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President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pose for photos before their talks in New Delhi on Jan. 25, 2015. (Press Trust of India/AP)
Former president Barack Obama made a few pointed jibes — without actually naming President Trump — in remarks in New Delhi on Friday, taking on social media, climate-change deniers and religious intolerance.
In a discussion period at a leadership forum, the former president was asked about his wife Michelle’s comments this week during a speech in Toronto, when she said it was not a good idea to “tweet from bed,” an obvious commentary on Trump’s early morning Twitter habit.
“Michelle was giving the general idea . . . don’t say the first thing that pops in your head. Have a little bit of an edit function,” he said. “Think before you speak, think before you tweet.”
The former president got a laugh when he pointed out that he has 100 million followers — “more than other people who use it more often.”
Actually, Trump has 44 million followers, Obama 97 million.
On the subject of climate change, Obama described the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions as giving children a “fighting chance,” although “we have a little bit of a pause in American leadership.” Trump announced earlier this year that the United States would be withdrawing from the agreement, in which countries gave voluntary pledges to limit their greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades.
Obama praised India for its role in the Paris accords and said he couldn’t have a debate with people who claimed climate change was not real. Trump has said that climate change is a hoax caused by China.
“I can have a debate with someone about climate change and about what we need to do, but if you call climate change a hoax, I don’t know what to do with that,” Obama said.
Obama also said that he had “privately” raised the issue of religious intolerance with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Modi is a Hindu nationalist whose more radical supporters have been accused of inflaming tensions with Muslims and other minority communities in Hindu-majority India.
“A country shouldn’t be divided on sectarian lines and that is something I have told Prime Minister Modi in person . . . People see the differences between each other much too vividly and miss the commonalities,” Obama said.
Tension between minority groups and religious communities in India, one of the world’s most diverse countries, have long existed, but some critics in India think that intolerance has increased during Modi’s administration.
“For a country like India where there is a Muslim population that is successful, integrated and considers itself as Indian, which is not the case in some other countries, this should be nourished and cultivated,” Obama said.
Modi did not address the subject of the meeting with Obama, simply tweeting that “it was a pleasure to meet, once again, former President Barack Obama.”
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A McDonald’s manager who turned in a gun that led to the arrest of a Tampa serial killer has been awarded $110,000.
“And she will receive every penny,” Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan said at a press conference Friday.
Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, a McDonald’s crew leader, was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder after his manager, Delonda Walker, reached out to a nearby police officer on Tuesday.
During his shift, Donaldson, 24, handed a loaded 9mm handgun inside a McDonald’s bag to one of his co-workers. He asked the worker to hold it while he went to an Amscot money superstore to get a payday loan, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
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That’s when Walker knew something wasn’t right and reached out to the police officer, police said. When Donaldson returned that afternoon, he was greeted by officers, who took him in for questioning. Late Tuesday, Tampa police announced that Donaldson would be arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder stemming from four shooting deaths in the Seminole Heights neighborhood in Tampa.
“This is the only arrest. He did it, that’s the way it goes,” Dugan said the next day. Officials say ballistics tests linked the murders to Donaldson’s gun. His cellphone location data matched the locations of the first three shootings, reported the Orlando Sentinel.
Police did not release details about the arrest, citing the open investigation. Dugan said the department had received “over 5,000 tips” since the murders began 51 days ago.
Walker in a statement said “receiving a reward never entered my mind.”
“I went to work on Tuesday intending to serve customers and do my job. The day turned out very differently,” she said in a statement read by Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn at the Friday press conference.
But giving police that crime tip was an eerie one for McDonald’s staff, who had previously teased Donaldson about how he resembled the serial killer, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Colleagues said he looked like the shadowy figure in a hoodie police had released in a surveillance footage.
“I called him the killer to his face,” one employee told the media outlet. “He didn’t like that.”
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The killings began on Oct. 9 with the shooting death of Benjamin Mitchell, 22, who was at a bus stop in front of his home. The second victim, Monica Hoffa, 32, was killed on Oct. 11. Her body was found two days later by a city employee in a vacant parking lot half a mile from where Mitchell was slain, the Bradenton Herald reported.
On Oct. 19, Anthony Naiboa, a 20-year-old with autism who had just graduated from high school, was found shot to death about 50 feet away from the bus stop where Mitchell died. Ronald Felton, 60, was the fourth victim. He was found Nov. 14.
“It was a dark chapter in Tampa’s history, but now that darkness has been removed,” Buckhorn said Friday.
On Thursday, Donaldson was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, records show. He’s being held at the Hillsborough County Jail on no bond.
Donaldson, shackled and in a blue anti-suicide vest, appeared in court before Tampa Judge Margaret R. Taylor via video, reported the Associated Press.
The victims’ families watched from the courtroom in tears.
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