Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto fired the chief of the nation’s federal police, Enrique Galindo, less than two weeks after the country’s human-rights commission released a report alleging that officers had “executed arbitrarily” at least 22 suspected drug cartel members. “In light of the recent events and on instructions of the president, Police Commissioner Enrique Galindo has been removed from his position,” Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said. “That is with the objective of facilitating that the corresponding authorities carry out an agile and transparent investigation in full view of citizens.”
Discussion Questions:
Three people were killed and another 26 wounded in a series of Chicago shootings last night and this morning. The overnight shootings continued a weekend of violence that has seen 7 killed and 38 injured by gunfire, including Nykea Aldridge, cousin of basketball player Dwyane Wade.
What happens to a journalist assigned to cover Chicago's overnight violent crime? Chicago Tribune reporter Peter Nickeas describes in harrowing detail how three years of covering endless violence and misery changed him: "I’d wanted a job at the paper, and this was the one they had. I was 25 years old. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve been able to gain any perspective on what those three years have meant for me. I still feel wrecked sometimes. I still feel drained from the work of chasing incessant violence. Drained from going from shooting to shooting to shooting. Drained from enduring the mind-numbing silence of a slow night only to be jolted awake, adrenaline on, into full chase mode. Drained from trying to convince my wife that the job hasn’t changed me. Or that the change hasn’t been so bad."
Police in Kabul say 12 people were killed and at least 35 more wounded in an attack on the American University of Afghanistan that lasted nearly 10 hours. By earlier this morning, Afghan forces are reported to have killed two attackers and rescued about 700 students who were being held in the school. Gunmen stormed the complex yesterday amid explosions and gunfire, prompting hundreds of students to barricade themselves in classrooms, with some taking to Twitter to issue pleas for help. The attack came just weeks after two foreign professors, one American and one Australian, were kidnapped near the school. While the number of attackers appears to be unknown, Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the police’s Criminal Investigation Unit, told AFP at least two attackers were killed in the dramatic rescue. “No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban has been escalating attacks in recent weeks.
Donald Trump continued to attempt to reach out to black voters specifically during a rally in Akron, Ohio, last night. Riffing on his prepared remarks, he said “I’ll straighten it out... you can walk down the street without getting shot. Now you walk down the street, you get shot.” Trump also employed a recent line he’s been using to help him get above the around 1 percent he’s been polling among black voters. “What the hell do you have to lose? Give me a chance,” he said.
NBC has released the first excerpt of Matt Lauer’s exclusive interview with Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, who is under fire for apparently fabricating a story about he and his teammates getting robbed at gunpoint in Rio. “I over-exaggerated that story,” Lochte admitted, one day after he posted an apology online. The man who confronted the athletes with a gun was a security guard demanding they pay for damage they caused to a gas station bathroom, a fact that was reportedly explained to them, in English, at the time. As Lauer put it, Lochte’s original story was about the “mean streets of Rio” whereas his new version is “much more about a negotiated settlement to cover up some dumb behavior.” In response, Lochte said that was why he was now “taking full responsibility for it” and blamed his own “immature behavior.”
Six years after a cholera epidemic killed thousands in earthquake-stricken Haiti, the United Nations has admitted that it played a role in the initial outbreak and called for a “significant new set of actions” to tackle the crisis. An email this week from Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary general, said that “over the past year, the UN has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera,” The New York Times reported. The statement comes as a reaction to a 19-page report by a UN adviser on August 8 that argued the disease “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations.” The report claims that UN personnel from Nepal were the most likely source of the outbreak in late 2010, and the UN’s refusal to acknowledge this or offer reparations is “is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible, and politically self-defeating.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has diminished the role of campaign chairman Paul Manafort and brought on Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. Bannon has been named the campaign’s new chief executive, and Conway will become campaign manager. According to The Washington Post, the decision is intended to curtail Manafort’s efforts to temper Trump’s campaign style. Trump had reportedly begun to feel “boxed in” and “controlled.” Manafort will remain part of the team, but his role will be internally diminished. The decisions, essentially, are a way for Trump to return to former aide Corey Lewandowski’s style, which was “let Trump be Trump.”
Just after afternoon prayers yesterday, Imam Maulama Akomjee and his 64-year-old assistant were shot and killed by a lone gunman in Queens, New York. Both men were shot in the head. Police have not confirmed any known motive. According to the police and witnesses who talked to the New York Daily News, the shooter was tall and Hispanic. Police say both men were shot from behind and there was no argument or words exchanged before the shots were fired.
Despite half of all U.S. states and the District of Columbia having allowed the medical use of marijuana, the federal government today has reaffirmed its prohibition on the drug and its standing as a Schedule I narcotic that has “no currently accepted medical use.” The refusal to reschedule the drug will maintain its illegality, at the federal level, for doctors to prescribe to patients, effectively continuing the chill on medical research for the popular drug. According to multiple outlets, however, the government’s announcement will also expand the number of research facilities allowed to grow marijuana for medical-research purposes, effectively ending the monopoly on such research held by the University of Mississippi in contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova got a cold reception during the women’s 100-meter breaststroke in Rio last evening, from both fellow swimmers and members of the audience. Twenty-four-year-old Efimova, who has been suspended from competition twice for doping offenses, won a legal battle last week to get herself back into the Rio Games after many Russian athletes were banned for systemic doping. But not everyone was happy to have Efimova in the pool. Before going on to claim a gold medal and beat Efimova, 19-year-old American swimmer Lilly King made it clear she didn’t think athletes guilty of “drug cheating” should be allowed to compete. Audience members apparently agreed, as Efimova was met with loud boos when taking her place before the race.
After publicly declaring multiple times this week that he had seen “top-secret” footage of a plane unloading money the same day the Iranian government released four American detainees, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump finally admitted that video does not exist. “The plane I saw on television was the hostage plane in Geneva, Switzerland, not the plane carrying $400 million in cash going to Iran!” he tweeted early Friday. Trump initially told a crowd last week that he’d seen the nonexistent video—footage he claimed was filmed by the Iranian government to “embarrass” the United States. The next day, however, Trump’s own spokeswoman said the video was actually of prisoners being released. Nevertheless, Trump doubled down, again repeating the claim even after it had been debunked by his own campaign.
French President François Hollande said U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump makes people want to throw up and that he’s concerned by how much the candidate could shift world politics, because “an American election is a world election.” In a meeting with the presidential press earlier today, Hollande said he believed a Trump victory could affect France’s presidential election next spring. He added, “His excesses make you want to retch, even in the United States, especially when—as was Donald Trump’s case—he speaks ill of a soldier, of the memory of a soldier,” Hollande said, referring to the family of felled U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, whose parents have engaged in a back-and-forth with the Republican nominee since they spoke at the DNC last week. “If the Americans choose Trump, that will have consequences,” he said.
Amid the uproar over Donald Trump’s response to the Khan family, who spoke out against the Republican nominee at the DNC, the “military mom” of a son serving in the U.S. Air Force was shouted down by Trump supporters at a rally for vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence in Carson City, Nevada. The woman was initially applauded by the crowd when she introduced herself, but those cheers turned to loud boos when she said, “Time and time again, Trump has disrespected our nation’s armed forces and veterans. And his disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example.” Trump has repeatedly criticized Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose U.S. Army captain son was killed in Iraq in 2004. “You have a son in the military,” she told Pence as the crowd tried to silence her. “How do you tolerate this disrespect?” Pence, who previously released a statement that tried to calm down the furor over his running mate’s remarks, effectively quieted down the crowd, saying, “That’s what freedom looks like, and that’s what freedom sounds like.” But while Pence reiterated that Captain Khan “is an American hero and we honor him and honor his family,” he went on to defend Trump by saying there is “no one more devoted to the veterans in this country.”