The Weekend Off – News You Missed

Alaska

ADN.com – ‘Nextdoor’ app aims to connect neighbors in Anchorage

It started as a quest to protect a reindeer.

About two years ago, somebody tried to break into Albert Whitehead’s home on 10th Avenue, near downtown Anchorage. They also tried to break into the pen of Whitehead’s well-known pet reindeer, Star.

APRN.org – Special Investigator Planned To Look Into National Guard Allegation

Attorney General Craig Richards is in the process of hiring a special investigator to look into the handling of sexual assault complaints within the Alaska National Guard.

Grace Jang, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Walker, said Richards is vetting five candidates who have strong criminal investigation backgrounds and are in good standing with the Alaska Bar. She did not have a set timeline for the hiring but expected it to be soon.

National

Vice.com [Jason Leopold] – Senator Dianne Feinstein Proposes Legislation to Make Torture Extra Illegal

There are already laws on the books in the US that prohibit the use of torture. But after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary last month of its 6,700-page torture report that revealed the CIA subjected some detainees it captured after 9/11 to “rectal rehydration” and “ice water baths,” the outgoing Democratic chairwoman of the committee said she will introduce legislation and call for a series of executive actions to ensure the US government never does it again.

Mediaite.com – Police Union Calls for Cops to Be Protected Under Hate Crimes Statute

The National Fraternal Order of Police asked Monday that its 300,000 members be included under the Congress’ hate crimes statutes, which would stiffen penalties against those found to have targeted police officers based on their job.

NY Times – The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls

Inside the gleaming mall here on the Sunday before Christmas, just one thing was missing: shoppers.

The upbeat music of “Jingle Bell Rock” bounced off the tiles, and the smell of teriyaki chicken drifted from the food court, but only a handful of stores were open at the sprawling enclosed shopping center. A few visitors walked down the long hallways and peered through locked metal gates into vacant spaces once home to retailers like H&M, Wet Seal and Kay Jewelers.

International

California Sunday Magazine – The Disappeared 

BY THE FIRST DAYS OF OCTOBER, the outdoor basketball court at the Rural Teachers College in Ayotzinapa, a town in the Mexican state of Guerrero, had become an open-air waiting room of despair. Pain emanated like heat. Under the court’s high, corrugated tin roof, the families of 43 missing students gathered to face the hours between search expeditions, protests, and meetings with government officials, human-rights workers, and forensic anthropologists. Assembled in clumps at the court’s edges, sitting on the concrete floor or in plastic folding chairs formed in semicircles, they spoke in hushed tones and kept to themselves. Most had traveled from small, indigenous, campesino communities in Guerrero’s mountainsides. Many had arrived without a change of clothes. They had all come to look for their sons.

Al Jazeera – 2 men charged in US in attempted Gambia coup

Two men have been charged in the United States with conspiring to help overthrow the government in the tiny West African nation of Gambia, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Both men were in custody and were expected to make court appearances later in the day in Baltimore and Minneapolis.

The Guardian – Thousands flee as Boko Haram seizes military base on Nigeria border

Thousands of people from remote towns in north-eastern Nigeria have begun streaming into the capital of Borno state to seek refuge after Boko Haram seized an army camp in the border village of Baga, the second time the militants have overrun a military base in a week.

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