Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, the Southern Poverty Law Center encouraged people to share details about potential hate crimes. By the next day, they’d received 250 reports – more than they’re used to seeing in six months. Then the FBI released its latest national tabulation, which showed a 67% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes. Those worried about the consequences of Trump’s triumph have seized on these reports to express concern over emboldened white nationalists.   read more

A male group resident was beaten to death by his caregiver after being accused of stealing cookies. Employees abused a female resident by binding her hands and ankles with duct tape, covering her head with a blanket and leaving her on a kitchen floor for hours. In many cases, the health and safety of residents has been left to unlicensed and scantly trained employees. The death toll has risen due to caregivers failing to promptly call 911, perform CPR or respond to medical emergencies.   read more

After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4%, to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015, according to the NHTSA. “This is a serious public safety concern for the nation,” said PCIAA VP Gordon. “We are all trying to figure out to what extent this is the new normal.”   read more

The FBI, CIA and NSA have 60 days to comply with the order that follows a 2012 case in which the FBI disclosed its efforts to monitor Occupy Wall Street activities. The FBI shared information about Occupy's plans with banks, businesses and local police, even as it acknowledged the protesters' nonviolent mission. "The government should not be investigating its citizens simply because they've raised their voices in dissent, whether it's against government or corporate policy," Hetznecker said.   read more

It's challenging because Twitter harassment often resembles online mob action, with numerous pseudonymous accounts ganging up to tweet vile messages at particular individuals. The alt-right movement drew national attention during the presidential campaign, especially after Stephen Bannon of the Breitbart website, considered by many to be the alt-right's platform, joined Donald Trump's campaign. Trump recently named Bannon as the White House chief strategist.   read more

"We will not accept proposals to roll back civil rights ... not on our watch," said LCCHR chief Wade Henderson. The selection of Bannon, a favorite of the alt-right and white nationalist movement, concerned many of the groups, which said they would be prepared to organize and mobilize if necessary. "This is not a good sign if we're talking about the unity of our nation," said Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.   read more

Cities across the country are enacting more bans on living in vehicles, camping in public and panhandling, despite federal efforts to discourage such laws. Cities listed in the report's "hall of shame" are in Colorado, Hawaii, Texas and Washington state. The report called several such policies unconstitutional. The group said panhandling is protected by free-speech rights and preventing sleeping in public could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.   read more

Brian Smothers told the Associated Press Wednesday the VA had opened two separate inquiries into his actions and tried to get him to sign a statement saying he had broken VA rules. He said he refused. Smothers also said the VA reassigned him to an office with no computer access, no significant duties and no social contact. He called the VA's actions punitive and his working conditions intolerable. He said he resigned as of Tuesday.   read more

Twitter said Tuesday that it is expanding a "mute" function that lets people mute accounts they don't want to see tweets from. But the company is also making it easier to report hateful conduct. Abuse can easily spread on Twitter due to its public, real-time nature, where tweets are easily amplified by retweets and users can easily and openly attack others. While Twitter prohibits specific conduct that targets people, this policy has not been enough to stomp out abuse.   read more

Some marketers have been left wondering if facts and reason matter less than they expected — a counterintuitive discovery in the age of information. DDB exec Clark said the election showed “facts are somewhat negotiable. Facts are sort of, ‘I might take them or I might not.' They’re certainly discretionary now, so there is that notion as a marketer and advertiser of understanding we live in a postfactual democracy.”   read more

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the new rule updates 30-year-old drilling regulations to meet modern standards and ensure that natural gas is used to power the economy — not wasted by being burned into the atmosphere. The new rule also should generate tens of millions of dollars a year that can be returned to taxpayers, tribes and states while reducing pollution. A new Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump could reconsider the rule or even scrap it.   read more

There is no doubt that as he rose in the ranks of a special police force in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, Khalimov received extensive taxpayer-funded military training from the U.S. to help counter drug-running and extremism along the border with Afghanistan. Now, Khalimov appears to have become the second senior commander of the Islamic State, the terrorist group he defected to last year, to have benefited from American military training provided to former Soviet states.   read more

During the past week, two of the world’s biggest internet companies have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome. Facebook was accused of swinging some voters in favor of Donald Trump through misleading and outright wrong stories that spread quickly via the social network. Google did not escape the glare: the top result on a Google search wrongly stated that Trump was ahead of Hillary Clinton in the popular vote.   read more

Stretching the rules to take pets into grocery stores, amusement parks and restaurants has become so commonplace that online merchants are selling official-looking service animal certificates and vests for as little as $50. The growing practice is insulting and harmful to those who genuinely require a service animal, said Karen Shirk. "Faking service dogs is one of the worst things anybody can do...[to] take advantage of something that was supposed to make a disabled person's life easier."   read more

Trump can now open the throttle on policies Obama set as limited but lawful for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention for terrorism suspects. Even in areas where Obama tried to terminate policies from the Bush era — such as torture and detention of Americans — he fought in court to prevent any ruling that they had been illegal. The absence of a definitive repudiation could make it easier for Trump lawyers to revive the policies.   read more

Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race has presented some companies with a new challenge: how to find the right balance in their post-election messages to employees and customers. Ben & Jerry's open letter to Trump said: "While we recognize that this is the outcome that many wanted, this is also an outcome that leaves half of our country feeling sadness and shock.” It reached 350,000 people on the company’s Facebook page and feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”   read more