Published time: 29 Dec, 2017 00:43

Officials in Kokomo, Indiana are praising a brave 9-year-old who brandished his pellet gun to ward off a would-be car thief. No one’s eye was shot out, and the man was later arrested after trying to steal another nearby vehicle.

Police responded to a report of an attempted car theft at a convenience store early Christmas morning in Kokomo, WRTV reported. The would-be thief set his sights on a 2009 Dodge Ram pick-up truck around am Monday, but did not count on the vehicle being occupied by an ‘armed’ youngster.

Dispatch told officers that the man stole a green Chevrolet SUV nearby after being confronted by a 9-year-old boy armed with a pellet gun inside the Dodge truck. The boy’s identity has not been reported, and there is no confirmation whether or not the gun was a Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle.

Police followed the thwarted carjacker and arrested him after the SUV was involved in a minor traffic accident. He was identified as Ollie Dunn, 32, of nearby Lafayette.

Dunn was charged with attempted auto theft, unlawful entry of a vehicle, vehicle theft, and lacking a driver’s license.

Dunn's criminal history goes back to August 2014, when there was no pellet-packing boy to prevent him from flooding the Tippecanoe County Jail's book-in area. He pulled off a sprinkler head from the fire suppression system after being arrested for smashing the windows of at least seven cars and taking what he could find inside, according to the Journal & Courier. As police pursued him, Dunn ducked into a trailer home, where a family had been having breakfast.

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Police in Alabama are facing a backlash after a 17-year-old was left heavily bruised following an encounter with officers. The boy’s bloodied image was posted by his mother and has been shared almost 80,000 times.

The parents of Ulysses Wilkerson are desperately seeking answers as to why their son ended up with a face swollen beyond recognition after an encounter with police in Troy, Pike County. According to Ulysses’ mother, Angela Williams, during the dramatic incident which unfolded on Saturday night, law enforcement officers beat her son so brutally he now has a fracture. "Troy police officers did this to my son while he was in handcuffs," she wrote in a Facebook post, which has since been widely shared.

“He had trauma to the brain, swelling on the brain, and a cracked eye socket in three different places,” Ulysses’ father, Ulysses Wilkerson Jr., told WKRG. “They had him handcuffed when we got in there they said he was charged with obstruction of justice, the ambulance came to take him to UAB [and] they took the handcuffs off and dropped the charges on him,” he added.

Police officers reportedly saw the teen coming around the corner of a building in downtown Troy. When they tried to speak to him, he ran off, prompting a foot chase. A witness cited by local media claimed police had later surrounded Wilkerson. “You could see the swelling of his face [and] you could tell he had a lot of bleeding. He looked like he was passed out or maybe in and out of consciousness,” Brittany Patterson, who drove by the scene, said.

The Alabama State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) said police arrested Wilkerson in the area of Madison Street around midnight.

“During the arrest, the juvenile was injured, and was transported directly to Troy Regional Medical Center,” the SBI said in a statement, adding that an investigation is underway into “the use of force” by the officers.

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While the teen’s mother is urging police to release body and dash camera footage of the incident, social media activists say law enforcement officials in Troy need to issue a public announcement.

“You need to acknowledge the problem… to insure your citizens you swore to protect are protected from abusive police officers,” one woman, Carley Kimberling, wrote on the Troy Police Department Facebook page.

Published time: 28 Dec, 2017 17:59 Edited time: 28 Dec, 2017 18:43

Donald Trump has accused China of exporting oil to North Korea, in contravention of UN sanctions, after a media report alleged transactions between the two countries. Beijing has denied making illegal shipments.

“Caught RED HANDED – very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!” tweeted the US president.

Caught RED HANDED – very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 28 December 2017

On Tuesday, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo claimed US surveillance satellites spotted Chinese vessels engaged in ship-to-ship oil transfers with North Korean ships at sea, citing government sources in Seoul. At least 30 such transfers have allegedly occurred since October.

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September’s United Nations Security Council Resolution 2375 imposed an import quota of 500,000 barrels of refined petrol on North Korea, for three months starting in October, as well as restrictions on crude oil transactions. Direct ship-to-ship transfers, which make it harder to account for the oil, are also banned by the UN, which imposed Resolution 2375 in response Pyongyang’s suspected nuclear test earlier that month.

On Thursday, China insisted that it was in full compliance with the resolution, as well as the new UN Security Council resolution passed last week, which places even tighter restrictions on North Korea’s energy imports.

Published time: 28 Dec, 2017 18:29

Two Milwaukee police officers are being hailed as heroes after dragging injured passengers from the burning wreckage of crashed car.

Officers Nicholas Schei and Nicholas Reid witnessed the near-fatal accident in the Hampton Heights area Tuesday, when the driver of a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am lost control and hit a utility pole.

We're incredibly proud of these officers for risking their lives to save these crash victims. The officers will be nominated for a MPD Merit Award! https://t.co/sgTWa5uiQF

— Milwaukee Police (@MilwaukeePolice) December 28, 2017

With the car upside down in the middle of the road, the two District Four cops sprung into action to rescue the occupants from the burning, crushed car.

READ MORE: ‘7 grams of pot, 24 cops’: French police mocked over anti-drug op

Footage taken from a police bodycam shows plumes of smoke rising from the car’s hood. In the dramatic video, Reid and Schei race against time to drag two injured youngsters away from the flaming wreck.

According to the Milwaukee Police Department, the two men, who came up through the police academy together, are now in line to receive a merit award for their heroics.

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“Officers Schlei, Reid and other officers from District Four risked their own lives and pulled the driver, a 16-year-old Milwaukee male, and another teenage male passenger from the car,” the police said in a statement.

Published time: 28 Dec, 2017 17:30 Edited time: 28 Dec, 2017 19:14

Former GOP candidate Roy Moore is crying foul in his loss to Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama state senate race. Jones eked out an unlikely victory over Moore in a traditionally Republican state.

Update: Alabama judge Johnny Hardwick ruled against failed GOP candidate Roy Moore’s move to prevent the certification of Doug Jones. Secretary of State John Merrill will certify Jones as the winner of the runoff election.

Moore requested a judge issue a restraining order to prevent the state canvassing board from certifying Jones’ victory. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said that Moore’s move “is not going to delay certification and Doug Jones… will be sworn in by Vice President Pence on the third of January,” according to AP.

Sam Coleman, a spokesman for Jones, called Moore’s last minute move a “desperate attempt… to subvert the will of the people,” and said it “will not succeed,” AP reported. “The election is over. It’s time to move on.”

Moore’s often strange campaign was dogged by allegations of sexual assault. Nine women accused Moore of sexually assaulting, harassing or having a relationship with them when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s.

Moore’s lawyer wrote in a complaint that he believed there were a broad range of irregularities during the election, including that voters may have come from other states. He included a statement from a poll worker that she had noticed licenses from states including Georgia and North Carolina as people signed in to vote in the Alabama contest.

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The complaint also said the voter turnout was abnormally high particularly in Jefferson County, and asked for an investigation into fraud and a fresh election.

A New York lawyer who advised pharmaceutical businessman Martin Shkreli may be heading to prison after a federal jury convicted him of helping his client to defraud shareholders to pay back previously defrauded investors.

Evan Greebel, who served as outside counsel to Retrophin Inc., the biopharmaceutical company formerly run by Shkreli, was convicted Wednesday on two conspiracy charges to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. The jury found Greebel guilty on both counts after three days of deliberations.

According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Greebel conspired with Shkreli from 2011 and 2014 to steal millions of dollars from Retrophin in order to pay off defrauded investors in two failed hedge funds run by Shkreli, MSMB Capital Management LP and MSMB Healthcare Management LP.

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The jury was presented with evidence that Greebel negotiated “settlement” agreements with the defrauded MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare investors. Retrophin reimbursed the investors with more than $2 million in cash and stock for their lost investments, even though the company had nothing to do with their losses.

Prosecutors also presented evidence that Greebel had arranged for certain investors to enter into sham consulting agreements with Retrophin as a way to pay them back.

According to the 2015 indictment, Retrophin did not receive “any legitimate consulting services based on these sham agreements,” but the company paid the defrauded investors more than $7.6 million in cash and stock for their consulting services.

In total, Shkreli and Greebel caused Retrophin and its investors to lose more than $11 million through their settlement and sham consulting agreements, according to the indictment.

The jury was also presented with evidence that Greebel and Shkreli attempted to illegally control the price and trading volume of Retrophin’s stock by concealing the fact that Shkreli controlled the majority of Retrophin’s free-trading shares. Prosecutors presented evidence that Greebel used his law license and training to file false documents with government regulators to hide the fact that Shkreli controlled those shares.

Promoting empathy and cracking down on hypermasculinity may help the Department of Defense to reduce unwanted sexual behavior and improve combat readiness, a new government report on sexual violence in the military says.

Unwanted sexual behaviors ‒ such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence ‒ “undermine core values, unit cohesion, combat readiness, and public goodwill,” says the report, published this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and signed by Brenda Farrell, director of defense capabilities and management.

The report pointed out that “interconnected, inappropriate behaviors” are part of a “continuum of harm” that creates a climate conducive to sexual harassment, assault and violence. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 expanded the definition of sexual harassment in the military beyond sex discrimination, to make it “an adverse behavior on the spectrum of behavior that can contribute to an increase in the incidence of sexual assault.” Both the Pentagon and the separate service branches have yet to update their policies to reflect this new definition, the GAO found.

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The report also urged the Pentagon to incorporate the guidelines for preventing and dealing with sexual violence developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Pentagon is ignoring risk factors identified by the CDC such as “alcohol and drug use, hypermasculinity, emotionally unsupportive family environments, general tolerance of sexual violence within the community, and societal norms that support male superiority and sexual entitlement,” the report says.

Also ignored by the DoD are protective factors such as “emotional health and connectedness, and empathy and concern for how one’s actions affect others.”

“CDC’s research has also established that survivors of one form of violence are more likely to be victims of other forms of violence, that survivors of violence are at higher risk for behaving violently, and that people who behave violently are more likely to commit other forms of violence,” the GAO report notes, apparently seeking to make a distinction between violence in authorized military conflict and personal violence.

Noting that the DoD instructed the services in 2014 to develop mechanisms for reporting incidents of sexual harassment anonymously, the GAO said that such mechanisms are not yet part of the department-wide sexual violence policies.

A feminist street artist has veered from her usual topic of giant vaginas, instead stunning New York City’s Lower East side with a 40-foot tall penis graffiti on an apartment building.

Swedish street artist Carolina Falkholt chose the side of 303 Broome St. as the canvas for her four-story phallic masterpiece. Her previous work has featured in multiple museum exhibitions, most recently in Wanas Konst, Gothenburg Museum of Art, and Eskilstuna Art Museum. Falkholt says she wants to challenge gender stereotypes and sexual taboos.

“I have never heard so much laughter and seen so many happy faces behind my back when painting as for today doing this wall on Broome Street,” Falkholt wrote on Instagram.

Falkholt is infamous for highly graphic depictions of human genitalia, plastering a massive vulva onto a building in Sweden in 2015 and, more recently painting another, more abstract depiction of a vulva on 56 Pike Street, near to this latest Christmas Eve penis mural.

Reaction to the work has been mixed, with local residents up in arms in an online residents group, complaining about the excessive vulgarity, especially for a residential neighborhood.

“It’s ugly,” said neighbor Qun Chen, 47, as cited by The New York Post.“There’s a lot of kids that live in this building and in the neighborhood — it’s not good for the kids, they’re little.”

“It’s not offensive — it’s 2017,” said Felton Chen, 30, no relation. “It doesn’t bother me.”

The piece was commissioned by The New Allen Foundation, run by a local Peruvian restaurant named Baby Brassa. “Created by Franco Noriega and Milan Kelez… [the] art foundation unites a collective of graffiti artists and muralist that are transforming Allen Street into the city’s premiere street art gallery,” the collective’s website reads.

The building’s superintendent, Jason Estrada told NBC that "no one knew" ahead of time about the highly graphic glans. "It's art, man. At the end of the day, it's freedom of expression. I'm into street art, and I like it. It doesn't bother me," he said, as cited by NBC New York.

"Talking about these subjects in public space is a must for a healthy, nonviolent community/world," Falkholt said as cited by NBC New York. "And the dialogue created around feminist public art pieces raises awareness."

The ruling marks the first time a judge has called the death of public prosecutor Alberto Nisman a murder, in a case that has been rife with speculation and conspiracy theories.Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on January 18, 2015, from a gunshot wound to his head. Days earlier, he had filed a report accusing former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and other officials of covering up Iran's involvement in a 1994 Jewish community center bombing that left 85 people dead and more than 300 wounded. Initially, Fernández and others called his death a suicide. But tests found no gunpowder residue on Nisman's hands or traces of blood on his arms to suggest the bullet wound was self-inflicted, judge Julián Ercolini wrote in a 656-page ruling."The death of Prosecutor Nisman was not a suicide, and was brought about by a third party and in a painful manner," Ercolini said in the ruling. In the ruling, Ercolini charged Diego Lagomarsino with accessory to murder. Lagomarsino was the last person inside the prosecutor's apartment, and Nisman was killed with a weapon belonging to Lagomarsino, the judge said. Lagomarsino, an IT security expert who worked for Nisman, has maintained that he gave Nisman his gun at the prosecutor's insistence. According to Lagomarsino, Nisman called him to his home on January 17 worried for his safety. But Lagomarsino has insisted he had nothing to do with Nisman's death.When he died, Nisman was overseeing the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association. In his report, Nisman alleged that Fernandez and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman wanted to cover up Iran's involvement in order to boost trade — specifically, oil imports and grain exports — with the Islamic republic.The Fernández administration hit back sharply after the allegations, denying a cover-up of Iranian links. At the time, Fernández said Nisman's claims "were intended to lie, disguise and confuse."After filing the complaint, Nisman made a prescient comment about the investigation: "I could end up dead from this," he told a reporter. Then, the night before he was scheduled to testify before lawmakers, his body was found.

CNN's Mariano Castillo, Mayra Cuevas and Eliott C. McLaughlin contributed to this report.

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A new poll reveals that Americans do not agree on whether a “non-consensual hug” should be considered sexual harassment. Seven other hypothetical situations were also put before people to determine what was appropriate or not.

The majority of Americans agree that non-consensual groping or kissing should be considered sexual harassment, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday. However, the poll found that Americans of different genders, races and ages bring diverse opinions to the workplace when it comes to other behaviors.

The December 13-18 poll asked more than 3,000 American adults about eight different hypothetical situations, and whether they should be considered sexual harassment.

Only 38 percent of those polled agreed that “unwanted compliments about your appearance” should be considered sexual harassment, while 47 percent said they should not. However, the poll found that Americans were split when it comes to telling “dirty jokes” in the workplace, with 41 percent agreeing it constitutes sexual harassment, and 44 percent saying it doesn’t.

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Nearly half, 44 percent, of those polled said they consider non-consensual hugs from a co-worker to be sexual harassment, while 40 percent said they did not.

The poll found men and women had very different opinions on touching a co-worker without their consent, with 19 percent of men saying that they do not consider it to be sexual harassment, compared to only 11 percent of women. The poll did not specifically define non-consensual touching.

There was also a difference of opinion among Americans of different races, with 52 percent of minorities agreeing that non-consensual hugging is considered sexual harassment, compared to only 39 percent of whites. Americans of different ages were also divided, with 94 percent of baby boomers, who were born 1946-64, agreeing that sending “pornographic pictures” to a co-worker constitutes sexual harassment, compared to only 83 percent of millennials born after 1982.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing federal discrimination laws in the workplace, defines sexual harassment as any “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.”