Pepper the robot offers friendly face tackling crimes against children | outstanding | Spanish edition

The semi-humanoid robot Pepper is being used by police in the United Arab Emirates to uncover crimes against children such as abuse and exploitation, a sensitive area where a friendly android face could prove more approachable and less traumatic for those involved.

The project from the multinational IT company Inetum uses Pepper’s artificial intelligence-driven ability to read emotions and understand human behavior to interact with the children and assess their responses to questioning when faced with a potentially distressing or even life threatening situation.

“It is one of our most beautiful and resilient projects,” head of innovation at Inetum Spain, Jesus Otero, told Efe at the Mobile World Congress taking place in Barcelona.

“The presence of the robot helps the children to open up and be more expressive in therapy despite the fear they are experiencing,” Otero said.

(…)

Valledupar marched against crimes of social leaders - Other Cities - Colombia

Social organizations demonstrate in Valledupar in rejection of the crimes of the leaders Teófilo Manuel Acuña and Jorge Tafur, registered last Tuesday in Puerto Oculto, district of San Martín, municipality in the south of Cesar.

The victims were spokespersons for the Interlocution Commission of the south of Bolívar, for the center and south of Cesar, south of Magdalena and Processes of the Santanderes (CISBCSC).
Both received bullet wounds in different parts of the body, by armed men who approached them in the middle of a family gathering.

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“It is a reprehensible fact that could have been avoided. We had already been publicly denouncing the violation of human rights and the systematic threat against our main spokespersons on national and international stages,” stressed Nadia Umaña, spokesperson for this organization.

Teófilo Acuña was facing a process for the crime of rebellion and others along with two peasant leaders linked to the National Agrarian Coordinator.

“This is a judicial set-up that they mounted against him. Since they couldn’t with this process, they facilitated his murder, ”said the spokeswoman.

For his part, Tafur had a career as a trade unionist, participated in the struggles of the National Association of Peasant Users – Anuc and in November 2021 he was elected a member of the National Board of the National Agrarian Coordinator.

The social group demands that the authorities investigate these murders, measures to stop these violent acts and threats from armed groups against the leaders.

“Before the murder, we had denounced that the landowner Wilmer Díaz was attacking the peasants in this sector. In fact, recently, a person was injured. The police and the mayor of San Martín met with them and nothing happened,” said a spokesperson.

The Interlocution Commission highlighted that the defenseless situation of the leaders in Cesar is critical. The double homicide of their spokesmen increases the abandonment on the part of the authorities and the institutional framework.

At this moment there are more than 15 threatened spokespersons in Tamalameque, Chimichagua, Pailitas, Astrea, among others.

“The State has responsibility because they know about these threats. The death of Teófilo and Jorge could have been prevented. If they dared to attack them, what remains for us!” Acuña said through tears.

In this same context, they demand compliance with the agreements that have been proposed at the dialogue tables since 2005.

The protest will take place in the Plazoleta de la Gobernación del Cesar, starting at two in the afternoon.

The National Agrarian Coordinator Association of Colombia (CNA) has joined the event, which also rejected and lamented the events.

“We warn about the risks of our organizations. We reiterate our decision to continue fighting in defense of our social processes”, highlighted the CNA in a statement.

Ludys Ovalle Jacome
Special for Weather
Valledupar

All 3 Defendants Convicted of Hate Crimes in Ahmaud Arbery Killing

The three men convicted of murder in Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting were found guilty of federal hate crimes Tuesday for violating Arbery’s civil rights and targeting him because he was Black.

The jury reached its decision after several hours of deliberation on the charges against father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan.

During the trial, prosecutors showed roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made derogatory comments about Black people. The FBI wasn’t able to access Greg McMichael’s phone because it was encrypted.

The McMichaels grabbed guns and jumped in a pickup truck to pursue Arbery after seeing him running in their neighborhood outside the Georgia port city of Brunswick in February 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own pickup and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery. The killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after the graphic video leaked online two months later.

The McMichaels and Bryan pleaded not guilty to the hate crime charges. Defense attorneys contended the three didn’t chase and kill Arbery because of his race but acted on the earnest, though erroneous, suspicion that Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood.

The panel of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person received the case Monday following a weeklong trial in U.S. District Court in the port city of Brunswick. The jurors adjourned for the night after about three hours of deliberations, and resumed deliberations at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning.

The trial closed Monday with prosecutors saying 25-year-old Arbery’s slaying on a residential street was motivated by “pent-up racial anger,” revealed by the defendants’ electronic messages as well as by witnesses who testified to hearing them make racist tirades and insults.

“All three defendants told you loud and clear, in their own words, how they feel about African Americans,” prosecutor Tara Lyons told the jury Monday.

Defense attorneys insisted that past racist statements by their clients offered no proof they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because he’s Black. They urged the jury to set aside their emotions.

“It’s natural for you to want retribution or revenge,” said Pete Theodocion, representing William “Roddie” Bryan. “But we have to elevate ourselves … even if it’s the tough thing.”

The basic facts aren’t disputed. The slaying of Arbery nearly two years ago, on Feb. 23, 2020, was captured in a graphic cellphone video that sparked widespread outrage. Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves after spotting Arbery running past their home and chased him in a pickup truck. Bryan joined his neighbors in his own truck and recorded the video of Travis McMichael firing at point-blank range.

Police found Arbery had no weapon and no stolen items. Prosecutors said he was merely out jogging.

Travis McMichael’s attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, told the jury that prosecutors presented no evidence that he “ever spoke to anyone about Mr. Arbery’s death in racial terms.” She said her client opened fire in self-defense after Arbery tried to take away his shotgun.

Greg McMichael’s attorney, A.J. Balbo, argued that his client initiated the chase not because Arbery was a Black man, but because he was “THE man” the McMichaels had seen in security camera videos taken from a nearby house under construction.

The McMichaels and Bryan, convicted of murder last fall in a Georgia state court, pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

FBI agents uncovered roughly two dozen racist text messages and social media posts from the McMichaels and Bryan in the years and months preceding the shooting.

For instance, in 2018, Travis McMichael commented on a Facebook video of a Black man playing a prank on a white person: “I’d kill that f—-ing n—-r.”

Some witnesses testified they heard the McMichaels’ racist statements firsthand. A woman who served under Travis McMichael in the U.S. Coast Guard a decade ago said he called her “n——r lover,” after learning she’d dated a Black man. Another woman testified Greg McMichael had ranted angrily in 2015 when she remarked on the death of civil rights activist Julian Bond, saying, “All those Blacks are nothing but trouble.”

Hate Crimes Trial Goes to Jury After Prosecutors Say 'Racial Hatred' Drove Ahmaud Arbery's Murderers

BRUNSWICK, Ga — 

The three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery acted out of “racial anger” when they chased down the young Black man as they saw him jogging through their Georgia community, a federal prosecutor told jurors at the defendants’ hate-crimes trial Monday.

Defense lawyers argued that their clients, despite a lengthy record of bigoted social discourse shown in court, pursued Arbery because they were suspicious of his conduct, not because of his race.

Judge Lisa Wood sent the predominantly white jury out to deliberate Monday afternoon after they listened to hours of closing arguments in a case probing whether vigilantism directed against a Black person in this case crossed the boundary of racially motivated violence as defined by U.S. law.

The defendants – Travis McMichael, 36; his father, Gregory McMichael, 66; and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52 – have already been convicted of murder in state court and sentenced to life in prison in an earlier trial that largely skirted racial issues and focused on proving a homicide case.

Arbery, 25, was out for an afternoon jog on Feb. 23, 2020, when the McMichaels spotted him running by their home, grabbed their guns and jumped in their pickup truck to follow him. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck before Aubrey was cornered and confronted face to face by the younger McMichael, who fired three shotgun blasts at Aubrey at close range, killing him.

Arbery’s name became entwined with a host of others invoked in protests that swept the country after an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis, George Floyd, was killed by a white police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he could no longer breathe in May 2020.

The federal prosecution of Arbery’s killers marks the first instance in which those convicted of such a high-profile murder are facing a jury in a hate-crimes trial.

Christopher Perras, a special litigator for the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in his summation Monday that Arbery was singled out by the defendants because of the color of his skin.

“They were motivated by racial assumption, racial resentment and racial anger,” Perras said, referring to the defendants. “They saw a Black man in their neighborhood and they thought the worst of him.”

Perras cited trial testimony showing the defendants had a long history of making overtly, sometimes violently racist comments about Black people in text messages, social media and conversations with others.

The proceedings were attending on Monday by several members of Arbery’s family, including his parents, Marcus Arbery Sr., and Wanda Coooper-Jones.

Defense attorneys countered that their clients believed they recognized Arbery from previous videos taken by a neighbor showing a person lurking on four occasions around a vacant house under construction amid a series of property thefts in the community.

“If you ask, ‘Would these defendants have grabbed guns and done this to a white guy?’ and the answer is yes,” said defense lawyer Amy Lee Copeland, representing Travis McMichael, the man who fired the three shotgun blasts that killed Arbery.

She and fellow defense lawyers said the record of past derogatory statements made by her clients about Black people failed to prove their actions on the day of Arbery’s killing were racially motivated.

Copeland said prosecutors presented no evidence that her client “ever spoke to anyone about Mr. Arbery in racial terms” or used a racial slur on the day of the killing. And she added that the government never connected McMichael to any white supremacist or hate groups.

A.J. Balbo, the attorney Gregory McMichael, argued that the defendants were motivated by a desire to protect their neighborhood.

Pete Theodocion, Bryan’s attorney, argued the evidence of racism was merely “circumstantial.”

“Yes, the N-word six times is six times too many, but it is not evidence (of a hate crime),” he told jurors.

All three men are charged with depriving Arbery of his civil rights by attacking him because of his race, as well as with attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels are additionally charged with a federal firearms offense.

The hate-crimes felony, the most serious of the charges, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Both McMichaels had agreed last month to plead guilty to the federal hate-crimes offense, and the son acknowledged in court that he singled out Arbery because of his “race and color.”

But Judge Wood rejected the plea bargain because it bound her to a 30-year sentence that prosecutors had agreed would be served in a federal lockup before the men were returned to the Georgia prison system, widely perceived as a tougher environment for inmates compared with federal penitentiaries.

The plea deals were then withdrawn, and all three defendants proceeded to trial.

Increase in crimes in Montería at the beginning of the year 2022 - Other Cities - Colombia

So far in 2022, crimes in the Montería Metropolitan area have increased one hundred percent compared to the previous year.

The situation also affects the municipality of Cereté, to which crime has migrated with its actions outside the law, including homicides, reaching a 267 percent increase.

The information was delivered by the mayor of Montería, Carlos Ordosgoitia Sanín, who in an extraordinary security council promises to take control actions, hand in hand with personnel from the Army and the National Police.

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The Clan of the Gulf

“We are working forcefully from all fronts to guarantee security in each of the city’s areas,” said Mayor Carlos Ordosgoitia.

According to the investigations carried out by the authorities in Córdoba, the actions recorded at the beginning of the year 2022 point to members of the Clan del Golfo.

“It was determined that 90 percent of the violent acts are the result of the reorganization of the leaders of the Clan del Golfo. The homicides committed in the capital indicate that they are settling accounts of members of this criminal organization, ”he specified.

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He expressed that crime has not respected borders in the same way, so far in 2022.

“With the capture of alias Otoniel, other heads have been regrouping and have also shown strength through their structures in recent criminal acts,” he said.
Control measures.

Night time restriction on
public establishments

…restriction of hours in public establishments until 1:00 a.m. and the restriction of the male barbecue on motorcycles from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. the next day

The actions committed by criminals in Montería led the mayor, in coordination with the Army and the National Police, to take more drastic measures at night.

“A restriction of hours will be implemented in public establishments until 1:00 am and the restriction of the male barbecue on motorcycles from 8:00 pm to 4:00 am the next day,” explained Mayor Carlos Ordosgoitia.

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The restrictions will be carried out in the neighborhoods of Los Recuerdos, Los Araujos, Furatena, Alfonso López, La Gloria, Nuevo Horizonte, La Granja, Las Colinas, Brisas del Sinú, Villa Melisa, Galilea, Panzenú, P5, Santander, Santa Fe, Villa Margarita. , Pastrana Borrero, Mocarí, Los Garzones, Comfacor, Boston and Los Cedros.

Reward

…monitor the corridors of drugs, weapons transport and crime that have been detected in some sectors of the urban area and the roads of the rural area

Likewise, the authorities offer reward for whom information leading to the capture of those presumed responsible for the homicides committed.
“We have identified seven individuals for whom we offer 5 million pesos as a reward and also one of the leaders who is in the perimeter part of the urban area of ​​Montería, which is a national operation, for which up to 500 million pesos are offered. pesos,” he added.

He specified that resources will be increased to provide technology to the authorities, with drones and logistical support with the aim of capturing criminals.

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“In addition to the work articulated with the Police and the Prosecutor’s Office, which is added to the work of the National Army to monitor drug corridors, weapons transport and crime that have been detected in some sectors of the urban area and roads in the rural area,” I note.

He has also indicated that the municipal administration and the public force are working to counteract criminal acts in the metropolitan area and the department in general, considering that the situation is a reflection of what is happening in the country.

Francis Xavier Barrios
Special for WEATHER
Hunting

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