Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than decade
WASHINGTON — Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade as federal officials also recorded the highest number of hate-motivated killings since the FBI began collecting that data in the early 1990s, according to an FBI report released Monday.
There were 51 hate crime murders in 2019, which includes 22 people who were killed in a shooting that targeted Mexicans at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso, Texas, the report said. The suspect in that August 2019 shooting, which left two dozen other people injured, was charged with both state and federal crimes in what authorities said was an attempt to scare Hispanics into leaving the United States.
There were 7,314 hate crimes last year, up from 7,120 the year before — and approaching the 7,783 of 2008. The FBI’s annual report defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation, among other categories.
Some of the 2019 increases may be the result of better reporting by police departments, but law enforcement officials and advocacy groups don’t doubt that hate crimes are on the rise.
The Justice Department has for years been specifically prioritizing hate crime prosecutions.
The data also show there was a nearly 7% increase in religion-based hate crimes, with 953 reports of crimes targeting Jews and Jewish institutions last year, up from 835 the year before. The FBI said the number of hate crimes against African
Americans dropped slightly to 1,930, from 1,943.
Anti- Hispanic hate crimes, however, rose to 527 in 2019, from 485 in 2018. And the total number of hate crimes based on a person’s sexual orientation stayed relatively stable, with one fewer crime reported last year, compared with the year before, though there were 20 more hate crimes against gay men reported.
After months without internal testing protocols, members of the U.S. House and their staff will now have regular access to coronavirus testing at the Capitol physician’s office when they return to Washington from their home states.
The new testing is voluntary, but is intended to prevent an outbreak in the sprawling Capitol complex as members fly back and forth from their districts and cases spike around the country. In a letter to members of Congress on Sunday, attending physician Brian Monahan wrote that his office is offering the testing “to be consistent with the spirit” of an order from Washington, D.C., that all travelers must obtain a coronavirus test prior to visiting the city and get a second test three to five days after arrival.
The tests, which have a six- to 12-hour turnaround, represent the first regular testing program in the Capitol since the beginning of the pandemic. While the White House requires rapid tests for all visitors who get close to the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had resisted any sort of regular testing in the Capi
Congress testing:
tol, saying they don’t want to be receiving tests when others around the country can’t obtain them.
The World Health Organization has recorded 65 cases of the coronavirus among staff based at its headquarters, including five people who worked on the premises and were in contact with one another, an internal email obtained by The Associated Press shows.
The U.N. health agency said it is investigating how and where the five people became infected — and that it has not determined whether transmission happened at its offices. WHO’s confirmation Monday of the figures in the email was the first time it has publicly provided such a count.
“To my knowledge, the cluster being investigated is the first evidence of potential transmission on the site of WHO,” Dr. Michael Ryan, the agency’s chief of emergencies, told reporters Monday after the AP reported on the internal email.
Outbreak at WHO:
Claims against Boy Scouts: Close to 90,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed against the Boy Scouts of America as the Monday deadline arrived for submitting claims in the organization’s bankruptcy case.
The number far exceeds the initial projections of lawyers across the United States who have been signing up clients since the Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy protection in February in the face of hundreds of lawsuits alleging decadesold sex abuse by Scout leaders.
“We are devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in Scouting and moved by the bravery of those who have come forward,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement. “We are heartbroken that we cannot undo their pain.”
More refugees flee: The growing conflict in Ethiopia has resulted in more than 25,300 refugees fleeing the Tigray region into Sudan, the U.N. refugee agency said Monday, as fighting spilled beyond Ethiopia’s borders and threatened to inflame the Horn of Africa region.
More than 5,000 refugees arrived in Sudan’s border provinces of Kassala and al-Qadarif on Sunday, the highest single-day number of arrivals since the start of the conflict in Tigray earlier this month, the UNHCR said.
Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on Nov. 4 a military offensive against the regional government in Tigray in response to an attack by Tigray forces. Each government regards the other as illegal after a monthslong falling out as Abiy marginalized the once-dominant Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
Abiy’s government on Monday refused international pleas for dialogue and asked for more time.
“Mediation at this point will only incentivize impunity,” senior official Redwan Hussein told reporters, even as the leaders of Uganda and Kenya urged the warring sides to find a peaceful end to the political and humanitarian crisis.
Maia Sandu, a former World Bank economist who favors closer ties with the European Union, has won Moldova’s presidential runoff vote, decisively defeating the staunchly pro-Russian incumbent, according to preliminary results released Monday.
Sandu captured over 57% of the vote, leaving the incumbent, Igor Dodon, behind by over 15 percentage points, according to preliminary data from the Central Election Commission, which said nearly 100% of the vote has been counted.
Sunday’s election was seen as a referendum on two divergent visions for the future of the small Eastern European nation sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. Sandu and Dodon, whom Russian President Vladimir Putin identified as his preferred candidate, have been rivals since he narrowly defeated her in the 2016 presidential race.
Putin ally defeated: