NYC moves reverse stop-frisk decision
NEW YORK – Attorneys for New York City asked a federal appeals court to vacate a judge’s orders that require the police department to change its stop-and-frisk practice that critics argue unfairly targets minorities.
The city said Saturday in filings with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin’s orders this summer should be thrown out largely for the same reasons a three-judge panel of the appeals court gave in staying her decision on Oct. 31, pending an appeal.
The panel stayed her order and removed her from the case, saying she misapplied a related case ruling that allowed her to take the stop-and-frisk case and gave media interviews during the trial, calling her impartiality into question.
Scheindlin ruled in August that the city violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of blacks and Hispanics by disproportionally stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking them. She assigned a monitor to help the New York Police Department change its policy and training programs regarding the tactic.
Countries to begin global-warming talks
WARSAW, Poland – Climate envoys from rich countries, emerging economies and low-lying nations at risk of being swamped by rising seas will meet in Poland for the next two weeks to lay the groundwork for a new global-warming pact.
Though no major decisions are expected at the conference starting Monday in Warsaw’s National Stadium, the level of progress could be an indicator of the world’s chances of reaching a deal in 2015. That’s the new watershed year in the U.N.-led process after a 2009 summit in Copenhagen ended in discord.
Climate change is “very, very scary stuff. And evidence is accumulating weekly, monthly as to how dangerous this will be. So there is a huge urgency that we get on with this,” said Andrew Steer, the head of the World Resources Institute in Washington.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sponsored body that provides the scientific basis for the negotiations, said in September with more certainty than before that humans are warming the planet, mainly through carbon emissions from the burning of oil, coal and gas.
Associated Press
