5: Black protester detained after being sucker-punched at Trump rally
A white Donald Trump supporter punched a black protester in the face at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday – after which uniformed sheriff’s deputies tackled and detained the man who was assaulted.
A number of videos, taken from different angles by multiple people, show a young black man being led up the stairs out of Fayetteville’s Crown Coliseum by Cumberland County officers, waving his hands in the air as the audience boos.
The Guardian
4: Doubts Emerge Over ‘Leaked IS Documents’ Identifying Thousands of Militants
German authorities are investigating tens of thousands of documents claimed to detail the identities and personal information of a large number of Islamic State (IS) militants, but doubts as to their authenticity are now also being raised.
The documents, which are said to include 23 question enrolment forms the group required from new recruits and date back to 2013, were obtained by British and German media outlets. Information included contact details, family members, and special skills.
If verified, other details, including countries the passed through en route to Syria or Iraq, special skills, and the name of the person who recommended them to IS, will prove invaluable to intelligence organizations. British broadcaster Sky News said some of the phone numbers listed were still active and believed to be in use by the group’s members.
However a number of experts have now called into question the authenticity of at least some of the documents due to a number of inconsistencies. These include different ways of writing IS’s former name, “the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” in Arabic, one of which did not correspond to previous usage, an unseen logo, and grammatical errors that Georgia State University researcher Charlie Winter told AFP were “big alarm bells.”
Vice News
3: Refugee crisis: Balkan route ‘permanently’ shut
Austria’s interior minister says the Balkan refugee route will remain closed permanently and that refugees should not be given false hope for passage.
Johanna Mikl-Leitner told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that “the most honest thing is to tell the refugees: it’s impossible to get through the Balkan route anymore. The Balkan route is closed.”
She said: “The biggest problem is that these refugees still have hopes and expectations, and these hopes are being constantly fed.”
Mikl-Leitner said it is important to warn that the Balkan refugee route into Europe is closed because, she added, “that way you do not feed any hopes and expectations”.
In recent months hundreds of thousands of people have travelled the route north from Greece hoping to settle in places like Germany or Scandinavia.
Aljazeera
2: Ai Weiwei: Europe not giving refugees dignity or love
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has decried Europe’s treatment of refugees, as he continues to document the crisis faced by millions of people fleeing war and persecution.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Idomeni near the Greek-Macedonian border, where some 13,000 people remain stuck in squalid conditions, Ai Weiwei said European politicians’ response to the crisis is stripping refugees of their “very basic human rights”.
The makeshift camp at Idomeni has become massively overcrowded in the past few weeks as border restrictions prevent refugees from continuing their journeys from Greece to northern Europe. Conditions there are poor, amid wet, cold weather and a lack of essential supplies such as food, nappies and waterproof clothing.
Aljazeera
1: Donald Trump: “I Think Islam Hates Us”
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the four remaining presidential candidates are slated to square off for a debate at the University of Miami tonight. This comes as front-runner Donald Trump is saying that if he wins the Ohio and Florida primaries next week, “it’s over.” Meanwhile, during an interview on CNN, Trump responded to Anderson Cooper’s question of whether Islam is at war with the West.
Donald Trump: “I think Islam hates us. There’s something—there’s something there that—there’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
Democracy Now!
