Monthly Archives: June 2014

Henrico jury finds aspiring rapper guilty in shooting

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“You are my sacrifice,” Brown said he heard El-Amin say before he fired a bullet that ripped through Brown’s hand, deflecting it enough that it missed his head.

wafeeq-sabir-el-aminBY LIZ SAWYER Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Henrico County jury today found an aspiring rapper guilty of the malicious wounding of his best friend, as well as two other drug and weapons charges stemming from a night of marijuana and meditation last December.

During a two-day trial in Henrico Circuit Court, the jury heard several conflicting version of the Dec. 26 shooting and doping incident, which left childhood friends pointing the finger, and ultimately a gun, at one another.

Wafeeq Sabir El-Amin, 27, suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but was charged for firing at his music partner’s head first, according to testimony.

Read more at Richmond Times-Dispatch

Night time schedule replacing daytime hours for US 89 paving project north of Cameron

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adot-logo-03aThe Arizona Department of Transportation will be switching to night-time hours for work to a nine-mile segment of US 89 at Moenkopi Wash, starting about 10 miles north of Cameron. The work just south of the US 160 Junction will maintain the same one-lane closures which have been in place for the daytime work, with alternating access and reduced speeds through the project area.

Drivers should anticipate delays and allow for extra travel time as they continue through the construction zone, 5 p.m. – 5 a.m. Sunday night through Thursday morning (June 30-July 3). Flaggers will guide traffic through the work zone. Both north- and southbound lanes will be unrestricted for daytime travel.

No construction is scheduled for the Fourth of July holiday weekend from Thursday morning to Sunday night.

Nighttime work will resume from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Monday through Friday (July 7 – July 11) and maintain the nightly schedule until further notice.

This project is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2014.

Paving project on I-17 between the Orme/Dugas exit and SR 169 continues next week

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adot-logo3Crews will continue with overnight paving and bridge work on State Route 169 at the Interstate 17 junction starting Sunday night, June 29 which will require overnight restrictions through Wednesday.

I-17 will be closed in both directions at the SR 169 junction (milepost 278), and drivers will be required to use the off- and on-ramps at SR 169 to exit and reenter the interstate between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Drivers can expect a single lane closure on southbound I-17 intermittently between the Orme/Dugas exit and SR 169 between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m.

The SR 169 bridge will be limited to one lane over I-17 Sunday through Wednesday nights between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Meriam Ibrahim: Sudan ‘apostasy’ woman freed again

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bbc-interviewA Sudanese woman whose death sentence for renouncing Islam was overturned has been released from jail again, after she was detained at Khartoum airport on Tuesday.

(BBC News) – Meriam Ibrahim’s lawyer, Muhannad Mustafa, said that she was currently in the US embassy with her family.

Mrs Ibrahim had been detained on charges of falsifying ID documents.

She was first released on 23 June when an appeals court lifted her death sentence for renouncing Islam.

Her sentencing in May to hang for apostasy sparked an outcry at home and around the world.

Mrs Ibrahim, 27, had been held at a police station in the capital, since Tuesday, when she was prevented from leaving the country along with her husband, Daniel Wani, and their two children.

Daniel Wani is a Christian from South Sudan and is a US citizen.

Read more and see interview at BBC News

Meriam Ibrahim’s Brother Blocked Escape from Sudan to US: Report

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300pix-Al-Samani-Al-Hadi-_2931922bA Christian mother trying to flee Sudan for the United States was stopped at the airport following a tip-off from her own brother.

Meriam Ibrahim spent months on death row on charges of apostasy – the crime of abandoning or disrespecting Islam – before she was freed Monday following international outcry. Amid continuing fears over her safety, she planned to fly to the United States with her husband — who is a naturalized American citizen.

But this plan failed at the last minute when Ibrahim was re-arrested at the airport by agents from Sudan’s shadowy security service. She was transferred to police custody where her lawyer told NBC News she remained early Thursday.

Authorities said she had been stopped because her travel documents were illegitimate. But in an interview with a Sudanese newspaper, her brother claimed he tipped off police that she had been “kidnapped” by her husband who planned to take her to the U.S. against her will.

Read more at NBC News

Meriam Ibrahim and the Persecution of Christians

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The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has found that Christians are persecuted in more places today than any other religious group, suffering formal or informal harassment in three-quarters of the world’s countries.

BN-DL196_howall_D_20140626143917By Charlotte Allen
A 27-year-old Sudanese woman named Meriam Ibrahim seemed likely to become a 21st-century Christian martyr in May when she was sentenced to death by hanging because of her faith. Then this week Ms. Ibrahim was saved when a court overturned her conviction for apostasy from Islam—her father was a Muslim, and under Islamic law she is automatically a Muslim too. (She had also been sentenced to public flogging for adultery because her husband, Daniel Wani, is also a Christian, and Islamic law doesn’t recognize marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men.) But the day after her release on Monday, Ms. Ibrahim was arrested again. While the Associated Press reported Thursday that she had again been released Thursday, her future remained uncertain.

Her story is harrowing. Ms. Ibrahim was eight months pregnant with her second child when she was convicted in a Khartoum court on April 30 under the Islamic Shariah law that has governed Sudan since 1989. On May 27, while in prison awaiting execution, Ms. Ibrahim gave birth to her daughter, Maya. Mr. Wani reported that his wife was shackled to the floor during labor. Their year-and-a-half-old son, Martin, had been jailed along with her.

Ms. Ibrahim was re-arrested on Tuesday by a government security force as she, Mr. Wani and their two young children tried to leave Sudan for the U.S. The Sudanese-born Mr. Wani has been an American citizen since 2005. The new charges against Ms. Ibrahim—which are reported to carry penalties of up to seven years in prison—consist of falsifying the family’s travel documents, which were issued by the embassy of South Sudan, the largely Christian territory that seceded from overwhelmingly Muslim Sudan in 2011 after a decades-long civil war. Mr. Wani hails from what is now South Sudan.

Ms. Ibrahim’s story bears uncanny parallels to another Christian story involving young African mothers who did become Christian martyrs, during the early third century: the story of Felicitas and Perpetua, executed for their faith in the Roman port city of Carthage in today’s Tunisia. …

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Massachusetts police claim exemption from accountablity because they are a private organization.

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15c6042cda9b852935c1d4959afe5ba5MASSACHUSETTS – Police militarization has reached an all-time low in Massachusetts. Not only are they armored and armed as well as any military unit in Afghanistan, they apparently now are not held accountable for their actions. The ACLU of Massachusetts claims a weakness in the Massachusetts public record laws.

ACLU-Tweet-Mass

Recent tweet by ALCUM

According to articles from the Boston Globe and Washington Post, various police forces are combining into groups called law enforcement councils, or LECs.

According to Boston.Com, the ACLU requested certain records concerning the police organizations:

As part of an effort to document regional policing operations, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts (“ACLUM”) requested documents concerning NEMLEC’s SWAT Team and RRT in July 2012. The request sought NEMLEC’s training materials, incident reports, deployment statistics, guidelines, procurement records, budgets, agreements with other agencies and documents relating to the structure of the SWAT team and RRT.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC, refused on the grounds that they are a private, non-profit 501(c)3 group that is not required to produce records for the public.

The Washington Post article stated:

Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

In the 2005 ruling of Gonzales v. Castle Rock, the Supreme Court ruled that police are not Constitutionally obligated to protect you even to enforce a restraining order.

A follow-up tweet by the ACLUM concerning the militarization of Mass. police.

A follow-up tweet by the ACLUM concerning the militarization of Mass. police.


SEE ALSO: Our Homes are Not Battlefields

Tanker rollover closes I-17 northbound in New River most of Thursday

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An oil tanker rollover has triggered a closure of Interstate 17 northbound in New River that is expected to last most of Thursday, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Drivers traveling from Phoenix to northern Arizona destinations such as Flagstaff will need to use alternate routes Thursday through Prescott or Payson and plan for extended travel times.

The Prescott route involves using US 60 from the Phoenix area to Wickenburg, where drivers will turn onto US 93 until reaching State Route 89. Once taking SR 89 into Prescott, drivers can take SR 69 to Dewey, and then SR 169 to return to I-17.

The Payson route involves taking SR 87 from the Mesa or Fountain Hills area. About 20 miles north of Payson, drivers will turn northwest on SR 260 to return to I-17 in Camp Verde. Drivers should expect extra traffic on either of these alternate routes today due to the I-17 closure.

There is no estimated time to reopen northbound lanes of I-17 while a hazardous materials crew responds to the tanker rollover. Southbound lanes of I-17 are unaffected and remain open.

3-star: Marine Corps ‘prepared to assist’ with recovery of Tahmooressi from Mexico

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Marine Sgt. Andrew P. Tahmooressi in 2012. (Facebook) - Marine Corp Times

Marine Sgt. Andrew P. Tahmooressi in 2012. (Facebook) – Marine Corp Times

(June 18) – As veteran Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi nears three months in a Mexican prison, a Marine Corps three-star general says the Marine Corps is standing by to help him.

Tahmooressi, who left active duty in 2012, was arrested by Mexican officials March 31 after crossing the border at San Ysidro with guns and ammunition in his truck in what he claims was an innocent mistake. His plight, reported by a number of media outlets, has spurred a massive wave of public support.

In a letter this week to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs Commander Lt. Gen. Robert Milstead said the Corps has limited ability to help Tahmooressi, but was willing to do whatever possible to bring him back.

“I understand … this matter rests appropriately within the U.S. Department of State’s capable hands,” Milstead said. “While it is not within the Marine Corps’ purview to unilaterally intervene in matters involving a foreign government, I assure you that we are prepared to assist as necessary to the greatest extent permissible under law.”

Read more at The Marine Corp Times

Williams to follow lead of ADOT on wrong way signage

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300px-wrong-dipstickWILLIAMS – ADOT is posting larger wrong way signs and posting them lower to the ground. The hope is that they will be more eye-catching for drivers. In recent weeks there have been several accidents caused by wrong way drivers.

The Northern Arizona Gazette has learned that the City of Williams is considering the process for signs along their one-way routes of Railroad and Bill Williams Avenue. Bill Williams Avenue is one-way going east in the direction of Flagstaff while Railroad Avenue is one-way going west toward Ash Fork. Both streets are part of the defunct Route 66 highway system.

The City of Williams will have larger signs created. They will also be posted lower to the ground. They will also have a more western-style eye-catching message to drivers going in the wrong direction.

When contacted, City Hall stated, “This is a completely satire piece. It is meant for humor only. You’ve been had.”