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in addition to firing rubber bullets at the demonstrators.ADVERTISEMENTAccording to Democratic Voice of Burma, a broadcast and online news service, two young men were shot and seriously wounded in Hpa-an.Other protests proceeded peacefully, including in Mandalay and on a smaller scale in Yangon, the two largest cities.

It says 2,906 people have been arrested, charged or sentenced at one point in connection with resisting the coup, with most remaining detained.Kanbawza Tai News, an online news service based in Taunggyi, reported that four of its staff, including its publisher and its editor, were detained Wednesday night. It said the home of the editor was raided and materials seized.

Thein Zaw, a journalist for The Associated Press who was arrested last month while covering an anti-coup protest, was released Wednesday. The judge in his case announced during a hearing that all charges against him were dropped because he was doing his job at the time of his arrest.

On Wednesday, more than 600 protesters were released from Yangon’s Insein Prison, where Thein Zaw had also been held — a rare conciliatory gesture by the ruling military.A Polish freelance journalist, Robert Bociaga, said Wednesday he’d also been freed but was being expelled from Myanmar.

On Wednesday morning, the Colombian military announced it had killed 12 people in a military operation that targeted the “criminal structure” of an armed group run by Miguel Botache, known by the alias Gentil Duarte, a former member of Colombia’s largest rebel group, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

President Iván Duque has been the subject of growing criticism that he is not doing enough to stop the violence.In late 2019, his former defense minister, Guillermo Botero, left his position after failing to disclose that several children died during a military raid on a criminal group.

“We’re not talking about young people who didn’t know what they were doing,” he said of those who join such groups.

Those comments drew immediate criticism from several sectors of Colombian society, who said that young people recruited by armed groups should be treated as victims, not perpetrators.

“The police shot an Arab demonstrators in Lod,” said Ahmed Tibi, the leader of the Ta’al party and a member of Israel’s Parliament, referring to the mixed Arab-Jewish city in Israel where some of the worst clashes occurred. “We don’t want bloodshed. We want to protest.”

In one seaside suburb south of Tel Aviv, dozens of Jewish extremists took turns beating and kicking a man presumed to be Arab, even as he lay motionless on the ground. To the north, in another coastal town, an Arab mob beat a man they thought was Jewish with sticks and rocks, leaving him in a critical condition. Nearby, an Arab mob nearly stabbed to death a man believed to be Jewish.

It is the first intense round of fighting since Israel normalized relations with several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, a long-fought prize and a delicate balancing act.

The Aqsa raid might have been the spark for the current round of hostilities, but the fuel was years of anger from Israel’s Arab minority, who make up about 20 percent of the population. They have full citizenship, but rights advocates say they are victims of dozens of discriminatory regulations.

A CNN report published Thursday found that hundreds of men had been rounded up in Shire, a town in Tigray, on Monday this week. Witnesses described, on condition of anonymity, how Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers had beaten and harassed the men. They also said the soldiers broke into at least two shelters for people displaced by the conflict, including an abandoned school, before shouting: "We'll see if America will save you now

CNN shared its report with Coons on Thursday. The Senator then raised the issue during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ethiopia, calling for "accountability" for the mass detention.

Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Ghebremeskel denied the reports and dismissed previous CNN reporting, saying: "For how long will you continue to believe at face value any and all 'witness statements' ... We have heard so many planted or false stories."

President Biden said in a statement late Wednesday that he is "deeply concerned by the escalating violence" in Ethiopia and condemned "large-scale human rights abuses taking place in Tigray."

Florida’s dashboard was created in part by Rebekah D. Jones, a state data scientist who was fired for insubordination in May 2020, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns.

Ms. Jones’s firing became a flash point as Mr. DeSantis, a close ally of then-President Donald J. Trump, touted Florida’s early success in battling the virus — a victory lap that turned out to be premature at the time and led to a disastrous summer. State officials insisted that her claims about hiding virus data were false.

In December, state police agents with guns drawn raided Ms. Jones’s home in Tallahassee to execute a search warrant in a criminal investigation, after police said a breach at the Florida Department of Health was traced to her computer. She denied having anything to do with the breach.

Ms. Jones’s dashboard generally shows a higher number of cases than the number reported by the state.

"The U.S. Army takes training seriously and prioritizes the safety of our soldiers, our allies, and civilians. We sincerely apologize to the business and its employees," the US military said in the statement. "We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake. We will implement rigorous procedures to clearly define our training areas and prevent this type of incident in the future."

CNN has reached out to the factory owner, US embassy in Bulgaria, Bulgaria's Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry for comment.Read MoreBulgarian President Rumen Radev condemned the incident and said he expects there will be an investigation, CNN affiliate Nova TV reported Monday.

"It is inadmissible to have the lives of Bulgarian citizens disturbed and put at risk by military formations, whether Bulgarian or belonging to a foreign army," Radev said. "The exercises with our allies on the territory of Bulgaria should contribute to building security and trust in collective defense, not breed tension."

One may ask: why did it take so long to get around to executing search warrants? We don't know for sure, and likely never will given the confidentiality around internal deliberations involving criminal investigations at DOJ, but The New York Times is reporting that there may have been politically motivated action taken to delay and then refuse to approve the warrant under the Trump administration. Search warrants involving lawyers like Giuliani carry particularly onerous approval requirements, because of concerns around breaching the attorney-client privilege by gaining access to communications between a lawyer and his client.

That means that these particular warrants would have been sent through the chain of command at the US Attorney's Office, up to Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss, and then down to the Justice Department in Washington for another set of approvals.

Thus, in this case, before presenting the warrant to a judge, the Giuliani and Toensing search warrants also would have been approved by DOJ's second-in-command, now Lisa Monaco. Once approval is given, prosecutors take the application to a federal judge, who must be satisfied that there was probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the evidence sought would be relevant to proving that crime.

But I expect -- as we saw when another Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was served with a search warrant as part of his criminal investigation by SDNY -- that Giuliani will challenge them every step of the way.

Once the legal challenges are dispensed with and the investigative team is able to review the evidence they collected, they will conduct any necessary follow-up investigation before making a charging decision. And while the FARA charges described above may be the most likely at this moment, new and additional offenses often come to light as an investigation proceeds, so it's impossible to say where authorities may end up.

while executing a search warrant certainly was a major event in the already lengthy saga of the investigation of Rudy Giuliani, there remains a long road ahead before we will know whether Giuliani faces arrest and criminal prosecution

The revocation of a Trump-era policy that restricted federal funding for "sanctuary cities."

under Attorney General Bill Barr, the department repeatedly blocked SDNY prosecutors from executing a search warrant for Giuliani's electronic records in the final months of 2020,

The New York-based Signature Bank announced that it would close down Trump’s personal accounts that have about $5.3 million due to the “displeasure and shock” management experienced following the Capitol riots. 

Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that Deutsche Bank would not conduct future business with Trump or his company besides monitoring the payment of existing loans amounting to more than $300 million. 

The deadly riots resulted in at least five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by a plain clothes Capitol Police officer.

The New York bank also called on the president to resign and said it would not make future agreements with lawmakers who contested the Electoral College results after the riots.

“We witnessed the President of the United States encouraging the rioters and refraining from calling in the National Guard to protect the Congress in its performance of duty,” the statement continued.

Eric TrumpEric TrumpLet's make Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 the day Trumpism died Ivanka Trump urges 'patriots' storming Capitol to 'stop immediately' in now-deleted tweet Eric Trump warns of primary challenges for Republicans who don't object to election results MORE, one of the president’s sons put in charge of day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization, told The Associated Press that banks and other companies ending their relationship with the business after the riots exemplifies a liberal “cancel culture.”

“If you disagree with them, if they don’t like you, they try and cancel you.”

Several companies, in addition to the banks, have distanced themselves from the president after last week’s events, including Shopify, which took down trumpstore.com, and PGA of America, which moved a 2022 championship away from Trump property.

New York City declared on Wednesday that it would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run attractions in the city’s park, with Mayor Bill de BlasioBill de BlasioRepublican Staten Island candidate apologizes for Hitler reference New York City considering ending business contracts with Trump Columnist Ross Barkan discusses the slow vaccination process in the state of New York MORE (D) saying, “New York City doesn’t do business with insurrectionists.”

Already, the public efforts by prosecutors and the FBI to encourage people who participated In the riot to turn themselves in is yielding fruit. Some attorneys have reached out to arrange for safe surrender of their clients in order to gain a measure of leniency and lessen the chance of a police raid on their homes, two officials said.

One of the defendants, Elzbieta Podlesna, said in court Wednesday that their 2019 action in Plock was spurred by an installation at the city’s St. Dominic’s Church that associated LGBT people with crime and negative behavior.

A group of supporters with rainbow flags and banners reading “The Rainbow Gives No Offense” gathered outside the court.

Podlesna was arrested in an early morning police raid on her apartment in 2019. She was detained for several hours and questioned over the posters of the icon that were placed around Plock. A court later said the detention was unnecessary and ordered damages equaling some $2,000 be awarded to her.

The case has highlighted the clash over social issues in predominantly Catholic Poland.

The scope of U.S. intelligence activity in the region has drawn renewed interest in recent days, in the wake of a U.S. raid on Saturday that killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The CIA, as well as Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officers, tracked the ISIS chief by interviewing the wife of an al-Baghdadi aide and one of his couriers, and by recruiting local spies along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

“The oil fields are small, we blasted them after Daesh [ISIS] seized them, and they will take years to rebuild,” said one official. So why leave forces there to protect them? “Talking about oil was the only way we could talk the President into keeping any U.S. military force in the area,” the official says. On Friday, after the plan to protect the oilfields was unveiled, Trump tweeted, “Oil is secured.”

U.S. officials are worried that a humanitarian crisis and renewed fighting in the region will invite a resurgence of ISIS, which operates best in chaotic situations. Many captured ISIS fighters remain in Kurdish custody in northern Syria. Trump appeared to dismiss the danger of a renewed terrorist threat Friday, when he tweeted, “ISIS SECURED”. Esper told reporters at NATO that the U.S. mission remains preventing a resurgence of ISIS.

U.S. intelligence officials aren’t the only ones seeing evidence of war crimes. The human rights group Amnesty International reported on Friday that Turkish-backed Syrian forces have committed war crimes, including executions of Kurdish civilians.

Mr. Breja said he urged Juul’s chief financial officer to issue either a recall or put out product safety warnings. A week later, the complaint says, Mr. Breja was fired.

He also claims that after the F.D.A. raided Juul headquarters in October 2018, seeking internal documents, Mr. Burns instructed Mr. Breja and other executives not to put anything relating to regulatory or safety issues in writing, so that the F.D.A. could not get them in the future.

Iran has also admitted shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet in error, killing 176 people. Amid anti-regime protests in Tehran, the threat of a US-Iran war has receded.

“They’re together sir,” Trump said he was told. “Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. ‘Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car, they’re in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, nine, eight ...’

According to CNN, Trump told his audience in Florida the death of al-Muhandis meant the US took out “two for the price of one”. He also repeated an erroneous claim that the Iraqi was “the head of Hezbollah”. Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon.

CNN said the audio of Friday’s speech also included a complaint that Conan, a Belgian Malinois dog wounded in the Baghdadi raid, “became very famous” and “got more credit than I did”.

...we’re asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of the Guardian’s open, independent journalism. This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, populism, mass migration and the escalating climate crisis. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

"On the very day we set aside to honor the life and enduring legacy of Dr. King, these dark and dangerous forces threaten to converge on our city and our Commonwealth, bringing hate and violence," prominent faith leaders warned in a statement released Sunday. "In this difficult moment, and in the face of these threats, we seek to muster Dr. King's moral courage."

There have been threats on law enforcement posted on their official social media sites in the last 24 hours, according to an official with the Virginia State Police.

The threats, which are considered credible by law enforcement, come from mainstream channels and alternative dark web ones used by violent groups and white nationalists from outside of Virginia, according to Northam. The governor added "the conversations are fueled by misinformation and conspiracy theories."

Gilbert acknowledged that although there may be policy differences among the state's GOP and Democratic lawmakers, it was important for all elected officials to stand together against hate. "While we and our Democratic colleagues may have differences, we are all Virginians and we will stand united in opposition to any threats of violence or civil unrest from any quarter," Gilbert said. Gilbert represents the 15th district in the Virginia House of Delegates.

At the Interior Ministry, where she works, anger has mounted at what is seen as Mr. Cadène’s “laïcité of appeasement,” one that is more concerned with the “struggle against stigmatization of Muslims” than with upholding the Republic against “militant Islamists,” the weekly magazine Le Point reported.

Among the disadvantaged “are a majority of French Muslims, even if the situation is evolving,” Mr. Cadène said. The result, as he sees it, is discrimination that is religious and social: the inferior schools in ghettoized neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities mean Muslim children have fewer chances.

“As laïcité is a tool to allow us all to live together, whatever our condition, it’s also necessary that we be together,” he said. “That we live in the same places. That we interact. And this happens too rarely.” A lot of schools, neighborhoods and workplaces were very homogeneous, he noted. “This insufficient social mixing spurs fears because when you don’t know the other you are more afraid.”

“It would be very dangerous to turn laïcité into a political tool,” he said. “It is not an ideology. It is absolutely not anti-religious. It should be a means to bring people together.”

Hakim El Karoui, a Muslim business consultant and senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, said the problem is that laïcité has many meanings. It can represent the law of 1905, freedom of conscience and the neutrality of the state.

Or it can be philosophical, a form of emancipation against religion, a battle for enlightenment against religious obscurantism, something close to atheism. Islam, with its vibrant appeal to young Muslims, then becomes the enemy

Mr. Cadène’s views seem broadly aligned with Mr. Macron’s. While condemning the extremist Islamism behind recent terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a schoolteacher, the president has acknowledged failings. In an October speech he said France suffered from “its own form of separatism” in neglecting the marginalization of some Muslims.

Draft legislation this month seeks to combat radical Islamism through measures to curb the funding and teachings of extremist groups. It was a necessary step, Mr. Cadène said, but not enough. “We also need a law of repair, to try to ensure everyone has an equal chance.”

A law, in other words, that would help forge a France of greater mingling through better distributed social housing, more socially mixed schools, a more variegated workplace. The government is preparing a “national consultation on discrimination” in January, evidence of the urgency Mr. Macron accords this question in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.

In France, saying to someone, “Tell me your laïcité and I’ll tell you who you are,” is not a bad compass.

So, I asked Mr. Cadène about his. “It’s the equality before the state of everyone, whatever their conviction. It’s a public administration and public services that are impartial. And it’s fraternity because that is what allows us to work together in the respect of others’ convictions.”

He continued: “In theory it’s a wonderful model. But if the tool is not oiled it rusts and fails. And the problem today is that equality is not real, freedom is not real, and fraternity even less.”

or many decades the model made French citizens of millions of immigrants, and it remains for many French people of different backgrounds and beliefs and skin color, a noble idea, without which France would lose some essence of itself.

“I believe that our Republic is laïque’’ — secular — “and dedicated to social justice, and that laïcité can only survive on that basis.”

The president took a different tone on Wednesday than this summer, when he called overwhelmingly peaceful protesters for racial justice "thugs," "agitators" and "looters." He tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." He threatened protesters outside the White House with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons."

But when the Capitol was stormed Wednesday, Trump told the extremists threatening to execute Democrats and target journalists and BLM activists "we love you, you're very special ... but you have to go home." Prior to the mob storming the Capitol, he'd told the rally of his supporters to "fight like hell."

"It just exaggerated the contradictions to me around how the state and how police respond to Black and Indigenous and Latinx and Asian and Pacific Islander folks when we protest," she said. "Versus how they responded to gun-toting white supremacists that were coming into the Capitol."

Black and brown people protesting for social justice are seen as criminals; a mostly white mob attacking the Capitol are seen as demonstrators.

Dozens of insurrectionists have been arrested in the days following the violent raid on the Capitol. Officials have levied charges against the man seen with his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk, the conspiracy theorist wearing a fur headdress, and the man seen lugging Pelosi’s lectern through the Rotunda while wearing a “Trump 45” hat.

Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor

the Western Empire seated in the city of Milan, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium, later known as Constantinople. The division made the empire more easily governable in the short term, but over time the two halves drifted apart.

Most importantly, the strength of the Eastern Empire served to divert Barbarian invasions to the West. Emperors like Constantine ensured that the city of Constantinople was fortified and well guarded, but Italy and the city of Rome—which only had symbolic value for many in the East—were left vulnerable.

With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative and logistical nightmare. Even with their excellent road systems, the Romans were unable to communicate quickly or effectively enough to manage their holdings.

Rome struggled to marshal enough troops and resources to defend its frontiers from local rebellions and outside attacks, and by the second century the Emperor Hadrian was forced to build his famous wall in Britain just to keep the enemy at bay.

ineffective and inconsistent leadership only served to magnify the problem.

Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after the murder of their predecessor.

The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership.

The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration caused by the Huns’ invasion of Europe in the late fourth century. When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire.

In brutalizing the Goths, the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders. When the oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378. T

410, when the Goth King Alaric moved west and sacked Rome.

The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity, and some have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire’s fall.

Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity.

For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world.

Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. The ranks of the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much so that Romans began using the Latin word “barbarus” in place of “soldier.” While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers

The Working Families Party, aligned with high-profile progressives, such as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is battling on behalf of liberal candidates in contests that will decide who holds positions as sheriffs and prosecutors.

"We're going from protests to the polls," Angela Angel, a former Maryland state legislator who is a senior adviser to the new Black Lives Matter PAC, told CNN. "We understand in this moment that the real power is in exercising our right to vote."

the group has targeted young voters in more than a dozen key states with a particular focus on reaching people who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet returned them.

In Georgia, a traditionally red state now in play in this year's presidential and US Senate elections, the Black Lives Matter PAC is backing Joyce Barlow, a Democrat running for the Georgia House of Representatives to represent a swath of rural southwest Georgia.

A study released earlier this year by the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina's Law School at Chapel Hill examined more than 2,300 prosecutors' races around the country and found contested elections in fewer than 700 -- or less than a third -- in either the primary or general election.

The groups engaged in electoral politics include Black Lives Matter, the sprawling social justice organization closely associated with this year's protests.

Tuesday's election "isn't just about the presidency. Your money, your minimum wage is on the ballot."

"We saw that very different outcomes were realized by Black people killed by police violence, based on the prosecutors elected in their jurisdictions," said Arisha Hatch, who oversees the Color of Change PAC.

Taylor's mother has sought the appointment of an independent prosecutor to handle the case. In September, Cameron announced that a grand jury indicted one former Louisville Metro Police Department Detective Brett Hankison, with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment in connection with his actions on the night of the raid.

But the Color of Change PAC and other liberal groups are putting their political muscle into local prosecutors' races around the country

In Florida, meanwhile, the PAC is urging a "yes" vote on Amendment 2, which would phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the Sunshine State by 2026.

Rural counties might lack enough lawyers to mount a challenge to an incumbent. Prosecutor elections don't generate much attention. And voters don't always understand the power local county and district attorneys wield.

The Working Families Party mailers in the race tout Rucker's opposition to cash bail for non-violent offenses. "People shouldn't be sitting in jail because they can't afford to not be there," Rucker said in an interview with CNN.

The Working Families Party's "people's charter" calls to "shift resources away from policing, jails and detention centers" and into schools, housing and jobs programs.