Football fan who made Nazi salute at Newcastle United match banned from every stadium in UK

Shay Asher is banned from attending football matches in the UK and abroad until 2025.

By Edward Era Barbacena

A white man who made a Nazi salute during a Newcastle United home game has been banned from every football stadium in the UK.

Shay Asher made the racist gesture in the direction of Tottenham supporters during the Premier League fixture at St James’ Park on October 17 2021.

An investigation was launched after other spectators witnessed the 24-year-old salute with his right hand while "putting his finger over his mouth for a moustache".

Asher, of Winlaton, in Gateshead, admitted a racially aggravated public order offence when he appeared before magistrates in Newcastle in April and was fined.

He returned to the same court on Tuesday 19 July for a further hearing where he was handed a football banning order that will run until 2025.

The order forbids Asher from attending any regulated football match in the UK, which includes Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two and National League fixtures, as well as England home internationals.

The banning order also prevents him from travelling abroad to watch international friendlies, qualification matches and tournaments.

Detective Inspector Gillian Beecroft, of Northumbria Police, said: “Hate crime of any kind within our communities will not be tolerated under any circumstances and I welcome the banning order handed down to Asher.

“In the North East, we have some of the most knowledgeable and passionate supporters in the entire country and the overwhelming majority of those who attend matches behave impeccably.

“However, when passions are high as was the case in this particular fixture, a small minority can let themselves down and ruin the spectacle for others.

"When that happens, it is important we use every tactic at our disposal to bring effective justice against them."

She continued: “I would like to thank everybody who assisted throughout this investigation, especially Newcastle United who have worked closely with us to ensure this case was brought to court.

“We are proud of the fantastic relationship we have with football fans across the North East and will continue to work with all our clubs and supporter groups to ensure matches can be enjoyed by everyone.”

Asher was fined £200, as well as ordered to pay £85 costs and a £34 victim surcharge, after admitting the racially aggravated offence at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court on April 27.

His banning order came into immediate effect

 

Black family targeted by racist white neighborhood  after moving into Houston community  

By Edward Era Barbacena

On Monday, local news outlet ABC 13 reported that a Black family is being targeted with racist threats after moving into the planned community of Kingwood just outside Houston, Texas.

"Within a week of moving into the Woodland Hills Village subdivision, Erika, her roommate, and her 12-year-old daughter were faced with a note left on their front doorstep," reported Shelley Childers. "'Very nasty. 'Color of your skin. [Expletive], get out of here. You don't belong here, get out of our neighborhood,'' Erika recalled. And then the very next day, she says a second note was also left at the doorstep. 'Go to sleep. Wake up. There's another note: 'last warning,'' she explained."

According to the report, Erika then caught four white men in her driveway slashing the tires on her SUV, upon which they fled the scene.

Houston police say they are investigating the incident as a hate crime. A neighbor, identified only as Robert, said, "Somebody that will do that, there's nothing redeeming about them."

Hate crimes have seen an uptick in recent years, reaching their highest level in roughly two decades.

 

Gang of Women Brutally Attack Vegas Uber Driver

By Edward Era Barbacena

A Las Vegas Uber driver was brutally beaten by a gang of black women and the entire attack was captured on the driver’s dashcam video. 

The video shows passengers punching Victoria Partridge as she struggled to get out of the car.

“I was just trying to protect my eyes in the beginning, just because I didn’t want to get blind,” she told NBC News. “When the attack started getting harder, punching harder, then I started thinking that I’m gonna die. And when they left, I was just praying God. Thank God I’m alive.”

The 55-year-old Uber XL driver said the group of seven girls could not fit in her six passenger vehicle — and that’s what led to the eventual confrontation.

Uber condemned the animalistic attack.

“This brutal attack against the driver is horrifying,” the company said in a statement. “The riders should be held accountable, and we look forward to helping the police with their investigation. Violence of any kind is not tolerated on the platform. As soon as the driver reported the incident to us, we began our investigation, deactivated the account holder, and have been in contact with the driver to offer our support.”

Police are searching for the suspects. Meanwhile, Uber has agreed to pay for all of the damages to Partridge’s car. They have also added $5,000 to her Uber account.

What’s disgusting is that the mainstream media completely ignored this story. Just consider how the media would’ve played the story had the passengers been white.

“It feels like nobody cares,” said Partridge. “And it hurts. Hurts a lot.”

 

Why Russians greet guests with bread and salt

By Edward Era Barbacens

Source: Russia Beyond

https://t.co/p2QaoALxNW

Many foreigners visiting Russia have come across a strange welcome: Gifts of bread and salt. As odd as it may seem, the gesture is actually an ancient Russian tradition for greeting important guests. Let’s look at what’s behind this ritual.

In Russia, guests almost always receive a warm welcome. People in the country go out of their way to make sure visitors have everything, nothing is spared - it’s in their blood. In ancient Russia, bread and salt symbolized prosperity and health, so hosts would put on their best clothes, lay a feast on the table, and offer a loaf or two together with the condiment to their guests.

Bread in Slavic culture is considered a sacred thing: No bread at home means there’s nothing to eat - no meal doesn’t include bread. "Bread is the staff of life" is probably the most famous Russian proverb.

To share a pood of salt

Today, there is no shortage of salt in the world. But in ancient and Medieval Rus, it was rather expensive and not everyone could afford it.  During the mid-17th century the rising price of salt led to riots in Moscow. The salt tax was completely abolished at the end of the 19th century - only afterwards did salt become affordable. That’s why Russians kept it for special occasions, like when they received guests.

It was believed that if someone wanted to offend the host, he just needed to scatter salt on the floor. This gesture expressed contempt. Now salt is not worth so much but scattering it is still used to insult someone - and trust us, it can result in fights. Nevertheless, Russians say the following about true friends: "Together they ate pood of salt," meaning they passed through many difficulties together.

The beginning of a friendship

According to the tradition, guests are greeted by ladies in national costumes with a large round loaf on a towel with a salt shaker on top. The guest should carefully break off a piece of the bread, dip it in the salt, and eat - this signals that a friendship has been forged between the two parties. An old belief is that if the worst of enemies share bread and salt, they will reconcile.

Another version says that salt symbolizes the purity of the soul (it has an unlimited shelf life) and by bringing bread and salt, Russians not only wish wealth to the guests but also drive away everything bad. And also check whether the person is a human, not the evil spirit - naturally.

But if the guest did not accept this gift, then he was not allowed into the house to avoid the evil eye and his bad thoughts. Since ancient times, hospitable hosts in Russia are called khlebosolnye(from Russian words khleb - bread - and sol - salt).

In today’s Russia, this tradition is still popular: It can be witnessed during official receptions, as well as in restaurants geared up for foreign tourists.

But most often you can see this at traditional Russian weddings, when parents of the newlyweds welcome their children with bread and salt after the ceremony: The husband and wife should break off a piece of bread, dip it in salt, and feed each other. This is a sign that they are ready to share any difficulties in life and promise to always take care of each other.

 

Jonathan Douglas Sapirman

Indianapolis mass shooter killed 3 in Greenwood Park mall but later killed by an armed shopper

Police say Jonathan Douglas Sapirman spent hour in bathroom, possibly assembling rifle, before firing on shoppers, killing three; ‘Good Samaritan’ Elisjsha Dicken praised for using lethal fire to take out shooter

By Edward Era Barbacena

A 20-year-old man likely assembled a rifle in the bathroom of a suburban Indianapolis shopping mall before shooting five people in the food court, killing three of them before an armed shopper fatally shot him, US authorities said Monday.

Jonathan Sapirman of Greenwood apparently was facing eviction before he opened fire at the Greenwood Park Mall shortly before it closed Sunday evening, the city’s police chief, James Ison, said at a news conference.

Elisjsha Dicken

Sapirman continued shooting people until he was shot and killed by 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, of Seymour, a city about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of Greenwood, who was shopping with his girlfriend, Ison said, calling Dicken’s quick action “nothing short of heroic.”

"Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen,” said the chief, noting that authorities were still trying to determine a motive for the attack.

The Johnson County and Marion County coroners’ offices identified the slain victims as a married Indianapolis couple — Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37 — and Victor Gomez, 30, also of Indianapolis. A woman and a 12-year-old girl who was hit by shrapnel were wounded in the attack, police said.

Although authorities said Dicken was legally armed, the mall prohibits people from carrying weapons on its property. The mall issued a statement Monday saying it grieves for the victims and praising Dicken’s “heroic actions.” It didn’t mention its no-weapons policy and its operator, the Simon Property Group, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

As of July 1, Indiana law allows anyone age 18 or older to carry a handgun in public except for those prohibited for reasons such as having a felony conviction, facing a restraining order or having a dangerous mental illness as determined by a court. Indiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature retained provisions in the law that allow private property owners to prohibit firearms.

The attack Sunday was the latest in a string of mass shootings in the US Schools, churches, grocery stores and a July Fourth parade near Chicago have all become killing grounds in recent months, though the country’s staggering murder rate can often be seen more clearly in individual killings that rarely make major headlines.

Authorities said Sunday that four of the victims were female and one was male, but they corrected that Monday to two males and three females.

Ison said Sapirman entered the mall and walked into a bathroom, where he spent about an hour before he emerged and opened fire. He said investigators believe Sapirman spent that time preparing and possibly assembling a disassembled rifle that he had brought in his backpack. He ended up firing 24 rounds within two minutes.

Ison said Sapirman used an AR-15-style rifle during the shooting and that investigators found another one in the bathroom. They also found a handgun on Sapirman, who was wearing a waistband holster and had several magazines that contained more than 100 rounds of ammunition.

Although police don’t know a motive for the attack, Sapirman’s relatives told investigators that he recently received notice that he was being evicted from his apartment, though Ison said authorities were still trying to confirm that. Relatives also said Sapirman resigned from a warehouse job in May, he said.

"Right now we have no motive. His family members that we spoke to, they were just as surprised as everyone else was. They said there were no indicators that he was violent or unstable,” Ison said.

The chief said Dicken fired 10 rounds from his handgun, and that as he fired, Sapirman “attempted to retreat back into the restroom and failed, and fell to the ground after being shot.”

"He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun and was very proficient in that, very tactically sound. And as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Ison said of Dicken.

Sapirman had a juvenile record, including for a fight at school and an incident where he ran away from home, but he had no criminal record as an adult, the chief said.

He said relatives told investigators that Sapirman has been practicing shooting at a gun range, and that records obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed he had frequented the range and bought ammunition there over the past two years.

Ison said officers recovered a cellphone from a toilet in the mall bathroom that they believe Sapirman placed there. At Sapirman’s apartment, they found a laptop and can of butane inside the oven, which was on and set to a high temperature, the chief said without elaborating.

The cellphone and the laptop, which was damaged by the oven’s heat, will be analyzed by the FBI, and that “we are very curious to have those analyzed,” he said.

Mark Myers, the mayor of Greenwood, a city of roughly 60,000 people just south of Indianapolis, said the grieving community is shocked to be the scene of a mass shooting.

“I don’t want to be among the mayors that has to share these statements. But sadly, I am,” he said. “I grieve for these senseless killings, and I ache for the scars that are left behind on the victims and on our community.”

 

Elijah Hyman

Memphis police arrest white man suspected of planning mass shooting

By Edward Era Barbacena

Tennessee police arrested a white man who planned to carry out a mass shooting after a Memphis event over the weekend, officials said Saturday.

Memphis police arrested Elijah Hyman, 28, at his apartment on a charge of commission of the act of terrorism, according to police. Police arrived at about 2:48 a.m. on Saturday after receiving an armed mental consumer call, and they found Hyman apparently distraught after breaking up with his girlfriend, who was also at the house, according to officials.

“Officers were advised that since Hyman and his girlfriend's relationship was coming to an end, he wanted to kill himself and everyone he saw coming from an event being held at the FedEx Forum,” police said in a statement. “Hyman was bleeding from his right hand as a result of being cut from a glass window inside of his apartment.”

The intended date of the attack was not clear, although Memphis rapper Yo Gotti seemingly indicated his "Birthday Bash" concert, held on Friday at that arena, was the target.

"We were informed of a potential threat regarding an individual seeking to harm attendees leaving [the] Birthday Bash that occurred 3 hours after our show ended," Gotti said in a tweet. "I would also like to thank the Memphis Police Department for their swift and proactive action in ensuring that all attendees returned home safely."

Hyman was detained by police before being taken for medical treatment and a mental health evaluation, police said.

Officers found and confiscated several weapons inside Hyman’s home, the statement said. Officials also contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to investigate the incident.

 

Black cop in Houston praised for preventing potential mass shooting near children's dance competition

Potential shooting was averted due to Sgt. Kendrick Simpo's actions

By Edward Era Barbacena

A Houston police officer spoke out for the first time about thwarting a potential mass shooting earlier this year, when a man with a rifle and 120 rounds of ammunition was spotted in a mall near a children’s dance competition. 

"I quickly bum rushed, tackled him. And my first reaction was to make sure that I get a hold of the rifle. No matter what I grabbed, make sure I grabbed that rifle," Houston Sgt. Kendrick Simpo told ABC 13. "I had in my mind (that) I was going to get shot. I just had to bear the pain. I knew it was going to hurt, and I was like, 'Whatever I do, I cannot let go of this rifle.'"

Simpo said he was working a second job at The Galleria mall in Houston’s Uptown District Feb. 5 when he heard a call about a man with a rifle near Macy’s at the mall. 

He and a security guard made their way toward Macy’s, and Simpo noted that he took special measures to not startle the hundreds of children and adults gathered for the dance competition, which was just a few hundred feet away from the department store. 

"I did know there was a dance competition with little kids going on at the Westin Ballroom, so I didn't pull my weapon out because I didn't want to be running towards the Macy's area, which is past the ballroom area, with the gun out and startle anyone," Simpo explained.

He saw the suspect, Guido Herrera, near the Westin Ballroom’s entrance and tackled him. 

"I knew if a person did have a rifle, and they were inside the mall, I was pretty much outnumbered because all I had was a handgun at the time. My handgun and his rifle, I was already at a disadvantage," he said.

Simpo was able to point the suspect's gun toward the ceiling while trying to subdue him. Backup soon arrived and arrested Herrera without a single shot being fired, ABC 13 reported. 

"I definitely know what I signed up for 20 years ago when I got into this profession," Simpo said. 

Police found that Herrera brought a rifle, Bible, 120 rounds of ammunition and a handgun to the mall, according to the outlet. Herrera was charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced last week to one year in jail, according to ABC 13. 

Just over a month after the incident at the mall, Herrera went to the Houston FBI headquarters and requested a meeting with the director of the FBI. Law enforcement officials found a gun inside his car during that incident. He was again charged with a misdemeanor because he did not shoot the weapon or point it at anyone.