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AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
It sounds like a Falun Gong stunt.

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Police release data on alleged rape by Chinese businessman
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July 24, 2019[/URL]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Police who were called to a report of an alleged rape by Chinese billionaire and JD.com founder Richard Liu last August initially decided to release him because it was unclear to them if a crime had occurred, according to investigative files released Wednesday that include conflicting statements from the woman and Liu.

But later that day, Liu was arrested and booked into the county jail on suspicion of felony rape after the woman, a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota, reported details and said Liu forced himself on her after a night of drinking. He was released the next day and ultimately
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after prosecutors said there were problems with evidence.

The data released Wednesday by the Minneapolis Police Department offers a glimpse into the investigation and shows how Liu, the woman, a limo driver, Liu's assistants and others gave conflicting versions of what happened. The data includes police reports, interview transcripts, 911 transcripts, a recorded interview with Liu, text messages and
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. The documents show the woman threatened to go to the media if she did not get money and an apology from Liu.

The alleged assault happened on Aug. 31 when Liu, 46, was in Minneapolis for a weeklong residency as part of the University of Minnesota's doctor of business administration China program, geared toward high-level executives in China.

The woman, Jingyao Liu, alleged Richard Liu and other wealthy Chinese executives coerced her to drink during a dinner party. She told police that Liu then made unwanted advances in his limousine and later raped her at her apartment. The Associated Press does not generally name alleged victims of sexual assault, but her attorney Wil Florin has said she agreed to be named. She was 21 at the time.

She
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and his company in April. That case is pending.

The data released Wednesday shows police went to the apartment and found Richard Liu lying on the bed wearing only a T-shirt. Police handcuffed him, helped him get dressed and took him to a squad car.

What followed, according to the documents, was a patchwork of conflicting stories and changing accounts.

That night, Jingyao Liu told one officer, "I was raped but not that kind of rape," according to police reports. When asked to explain, she changed the subject and said Richard Liu was famous and she was afraid. She told the officer the sex was "spontaneous" and that she did not want police to get involved.

According to the data, officers released Richard Liu because "it was unclear if a crime had actually taken place" and they couldn't establish probable cause.

In a later interview with an investigator, Richard Liu said the sex was consensual and that the woman "enjoyed the whole process very much."

Jill Brisbois, an attorney for Richard Liu, said in a statement that the evidence reaffirms their belief that Liu is innocent. She said the police reports and videos fully dispel "misinformation and unsubstantiated speculation" and support prosecutors' decision not to file charges.

Florin said police body camera footage shows Jingyao Liu initially said she was raped — but after Richard Liu gave her an angry look, she told police she was afraid of his power and retracted her initial statement. The body camera video was not retained by police after 90 days because it contained "nothing evidentiary," said police spokesman John Elder. Florin did not provide the video to the AP.

According to a transcript of a police interview, the woman said Liu kissed her and tried to take off her clothes in the limo, and she tried to push him away. She said she didn't know where they were going and was afraid, so she asked to go to her apartment. There, she said, Richard Liu tried to take off her clothes over her protests, tried to pull her into the shower and eventually raped her.

She told police that she begged him, "Please, please ... I don't want to do this."

She also told police she wanted Liu to apologize, and she threatened to go to the media if she didn't hear from Liu's attorney. Transcripts show she spoke with Brisbois and asked for an apology and money.

In a roughly 30-minute interview with an investigator, Richard Liu said the woman invited him to her apartment, where she initiated sex acts and helped him shower. He said it was clear she "want to make love with me."

Officers also interviewed Liu's employees and the limo driver. According to transcripts, one assistant said Richard Liu and the woman were intimate and she didn't seem distressed.

However, the driver said when the pair was outside the limo, Richard Liu "grabbed" and seemed to overpower the woman, and brought her into the vehicle. He said he looked in the mirror and saw "this guy was all over this girl." He said Liu's assistant adjusted his mirror. He told police he heard kisses and moaning but didn't hear anyone say "No." The driver said he didn't know if the activity was consensual, according to a transcript.

Richard Liu, known in Chinese as Liu Qiangdong, is a prominent member of the Chinese tech elite, with a fortune of $7.5 billion. He is part of a generation of entrepreneurs who have created China's internet, e-commerce, mobile phone and other technology industries since the late 1990s. The son of peasants, Liu built a Beijing electronics shop into JD.com, China's biggest online direct retailer, selling everything from clothes to toys to fresh vegetables.
 
noted
US government orders first federal executions since 2003
  • 26 July 2019
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The US federal government is to resume executing death-row inmates after a 16-year hiatus, the justice department has announced.

Attorney General William Barr said in a statement he had directed the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to schedule the executions of five inmates.

Mr Barr said the five had been convicted of murders or rapes of children or the elderly.

The executions have been scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020.

"Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals," Mr Barr said in a statement. "The Justice Department upholds the rule of law - and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system."

Mr Barr's announcement lifts what was an informal moratorium on the federal death penalty - as opposed to state-directed executions - since the 2003 execution of Louis Jones Jr, a 53-year-old Gulf War veteran who murdered 19-year-old soldier Tracie Joy McBride.

Robert Dunham from the Death Penalty Information Center said the decision did not come as a surprise.

"President Trump has been a staunch supporter of capital punishment and has proposed several extreme uses of it, including for selling drugs and for all murders involving state and local police officers," he said.

"So it was not a surprise that he would seek to have executions carried out. I think the biggest surprise is that it took as long as it did."

Meanwhile the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the fact that the executions were scheduled so close together raised "serious questions about the fairness for each of those cases".

"We need time to consider and review cases and there's just absolutely no basis for lumping cases together in this way and rushing forward," said Cassy Stubbs from the group.

Under the US justice system, crimes can be tried either in federal courts - at a national level - or or state courts, at a regional level. Certain crimes that apply nationally, such as counterfeiting currency or mail theft, are automatically tried at a federal level, while others are tried in federal courts based on the severity of the crimes.

The death penalty was outlawed at state and federal level by a 1972 Supreme Court decision that cancelled all existing death penalty statutes. A 1976 Supreme Court decision reinstated the death penalty to a number of states and in 1988 the government passed legislation that made the death penalty available again at a federal level.

According to data collected by the Death Penalty Information Center, 78 people were sentenced to death in federal cases between 1988 and 2018 but only three have since been executed. There are 62 inmates currently on federal death row.

Mr Barr is to allow the prison authorities to use the single drug Pentobarbital in place of a three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions. The drug is a potent sedative that slows down the body, including the nervous system, to the point of death.

The five executions to be scheduled would take place at the US Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, and additional executions would take place at a later date, the justice department said.

For more than a decade and a half, the federal death penalty was mostly an afterthought. Although there was no formal moratorium on the procedure, as there was in some states where opposition to executions has been growing, a combination of administrative inertia, protracted appeals processes, practical obstacles and the relatively few number of federal death-row inmates combined to grind executions to a de-facto halt.

The Trump administration now wants to change that, even if a shortage of the drugs used in lethal injections remains a significant obstacle.

The president has expressed a harsh attitude toward convicted criminals in the past, claiming that they are treated too gently and given too many opportunities to appeal against their sentences.

While a majority of Americans say they still favour the death penalty in certain instances, opinion surveys indicate that the American public is turning against capital punishment, with a particular eye toward allegations that it is frequently unjustly imposed.

That suggests that while the Trump administration's announcement will draw some sharp criticism from activists, it is unlikely to cause significant political waves.

Capital punishment in the US
  • The death penalty is a legal punishment in 29 US states
  • Since 1976, Texas has carried out the most executions (561), followed by Virginia (113) and Oklahoma (112)
  • There are 2,673 inmates on death row in the US
  • California has the most prisoners on death row - 733 - but has carried out only 13 executions since 1976
  • The annual number of death sentences fell by 85% between 1998 and 2018 - from 295 to 43
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
It sounds like a Falun Gong stunt.

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Police release data on alleged rape by Chinese businessman
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July 24, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Police who were called to a report of an alleged rape by Chinese billionaire and JD.com founder Richard Liu last August initially decided to release him because it was unclear to them if a crime had occurred, according to investigative files released Wednesday that include conflicting statements from the woman and Liu.

But later that day, Liu was arrested and booked into the county jail on suspicion of felony rape after the woman, a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota, reported details and said Liu forced himself on her after a night of drinking. He was released the next day and ultimately
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after prosecutors said there were problems with evidence.

The data released Wednesday by the Minneapolis Police Department offers a glimpse into the investigation and shows how Liu, the woman, a limo driver, Liu's assistants and others gave conflicting versions of what happened. The data includes police reports, interview transcripts, 911 transcripts, a recorded interview with Liu, text messages and
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. The documents show the woman threatened to go to the media if she did not get money and an apology from Liu.

The alleged assault happened on Aug. 31 when Liu, 46, was in Minneapolis for a weeklong residency as part of the University of Minnesota's doctor of business administration China program, geared toward high-level executives in China.

The woman, Jingyao Liu, alleged Richard Liu and other wealthy Chinese executives coerced her to drink during a dinner party. She told police that Liu then made unwanted advances in his limousine and later raped her at her apartment. The Associated Press does not generally name alleged victims of sexual assault, but her attorney Wil Florin has said she agreed to be named. She was 21 at the time.

She
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
and his company in April. That case is pending.

The data released Wednesday shows police went to the apartment and found Richard Liu lying on the bed wearing only a T-shirt. Police handcuffed him, helped him get dressed and took him to a squad car.

What followed, according to the documents, was a patchwork of conflicting stories and changing accounts.

That night, Jingyao Liu told one officer, "I was raped but not that kind of rape," according to police reports. When asked to explain, she changed the subject and said Richard Liu was famous and she was afraid. She told the officer the sex was "spontaneous" and that she did not want police to get involved.

According to the data, officers released Richard Liu because "it was unclear if a crime had actually taken place" and they couldn't establish probable cause.

In a later interview with an investigator, Richard Liu said the sex was consensual and that the woman "enjoyed the whole process very much."

Jill Brisbois, an attorney for Richard Liu, said in a statement that the evidence reaffirms their belief that Liu is innocent. She said the police reports and videos fully dispel "misinformation and unsubstantiated speculation" and support prosecutors' decision not to file charges.

Florin said police body camera footage shows Jingyao Liu initially said she was raped — but after Richard Liu gave her an angry look, she told police she was afraid of his power and retracted her initial statement. The body camera video was not retained by police after 90 days because it contained "nothing evidentiary," said police spokesman John Elder. Florin did not provide the video to the AP.

According to a transcript of a police interview, the woman said Liu kissed her and tried to take off her clothes in the limo, and she tried to push him away. She said she didn't know where they were going and was afraid, so she asked to go to her apartment. There, she said, Richard Liu tried to take off her clothes over her protests, tried to pull her into the shower and eventually raped her.

She told police that she begged him, "Please, please ... I don't want to do this."

She also told police she wanted Liu to apologize, and she threatened to go to the media if she didn't hear from Liu's attorney. Transcripts show she spoke with Brisbois and asked for an apology and money.

In a roughly 30-minute interview with an investigator, Richard Liu said the woman invited him to her apartment, where she initiated sex acts and helped him shower. He said it was clear she "want to make love with me."

Officers also interviewed Liu's employees and the limo driver. According to transcripts, one assistant said Richard Liu and the woman were intimate and she didn't seem distressed.

However, the driver said when the pair was outside the limo, Richard Liu "grabbed" and seemed to overpower the woman, and brought her into the vehicle. He said he looked in the mirror and saw "this guy was all over this girl." He said Liu's assistant adjusted his mirror. He told police he heard kisses and moaning but didn't hear anyone say "No." The driver said he didn't know if the activity was consensual, according to a transcript.

Richard Liu, known in Chinese as Liu Qiangdong, is a prominent member of the Chinese tech elite, with a fortune of $7.5 billion. He is part of a generation of entrepreneurs who have created China's internet, e-commerce, mobile phone and other technology industries since the late 1990s. The son of peasants, Liu built a Beijing electronics shop into JD.com, China's biggest online direct retailer, selling everything from clothes to toys to fresh vegetables.
typical 碰瓷 (racketeering?)
 
now
Live Updates
Hong Kong: Riot police clash with protesters as Yuen Long march descends into violence
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picking this chart:
1 hr 10 min ago
Here's how many people have attended each protest
c7a68fa1-0b41-474c-a66d-6e2795b7600a.png
 
now noticed and watched
Published on Aug 1, 2019 The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) garrison in Hong Kong on Wednesday (Jul 31) posted a video on social media showcasing its military hardware in action, as well as an "anti-riot" drill in which armed soldiers disperse a crowd of protesters. The video is seen as a thinly veiled warning to the city's pro-democracy movement:
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Franklin

Captain
Revenge for the Opium Wars ? :D

Trump accuses China's Xi of failing to halt fentanyl exports to U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday accused his Chinese counterpart of failing to meet promises to stem a deluge of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States, after months of praising Chinese President Xi Jinping for his pledges.

“My friend President Xi said that he would stop the sale of fentanyl to the United States - this never happened and many Americans continue to die,” Trump said in a tweet.

“We’re losing thousands of people to fentanyl,” he later told reporters.

The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin, and has a central role in the devastating U.S. opioid crisis. In the United States, fentanyl and all of its analogues are controlled substances subject to strict regulation.

More than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths, mostly from fentanyl related substances, were recorded in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trump’s complaints came as he also announced a new round of tariffs on Chinese imports starting Sept. 1, after negotiators failed to make progress in U.S.-China trade talks.

Trump has made battling the opioid epidemic a priority since taking office and he pressed Xi to halt the flow of fentanyl and related substances from China, which U.S. officials say is the main source of the powerful synthetic opioids.

Xi promised Trump at a summit in Argentina last December that he would act.

China later announced that it expanded on May 1 the list of narcotics subject to state control to include the more than 1,400 known fentanyl analogues, which have slightly different chemical makeups but are all addictive and potentially deadly, as well as any new ones developed in the future.

The policy change was supposed to shut down the illicit production and online sales of the drugs, which are mainly delivered to the United States by mail.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said after Trump’s comments on Thursday that the administration had not “directly seen any large-scale seizures or law enforcement action by the Chinese on fentanyl.”

“Too many Americans do continue to die from these deadly drugs, most of which come from China,” it said in a statement. “We’ll continue to press China to follow through on the promise they made to keep fentanyl out of our communities.”

U.S. officials and experts had been skeptical that Beijing would take meaningful action, with some saying any crackdown would depend on progress in resolving the U.S.-China trade war.

Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said that skepticism was well placed.

“What the Chinese have effectively said is we should forget what they said just a few months ago. If they don’t like the trade situation, the fentanyl and related products will continue to flow,” he said in an email on Thursday.

“The Chinese government accuses us, with some reason, of not keeping strictly to our word,” he said. “When we back away from our word, the way they have here, does anyone die?”

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