5: New Zealand’s Massey University Just Realised it’s Named After a White Supremacist
Massey University is in the midst of an identity crisis. The problem is the uni is named after William Ferguson Massey, the former New Zealand prime minister, who has recently been outed as a disgusting racist.
Massey lecturer and PhD scholar Steve Elers came across comments made by Massey while he was researching Maori representation in newspapers. Massey was originally a farmer who served as prime minister from 1912 until his death in 1925. Following his passing, the Massey Agricultural College was founded in 1926, and has borne an updated version of his name ever since—with an administration that was apparently unaware Massey was a white supremacist.
Vice News
Protests continue in the San Diego, California, suburb of El Cajon, where police shot and killed an unarmed African-American man Tuesday after his sister called 911 to report her brother was having a mental health emergency. Eyewitnesses in El Cajon said 38-year-old Alfred Olango was holding his hands up when he was tased by one police officer and then fired upon five times by another officer. Olango was a 38-year-old father of two and a Ugandan refugee who moved to the San Diego area 20 years ago. On Wednesday, police confirmed Alfred Olango did not have a gun. The object he pointed at police was a three-inch-long silver e-cigarette. We speak to Olango family attorney Dan Gilleon and Christopher Rice-Wilson of Alliance San Diego.
Democracy Now
3: US ‘on the verge’ of ending Syria talks with Russia
The US is “on the verge” of ending talks on Syria with Russia following days of deadly attacks on Aleppo, according to the US secretary of state.
US officials say the administration is looking at other ways to end the war in Syria that has been going on for over five years.
Speaking at the Atlantic Council think-tank on Thursday, John Kerry said that the US is “on the verge of suspending the discussion because it’s irrational in the context of the kind of bombing taking place”.
He said the US has no indication of Russia’s “seriousness of purpose” and discussions made no sense at a time when Russian and Syrian warplanes were bombing rebel-held areas of Syria’s second largest city.
Aljazeera
2: Snowden disclosures helped reduce use of Patriot Act provision to acquire emails
Edward Snowden’s disclosures were partially responsible for reversing a massive growth in the use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act for acquiring email and other so-called “business records”, the US justice department’s internal watchdog has found.
The Patriot Act provision, known as Section 215, permits intelligence and law enforcement agencies to acquire from a service provider records of someone’s communications – such as phone calls or email records – that are relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation.
In June 2013, the Guardian, based on Snowden’s leaks, revealed that the Bush and Obama administrations had secretly been using Section 215 to acquire Americans’ phone data in bulk. The revelation led Congress to significantly curtail domestic bulk phone records collection in 2015.
The Guardian
1: U.S. MILITARY IS BUILDING A $100 MILLION DRONE BASE IN AFRICA
FROM HIGH ABOVE, Agadez almost blends into the cocoa-colored wasteland that surrounds it. Only when you descend farther can you make out a city that curves around an airfield before fading into the desert. Once a nexus for camel caravans hauling tea and salt across the Sahara, Agadez is now a West African paradise for people smugglers and a way station for refugees and migrants intent on reaching Europe’s shores by any means necessary.
Africans fleeing unrest and poverty are not, however, the only foreigners making their way to this town in the center of Niger. U.S. military documents reveal new information about an American drone base under construction on the outskirts of the city. The long-planned project — considered the most important U.S. military construction effort in Africa, according to formerly secret files obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act — is slated to cost $100 million, and is just one of a number of recent American military initiatives in the impoverished nation.
The Intercept
