In Brief: Nation & World: 7-10-16
Obama says Dallas gunman was a ‘demented individual’
DALLAS (AP) — President Barack Obama said Saturday that the gunman responsible for killing five Dallas police officers was a “demented individual” who does not represent black Americans any more than a white man accused of killing blacks at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, represents whites.
“So we cannot let the actions of a few define all of us,” Obama said from Warsaw, Poland, where he attended a NATO summit.
The president said he would visit Dallas in a few days to pay respects and mourn. He also planned to convene a White House meeting next week with police officers and community and civil rights activists to talk about next steps.
It was the third time in as many days that Obama has spoken about the fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that were immediately followed by a sniper attack in Dallas that killed five police officers Thursday night. Seven officers and two civilians were also injured.
The Dallas attack layered new anxiety onto a nation already divided about guns and how police treat African-Americans.
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Black activists hope killings prompt more action from whites
NEW YORK (AP) — Since the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement three years ago, many white Americans have wrestled with how to respond. Some chose racist-tinged ridicule. Others, by word or deed, sought to show solidarity as blacks protested the deaths of fellow blacks in encounters with police. Still others, untouched personally, watched from a distance in silence.
This past week, as graphic videos portrayed two more such deaths and five police officers were slain at a march in Dallas protesting the killings, whites have joined blacks in forceful calls for unity that cut across color lines. Some see hope of a turning point from these tragedies, that this might be the eyes-wide-open moment that moves white America from apathy or remorse to action in pursuit of racial reconciliation.
“I definitely think there’s a change in the atmosphere,” said Johnetta Elzie, a black activist from St. Louis who believes the events have galvanized more white people to confront issues that afflict blacks. “I hate the fact that it is this way, but with every police violence victim story that goes national, more and more people wake up.”
The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013, inspired to a large degree by the killing the previous year of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. It soon grew into both a national battle cry and phenomenon after a series of killings of blacks and other minorities by police.
Over the course of the campaign, black activists have had mixed feelings about the response from whites — commending those who have supported the effort yet decrying what they perceive as disinterest or hostility from a majority of whites.
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Cop’s lawyer blames driver’s gun, not his race
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A suburban St. Paul police officer who killed a black driver reacted to the man’s gun, not his race, his attorney said Saturday, giving the most detailed account so far of why the officer drew his own weapon during the traffic stop last week.
Philando Castile’s girlfriend, who streamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting live on Facebook, has said he was shot several times while reaching for his wallet, after telling the officer he had a gun and a permit to carry it.
St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez was reacting to “the presence of that gun and the display of that gun” when he opened fire on Castile, Minneapolis attorney Thomas Kelly told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate on how Castile displayed the weapon or what led up to the deadly traffic stop.
Yanez “was reacting to the actions of the driver,” Kelly said. “This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun.”
An attorney for Castile’s family, Larry Rogers, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on Kelly’s remarks. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, also couldn’t be reached for comment; no one answered the door at her home Saturday afternoon.
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Obama asks Americans not to fear a return to a dark past
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected any notion that the past week’s stunning violence signals a return to racial brutality of a dark past, saying that as painful as the killings of police and black men were, “America is not as divided as some have suggested.”
With five Dallas police officers dead at the hands of a sniper and two black men dead at the hands of police, Obama appealed to Americans not to be overwhelmed by fear of a return to 1960s-style chaos and to understand the progress that has been made in racial relations since that time.
“You’re not seeing riots and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully,” he said. “You’ve seen almost uniformly peaceful protests and you’ve seen, uniformly, police handling those protests with professionalism.”
Obama spoke at the conclusion of a NATO summit in Warsaw before leaving for Spain, part of a farewell trip to Europe he was cutting short by one day because of the developments at home.
The comments marked the third time in as many days that Obama has spoken, from a distance, about the police-involved fatal shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that were followed by a sniper attack in Dallas that killed five police officers. Seven other officers and two civilians were also injured.
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NATO boosts support for countries battling Islamic extremism
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO allies agreed Saturday to provide increased military support to countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are targets of Islamic extremism, including using NATO surveillance planes in the fight against the Islamic State group.
Alliance leaders also agreed to launch a new naval mission in the Mediterranean, and made commitments to maintain a stable military presence in Afghanistan and to fund Afghan security forces through 2020.
“We’re moving forward with the most significant reinforcement of our collective defense any time since the Cold War,” U.S. President Barack Obama said at a news conference at the end of a crucial NATO summit in Warsaw.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO will start a training and capacity-building mission for Iraqi armed forces in Iraq, a country he called central in the fight against IS. NATO is also working to establish an intelligence center in Tunisia, a major recruiting ground for IS, and will shortly start providing support to Tunisian special operation forces.
“Today we have taken decisions to strengthen our partners and to project stability beyond our borders,” Stoltenberg told reporters. He said millions of people in Africa and the Middle East have been rendered “homeless and helpless” by radical organizations like IS and that the extremist groups are also to blame for organizing terrorist attacks in Europe and America.
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In nod to Sanders, Clinton offers new health care proposals
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — In another nod to primary rival Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton is proposing to increase federal money for community health centers and outlining steps to expand access to health care across the nation.
Clinton’s campaign says the proposal is part of her plan to provide universal health care coverage in the United States. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee also is reaffirming her support for a public-option insurance plan and for expanding Medicare by letting people age 55 year and older opt in.
The announcement Saturday was a clear gesture toward Sanders, who ran a strong primary campaign against Clinton and has held back from endorsing her candidacy as the party’s convention nears.
In a statement, Clinton said: “We have more work to do to finish our long fight to provide universal, quality, affordable health care to everyone in America.”
Clinton’s campaign noted that Sanders had promoted doubling money for primary care services at federally qualified health centers. Money for these centers was increased under the Affordable Care Act, an effort led by the Vermont senator.
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Islamic State’s Twitter traffic drops amid US efforts
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Islamic State group’s Twitter traffic has plunged 45 percent in the past two years, the Obama administration says, as the U.S. and its allies have countered messages of jihadi glorification with a flood of online images and statements about suffering and enslavement at the hands of the extremist organization.
Among the images: A teddy bear with Arabic writing and messages saying IS “slaughters childhood,” ”kills innocence,” ”lashes purity” or “humiliates children.” A male hand covering a female’s mouth, saying IS “deprives woman her voice.” A woman in a black niqab (veil), bloody tears coming from a bruised eye, and the caption: “Women under ISIS. Enslaved. Battered. Beaten. Humiliated. Flogged.”
U.S. officials cite the drop in Twitter traffic as a sign of progress toward eliminating propaganda they blame for inspiring attacks around the world.
When the U.S. formed an international coalition in September 2014 to fight IS, the administration outlined multiple goals: military action and cutting off foreign fighters and finances, confronting the group’s extremist ideology and stemming the militants’ growing popularity in the Arab world and beyond.
The messaging element of the campaign struggled early on. Much of the anti-IS content put online was in English, limiting its effectiveness. At the time, social media networks were only getting started with new technological approaches to the challenge of disabling accounts that were recruiting and radicalizing prospective IS members.
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1 dead from bull-run goring in Alicante; 2 gored in Pamplona
PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) — A man from Valencia died Saturday after being gored in a late-night bull run near the southern Spanish town of Alicante, while two men were gored and 12 others injured in the more popular morning bull-run race in Pamplona.
The deadly goring occurred about 1 a.m. during festivities involving female cattle in the small village of Pedreguera. The Red Cross said a heifer gored the 29-year-old man through the thorax and abdomen. He was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead an hour later.
The town suspended all bull-related festivities for the day.
At the famed San Fermin festival, the bull run was unusually long Saturday, with one bull left stranded at the starting gate, where he proceeded to charge and strike a couple of runners. Many other participants fell and were stampeded by the head of the pack in the 930-yard race.
Another of the six bulls in the run got separated from the pack, did a U-turn and gored a nearby runner, lifting his body off the ground and flipping him over.
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Stopped 52 times by police: Was it racial profiling?
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When Philando Castile saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror the night he got shot, it wasn’t unusual. He had been pulled over at least 52 times in recent years in and around the Twin Cities and given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt.
He was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.
Was Castile an especially bad driver or just unlucky? Or was he targeted by officers who single out black motorists like him for such stops, as several of his family members have alleged?
The answer may never be known, but Castile’s stop for a broken tail light Wednesday ended with him fatally shot by a suburban St. Paul police officer, and Castile’s girlfriend livestreaming the chilling aftermath.
The shooting has added a new impetus to a national debate on racial profiling; a day after Castile died, a black Army veteran killed five officers in Dallas at a demonstration over Castile’s killing and another fatal police shooting, in Louisiana.
