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His name was Nasratullah Ahmadyar and he had lived on an US Army base from the time he was young, working an an interpreter. He and his family escaped the Taliban when the US pulled out of the country. He and his wife and five children were living in Alexandria and he worked as a Lyft driver in and around Washington DC. Monday he was shot and killed by a group of teens who were apparently trying to carjack him.Matthew Butler, who was in the Army from 1990 through 2017 and did five tours in Afghanistan, said Ahmadyar started working...

MOSCOW – The escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine begs the question of what went wrong. The Cold War ended with such fanfare three decades ago that many people assumed the world would become a better place, at least in terms of geostrategic stability, and many diplomats have been deeply disappointed by the latest developments.

Now Congress faces a very hard question: Subpoena President Donald Trump’s translator, or not? On Saturday, The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported new details of the extreme things done by Trump to conceal his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin from even the senior-most members of Trump’s own administration. Trump even reportedly seized the interpreter’s notes after one of his meetings, the Trump-Putin sit-down at the Hamburg G20 meeting in July 2017. Even more disturbingly, Trump and Putin met privately a second time at Hamburg—with no American present. In an act of astonishing recklessness, Trump relied entirely on the Russian...

At first, it was mostly just Chuck Schumer calling for hearings over what happened at the Trump – Putin summit. As Allahpundit noted last night, unless there are a lot of Republicans willing to go along with the idea (including key committee leaders) that’s not likely to happen. But now some additional Democrats are jumping on the dogpile and getting more specific than simply calling for “hearings.” Joe Kennedy and Jeanne Shaheen want to know what was discussed during the private, two-hour conversation between Presidents Trump and Putin. But if neither of the leaders are choosing to divulge that...

As authorities in Tampa announced the arrest of a suspected serial killer last week, hearing-impaired people tuning into the news conference got quite a different message from an American Sign Language interpreter. Instead of getting a rundown from Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan on the timeline of the four shootings and what led up to the arrest of 24-year-old Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, interpreter Derlyn Roberts made signs that were gibberish, according to those who watched in confusion. "She sat up there and waved her arms like she was singing Jingle Bells," Rachell Settambrino, who is deaf and teaches American...

His accuser, GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore’s accusers, Debbie Gibson, has worked as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Deborah Wesson Gibson, as she goes by on Facebook, supports Moore’s Democrat rival, Doug Jones.

One of the women accusing Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety reportedly worked as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, a new report claims. Deborah Wesson Gibson, who told The Washington Post that she briefly dated Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, founded the language interpreting company, Signs of Excellence, and has worked for a number of democratic campaigns, according to Alabama Local News. The company’s Facebook page shows Gibson working for and posing with several democratic candidates at political rallies including 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden,...

[FULL TITLE] BOMBSHELL: Judge Roy Moore Accuser Worked for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden Campaigns, Part of the ‘Resistance’ The Washington Post hatchet job, conveniently produced a month before the Alabama Senate election on December 12, wants us to believe that Christian constitutionalist Judge Roy Moore, 70, a former member of the Alabama Supreme Court who stood up to vicious leftist attacks for his fight for real marriage and the Ten Commandments, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl when he was 32, in 1979, and that somehow — after 40 years in public service — (judges are elected in Alabama where Moore...

A woman who alleges that she engaged in a legal and consensual but inappropriate relationship with Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore has deleted multiple political postings from her Facebook page. Some of those postings by Deborah Wesson Gibson were critical of Moore while one was related to Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones. One posting shows a picture of Gibson with Vice President Joe Biden and says that she did work for him in 2012. One older version of that image is still on her page while another more recent posting of that same image in response to a posting from...

The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay halting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries tonight, following widespread protests at airports around the country. The court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who were denied entry to the US upon landing at JFK airport in New York City and detained indefinitely by Customs and Border Patrol. Darweesh spent a decade working for the United States military in Iraq as an interpreter and...

If real-time translation apps can get it right, they could upend a lucrative sector. According to a recent report by the Economist newspaper - which cited consulting firm Common Sense Advisory - the language interpretation industry generates about $37bn (£24bn) worth of sales every year. But the problems I experienced in Bilbao suggest that processor-powered translations still have far to go. Those issues are indicative of speech recognition tech's limitations in general, according to Joseba Abaitua, an academic at the modern foreign languages department at Bilbao's University of Deusto. Mr Abaitua, who specialises in online communication, suggests that interacting via...

Johannesburg (AFP) - The sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial ceremony denied he was a fraud Thursday, claiming he gesticulated nonsense during the service because he was suffering a schizophrenic episode and hallucinating. Thamsanqa Jantjie has been branded a fraud by members of South Africa's deaf community, who said his signing for US President Barack Obama and other world leaders amounted to little more than "flapping his arms around." Jantjie on Thursday insisted he was a qualified signer, but said his behaviour was down to a sudden attack of schizophrenia, for which he takes medication.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A man who appeared to provide sign language interpretation on stage for Nelson Mandela's memorial service, attended by scores of heads of state, was a "fake," the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Wednesday. The unidentified man seen around the world on television next to leaders including United States President Barack Obama "was moving his hands around but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for," Bruno Druchen, the federation's national director, told The Associated Press. The allegation was yet another example of bad organization at the historic memorial...

Passover recalls the bondage and suffering of Jews in Egypt and the miracle of the Exodus, but U.S. President Barack Obama says its message is reflected in Muslim uprisings. In his annual message, prior to his third straight participation in the Passover Seder, President Obama stated, “The story of Passover…instructs each generation to remember its past, while appreciating the beauty of freedom and the responsibility it entails. This year that ancient instruction is reflected in the daily headlines as we see modern stories of social transformation and liberation unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Gaddafi interpreter 'collapsed during UN speech' After 75 minutes Gaddafi's interpreter shouted: 'I just can't take it any more' Philippe Naughton A Libyan interpreter brought over by Muammar Gaddafi to translate his speech at the United Nations General Assembly collapsed 75 minutes into the rambling diatribe, it has emerged. Visiting dignitaries usually rely on the UN's highly professional team of interpreters but the Libyan leader brought his own expert linguists to translate his speech into English and French, saying that the UN's Arabic language interpreters would not be able to understand his Libyan dialect. In the event, according to the...

Millions of Californians with limited English proficiency now have the right to an interpreter from their commercial health and dental plans – made possible by a first-in-the-nation law aimed at dismantling the language barriers that get in the way of good medicine. The new regulation – implemented New Year's Day after five years of hearings, delays and wrangling among insurance companies, regulators and consumer advocates – is widely hailed as a milestone in reducing mistakes because of miscommunication. "This is really huge, especially in California where we're getting more and more diverse," said Martin Martinez, policy director for the California...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 30, 2008 – A deployed soldier is helping to bridge the gap between two cultures by serving as an interpreter in Iraq. Army Spc. Mohamed Dawoud, an interpreter/translator with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 8th Military Police Brigade, interprets information for a U.S. and Iraqi soldier. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Army Spc. Mohamed Dawoud, interpreter/translator with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 8th Military Police Brigade, said he was led into his career path by his love for country and by a television show. “I was watching television, and this lady was crying because she lost...

Between 2007 and 2008, I got to know a man in South Baghdad whose codename was “Bishop.” This is the short story of his life. His parents were Kurdish Sunnis. They moved to Baghdad 34 years ago – recently married and excited to make a new life for themselves and create a family. Bishop’s real name was Bashar Akram Ameen; the name given to him when he was born on October 6, 1978 in the Abu Ghraib apartments in Baghdad. Bashar had three sisters and one brother. His schooling included graduating from a Baghdad high school in the class of...

A 7-year-old girl said she had been raped and repeatedly molested over the course of a year. Police in Montgomery County, Md., acting on information from a relative, soon arrested a Liberian immigrant. They marshaled witnesses and DNA evidence to prepare for trial. What was missing - for much of the nearly three years that followed - was an interpreter fluent in the suspect's native language. A judge recently dropped the charges, not because she found that Mahamu Kanneh had been wrongly accused but because repeated delays in the case had, in her view, violated his right to a speedy...

IBRAHIM AL MARKHUR, Iraq — One misplaced cell phone and one savvy interpreter equaled one dead insurgent, several pieces of intelligence and a whole lot of captured weapons. On a routine patrol, U.S. troops with 1st Battalion, 68th Armor came upon a house in the midst of dense greenery and at the end of a dusty country road. Staff Sgt. Matthew Nicodemus, 33, said he immediately noticed that no Iraqi men were around. Suddenly, a cell phone inside the home rang, said Nicodemus, of Altoona, Pa. “The interpreter went in and answered the phone, and on the other end of...