West Philadelphia health center hit by looters for second time

For the second in four months, looters busted through Spectrum Community Health Center on 52nd and Haverford in West Philadelphia.

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  • Trump says it will be 'a very hard thing' to concede to Biden

    This was the first time Trump took questions from reporters since he lost the presidential election.

  • Operator of notorious South Korean online sex trafficking ring sentenced to 40 years

    A South Korean court has sentenced the operator of a vast online sex trafficking ring to 40 years in prison in a case that outraged the nation. Cho Ju-bin, 25, oversaw a group of 38 accomplices who befriended and then blackmailed at least 74 women into sharing explicit videos that were then posted in pay-per-view internet chat rooms. Sixteen of the victims were less than 16 years old, the age of consent in South Korea. The Seoul Central District Court on Thursday found Cho guilty of violating laws to protect minors from sexual abuse and of making a profit from producing and selling abusive footage, Yonhap News reported. Indicted on 14 criminal charges, including inducing another person involved in the trafficking ring to rape a teenage girl and concealing more than £70,000 in criminal proceeds, prosecutors had initially demanded a life sentence on the grounds of the “irreperable damage” Cho had caused his victims. They had also requested that he be obliged to wear an electronic monitoring device for 45 years. In a petition to the court, one of the women said Cho, who had worked in an orphanage and adopted the online name “The Doctor”, was “evil” and deserved a 2,000-year prison term. Passing sentence, the judge said: “The accused has widely distributed sexually abusive content that he created by luring and threatening many victims.” Media reports have suggested that some of the video clips showed a group of men raping a teenage girl in a motel room, while others included images of the word “slave” cut into a woman’s body. One video showed girls “barking like dogs”, the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper reported. Cho operated the chat room on the Telegram messenger service, with at least 10,000 people accessing the site and paying as much as £1,000 for access. Authorities have been tracing people who used the site and have identified serving police officers and teachers as among the users. Cho’s arrest in March sparked fury across South Korea after prosecutors initially refused to name the suspect before his trial opened. Within days, more than 5 million people had signed petitions on the home page of Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, demanding that the authorities withdraw his right to anonymity. A committee of senior judicial officials, a psychologist and a psychiatrist weighed the public’s right to know and took the unprecedented step of naming Cho. He was then brought out in handcuffs from a police station in central Seoul to face the public. “I apologise to those that I hurt”, Cho said. “Thank you for putting a brake on the life of a devil who could not be stopped.” South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has been the target of criticism for its failure to deal with the growing use of technology to carry out sex crimes, with one ministry official admitting that the case had been “a disaster” and apologising for its “lukewarm response” to online sexual abuse cases.

  • Florida governor accused of ‘killing spree’ after extending ban on cities from imposing own mask mandates

    Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava calls decision ‘deeply frustrating’

  • Biden's win hides a dire warning for Democrats in rural U.S.

    Democrats once dominated Koochiching County in the blue-collar Iron Range of northern Minnesota. “We’ve got to see if we can get the Democratic Party to moderate and accept the fact that rural Minnesota is not getting more conservative,” said Bakk, who announced last week that he would become an independent after serving 25 years as a Democrat. The party lost House seats in the Midwest, and Democratic challengers in Iowa, Kansas, Montana and North Carolina Senate races, all once viewed as serious threats to Republican incumbents, fell, some of them hard.

  • Coronavirus pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality, new data from UN suggests

    Economic and domestic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality, new United Nations data suggests. Lockdowns, job losses, school closures and dwindling income from the coronavirus have seen women take on significantly greater shares of housework and childcare. Employment and education opportunities are likely to be lost and women may suffer from poorer mental and physical health. "Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year," the UN Women deputy executive director Anita Bhatia told the BBC. Women's new burden of care posed a "real risk of reverting to 1950s gender stereotypes", she said.

  • S. Korea agency says N. Korea executed people, shut capital amid pandemic

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered at least two people executed, banned fishing at sea and locked down the capital, Pyongyang, as part of frantic efforts to guard against the coronavirus and its economic damage, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Friday.

  • Trump's national security advisor and his entourage were said to be treated as 'human petri dishes' in Vietnam, as the US COVID-19 outbreak worsens every day

    Robert O'Brien's airplane crew was also not allowed to enter Vietnam and had to spend the night in Thailand, Bloomberg reported.

  • Shawn Mendes says he used to trade sleep for 2-hour workouts out of fear that his fans would stop liking him if he wasn't in perfect shape

    The 22-year-old "Wonder" singer told British GQ that girlfriend Camila Cabello helped him to change his perspective on his body.

  • The Top 6 Black Friday Deals for Vacuums

    Cordless? Handheld? Robotic? We have you covered with all the best vacuum deals that you need to know aboutOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • ‘Isn’t this the language of a dictator?’: Trump confronted after press conference littered with misinformation

    US president doubles down on false election claims and angrily rebukes reporter

  • North Korea defectors: Loose screws at border blamed for gymnast crossing

    A former gymnast is thought to have jumped across the border fence undetected to flee to the South.

  • Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh assassinated

    An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb programme was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday, likely to provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump's presidency. Iran's armed forces chief of staff vowed "severe revenge" for those behind the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who died of injuries in hospital after armed assassins fired on his car, state media reported. "Terrorist groups and the leaders and the perpetrators of this cowardly attempt should know that severe revenge awaits them," he said Fakhrizadeh has long been described by Western countries as a leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of trying to restore in secret. Iran has long denied seeking to weaponise nuclear energy.

  • Americans 'won't stand' for election results not being honored: Biden

    US President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday that Americans "won't stand" for the results of the November 3 election not being honored.

  • Zoom nightmare come true: New Jersey school board member resigns after streaming bathroom break during meeting

    Stop taking Zoom into the bathroom. A New Jersey school board member accidentally broadcast her bathroom break during a board meeting and resigned.

  • North Korea executed people, shut capital in battle against Covid, South's spies say

    Kim Jong Un has also banned fishing and salt production at sea to prevent seawater from being infected with the virus, lawmakers were told.

  • Trump campaign caught sharing fake newspaper cover on election result

    In a now-deleted tweet, Tim Murtaugh attempted to mock the media for projecting Joe Biden as president-elect by sharing a doctored headline declaring ‘President Gore’ in 2000

  • Germany was super-efficient at containing the coronavirus first wave  – so what's gone wrong?

    As Germany passed the grim milestone of 1million coronavirus infections on Friday, the lustre of its success against the first wave was somewhat faded. In the spring, no major country in Europe was as effective at containing the virus, and Britain and others could only look on in envy. But the second wave has engulfed Germany along with the rest of Europe, and there is no more talk of a “German exception”. Daily new infections peaked at 23,648 last week — fewer than the 33,470 recorded in the UK on Nov 12, and far fewer than France’s bleak Nov 7 record of 86,852. But unlike in other European countries, where advances in treating the virus have resulted in fewer deaths, Germany has experienced a higher daily toll in the second wave. It recorded its highest 24-hour toll since the pandemic began on Wednesday, with 410. The previous record, set on April 16, was 315. Compare that to the UK figures and it is almost as if the roles have been reversed. Britain also recorded its highest toll of the second wave on Wednesday, with 695. But it saw 1,172 deaths in 24 hours on April 20. So has Germany got its response wrong this time, or has the virus just caught up with it? In part, there may simply be more deaths this time because there are more infections, say scientists.

  • France struggles to retain Karabakh sway after Armenia defeat

    President Emmanuel Macron faces a major challenge to retain France's influence over resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, needing to take account of the large Armenian minority in his country and accused by Azerbaijan of bias.

  • A bride wore a gold wedding dress with a plunging neckline that was covered in head-to-toe sparkles

    Karen Lima wore a sheer, backless gold Kyha Studios wedding dress that was covered in head-to-toe sparkles. She bought it without trying it on.

  • Trump snapped at a reporter quizzing him about his election defeat, saying 'Don't ever talk to the president that way'

    'You're just a lightweight ... I'm the president of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way,' Trump told a White House reporter.