‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ becomes rallying cry despite questions whether hands were raised high
FERGUSON, Mo. — The word spread within minutes of Michael Brown’s death — a young black man with his hands raised in surrender had just been shot by a white cop.
Soon, “Hands Up. Don’t Shoot!” became a rallying cry for protesters in the streets of this St. Louis suburb and the symbol nationwide of racial inequality for those who believe that minorities are too often the targets of overzealous police.
Yet the witness accounts contained in thousands of pages of grand jury documents reviewed by The Associated Press show many variations about whether Brown’s hands were actually raised — and if so, how high.
To some, it doesn’t matters whether Brown’s hands literally were raised, because his death has come to symbolize a much bigger movement.
“He wasn’t shot because of the placement of his hands; he was shot because he was a big, black, scary man,” said James Cox, 28, a food server who protested this week in Oakland, California.
OPEC keeps its production ceiling unchanged despite crude glut, price plunge
VIENNA — Reflecting its lessening oil clout, OPEC decided Thursday to keep its output target on hold and sit out falling crude prices that will likely spiral even lower as a result.
Oil prices fell sharply on the news. Even though the decision was largely expected, it showed the once-powerful cartel is losing the power to push up markets to its own advantage.
OPEC has traditionally relied on output cuts to regulate supply and prices. But it appeared to realize Thursday that with cheap crude in oversupply, a reduction would only cut into OPEC’s share of the market without a lasting boost in prices and with others outside the cartel making up the difference.
Instead, the move to maintain a production target of 30 million barrels a day appeared to reflect acceptance of the Saudi view within OPEC that short-term pain had to be accepted for later gain.
The Saudis and their Gulf allies hope to put economic pressure on rival producers in the U.S., which need higher prices to break even. In the long term, that could help reaffirm OPEC’s dominance of the oil market.
Mystery novelist PD James, creator of sensitive sleuth Adam Dalgliesh, dies at 94
LONDON — P.D. James took the classic British detective story into tough modern terrain, complete with troubled relationships and brutal violence, and never accepted that crime writing was second-class literature.
James, who has died at 94, is best known as the creator of sensitive Scotland Yard sleuth Adam Dalgliesh. But her wickedly acute imagination ranged widely, inserting a murder into the mannered world of Jane Austen in “Death Comes to Pemberley” and creating a bleak dystopian future in “The Children of Men.”
James told the Associated Press in 2006 that she was drawn to mystery novels because they “tell us more … about the social mores about the time in which they were written than the more prestigious literature.”
Publisher Faber and Faber said James died peacefully on Thursday at her home in Oxford, southern England.
Faber, James’ publisher for more than 50 years, said in a statement that she had been “so very remarkable in every aspect of her life, an inspiration and great friend to us all.”
By wire sources