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Sally Kincaid from Leeds Stop the War Coalition reports from Beeston on how the community has reacted to news that the suspected London bombers came from the area.
At the start of last week Leeds Stop the War Coalition decided to call a vigil that Thusday for victims of the 7 July London bombings.
Little did we know then that Leeds — and particularly the Beeston area I have lived in for the last 15 years — would become the focus of worldwide media attention.
There was shock and confusion across Leeds after the announcement that the suspected bombers had lived, worked and studied in our city alongside us.
The Hyde Park and Beeston areas of the city were the most affected. Houses were evacuated and streets closed off as the press and police descended.
But the community rallied and responded swiftly. On Wednesday night over 150 people from Hyde Park marched through the streets under the slogan “Peace and Unity in Our Community”.
This march was organised by a local woman who approached her church after she found one of her Muslim neighbours crying in her house.
On Thursday lunchtime we held a two minutes silence outside the Hamara community centre in Beeston. It was a very mixed crowd — old, young and of all faiths.
Later that day some prominent members of the Muslim community called for us to march from Beeston into Leeds town centre for the Stop the War vigil that evening.
After a lot of discussion and the argument to march was won. The response was fantastic — people tooted their horns at us, and as we reached Leeds town centre people came out of pubs and offices to clap.
The vigil itself was fantastic. “This evening felt respectful and everyone struck the right note of sympathy for families, condemnation of the bombing and criticism of our government’s foreign policy,” was one reaction.
We decided on our walk down that Beeston activists should organise something else on Saturday, since it was important to keep the momentum going to give people confidence.
Later I went to one of the mosques where a meeting of the elders was taking place. Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, was chairing the meeting. There was a heated discussion about whether to march or not, and whether the war was important.
We also heard that the fascist British National Party was looking to stir up race hatred. BNP thugs met at a local pub that night — which ended up in a big brawl.
On Saturday about 90 of us met up in Hyde Park and marched through the streets with a megaphone. We carried home made signs, 'Beeston United for Peace', 'Stop the Bombings, Stop the War' as well as white flowers and peace flags.
As we marched round the streets we picked up more people on the way, including a set of Labour councillors. By end of the march even our local MP, cabinet minister Hilary Benn, had joined us to speak up for unity in the community.
By the time we reached the war memorial near the Hamara centre there were over 150 of us. We attached our flowers, flags and placards to the fence and observed a two minute silence.
Since then we have set up an umbrella group under the banner Beeston United for Peace to organise similar events across the area. Our community is rallying together and standing up against racism and for peace.
George Zimmerman’s trial attorney admitted that his client is worried about the outcome of the Trayvon Martin second-degree murder trial that is ongoing in Seminole County, Florida.
Zimmerman defense lawyer Mark O’Mara answered questions at a press conference today (see embed above) after both sides rested their case. Closing arguments are scheduled to start tomorrow, and jury deliberations are expected to start as soon as the final summations end.
As we reported previously, there is some possibility that the jury will come back with a compromise verdict (which is not allowed is some states) for the lesser offense of manslaughter but which in Florida also carries a long jail term. O’Mara strongly push backed against a compromise manslaughter guilty verdict or even what he called a jury “pardon” on the basis of sympathy. A jury instruction for manslaughter would be factually inappropriate, he insisted. Self-defense is a defense to murder or manslaughter, he noted.
During the course of this afternoon’s press conference, O’Mara among other things disclosed that the controversial animation of the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin confrontation that the judge declined to admit into evidence would likely be incorporated into the defense’s closing argument.
What do you think will be the outcome of the George Zimmerman criminal trial?
Movement Mortgage has been through a couple rounds of layoffs this year, but when the nonbank lender laid off 180 employees back in October, CEO Casey Crawford said the company had no plans to step back. And that’s just what the company has done. Movement Mortgage announced Wednesday that it is acquiring a big piece of Lennar’s mortgage arm, Eagle Home Mortgage.
Hippo Insurance recently announced it raised $70 million in growth funding, bringing the company's total amount of capital raised to $109 million. The California-based company has managed to grow sales 30% month over month, grabbing the attention of some serious heavy hitters.
Not a legal expert? No worries. Here's more on some of the legal terms used and court opinions discussed in this season of "Uncertain Terms."
The justices ruled 5-4 that executing juvenile killers was unconstitutional and violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
"The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. “It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest."
The justices ruled 6-3 that life sentences for juveniles convicted of crimes other than murder were unconstitutional and violated the Eighth Amendment.
Because children have a greater capacity for change and have a lower level of culpability than adults, “they are less deserving of the most severe punishments,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
The justices ruled 5-4 that automatic life without parole sentences for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The justices ruled 6-3 to extend a 2012 ruling that struck down automatic life terms with no chance of parole for teenage killers. Now, even those who were convicted long ago must be considered for parole or given a new sentence.
“Prisoners like (Henry) Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
The justices ruled the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama must apply retroactively to juvenile offenders who were serving the same sentence the Miller opinion banned.
The justices ruled the state's parole system did not provide a meaningful opportunity for release as required by Miller v. Alabama, and was therefore unconstitutional.
Reversing their Atwell opinion, the justices ruled a juvenile offender's sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole did not violate the Constitution, and these offenders were not entitled to resentencing under Miller v. Alabama.
Upholding their Michel opinion, the justices ruled 4-3 that juveniles serving a life prison term with the possibility of parole were not entitled to resentencing.
Criminal culpability: A term in criminal law that refers to the blameworthiness of the accused. An accused is culpable when he or she is sufficiently responsible for criminal acts or negligence to be at fault and liable for the conduct. Culpability often implies some knowledge of the wrongfulness of one's actions.
Retribution: Principle of retribution is the law of retaliation, under which punishment should be in-kind. Everyone is to be punished alike in proportion to the gravity of his/her offense or to the extent to which s/he has made others suffer.
Juvenile rehabilitation: Because an adolescent’s character and traits are less fixed than an adult’s, they have a greater capacity to change and overcome from the effects of trauma or child abuse and become reformed from criminal behavior that will not necessarily continue into adulthood.
Prefrontal cortex: The brain’s gray matter of the anterior part of the frontal lobe that is highly developed in humans and plays a role in the regulation of complex cognitive, emotional and behavioral functioning.
Limbic system: A group of subcortical structures of the brain — hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala — especially concerned with emotion and motivation.
The venerable PBS talk-show host Charlie Rose has opened up his archives, inviting you into his black-walled studio to sit at his virtual desk. Starting today, you can go to Charlierose.com and watch over 4,000 hours of taped interviews from his show's archives. The Flash video player in the search tool is tiny, but navigating through the guests' last names lead to bigger, sharable Google Video players. Every video is free.
I spent some time digging through the archives today, and I've found some choice programs that may be of interest to Compiler readers.
LANSING, MI -- Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny resentencing hearings for inmates who are serving mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for murders or other violent crimes they committed as minors.
The nation's highest court, in a 2012 ruling, invalidated mandatory "juvenile lifer" laws in Michigan and other states, declaring the mandatory sentencing schemes a form of cruel and unusual punishment that fail to consider an offender's age or potential for development.
But justices did not specify whether the decision applied retroactively to inmates already behind bars, a question that is now before the court. And it's a big question for Michigan, which is home to more juvenile lifers than all but one other state.
There are 368 Michigan inmates currently serving mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed as minors, and more than 200 of those cases date back more than 20 years, according to a brief Schuette filed with the Supreme Court.
The attorney general has long argued that resentencing hearings would unfairly re-traumatize victim families, an argument his office reiterated in the brief, suggesting retroactivity "would challenge the settled expectations of victims that these violent murderers would never be subject to release."
Schuette filed the court document in late August on behalf of Michigan and 15 other states that house juvenile lifers and could be affected by a decision from the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in a related case last week.
The inmates in question "committed the gravest crime -- murder. And they have been incarcerated for virtually their entire adult lives," the attorney general's office wrote. ""Requiring the states to resentence hundreds of offenders, many of whose crimes were committed decades ago, would undermine the community's safety and would offend principles of finality."
The brief referenced 71-year-old Sheldy Topp, who is Michigan's oldest juvenile lifer and has spent more than five decades behind bars for a murder he committed as a teen.
"Basically, I was raised in prison," Topp told MLive in 2011, when he was profiled in advance of the 2012 Supreme Court case. "But I've changed. I'm confident I can be a productive member of society. That's what I want to be more than anything."
A troubled youth, Topp was 17 when he ran away from the state mental hospital in Pontiac, broke into a nearby residence, and stabbed the homeowner -- a well respected local attorney -- four times. He then stole the man's car and fled the state.
"Any resentencing for Mr. Topp would be more of a parole hearing than a sentencing," Schuette said in the brief, arguing against that possibility.
While Topp now admits his guilt, some Michigan juvenile lifers like 38-year-old Cortez Davis of Detroit were convicted of felony murder charges for aiding and abetting even though they did not necessarily do the actual killing.
The case now before the Supreme Court involves 70-year-old Henry Montgomery of Baton Rouge, Alabama. He was convicted in the 1963 murder of a sheriff's deputy, who allegedly had confronted him for playing hooky.
Montgomery's attorneys say he received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole despite "ample available evidence suggesting that his young age and related characteristics" affected his behavior.
The American Civil Liberties Union, in a brief urging resentencing hearings for Montgomery and other inmates like him, noted that the Supreme Court's 2012 decision made clear that sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole should be rare.
"Juveniles punished under these unconstitutional mandatory systems therefore have an undeniably significant liberty interest in collateral review to reduce their inherently disproportionate sentences," wrote the ACLU. "And most should succeed if allowed the chance."
The Michigan Supreme Court considered the retroactivity question in 2014 and ruled that the state was not obligated to resentence juvenile lifers, but a U.S. Supreme Court would settle the issue for good.
Michigan ditched its mandatory juvenile lifer law in 2014. Now, young people convicted of violent crimes can still be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, but judges can also consider mitigating factors and sentence them to a term of between 25 and 60 years.
The updated state law included a "trigger" that would require the resentencing hearings if the U.S. Supreme Court determines its 2012 ruling should apply retroactively to juvenile lifers already behind bars. The sentencing judge or successor could again consider life without the possibility of parole or a term of between 25 and 60 years.
If you follow the money, it appears that some of the people whose money was used to build the company that manufactured the gun that Adam Lanza used to kill students and teachers in Newtown last week were, tragically, teachers themselves.
Dan Primack reports that the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) “effectively owns a 6.67% stake” in Bushmaster — the company whose semiautomatic .223 rifle was used in the deadly Sandy Hook rampage — by virtue of its investment in Cerberus Capital Management, the private-equity firm that owns the Freedom Group, Bushmaster’s parent company.
A list of Cerberus’s investors isn’t publicly available, but it appears that at least two additional teachers’ pension funds (and probably more) have money invested in the firm: the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which listed Cerberus among a group of investors to which it had paid fees in its most recent annual report [PDF], and the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, which reportedly allocated $400 million to the Cerberus fund that was used to bankroll the Freedom Group.
As politicians sort through the legislative ramifications of Friday’s shooting, indirect investors in the Freedom Group and other gun manufacturers may start asking tough questions about where their money is going.
It’s easy to measure the impact that the Newtown shooting has had on publicly traded gun makers. Bloomberg reports that Smith & Wesson, the firearms maker, has seen its stock price slide 8.2 percent in the period since the Newtown shooting, while Sturm, Ruger & Company — whose Ruger Mark .177 Break-Barrel Pistol is available for $64.97 at Wal-Mart — is down 5.5 percent.
But Bushmaster, as a private company within a private-equity firm, is more shielded from the effects of a disaster involving its products.
Spokespeople for the Texas and Pennsylvania funds did not immediately return my e-mails.
Private-equity firms don’t generally care what the general public thinks of their investments. But the opinions of major pension funds and endowments who provide firms with capital do matter. If investors like CalSTRS and Texas Teachers were to pull their money from Cerberus funds, citing pressure from members or a violation of their social responsibility codes, it could send a strong message to the fund. And if enough investors pull their money, it’s conceivable that Cerberus could be pressured into changing the way it manufactures and sells firearms.
Profit should be the primary goal of their investment offices, but not at the expense of their broader purposes. If a schoolteachers union or university endowment or nonprofit foundation truly cares about stopping the next mass killing, then they should not provide capital that produces the instruments of such destruction.
Even within gun circles, the Freedom Group is something of an enigma. Its rise has been so swift that it has become the subject of wild speculation and grassy-knoll conspiracy theories. In the realm of consumer rifles and shotguns — long guns, in the trade — it is unrivaled in its size and reach. By its own count, the Freedom Group sold 1.2 million long guns and 2.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the 12 months ended March 2010, the most recent year for which figures are publicly available.
No major gun manufacturers have released statements in the wake of the Newtown shooting, and Cerberus itself wouldn’t return Primack’s calls. But it’s safe to say that as legislators mull the proper response to the tragedy, there are some serious and somber meetings going on at the investment offices of major pension firms as well.
A suspect in the shooting has been arrested.
ROSEBURG, Ore. -- Roseburg Police are investigating a shooting that occurred Monday night.
Police said that when they arrived at a residence on SE Downey Avenue in Roseburg they found a 34-year-old woman who had been shot. She was taken to Mercy Medical Center for treatment. Officials have not given details on the extent of the woman's injuries.
Joshua James Kramer, 32, of Glide, the suspect in the shooting, had left before police arrived. He was found later while driving in Roseburg. Kramer and the woman who was shot are believed to be known to each other. Kramer was arrested and charged with first-degree assault.
One neighbor said she was watering her roses when she saw a white pickup truck pull up to a house, and she heard what sounded like about six gunshots. She said she then saw the truck leave, pull out into the street and that's when she called 911.
It is believed the subject changed vehicles at one point. The alleged shooter was arrested at the Abby's restaurant off of Diamond Lake Boulevard in Roseburg.
The extravagant £40 million range of diamond jewellery stolen from Graff's in Mayfair has been revealed by Scotland Yard.
Two men, dressed in suits and concealing handguns, placed 43 separate items into a bag before threatening staff with warning shots. They escaped with amassed items containing 1,437 individual diamond stones - worth £40 million - in the biggest jewellery heist in British history.
Police have appealed for anyone who is offered or knows the whereabouts of the jewellery to contact them.
3) White round diamond double hoop earrings with a white pearshape and round diamond top. A total of 84 diamonds are set in these extravagant white gold earrings.
4) Multicoloured and white pearshape, round and cushion yellow diamond flower necklace. A large platinum and gold necklace containing 272 different diamonds in pink and yellow.
5) Ovalshape white diamond single line necklace encrusted with 78 diamonds.
THE REAL-ESTATE market in Slovakia draws more and more investors from abroad.
Big developing groups find their interests mostly in the sphere of hotels, trade and logistics. These include also investments exceeding €100 million.
Already the beginning of the year 2016 saw interesting news in changes of ownership structures on the real estate market. In the beginning of January, the group controlled by J&T Best Hotel Properties sold its hotels Crowne Plaza Bratislava and Grand Hotel Kempinski in the High Tatras to hotel fund Nova Hotels for €56 million.
Also the Bratislava-based shopping centre Central changed hands: the Allianz Real Estate group became its new owner, acquiring 100 percent of shares for €175 million from the developer Immocap. From the point of view of financial volume, this is allegedly the biggest investment on the real estate market over the past year.
Investment groups rarely plan to operate such centres over the long-term, but rather to invest in further developing projects.
Important deals at the end of last year included e.g. sale of administrative building Westend Tower, bought by CTP developer; or acquisition of Trigranit company (comprising Lakeside Park and adjacent plots in Jarovce borough of Bratislava) by TPG Real Estate.
Investments in well-established commercial real estate offer attractive stable revenues which makes them sought-after by investors, Marián Mlynárik of CBRE real estate consultancy company said, adding that in this light, investments in real-estate projects worth over €100 million are no exception.
Historically the most successful year so far was 2014 when €610 million was invested in Slovakia in this sphere.