a pattern of attacks against Shia worshippers emerged, mainly claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province,” the UN said. Prior to that, the only major sectarian attack documented by the UN was a bombing at a religious festival in 2011, claimed by the Pakistani militant group Laskhar-e-Jhangvi.The UN said many children were likely to be among those killed in Thursday’s bombing because families had gathered at the centre to mark the national day.“I have little doubt that this attack deliberately targeted civilians,” said Toby Lanzer, the acting head of the mission in Afghanistan. “Today in Kabul we have witnessed another truly despicable crime in a year already marked by unspeakable atrocities.” Topics Afghanistan South and Central Asia news

So-called manifestoes left by the terrorist attackers at Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex., have warned of this coming war too. They also say their attacks were intended to provoke more racial violence, hastening the fight’s arrival.Radicalization requires little more than a community with like-minded beliefs, said Maura Conway, a terrorism scholar at Dublin City University. While white backlash to social and demographic change is nothing new, social media has allowed whites receptive to the most extreme version to find one another.Mr. Berger, in his research, found that these deadly messages, which have had mixed success in traditional propaganda channels in all but the most dire historical moments, can spread like wildfire on social media.He termed the message one of “temporal acceleration” — the promise that an adherent could speed up time toward some inevitable endpoint by committing violence. And the “apocalyptic narratives,” he found, exploit social media’s tendency to amplify whatever content is most extreme.As with the Islamic State’s calls for mass murder, this worldview has resonated among young men, mostly loners, who might have previously expressed little ideological fervor or experienced much hardship. It offered them a way to belong and a cause to participate in.And, much like the Islamic State had found, social media gave white extremists a venue on which to post videos of their exploits, where they would go viral, setting off the cycle again.In 2015, Mr. Berger wrote that the Islamic State had been “the first group to employ these amplifying tactics on social media.” But, he added, “it will not be the last.”

Five people including three soldiers were killed in a bombing targeting an elite army unit in the Philippines’s restive south, which Islamic State claimed was a suicide attack, authorities and experts said.The military said the kidnap-for-ransom group and Isis-affiliate Abu Sayyaf was likely behind the midday blast on the island of Jolo on Friday, which also left nine other soldiers wounded.Isis claimed the bombing was the work of two suicide attackers, according to tweets from Rita Katz, the director of SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist activities worldwide.The Philippines has renewed its campaign against the militants on Jolo this year after a suspected suicide bomber struck the island’s Roman Catholic cathedral in January, killing 21 people.The country is home to numerous armed groups, several of which are linked to the decades-old insurgency aiming to create a Muslim homeland in the Christian-majority nation’s deep south.Friday’s blast blew the roof off the sentry gate of the military camp and blackened its concrete walls, according to photographs of the aftermath of the attack shown on local television.Three members of the military unit were killed and nine others were wounded, while two civilians – a motor tricycle driver and a woman street vendor – also died in the attack, army spokesman Colonel Ramon Zagala said.“This attack is meant to disrupt the intensified security operations and our operational tempo following (a) series of recent operational gains in the area,” Zagala said in a separate statement.The authorities could not say what kind of explosives were used.Abu Sayyaf was active in the Philippines years before linking up with Isis, and has supported its violent activities with kidnapping.The group has held hostages over the course of years and negotiated ransoms, but has also shown a willingness to kill its captives. Topics Philippines Asia Pacific Islamic State news

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It is a bold move to sit, as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh did yesterday, and confidently claim under oath to have been a young person who liked beer, drank beer, sometimes had too many beers, but never once experienced a lapse in memory as a result of drinking too many beers. (He vomited, sure, but only because he has “a weak stomach, whether it’s with beer or with spicy food or anything.”)On a remarkable day in which both the definition of “ralph” as a verb and the existence of a man called “Squee” were entered into the official transcript of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Kavanaugh’s dogged refusal to have ever experienced this particularly common side effect of adolescent alcohol consumption was among the most dispiriting.It’s a statement that strains credulity. “Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him,” a medical school professor and former college friend of Kavanaugh’s told the Washington Post. “There’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. . . . But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”To admit to ever waking with a hazy memory following a night of excess consumption would invite questions about what may have occurred in those moments he can’t recall with perfect accuracy. It might mean his story would be picked apart and his memory and credibility questioned, as is often the case for victims of sexual assault who consumed alcohol before they were attacked.Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court feels so sadly appropriate for this age of politics by gaslight. At the announcement of his nomination in July, Kavanaugh opened by claiming that “no president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a supreme court nomination,” a bit of hyperbole that can’t be proven false but that Kavanaugh also can’t have known was true.It’s the kind of lie that a clever but slippery person tells to satisfy a boss known to prefer a doctored version of reality to the actual one. It’s not that different from former press secretary Sean Spicer insisting with a straight face that Trump’s was the best-attended presidential inauguration in history, when photographic evidence so clearly proved it wasn’t; or UN ambassador Nikki Haley claiming that the UN General Assembly was laughing with Trump and not at him, when they clearly weren’t; or his lawyer Rudy Giuliani asserting that “truth isn’t truth” while poor Chuck Todd drops his face in his hands.Kavanaugh may be telling the truth about his memory, or at least what he believes to be the truth. But it is also much easier for Kavanaugh to shut the door on that line of questioning altogether, to pretend that it’s not reasonable to question how an adolescent with an immature relationship to alcohol might have behaved while under its influence. And he got away with it, to the point that he was comfortable snapping “I don’t know. Have you?” at a senator who asked if he’d ever blacked out. (He later apologized.)It is no secret that Trump surrounds himself to an unusual degree with lackeys willing to lie to him and for him. But Kavanaugh is seeking a lifetime appointment to the country’s ultimate arbiter of justice, a thing that can’t exist without truth. A willingness to play with accuracy when it’s politically convenient is a disqualifying trait—or, at least, it should be.

Donald Trump has used a campaign speech to attack what he called media “hostility” after a wave of pipe bombs were sent to senior Democrats, prominent critics and the broadcaster CNN.The US president, who had earlier said he condemned the attempted bombings and that a “major federal investigation” was under way, followed this with a plea for unity during a midterms campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday.“Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy itself,” he told the crowd. “We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it … Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as morally defective.”But he soon reverted to a familiar scapegoat. The media, he said, has “a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories”.He doubled down on the criticism on Thursday morning, tweeting: “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting… Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”Authorities said on Wednesday that pipe bombs had been sent to prominent critics of Trump, spreading terror in the US less than two weeks before the midterm elections.Packages containing suspected explosives were sent to the homes of the former president Barack Obama and the former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The bombs were intercepted by the US secret service.Another suspect package addressed to the former attorney general Eric Holder was discovered before reaching its target. The FBI also reported finding two suspicious packages addressed to the Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters. Federal investigators were also trying to track down a suspicious package they believe was addressed to the former vice president Joe Biden, a US official told Reuters.CNN evacuated its studios in New York after what police called a “live explosive device” was found in its mailroom. The package was addressed to John Brennan, the former CIA director, who has repeatedly clashed with Trump.Some Democrats expressed fears that party figures were coming under attack before the 6 November congressional elections. James O’Neill, the New York police commissioner, said the recipients may have been selected because of their opposition to Trump. “It is of concern to us,” O’Neill said.The packages are being analysed by the FBI at its lab in Virginia.Trump, who still assails Clinton at rallies while supporters chant “lock her up” two years after her election defeat, took a softer tone in Wisconsin. “Let’s get along,” he told supporters. “By the way, do you see how nice I’m behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this? We’re all behaving very well and hopefully we can keep it that way, right?”He did not mention the intended recipients of the devices by name but spoke more generally, including in language which could be taken to refer to protests against himself and allies. “No one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains, which is done often, it’s done all the time, [it’s] got to stop. We should not mob people in public places or destroy public property. There is one way to settle our disagreements … peacefully, at the ballot box.”The packages were found after the discovery on Monday of a bomb in a mailbox at the New York home of George Soros, the billionaire liberal donor. The FBI said that device and at least four others found so far were in matching envelopes with similar address labelling and stamps.Speaking at an event in Florida, Hillary Clinton said the US was in a “troubling time” and condemned divisive rhetoric by politicians. “We have to do everything we can to bring our country together,” said Clinton. “We also have to elect candidates who will try to do the same.”Brennan suggested he may have been targeted because of his past criticisms of Trump. “His rhetoric, I think, too frequently fuels these feelings and sentiments that now are bleeding over into, potentially, acts of violence,” the former CIA director said during an event in Austin, Texas.He added: “One could make an argument that it has emboldened individuals to take matters into their own hands. So when he compliments individuals who have in fact body-slammed others, or that he’s going to pay the legal bill of somebody who takes a swing at somebody, that can only be seen as encouragement and incitement.”Several influential supporters of the president tried, without evidence, to dismiss the attempted bombings as a liberal hoax. But the idea caught on in some online chatrooms nonetheless: a sign reading “Democrats fake news fake bombs” was spotted amid supporters of the Republican candidate for the Florida governorship, Ron DeSantis, before a debate against his Democratic challenger, Andrew Gillum, on Wednesday evening.Soros, Clinton and Obama are three of the most prominent figures in Democratic politics and have long been the subjects of attacks and conspiracy theories from Trump and allies in the Republican party and rightwing media.Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, last week falsely suggested that Soros, a billionaire financier and philanthropist, was funding the “caravan” of Central Americans currently traveling through Mexico toward the US.Alexander Soros, George Soros’s son, said a wave of vitriol against his father was unleashed by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In an article for the New York Times, he said of the attempted bombing: “I cannot see it divorced from the new normal of political demonization that plagues us today.”CNN is frequently singled out by Trump as part of his campaign to discredit the media generally. In 2017 he tweeted a video showing him wrestling a man who had a CNN logo superimposed on his head.Reuters and Associated Press contributed reporting Topics Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Bill Clinton Barack Obama CNN US pipe bomb packages news

PLANTATION, Fla. (Reuters) - The man suspected of mailing at least 14 pipe bombs to some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s leading critics was arrested on Friday in Florida on federal charges in a case echoing the rancor of one of the most toxic election campaigns in decades. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a part-time pizza deliveryman, grocery worker and former stripper once charged with threatening to bomb an electric company in a billing dispute, was taken into custody by federal agents outside an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, near Miami as helicopters flew overhead. Authorities also seized a white van that Sayoc appeared to have used as his dwelling, its windows plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan “CNN SUCKS” and images of Democratic leaders with red cross-hairs over their faces. Fingerprint and DNA evidence helped identify the suspect, but his arrest did not necessarily end the threat, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray warned at a news conference. “There may be other packages in transit now and other packages on the way,” Wray said. One federal law enforcement source told Reuters that authorities were investigating whether other individuals were involved and did not rule out further arrests. Sayoc’s arrest followed an intense four-day manhunt sparked by the discovery of bombs concealed in packages addressed to such leading Democratic figures as former U.S. President Barack Obama and former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race. Some of the parcels also contained photographs of the intended recipients marked with a red X, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. The complaint accused Sayoc of sending 13 bombs to 11 individuals, starting with billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. A package surfaced on Monday near his home in Katonah, New York. A 14th package was found on Friday at a post office outside San Francisco addressed to another wealthy contributor to the Democratic Party and liberal causes, Tom Steyer. The bombs were sent in manila envelopes lined with bubble wrap and consisted of plastic 6-inch pipes packed with explosive material and wired to small clocks and batteries, the complaint said. Related CoverageTrump says 'Bomb' stuff' slowing Republican momentum at pollsFrom tweets to bombs, suspect's rage at Trump foes escalatedWray said investigators had yet to determine whether the bombs were actually “functional,” but added that the devices could be dangerous “if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction.” All were sent through the U.S. Postal Service system and intercepted before reaching their intended targets without exploding. No one has been hurt. But the bombs have heightened tensions during the closing days of a highly contentious campaign ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Democrats are battling to seize control of Congress now held by Trump’s Republican Party. Wray said fingerprints on one of two packages sent to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat frequently disparaged by Trump as “low-IQ Maxine,” belonged to Sayoc. The complaint also cited a “possible DNA” link between samples taken from two of the bombs and a sample previously collected from Sayoc. Sayoc was charged with five felony counts, including interstate transportation and illegal mailing of explosives, threatening a former president, making threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers. If convicted, Sayoc could be sentenced up to 48 years in prison, officials said. “We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference. Announcing the arrest to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said, “We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen,” Trump said. “And I’m committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now.” A native of New York City’s Brooklyn borough and a registered Republican, Sayoc made his political views evident on social media. In Facebook and Twitter posts, he railed against Democrats, Muslims and liberals, including an anti-Soros tweet two days before a bomb showed up at the financier’s home. The Arizona Republic newspaper reported that Sayoc threatened Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, one of the few Republicans in Congress openly critical of Trump, in a pair of Oct. 1 Twitter posts consisting of violent imagery and a photo of Flake’s Arizona home, with the message, “... very nice house Jeff a lot entrances.” FBI officers escort Cesar Altieri Sayoc into a waiting SUV at FBI headquarters after arresting him in connection with an investigation into a string of parcel bombs in Miramar, Florida, U.S. October 26, 2018. WSVN Ch. 7/Handout via REUTERS Public records showed numerous arrests over the years for domestic violence, theft and other charges, including the alleged bomb threat against a utility company. Sayoc was expected to be held at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and make his first appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. A public defender listed as Sayoc’s attorney of record in New York, Sarah Baumgartel, could not immediately be reached for comment. Ron Lowy, a former lawyer for Sayoc who now represents his family, told CNN he believed Sayoc was left emotionally scarred as a boy when his father left the home, developing an identity crisis in which he ultimately embraced Trump as a kind of father figure. “It’s my opinion that he was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out, Trump reaching out to these types of outsiders - people who don’t fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them that they have a place at the table, telling them that it’s OK to get angry,” Lowy said. All the individuals targeted by the packages Sayoc is accused of sending have been outspoken critics of Trump and his administration, foils for the president and his right-wing supporters or both. Among intended recipients earlier in the week were former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, actor Robert De Niro and former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance Trump revoked after Brennan lambasted Trump’s Russia summit performance as “nothing short of treasonous.” His package was delivered to the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he had served as an on-air analyst. On Friday, packages surfaced for Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Democratic U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California. The episode has sparked an outcry from Trump’s critics charging that his inflammatory rhetoric against perceived enemies among Democrats and the press has fostered a climate ripe for politically motivated violence. “If we don’t stop this political mania, this fervor, rancor, hatred, you’ll see this again and again and again,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC. “...It starts with the president.” Trump’s supporters have accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting that the president was to blame for the bomb scares, and Trump himself accused the press of using coverage of the investigation to score political points against him. Slideshow (23 Images)After first calling for unity at the White House event, Trump lamented partisan attacks against him and again pointed at the media. “I get attacked all the time ... I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on different things it will show bad,” he told the crowd, acknowledging an attendee who shouted “fake news.” Reporting by Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Gabriella Borter and Peter Szekely in New York, Mark Hosenball, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert in Washington, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis and Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Michael PerryOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.