Family Releases Video of Mentally Ill Man Killed by Fort Bend Officer




A video released Wednesday shows the last few minutes in the life of Michael Blair who died in a hail of gunfire last year from a Fort Bend County sheriff's deputy.

In the last seconds of the video, Blair - holding a knife but already struck several times by a stun gun - appears to stumble toward the deputy standing in the bathroom doorway at the family's Rosenberg-area home.

The deputy shouts for the man to stop, then begins firing.

The video appears to show the deputy continuing to shoot almost a dozen times, the pistol following Blair as he collapses to the floor.

Anguished screams from family members can be heard as they are hustled out of the home.

Community activist Quanell X on Wednesday called the shooting "nothing less than a cold-blooded execution."

Blair's family gave the video to the Houston media and said they intended to hand over a copy to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

It was never provided to local investigators, so was not taken into account by a Fort Bend County grand jury that declined to issue an indictment in the case.

A Fort Bend County Sheriff's official said the department could not comment on something it hasn't seen.

"We consider it evidence and it needs to be turned over to the proper authorities," said sheriff's spokesman Bob Haenel.

The deputy, an 11-year veteran, was sent to the home in the 7000 block of Dawn Bloom on Nov. 4, because Blair had locked himself in a bathroom and was threatening to harm himself, officials said.

Blair's family said they called 911 only after several hospitals told them that was the proper course in the case of someone who was possibly suicidal.

"All this family wanted was somebody to help. This young man did not have to die," the activist said, standing outside the U.S. Attorney's Office in downtown Houston.

The video shows the deputy standing with another officer in front of a closed bathroom door.

"If you don't open this door, we're going to kick it in," the deputy said.

"We want to do this the easy way. Don't make us do it the hard way."

After several attempts jiggling the knob, the door opens slightly, allowing the deputy to see inside the bathroom.

"He's got a knife. He's got a knife," the deputy yells, as the doors shuts again.

He kicked open the door and shouted at Blair to "Stay down. Stay down."

He told the other officer to use the Taser and continued ordering Blair to drop the knife.

The video shows the deputy trying to coax Blair to disarm himself, telling him he didn't want to shoot him.

"We're trying to help you. Let it (the knife) go. Do it now," the deputy said.

The confrontation lasted about 20 minutes.

"All we're asking is that someone recognize what we recognize - that was brutality," said Blair's mother, Kimberly Blair-Olaniyi.

Quanell X would not say why an apparently hidden camera was aimed at the bathroom door during the violent confrontation.

He said the family wanted to release the video after local investigations were concluded.

"These cases are always lies and truths are not told," he said. "We have a tape to expose those lying hypocrites."

The activist said the man's family wants a federal civil rights investigation into Blair's death and will likely file a lawsuit.

"We forgave that officer," Blair's mother said. "We want him to live a long life so he will always remember my son and how he murdered him in that bathroom."

The sheriff's office was creating a crisis intervention team and training the deputies to deal with mental health problems at the time Blair was fatally shot. Haenel said the 10-member team is now operational.

Read more at Source

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Samsung Unveils Galaxy S5 Smartphone


Today at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona, Samsung unveiled its latest flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S5. Samsung mobile honcho J.K. Shin opened the presentation by saying his company asked customers what they most wanted in a phone. The answers boiled down to a desire for simplicity, nice design, fitness features, long battery life and a good camera.

Here’s a list of most of the specs:

Screen

The phone sports a 5.1-inch OLED display – ever so slightly larger than the S4′s 5-inch display; the screen’s resolution remains unchanged at 1080p. Samsung has infused a couple of neat environment-specific features, such as the ability for the display to adjust its levels relative to your surrounding lighting conditions (indoors or outdoors, for example) and an extra low dimming mode for use in dark rooms or if you don’t want people looking at your screen from over your shoulder.

Battery

Samsung promises up to 10 hours of web surfing over an LTE cellular connection, or up to 12 hours of video playback. There’s a new “ultra power saving” mode that will shut down all but the most essential features and turn the screen to black and white, so when you’re just about out of juice, you’ll be able to squeak out enough usage to communicate in an emergency. Samsung says you’ll get up to 24 hours of usage with 10% of your battery left.

Cameras

The rear-facing camera gets a slight bump, jumping to 16 megapixels (up from 13 in last year’s model). Autofocus speed has been increased, and the actual image sensor is larger than the S4′s; it’s been paired with an image processing chip as well, and it’s capable of shooting 4K video. There’s also a “selective focus” feature that lets you finesse which areas of a photo receive more focus and which are blurred more for a DSLR-like look. Finally, there’s a real-time high dynamic range (HDR) mode that’ll let you preview what an HDR-enhanced photo would look like next to a non-HDR version of the same photo.

Build

“Aluminum? Finally aluminum?!” Sorry. No aluminum here this time around. The case is still polycarbonate – a fancy word for plastic. There’s a perforated back, though, which looks somewhat similar to the Galaxy Note 3. Color options include black, blue, white and gold.
Galaxy S5



The phone is also water- and dust-resistant. Samsung says you can watch videos in the tub, for instance, but that you shouldn’t submerge the phone underwater. Tough but fair.

On the back of the phone, right under the camera sensor, there’s an integrated heart-rate monitor — the first of its kind in a smartphone. Hold your finger against the monitor and it’ll tell you your pulse.

Data Connections

The Galaxy S5 sports fifth-generation Wi-Fi (a first for smartphones, says Samsung) that can be paired with the LTE cellular connection to accelerate overall download speeds.

Security

There’s an integrated fingerprint scanner appears on-screen above the home button. You’ll have to actually swipe your finger, so it’s different from Apple’s TouchID sensor. You can use the sensor to unlock the phone, log in to a handful of apps (such as PayPal), and to protect certain files and settings on the phone from others.

Software

The modifications made to stock Android (it’s running the latest version, 4.4.2 — Kit Kat) look flatter and somewhat less overwhelming than past efforts, with a thin, modern font and simple graphic app circles. Things generally look more grown-up than in past years. Not too grown up, though. It looks fun but not hokey.

Processor, Memory and Storage
samsung galaxy s5

Samsung

Samsung didn’t really touch on the Galaxy S5′s processor during its MWC presentation, so it’s likely that horsepower might vary by market: some phones might ship with Samsung’s own Exynos chips, while others might ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, for example. We’ll see 16- and 32-gigabyte storage options, but the amount of RAM hasn’t been revealed (it’s believed to be three gigabytes). We’ll know more once we get closer to launch.

Speaking of a launch date…

Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S5 will be available starting April 11 in 150 countries. No word on pricing, but here in the U.S., it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect the phone to start around $200 with a two-year contract and to be available on all major carriers.

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Source: Nelson Mandela on dialysis, but responsive

Crowds gather to support Mandela
Pretoria, South Africa (CNN) -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been getting kidney dialysis and opens his eyes when people talk to him, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said Friday.


Mandela, who is on life support, is not in a vegetative state, the source said.
The anti-apartheid icon has been hospitalized for nearly a month for a recurring lung infection.
Considered the founding father of South Africa's democracy, Mandela became an international figure while enduring 27 years in prison for fighting against apartheid, the country's system of racial segregation. He emerged from prison in 1990 and became the nation's first black president four years later.

His lung problems started during his years in prison under South Africa's now-defunct apartheid regime.
He was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on June 8, and since then, varying accounts of his medical condition have emerged.

His health had declined so sharply last week that his family was considering whether to take him off life support before his condition improved, a court document released Thursday revealed.


The document, known as a certificate of urgency, was filed by his family on June 26 in a burial dispute.
It stated that Mandela, 94, had "taken a turn for the worst and that the Mandela family have been advised by the medical practitioners that his life support machine should be switched off."

"Rather than prolonging his suffering, the Mandela family is exploring this option as a very real probability," it added.

The following day, however, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that Mandela's condition had improved from critical to critical but stable.


Another document filed by Mandela's family in the burial dispute described his health as "perilous" and stated that fears that his death is drawing near were justified.

Mandela remained in critical but stable condition Thursday, Zuma's office reported after he visited Mandela. It denied reports that Mandela was in a "vegetative state."

The court battle pitted 16 members of Mandela's family against his grandson, Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, also known as Mandla, over where three of the anti-apartheid icon's deceased children should be buried.
Mandla Mandela lost his case Wednesday, which meant the return of the remains of the three relatives to the family graveyard in Qunu, Nelson Mandela's boyhood home, could go ahead.

They were reburied Thursday in the family compound.

But the dispute brought a public chiding from another hero of the anti-apartheid cause, retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

In a statement carried by the South African Press Association late Thursday, Tutu urged the family not to "besmirch" Mandela's name in his last days.

Investigators have been gathering evidence against Mandla Mandela in a "grave tampering" case and expect to hand it to a senior prosecutor next week, Mthatha police said Friday, according to the South African Press Association.

By : Robyn Curnow, CNN
July 5, 2013 -- Updated 1423 GMT (2223 HKT)

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