Category Archives: Post Human

Forensic experts in Brazil are investigating a mans disappearance after locals discovered human remains in the guts of a 13-foot caiman.

Farmer Adilson de Oliveira, 47, was camping on the banks of the Javae River, in Tocantins, last month when he was likely swallowed by a black caiman, according to a report from the Palmas Forensic Medical Institute released Tuesday.

Locals slaughtered the reptile during a search for the presumed victim, who was last seen fishing on the night of July 27. Oliveiras flip-flops and a lighter were found at the edge of the river but he was nowhere to be seen.

After a campsite official reported Oliveira missing several hours later, it took firefighters nearly a day to access the dangerous and remote area near the campsite.

More than 30 officers searched the alligator-, stingray- and piranha-infested waters for two days.

When we reached the deepest part of the river, where the water stands still, I dived in and went about 13 feet down, Sgt. Ronaldo Barbosa said of the perilous rescue mission.

It was a huge risk. The water was very dark and cloudy with very little visibility. About 20 minutes later, when I came back to the surface, an alligator was swimming about 20 feet away from me, he added.

When rescuers failed to find any further trace of Oliveira, locals concluded he was likely devoured by one of the reptiles in the area.

They also noticed at least seven alligators gathered on the opposite banks of the river a day after Oliveira went missing another sign that the creatures ate a big meal recently.

Locals told us these creatures dont normally come together unless they have been eating. Because of their experience in the area, they decided to take matters into their own hands, Barbosa said.

A group of the victims colleagues hunted down, trapped and killed a gator that appeared to be fatter than normal and that had an unusual swelling in its abdomen.

They disemboweled the creature and found a round lump of flesh in its stomach along with some plastic bags.

Adilson was known to stuff plastic bags into his trouser pockets and when the locals called us to report their find, we discovered evidence of plastic bags, broken bones, hair, skin and other body parts inside the caimans stomach, Barbosa said.

Forensic experts are waiting to confirm the human remains belong to the victim. They asked members of Oliveiras family to supply samples of their DNA for analysis and comparison.

The test results will be released within the next few weeks, pathologists said.

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Human remains found in caiman may belong to missing man - New York Post

Authorities discovered human remains behind a house in Aruba, a grisly find that may finally crack the mystery surrounding a young womans disappearance 12 years ago.

The remains, discovered following a renewed 18-month probe, are being tested to see if theyre a DNA match with Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager who went missing while on a graduation trip in 2005, her father, Dave Holloway, and investigator T.J. Ward revealed on Today on Wednesday.

I know theres a possibility this could be someone else, and Im just trying to wait and see, Holloway said. It would finally be the end.

In 2012, an Alabama judge granted Holloways request to have his daughter declared dead but no one has ever been charged in her disappearance.

Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch man the teen was last seen with outside a bar, is serving a 28-year sentence in a Peru jail for killing business student Stephany Flores a killing that came five years to the day after Natalees disappearance.

In March 2016, van der Sloot appeared to have made a shocking confession to an undercover reporter about having murdered Natalee.

The dad said the investigation led them to an informant known as Gabriel, who lived with a friend of van der Sloot, and eventually, to the remains.

[He] had information that took us to a spot where remains were found. And we took those remains and had those remains tested, Holloway said. Weve chased a lot of leads and this one is by far the most credible lead Ive seen in the last 12 years.

The DNA tests will take several months.

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Natalee Holloway's dad finds human remains in Aruba - New York Post

British scientists have developed the worlds smallest surgical robot which could transform daily operations for tens of thousands of patients, the media reported on Sunday.

Representational image. Reuters

From a converted pig shed in the Cambridgeshire countryside, a team of 100 scientists and engineers have used low-cost technology originally developed for mobile phones and space industry to create the first robotic arm specifically designed to carry out keyhole surgery, reports the Guardian.

The robot, called Versius, mimics the human arm and can be used to carry out a wide range of laparoscopic procedures including hernia repairs, colorectal operations, and prostate and ear, nose and throat surgery, in which a series of small incisions are made to circumvent the need for traditional open surgery.

The robot is controlled by a surgeon at a console guided by a 3D screen in the operating theatre, according to its maker Cambridge Medical Robotics.

"Having robots in the operating theatre is not a new idea," said the company's chief executive, Martin Frost.

"But the problem at the moment is that they are phenomenally expensive, not only do they cost $2.5 million each to buy but every procedure costs an extra $3,800 using the robot... and they are very large."

The Cambridge Medical Robotics said it was already working with a number of National Health Services-owned and private hospitals to introduce the robots.

The current global market for surgical robots is worth approximately $4 billion a year but this is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2024.

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British scientists develop world's smallest surgical robot that can mimic human arm - Firstpost

Big Brother is a game built on broken promises. But when you publicly break one to the Head of Household moments after making it just to score $5,000, the other thing being broken is your game.

Elena Davies may have passed her camping curse onto Alex, but the move also sealed her fate and she was voted out by the house in the second elimination of double eviction night. Does Elena regret that decision? What are her real thoughts on Josh? And is there a future for her and showmance partner Mark outside of the house? We caught up with the radio personality on her way to the jury house unfortunately with no live feeds to ask her that and more. (Also make sure to read our Q&As with Cody and Julie Chen.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lets talk about your big decision at the Veto competition to stick Alex with the camping curse and taking her $5,000 after you promised you wouldnt. Why did you do it anyway and did you regret it after?ELENA DAVIES: That was a tough decision for me in the moment. I did promise that I wouldnt punish her, but the way I see it is, she shouldnt have kept the $5,000. She should have traded it for Marks Colorado trip, and I could have taken the money from him and he would have been punished. Instead of executing it the logical way, she wanted to be selfish and keep the $5,000 and me take a lesser prize, even though I won the competition. I dont regret it because Im pretty confident Id be speaking to you regardless, and now Im speaking to you with 5,000 extra dollars.

Give me your thoughts on Josh and why you all mixed it up a few times.Josh is a frustrating person to have a mature conversation with. I say you cant have a rational conversation with an irrational human, and he is an irrational human. A lot of the times when he talks, I dont even process what hes saying as words, its just sounds. He doesnt always make sense, hes a walking contradiction, he makes every argument in the house about himself, and everyone else seems to support it whenever hes doing it, and then talks bad about him behind his back.

I wasnt afraid to be direct. I dont think it was fair for him to switch up some of the dialogues we had and paint me in a way that wasnt fair, and it probably made me a bigger target by addressing it, but Im not going to roll over and let Josh win a word battle with me. Hell no. But talking to him gives me acid refluxes, as he likes to call it.

What do you regret most about your time in the house and what is the one thing you would you change if you could?I threw Alexs first HOH comp to her, and I regret that a little bit, and I also threw the last HOH comp that Alex won, when it was getting too close because I was certain this week would be a double eviction and I wanted to be able to participate in it. But maybe if I had taken that last HOH things would be different. Working with Cody week 1, I regret, but there were a lot of people working with him.

Do you think there is any future for you and Mark outside of the house?I think there is a future, whether it be romantic or friendship, I definitely see us maintaining a relationship in some way. I have yet to share with him how I feel, because I was still kinda figuring it out, and am still figuring it out. But, it is weird, because right when I left I did miss him and I cant wait to see him, so I think that says something.

For more Big Brother nonsense, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.

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Big Brother: Elena slams Josh as 'an irrational human' - EW.com

Its a really important piece of work, said David M. Miller, a cell biologist at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the study. With this approach, you can do more for a whole lot less work, and a whole lot less money.

In the laboratory, scientists easily discern the difference between, say, a muscle and a nerve cell. But these broad categories encompass many different types of cells.

A muscle cell might be a skeletal muscle cell, the kind you use to walk or lift a cup. Or it might be a smooth muscle cell lining your small intestines, making it ripple with contractions. Our hearts are built of special muscle cells all their own, known as cardiomyocytes.

Even these come in different types. Some contract the chambers to pump blood, for example, while others conduct electric impulses around the heart.

Genetically speaking, all cells in the body are identical. They all carry the same 20,000 or so protein-coding genes. What distinguishes each type is the particular combination of genes the cell uses to make proteins.

The first step in this process is making a copy of the gene in the form of a molecule called RNA. The cell uses the RNA molecule as a template to build a protein.

Dr. Shendure and his colleagues reasoned that the distinctive collection of RNA molecules floating around inside a cell could provide clues about the cells type. To measure that RNA, they developed a kind of molecular bar coding.

In the first step, the researchers pour thousands of cells into hundreds of miniature wells. Each well contains molecular tags that attach themselves to every RNA molecule inside the cells.

The process is repeated two or more times until each cell ends up with a unique combination of tags attached to its RNA molecules. Dr. Shendure and his colleagues then break open the cells and read the sequences of tags at once.

The bar codes allow the scientists to see which genes are active in each cell. Cells of the same type should share many of those genes in common.

We came up with this scheme that allows us to look at very large numbers of cells at the same time, without ever isolating a single cell, said Dr. Shendure.

He and his colleagues call their method sci-RNA-seq (short for single-cell combinatorial indexing RNA sequencing). To test it, they set out to classify every cell in a tiny worm, Caenorhabditis elegans.

Scientists know more about C. eleganss cells than any other animals. In the 1960s, the biologist Sydney Brenner made it a model for investigating biological development.

Dr. Brenner and later generations of scientists tracked the worms growth from a single cell to about 1,000 cells at maturity, classifying them into types with a microscope. Eventually, scientists plucked individual cells from the worms body and painstakingly measured their DNA activity.

Dr. Shendure and his colleagues decided to see how results from sci-RNA-seq compared to those from decades of research.

They raised 150,000 C. elegans larvae and then doused them with chemicals that broke them apart into individual cells. (Each larva has 762 cells, not counting the cells that will become eggs or sperm.) They then tagged all the RNA in the cells.

With the new method, the researchers were able to identify 27 cell types that had been identified in previous studies. But the team also was able to break them down into smaller groups, each with a slightly different pattern of gene activity.

They identified 40 different kinds of neurons, for example, including very rare types. In few cases, only a single such neuron develops in each worm.

I was excited because it worked extremely well they uncovered results that will be valuable for me and for the whole field, said Cori Bargmann, an expert on C. elegans at the Rockefeller University.

Yet for now, sci-RNA-seq falls far short of capturing the full complexity of cell types, even in such a simple animal.

Dr. Shendure and his colleagues could not match some of their clusters of neurons to a known type of cell, and they did not find most of the 118 different types of neurons that earlier studies have documented.

We dont consider this a finished project, said Dr. Shendure.

Dr. Bargmann and her colleagues are already trying to match Dr. Shendures results to neurons in the worm. Of course, there is more to do, but I am pretty optimistic that this can be solved, she said.

Sarah A. Teichmann, a cell biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute who was not involved in the new study, said the report illustrated how fast the field of cell-typing has moved.

In a review posted on the pre-publication service Arxiv, Dr. Teichmann and her colleagues noted that it was only in 2009 that scientists managed to measure gene activity this way in a single cell. They broke the thousand-cell barrier just three years ago.

This exponential increase will be crucial to the success of the Human Cell Atlas, an international initiative of which Dr. Teichmann is a joint leader. The researchers plan to create a complete catalog of every cell type in the human body.

Dr. Teichmanns fellow atlas leader, Aviv Regev, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute and MIT, said that differences between the human body and that of C. elegans would require some different strategies.

For one thing, humans are huge compared to C. elegans. The researchers certainly will not try to dissolve human bodies into 37 trillion loose cells and analyze them all at once.

The human cell atlas initiative will work through organs, tissues and systems, Dr. Regev said.

And C. elegans follows a tightly controlled genetic program to build its body. Its cells always end up in the same place, in the same numbers. Humans are a lot more flexible in how they develop: the locations of cells vary from one persons body to the next.

The trick is to relate cells to the place they came from, Dr. Regev said.

Nevertheless, sci-RNA-seq may well become a useful tool for work in humans. The major benefit is that it could scale to capture many more cells in one experiment, Dr. Teichmann said. Its an elegant and potentially very powerful approach.

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A Speedier Way to Catalog Human Cells (All 37 Trillion of Them) - New York Times

The National Legislative Assembly (NLA) has voted to set zero on the incumbent National Human Rights Commission, whose members will remain acting commissioners until new members are chosen.

The NLA voted 199-0 on Thursday to pass the organic law on the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

Thailands NHRC has been ranked low internationally because the members were selected mainly by judges, a process viewed not diversified enough under the Paris Principles.

After being approved, the bill will be sent back to constitutional writers, who drafted it, and to the NHRC. If the two bodies view some points in the NLA-approved version are unconstitutional, a three-way joint panel will be set up to sort out the differences before it is enacted.

Before casting the vote on Thursday, the NLA members debated three options.

First, all existing NHRC members should be removed but remain acting commissioners to pave the way for a more internationally accepted screening process.

Second, they should continue to serve their terms because they were selected in line with the law at the time and a National Council for Peace and Order order.

Third, they should complete their three-year term and a new screening method could be used after they leave office.

After a break, the NLA voted to choose the first option -- all existing NHRC commissioners will be removed from office when the law takes effect but will serve as acting commissioners until the new ones are screened within 320 days.

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Human rights commission 'reset' - Bangkok Post

An AirAsia counter staff attends to a customer at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang on Aug 28, 2016. (Reuters photo)

KUALA LUMPUR - AirAsia, the biggest budget carrier in Asia, is training thousands of its staff to fight human trafficking, becoming one of the first airlines in the continent to crack down on the global crime.

Companies have come under increased pressure to tackle human trafficking, with an estimated 46 million people living in slavery and profits thought to be about US$150 billion.

Planes are a key part of the illegal business, as criminal gangs transport thousands of children and vulnerable people by air each year for redeployment as sex workers, domestic helpers or in forced labour.

The United Nations has urged airlines to step in and look out for the tell-tale signs of trafficking.

Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia, which flies millions of passengers annually to more than 110 destinations, said it was planning to train between 5,000 and 10,000 frontline staff, including cabin crew.

"We like to be able to have our staff know what to do if somebody comes up to them and says 'I need help'," said Yap Mun Ching, the executive director of AirAsia Foundation, the airline's philanthropic arm, which is driving the initiative.

"Sometimes (the victims) don't know they have been trafficked. They realise it only when they are on their way and they want to be able to get help. Most of the time they don't know who to turn to," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

AirAsia has teamed up with US-based Airline Ambassadors International, a group that trains airline staff on trafficking, for the initiative, which kicked off this week at the airline's four main hubs - Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila.

All are hotspots for trafficking.

The group said signs of trafficking include young women or children who appeared to be under the control of others, show indications of mistreatment or who seem frightened, ashamed or nervous.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime urged airline bosses at a summit in June to train flight crews to help combat human trafficking, the first time the aviation industry has held global discussion on the issue.

While some training of airline staff to spot and report potential trafficking is mandatory in the United States, it is not widespread across the industry.

So far, more than 70,000 US airline staff have been trained under a programme that began in 2013.

Asia has some of the worst offenders of human trafficking.

Countries such as Thailand, Myanmar and Laos are listed by the United States on a trafficking watch list for not meeting the minimum standards needed to end the crime.

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AirAsia trains crew to spot human traffickers - Bangkok Post

City officials got their first look at a detailed human rights ordinance Monday that supporters said will show Portage can be home to all kinds of residents.

The City Council's three-member ordinance committee John Cannon, R-4th, Sue Lynch, D-At large, and committee chair Pat Clem, D-2nd had plenty of questions and concerns about the lengthy and tabled the measure, but all agreed the spirit of the ordinance was important.

"We totally support the rights for our city for all human beings who live in our city," Lynch said.

Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham, who drafted the ordinance with Portage resident Beto Barerra, a retired civil rights organizer, and the Rev. Michael Cooper, who pastors Metropolitan Community Church Illiana, a church open to LGBTQ members, said the ordinance would send "the right message."

"This ordinance says we're an open for business city, that we're an open and welcoming city," Stidham said.

The committee members said they had not had enough time to read the seven-and-a-half page ordinance, which, as written, is meant to ensure "equal rights" and "equal treatment without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, familial status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or veteran status."

The ordinance calls on the city to appoint a nine-member Human Rights Committee, made up of members selected by each of the city's nine elected officials, to ensure equal access to public accommodations, even extending fairness to private interactions, such as banks granting loans or landlords treating tenants and potential tenants fairly and handling a wide range of potential complaints.

The ordinance committee spent considerable time wrestling with the ordinance's appointment of a Human Rights Coordinator to do extensive community education and outreach and to serve as the point person for any civil rights complaints.

Cannon had the most questions on the coordinator position, peppering ordinance supporters with questions on how a coordinator would be selected and paid and suggesting many of the alleged wrongs the ordinance would address already are covered by state and federal law.

Another sticking point was how deeply the human rights committee and coordinator can go into addressing complaints of alleged discrimination, especially if those complaints are aimed at local businesses. Everyone from landlords to bankers to colleges and private employers and labor unions could face an investigation and mediation if the committee and coordinator find they discriminated against any of the protected groups in the legislation, the plan says.

As long as the council members agree with "the spirit of the ordinance," there's room for dialog and explanations that could make the ordinance more palatable, Barrera said.

"If they're against some of the content, then we can deal with that," Barrera said. "At least all three said they're not against the ordinance itself. I think if they, in good faith, would sit down and read the ordinance and try to understand it better, then we can eliminate some of the language, no problem."

Portage would not be alone locally or statewide in adopting a human rights ordinance, Cooper said. Statewide, 17 other municipalities have such local legislation and, with Portage, he ordinances would cover about two million Hoosiers, he said.

Munster and Valparaiso adopted similar ordinances last year, and Portage supporters used Valparaiso's model, Stidham said.

Heath Carter, a Valparaiso University assistant history professor and chair of the mayor's Advisory Human Relations council, said his city still is working on how to educate the public on its ordinance and on hiring a citywide community relations director to serve as the point person on discrimination issues.

"It's just a process, and we're still at the beginning of the process of helping the residents of Valpo understand what I think is a pretty extraordinary law," Carter said. "It offers you a local, accessible, free recourse should you experience some discrimination in a protected status.

"It's our word and deed," he said. "It's our commitment to being a place that can be a home for anybody and everybody. It's a way of living into the values this community has expressed, no matter who you are, you can feel right at home here."

Michael Gonzalez is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

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Portage gets first look at human rights proposal - Chicago Tribune

A baby dolphin died last week after hundreds of beachgoers in southern Spain surrounded the animal to touch and take pictures with it, sparking condemnation from a local animal rescue group.

The incident took place last Friday in Mojcar, on the countrys southeastern coast, according to Equinac, a Spanish nonprofit organization that advocates for marine wildlife.

According to several posts on the groups Facebook page, a baby dolphin that was stranded on the beach was quickly surrounded by numerouscurious people, including children,who wanted totouch and photograph it. Some accidentally covered the dolphins spiracle, the blowhole the animals use to breath, the group said.

One concerned person reported the stranded animal to 112, the countrys emergency services number, but by the time Equinac rescuers arrived at the beach, the dolphin was dead, the group said.

Once again we note that the human being is the most irrational species that exists, Equinac wrote on Facebook Aug. 11, the day of the incident, blasting the selfishness of those that had swarmed the animal. There are many [who are] incapable of empathy for a living being that is alone, scared, starved, without his mother and terrified. All you want to do is to photograph and poke, even if the animal suffers from stress.

The group later clarified that the baby dolphin may have been isolated because it was sick or somehow separated from its mother. However, even though the beachgoers had not been responsible for the dolphins stranding, merely touching and photographing the animals can cause them to enter a very high stress state and, at worst, to experience fatal shock, the group said.

Those who see a stranded dolphin should call emergency rescue services rather than try to handle the animal, it added.

Equinac did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Wednesday. In a subsequent Facebook post, the group said it had turned down media interview requests because we are not interested in circuses.

The incident was reminiscent of a similar one last year in Argentina, when beachgoers picked up an endangered baby dolphin and passed it around for selfies. The animal later died. Its death triggered a round of public shaming against those who had mobbed the animal, as well as a strongly worded statement by the Argentine Wildlife Foundation.

Equinac, the Spanish group, regularly posts pictures of its attempts to rescue marine life and of dead dolphins periodically found washed ashore.

In an angry follow-up postSaturday, Equinac lamented how many times it had previously tried to educate the public on what to do in the case of a stranded animal to seemingly no avail.

Do we have to continue to justify our anger? Does it have to be us, Equinac, the police, the lifeguards, the ones that teach many of you common sense? the post read. Ignorance has absolutely nothing to do with respect, empathy and logic.

CRA LACTANTE DE DELFN APARECE VIVA EN UNA PLAYA DE MOJCAR, CIENTOS DE PERSONAS SOBRE ELLA PARA TOCARLA Y HACERLE

Posted by Equinac onFriday, August 11, 2017

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Endangered baby dolphin dies after swimmers pass it around for selfies

Canadian fisherman killed after freeing trapped whale

Flesh-eating sea bugs attacked an Australian teens legs: There was no stopping the bleeding.

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A mob of beachgoers wanted to play with a baby dolphin and wound up killing it - Washington Post

FILE -- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo talks about improvement plans for Penn Station and the subway system at the City University of New York, in New York, May 23, 2017. Cuomo will make a rare trip to Washington on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, to meet with Democratic members of the New York congressional delegation and the transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, as New York City suffers through an ongoing transit crisis. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times) ORG XMIT: XNYT182 less FILE -- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo talks about improvement plans for Penn Station and the subway system at the City University of New York, in New York, May 23, 2017. Cuomo will make a rare trip to Washington ... more Photo: HIROKO MASUIKE Torch-bearing white nationalists rally around a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, near the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Aug. 11, 2017. Following violent confrontations on Saturday, a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring at least 19. (Edu Bayer/The New York Times) ORG XMIT: XNYT98 less Torch-bearing white nationalists rally around a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, near the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Aug. 11, 2017. Following violent confrontations on ... more Photo: EDU BAYER People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. The nationalists were holding the rally to protest plans by the city of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. (Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP) ORG XMIT: VACHA301 less People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. The nationalists were holding the rally ... more Photo: Ryan M. Kelly Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler is escorted by police after his press conference was disrupted by protestors Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017, outside City Hall in Charlottesville, Va. The previous day, a woman was killed and several others injured after the Unite the Right rally. (Andrew Shurtleff /The Daily Progress via AP) ORG XMIT: VACHA101 less Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler is escorted by police after his press conference was disrupted by protestors Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017, outside City Hall in Charlottesville, Va. The previous day, a ... more Photo: Andrew Shurtleff

Cuomo proposes new hate crimes provisions post-Charlottesville

ALBANY Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday he will push to add inciting to riot and rioting that targets a protected class of people to the state hate crimes statute, a response to violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

Dubbed the Charlottesville Provisions, penalties for rioting and inciting to riot would be increased. Rioting under the hate crimes law would come with stiffer felony penalties, while inciting to riot under the hate crimes law would become a felony (up from a misdemeanor).

Hate crimes statute protects those who are targeted because ofa perception or belief about their race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation.

Cuomo also called on legislators to extend human rights law protections to public school students so that the state Division of Human Rights would be able to investigate bullying, harassment or other discrimination by public school students.

A 2012 state Court of Appeals decision found that public schools are not covered under the definitions in human rights law that gives the state the ability to investigate such incidents.

"The ugly events that took place in Charlottesville must never be repeated, and in New York we're going to stand united against hate in all of its forms," Cuomo said in a statement. "Our diversity is our strength and this legislation will help protect New Yorkers and send a clear signal that violence and discrimination have no place in our society. New York is one community and one family, and we will never stop fighting to ensure the safety and equal treatment of all New Yorkers."

Lawmakers are not set to return to the Capitol to act on legislation until January.

Since the weekend, Cuomo has been responding to the events in Charlottesville through different methods.

On Monday, he signed legislation that adds community centers to the list of public places where people who commit certain crimes, including making a false bomb threat, can face stiffer penalties. Originally crafted in response to bomb threats made to Jewish Community Centers in New York and elsewhere in the country, Cuomo said the Charlottesville violence demonstrated a need to stand against bias and hate.

On Sunday,he circulated a petition calling on President Donald Trump to "clearly and unequivocally condemn and denounce the violent protest organized by the white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler, with support from David Duke."

"President Trump must immediately call this for what it is no cover, no euphemisms," the petition states. "This was a terror attack by white supremacists."

Trump said Monday that those who acted criminally "in this weekend's racist violence" will be held accountable. In remarks at the White House, he singled out the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and others who "are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."

mhamilton@timesunion.com 518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10

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Cuomo proposes new hate crimes provisions post-Charlottesville - Albany Times Union