Turkish court files terror charges against 2 British journalists, assistant
Turkish court files terror charges against 2 British journalists, assistant
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — A Turkish court charged two Vice News journalists and their assistant on Monday with “aiding a terrorist organization” and ordered them arrested pending trial. Their employer has called the charges “baseless and alarmingly false.”
Two British journalists, correspondent Jake Hanrahan and cameraman Philip Pendlebury, and their Turkey-based assistant were detained on Thursday while reporting from Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, where renewed fighting between security forces and Kurdish rebels has killed scores of people.
A court official said the court in Diyarbakir ordered the three arrested on Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear which organization the journalists are accused of aiding.
It is not uncommon for journalists to be taken into custody while reporting from Turkey’s mostly Kurdish regions and several Kurdish journalists have been jailed for alleged links to the Kurdish rebels. While foreigners, including some journalists, were arrested and prosecuted in the 1990s on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda, such trials had become rare in recent years.
State Dept to release 7,000 pages of emails
WASHINGTON — The State Department is expected to release roughly 7,000 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails later Monday, including about 150 that have been censored because they contain information that has now been deemed classified.
Department officials say the redacted information was classified in preparation for the public release of the emails and was not identified as classified when Clinton sent or received them.
The State Department plans to post the documents to its website on Monday evening.
Experts in government secrecy law see almost no possibility of criminal action against Hillary Clinton or her top aides in connection with now-classified information sent over unsecure email while she was secretary of state, based on the public evidence thus far.
There is no evidence of emails stored in Hillary Clinton’s private server bearing classified markings. State Department officials say they don’t believe that emails she sent or received included material classified at the time. And even if other government officials dispute that assertion, it is extremely difficult to prove anyone knowingly mishandled secrets.
“How can you be on notice if there are no markings?” said Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who frequently handles security-clearance cases.
Grenade explodes outside Ukraine’s parliament during nationalist protest
KIEV, Ukraine — As lawmakers took up a measure to give greater powers to separatists in eastern Ukraine, nationalist protesters clashed with police outside parliament on Monday, and the Interior Ministry said one officer was killed in a grenade blast and more than 100 were wounded.
It was the worst violence in the capital since the government took power in February 2014.
The decentralization of power was a condition demanded by Russia for a truce signed in Minsk in February aimed at ending the fighting between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-backed separatists that has left more than 6,800 dead since April 2014.
But Ukrainian nationalists strongly oppose changing the constitution, saying that would threaten the country’s sovereignty and independence.
Man charged in Houston-area deputy’s death placed in mental hospital after 2012 arrest
HOUSTON — The man accused of shooting and killing a suburban Houston officer has a history of mental illness and once lived in a homeless shelter, authorities said Monday.
Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth was ambushed and shot 15 times, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said in a court hearing for Shannon J. Miles, who is charged with capital murder.
Miles, a 30-year-old Houston resident who said little in court, is being held without bond. His criminal history dates back to 2005 and includes an arrest in Austin in 2012 that led to Miles being sent to a state mental hospital for several months.
Anderson would not comment on a motive, saying investigators were still trying to figure that out.
By wire sources.