Daily News Roundup

Thursday, Oct 17

Target and Cotton On have stopped getting cotton from China’s Xinjiang province which the United Nations described as resembling a “mass internment camp”, the ABC reports.

Four Corners reported in July that Uyghur Muslims were being rounded up as part of a detention program and forced to work in textile factories in Xinjiang.

After the show revealed that Target Australia was conducting an internal review into where it sourced its cotton from in Xinjiang Cotton On also completed an internal investigation into its supply chain.

The Australian branches of Jeanswest, Dangerfield, Ikea and H&M were also revealed to source cotton from Xinjiang.

Cotton On sourced cotton from Xinjiang-based subcontractors Litai Textiles.

The company confirmed that last year that a Cotton On staff member visited the Litai Textiles factory, which is located just six kilometres away from a massive re-education camp.

Cotton On said it no longer sourced from Litai Textiles and that it was “absolutely committed to having an ethical supply chain”.

As a result of an internal investigation into supplies sourced from a mill owned by the company Huafu in Xinjiang province, Target Australia said it has now “made the decision to stop orders from that mill.”

International brand H&M also works with Huafu but has said that the yarn sourced from the company comes from a facility outside Xinjiang province.

The company told Four Corners that it also requested access to Huafu’s spinning facilities inside the province and their investigations “showed no evidence of forced labour”.

In early 2017, the Communist Party began a new incarceration campaign, rounding up, detaining and forcibly indoctrinating Uyghurs and other Muslim minority ethnic groups in the far-western region.

Islam has effectively been outlawed, with people routinely labelled as extremists and imprisoned for practising their religion.

Many of those not detained have had their passports seized and live under constant surveillance.

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The father of a six-year-old boy killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in the US  has been awarded $US450,000 ($665,000) after he filed a defamation lawsuit against conspiracy theorists who claimed the shootings never happened.

News agencies in the US said author James Fetzer was ordered to pay the amount to Leonard Pozner, whose son Noah was among the 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

Mr Fetzer, a retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor now living in Wisconsin, and Mike Palacek co-wrote a book, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, in which they claimed the shooting never took place but was instead an event staged by the US Government as part of an Obama administration effort to enact tighter gun restrictions.

A judge earlier ruled Mr Pozner was defamed by statements in the book that claimed he fabricated copies of his son’s death certificate.

Mr Fetzer called the damages amount “absurd” and said he would appeal.

Mr Palacek settled with Mr Pozner last month, terms of which were not disclosed.

Mr Pozner has been pushing back for years against hoaxers who have harassed him, subjected him to death threats and claimed that he was an actor and his son never existed.

He has spent years getting Facebook and others to remove conspiracy videos and set up a website to debunk conspiracy theories.

Others who lost relatives in the Newtown shooting have joined the fight lately after quietly enduring harassment and ridiculous assertions for years.

Their efforts have turned the tables on the hoaxers. A defamation case by Sandy Hook parents against Alex Jones, host of the conspiracy-driven “Infowars” website, is pending.

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American actor Ron Ely, who starred in a TarzanTV series in the 1960s, has been left shattered after his wife was stabbed to death by the couple’s son who was then shot and killed by police.

A Santa Barbara (California) County sheriff’s statement said officers found 62-year-old Valerie Lundeen Ely dead with multiple stab wounds inside her house on Tuesday night.

Officers identified the suspect as the couple’s son, 30-year-old Cameron Ely, who was found outside the house after a search.

The sheriff’s statement said after an unspecified threat, four officers fired on Cameron Ely and he was killed.

Police said an elderly man from the home was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

Ely, 81, starred in a Tarzan TV series on NBC from 1966 to 1968.

He won the role of Tarzan in 1966 after playing supporting roles in films such as South Pacific (1958), as an airplane navigator, The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958) and The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker(1959).

During the filming of Tarzan, Ely did virtually all of his stunts for the series, and suffered two dozen major injuries in the process, including two broken shoulders and various lion bites.

Ely’s height (6’4″) and athletic build also won him the title role in the film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), as well as various guest shots. 

Ely wrote two published mystery novels featuring private eye Jake Sands: Night Shadows (1994) and East Beach (1995).