United States – Page 14

Grand jury finds white Ferguson police officer not guilty

A St. Louis, Missouri grand jury has found white police officer Darren Wilson not guilty in the death of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown who he fatally shot in August, St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCullough has announced.

“After a full, and impartial, and critical examination of all the evidence and the law… they [the grand jury] determined that no probable cause exist to file any charge against officer Wilson,” McCullough told a courtroom of reporters Monday.

McCullough said that the full evidence of the investigation would be released after his announcement, but that it would not provide details on who the grand jury were or how they cast their votes.

He added that the grand jury met 25 times to talk to various witnesses, hearing more than 70 hours of testimony while examining all physical and scientific evidence before making their decision.

“I’m ever mindful that this decision will not be accepted by some and may cause disappointment for others,” McCullough said. “But all decisions in the criminal justice system must be determined by the physical and scientific evidence and the credible testimony corroborated by that evidence not in response to public outcry or for political expediency.”

18-year-old Brown was shot dead by Wilson on August 9, in Ferguson, Missouri, from the officer’s vehicle. The shooting triggered massive race related protests against police brutality in Ferguson and around the country.

“We are a nation built on the rule of law, and so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make,” US President Barack Obama said in a statement from the White House, calling on the protesters to remain peaceful.

Prior to jury’s decision, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and signed an executive order, activating the state’s National Guard to prepare for the possibility of a second wave of unrest.

The protesters have used the slogan, “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” to show solidarity with Brown, who, some witnesses say, was killed in a surrender posture. However, officer Wilson told the authorities he acted fearing for his life, while the teenager struggled for his gun.

Politics of white destruction: Nevada speaker steps down

Nevada Assemblyman Ira Hansen will not take the State Assembly speaker position next year, he announced Sunday. The speaker-elect has faced criticism for a history of bigoted sentiments he expressed in a regular local newspaper column.

Hansen, a two-term assemblyman, first told his fellow Republicans in an email that he would not assume speaker duties, according to Nevada journalist Jon Ralston.

“Politics of personal destruction win,” Hansen wrote to his caucus. “I need to step down. I hope that you all know that the Ira that you have known through these years and weeks is the real Ira and not what the media is painting me to be. You are a great group that can hopefully do great things and my staying will harm the caucus. I wish you all the best. Thanks for hanging tough through these difficult past days. If this were just about ‘me’ I would fight this out to the bitter end, but it is going to harm all of you.”

For 13 years, Hansen wrote a column in the Sparks Tribune, a small local newspaper. The Reno News and Review reviewed his columns and published last week a number of racist, misogynistic and homophobic portions.

“The lack of gratitude and the deliberate ignoring of white history in relation to eliminating slavery is a disgrace that Negro leaders should own up to,” Hansen wrote in one instance.

“Today, when Army men look at women in the ranks with ‘longing in their eyes’ it very well may constitute ’sexual harassment,'” he wrote in another column. “The truth is, women do not belong in the Army or Navy or Marine Corps, except in certain limited fields.”

Hansen, a denier of evolution, also consistently linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claimed he proudly kept a Confederate flag in his home “in memory of a great cause and my brave ancestors who fought for that cause.”

Last week, Hansen became the target of intense scrutiny over the history of columns, which became available online only recently.

“No Nevada official has ever given the public a more detailed blueprint to his thinking than Hansen,” The Reno News and Review wrote. “For many years, starting on May 11, 1994, he wrote a column for the Sparks Tribune. The Tribune did not go online until relatively recently, so access to and knowledge of most of the Hansen columns has not been easy. We reviewed every column on microfilm for this piece, covering a period of 13 years, plus a few that did make it onto the Trib website. In these columns, his viewpoint evolved very little. In fact, some columns ran unchanged time and again as the years passed.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a fellow Republican, denounced Hansen’s writings.

“I wholeheartedly disagree with Assemblyman Hansen’s past public statements on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. This abhorrent kind of speech is unacceptable,” Sandoval said.

Hansen released a statement later Sunday that confirmed his resignation. He insisted that he was the victim of a media-led “character assassination.”

“For the greater good of the State of Nevada and the cause I support it is necessary for me to withdraw as Speaker Designee. The tens of thousands of people who both read my columns and listened to my radio shows through two decades in the media know this has been a carefully orchestrated attack to remove a conservative Republican from a major leadership role in State government. The deliberate character assassination and the politics of personal destruction have totally distorted my views and record. Ultimately, this whole attack has very little to do with my views. The powers that be are planning a massive, more than one billion dollar, tax increase and I stood in the way as Speaker. I have already served two terms as an Assemblyman without any of these vicious attacks. It was only when I had risen to leadership that this smear campaign occurred. That is the real reason for this and it is vital the public understands that.”

Whether Hansen will remain in his Assembly seat is unclear, according to Ralston.

US whites a minority by 2050

A new baby boom of Hispanic, Asian and black children is coming to America – and it will make whites a minority by 2050.

The surge is not due to new immigrants coming to the United States – but instead stems from the immigrants who are already here having children, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

His new book, Diversity Explosion, recounts how falling white birth rates and rising birth rates for minorities will change way the United States of America looks – and votes – forever.

There are already nearly as many non-white babies being born as white children, according to Census Bureau statistics. It’s only a matter of time before minorities children outnumber white ones.

The result, Frey tells the Atlantic, will be very similar to the Baby Boom after the Second World War – except this time it will be minority children being born.

‘Back in the 1950s, we had a lot of Americans across the board in their childbearing years – we had all these babies,’ he said.

‘Now, that’s really only the case for some of the newer minorities.’
And it’s not just cities that will be changing. The suburbs are already becoming more diverse and are likely to become progressively less white year after year.

Between 2000 and 2010, the population of Hispanics in suburbs grew by more than eight million. Major cities added just three million Hispanics.

Even among black Americans, the population of suburban dwellers is growing. In the last decade, the population of suburban blacks grew by three million and the population of urban blacks shrank by several hundred thousand.

Source: Daily Mail

FBI warns about extremists as Ferguson awaits verdict

As the US waits to hear whether a Missouri police officer will face charges for killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the FBI is warning law enforcement agencies across the country that the decision “will likely” lead some extremist protesters to threaten and even attack police officers or federal agents.

Peaceful protesters could be caught in the middle, and electrical facilities or water treatment plants could also become targets. In addition, so-called “hacktivists” like the group “Anonymous” could try to launch cyber-attacks against authorities.

“The announcement of the grand jury’s decision … will likely be exploited by some individuals to justify threats and attacks against law enforcement and critical infrastructure,” the FBI says in an intelligence bulletin issued in recent days. “This also poses a threat to those civilians engaged in lawful or otherwise constitutionally protected activities.”

The FBI bulletin expresses concern only over those who would exploit peaceful protests, not the masses of demonstrators who will want to legitimately, lawfully and collectively express their views on the grand jury’s decision.

The bulletin “stresses the importance of remaining aware of the protections afforded to all U.S. persons exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

Within hours of the FBI issuing its bulletin, some police departments across the country issued their own internal memos urging officers to review procedures and protocols for responding to mass demonstrations.

Still, the bulletin’s conclusions were blunt: “The FBI assesses those infiltrating and exploiting otherwise legitimate public demonstrations with the intent to incite and engage in violence could be armed with bladed weapons or firearms, equipped with tactical gear/gas masks, or bulletproof vests to mitigate law enforcement measures.”

In its new intelligence bulletin, obtained by ABC News, the FBI says “exploitation” of mass demonstrations “could occur both in the Ferguson area and nationwide.”

In a recent interview with ABC News, Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey said people in “communities of color” often “don’t view us as people who really have the right to enforce laws or tell them what to do,” and sometimes it’s because of “the way they’ve seen us conduct ourselves in the past.”

In particular, African-Americans are disproportionally represented in crime. According to the FBI, 4,379 blacks were arrested for murder last year, while 3,799 whites were arrested for murder – even though census numbers show there are six times more whites than blacks in the United States.

Source: ABC

‘Nigga’ used 500 000 times daily on Twitter

This season, the US National Football League is attempting the impossible: banning the n-word within the chalk-lined borders of its purview.

As with the previous attempts, the NFL’s “zero tolerance” policy — which gives referees leeway to issue a 15-yard penalty for a first offense and ejection for a second — comes with good intentions: to establish a field of play free of the most racially charged word in American history.

The policy, though, was widely criticized as being heavy-handed and out of touch. As the league wrestled with the issue, a team of Washington Post journalists examined the history of this singular American word, its spread through popular culture and its place in the vernacular today.

But like the others, it is almost certainly doomed to fail; to be ignored, at best — or mocked and flouted, at worst.

If there is one thing certain about the modern n-word, it is that it defies black-and-white interpretations and hard-and-fast rules.

The word is too essential as an urban slang term to be placed in a casket and buried, as NAACP delegates attempted to do in a 2007 mock “funeral” for the word.

It is too ingrained in youth culture to be eliminated from city streets, as the New York City Council attempted with a symbolic resolution banning the word the same year. And more than likely, it will prove too complex and nuanced to be policed by football referees wielding yellow flags and penalties. Never mind the troublesome optics of a group of mostly white NFL executives dictating the language rules of a majority-black player pool.

If anything, in 2014, it is the very notion of banning the n-word that appears dead and fit for burial. It was a long and noble fight, waged largely — but not exclusively — by an older generation for which the word is inseparable from the brutality into which it was born. If there is still a meaningful n-word debate left to have, it is over context, ownership and the degree to which it should be tethered to its awful history — or set free from it.

A word that is used 500,000 times a day on Twitter — as “nigga” is, according to search data on the social media analytics Web site Topsy.com — is almost by definition beyond banning. By comparison, “bro” and “dude” — two of the terms with which the n-word is synonymous to many people younger than 35 — are used 300,000 and 200,000 times, respectively. For many of this generation, the word is tossed around unthinkingly, no more impactful than a comma.

“It’s such a regular part of my vernacular. It’s a word I use every day,” said comedian/actor Tehran Von Ghasri, a 34-year-old D.C. native of African American and Iranian American heritage. “I’m a ‘nigga’ addict.”

But any larger exploration of this subject leads to the inevitable conclusion that it isn’t just the NFL that has an n-word problem. It’s all of America.

Source: Washington Post

Iraq, the remake

Obama’s latest comments drew an emerging parallel to past US military strategy in Iraq.

After having lost the Senate to Republicans, American foreign policy is heading towards a repeat of George W Bush’s presidency.

The latest US troop surge in Iraq will allow an offensive campaign against Islamic militants, president Barack Obama claimed on Sunday, as political talk shows featuring the president and his predecessor, George W Bush, underscored the growing echoes of the past in current American military strategy.

In his first public comments since doubling the number of US ground troops in Iraq to 3,000, Obama said the decision did not represent a failure of his administration’s early reliance on air strikes in Iraq and Syria.

“Now we need some ground troops, Iraqi ground troops, to start pushing back.”

The new strategy has echoes of previous US attempts to train Iraqi forces. The former president George W Bush also appeared on CBS on Sunday to defend his original decision to invade Iraq, denying it was just to “finish the job my father started”.

“I went in there as a result of a very changed environment because of September 11 and the danger we were concerned about was that the weapons would be put into hands of terrorist groups that were going to come and [make] the attacks of 9-11 pale in comparison,” he said.

Obama insisted that this Iraqi campaign would be different from past campaigns by the US in the middle-eastern country.

SEALs officially distance themselves from ‘Shooter’

The senior leadership of the US Navy’s SEAL community—the commander and force master chief of Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC)—have officially distanced themselves from a so-called SEAL Team Six member, labeled in the media as ‘The Shooter’.

The man claims to have been the operator who shot Osama Bin Ladin in the 2011 raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader. Eyewitnesses on the scene have since contradicted the White House’s story of the raid.

Thousands of sailors on the US aircraft carrier from which Bin Laden was said to have been dumped into the Indian Ocean also wrote home that no such burial took place.

In a letter signed by both the senior commander and enlisted man of Naval Special Warfare Command, the SEAL leadership denied that the so-called Shooter was part of their team, pointing out that to reveal such classified information is a violation of the law.

Rear Admiral Brian Losey, Commander of NSWC, and Force Master Chief Michael Magaraci state that violators of that ethos “are neither teammates in good standing, nor teammates who represent Naval Special Warfare.”

Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be Bin Laden’s hideout. The Obama administration have also ignored the numerous obituaries of bin Laden’s death in December 2001.

It was reported earlier that 22 Navy SEALs, most of whom belonged to Team 6, died after their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. This was the largest loss of life in a single day since the 2001 invasion.

Several more members of the team that allegedly carried out the dubious raid on Bin Laden’s compound, have also wound up dead.

Unlike Bradley Manning who received jail time for leaking classified military information, SEAL Team Six members who speak out are somehow not punished.

Texans ban fracking in its birthplace

Voters approved a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the north Texas town of Denton on Tuesday, making it the first city in the Lone Star State to outlaw the oil and gas extraction technique behind the U.S. energy boom.

The vote in the city of 123,000 was highly symbolic because hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is widely used in Texas, the top crude producer in the United States.

“Denton, Texas is where hydraulic fracturing was invented,” said Bruce Baizel, Earthworks energy program director. “If this place in the heart of the oil and gas industry can’t live with fracking, then who can?”

Green groups said the result served as a wake-up call to the industry.

Groups like Frack Free Denton won even though they were outspent by a margin of 10 to one, according to organizers and local media reports.

The Texas Oil & Gas Association, the state’s energy lobby, on Wednesday quickly filed for an injunction.

“A ban on hydraulic fracturing is inconsistent with state law,” Thomas Phillips, a former head of the Supreme Court of Texas who now represents the trade group, said.

In a frack job, a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals is used to unlock hydrocarbons from rock. Operators claim it is safe but many environmental groups oppose the practice – calling it wasteful, polluting, dirty and noisy.

Fracking was pioneered at the Barnett shale formation where Denton is located. Exxon Mobil’s XTO unit honed its shale expertise in the natural gas-rich Barnett. Most of the crude output in Texas comes, however, from the growing Eagle Ford and Permian fields to the south and west.

The Denton referendum pitted oil and gas operators and mineral rights owners against residents who say their homes and lives are being encroached on by work that can be noisy, soak up scarce water supplies and overwhelm roads with heavy truck traffic.

“It’s essentially a ban on all drilling,” said Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, a group aligned with producers. “No one would try to drill a well if they can’t frack it.”

Source: Reuters

Harvard University offers Anal Sex 101

Harvard University is renowned the world over for the Ivy League education its students are offered, and the curriculum contains a class or two that would be hard to find elsewhere, RT reported.

As part of its annual Sex Week, “a week of programming that is interdisciplinary, thought-provoking, scholastic, innovative and applicable to student experiences in order to promote a holistic understanding of sex and sexuality,” the school will be hosting classes that contrast quite sharply with what is considered a good education by most.

Starting this Monday, Sex Week attendees can sit-in on events that range from a sexual health career panel on Tuesday evening, to a class offered that afternoon called “What What in the Butt: Anal Sex 101.”

“Come learn everything about anal sex from the experts of Good Vibrations, a sex-positive store located right in Brookline!” reads the course description posted on the official Harvard Sex Week website. “They will dispel myths about anal sex and give you insight into why people do it and how to do it well.”

This year’s session marks the fourth consecutive run of Sex Week at the school, which is coordinated annually by Sexual Health Education & Advocacy throughout Harvard College, or SHEATH, a group that describes itself as being “dedicated to empowering the Harvard community to explore their experiences with love and sex by providing comprehensive programming addressing a wide range of issues relating to sex, relationships, dating, sexual health, and sexuality.”

“We’re always honored to support Harvard Sex Week and everything that SHEATH does throughout the year,” CEO Susan Colvin said in a statement. “We share a common goal: helping people learn and understand sexual wellness.”

Others aren’t so optimistic, though, and have raised concerns about the types of classes that are offered. One Harvard student, Molly Wharton, reportedly told The College Fix website that she wasn’t initially well versed in what this year’s installment will involve, but added, “after looking at the schedule of events, though, I do question the amount of time and resources that went into planning and funding these events, some of which are downright vulgar, at a place like Harvard.”

“I can’t imagine that there are not more worthwhile educational programs and initiatives to which Harvard’s resources should be devoted,” the student said.

The programme is unlikely to change, however.

America promises endless war

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans

The US should get ready for a new era of endless wars, stated Pentagon’s chief Chuck Hagel, noting that “tyranny,” “terrorism,” national security challenges and climate change pose a substantial threat to the US and its allies.

Although the Pentagon’s chief urges to prepare for an endless war, the question remains open if ordinary Americans will support the new doctrine.

More than half of American respondents said that the US had not achieved its goals in both Iraq and Afghanistan, expressing their discontent with US foreign policy, according to the Pew Research poll conducted in the beginning of the 2014. Although 57 percent of US citizens approved the US campaign against Islamic State according to the October poll, 55 percent strongly oppose sending US ground troops to Iraq and Syria.

“I think we are living through one of these historic, defining times. We are seeing a new world order—post-World War II, post-Soviet Union implosion—being built. There are many questions, foremost among the American people: What’s the role of America in this new world that is evolving? Should we have a role? What is appropriate?” said Chuck Hagel, as cited by the Atlantic.

The US Secretary of Defense claims that as the global leader, the US will “continue to grapple with overseas threat for the foreseeable future,” containing international terrorism and tyrannical regimes. “Hagel didn’t seem especially sanguine that it would end anytime soon. In other words: Get used to endless war,” stressed the Atlantic, characterizing the Pentagon’s new doctrine.

Remarkably, practically none of the previous US overseas military campaigns has proved effective. “US soldiers have been laboring under sad paradox: even though the United States enjoys unprecedented global military dominance that should cow enemies mightily, it has found itself in constant combat for longer than ever before in its history, and without much to show for it,” writes Richard K. Betts, the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, in his article “Ending America’s Era of Permanent War” published in Foreign Affairs. The professor points out that of the US military actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, “only the first can be counted a success.”

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans. According to the expert, the White House should not cut back its overseas military operations, but prepare for “more action.”

“Frightening challenges in three critical regions are demanding yet more action: Islamic extremists have seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, Russia has intervened in Ukraine, and China is flexing its muscles in East Asia,” stressed Richard K. Betts.

The idea of the US “moral obligation” to meddle into domestic affairs of other countries in order “to set them right” is a “mythological concept,” aimed at justification of American interventionism, contended Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute.

“The idea that the United States must exercise “global leadership” is rationalized by our interventionists as a necessary prerequisite for maintaining some type of “world order,” Mr. Raimondo underscores in his article “Putin’s Complaint: Is Washington a Revisionist Power?”
However, the Pentagon’s “endless war,” cannot last forever, as it is the American taxpayers who pay for the extortionately expensive military operations. For instance, the Afghanistan campaign cost the US “roughly $45 billion a year from 2001 to 2013,” while Iraq cost “about $100 billion a year from 2003 to 2011,” Kenneth M. Pollack, a Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institution and former CIA analyst, noted in his article “An Army to Defeat Assad.”

It should be also noted that the December poll in 2013 carried out by the Pew Research indicated that 52 percent thought the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” The researchers underscore that the tendency demonstrated by the poll reflects a gradual and longstanding decline. According to the October 2014 poll, most Americans consider inequality more dangerous than nuclear weapons, or sectarian religious threats.

British spies allowed warrantless access to US data

Newly released documents from the British government reveal a lack of judicial oversight for how it sifts through communications data collected by the NSA and other foreign governments

British authorities are capable of tapping into bulk communications data collected by other countries’ intelligence services—including the National Security Agency—without a warrant, according to secret government documents released Tuesday.

The agreement between the NSA and Britain’s spy agency, known as Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, potentially puts the Internet and phone data of Americans in the hands of another country without legal oversight when obtaining a warrant is “not technically feasible.”

The data, once obtained, can be kept for up to two years, according to internal policies disclosed by the British government. GCHQ was forced to reveal that it can request and receive vast quantities of raw, unanalyzed data collected from foreign governments it partners with during legal proceedings in a closed court hearing in a case brought by various international human-rights organizations, including Privacy International, Liberty U.K., and Amnesty International. The suit challenges certain aspects of GCHQ’s surveillance practices.

It is well known that the NSA and GCHQ closely share intelligence data with one another, as part of a long-standing surveillance partnership. Some details of the agencies’ spy pact were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year, including the existence of GCHQ’s Tempora program, which taps into fiber-optic cables to scoop up online and telephone traffic across the Web for up to 30 days.

But this is the first time the British government has disclosed that it does not require a warrant to access data collected and maintained by its American counterparts. The revelation appears to counter statements made by an oversight committee of the British Parliament in July of last year that “in each case where GCHQ sought information from the U.S., a warrant for interception, signed by a minister, was already in place.”

Source: National Journal

White House hit by sustained cyber attack

White House technicians recently detected suspicious activity on a computer network at the US presidential mansion, and have taken steps to resolve the issue, an official said Tuesday.

The White House – or the Executive Office of the President (EOP) – is routinely struck with cyber attacks, but the one revealed Tuesday had a more significant duration, affecting the system’s functionality for nearly two weeks.

“In the course of assessing recent threats, we identified activity of concern on the unclassified EOP network,” the official said.

“Any such activity is something we take very seriously. In this case, we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity.”

In the course of addressing the suspicious cyber activity, some White House users were temporarily disconnected from the network.

“Our computers and systems have not been damaged, though some elements of the unclassified network have been affected. The temporary outages and loss of connectivity for our users is solely the result of measures we have taken to defend our networks,” the official said.

Black boys attacked at NY school and called ‘Ebola’

A group that advocates for Africans in the Bronx is calling for action after it says two brothers who had recently immigrated to the borough from Senegal were beaten and badly injured by several people who called them “Ebola” in school.

The 11- and 13-year-old boys, in sixth and eighth grade, respectively, were attacked Friday afternoon at I.S. 318 in Tremont, according to the African Advisory Council. Their father, Ousame Drame, said they were pummeled by other students in the schoolyard during lunch after enduring weeks of taunts.

The boys, who have been in the U.S. for about a month, were taken to the hospital after the attack.

Drame said his sons have been cruelly harassed for two weeks over Ebola. Days after news broke that the deadly disease was in the United States, he said students, whispering the word, “Ebola,” told other students not to talk to the boys. They were treated like cancers, he said.

“If they go to the gym they don’t want them touching the ball – ‘Oh, you have Ebola, don’t play with us,'” Drame said.

Though the children were raised in Senegal, they were born in America — and have every right to be here, their father said.

But Drame didn’t blame the students.

“They don’t know nothing. They’re babies,” he said.

Instead, Drame insisted the school system wasn’t doing enough to protect his children and others like them. He called on politicians and educators to spread awareness about the disease — and to step in when necessary.

Calling the attack “unacceptable,” advocates say it is just the latest incidence of disrespect and bullying of Africans since the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.

“Where was the school administrators, where was the school staff when all of this was happening?” asked Charles Cooper of the African Advisory Council as he demanded more action.

Drame said his sons will return to school, but he wants confirmation they’ll be safe — physically and emotionally.

The Department of Education says it’s aware of the complaint and that it dispatched additional security to the boys’ school. The agency said it would instruct teachers and principals to be on high alert for any potential instances of bullying or discrimination. It also said it would send information to parents to help them better understand the issue and dispel any misconceptions their children might have.

“We will not tolerate intimidation or bullying of our students, especially in this moment when New Yorkers need to come together,” Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina said in a statement.

Senegal is one of several West African countries where Ebola cases have been reported, but there have been no new cases in that country since late August, according to the CDC. The World Health Organization has declared the country “Ebola-free.”

Cases continue to be reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A few health care workers and travelers coming from those countries have also been diagnosed with the disease in other countries, including one person in New York City.

Source: nbcnewyork.com

Ebola translator steals the show

This is not the first time that has sign language translator has grabbed the headlines at a major event.

While an Ebola news conference should have been grabbing the headlines, a signer stole the show. The signer has now gone viral on social media, with some even questioning whether he was a legitimate interpreter.

The media conference was headed by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and health officials, who were giving updates on the city’s first case of Ebola on Friday. However, as the officials continued, attention started to be diverted to a man sitting on the very left of the platform.

At Nelson Madela’s funeral in December 2013, South African Thamsanqa Jantjie appeared on stage and proceeded to conduct fake sign language gestures during the dignitaries’ speeches – including by US President Barack Obama – in an event that was watched by 95,000 mourners at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg and millions around the world.

“There was zero percent accuracy. He couldn’t even get the basics right. He couldn’t even say thank you,” Delphin Hlungwane, a South African sign language interpreter at DeafSA, told Reuters.

Jantjie later claimed he was suffering a schizophrenic episode at the Mandela memorial service.

South African broadcaster, eNCA investigations, discovered that Jantjie, who is receiving treatment for his schizophrenia, has also faced rape (1994), theft (1995), housebreaking (1997), malicious damage to property (1998), murder, attempted murder and kidnapping (2003) charges.