Wednesday, November 26, 2014
FERGUSON PROTESTS SPREAD ACROSS U.S.
Protests against a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of teenager Michael Brown spread to more than 170 American cities, from New York to Los Angeles, CNN reports. In Ferguson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said that the protests were calmer than the previous night, despite damages to the City Hall building, and 44 arrests, mostly for failure to disperse. Violence was notable in Oakland, California, where several shops were looted and bonfires were set around the city.
Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown on August 9, spoke out publicly for the first time, telling ABC News he acted in self-defense and had a “clean conscience.”
JUNCKER’S PLAN TO KICKSTART EU ECONOMY
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has unveiled an ambitious 315 billion euro ($393 billion) investment plan to “kickstart” Europe’s economy. “We need to send a message to Europe and to the rest of the world: Europe is back in business,” AFP quoted Juncker as saying.
$702 BILLION
Apple has becomes first company ever to top $700 billion value.
FACEBOOK COULD HAVE HELPED PREVENT UK SOLDIER MURDER
Social media giant Facebook and other big Internet companies are facing calls in the UK for them to monitor messages posted on their website and co-operate with British secret services after a report published yesterday revealed that Facebook failed to flag up extremist messages posted by one of the killers of soldier Lee Rigby in May 2013. Although the investigation listed a series of errors and delays by MI5 and the police, The Daily Telegraphsays the “most significant” blunder was Facebook’s failure to report a message in which one of the killers spoke about his desire to “kill a soldier” in a “graphic and emotive manner.”
Prime Minister David Cameron suggested new laws could be pass to force companies to disclose communication from potential terrorists. In its editorial, The Guardian deplores that the social network has become “the new fall guy” and writes that “the failure to prevent the killers does not lie with that company’s understandable caution about allowing a foreign government to trawl through its accounts and data.”
FAREWELL
Icon of Arab music Sabah has died in Lebanon at age 87.
HONG KONG STUDENT LEADERS ARRESTED
The Hong Kong police force continued to clear protest sites with hundreds of officers demolishing barricades to reopen a major street. Like the previous day, this ended in scuffles Wednesday with the police using pepper spray and batons. According to the South China Morning Post, at least 116 people have been arrested since the clearing of the Mong Kok site began yesterday. Among them are two of the student movement’s leaders, Joshua Wong and Lester Shum, Reuters reports. Protesters have vowed to return to the cleared site tonight.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Poland’s top daily Gazeta Wyborcza travels to Kaliningrad, nestled in between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea — and far from mainland Russia. “If not for the grave of philosopher Immanuel Kant, it would be difficult to single out the former Prussian Königsberg in the Soviet landscape of today’s Kaliningrad. The city looks like a sea of post-Soviet towers.”
Read the full article, Kaliningrad, Mother Russia’s Rebellious Western Son.
EU AIMS FOR GOOGLE JUGULAR
Washington officials have expressed “alarm” at a motion that will be presented tomorrow to the European Parliament proposing to “unbundle search engines from other commercial services,” a move specifically aimed at Google, the Financial Times reports. The legislation, which comes after a five-year-long antitrust probe, is backed by the EU Parliament’s two main groups and is likely to pass, the newspaper writes. But breaking up Google’s activities in Europe would be no easy thing.
ONE FLEW OVER THE ATOMIC NEST
Drone: check. GoPro: check. Nuclear ghost town: check. Take a look at the eerily beautiful Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl.
‘O LUNA MIA
As we continue to explore every corner of the planet, Worldcrunch is set to expand its coverage to the stars: ‘O Luna Mia is the weekly horoscope from Simon, Italy’s most trusted astrologer, translated into English for the first time. Check it out here!
