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    • Video of Miners Shot by South African Police

    By THE NEW YORK TIMES

    As our colleague, Lydia Polgreen reports, at least 18 striking miners were shot dead on Thursday by South African police who opened fire as a crowd approached, carrying machetes and sticks at Lonmin's platinum mine in Marikana.

    News camera crews were at the mine covering the labor unrest when the shooting began. A camera crew from eNewsChannel in South Africa captured this video, which shows graphic images of police firing into the crowd.

    Graphic images from a platinum mine where South African police opened fire on striking miners, carrying machetes and sticks. Courtesy of eNews Channel Africa



    Russia Assigns Bodyguards to Judge Ahead of Verdict in Pussy Riot Trial

    By ANDREW ROTH and ROBERT MACKEY

    MOSCOW â€" Russian authorities announced on Thursday that bodyguards have been assigned to protect the judge presiding over the trial of three members of the all-female protest band Pussy Riot, after unspecified threats. The authorities did not describe the threats to the judge, Marina Syrova, who is expected to announce a verdict and possible jail terms for the women on Friday.

    The women have been in jail since March, shortly after the band staged an audacious protest against Russian leader Vladimir Putin inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The group posted a recording of that performance on YouTube, showing five women wearing brightly colored balaclavas, staging an impromptu performance before the alter of the cathedral, punctuated with three cries of, “Holy Mother, send Putin packing!”

    A copy of video originally posted on YouTube by members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot shows the group's “punk prayer service” in a Moscow cathedral in February.

    The reported threats against the judge underlined the growing prominence of the case, which has attracted international attention, in part because a host of musicians - from Franz Ferdinand to Madonna to Peaches - have denounced the trial as an unwarranted assault on freedom of speech and expression.

    Close observers of the Russian political and legal system say that despite the international pressure, there is little chance that the three women - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30 - will walk free on Friday. “Imagine some 500 people and journalists are gathered near the courthouse and then they walk out triumphantly like victors,” said Zoya Svetova, a reporter who covers the courts for The New Times, an independent Moscow weekly. “That would b e impossible for Putin's system.”

    As The New Times reports, Paul McCartney added his name on Thursday to the list of Pussy Riot supporters, publishing a letter to the three women on his Web site. “Dear Nadya, Katya & Masha,” the former Beatle wrote. His letter continued:

    I'm writing to show my support for you at this difficult time. I would like you to know that I very much hope the Russian authorities would support the principle of free speech for all their citizens and not feel that they have to punish you for your protest. Many people in the civilized world are allowed to voice their opinions and as long as they do not hurt anyone in doing so I believe this is the best way forward for all societies. I hope you can stay strong and believe that I and many others like me who believe in free speech will do everything in our power to support you and the idea of artistic freedom.

    While there is no sign that the Russian president is a fan of the American riot grrrl movement that inspired the members of Pussy Riot, Mr. Putin is known to be a lover of rock music from an earlier era. In 2009, his spokesman wrote to The Times of London to deny a report that Mr. Putin had imported an Abba tribute band for a command performance. In the letter, the spokesman wrote: “Mr. Putin is more of a Beatles fan than an Abba one.” A year earlier, Mr. Putin had expressed his admiration for the Beatles in an interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber. “Several generations of Russians were brought up on and had a special feeling for The Beatles,” the Russian leader told the composer. “Some years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul McCartney. Their songs are still at the summit.”

    Regular readers of The Lede might recall that Mr. Putin gave another clue to his musical tastes in late 2009, when he took to the stage during a benefit concert for children with cancer in St. Petersburg to sing “Blueberry Hill.”

    Video of Vladimir Putin's rendition of “Blueberry Hill,” at a benefit concert in St. Petersburg in 2009.

    It is not surprising that many consider the Pussy Riot verdict a foregone conclusion. The Moscow city court system had only a 0.7 percent acquittal rate in criminal trials in 2011, handing down not-guilty verdicts in just 239 of the 35,626 cases tried in court that year. Instead, most are waiting to see whether the judge will grant a prosecutor's request to deliver sentences of three years in a prison colony.

    The authorities have sent mixed signals. Mr. Putin set the odds for a spin when he told journalists this month in London that the young women should “not be judged too harshly.” In the same interview, however, he said that there was nothing good about their stunt in the church and that the decision was up to the court. Some supporters of the women interpreted the president's remarks as pa rt of a ruse to make the prosecution seem independent of political considerations.

    Russians, meanwhile, are divided over the trial. While a mere 5 percent of respondents polled last month by the Levada Center said that the women should be let off without punishment, only 15 percent supported a jail term of more than two years. Most, called for a lighter punishment, and 29 percent said the women should be sentenced to community service.

    Anastasia Volochkova, a former prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet known for her sharp, often unprintable comments, wrote on her blog that the trial was damaging the Church's public image. “The Church should call on them to publicly repent, and let them fight for truth, cleaning public toilets until they shine!!!”

    She was not the only one to suggest an unorthodox punishment. As our colleague David Herszenhorn reported, the case has driven a wedge between members of the Russian Orthodox Church as well.

    The Rev. Ale ksandr L. Ptitsyn, of Moscow's Church of the Exultation of the Cross, told The Times this month that the women would probably have been given “a slap” on the behind if they had performed in his Church without stirring up huge publicity, but because they made efforts to publicly offend the church he said a two-year suspended sentence was more appropriate.

    In his defense of the women in March, the protest leader Aleksei Navalny, a Christian, called on the Russian Orthodox Church to “display mercy and forgive the silly girls, ask for their immediate release before trial, and hold an educative conversation with them when they are released.”

    Under Russian law, the charges against the women - hooliganism motivated by religious hatred - carry a maximum penalty of seven years in jail. Ms. Svetova, the New Times reporter, said that the requested three-year sentence was more likely â€" but that anything was possible. The judge “could give four years â€" it has ha ppened before. But my prognosis is that it will be less,” she said.

    The trial has also raised concerns about the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the state. The Russian news site Gazeta.ru reports on Thursday that the city of Omsk “banned a Zombie Walk at the request of local diocese, Interfax reports, citing walk organizer Mikhail Yakovlev.” Mr. Yakovelev connected the banned walk to the prosecution of the musicians, noting: “both in the Pussy Riot case and in ours we see that the church is interfering not only with the matters of state, but also in criminal cases and cultural issues.”

    Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos Oil and once Russia's richest man, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on tax charges in 2005 and then had his prison sentence extended to 2017, offered little in the way of a prediction. In an open letter to the three women on trial, he wrote: “I want to hope that your prison experience will end s oon.”

    In his statement, Mr. Khodorkovsky also noted that the women are being prosecuted in the same courtroom, and seated behind the same glass enclosure, used in his trial.

    It is painful to watch what is taking place in the Khamovnichesky Court of the city of Moscow, where Masha, Nadya, and Katya are on trial. The word “trial” is applicable here only in the sense in which it was used by the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages.

    I know this aquarium in courtroom number 7 well â€" they made it especially for me and Platon, “just for us”, after the ECHR had declared that keeping defendants behind bars is degrading and violates the Convention on Human Rights.



    Police Video on Handcuffed Man\'s Death Does Little to Calm Doubts

    By CHRISTINE HAUSER

    This police video was intended to show how a handcuffed man could shoot himself in the head.

    The police in Jonesboro, Ark., have released a video that they say shows how a 21-year old man, Chavis Carter, could have been able to shoot himself in the head while handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car. But the video appeared to do little to calm the skepticism that continues to swell on social media networks after Mr. Carter was fatally shot on July 29.

    The police are preparing to release, possibly later on Thursday, another video extracted from a dashboard camera in the patrol car where Mr. Carter was placed after his arrest, Sgt. Lyle Waterworth, with the Jonesboro Police Department, said.

    Protests and petitions have been circulated online and calls for the resignation of the Jonesboro police chief, Michael Yates, and for the records of the officers involv ed in Mr. Carter's arrest to be made public have accelerated in the wake of Mr. Carter's death. Some have compared the case of Mr. Carter, who is black and from Tennessee, to that of Trayvon Martin, the black youth shot and killed by a crime watch volunteer in Florida earlier this year.

    Early on Thursday, a Federal Bureau of Investigation regional spokeswoman, Kimberly Brunell, said the agency was “monitoring” developments related to the death but it has not announced the start of an official investigation.

    The video, which is just over two minutes and was released on Wednesday, was not intended to serve as evidence that Mr. Carter shot himself in the head, but instead to show that it was possible, according to a statement broadcast in the initial frames of the footage. It then shows several officers demonstrating, one after another, by twisting around and putting a gun to their heads, with their right hands, while handcuffed.

    A Memphis television channel, WREG, showed the video to Mr. Carter's mother, who made it apparent that the demonstration did little to convince her.

    In an earlier interview with the channel soon after his death, she said her son was left-handed and that she believed the police killed him

    Mr. Carter was arrested on a street in Jonesboro at about 9:50 p.m. after the vehicle he was in was stopped by the police. A Jonesboro police statement said that a small amount of marijuana and bags “commonly used to package drugs” were discovered in his pocket. After officers learned Mr. Carter had a warrant active in Mississippi, he was searched again and handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car.

    Officers “noted the smell of something burning” and then “noticed Carter unresponsive with a quantity of blood on him,” the statement said. A .380 caliber Cobra semiautomatic firearm was “discovered,” and a “projectile” was found in the back seat, it said.

    Sgt. Waterworth added in a telephone call that the two officers involved in the man's arrest were put on paid administrative leave.

    Mr. Carter's death inspired inquiries into the past records of the officers in the department. A local Arkansas n ews outlet, KAIT8.com and Region 8 News, published the records of the policemen involved in arresting Mr. Carter. The Arkansas Times blog also dredged up the records of the police chief and the controversy that has surrounded his previous police work in Georgia.

    A Facebook page called Justice for Chavis Carter, which had nearly 2,000 members, circulated online petitions calling for a full investigation into the death.

    The finalcall.com newspaper and Web site also interviewed Mr. Carter's mother, who said:

    “I'm just heartbroken. I just want to know what really happened. … My child was never suicidal. He would never kill himself. My son was full of joy, full of life, full of ambition.”



    Justice Dept. Approves, With Changes, Verizon Wireless Spectrum Purchase

    August 16, 2012, 11:59 am
    By AMY CHOZICK

    The United States Justice Department approved a deal struck by Verizon Wireless to purchase spectrum from the country's largest cable operators, but officials also required that the agreement be altered to protect against higher prices for consumers.

    The department said that the deal, unamended, could hinder quality and lead to higher costs. Verizon will pay $3.6 billion for wireless airwaves owned by Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks.

    Its decision comes after an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission into whether the spectrum transfer adhered to antitrust laws. Final approval will still be subject to the F.C.C.

    The spectrum purchase won't j ust allow Verizon to expand its wireless data network, but will also allow the cable partners to market their services in Verizon retail stores. The agreements could speed the way to cellphone, cable, Internet and home phones (if those still exist) appearing on a single monthly bill.

    Comcast has already set up branded kiosks in select Verizon Wireless stores to offer customers discounts if they sign up for the cable company's “triple play” of Internet, phone and cable service upon purchasing a Verizon mobile device.

    “We are pleased that the consent decree that we have negotiated with the Department of Justice preserves the most important goals of the agreements, including Comcast's ability to market Verizon Wireless services,” David L. Cohen, Comcast's executive vice president said in a statement.

    Amy Chozick is The Times's corporate media reporter. Follow @amychozick on Twitter.



    Videos of Top Teachers Explaining Their Craft

    By MOTOKO RICH

    Victoria Tyson, a top performing 10th-grade world history teacher at School Without Walls in Washington, D.C., shares her teaching tips.

    Teachers are human, after all, and they don't like to be bored any more than the rest of us.

    As we report, teachers in the Washington, D.C., public schools can now watch their best performing colleagues at work in the classroom.

    Instead of setting up a camera at the back of the room and film a whole class, C-Span style, the district teamed up with a reality television company. The result is a collection that showcases a range of teachers, subjects and grade levels. In interviews filmed in a style familiar to anyone who's watched “Survivor” or “The Bachelor,” the teachers explain a little about what they are trying to get their students to learn, and then quick jump cuts land on snippets from the classroom.

    Most of the videos will be available only to Washington teachers who have access to a password protected portal. Jill Nyhus, senior director of technology in Washington, said that the district wanted to show parents and teaching recruits, though, a few samples of what happens in D.C. classrooms. So, the district has made a few available on its Web site and YouTube.

    There is Aika Aggarwal, a fourth-grade teacher at Turner Green Elementary, delivering a lesson on decimals.

    As much as showing the content of the classes, the videos help teachers identify techniques for organizing a lesson or eliciting sophisticated questions from students.

    In this video, the preschool teacher Scott Harding demonstrates how he explains “content clearly” to his young students at Maury Elementary School.

    The District of Columbia is not the only public school district or educational organization that is using video for the professional develop ment of teachers. Teaching Channel, a nonprofit, has amassed more than 500 videos of teachers who are recommended by school districts, teaching organizations and a panel of advisers.

    On one of its videos on YouTube, Loredana Wicketts has multiple objectives in her fourth-grade history lesson about Harriet Tubman.

    And several charter management organizations, which have tried to anatomize some teaching technique into a science as much as an art, rely heavily on video to help train new recruits.

    Uncommon Schools, which runs 32 schools, mostly in Brooklyn and Newark, show videos like these during teacher training.

    A YouTube video shows Juliana Worrell, a first-grade teacher, with her students at North Star Academy Vailsburg Elementary School.

    KIPP, one of the most well-known charter school chains, last year filmed 10 of its exemplary teachers from around the country and is in the process of building a library for all KIPP teachers.



    Pinterest Rolls Out Android and iPad Apps

    Pinterest, the social networking service where people "pin" content from around the Web on a virtual board, released versions of its mobile app for Android devices and the iPad.

    Daily Report: Germans Reopen Facebook Privacy Inquiry

    German data protection officials have reopened an investigation into Facebook's use of facial recognition software. It could lead to fines against the social network giant.

    Getting a Jump on iPhone Upgraders

    From now until Apple introduces the new iPhone, expected to be Sept. 12, consumers are likely to get the best prices online for their old phones, according to Gazelle, a Web site that buys old iPhones and other gadgets and resells them.

    Today\'s Scuttlebot: Mars on View, and Odes to Minecraft

    The technology reporters and editors of The New York Times scour the Web for important and peculiar items. Wednesday's selection includes a Curiosity Rover app and song parodies from fans of the game Minecraft.

    Boundary: Keeping Cloud Software in Shape

    Cloud-based applications feed off new data, check into different machines and deal with servers around the world. A start-up, Boundary, hopes to make a Big Data play out of mapping all this near chaos, improving performance and eventually predicting where there might be trouble.

    Volunteers Rescue Livestock From Raging Wildfire in Washington State

    August 15, 2012, 10:14 pm
    By JENNIFER PRESTON

    The Kittitas County Fairgrounds in central Washington State was being prepared for the arrival of hundreds of horses for the annual 4-H Horse Show this weekend when it suddenly became a crisis center for livestock caught in a wildfire that has consumed more than 28,000 acres since Monday.

    Hundreds of goats, horses, cows, sheep and other livestock have been brought to the fairgrounds. At least 70 homes have been destroyed in the area and more than 500 people have been evacuated from what is being called the Taylor Bridge Fire. The fire is burning near the city of Cle Elum in Kittitas County, about 80 miles southeast of Seattle, and is one of more than 50 wildfires now burning across the Western United S tates.

    The Washington Department of Natural Resources posted a photo on Twitter showing an aerial view of the fire, which was only 10 percent contained on Wednesday.

    There have been no reported injuries but authorities are concerned that livestock and wild animals may have died in the fire, despite efforts by volunteers who brought horse trailers and trucks on rural roads to rescue stray animals. The rescued animals were brought to the fairground, where more volunteers had arrived to help care for them. Smaller animals were brought to nearby veterinarians.

    Meg Coyle, a reporter/anchor with King/5 News in Seattle, reported from the fairgrounds on Wednesday and shared multiple photos of animals on her Twitter stream.

    To help owners of the livestock find their animals, a Facebook group called the Taylor Bridge Fire Animal Recovery page has been started.

    The Seattle Times is reporting that 800 firefighters are now on the ground battling the fire, which was only 10 percent contained on Wednesday. Officials believe the fire originated on Monday afternoon at a construction site by the Taylor Bridge near Cle Elum.



    U.N. Panel Blames Syrian Army and Militia for Houla Massacre

    By RICK GLADSTONE

    An independent panel appointed by the United Nations to investigate rights abuses in Syria said Wednesday that the government's armed forces and loyalist militias were responsible for the worst known atrocity in the conflict, a massacre of 108 villagers, nearly half of them women and children, in the western village of Houla on May 25.

    The Houla finding was contained in a highly incriminating 102-page report from the panel, created by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, that was based on testimony from hundreds of witnesses and survivors who had fled Syria, as well as medical evidence, satellite images and photographs, all of which contradicted the government's assertion that insurgents had carried out the massacre.

    The Syria panel's report also recited a litany of murders, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, crimes against children, sexual violence, pillaging and destruction that it sai d had been committed “pursuant to State policy” by the armed forces and thuggish militia members working with them, known as shahiba. The report asserted that the complexity and scale of these violations “indicate the involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the Government.”

    The complete text of the panel's report was made available online by the council. (Click at the lower right of the document viewer for an enlarged view.)

    A-HRC-21-50

    The Houla finding was particularly significant, because responsibility for that atrocity became immersed in conflicting claims that have come to define the maelstrom of misinformation presented by antagonists in the nearly 18-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

    The government and the insurgents reported diametrically opposite accounts of what happened in Houla, as they have in many other instances of mass killings in Syria.

    Mr . Assad said in an interview on German television last month that his armed opponents, whom he calls terrorists, had dressed up in Syrian army uniforms and carried out the Houla killings in order to vilify him and his government. Reports in the German press had also questioned whether Mr. Assad's critics had prematurely concluded the Houla killers were really supporters of Mr. Assad.

    The Syria panel's report also said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe that war crimes, including murder and torture, had been carried out by anti-Assad groups, but that their abuses “did not reach the gravity, frequene and scale of those committed by the Government forces and the shahiba.”

    Despite repeated requests by the Syria panel's chairman, Sergio Pinheiro, a veteran human rights investigator, Mr. Assad refused to grant the panel permission to enter Syria, which meant that all of its firsthand accounts were based on depositions from people who had left the coun try.

    Established in September 2011, Mr. Pinheiro's panel is to present its final report on Syria at the Human Rights Council session on Sept. 17.

    As The Lede noted last week, a reporter for the German magazine Der Spiegel visited Houla last month and returned with videotaped testimony from a number of witnesses who blamed shabiha militants for the killings.



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