Mihir Zaveri and Jacey Fortin

The report, “State of Black America,” was released by the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York. It underlined the Russian interference in particular but said black voting rights were under attack from a wide range of actors, including domestic politicians.

In about two dozen states, voting restrictions have gotten worse since 2010 because of changes including new voter identification laws and decisions to limit locations where voters can cast ballots, the report said.

The report’s findings on the Russian interference drew from academic research and federal investigations to highlight the campaign run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, which deployed thousands of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

One such account on Twitter, called @WokeLuisa, garnered more than 50,000 followers, and its posts were highlighted by dozens of news outlets, the report said.

The account sought to explicitly and implicitly discourage black voters from going to the polls in an effort to secure Republican victory, even as other Russian-backed efforts bolstered white extremism online, said Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League.

The FBI has warned that the threat of Russian interference in U.S. elections persists. Intelligence officials have said Russia interfered throughout the midterm elections last year, and that those efforts are likely to intensify during the next presidential campaign.

Bret Schafer, social media analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, wrote about the Russian interference in the report and described @WokeLuisa as one of many fake accounts that impersonated African-American people to exploit pre-existing animosity and discourage voting.

Citing data compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice, the report said that as of March, more than 40 states had passed or were considering bills expanding access to voting.

But domestic restrictions on voting, the vast majority of which are imposed by Republicans, proliferated in many states, the report found.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/us/russia-disinformation-black-activists.html" id="3bcc6da4-29b0-3bd6-a6a5-e903a19591b8">The New York Times</a>.

Russian disinformation operations to exploit racial tensions during the 2016 presidential election in the United States found firm ground in a country where legislators have long sought to suppress the black vote, according to a report released Monday.

Russian Efforts to Exploit Racial Divisions in 2016 Found Firm Ground in U.S., Report Says

Chief Jeff Baker of the UNCC Police and Public Safety Department said at a news conference that three of those injured were in critical condition. The fourth had less serious injuries, he said.

The police disarmed the suspect and took him into custody at a building on campus, Baker said. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department identified the suspect as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22. The police declined to elaborate on a possible motive for the shooting.

“One officer immediately went to the suspect to take him down,” Baker said.

He said the gunman did not say anything when he was taken into custody. “Our officers’ actions definitely saved lives,” he said.

Terrell was charged with two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, four counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, possession of a firearm on an educational property and discharging a firearm on an educational property.

Just before 6 p.m., the campus’ office of emergency management reported that shots were fired near the Kennedy Building, an administrative building in the middle of campus.

Katie Ballard, 24, a graduate student in gerontology, was sitting in a classroom in a nearby building when her professor stepped out. The professor came back in and said she heard somebody had been shot. Then an alert popped up on a projector screen at the front of the class saying that gunshots had been fired close by.

“Run, Hide, Fight,” the alert said. “Secure yourself immediately.”

Ballard ran with about 30 other students to an empty room nearby and locked the doors.

Ballard never heard any gunshots, but she heard helicopters buzzing while locked in the room. She heard students running up and down the halls. Through the window, she saw a man who had been shot in the abdomen. A handful of paramedics crouched around him, tending to his wounds.

“It was so surreal,” Ballard said. “I just felt all the blood leave my face. I felt there’s no way this is real.”

Eventually, she said, “the police came and knocked on the door, and we were all escorted out with our hands above our head.”

Videos posted on Twitter showed police officers running in one direction while students streamed in the other direction.

“We are in shock to learn of an active shooter situation on the campus of UNC Charlotte,” Vi Lyles, the mayor of Charlotte, said in a tweet. “My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives, those injured, the entire UNCC community and the courageous first responders who sprang into action to help others.”

It was the final day of classes for the school year, with graduation ceremonies scheduled for early May. Some students were getting ready for the summer break, and some were preparing to attend an on-campus concert featuring rapper Waka Flocka Flame, which was canceled after the shooting.

Joan F. Lorden, the school’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said at a news conference late Tuesday evening that the school had canceled final exams through Sunday.

“From today through the weekend,” she said, “everything academic is essentially canceled.”

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said at the news conference that the state would take a “hard look” at how such shootings could be prevented in the future.

“This is a tough day, but this university will get through it,” Cooper said. “One thing I do know is a student should not have to fear for his or her life when they are on our campuses.”

The episode was yet another in a series of deadly shootings that have made headlines across the United States. It happened three days after a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing a congregant there, and it came on the heels of anniversaries of other deadly school shootings. It has been a little more than one year since 17 people were killed in Parkland, Florida, and two decades since 13 were killed at Columbine High School in Colorado.

UNC Charlotte is a public university with an enrollment of about 30,000. It is the largest postsecondary educational institution in the Charlotte area.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/unc-charlotte-shooting.html" id="03d85fe9-f2c8-37ff-a7ba-0e081f8cb1ec">The New York Times</a>.

A man with a pistol walked into a classroom at the University of North Carolina Charlotte late Tuesday afternoon and opened fire, fatally shooting two people and injuring four others on the last day of classes, the authorities said.

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 Dead and 4 Wounded

The police disarmed the suspect and took him into custody at a building on campus, Baker said. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department identified the suspect as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, and said that charges were pending against him. The police declined to elaborate on a possible motive for the shooting.

Just before 6 p.m. Eastern time, the campus’ office of emergency management reported that shots were fired near the Kennedy Building, an administrative building in the middle of campus.

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

The police disarmed the suspect and took him into custody at the scene, Baker said. He did not name the suspect and declined to elaborate on a possible motive for the shooting.

“I can’t tell you the sadness of the entire community to know that a situation like this has occurred on our campus,” he said.

It was the final day of classes for the school year, and graduation ceremonies are scheduled for early May. Some students were getting ready for the summer break, and some were planning to attend an on-campus concert featuring rapper Waka Flocka Flame, which was canceled after the shooting.

“I’m horrified to hear about the shooting at UNC Charlotte,” U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, who represents the area, wrote on Twitter. “I encourage everyone to adhere to emergency personnel and stay safe. My office is monitoring the situation and my thoughts are with everyone on campus.”

The episode was one more in a series of deadly shootings that have made headlines across the United States. It happened three days after a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing a congregant there, and it came on the heels of anniversaries of other deadly school shootings. It has been a little more than one year since 17 people were killed in Parkland, Florida, and two decades since 13 were killed at Columbine High School in Colorado.

A man with a pistol opened fire on the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s campus on Tuesday, fatally shooting two people and injuring four others on the last day of classes, the authorities said.

The UNC Police Department said that three people were in critical condition, and that a fourth had non-life-threatening injuries.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that one suspect was in custody and that it did not believe there were other gunmen. The motive for the shooting was unclear.

Two people were fatally shot and at least four others injured at the University of North Carolina Charlotte on Tuesday, the last day of classes, authorities said.

The Mecklenburg County Emergency Services said on Twitter that two people had life-threatening injuries. Another was grazed by a bullet, and a fourth had an injury that was not from a gunshot, the agency said.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said one person was in custody and that it did not believe there were other gunmen.

“Run, Hide, Fight,” the office said in a tweet. “Secure yourself immediately.”

Aerial footage from television stations showed multiple police cars and officers on campus. At least one person could be seen being put on a stretcher.

It was the final day of classes for the school year; graduation ceremonies are scheduled for early May. Some students were getting ready for the summer break, and some were planning to attend an on-campus concert featuring rapper Waka Flocka Flame.

The episode was one more in a series of deadly shootings that have made headlines across the United States. It happened three days after a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing a congregant there.

And it came on the heels of anniversaries of other deadly school shootings; it has been a little more than one year since 17 people were killed in Parkland, Florida, and two decades since 13 were killed at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Two people were fatally shot and at least four others injured at the University of North Carolina Charlotte on the last day of classes, authorities said Tuesday evening.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that one person was in custody and that it did not believe there were other gunmen.

The Mecklenburg Emergency Services said on Twitter that two people had life-threatening injuries. It was not immediately clear if anyone was in custody.

The shooting took place three days after a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing a congregant.

Two people were fatally shot and at least four others injured in an attack at the University of North Carolina Charlotte on the last day of classes, authorities said Tuesday evening.

2 People Are Fatally Shot and 4 Are Injured in Attack at UNC Charlotte

The Hullibargers wanted it to be about the life of their son, Maison, not the manner of his death. They wanted to focus on a teenager who was opinionated and passionate and who they knew was a source of comfort to friends dealing with their own adversity.

They recalled the priest, the Rev. Don LaCuesta, taking notes. They anticipated uplifting words for the friends and relatives attending the funeral at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, where all six of their children were baptized and confirmed.

The homily that LaCuesta delivered at the church in Temperance, Michigan, about 10 miles north of Toledo, Ohio, on Dec. 8, four days after Maison died, did not resemble that conversation, the Hullibargers said Sunday. Instead, the priest spoke about how suicide was “against God who made us and everyone who loves us” but how Maison would still have a chance of salvation. A copy of the remarks he prepared show the word “suicide” appeared six times.

The family’s grief already seemed unbearable, but the homily’s focus on how he died made it worse. The episode, which gained widespread attention, prompted the Archdiocese of Detroit to say in a statement Saturday that LaCuesta would not preside over funeral services for the foreseeable future and would get help to become a better minister in difficult situations.

The news of what happened also put a spotlight on the tensions between traditionalist stances in the Roman Catholic Church about suicides and more nuanced thinking that has evolved over time about the issue, experts said.

“Maison didn’t deserve this. He basically called him a sinner in front of everybody,” Linda Hullibarger said. “We were just blindsided.”

In its statement, the archdiocese said the priest was trying to “offer a message of confidence in salvation.”

“The family wanted a homily based on how their loved one lived, not one addressing how he passed away,” the archdiocese said. “We also know the family was hurt further by Father’s choice to share Church teaching on suicide, when the emphasis should have been placed more on God’s closeness to those who mourn.”

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large at America Magazine, which covers news relevant to Catholics, said the homily for Maison was a “pastoral disaster.”

“The purpose of the homily in the funeral rite is to speak about not only the person’s life but the resurrection and the promise of new life of that person,” he said. “It’s to offer consolation and hope to the family of the deceased.”

LaCuesta, who was ordained in 2006 and who joined the parish in 2013, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday. The archdiocese shared the remarks he had prepared.

“If we Christians are right in believing that salvation belongs to Jesus Christ, that it does not come from us — and that our hand cannot stop what God allows for us, then yes, there is hope in eternity even for those who take their own lives,” the homily reads. “Having said that, I think that we must not call what is bad good, what is wrong right. Because we are Christians, we must say what we know is the truth — that taking your own life is against God who made us and against everyone who loves us. Our lives are not our own. They are not ours to do with as we please.”

The homily would go on to say, “Nothing — not even suicide — can separate us from the unconditional love of God.”

For the Roman Catholic Church and other religious institutions in the United States, self-harm is an increasingly pertinent issue. In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a steady rise in the national suicide rate, up 25 percent from 1999 to 2016. It is now the 10th leading cause of death in the country.

Under historical Catholic doctrine, suicide was generally considered a mortal sin and those who took their own lives were denied salvation, experts said.

But interpretations have changed with time. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a doctrinal text approved by Pope John Paul II in 1992, suicide is an affront to God’s love.

But the document adds that “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide,” and “we should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives” because God may grant them the opportunity to repent.

The Rev. Ronald Rolheiser, president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, said the 1992 catechism essentially formalized changes in the Catholic Church’s thinking that had been occurring for 50 years.

Mathew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, said that there is still a divide within the Catholic Church between traditionalists who take a hard line on suicide, and those with a more nuanced understanding. He said the traditionalist view is more common internationally, and that for example, in India, people have been denied Christian burials if they died by suicide.

“There’s all these kinds of clashes that you have in Catholicism now because it’s so ideologically divided,” he said.

The Hullibargers said they had not discussed with LaCuesta how Maison had died, and they do not know how he found out. Jeff Hullibarger said at one point he got up and futilely asked LaCuesta to stop partway through the homily.

The Hullibargers declined to discuss how Maison died. They said it was not necessarily the content of the Catholic teachings that offended them, but the priest’s actions.

“Our purpose is to know that no other family, no other parent, nobody ever has to go through this again,” Linda Hullibarger said.

[If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.]

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/us/maison-hullibarger-suicide-funeral.html" id="44e00360-8964-335c-ad34-310249f7a045">The New York Times</a>.

Days before the funeral for their son, who at the age of 18 took his own life, Jeff and Linda Hullibarger met with their parish priest to discuss the homily to be given.

Priest Pulled From Funerals After Repeatedly Citing Teenager's Suicide in 'Pastoral Disaster'

The archdiocese apologized and said in its statement that the priest was trying to “offer a message of confidence in salvation.”

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large at America magazine, which covers news relevant to Catholics, said the homily for Maison was a “pastoral disaster.”

The report, “State of Black America,” was released by the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York. It underlined the Russian interference in particular but said that black voting rights were under attack from a wide range of actors, including domestic politicians.

The report’s findings on the Russian interference drew from academic research and federal investigations to highlight the huge campaign run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, which deployed thousands of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

One such account on Twitter, called @WokeLuisa, garnered more than 50,000 followers, and its posts were highlighted by dozens of prominent news outlets, the report said.

“It was targeted; it was focused,” Morial said. “It’s intentionally pouring gasoline on racial division.”

The FBI has warned that the threat of Russian interference in U.S. elections persists. Intelligence officials have said that Russia interfered throughout the midterm elections last year, and that those efforts are likely to intensify during the next presidential campaign.

Bret Schafer, social media analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative to combat efforts to undermine democratic institutions that is housed at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote about the Russian interference in the report and described @WokeLuisa as one of many fake accounts that impersonated African-American people to exploit pre-existing animosity and discourage voting.

“It’s moving the dial just a couple of degrees in the direction they want it to go,” Schafer said in an interview. “The anonymity of the internet allows you to be whoever you want to be, and of course you’re going to be far more persuasive if that target audience thinks you’re one of them.”

The report also outlined domestic efforts to both empower and disenfranchise minority voters.

Citing data compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice, the report said that as of March, more than 40 states had passed or were considering bills expanding access to voting, for instance by easing the voter registration process, expanding early voting and giving voting rights to felons.

But domestic restrictions on voting, the vast majority of which are imposed by Republicans, proliferated in many states, the report found. Such moves reflect rising partisanship, societal shifts toward greater diversity and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Morial said it was not possible to disentangle the Russian interference campaign from other factors that determined black voter turnout in the 2016 election, since both involved racial targeting.

Joel Ford, a former Democratic state senator in North Carolina who was a sponsor of a voter identification bill there, disagreed. “I think that those are two separate issues,” he said. “One is something that we as Americans can control through the legislative process, and the other is foreign interference in our elections.”

Ford said that as an African American man, he was sensitive to discriminatory voter suppression tactics. But he called blanket opposition to voter identification laws “an unnecessary political wedge,” in part because it is a state-by-state issue, and laws can be crafted to minimize discrimination.

He added that photo identification was already necessary for activities like banking or flying, and that the bill he supported in North Carolina allowed voters to obtain photo identification cards at no cost. (That bill passed in December after the Legislature overrode the Democratic governor’s veto. Monday’s report named North Carolina as one of the states where voting restrictions have gotten worse.)

The report, which is now in its 43rd annual edition, featured more than 30 other essays written by various authors, including scholars, politicians and corporate executives.

It also recommended a number of policy changes, including automatic voter registration, the creation of a national commission to “identify and eliminate foreign interference in the American democratic process,” and postelection auditing to compare paper ballots to computerized tabulations.

And Morial said he hoped Congress would hold hearings on Russian efforts to target black voters.

“I tell people: Russia today, China tomorrow, Saudi Arabia next week,” he said. “Every country that wants to influence and impact us is going to be playing in our elections.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="3bcc6da4-29b0-3bd6-a6a5-e903a19591b8" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/us/russia-disinformation-black-activists.html">The New York Times</a>.

Russian efforts to exploit racial divisions in 2016 found firm ground in U.S., report says

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Pulse Ghana is the most followed news and entertainment platform, informing and engaging young Ghanaians round the clock, providing updates by the hour.

Mihir Zaveri and Jacey Fortin

Articles written by the author

Russian Efforts to Exploit Racial Divisions in 2016 Found Firm Ground in U.S., Report Says

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 Dead and 4 Wounded

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

Shooting at UNC Charlotte Leaves 2 People Dead

2 People Are Fatally Shot and 4 Are Injured in Attack at UNC Charlotte

Priest Pulled From Funerals After Repeatedly Citing Teenager's Suicide in 'Pastoral Disaster'

Priest Pulled From Funerals After Repeatedly Citing Teenager's Suicide in 'Pastoral Disaster'

Russian efforts to exploit racial divisions in 2016 found firm ground in U.S., report says