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katyshannon

Justice Department set to free 6,000 prisoners, largest one-time release - The Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html

justice department release prisoners

shared by katyshannon on 07 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison — the largest one-time release of federal prisoners — in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, according to U.S. officials.
  • inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. About two-thirds of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. About one-third are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported, officials said.
  • The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, an initiative that has resulted in the early release of 89 inmates.
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  • The panel estimated that its change in sentencing guidelines eventually could result in 46,000 of the nation’s approximately 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison qualifying for early release. The 6,000 figure, which has not been reported previously, is the first tranche in that process.
  • an additional 8,550 inmates would be eligible for release between this Nov. 1 and Nov. 1, 2016.
  • The releases are part of a shift in the nation’s approach to criminal justice and drug sentencing that has been driven by a bipartisan consensus that mass incarceration has failed and should be reversed.
  • Along with the commission’s action, the Justice Department has instructed its prosecutors not to charge low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations with offenses that carry severe mandatory sentences.
  • The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously for the reduction last year after holding two public hearings in which members heard testimony from then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., federal judges, federal public defenders, state and local law enforcement officials, and sentencing advocates. The panel also received more than 80,000 public comment letters, with the overwhelming majority favoring the change.
  • The policy change is referred to as “Drugs Minus Two.” Federal sentencing guidelines rely on a numeric system based on different factors, including the defendant’s criminal history, the type of crime, whether a gun was involved and whether the defendant was a leader in a drug group.
  • An average of about two years is being shaved off eligible prisoners’ sentences under the change. Although some of the inmates who will be released have served decades, on average they will have served 8  1/2 years instead of 10  1/2 , according to a Justice Department official.
  • “Even with the Sentencing Commission’s reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. “Moreover, these reductions are not automatic. Under the commission’s directive, federal judges are required to carefully consider public safety in deciding whether to reduce an inmate’s sentence.”
  • katyshannon on 07 Oct 15
     
    Justice Department is set to free 6,000 prisoners this year.
Maria Delzi

Israel releases 26 Palestinian prisoners - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ease-20131230221424954472.html

shared by Maria Delzi on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Twenty-six Palestinian prisoners have been released from Israeli jails, as part of a US-brokered deal to restart Middle East negotiations.
  • It is the third of four stages to free 104 inmates that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed to let go when the talks were renewed in July. They have been convicted of killing Israeli civilians or soldiers and have spent between 19 and 28 years in prison.
  • We will not sign a final peace deal with Israel before all the prisoners are released,'' he said.
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  • In Israel, though, the release was met with anger. Relatives of Israelis killed in attacks had attempted to prevent the release by petitioning Israel's Supreme Court
  • The 26 inmates were jailed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, which formally launched the Middle East peace process.
  • They include 18 men from the West Bank, three Gazans, and in a concession by Israel, five men from East Jerusalem.
  • The US welcomed the release, with Kerry expressing "his appreciation for Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to release the third tranche of prisoners," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
  • The Israeli government's commitment to release Palestinian prisoners helped enable the start ... and the continuation of the final status negotiations, and we believe this is a positive step forward in the overall process," she added.
  • "As part of this release he has announced 140,000 additional new settlements in the West Bank," he said
  • "The Palestinians ask, how can you talk to us about being legitimate partners, if you're going to build inside the West Bank?"
criscimagnael

New Rule Makes Thousands of Federal Inmates Eligible for Release - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...federal-prisoners-release.html

shared by criscimagnael on 14 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Thousands of federal inmates will become eligible for release this week under a rule the Justice Department published on Thursday that allows more people to participate in a program that allows prisoners to earn shorter jail terms.
  • As part of those guidelines, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has begun transferring eligible inmates to supervised release programs, residential re-entry centers or home confinement.
  • The rule, together with a decision by the department last month that well-behaved inmates released to home confinement during the pandemic would not have to return to prison, is a major step toward overhauling and shrinking the federal prison system,
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  • The measure expands job training and other efforts aimed at reducing recidivism, expands early-release programs and modifies sentencing laws.
  • The law gave the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons leeway in interpreting some aspects of its implementation, including whether credits for good behavior and job training accrued before the law was passed could be used to apply for early release.
  • Critics argued that the proposed rule did not accurately reflect the intent of the lawmakers who had drafted the bill, and that it kept thousands of people behind bars who should be immediately released.
  • Last May, Senators Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s top Republican, pressed the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons to revise the proposed rule.
  • They said that it included limitations that were not part of the act, and penalties that were unduly harsh.
  • In the guidelines announced Thursday, the Justice Department said inmates could apply credits that had been earned as far back as Dec. 21, 2018, when the First Step Act was enacted, subject to the Bureau of Prisons determining eligibility.
  • Justice Action Network, a bipartisan criminal justice reform group, said that the new guidelines could result in the release of as many people as were freed immediately after passage of First Step Act, which was more than 3,100. The home confinement decision had already affected about 2,800 inmates. There are 157,596 federal inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
julia rhodes

U.S. and Israel Said to Be Near Agreement on Release of Spy - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...jonathan-pollard.html

u s israel agreement release spy

shared by julia rhodes on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Officials involved in the fraught Israeli-Palestinian peace talks said on Tuesday that an agreement was near on extending the negotiations through 2015 in exchange for the release of Jonathan J. Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. The agreement would also include the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including citizens of Israel, and a partial freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.
  • The senior official said the terms of the developing agreement would be for Mr. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of espionage more than a quarter century ago, to be released before Passover, which begins the evening of April 14. Israel would free a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners as promised at the start of the talks, as well as 400 other prisoners, many of them women and children, who were not convicted of murder.
  • Among the prisoners would be 14 Arab-Israelis, whose release is deeply controversial in Israel and could cause a crisis in its governing coalition, with some ministers threatening to quit if they are freed. Israel would also agree to show “restraint” in building in its West Bank settlements, which most of the world views as illegal.
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  • Palestinians, in turn, would agree not to join more than 60 United Nations and other agencies, including the International Criminal Court, suspending an effort that has been vigorously opposed by both Israel and Washington.
  • “On principle, the leadership rejects the idea of extending the talks, basically because no progress has been made — on the contrary, things got worse,” Mr. Shehada said on Voice of Palestine radio. “However, if the U.S. promises and the Israelis reassure that the negotiations need a limited amount of time to achieve progress, then the leadership may be more lenient. But there must be a complete halt to the settlements, and more prisoners must be released.”
  • While Mr. Netanyahu could win significant political cover with a preholiday homecoming for Mr. Pollard, who was granted Israeli citizenship while in prison, his coalition is deeply divided over the Palestinian question. Several ministers have vowed to vote against any release of imprisoned Israeli citizens.
  • “We have to ask ourselves, have the Palestinians become addicted to Israeli incentives?” Mr. Oren said in a radio interview.
katyshannon

14 Testy Months Behind U.S. Prisoner Swap With Iran - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-prisoner-swap-with-iran.html

months behind u s prisoner swap iran new york times politics US history culture

shared by katyshannon on 19 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • For a year, Obama administration officials had been meeting in secret with Iranian counterparts, seeking to free Americans imprisoned in the Islamic republic. Finally last fall, a deal for a prisoner release seemed all but sealed.
  • But the Iranians arrived at the latest clandestine session in a Geneva hotel suite with a whole new proposal that insisted on the release of dozens of Iranians held in American prisons, essentially returning to initial demands that had long since been rejected.
  • The Americans were flabbergasted. “We’ve already talked about this,” said Brett McGurk, the lead negotiator. But the Iranians were adamant, according to American officials informed about the meeting. Something back home had changed, part of the continuing battle inside Iran over how to deal with the United States. Someone in power in Tehran, it seemed, did not want a deal after all.
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  • Eventually, the deal got put back together by Secretary of State John Kerry and the American-educated Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Five Americans were released in Iran over the weekend in exchange for seven Iranians freed by the United States.
  • But it took 14 months of turbulent talks punctuated by high diplomatic drama and multiple near-collapses that paralleled the final year of nuclear negotiations. The secret negotiations were weighted by the baggage of a bitter history as the Iranian representatives berated their counterparts over past grievances, including the C.I.A.-backed coup in 1953 and American support for Iraq in its war with Iran in the 1980s.
  • The Iranians were not the only ones grappling with divisions in their government about a possible deal. The Obama administration was engaged in a vigorous debate about whether to trade Iranian prisoners and, if so, which ones, with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch objecting to any deal that equated innocent Americans seized for political gain with Iranian criminals indicted or convicted under Western legal traditions.
  • In the end, officials said President Obama decided that to spare the Americans years — if not life — in an Iranian prison, he would make what he called a “one-time gesture” by releasing Iranians who had been accused or convicted of violating sanctions that he was lifting anyway as part of the nuclear agreement.
  • Republican critics, while celebrating the release of the Americans, questioned the cost. “I think it’s a very dangerous precedent,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a leading Republican presidential candidate, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The result of this, every bad actor on earth has been told to go capture an American. If you want terrorists out of jail, capture an American and President Obama is in the let’s-make-a-deal business.”
  • Mr. Obama authorized a secret diplomatic channel to Iran to negotiate for their release, even as he was seeking a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. Mr. McGurk, a top State Department official who had just brokered the departure of Iraq’s problematic prime minister, was tapped in October 2014 to lead the new talks with Iran.
  • Brought together by the Swiss, who represent American interests in Tehran, Mr. McGurk’s team sat down with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva for the first time in November 2014, according to an account by several American officials on the condition of anonymity.
maddieireland334

Iran Complies With Nuclear Deal; Sanctions Are Lifted - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tions-lifted-nuclear-deal.html

shared by maddieireland334 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The United States and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions on Iran and released roughly $100 billion of its assets after international inspectors concluded that the country had followed through on promises to dismantle large sections of its nuclear program.
  • Five Americans, including a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, were released by Iran hours before the nuclear accord was implemented.
  • Early on Sunday, a senior United States official confirmed that “our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left.”
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  • “Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.
  • The release of the “unjustly detained” Americans, as Mr. Kerry put it, came at some cost: Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists.
  • They particularly object to the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets — mostly from past oil sales — that Iran will now control, and the end of American and European restrictions on trade that had been imposed as part of the American-led effort to stop the program.
  • In Tehran and Washington, political battles are still being fought over the merits and dangers of moving toward normal interchanges between two countries that have been avowed adversaries for more than three decades.
  • But Mr. Kerry suggested that the nuclear deal had broken the cycle of hostility, enabling the secret negotiations that led up to the hostage swap.
  • “Critics will continue to attack the deal for giving away too much to Tehran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who started the sanctions against Iran that were lifted Saturday as the No. 3 official in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.
  • A copy of the proposed sanction leaked three weeks ago, and the Obama administration pulled it back — perhaps to avoid torpedoing the prisoner swap and the completion of the nuclear deal. Negotiations to win the release of Mr. Rezaian, who had covered the nuclear talks before he was imprisoned on vague charges, were an open secret: Mr. Kerry often alluded to the fact that he was working on the issue behind the scenes.
  • Then, several weeks ago the Iranians leaked news that they were interested in a swap of their own citizens, which American officials said was an outrageous demand, because they had been indicted or convicted in a truly independent court system.
  • The result was two parallel races underway — one involving implementing the nuclear deal, the other to get the prisoner swap done while the moment was ripe.
  • For example, the United States and Iran were struggling late Saturday to define details of what kind of “advanced centrifuges” Iran will be able to develop nearly a decade from now — the kind of definitional difference that can undermine an accord.
  • The result was that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Zarif veered from the monumental significance of what they were accomplishing — an end to a decade of open hostility — to the minutiae of uranium enrichment.
  • But Iran has something it desperately needs: Billions in cash, at a time oil shipments have been cut by more than half because of the sanctions, and below $30-a-barrel prices mean huge cuts in national revenue.
  • senior American official said Saturday that Iran will be able to access about $50 billion of a reported $100 billion in holdings abroad, though others have used higher estimates. The official said Iran will likely need to keep much of those assets abroad to facilitate international trade.
  • The Obama administration on Saturday also removed 400 Iranians and others from its sanctions list and took other steps to lift selected restrictions on interactions with Iran
  • Under the new rules put in place, the United States will no longer sanction foreign individuals or firms for buying oil and gas from Iran. The American trade embargo remains in place, but the government will permit certain limited business activities with Iran, such as selling or purchasing Iranian food and carpets and American commercial aircraft and parts.
  • It is unclear what will happen after the passing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has protected and often fueled the hardliners — but permitted these talks to go ahead.
Javier E

The Contradictions of Sam Altman, the AI Crusader Behind ChatGPT - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...l-intelligence-openai-b0e1c8c9

AI history control effects

shared by Javier E on 02 Apr 23 - No Cached
  • Mr. Altman said he fears what could happen if AI is rolled out into society recklessly. He co-founded OpenAI eight years ago as a research nonprofit, arguing that it’s uniquely dangerous to have profits be the main driver of developing powerful AI models.
  • He is so wary of profit as an incentive in AI development that he has taken no direct financial stake in the business he built, he said—an anomaly in Silicon Valley, where founders of successful startups typically get rich off their equity. 
  • His goal, he said, is to forge a new world order in which machines free people to pursue more creative work. In his vision, universal basic income—the concept of a cash stipend for everyone, no strings attached—helps compensate for jobs replaced by AI. Mr. Altman even thinks that humanity will love AI so much that an advanced chatbot could represent “an extension of your will.”
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  • The Tesla Inc. CEO tweeted in February that OpenAI had been founded as an open-source nonprofit “to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.”
  • Backers say his brand of social-minded capitalism makes him the ideal person to lead OpenAI. Others, including some who’ve worked for him, say he’s too commercially minded and immersed in Silicon Valley thinking to lead a technological revolution that is already reshaping business and social life. 
  • In the long run, he said, he wants to set up a global governance structure that would oversee decisions about the future of AI and gradually reduce the power OpenAI’s executive team has over its technology. 
  • OpenAI researchers soon concluded that the most promising path to achieve artificial general intelligence rested in large language models, or computer programs that mimic the way humans read and write. Such models were trained on large volumes of text and required a massive amount of computing power that OpenAI wasn’t equipped to fund as a nonprofit, according to Mr. Altman. 
  • In its founding charter, OpenAI pledged to abandon its research efforts if another project came close to building AGI before it did. The goal, the company said, was to avoid a race toward building dangerous AI systems fueled by competition and instead prioritize the safety of humanity.
  • While running Y Combinator, Mr. Altman began to nurse a growing fear that large research labs like DeepMind, purchased by Google in 2014, were creating potentially dangerous AI technologies outside the public eye. Mr. Musk has voiced similar concerns of a dystopian world controlled by powerful AI machines. 
  • Messrs. Altman and Musk decided it was time to start their own lab. Both were part of a group that pledged $1 billion to the nonprofit, OpenAI Inc. 
  • Mr. Altman said he doesn’t necessarily need to be first to develop artificial general intelligence, a world long imagined by researchers and science-fiction writers where software isn’t just good at one specific task like generating text or images but can understand and learn as well or better than a human can. He instead said OpenAI’s ultimate mission is to build AGI, as it’s called, safely.
  • “We didn’t have a visceral sense of just how expensive this project was going to be,” he said. “We still don’t.”
  • Tensions also grew with Mr. Musk, who became frustrated with the slow progress and pushed for more control over the organization, people familiar with the matter said. 
  • OpenAI executives ended up reviving an unusual idea that had been floated earlier in the company’s history: creating a for-profit arm, OpenAI LP, that would report to the nonprofit parent. 
  • Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder who advised OpenAI at the time and later served on the board, said the idea was to attract investors eager to make money from the commercial release of some OpenAI technology, accelerating OpenAI’s progress
  • “You want to be there first and you want to be setting the norms,” he said. “That’s part of the reason why speed is a moral and ethical thing here.”
  • The decision further alienated Mr. Musk, the people familiar with the matter said. He parted ways with OpenAI in February 2018. 
  • Mr. Musk announced his departure in a company all-hands, former employees who attended the meeting said. Mr. Musk explained that he thought he had a better chance at creating artificial general intelligence through Tesla, where he had access to greater resources, they said.
  • OpenAI said that it received about $130 million in contributions from the initial $1 billion pledge, but that further donations were no longer needed after the for-profit’s creation. Mr. Musk has tweeted that he donated around $100 million to OpenAI. 
  • Mr. Musk’s departure marked a turning point. Later that year, OpenAI leaders told employees that Mr. Altman was set to lead the company. He formally became CEO and helped complete the creation of the for-profit subsidiary in early 2019.
  • A young researcher questioned whether Mr. Musk had thought through the safety implications, the former employees said. Mr. Musk grew visibly frustrated and called the intern a “jackass,” leaving employees stunned, they said. It was the last time many of them would see Mr. Musk in person.  
  • In the meantime, Mr. Altman began hunting for investors. His break came at Allen & Co.’s annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho in the summer of 2018, where he bumped into Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, on a stairwell and pitched him on OpenAI. Mr. Nadella said he was intrigued. The conversations picked up that winter.
  • “I remember coming back to the team after and I was like, this is the only partner,” Mr. Altman said. “They get the safety stuff, they get artificial general intelligence. They have the capital, they have the ability to run the compute.”   
  • Mr. Altman disagreed. “The unusual thing about Microsoft as a partner is that it let us keep all the tenets that we think are important to our mission,” he said, including profit caps and the commitment to assist another project if it got to AGI first. 
  • Some employees still saw the deal as a Faustian bargain. 
  • OpenAI’s lead safety researcher, Dario Amodei, and his lieutenants feared the deal would allow Microsoft to sell products using powerful OpenAI technology before it was put through enough safety testing,
  • They felt that OpenAI’s technology was far from ready for a large release—let alone with one of the world’s largest software companies—worrying it could malfunction or be misused for harm in ways they couldn’t predict.  
  • Mr. Amodei also worried the deal would tether OpenAI’s ship to just one company—Microsoft—making it more difficult for OpenAI to stay true to its founding charter’s commitment to assist another project if it got to AGI first, the former employees said.
  • Microsoft initially invested $1 billion in OpenAI. While the deal gave OpenAI its needed money, it came with a hitch: exclusivity. OpenAI agreed to only use Microsoft’s giant computer servers, via its Azure cloud service, to train its AI models, and to give the tech giant the sole right to license OpenAI’s technology for future products.
  • In a recent investment deck, Anthropic said it was “committed to large-scale commercialization” to achieve the creation of safe AGI, and that it “fully committed” to a commercial approach in September. The company was founded as an AI safety and research company and said at the time that it might look to create commercial value from its products. 
  • Mr. Altman “has presided over a 180-degree pivot that seems to me to be only giving lip service to concern for humanity,” he said. 
  • “The deal completely undermines those tenets to which they secured nonprofit status,” said Gary Marcus, an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at New York University who co-founded a machine-learning company
  • The cash turbocharged OpenAI’s progress, giving researchers access to the computing power needed to improve large language models, which were trained on billions of pages of publicly available text. OpenAI soon developed a more powerful language model called GPT-3 and then sold developers access to the technology in June 2020 through packaged lines of code known as application program interfaces, or APIs. 
  • Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei clashed again over the release of the API, former employees said. Mr. Amodei wanted a more limited and staged release of the product to help reduce publicity and allow the safety team to conduct more testing on a smaller group of users, former employees said. 
  • Mr. Amodei left the company a few months later along with several others to found a rival AI lab called Anthropic. “They had a different opinion about how to best get to safe AGI than we did,” Mr. Altman said.
  • Anthropic has since received more than $300 million from Google this year and released its own AI chatbot called Claude in March, which is also available to developers through an API. 
  • Mr. Altman shared the contract with employees as it was being negotiated, hosting all-hands and office hours to allay concerns that the partnership contradicted OpenAI’s initial pledge to develop artificial intelligence outside the corporate world, the former employees said. 
  • In the three years after the initial deal, Microsoft invested a total of $3 billion in OpenAI, according to investor documents. 
  • More than one million users signed up for ChatGPT within five days of its November release, a speed that surprised even Mr. Altman. It followed the company’s introduction of DALL-E 2, which can generate sophisticated images from text prompts.
  • By February, it had reached 100 million users, according to analysts at UBS, the fastest pace by a consumer app in history to reach that mark.
  • n’s close associates praise his ability to balance OpenAI’s priorities. No one better navigates between the “Scylla of misplaced idealism” and the “Charybdis of myopic ambition,” Mr. Thiel said. 
  • Mr. Altman said he delayed the release of the latest version of its model, GPT-4, from last year to March to run additional safety tests. Users had reported some disturbing experiences with the model, integrated into Bing, where the software hallucinated—meaning it made up answers to questions it didn’t know. It issued ominous warnings and made threats. 
  • “The way to get it right is to have people engage with it, explore these systems, study them, to learn how to make them safe,” Mr. Altman said.
  • After Microsoft’s initial investment is paid back, it would capture 49% of OpenAI’s profits until the profit cap, up from 21% under prior arrangements, the documents show. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit parent, would get the rest.
  • He has put almost all his liquid wealth in recent years in two companies. He has put $375 million into Helion Energy, which is seeking to create carbon-free energy from nuclear fusion and is close to creating “legitimate net-gain energy in a real demo,” Mr. Altman said.
  • He has also put $180 million into Retro, which aims to add 10 years to the human lifespan through “cellular reprogramming, plasma-inspired therapeutics and autophagy,” or the reuse of old and damaged cell parts, according to the company. 
  • He noted how much easier these problems are, morally, than AI. “If you’re making nuclear fusion, it’s all upside. It’s just good,” he said. “If you’re making AI, it is potentially very good, potentially very terrible.” 
redavistinnell

Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ed-territorial-waters-state-tv

revolutionary guards release iranian waters

shared by redavistinnell on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters
  • The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.
  • The sailors’ two small navy craft brieflywent missing on Tuesday while crossing the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. Pentagon sources later said the vessels entered Iranian waters because of technical difficulties.
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  • “These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control. I’m appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities.”
  • In fact, it is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved, and officially resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping the country safe, secure and strong.”
  • The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said: “I am pleased that 10 US navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in US hands. I want to personally thank secretary of state John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return. Around the world, the US navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved.”
  • The Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
  • The swift release of the Americans contradicted speculation that the hardline Revolutionary Guards were seeking to sabotage improving relations between Iran and the west days before the planned implementation of the nuclear deal reached in Vienna in July
  • In an unusual move, the Guards last week condemned the attack by a group of hardliners on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, showing an approach in line with that of the Rouhani administration.
  • Once Iran finishes swapping the core of a heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak with cement, they will receive an influx of cash under the July deal.
runlai_jiang

JFK files: Trump teases release as deadline arrives - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

JFK

shared by runlai_jiang on 26 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • to invoke his waiver privilege to keep some of the documents secret, as some members of the US intelligence community have privately requested.
  • In a Saturday tweet, Trump said he would allow the release of the documents "subject to the release of further information."
  • Trump could block the release of certain documents if he finds "an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or conduct of foreign relations" and if "the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure,"
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  • Historians who have closely studied the Kennedy assassination have said they do not expect the documents to reveal any bombshells or to contradict the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for killing Kennedy
  • The President's longtime political adviser Roger Stone, an avid JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, also privately urged Trump to allow the full release of the documents.
ethanmoser

Trump Calls NBC Release of 2005 Video 'An Illegal Act' - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ideo-an-illegal-act-1477616180

trump nbc illegal politics us release

shared by ethanmoser on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Trump Calls NBC Release of 2005 Video ‘An Illegal Act’ Republican candidate threatens to take legal action against the network
  • Republican nominee Donald Trump on Thursday said it was “an illegal act” for NBC to release earlier this month a 2005 videotape of him making lewd comments about women, and threatened to take legal action against the network.
  • Mr. Trump once again defended his comments—in which he said of groping women, “when you’re a star, they let you do it”—as “locker-room talk,” and added: “The microphone was not supposed to be on—not that I make that as an excuse for myself, but certainly it was an illegal act that was NBC. It was not supposed to be on.”
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  • “Oh, absolutely. You know that was a private dressing room—yeah that was certainly illegal, no question about it.”
  • “Just kiss. I don’t even wait”—and said, “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” Mr. Trump was speaking to then-“Access Hollywood” anchor , who has since been fired by the network.
malonema1

Industrial Facilities' Toxic Chemical Releases Dropped 8% in 2015 - Environmental Leader - 0 views

www.environmentalleader.com/...cal-releases-dropped-8-in-2015

industrial economy environment

shared by malonema1 on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Air emissions of toxic chemicals from industrial facilities saw an 8 percent decrease from 2014 to 2015, continuing their 10-year decline, according to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) National Analysis.
  • hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, toluene and mercury were among chemicals with significantly lower air releases at TRI-covered facilitie
  • This year’s report also includes a section highlighting the new Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which updated the Toxic Substances Control Act
prendergastja

Two Italian women seized by al-Qaeda released - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ized-by-al-Qaeda-released.html

shared by prendergastja on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • uggesting that Italy has continued its long-running policy of paying ransoms for captives.
  • The two young women were taken hostage in July while working on humanitarian projects in the embattled northern city of Aleppo.
  • Dressed in black hijabs, Ms Ramelli, 20, and Ms Marzullo, 21, appealed for help in the video, saying they were “in great danger” and could be killed.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Their families were criticised in Italy for allowing their daughters to travel to Syria,
  • Italy, along with France and Spain, is believed to pay ransoms to secure the release of its citizens if they are kidnapped or held as hostages
  • Britain has long argued that paying such ransoms only encourages militant and terrorist groups to kidnap more victims.
  • prendergastja on 17 Jan 15
     
    Two young Italian women were taken hostage in July while working in Syria on humanitarian projects in the city of Aleppo. The Italian government payed the ransom to secure the release of the two women on January 16, 2015.
katyshannon

Iran demands apology after detaining US navy boat crews for 'violating' Gulf waters | W... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...two-us-navy-ships-persian-gulf

iran apology navy boat gulf waters detainment world news the guardian politics US crisis obama

shared by katyshannon on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Iran has said the US should apologise after the crews of two US Navy boats were detained by Revolutionary Guards for “violating” Iran’s waters in the Gulf.
  • Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said in an interview broadcast live on state television that foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had taken a “firm stance” on the issue when contacting US secretary of state John Kerry.
  • Earlier, US officials said they had received assurances from Tehran that the crew of two small US navy ships in Iranian custody would soon be allowed to continue their journey. Fadavi was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as saying “The final order will be issued soon and they will probably be released.”
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  • Fadavi blamed the incident on the American navigation system. “Investigation shows that [the] entry of American sailors into Iran’s territorial waters was due to mechanical problems in their navigation system and that issue is being resolved,” he said.
  • The two small craft briefly went missing on Tuesday after transiting the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. The Pentagon said the crews ended up in Iranian custody, sparking immediate fears of escalating tensions during a week when Iran is expected to receive the first wave of sanctions relief from the landmark nuclear accords.
  • Plans were in place for Iran to return the crew to a US Navy vessel in international waters early on Wednesday, during daylight hours when it would be safer, a US defence official told the Associated Press. The exchange was reportedly set for 10.30am local time (7am GMT), but is yet to have happened.
  • Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that 10 Americans – including one woman – were arrested by the naval forces of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters.
  • Fars said the two American boats were 2km inside Iranian waters when they were detained close to Farsi island, which is home to a Revolutionary Guards base.
  • The agency claimed GPS data on the American ships – reported to be on a training mission – also indicated they were on the Iranian side. Pentagon officials told the Associated Press the two boats drifted into Iranian waters after facing mechanical problems. Fars reported the Americans were carrying semi-heavy weaponry on board their craft.
  • The episode comes amid heightened regional tensions, and only hours before Barack Obama was set to deliver his final State of the Union address.
  • Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio reacted swiftly to the reports, calling on Iran to release the US sailors and navy boats immediately. “If they are not immediately released, and the boats are not immediately released, then we know something else is at play here,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
  • Paul Ryan, House speaker and the top Republican in Washington, withheld judgment, saying in a statement: “Our top priority is the safety and security of our servicemembers detained by Iran.
  • A US defense department official played down the incident, saying the Iranians had sent indications of the “safety and wellbeing” of the sailors.
  • Pentagon and Navy officials did not identify the naval craft, the number of detained sailors, their mission or a timetable for their release.
  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway where a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
jongardner04

Americans in Iran prisoner swap arrive in Switzerland - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

iran americans swap

shared by jongardner04 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A plane carrying at least three of the four Americans freed by Iran as part of a prisoner swap has taken off
  • statement from a senior White House official did not name specific prisoners and provided only sparse details
  • Washington Post confirmed its journalist, Jason Rezaian, was released in the prisoner swap and had left the country with his wife
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • We can confirm that our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left
  • The nuclear agreement "accelerated" the prisoner swap
  • were released, along with four other Iranians held in other parts of the U.S., Mechanich's attorney
  • concluded Tehran was in compliance with the deal governing its nuclear program.
  • U.S. federal officials said they will not comment on the names of anyone who is part of the agreement until after the four Americans are in U.S. custody
  • seven Iranian men walked free from detention in the United States after being pardoned and released
  • he freed prisoners are expected to be transported to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for medical evaluation
  • Iranian officials to "continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson,
  • FBI agent and CIA contractor, went missing in Iran in 2007.
  • men had been involved in exporting products and services to Iran in violation of trade sanctions against the country.
  • agreed to drop charges against 14 other Iranians whose extradition to the United States seemed unlikely
  • Three Americans freed in a prisoner swap with Iran arrived in Germany on Sunday evening after a brief stop in Switzerland, two White House officials said.
  • The fourth prisoner released in the swap, identified by U.S. officials as Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, decided not to leave Iran, senior White House officials said. "It's his free determination" whether he wants to stay in Iran, one official said. "We don't make that judgment."
knudsenlu

Greek protesters demand release of two soldiers held in Turkey | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...of-two-soldiers-held-in-turkey

release soldiers turkey greece protest culture global

shared by knudsenlu on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Protesters have taken to the streets of northern Greece demanding the release of two Greek soldiers detained by Turkey, amid rising tensions between the two countries.
  • Greece’s defence minister, Panos Kammenos, described the pair as “hostages” and ordered border patrols to be stepped up along the heavily defended land frontier the two nations share.
  • In rallies in Orestiada, the Greek town closest to the border, and Thessaloniki, the country’s northern capital, protesters called for the soldiers to be set free immediately.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Athens’ leftist-led government raised the case with Nato and the United Nations last week, asking both to intervene. Internationalising the case further, Kammenos told his Romanian counterpart during a visit to Bucharest that Greece was seeking support for the “immediate release of Nato, European and Greek servicemen.”
  • Diplomats in Europe have become increasingly alarmed as tensions have risen markedly not only along the land border between Greece and Turkey but in the Aegean Sea and off the coast of Cyprus, where Ankara has threatened to use military force in a dispute over the ethnically divided island’s right to explore for oil and gas reserves.
  • At a rally this weekend, Erdoğan surprised supporters by making a hand gesture long associated with the fascist Grey Wolves, an unprecedented move by any leader since the foundation of modern Turkey.
malonema1

Democratic intelligence memo released with redactions - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

politics US policy

shared by malonema1 on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • CNN)The House Intelligence Committee on Saturday released a Democratic memo in redacted form that seeks to undercut Republican claims of FBI surveillance abuses.The committee made the Democratic memo public after the White House signed off following negotiations between the FBI and the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, over what in the document should be redacted.
  • "The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC," Schiff said in a statement. "Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests."
  • Speaking Saturday afternoon at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Nunes said that he wanted the Democratic memo released "because we think it is clear evidence that the Democrats are not only trying to cover this up, but they're also colluding with parts of the government to help cover this up.
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  • n the three subsequent FISA renewals, the Justice Department provided information "obtained through multiple independent sources" that corroborated parts of what Steele reported about Page, the memo states, though many details of that section are redacted.
zareefkhan

Committee Votes to Release Democratic Rebuttal to G.O.P. Russia Memo - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ic-memo-adam-schiff-trump.html

politics US trump russia memo votes

shared by zareefkhan on 06 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Monday to make public a classified Democratic memorandum rebutting Republican claims that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had abused their powers to wiretap a former Trump campaign official, setting up a possible clash with President Trump.
  • The vote gives Mr. Trump five days to review the Democratic memo and determine whether he will try to block its release
  • Democrats have said the memo corrects mischaracterizations by the Republicans and adds crucial context to actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department in obtaining a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to wiretap the former Trump aide, Carter Page, in October 2016.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Despite Mr. Trump’s claims, the Republican memo did nothing to clear him of either collaborating with the Russians or obstructing justice — the two lines of inquiry being pursued by Mr. Mueller.
  • Mr. Trump signaled earlier on Monday that he had little good will toward the committee’s Democrats, launching a broadside at Mr. Schiff. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Schiff on Twitter of illegally leaking confidential information from the committee, called the congressman “Little Adam Schiff” and ominously said that he “must be stopped.”
  • If Mr. Trump tries to block the Democratic memo’s release, House rules allow Democrats to seek a closed-door vote of the full House of Representatives to override the president.
  • Nevertheless, Democrats have denounced the document as a tactic to undermine the investigation and to protect Mr. Trump, and they have said it is riddled with errors and omissions.
  • In initiating the release of the Democratic memo, the committee is relying on the same obscure House rule it invoked last week. The rule allows the Intelligence Committee to sidestep the usual back-and-forth between lawmakers and the executive branch over the government’s most closely held secrets if the committee deems release to be in the public interest.
zareefkhan

House Republicans Vote to Release Secret Memo on Russia Probe - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-intelligence-republicans.html

politics US trump republicans vote russia

shared by zareefkhan on 30 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, disregarding Justice Department warnings that their actions would be “extraordinarily reckless,” voted Monday evening to release a contentious secret memorandum said to accuse the department and the F.B.I. of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance order on a former Trump campaign associate.
  • Under the obscure House rule invoked by the committee, President Trump now has five days to review the document and decide whether to try to block it from going public. The White House has repeatedly indicated that it wants the memo out, but Mr. Trump’s Justice Department had been working to slow or block its release.
  • Speaking to reporters after the closed-door vote, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said it has been a “sad day” for the committee and that Republicans had voted “to politicize the intelligence process.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Speaking to reporters after the closed-door vote, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said it has been a “sad day” for the committee and that Republicans had voted “to politicize the intelligence process
  • The memo, which was made available to all members of the House, is said to contend that officials from the two agencies were not forthcoming to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge.
  • The New York Times reported on Sunday that the memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a top Trump appointee, signed off an application to extend the surveillance of Mr. Page shortly after taking office last spring. The renewal shows that the Justice Department under Mr. Trump saw reason to believe that Mr. Page was acting as a Russian agent.
  • The inclusion of Mr. Rosenstein’s action in the memo could expose him to a torrent of criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from conservatives in the media who have seized on the surveillance to argue that the Russia investigation may have been tainted from the start.
  • There is no known precedent for the Republicans’ action. Though House rules allow the Intelligence Committee to vote to disclose classified information if it is deemed to be in the public interest, the rule is not thought to have ever been used.
  • Stephen E. Boyd, an assistant attorney general, said it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release a memo drawing on classified information without official review. He said the department is “unaware of any wrongdoing related to the FISA process.”
  • Democrats responded to the committee’s actions with outrage.
millerco

Trump plans to release classified JFK documents - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

JFK Trump Conspiracy US politics history assassination

shared by millerco on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to allow the release of classified government documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy "subject to the receipt of further information."
  • Trump's tweet comes as he is staring down an October 26 deadline set in law by Congress mandating the public release of the still-secret documents -- including FBI and CIA files -- barring any action by the President to block the release of certain documents.
  • "Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened," Trump said, appearing to leave open the possibility that some documents could still be withheld.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A White House official told reporters Saturday: "The President believes that these documents should be made available in the interests of full transparency unless agencies provide a compelling and clear national security or law enforcement justification otherwise."
  • The White House said in a statement to Politico earlier this week that the White House was working "to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public" by next week's deadline.
  • Trump himself is no stranger to the controversies and conspiracy theories that have long swirled around the assassination of the 35th president.
  • During the 2016 campaign, Trump made the unfounded claim that the father of GOP rival Sen. Ted Cruz was associated with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, a claim he has never reneged nor apologized for.
delgadool

N.Y.P.D. Releases Secret Misconduct Records After Repeal of Shield Law - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nypd-discipline-records.html

politics policy

shared by delgadool on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Inspired by racial justice protests, the Legislature repealed a law blocking police misconduct records from scrutiny. Now the outcomes of thousands of cases are available online.
  • Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea have said that releasing the records would allow the nation’s largest police department to respond to public demands for accountability and transparency by showing it has a strong disciplinary system.
  • But police reform advocates criticized the administration on Monday for continuing to withhold information about misconduct cases that did not result in a finding or admission of guilt by the officer — the vast majority of the records — even after a federal appeals court made it clear that the city could release them.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “It is a slap in the face to every New Yorker that took to the streets and the polls demanding an end to the secrecy shrouding N.Y.P.D. abuse,” s
  • And last month, a federal appeals court rejected a last-ditch legal challenge from police unions, which argued that releasing the records would put officers in danger and harm their careers.
  • Before the secrecy law was repealed last year, New York was one of more than 20 states that did not make police disciplinary records public.
  • Critics said, however, that the database presented only a sliver of the universe of misconduct allegations, obscuring the full picture. The profiles of some notable officers known to have been disciplined in the time period covered by the data show no record of those charges.
  • The city announced plans to publish disciplinary summaries proactively online last summer, after the Legislature removed the law. Police unions, joined by those representing firefighters and corrections officers, sued in federal court and won a temporary delay.
  • Susan Hutson, New Orleans’s independent police monitor since 2010, said the scope of the records being released in New York is “ahead of the game,” and other cities would be paying attention.
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