Hate Crime

Three white Mississippi men pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes Thursday in connection with the 2011 beating death of an African-American man in Jackson, the Justice Department announced.
Deryl Dedmon, John Aaron Rice and Dylan Butler each admitted to conspiracy and violating the 2009 federal hate-crimes law in last June's killing of James Craig Anderson. They face sentences of up to life in prison and $250,000 in fines, federal prosecutors said.

The 19-year-old Dedmon had already pleaded guilty to state murder and hate-crime charges Wednesday in a state court and was sentenced to life in prison. Rice, 19, and Butler, 20, made their initial appearances with Dedmon in federal court Thursday morning.

The men are among the first defendants to be prosecuted under the federal hate-crime statute that President Barack Obama signed in 2009 and the first to be prosecuted in a fatal attack, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a statement on Thursday's pleas.

"The Department of Justice will vigorously pursue those who commit racially motivated assaults and will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that those who commit such acts are brought to justice," Perez said. "And I note that our investigation in this matter is ongoing."

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This is bull why do people want to be so hateful this guy didn't do anything to them. They should be locked away for a very long time and i bet in jail they will get beat worst then they ever have. I also think charging people for hate crimes will help stop racism in the US.

Cruise werk

The bodies of five more people killed when the Costa Concordia cruise ship sank were found Thursday, bringing to 30 the number of bodies located, Italian officials said.

Two of the roughly 4,200 originally aboard the cruise liner remain missing. The Costa Concordia, a ship belonging to cruise line Costa Crociere, struck rocks off the island of Giglio on January 13 with about 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members on board.

Workers completed the removal of 2,400 tons of oil from the ship's tanks this week, a delicate process that began five weeks ago, the ship's owner said Thursday.

A salvage company will be selected next month to move the ship, a task that could take a year, according to the statement from Costa Crociere.

Divers who located the three bodies Thursday were not able to immediately determine age or sex of the victims, according to Piero De Milito, an official with Italy's Civil Protection Coordination department.

"The bodies were found on the exterior side of the wreck facing the island, between the wreck and the rocks," De Milito said. "In the next 48 hours, we'll be able to bring them on the mainland."

Crews used 20 vessels, including platforms, tugs, transport ships, crane barges and tankers, to defuel the cruise ship, which remains on its side.
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This is a really bad werk i cant believe their finding all these bodys. I can't believe a big ship like that can go down. Its a shame that so meny people died. The Costa Crociere should try to bring up there cruise ship because it could harm the wild life in the ocean.

School stand off

About 300 police officers surrounded an apartment in the south of France on Wednesday, trying to coax a man whom authorities called a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist to surrender after a series of shootings that left seven people dead.

Soon after special operations police mounted their raid in Toulouse at 3:30 a.m., shots rang out from inside, wounding two officers, police said.

The man later threw a handgun out the window, but he has other guns, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.

As the standoff stretched to its sixth hour, Gueant said he expected the suspect to give himself up in the afternoon.

"The suspect told me -- and I hope he told me the truth -- that he will surrender in the afternoon," Gueant said.

But the suspect later broke off communications with the police, Gueant told reporters.

A police source named the suspect as Mohammed Merah. The source asked not to be named because he is not authorized to give the name to the media.

Gueant said Merah had a car containing more weapons near his apartment.

The 24-year-old suspect is accused of killing seven people in the last 10 days: a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school on Monday, and three soldiers of north African origin who had recently returned from Afghanistan in two earlier incidents.

As the siege went on, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had met with Muslim and Jewish leaders and assured them "that terrorism cannot destroy our national community."
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It turns out that al Qaeda was responsible for the school shooting in France that killed 3 kids there were also behind two other attacks. This brings up more question like is al Qaeda planning another big attack and if so where. The man that was responsible for the shooting was killed in a hotel room in France.

Slavemaster to abolitionist

As a member of Mauritania's slave-owning class, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane could have had anything he wanted as a present for his circumcision ceremony: a toy, money, a camel, or, as his brother would choose, a bicycle.

But the 7-year-old wanted something more sinister.

He chose Yebawa Ould Keihel, a young boy with skin the color of coal. At that moment, Abdel became a slave master.

It's an experience that's common here in Mauritania, a vast country in West Africa's Sahara Desert where activists and the United Nations estimate 10% to 20% of people are enslaved -- usually dark-skinned people who have lighter-skinned masters.

For the owners of slaves, a group of Arab people called the White Moors who raided sub-Saharan Africa for slaves centuries ago, this is no big deal.

"It was as if I were picking out a toy," Abdel, now 47, said of choosing Yebawa as his slave. "For me, it was as if he were a thing -- a thing that pleased me. This idea came to me because there were all these stories about him which made me laugh -- that he talked in his sleep, that he was a bit chubby and a bit clumsy, that he was always losing the animals he was supposed to be watching over and was then always getting punished for this. So for me, he was an interesting and comic figure.

Sadder still, Yebawa didn't consider himself human either -- at least not in the way Abdel was. Mauritania's slaves are very often brainwashed by their masters into thinking they are less than human and that their place is at the bottom of a rigid and still-enforced caste system that allows them only to serve their masters without pay or free will.

But there's a surprising twist in Abdel's story.

It's one that shows how far Mauritanians have come in their effort to combat slavery.

And how very much more must be done before the hundreds of thousands of slaves and former slaves here can truly be set free
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I thought once the US abolished slavery it was abolished worldwide.  After reading this article I know now in some country like Mauritania where slavery is just another thing that you see and deal with in a normal everyday life. I think having slavery in a country makes it look barbaric and uncivilized. If I had any say I would help abolish slavery.

Election

Mitt Romney heads in to Illinois's presidential primary this week with a handy win in Puerto Rico, pocketing the territory's 20 GOP delegates in a bruising race that has become a numbers game for the Republican nomination.

With about 83% of total ballots accounted for early Monday in Puerto Rico, Romney had garnered more than 98,000 votes -- or 83% of the total -- based on unofficial results obtained from local party and election officials.

Rick Santorum was a distant second, at 8% with slightly more than 9,500 votes.

The other two candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, were barely registered in the race with 2,431 votes, or 2% of the vote, and 1,452 votes, or 1%, respectively.

Even as the vote was being counted in Puerto Rico, Romney, Santorum and the other candidates were already on the mainland vying for delegates in Illinois and Louisiana.

Illinois holds its primary on Tuesday and Louisiana on Saturday.

CNN's latest delegate estimates show Romney with 518 delegates to Santorum's 239. Gingrich has 139 delegates, and Paul, the libertarian champion, has 69 delegates. To secure the nomination, 1,144 delegates are needed.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, was in Louisiana late Sunday, where he is expected to win the primary.
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In my opinion Mitt Romney is going to win for the republican. Romney is in first with a pretty big lead. This leads me to be leave that Obama is going to be running again Romney in the presidential election. This election with also decide who going to take charge in the government.

The Hunt for El Chapo

American officials have become so frustrated with a Mexican drug lord's ability to elude capture that they've started telling jokes about it.
Time and again, the U.S. provides Mexican law enforcement with precise intelligence about the safe houses where Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, is hiding. And every time the Mexicans raid a house, the man that the U.S. government calls "the most powerful drug trafficker in the world" manages to escape at the last minute through the back door.
"Every time he gets away, they tell us, 'He got out the back door,'" said one American official. U.S. officials have started to joke that "there is no word for 'surround' in Spanish."
Behind the jokes, however, is concern that someone in Mexican law enforcement is tipping off Guzman, allowing him to escape just ahead of the raids. During the 1990s, problems with leaks of U.S. intelligence helped delay the capture or killing of several top players in the Colombian drug cartels.
In El Chapo's latest escape, he apparently went out the back door of a mansion in the beach resort of Los Cabos just before Mexican Federal Police raided the house. Several of his alleged associates were arrested and are in custody. The raid in late February came just a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other foreign dignitaries were in town for a meeting, and the U.S. was able to provide Mexican officials with precise intelligence about Guzman's whereabouts.
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The drug lord in South America is getting stronger each day. The US has been trying to capture el charpo but he gets any every time because he pay off the Mexican government for intelligence. This is very common in Mexico corruption is everywhere down there. The local police are still having problems with intelligence getting out.

Man in Columbus, Ohio went on a rampage.

A man armed with three knives went on a rampage in downtown Columbus, Ohio, today, stabbing four people before he was shot multiple times by a police officer.
Grant Medical Center in Columbus confirmed that three victims, including the suspect, had been critically wounded and had undergone surgery. A fourth victim was in less serious condition.
The bloody assault began inside the Continental Center, which houses the Miami-Jacobs Career College. According to Columbus Police Sgt. Rich Weiner, a "confrontation" occurred in the admissions office where one victim was stabbed.
As onlookers came to the victim's aid and disarmed the assailant, he pulled out another knife. The fight spilled into the lobby of the building where two more people were stabbed, one of them a Good Samaritan who tried to intervene.

Jay LaPrete/AP Photo

Police tape marks the scene outside...

Jay LaPrete/AP Photo

Police tape marks the scene outside Miami-Jacobs Career College where a stabbing occurred Wednesday, March 14, 2012, in Columbus, Ohio.

A witness described the scene "pandemonium" and said the knife-wielding man "went running out of the building still trying to stab people." It is not clear where the fourth victim was wounded. This same witness also reported that a Columbus police officer who quickly responded to the 911 call told the suspect to "freeze" and used a Taser on him. When he continued to advance toward the officer, she shot the suspect "several times."
Two knives were found near the suspect outside the building, and another was found inside. A worker at the Continental Center called the situation "very bloody and scary."
Police said they were reviewing surveillance camera video footage that might have captured the violence.
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This article kind of hit home for me around 4 years ago my cousin was shot in a mall shooting. When I read this article it reminded me of the event with my cousin. It’s sad that you hear of people going on rampages in school from getting bullied. It people would grow up and stop messing with people it would stop a lot of problems.