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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

N.B.A. Players, Coaches and Executives React on Social Media to Sterling’s Ban

On Facebook and Twitter, N.B.A. players, coaches and executives heaped praise on Adam Silver, the league’s new commissioner, for his decision to ban the Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, for making racist remarks that became public in an audio recording.


On Twitter, LeBron James of the Miami Heat praised the decision.

Dwyane Wade, who also plays for the Heat, posted on Twitter:

On Facebook, Harrison Barnes, who plays for the Golden State Warriors, said: “Proud of Commissioner Silver and what he did today! Respect him taking a strong stance on such an important issue.”

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said he supported Mr. Silver’s decision.

Jodie Meeks plays for the Los Angeles Lakers and posted on Twitter that Mr. Silver did a #greatjob.

J. R. Smith, who plays for the New York Knicks, used the hashtag #NoPlaceInOurGameForThis



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Before Watchdog Mission, a Trail of Videos Warned of Chlorine Gas Attacks in Syria

Video by a Syrian media activist from Kafr Zita on April 18, showing people suffering from a choking ailment that medical experts said was caused by chlorine gas attacks.

Syrian activists have been posting multiple videos in the past few weeks showing civilians at medical facilities in the village of Kafr Zita coughing and struggling to breathe, with the narrators during the footage identifying the cause of their condition as coming from the use of chlorine gas bombs.

The United States and France have said they are taking seriously accusations that Syrian government forces dropped such bombs in the village, and on Tuesday, as my colleague Nick Cumming Bruce reported, the group that monitors compliance with the treaty banning chemical weapons said that it was sending a mission to Syria to “establish the facts.”

The group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, made the announcement in Geneva.

The Syrian government, which has denied responsibility and has accused the Nusra Front, a jihadi insurgent group, of carrying out the attack, is said by the monitoring organization to have “agreed to accept this mission” and would provide security in areas under government control.

My colleagues Anne Barnard and Ben Hubbard have reported that the attack on Kfar Zita took place on April 11 in the evening, and how in subsequent days videos began to emerge showing people struggling to breathe as they sought medical help.

Kafr Zita, a Syrian media group, posted footage on its YouTube account showing patients at a sparsely equipped medical facility. A doctor goes from one to the other, using just one inhaler device on each of those he attended to, saying they were affected by the gas.

Then an element intruded of the difficulties against which civilians are being medically treated in Syria after years of war: the electrical power suddenly went out.

Footage posted to the YouTube account of Kafr Zita on April 18, showing a doctor speaking in English and describing multiple cases attributed to chlorine gas attack.

Another media activist posted a video in which a Syrian doctor described in English how more than 100 people at a time would come to his clinic after aerial bomb attacks released a yellow gas.

Aous Hassan, an activist, interviewed a Syrian doctor who described the symptoms.

In another video, the same doctor said there are more cases in other hospitals.

Aous Hassan posted a video April 16 showing medical personnel helping a chlorine gas victim.

Kafr Zita activists had posted on their Facebook pages photographs of canister fragments with CL2 stamped into them, the chemical formula for chlorine gas.

The narrator in this video from April 13 said the canister stamped with CL2 had been deployed in an attack the previous night.

A video of a canister stamped with CL2 posted on April 13 in Kafr Zita.

The blogger Eliot Higgins compiled and updated videos and statements related to the reports of the chlorine gas attacks released this month, stating that the footage of used canisters suggested they had been dropped out of aircraft in barrel bombs.

“This seems an incredibly badly designed way of deploying chlorine, but may be the only option available after the OPCW’s work in Syria, and like the chlorine bombs used in Iraq appear to be better at spreading terror than chlorine,” he wrote.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



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Live Coverage on Weather Channel of Severe Weather Threat

Live coverage from the Weather Channel on the severe weather threat via YouTube.

At least 11 people died Monday in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee after a powerful storm system spawned multiple tornadoes and ripped across several states in the South, bringing the total death toll from the severe weather to more than two dozen people since Sunday, as our colleagues report.

In Alabama and Mississippi, where people were sifting through debris from flattened homes and businesses, weather officials warned there was a risk for more tornadoes in the same parts of both states today, as severe weather is expected from Michigan to Florida.

Since Sunday, at least 30 people have died in the South and Midwest, 15 in Arkansas alone on Sunday, and the National Weather Service has issued 191 tornado warnings. There have been 114 reports of tornadoes.

On Monday, Mississippi and Alabama were hardest hit with tornadoes flattening entire neighborhoods. The devastation was captured on the front pages of two newspapers in Mississippi.

A view of the damage in Tupelo from a resident, Jay Ward.

Scott Peake, a storm chaser, captured on video his encounter with the violent storm in Louisville, Miss.

In Alabama, emergency officials said the storms from Monday had caused widespread damage in Limestone County and they were urging people to stay off the roads.



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Monday, April 28, 2014

Iraq’s Ailing President Talabani Is Shown Casting a Vote

A video from Kurdsat Broadcasting Corporation published on April 28 that is said to show President Jalal Talabani voting in Iraq’s parliamentary elections.

Video of a rare appearance of the ailing president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, has surfaced on social media pages, just as some voting gets underway for the first parliamentary elections since the United States withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

A Facebook page affiliated with the news organization connected to Mr. Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Party posted the video, as did the one belonging to the Kurdsat Broadcasting Corporation channel, which originally released it.

It showed a few seconds of Mr. Talabani seated in a wheelchair, at one point smiling weakly. A close-up shot is then edited in showing a ballot being cast, and then subsequent footage shows the Iraqi president holding up the index finger on his left hand, stained blue as confirmation that he had voted, as those gathered around him applaud. His right hand is immobile, and appears to be clutching a cane.

One Iraqi official said that a ballot box had been brought to the medical facility in Berlin where Mr. Talabani is being overseen by doctors.

The footage during the few seconds that he appeared was unremarkable. But by showing Mr. Talabani alive, holding up his hand, and responding to those around him, some of them dressed in traditional Kurdish clothing, his party is apparently intending to impart a message of political significance for its parliamentary candidates as voters go to the polls.

Violence erupted in the wake of the video, news agencies in Iraq reported. Agence France-Presse said that a suicide bomber killed about 20 people who had gathered in the mostly Kurdish town of Khanaqin in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, to celebrate the Talabani video. The agency quoted security and medical officials in its report.

Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, suffered a stroke and was flown to Germany for treatment at the end of 2012. As president, his influence in mediating disputes among the country’s many factions far outweighed the limited powers of the office, and his illness added a new level of uncertainty to the country’s divided politics.

Since then, many in his party have demanded information, but he has not appeared publicly, and his closely knit circle of family, aides and medical personnel has been guarded about his medical condition and progress.

On Twitter on Monday, local media, political parties and other observers reported that, after Mr. Talabani’s appearance in the video, more than a dozen people were injured when weapons were fired into the air in celebration in the city of Sulaimaniya, one of the biggest cities in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.

Before the video was released, local media had reported that Mr. Talabani would be voting in the German city.

Iraqis started voting on Sunday, including those living outside of the country, and police and security forces voted on Monday. But the full elections inside Iraq are scheduled for April 30. As my colleagues Tim Arango and Duraid Adnan reported last week, Iraqis are going to the polls against the backdrop of worsening sectarian tensions.

Tim Arango contributed reporting from Baghdad.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



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Images of the Destruction Left By Tornadoes in the Midwest and South

A lethal storm system rumbled over a broad swath of the United States over the weekend, spawning several tornadoes that damaged homes and buildings and left authorities scrambling to find the dead and help the injured.

As I report with my colleague Alan Blinder, at least nine people died after tornadoes ripped through parts of Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas on Sunday, setting the tornado-prone Midwest and South on edge on the third anniversary of one of the deadliest tornado streaks in history.

A baby boy who was injured in North Carolina died Sunday, two days after the force of a tornado collapsed the roof of his home, his uncle said on a webpage set up to raise money for the boy’s family. Richard Bain said that his nephew Gavin had been in a coma since Friday at a hospital in Norfolk, Va.

“My sister is a single mother of two trying to go to school and now has had everything taken away from her,” he said. “I wish I could do something more than this.”

Mr. Bain said his nephew was home with his niece, Brylee, and the children’s mother, Ashley Bain, who is Mr. Bain’s sister, when the roof of their home caved in on them. The storm lifted the house 30 feet into the air, then dropped it, he said. Ms. Bain and Gavin were pinned underneath a ceiling beam, but Brylee was able to escape and get help.

The tornadoes severely damaged a firehouse in Quapaw, Okla., and reduced to rubble parts of Mayflower and Vilona, Ark. Many people took to social media to show the extensive path of destruction left behind by the storms.

Thomas Gounley, a business reporter for the Springfield News-Leader, snapped a photo of the Quapaw firehouse before a tornado cut through the city of 900, killing one person.

After the storm passed, Kade Witten posted a photo showing the damage to the firehouse from the rear. Other photos showed firefighters carrying out equipment.

The damage appeared to be much worse in Arkansas, where the number of fatalities was still being counted and was expected to climb overnight. Garrett Johnson posted a panoramic view of the leveled homes and buildings just off I-40 in Mayflower.

Residents of the River Plantation, an residential area between Mayflower and Palarm, Ark. posted photos of the tornado.

Part of Vilona was destroyed in April 2011, when a tornado killed four people during one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in history. Over a span of three days, more than 350 people in six states.

Mayflower was the site of an oil spill in 2013, when an Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying tar sands from Canada ruptured and spilled several thousand barrels of crude oil.

The National Weather Service confirmed that six tornadoes touched down in eastern North Carolina on Friday. Hunter Pridgen filmed one of them as it moved over Washington, a city about 20 miles east of Greenville on the Pamlico River.

Post by Hunter Pridgen.

More storms were expected overnight Sunday, including hail and severe thunderstorms.



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Sunday, April 27, 2014

Foursquare Chief Apologizes for Wife’s Fake Boston Marathon Bib

A co-founder of Foursquare, a popular location-sharing mobile app, issued an online apology after an investigation of unauthorized runners in the Boston Marathon found that his wife had used a fake bib to participate in the race last Monday.

Dennis Crowley, the Foursquare co-founder and chief executive, and his wife, Chelsa Crowley, made the joint apology after a Massachusetts woman, Kathy Brown, told a Boston television station that she had realized from photos that Ms. Crowley had used her number to run the 118th marathon.

The apology did little to quell an intense reaction to the incident on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, where it was given the hashtag “bibgate.”

In a statement on the website Medium, the couple wrote: “It’s clear that both Chelsa and I lost perspective on how our actions could be hurtful to others. What we did was wrong and we’re sorry. Our biggest regret is that our actions have overshadowed the event for those who ran and ran to honor others.”

Mr. Crowley, who grew up just outside Boston in Medway, vowed to “work to make this right, but out of the public eye.”

Unauthorized runners known as “bandits” are a constant in races like the Boston Marathon, which annually draws tens of thousands of runners who have qualified in other races or signed up to run for a charity. But their presence last Monday among the 35,000 runners who participated touched a nerve because of the marathon’s heightened symbolic significance a year after two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 260. A moment of silence was held at 2:49 for the victims and survivors of the 2013 attack.

Organizers vowed to crack down on bandits this year, and the Boston Athletic Association said it was investigating multiple reports of unauthorized runners, emphasizing that they went through the same security checkpoints as registered runners.

Wearing another person’s bib number, which allows a bandit to avoid registering and paying fees for the race, violates race rules, and impostors risk being kicked out of the marathon and banned from future events if they are caught. More important, runners and nonrunners said on social media, it’s just plain cheating.

Ms. Brown, of Framingham, Mass. saw Ms. Crowley wearing her bib number, 34033, when she went to look at her official marathon pictures, she said. The impostor had written a Twitter handle â€" @chelsa, which belongs to Ms. Crowley â€" below the fake bib, Ms. Brown told WCVB.

In a comment below the WCVB report, Mr. Crowley said he had apologized to Ms. Brown in an email and offered his “sincerest apologies to anyone we offended or disrespected,” including the race organizers and the police, fire and emergency crews “that worked so hard to make sure Monday’s race was safe for all runners.”

Some people had a hard time accepting Mr. Crowley’s apology, arguing that he had confessed the forgery only after it was discovered. They pointed to a photo Ms. Crowley had posted of herself on Instagram a day earlier with the caption: “Heading to DC for Nike Women’s Half Marathon and strategizing on how to even out my tan lines from #Boston.”

The user @arianneroxa pleaded, “Please consider the message that this photograph and caption sends. You’re better than this.”

Ms. Crowley was not the only bandit unmasked after Monday’s marathon.

Michael Sullivan discovered another man wearing his bib number, 10055. When Kara Bonneau spotted four impostors wearing her bib number, 14285, she posted their photos to the Boston Marathon Facebook page. Two of the runners were later identified as former Boston College cross-country athletes.

Mr. Crowley explained that the couple had forged his wife’s bib so that they could complete the marathon together this year, after getting separated during the 2013 race. When the bombs went off, Ms. Crowley â€" who was then Ms. Skees; the couple married in October â€" was receiving her medal at the finish line while Mr. Crowley was still running.

He was able to get a number this year because he did not finish last year. The couple decided to make the fake bib after trying unsuccessfully to get a number for Ms. Crowley, he said.

“We both felt like we needed to run again and finish together to get closure,” he said.

The Crowleys did not seem to have made much of an effort to hide the ruse, and the fake bib is clearly visible in photos posted to Instagram and Twitter before, during and after the race. After Mr. Crowley posted a photo on Twitter of him with his wife before the race, Ms. Crowley responded “shh!!” to someone who asked if her bib was fake.

Critics said the Crowleys’ actions smacked of arrogance and entitlement.

Several users said they had gone as far as leaving the Foursquare app because of the Crowleys.

But others came to the couple’s defense, shrugging off the criticism as overblown. The couple had a compelling motivation, they said, and they owned up to their misbehavior.

“Good on you for apologising and taking accountability. Wanting to finish the race together doesn’t steal anything from anyone,” the user @samakbari wrote on Instagram.

Writing on Tumblr, Rob Underwood of Brooklyn advised fellow runners to “put the pitchforks down” and take a wait-and-see-approach:

“I am guessing this will turn out to be one of those circumstances where an error in judgement (which this undoubtedly was) could turn into something positive for all,” he wrote. “And maybe when that happens we’ll all feel better about ourselves having let the vitriol go un-typed and un-shared, and instead having let a mistake be resolved and made right on its own by the people at the center of this.”



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Saturday, April 26, 2014

Reaction to the Remarks Linked to Donald Sterling

As my colleagues Scott Cacciola and Billy Witz report, the N.B.A. is investigating a report that Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Clippers’ owner, made “disturbing and offensive” remarks about black people to a female friend.

According to the report, published online by TMZ, Mr. Sterling disapproved of the woman’s being seen publicly with black people, including her posting of pictures on Instagram with figures like Magic Johnson. Mr. Sterling has not explicitly denied that the recording was him, but has said through the team’s president, Andy Roeser, that the recording “is not consistent with, nor does it reflect, his views, beliefs or feelings.”

Reaction around the league, whose players are predominantly black, was swift, just as it was on social media, where current and former players, entertainers and ordinary people chimed in using hashtags like #DonaldSterling, #Sterling and #boycottclippers.

Kobe Bryant, the Lakers’ All-Star guard, commented on Twitter:

Magic Johnson, the former Lakers star and part owner of the team, said on Twitter that the remarks were a “black eye for the NBA,” and he vowed to boycott Clippers games as long as Mr. Sterling remained the owner.

Some entertainers weighed in. The rapper Snoop Dogg posted a short, profanity-laden tirade on Instagram.

The Instagram user islam2christ said Mr. Sterling should have known better since he is Jewish. “Feel bad for the players,” the user said. “He needs to realize that many people don’t like Jews like him. He needs to be more empathetic to say the least.”

Dr. Greg Carr, the chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Howard University, a historically black college, connected the remarks to racially tinged statements others have made recently. The report followed remarks made this week by Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who gained notoriety after saying he wondered whether black people may have been better off under slavery than now.

The controversy is an early test for Commissioner Adam Silver, who took the league’s top job in February. At halftime during TNT’s coverage of Game 4 of the Atlanta Hawks-Indiana Pacers series, Shaquille O’Neal articulated his view of the investigation’s central question.

“It’s one thing to say something that’s controversial; it’s another thing to say something that’s very repugnant,” he said. “The question is now, should this guy continue being an owner.”

He concluded: “I think the league should take a very long, hard look at whether this guy should continue being an owner or not.”

Charles Barkley was more forceful and echoed the sentiments of many people who argued that the N.B.A. should expel Mr. Sterling. He noted that Mr. Sterling had faced accusations of racial bias before.

As Mr. Witz reported, Sterling paid a record $2.725 million in 2009 to settle a housing discrimination suit brought by the Justice Department on behalf of African-Americans and Latinos, and families with children. The same year, Elgin Baylor, the former longtime general manager of the Clippers, accused Mr. Sterling of racial discrimination in an unsuccessful lawsuit for wrongful termination.

“We cannot have an N.B.A. owner discriminating against a league that â€" we’re a black league,” Mr. Barkley said.

Some users said that strong action â€" a fine, a suspension or an expulsion â€" was necessary, pointing to the league’s tendency to make employees and players pay for even minor infractions. Matt Barnes, a Clippers small forward, was fined $25,000 in December for using a racial slur on Twitter. Mr. Sterling, who Forbes estimates is worth about $1.9 billion, could easily pay a penalty above the record fine slapped on the Minnesota Timberwolves for $3.5 million for violating the salary cap. The highest fine the league has given an individual is the $500,000 penalty against the Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, in 2002 for criticizing N.B.A. officials.

There was little public reaction from the Clippers organization on Saturday outside of statements from Doc Rivers, a former Clippers point guard and the team’s coach, and Mr. Roeser, the Clippers’ president.

“This is a situation where we’re trying to go after something very important for us, something that we’ve all dreamed about all our childhoods, and Donald or anyone else had nothing to do with that dream, and we’re not going to let anything get in the way of those dreams,” he said after a team practice on Saturday, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Players kept a low profile after practice on Saturday as the team prepared to resume its first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors on Sunday. But shortly after news of the remarks broke, DeAndre Jordan posted a black photo on Instagram.

Users had opinions about whether the players should boycott the playoffs to force Mr. Sterling’s removal.

In response to Mr. Jordan’s post on Instagram, user serg815 wrote: “You guys have been great this year! Don’t give up or falter because of his stupidity and ignorance! Let’s hope the league acts swiftly and aggressively! Together we stand, together we fall! #ClipperNation”



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Reaction to the Remarks Linked to Donald Sterling

As my colleagues Scott Cacciola and Billy Witz report, the N.B.A. is investigating a report that Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Clippers’ owner, made “disturbing and offensive” remarks about black people to a female friend.

According to the report, published online by TMZ, Mr. Sterling disapproved of the woman’s being seen publicly with black people, including her posting of pictures on Instagram with figures like Magic Johnson. Mr. Sterling has not explicitly denied that the recording was him, but has said through the team’s president, Andy Roeser, that the recording “is not consistent with, nor does it reflect, his views, beliefs or feelings.”

Reaction around the league, whose players are predominantly black, was swift, just as it was on social media, where current and former players, entertainers and ordinary people chimed in using hashtags like #DonaldSterling, #Sterling and #boycottclippers.

Kobe Bryant, the Lakers’ All-Star guard, commented on Twitter:

Magic Johnson, the former Lakers star and part owner of the team, said on Twitter that the remarks were a “black eye for the NBA,” and he vowed to boycott Clippers games as long as Mr. Sterling remained the owner.

Some entertainers weighed in. The rapper Snoop Dogg posted a short, profanity-laden tirade on Instagram.

The Instagram user islam2christ said Mr. Sterling should have known better since he is Jewish. “Feel bad for the players,” the user said. “He needs to realize that many people don’t like Jews like him. He needs to be more empathetic to say the least.”

Dr. Greg Carr, the chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Howard University, a historically black college, connected the remarks to racially tinged statements others have made recently. The report followed remarks made this week by Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who gained notoriety after saying he wondered whether black people may have been better off under slavery than now.

The controversy is an early test for Commissioner Adam Silver, who took the league’s top job in February. At halftime during TNT’s coverage of Game 4 of the Atlanta Hawks-Indiana Pacers series, Shaquille O’Neal articulated his view of the investigation’s central question.

“It’s one thing to say something that’s controversial; it’s another thing to say something that’s very repugnant,” he said. “The question is now, should this guy continue being an owner.”

He concluded: “I think the league should take a very long, hard look at whether this guy should continue being an owner or not.”

Charles Barkley was more forceful and echoed the sentiments of many people who argued that the N.B.A. should expel Mr. Sterling. He noted that Mr. Sterling had faced accusations of racial bias before.

As Mr. Witz reported, Sterling paid a record $2.725 million in 2009 to settle a housing discrimination suit brought by the Justice Department on behalf of African-Americans and Latinos, and families with children. The same year, Elgin Baylor, the former longtime general manager of the Clippers, accused Mr. Sterling of racial discrimination in an unsuccessful lawsuit for wrongful termination.

“We cannot have an N.B.A. owner discriminating against a league that â€" we’re a black league,” Mr. Barkley said.

Some users said that strong action â€" a fine, a suspension or an expulsion â€" was necessary, pointing to the league’s tendency to make employees and players pay for even minor infractions. Matt Barnes, a Clippers small forward, was fined $25,000 in December for using a racial slur on Twitter. Mr. Sterling, who Forbes estimates is worth about $1.9 billion, could easily pay a penalty above the record fine slapped on the Minnesota Timberwolves for $3.5 million for violating the salary cap. The highest fine the league has given an individual is the $500,000 penalty against the Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, in 2002 for criticizing N.B.A. officials.

There was little public reaction from the Clippers organization on Saturday outside of statements from Doc Rivers, a former Clippers point guard and the team’s coach, and Mr. Roeser, the Clippers’ president.

“This is a situation where we’re trying to go after something very important for us, something that we’ve all dreamed about all our childhoods, and Donald or anyone else had nothing to do with that dream, and we’re not going to let anything get in the way of those dreams,” he said after a team practice on Saturday, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Players kept a low profile after practice on Saturday as the team prepared to resume its first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors on Sunday. But shortly after news of the remarks broke, DeAndre Jordan posted a black photo on Instagram.

Users had opinions about whether the players should boycott the playoffs to force Mr. Sterling’s removal.

In response to Mr. Jordan’s post on Instagram, user serg815 wrote: “You guys have been great this year! Don’t give up or falter because of his stupidity and ignorance! Let’s hope the league acts swiftly and aggressively! Together we stand, together we fall! #ClipperNation”



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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Video of Rancher Cliven Bundy’s Remarks on Race

As my colleague Adam Nagourney reports, on Saturday the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy veered away from his fight with the federal government to share his views on race, slavery and abortion in remarks to supporters and journalists at a news conference.

Mr. Bundy’s inflammatory comments about “the Negro” were caught on video streamed from the phone of a blogger who has been chronicling Mr. Bundy’s well-publicized standoff with the Bureau of Land Management to the website Bambuser.

Despite the video evidence, Mr. Bundy’s supporters suggested in a Facebook update on Thursday that his words had been “taken out of context,” as Oliver Willis pointed out in a blog post for the liberal group Media Matters for America.

Post by Bundy Ranch.

Follow Robert Mackey on Twitter @robertmackey.



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American Journalist Released by Ukraine Separatists

Before he was taken prisoner by pro-Russia separatists on Sunday, the Vice News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky interviewed the self-appointed mayor of Slovyansk in eastern Ukraine.

Separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine released the American journalist Simon Ostrovsky on Thursday, three days after he was taken prisoner in the town of Slovyansk while filming a video report for Vice News. The Brooklyn-based news organization confirmed his release in a statement which was followed by a tweet from the correspondent.

Jean-François Bélanger, a correspondent for Canada’s state broadcaster, CBC reported on Twitter that Mr. Ostrovsky left the town a short time later in his company. The Vice News correspondent, he said, had been beaten and blindfolded when he was seized late Monday but later treated well.

Mr. Ostrovsky and his colleagues have produced a series of vivid YouTube dispatches for Vice News in recent weeks on the turmoil in Ukraine.

Shortly after the correspondent was released, Vice News published a video report filmed just before his detention in which he subjected Vyachislav Ponomaryov, a separatist who has appointed himself the new mayor of Slovyansk, to skeptical questioning. Mr. Ostrovksy, a former BBC and Al Jazeera reporter, appeared to unsettle the separatist leader by not accepting at face value his claim that a gun battle near the town over the weekend was an attack by right-wing ultranationalists from Kiev.

After he was taken hostage on Monday, his pro-Russian captors had seemed obsessed with the possibility that Mr. Ostrovsky, a New Yorker, might also hold an Israeli passport and accused him, improbably, of working as a spy for Ukrainian anti-Semites.

As Max Seddon reported for Buzzfeed, Russian state television even gave air time to the bizarre theory of Mr. Ponomaryov, who claimed that Mr. Ostrovsky was both an Israeli and an operative of the Right Sector, a Ukrainian nationalist movement routinely called anti-Semitic by Russian officials.

The State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denounced Russian state media for “pushing dangerous lies” about the “kidnapped U.S. citizen,” late Wednesday.

The journalist was released after Ukrainian forces said that they had relaunched an operation to regain control of towns in the east, and were filmed moving on a checkpoint set up recently by pro-Russia militants near Slovyansk as Russian forces massed just across the border.

Video said to show Ukrainian forces on Thursday at a checkpoint set up by pro-Russia militants.

Follow Robert Mackey on Twitter @robertmackey.



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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

New York Police Twitter Backlash Spreads Around the World

What began as an effort by the New York Police Department to get people to share favorable photos of city police officers on Twitter has turned into an international social media campaign about police abuse.

As my colleague J. David Goodman reports, the Police Department’s Twitter hashtag #mynypd was quickly hijacked after @NYPDNews made its initial callout.

Now, people are sharing unflattering photos of police officers on Twitter from Greece, with the hashtag #myELAS, to Mexico, using the hashtag #MiPolicíaMexicana.

In Greece, Twitter users were sharing encounters with police officers from protests in the last two years.

Twitter users in Los Angeles turned to the hashtag #myLAPD to share photos of police officers there.

In New York City, a Twitter account for the Occupy Wall Street movement urged its followers to share photos of the police “changing hearts and minds one baton at a time.” Several of the photos, including one from The Associated Press, came from confrontations with city police officers during multiple protests organized by Occupy Wall Street, starting in the fall of 2011.

A Twitter user from Venezuela, where police officials have been clashing with protesters in recent weeks, said police abuse was much worse in that country.

While most of the photos on Twitter did not portray police officers in the best light, a few people did post positive images.



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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

American Reporter Held by Ukraine Separatists

A Vice News video report filed by Simon Ostrovsky in eastern Ukraine on Sunday.

Foreign correspondents in the eastern Ukrainian town of Slovyansk, including my colleague Andrew Roth and Roland Oliphant of The Telegraph, report that one of their number, the Vice News reporter Simon Ostrovsky has been detained by pro-Russia separatists who seized power in recent days.

Vice News said in a statement that the Brooklyn-based news organization “is aware of the situation and is in contact with the United States State Department and other appropriate government authorities to secure the safety and security of our friend and colleague.”

Mr. Ostrovsky and his colleagues have produced a series of vivid dispatches for the Vice News YouTube channel in recent weeks on the turmoil in Ukraine, including a report from Slovyansk posted online Sunday about the government’s hapless attempt to retake the town late last week.

Tensions in Slovyansk spiked over the weekend, when a gun battle late Saturday left at least three men dead in murky circumstances. The Kyiv Post reported on Tuesday that a statement from Ukraine’s acting president said that the military would relaunch its operation to quell the separatist movement after the dead bodies of two men, including a local politician, had been discovered near Slovyansk, showing signs of having been “brutally tortured.”

Before his disappearance, Mr. Ostrovsky had reported on Monday via Twitter that Vyachislav Ponomaryov, a pro-Russian activist and the town’s de facto mayor, had berated journalists for “provocative” questions about the town’s former mayor, and a woman pressed reporters to make donations towards the funeral expenses of the separatists killed in the shoot-out.

One of Mr. Ostrovsky’s last tweets on Monday included a photograph of Irma Krat, a journalist who took part in the pro-European sit-in in Kiev who was taken prisoner by the Slovyansk separatists over the weekend.

Mr. Ostrovsky, a former BBC and Al Jazeera correspondent who wrote for The Moscow News a decade ago, has been an eloquent chronicler of the confusing and chaotic scenes in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in more than two dozen video reports from the region.