DECEMBER

The New York Times website reported that 11 people whose phones and laptops were searched at US airports and at the nation’s northern border were suing the Department of Homeland Security. Several of the plaintiffs said they were intimidated. According to the most recent data available, there were nearly 15,000 searches from October 2016 to March 2017, compared with 8,383 in the same period a year before.

More than 40 million people live in poverty, with 18.5 million of them in extreme poverty, according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau.

A report from The New York Post website told that a volunteer Ohio firefighter posted racist comments on social media which said if he had to choose between saving a dog and a black man from a burning building, he would save the dog first. “That’s because one dog is more important than a million (expletive),” he wrote, using the N-word.

ABC news reported that on the night of Sept 15, 32 people were arrested when protesters took to the street in St. Louis after a white former police officer, Jason Stockley, who killed 24-year-old black man Lamar Smith with five shots in 2011, was acquitted earlier that day. “If you look like me, then you feel like there is no other way to express yourself in this kind of verdict. Time and time again, AfricanAmerican men are killed by police, and nobody is held accountable,” a protester was quoted as saying.

ABC News website reported that the Senate held a hearing on the Republican healthcare bill, known as the Graham-Cassidy bill. People from all over the US and all walks of life lined up as early as 5 am, urging lawmakers to oppose the bill. Protesters in wheelchairs cried aloud with chants of “No cuts to Medicaid! Save our liberty!” Capitol Police officers struggled to remove people, with some sliding out of their wheelchairs and onto the floor. More than 180 protesters were arrested.

British newspaper The Independent reported on its website that the US government had quietly announced that it was planning on continuing to collect social media information on immigrants in the US. Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, told The Independent that monitoring social

The Chicago Tribune website reported that US authorities made more than 300 arrests at demonstrations over the Sept 15 acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of an AfricanAmerican. Protesters and civil liberties groups accused the authorities of using heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators. And the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed a lawsuit which accused police of unnecessarily using tear gas and pepper spray, arresting bystanders and journalists.

Research by the Pew Research Center showed that 57 percent of women said the country hasn’t done enough to give women equal rights with men; 38 percent of women who said they have faced gender discrimination cited experiences related to hiring, pay or promotion; 26 percent said they have had their abilities questioned or were treated as if they weren’t smart because of their gender; and 10 percent cited sexual harassment.

The International Business Times website reported that a study from the Reflective Democracy Campaign found that 90 percent of all US elected officials were white and 71 percent were men. With only the wealthy funding and communicating with the campaigns of elected officials, politicians were incentivized to make policy decisions that align with their donors’ interests, not those of their broader constituency. Nick Nyhart, founding executive of voting rights advocacy group Every Voice, said “every cycle, there are fewer and fewer donors giving more and more of the money. The voices of everyday people get heard less and less each year. People who win under (the current system) don’t promote policies that everyday people want to happen”.

A study on the website of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showed that child care costs represent a large financial burden for parents who are in college. Washington State’s child care assistance rules made it difficult for low-income students to access child care. And Washington was one of 11 states that require parents in postsecondary education to also work to be eligible for child care assistance.

The New York Post website reported that police arrested three men who smashed more than 40 headstones and spray-painted racial slurs on graves that had Asian names on them at a Queens

The website of WHAM, a New York based station, reported that at least 26 people were dead and 20 injured in a mass shooting in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Those killed ranged from 5 to 72 years old, and the incident was called the “worst mass shooting” in the state’s history.

The Huffington Post website reported that New York Police Department detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall were accused of detaining and raping a woman in a police van after finding her in possession of marijuana and antianxiety pills.

The Huffington Post website reported that 80 percent of the political nominees the president has sent to the Senate have been men. Among the nominees for US attorney, 41 were men and only one was a woman.

The website of the American Civil Liberties Union reported that after a decade of collecting evidence, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, announced that she would take steps toward a full investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over the course of the armed conflict in Afghanistan since May 2003.

In a 2016 report, the prosecutor’s office revealed that it had reason to believe that members of the US military “subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity” and members of the CIA “subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape”.

The Huffington Post website reported that a report released by the US Sentencing Commission looked at federal prison sentences in the country from Oct 1, 2011 to Sept 30, 2016, and found that black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than those of “similarly situated” white male offenders. Sentencing was just one part of the broader problem of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system: Black people were incarcerated in US state prisons at more than five times the rate of white people.

The New Yorker website reported on the hugely unbalanced gender ratio in tech industry. Studies estimated that women make up only a quarter of employees and 11 percent of executives in the industry. In September, three women brought a class-action lawsuit on

The Newsweek website reported that hundreds of thousands of US citizens were being denied the right to vote because they are poor. In nine states, legislators have enacted laws that disenfranchise anyone with outstanding legal fees or court fines. In Alabama, more than 100,000 people who owe money — roughly 3 percent of the state’s voting-age population — have been struck from voting rolls.

The BBC website reported that former USA Olympic gymnastics sports doctor Larry Nassar had been accused of sexually abusing more than 130 women, including several Olympic gold medalists.

The New York Times website reported that the elderly and disabled citizens of any age have faced several obstacles while voting. The results of a survey of 178 polling places showed that the great majority had impediments outside — like steep ramps or inadequate parking — or inside that could discourage or exclude disabled voters. Voting machines may not accommodate people who use wheelchairs or are visually impaired.

The Al Jazeera website reported that protests carried out by AfricanAmericans have been monitored by the US government and have been seen as a potential threat, according to documents from the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.

The BBC website reported that the US Supreme Court had ruled the new US administration’s travel ban on six mainly Muslim countries could go into full effect. The decision was a boost for President Donald Trump’s policy against travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. A federal judge in Hawaii said the policy “plainly discriminates based on nationality” in violation of “the founding principles of this nation”.

According to the Guardian website, a study showed that 553,742 people in the US were homeless on a single night in 2017. The homeless population of New York increased 4.1 percent. The poverty rate of California has reached 20.4 percent.

The VOA website reported a surcemetery

The website of ABC news reported that the new US administration has not released any prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay and not added any to the list of cleared men who can go home, or to a third country, for resettlement.

The Independent website reported that Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said torture was still being carried out at Guantanamo Bay and urged the US to end its torture of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The website of CNN reported that US service members have been accused of assaulting and raping Okinawans.

According to the Al Jazeera website, the Federal Communications Committee voted to end the 2015 Open Internet Rules on Dec 14. The move broke the net neutrality rules, and allowed internet service providers to block and “throttle” certain data streams. It would also deepen the “digital divide” between the wealthy and low-income communities.

Nyasia Valdez, with Detroit’s Equitable Internet Initiative in Southwest Detroit, said making the internet more expensive would further economically disadvantage poor people. “It would be so devastating and further exacerbate the inequality that’s already there,” Valdez said.

Research showed that 94 percent of job recruiters used online means of finding candidates for work. Minority and lower-income populations in the US would experience joblessness at higher rates. With so many jobs advertised only online, the problem of unemployment is made worse.

The Al Jazeera website reported that the so-called “medical deserts” were becoming more common in the US. Since 2010, more than 80 rural hospitals had been closed and hundreds more were at risk of shutting their doors.

The Huffington Post website reported that at least 15 women said Judge Alex Kozinski groped them, made inappropriate sexual comments, and/or showed them pornography.

According to the gunviolencearchive.org website, as of Dec 18, 2017, the total number of gun violence and crime incidents in the US was 60,091, including 338 mass shooting incidents, causing total deaths of 15,182 and 30,619 injuries. 716 children aged 0 to 11 were killed or injured, and 3,178 teens aged 12 to 17 were killed or injured.

The Center for Responsive Politics website reported the latest figures on federal lobbying activity showing that the total spent on lobbying in 2017 reached $2.468 billion, a record high in the past five years.

The Washington Post website reported that 987 people have been shot and killed by police in 2017. According to monthly statistics, in 2017, the US police shot 92 people dead in January; 100 in February; 76 in March; 67 in April; 74 in May; 84 in June; 94 in July; 82 in August; 70 in September; 85 in October; 84 in November and 79 in December.