World Briefly: 11-13-2016

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AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST

Thousands rally, march in nationwide anti-Trump protests

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands took to the streets Saturday across the United States as demonstrations against President-elect Donald Trump continued in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and beyond.

Protesters rallied at New York’s Union Square before picking up steam and taking their cause toward Trump Tower. Police set up barricades in front of some of the most expensive stores in Manhattan as the group made its way along Fifth Avenue.

“I just can’t have Donald Trump running this country and teaching our children racism, sexism and bigotry,” said Noemi Abad, 30, a fashion designer, as she marched down the famous road. “Out of his own mouth he made this division. He needs to go — there’s no place for racism in society in America.”

Trump’s comments — particularly a 2005 recording of him making lewd comments about women — sparked outrage during his campaign. That spilled over into a fourth day of demonstrations following an election that ended with half of U.S. voters choosing the other candidate, Hillary Clinton.

In Los Angeles, several thousand people marched through downtown streets Saturday to condemn what they saw as Trump’s hate speech about Muslims, pledge to deport people in the country illegally and crude comments about women.

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Campaign’s disdain for civility could leave lasting damage

When a South Carolina congressman shouted “You lie!” during a speech by President Barack Obama in 2009, House members rebuked him for violating norms of civility. After this year’s presidential campaign, the idea that people were once troubled by the outburst seems almost quaint.

Civility in politics has been declining for years, both a cause and symptom of a changing culture where anonymous verbal assaults are fired freely across the internet, and cable TV routinely broadcasts words once banned from the airwaves. But Donald Trump’s presidential run took name-calling and mockery — things that voters long said they detested in their candidates — and normalized them into a winning political strategy.

Now Trump, the president-elect, is calling for unity in words that draw attention precisely because they sound so unlike Trump, the candidate. But many question whether it is possible to reverse the campaign’s damage to political discourse and its ripples out to the way Americans speak to and about each other.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around on this subject, but I think in this particular election that an embrace of Donald Trump was an embrace of incivility and vulgarity and insults and bullying, and unfortunately we saw very little public repudiation of that from any Trump supporters,” said Mark DeMoss, an Atlanta public relations executive and conservative Republican whose clients are mostly Christian religious organizations.

DeMoss, who abandoned a campaign called the Civility Project in early 2011 after only three members of Congress would sign a pledge to act respectfully, watched the degradation of political speech for years. Then Trump’s campaign, he and other longtime observers say, stomped well past what was thought to be acceptable.

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Trump, McConnell and Ryan: Unlikely new power trio for DC

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington’s new power trio consists of a bombastic billionaire, a telegenic policy wonk and a taciturn political tactician. How well they can get along will help determine what gets done over the next four years, and whether the new president’s agenda flounders or succeeds.

President-elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell make up an unlikely alliance, one defined in advance mostly by Trump’s opposition to the Washington establishment that Ryan and McConnell exemplify.

Trump and Ryan clashed throughout the campaign, with Trump taking offense when Ryan initially refused to endorse him and later distanced himself over the audio of Trump talking about groping women.

“Paul Ryan, a man who doesn’t know how to win (including failed run four years ago), must start focusing on the budget, military, vets etc.,” Trump groused over Twitter last month.

But that was then, this is now, as Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, said Thursday after meeting with Trump at the Capitol.

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Deadlocked jurors force mistrial in Ohio police shooting

CINCINNATI (AP) — Jurors failed to come up with a verdict against a white former police officer charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black motorist and were leaning toward a lesser conviction, a prosecutor said Saturday after a mistrial was declared.

The jury spent some 25 hours debating the outcome and indicated several times that they were deadlocked before a judge agreed.

Prosecutors will decide within the next two weeks whether to retry former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing. He was fired after shooting 43-year-old Sam DuBose in the head after pulling him over for a missing front license plate on July 19, 2015.

Tensing, 26, testified he feared he was going to be killed. Prosecutors said repeatedly the evidence contradicted Tensing’s story.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters jurors were leaning toward a conviction of voluntary manslaughter and acquittal on the murder charge. He later told media outlets the vote was deadlocked at 8-4 in favor of the lesser charge.

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Mass grave points to IS horrors to come in push for Mosul

HAMAM AL-ALIL, Iraq (AP) — For months, Islamic State group fighters drove thousands of civilians on forced marches across the Nineveh desert into the small town of Hamam al-Alil. Retreating ahead of methodical Iraqi advances on Mosul’s southern approach, IS fighters converged here, rounding up men, women and children for use as human shields and killing dozens of others.

When Iraqi forces began to close in on this cluster of villages along the Tigris River valley, most of the militants fled into Mosul, taking thousands of civilians with them. But before the retreat, IS fighters also led hundreds to a garbage dump past an old IS training camp and shot them dead, leaving the bodies among the piles of trash.

A week after Hamam al-Alil was retaken from IS, and days after a delegation from the central government in Baghdad visited the site, about a dozen bodies remain strewn among piles of garbage on the western edge of the town. The bodies that remained were the ones family members were unable to identify. Some had been decapitated, other have their hands and feet bound. Iraqi officials at the scene said the men were killed for alleged spying in aid of the operation to retake Mosul or having links to the Iraqi government’s security forces.

No efforts to preserve the site were visible on a visit Friday and Iraqi officers reported that wild dogs were eating at the decaying corpses that lay on the edge of an old agriculture college later bombed by coalition aircraft after IS converted the sprawling compound into a training base.

“These were men working with us,” said Iraqi federal police Cpt. Muhannad Adnan.

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Successful real-estate firm built between grisly crimes

WOODRUFF, S.C. (AP) — As he built a successful real estate firm, Todd Kohlhepp’s behavior struck some as odd: watching pornographic videos during work, making macabre jokes in marketing literature and openly discussing that he was a sex offender.

But he was also an award-winning agent described as a hard worker and good boss.

All the while, authorities say, he was hiding a grisly secret that included seven killings over 13 years. He gunned down four people at a motorcycle shop in 2003 and within the last year killed three more, authorities said. The crimes were uncovered earlier this month when investigators rescued a woman chained up in a 30-foot long storage container on his property.

“He was the kind of Type Double A, hair-on-fire kind of guy. … You felt that if he wanted to take you out, he could take you out easily,” said Lawrence Shorts, a mortgage banker who worked on transactions with Kohlhepp.

Kohlhepp made ominous comments about having trouble sleeping and how he would “know where people live,” Shorts said. A neighbor, Scott Waldrop, said Kohlhepp bragged about chasing people off his rural property with an arsenal including guns with silencers and night-vision equipment.

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Death toll rises to 50 in IS-claimed blast in Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — The death toll from a bomb blast at a Sufi shrine in southwest Pakistan Saturday has risen to 50 people with more than 100 wounded, officials said.

The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the suicide attack at the shrine of Sufi saint Shah Bilal Noorani in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

Abdur Rasool, an official at the province’s home ministry, said rescuers were transporting the wounded to hospitals and the dead to local morgues, but were struggling in the difficult mountainous terrain, some 350 kilometers (217 miles) south of the provincial capital, Quetta.

The blast targeted worshippers as they were in the throes of their devotional “dhamal” dance, and the courtyard at the time was packed with families, women and children.

The Islamic State group’s statement on the IS-affiliated Aamaq news agency said the suicide attack had targeted “Shiites.” The shrine is frequented by both Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim majority and Shiite minority. IS considers all Shiite Muslims heretics.

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Dutch police detain protesters before Saint Nicholas arrival

MAASSLUIS, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch incarnation of Saint Nicholas arrived in the Netherlands on Saturday amid a huge security operation to prevent violent confrontations between supporters and opponents of his helper, “Black Pete.”

The children’s character known as Sinterklaas has in recent years been at the center of a heated debate about race in the Netherlands. That’s because of his sidekick “Black Pete,” who is often played by white people in blackface makeup.

Opponents claim he is a racist caricature who harkens back to slavery, while supporters see him as a harmless figure of fun and an integral part of cherished Dutch tradition.

Thousands of people, including many children wearing “Black Pete” costumes who clambered up trees and street lights to get a better view, crowded into the historic harbor of Maassluis for the nationally televised arrival of Sinterklaas. They were watched over by hundreds of police and security guards amid fears of confrontations.

The celebrations passed peacefully in Maassluis, but police detained 180 anti-Black Pete activists in nearby Rotterdam for defying a ban on protests in that city.

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Heavy security as Sting reopens Bataclan after Paris attacks

PARIS (AP) — French security turned out in force Saturday night ahead of a concert by British pop legend Sting marking the reopening of the Bataclan concert hall one year after suicidal jihadis turned the famed Paris site into a bloodbath.

Hundreds of yards of barricades, extensive body searches and scores of armed police greeted those lucky enough to get a ticket. The Bataclan said all 1,000 Sting tickets sold out quickly and other tickets were given to the families of the 90 revelers slain a year ago by extremists with automatic weapons and explosive belts.

Sting , in a T-shirt with a guitar slung over his shoulder, asked concert-goers in fluent French to observe a minute of silence as he opened the show.

“We will not forget them,” the singer promised. “Tonight we have two tasks to settle. First, to remember and honor those who lost their life in the attacks. Then, to celebrate life and music.”

He then strummed out a string of hits, including “Message in a Bottle.”

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UFC loads 3 title fights under bright lights of NYC debut

NEW YORK (AP) — With his mink coat left in the locker room, Conor McGregor is set to take a swing at UFC history.

No metal chair needed.

McGregor, who attempted to use a chair in a violent fashion at a pre-fight press conference, can become the first UFC fighter to hold championship belts in two divisions at the same time.

“It’s never even been close to a reality in this game, in the UFC,” McGregor said. “And then to do it on such a monumental stage like this, of course, this will be one of my shining moments.”

Imagine, McGregor strutting out of Madison Square Garden with two title belts over his shoulder in the same arena where the New York Rangers and New York Knicks aren’t even factors for one championship.