Tag Archives: Death

Las Vegas massacre probe turns to gunman’s girlfriend ahead of Trump visit

Las Vegas massacre probe turns to gunman's girlfriend ahead of Trump visit

By Sharon Bernstein and Alexandria Sage

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – The quest by police to comprehend why a retiree shot 58 people to death in Las Vegas has turned to the gunman’s girlfriend, who has flown back to the United States from the Philippines facing investigators’ questions about what she knew of his motives.

Stephen Paddock, who killed himself moments before police stormed the hotel suite he had transformed into a sniper’s nest on Sunday night, left no clear clues as to his reasons for staging the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

But law enforcement authorities were hoping to obtain some answers from the woman identified as Paddock’s live-in companion, Marilou Danley, who Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo called a “person of interest” in the investigation.

Danley boarded a Philippine Airlines passenger jet in Manila, where she had traveled to before the shooting rampage, for a non-stop flight to Los Angeles International Airport, landing there as scheduled on Tuesday night.

A police official in Manila, the Philippines capital, and a law enforcement official in the United States, both speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Danley was being met by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Los Angeles.

The U.S. source said Danley was not under arrest but that the FBI hoped she would consent to be interviewed voluntarily.

Investigators were examining a $100,000 wire transfer Paddock sent to an account in the Philippines that “appears to have been intended” for Danley, a senior U.S. homeland security official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The official, who has been briefed regularly on the probe but spoke on condition of anonymity, said the working assumption of investigators was that the money was intended as a form of life insurance payment for Danley.

Danley’s return to the United States is the latest development in a case which has baffled investigators for its lack of any apparent motive by the killer. It comes ahead of a condolence visit by President Donald Trump to Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Trump, who strongly supported gun rights during his bid for the White House, now confronts for the first time as president the tragic aftermath of deadly firearms violence that has routinely claimed hundreds of lives in recent years.

On Tuesday, he referred to Paddock as “a sick man, a demented man,” and in response to renewed calls for tougher gun control measures, said, “we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”

A combination photo of victims of the October 1, 2017 mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, seen in these undated social media photos obtained by Reuters October 3, 2017. They are (top L-R) Christopher Christopher Roybal, Melissa Ramirez, Jack Beaton, Adrian Murfitt, Angie Gomez, (bottom L-R) Jessica Klymchuk, Bailey Schweitzer, Sonny Melton, and Jordan McIldon. Social media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

A combination photo of victims of the October 1, 2017 mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, seen in these undated social media photos obtained by Reuters October 3, 2017. They are (top L-R) Christopher Christopher Roybal, Melissa Ramirez, Jack Beaton, Adrian Murfitt, Angie Gomez, (bottom L-R) Jessica Klymchuk, Bailey Schweitzer, Sonny Melton, and Jordan McIldon. Social media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

MONEY TRAIL TO PHILIPPINES

In Las Vegas, police acknowledged being stymied in their initial attempts to determine what drove Paddock, 64, to assemble an arsenal of high-powered weapons in a 32nd-floor hotel suite and unleash a barrage of gunfire onto an crowded outdoor concert below.

Investigators hope Danley may shed some additional light on the carnage, carried out by an individual with no criminal record, no known history of mental illness and no outward signs of social disaffection, political discontent or extremist ideology.

Danley, an Australian citizen reported to have been born in the Philippines, had been sharing Paddock’s condo at a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Las Vegas, according to police and public records.

The homeland security official said U.S. authorities were eager to question Danley, who described herself on social media websites as a “casino professional,” mother and grandmother, about whether Paddock encouraged her to leave the United States before he went on his rampage.

“He sent her away so that he can plan what he is planning without interruptions, in that sense I thank him for sparing my sister’s life, but that won’t be to compensate the 59 people’s lives,” two of her sisters told Australia’s Seven Network television.

Danley’s sisters, whose full identities were shielded by the television station, said that Paddock bought her a ticket to the Philippines.

“No-one can put the puzzles together. No-one except Marilou, because Steve is not here to talk anymore. Only Marilou can maybe help,” they said.

Danley arrived in Manila on Sept. 15, more than two weeks before the mass shooting in Las Vegas, then flew to Hong Kong on Sept. 22 and returned in Manila on Sept. 25. She was there until she flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday night, according to a Philippines immigration official.

A Philippine police source said authorities in Manila were told that Paddock used identification belonging to Danley, who has an Australian passport, when checking into the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

Both the Philippines immigration official and police source spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. official said investigators had also uncovered evidence that Paddock may have rehearsed his plans at other venues before ultimately carrying out his attack on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival near the Mandalay Bay hotel.

A candlelight vigil is held at Zack Bagans Haunted Museum in remembrance of victims following the mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

A candlelight vigil is held at Zack Bagans Haunted Museum in remembrance of victims following the mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

ARSENAL RECOVERED

Fresh details about the massacre Paddock’s weaponry emerged on Tuesday.

Police said Paddock strafed the concert crowd with bullets for nine to 11 minutes before taking his own life, and had set up cameras inside and outside his hotel suite so he could see police as they closed in on his location.

A total of 47 firearms were recovered from three locations searched by investigators – Paddock’s hotel suite, his home in Mesquite, and another property associated with him in Reno, Nevada, according to Jill Snyder, special agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

Snyder said 12 of the guns found in the hotel room were fitted with so-called bump-stock devices that allow the guns to be fired virtually as automatic weapons. The devices are legal under U.S. law, even though fully automatic weapons are for the most part banned.

The rifles, shotguns and pistols were purchased in four states – Nevada, Utah, California and Texas – Snyder told reporters at an evening news conference.

A search of Paddock’s car turned up a supply of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be formed into explosives and was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building that killed 168 people, Lombardo said earlier.

Police also confirmed that photos widely published online showing the gunman’s body, his hands in gloves, lying on the floor beside two firearms and spent shell casings, were authentic crime-scene images obtained by media outlets. An internal investigation was under way to determine how they were leaked.

Video footage of the shooting spree on Sunday night caught by those on the ground showed throngs of people screaming in horror, some crouching in the open, hemmed in by fellow concert-goers, and others running for cover as extended bursts of gunfire rained onto the crowd of some 20,000.

Police had put the death toll at 59 earlier on Tuesday, not including the gunman. However, the coroner’s office revised the confirmed tally to 58 dead, plus Paddock, on Tuesday night.

More than 500 people were injured, some trampled in the pandemonium. At least 20 of the survivors admitted to one of several hospitals in the area, University Medical Center, remained in critical condition on Tuesday, doctors said.

The union representing firefighters disclosed that a dozen off-duty firefighters who were attending the music festival were shot while trying to render aid to other spectators, two of them while performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on victims.

“This is a true feat of heroism on their part,” said Ray Rahne of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

The gunman’s brother, Eric Paddock, said his family did not plan to hold a funeral for his brother, who was not religious, in part because it could attract unwanted attention. He previously described his brother as a financially well-off enthusiast of video poker and cruises.

The death toll of Sunday’s shooting far surpassed the massacre of 26 young children and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, and the slaying of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando last year.

The latter attack was previously the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Girion in Las Vegas, Jonathan Allen and Frank McGurty in New York, John Walcott, Susan Cornwell, Doina Chiacu and Jeff Mason in Washington, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Weak columns, extra floors led to Mexico school collapse, experts say

People put floral wreaths for the students of the Enrique Rebsamen school after an earthquake in Mexico city, Mexico September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Michael O’Boyle and Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A Mexico City school that collapsed in a powerful earthquake last week killing 19 children buckled under the heavy weight of floors added over the years with scant steel support, according to experts and witnesses.

The tragedy at the privately owned Enrique Rebsamen school in southern Mexico City, in which seven adults also died, has become a symbol of the devastation inflicted by the country’s 7.1 magnitude quake, the worst in a generation. At least 355 people died in the capital and surrounding states.

“The building was badly designed, poorly calculated and poorly constructed,” said Alfredo Perez, a 52-year old civil engineer who dashed to the school shortly after the Sept. 19 quake to help rescue efforts. “The reinforced concrete doesn’t comply with specifications in construction regulations.”

Alongside rescue workers, Perez said, he pulled bodies from the rubble. Then he sat in one of the undamaged classrooms and drew plans detailing potential design failures in the collapsed building.

Reuters showed those plans to six structural engineers along with Reuters’ photos of the ruined structure. They independently concluded that the structure’s columns lacked sufficient steel rebar to support all four floors and prevent them from snapping in such a powerful earthquake.

While the quantity of steel required under Mexico’s stringent post-1985 building code varies depending on the size of structure, all six engineers said the building’s columns were built with too little steel to withstand strong quakes.

Perez and another engineer specified that columns appeared to have less than half the required amount of steel reinforcement. They base their view on the number of vertical and horizontal steel rebar rods in the columns, which are visible in Reuters photos along with the measurements in Perez’s plans.

“It comes down to the lack of steel,” said Troy Morgan, a New York-based senior managing engineer at Exponent, an engineering consulting firm.

Since a 1985 quake toppled hundreds of buildings in Mexico City, planning officials developed a strict building code at the forefront of international standards for quake-proofing that raised the proportion of required steel reinforcement.

Reuters was unable to locate or contact the school’s owner and principal, Monica Garcia. Teachers, current and former students and their families all said she had been at the premises during the quake and survived.

Reuters was unable to identify the builder. A spokesman for the Tlalpan district where the school was located said property owners are not required to notify authorities of the builders or architects they used for modifications. The spokesman said the district had no record of the builder that worked on the new floors at the school. People living by the school said they did not know who had done the work.

The Mexico City urban development department did not respond to requests for comment on whether the inspectors who certified the school had proper licenses or any history of complaints.

Although the school was founded in 1983, before the new code took effect, the administrative building that buckled was expanded from two to four floors over the last decade or so, neighbors and former students said.

Photos published by Google Maps show the building had four floors as of 2009 with an expansion of the top floor by 2014 and a further expansion in 2016.

“It definitely did not comply with the post-1985 code,” said Eduardo Miranda, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford who collected statistics on buildings that collapsed in Mexico’s 1985 earthquake, citing the code, photos and plans.

Construction permits released by local authorities dated in 1983 and 1984 authorized a four story structure at the school site. The top two floors were added much later, meaning the existing structure should have been brought up to modern standards, according to Mexico City’s construction code.

The engineers who studied the photos and plans said the existing building had not been visibly reinforced.

Mexican prosecutors said they had opened a probe into potential criminal responsibility of the owner and private inspectors for the collapse. Prosecutors also said they had opened an investigation in February into whether the school had the proper zoning permits to operate.

Luis Felipe Puente, coordinator of Mexico’s Civil Protection department, told Reuters that local officials, the construction company and the owner of the property could all be held accountable if any violations were discovered.

One inspector, Juan Apolinar Torales Iniesta, gave the buildings its most recent safety certificate in June according to documents filed with the local government, which released them publicly.

Torales did not respond to requests for comment sent to telephone numbers and emails listed in a government database. At Torales’ government-registered address, a man refused to identify himself and said the registered architectural engineer did not live there.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Tlalpan district mayor, filed a criminal complaint on Thursday accusing two prior attorneys for the district Alejandro Zepeda and Miguel Angel Guerrero of maliciously failing to enforce the law after discovering unpermitted construction between 2010 and 2014 on the upper floors.

“What we’ve found is truly outrageous,” she said, referring to a document dated Nov. 8, 2013 by the Tlalpan public works department that described demolition work on the upper floors causing structural damage to the building. Despite that document, which she made public and was reviewed by Reuters, the school was allowed to keep operating with a small fine, Sheinbaum said

Guerrero did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to his email address. Zepeda did not respond to a message sent to his Facebook account.

‘LACK OF STEEL’

All six engineers said the addition of two floors dangerously loaded down the building, given its lack of steel support.

“If it was kept at two levels, it would have not collapsed…it would not have caused so many deaths,” said Casey Hemmatyar, managing director at Pacific Structural and Forensic Engineers Group, a consultancy firm in Los Angeles.

Based on the position of the ruins, the school lurched as much as 18 feet (5.5 m) towards the street before collapsing, a sign of weak columns, said Geoffrey Hichborn, chief engineer at Building Forensics International, a concrete consulting firm in Anaheim, California.

Mexico City’s government has not completed its own analysis, and Sheinbaum said the rubble would be left in place for engineers to investigate.

Documents published by Sheinbaum on Tlalpan district’s website, including building inspection reports and closure orders from the district’s attorneys, show that officials ordered fourth-floor construction to be halted at several points between 2010 and 2014 because it lacked proper permits.

Sheinbaum’s complaint filed Thursday refers to these documents and others filed with the district to say the irregularities were never resolved.

“No evidence or documents exist that allow the conclusion that these irregularities were corrected,” the complaint said. Reuters was unable to independently confirm whether or not corrective measures were taken.

(Additional reporting by Stefanie Eschenbacher, Anthony Esposito and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Frank Jack Daniel)

Most Filipinos believe drug war kills poor people only, survey shows

A witness to a recent teen killing linked to illegal drugs, wearing a sweatshirt and mask to hide his identity gestures while parents of the killed teenager, wearing bulletproof vests listen during the Senate investigation on illegal drugs at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, metro Manila, Philippines October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

MANILA (Reuters) – Most Filipinos believe only the poor are killed in their country’s war on drugs, and want President Rodrigo Duterte to reveal the identity of alleged narcotics kingpins and charge them in court, a survey released on Monday showed.

The survey of 1,200 Filipinos by Social Weather Stations (SWS) conducted late in June also showed public opinion was split over the validity of police accounts of operations against illegal drugs that resulted in deaths.

More than 3,800 people have been killed during Duterte’s 15-month-old crackdown, all during police operations.

Human rights group say the death toll is much higher and the official figures overlook murders attributed to shadowy vigilantes. Some activists say unknown gunmen have collaborated with police to kill drug dealers and users.

Police and the government vehemently reject those allegations and accuse critics of exaggerating the death toll for political gain.

The high death toll in Duterte’s fight against crime and drugs, a key election plank, has stoked international alarm, although domestic polls have shown Filipinos are largely supportive of the tough measures.

The crackdown has come under heavy scrutiny of late, prompted largely by the police killing of a 17-year-old student on August 16. Two witnesses on Monday told a senate inquiry they saw police officers kill another teenager arrested earlier in the same area for robbery.

In both teen killings, however, police said the victims had violently resisted arrest. A third teenager arrested with the second victim was found dead with 30 stab wounds in a province about a three-hour drive away from the capital.

Duterte has several times brandished what he called a file on 6,000 alleged druglords at the center of the country’s trade. In the SWS survey, 74 percent of respondents said they wanted him to make that list public.

The survey also showed 60 percent agreed with the statement that only poor drug pushers were killed.

Duterte, who enjoys huge support among working class Filipinos, has been angered by critics who characterized his campaign as a war against the poor.

The survey also showed nearly half of respondents were undecided whether police were telling the truth when saying that drugs war deaths happened only when suspects refused to go quietly.

Twenty-eight percent said the police were lying but a quarter believed they were being honest.

The Philippines, extremely sensitive about foreign criticism of its drugs war, last week accused the West of bias, hypocrisy and interference after 39 nations, most of them European, expressed concern about the drug-related killings.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Clarence Fernandez)

Las Vegas police look for motive in deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history

Las Vegas police look for motive in deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history

By Alexandria Sage and Lisa Girion

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Police sought clues on Tuesday to explain why a retiree who enjoyed gambling but had no criminal record set up a vantage point in a high-rise Las Vegas hotel and poured gunfire onto a concert below, slaying dozens of people before killing himself.

The Sunday night shooting spree from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay hotel, on the Las Vegas Strip, killed at least 59 people before the gunman turned a weapon on himself. More than 500 people were injured, some trampled, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

A candlelight vigil is pictured on the Las Vegas strip following a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

A candlelight vigil is pictured on the Las Vegas strip following a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, left no immediate hint of his motive for the arsenal of high-powered weaponry he amassed, including 42 guns, or the carnage he inflicted on a crowd of 22,000 attending an outdoor country music festival.

Paddock was not known to have served in the military, to have suffered from a history of mental illness or to have registered any inkling of social disaffection, political discontent or radical views on social media.

“He was a sick man, a demented man,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters. “Lot of problems, I guess, and we’re looking into him very, very seriously, but we’re dealing with a very, very sick individual”

He declined to answer a question about whether he considered the attack an act of domestic terrorism.

U.S. officials also discounted a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State militant group.

Police said they believed Paddock acted alone.

“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters on Monday. “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath.”

Although police said they had no other suspects, Lombardo said investigators wanted to talk with Paddock’s girlfriend and live-in companion, Marilou Danley, who he said was traveling abroad, possibly in Tokyo.

Lombardo also said detectives were “aware of other individuals” who were involved in the sale of weapons Paddock acquired.

The closest Paddock appeared to have ever come to a brush with the law was for a traffic infraction, authorities said.

As with previous mass shootings that have rocked the United States, the massacre in Las Vegas stirred the ongoing debate about gun ownership, which is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and about how much that right should be subject to controls.

Democrats reiterated what is generally the party’s stance, that legislative action is needed to reduce mass shootings. Republicans argue that restrictions on lawful gun ownership cannot deter criminal behavior.

“We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by,” Trump said.

Las Vegas Metro Police and medical workers stage in the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South. REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus

Las Vegas Metro Police and medical workers stage in the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South. REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus

ITINERANT EXISTENCE

The death toll, which officials said could rise, surpassed last year’s record massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Paddock seemed atypical of the overtly troubled, angry young men who experts said have come to embody the profile of most mass shooters.

Public records on Paddock point to an itinerant existence across the U.S. West and Southeast, including stints as an apartment manager and aerospace industry worker. But Paddock appeared to be settling in to a quiet life when he bought a home in a Nevada retirement community a few years ago, about an hour’s drive from Las Vegas and the casinos he enjoyed.

His brother, Eric, described Stephen Paddock as financially well-off and an enthusiast of video poker games and cruises.

“We’re bewildered, and our condolences go out to the victims,” Eric Paddock said in a telephone interview from Orlando, Florida. “We have no idea in the world.”

Las Vegas’s casinos, nightclubs and shopping draw more than 40 million visitors from around the world each year. The Strip was packed with visitors when the shooting started shortly after 10 p.m. local time on Sunday during the Route 91 Harvest music festival.

The gunfire erupted as country music star Jason Aldean was performing. He ran off stage as the shooting progressed.

Video of the attack showed throngs of people screaming in horror and cowering on the open ground as extended bursts of gunfire strafed the crowd from above, from a distance police estimated at more than 500 yards (460 meters).

The bloodshed ended after police swarming the hotel closed in on the gunman, who shot and wounded a hotel security officer through the door of his two-room suite and then killed himself before police entered, authorities said.

Police said 23 guns were found in Paddock’s suite.

Lombardo said a search of the suspect’s car turned up a supply of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer compound that can be formed into explosives and was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building that killed 168 people.

Police found another 19 firearms, some explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition at Paddock’s home in Mesquite, about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Las Vegas.

They also obtained a warrant to search a second house connected to Paddock in Reno, Nevada.

Chris Sullivan, the owner of the Guns & Guitars shop in Mesquite, issued a statement confirming that Paddock was a customer who cleared “all necessary background checks and procedures,” and said his business was cooperating with investigators.

“He never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time,” Sullivan said. He did not say how many or the kinds of weapons Paddock purchased there.

Lombardo said investigators knew that a gun dealer had come forward to say that he had sold weapons to the suspect, but it was not clear if he was referring to Sullivan. He said police were aware of “some other individuals who were engaged in those transactions,” including at least one in Arizona.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Frank McGurty in New York, Doina Chiacu and Jeff Mason in Washington, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Ali Abdelaty in Cairo and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Steve Gorman and Scott Malone; Editing by Paul Tait and Frances Kerry)

Furious Philippines decries West’s joint stand on drug war killings

Philippines 'President Rodrigo Duterte stands at attention during a courtesy call with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Ministers in Manila, Philippines, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Pool/Mark Cristino

MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines vigorously defended its human rights record on Friday, accusing the West of bias, hypocrisy and interference after 39 mostly European nations expressed concern about thousands of killings during Manila’s ferocious war on drugs.

More than 3,800 Filipinos have been killed by police in anti-drug operations since President Rodrigo Duterte came to office 15 months ago and launched what he promised would be a brutal and bloody crackdown on drugs and crime.

Human rights groups say the figure is significantly higher and accuse police of carrying out executions disguised as sting operations, and of colluding with hit men to assassinate drug users.

The authorities strenuously reject those claims and Duterte insists he has never incited police to commit murder, despite his frequent and animated speeches about killing drug dealers.

During the periodic review on Thursday at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, 38 countries backed a statement by Iceland urging the Philippines to take “all necessary measures to bring these killings to an end”.

The signatories were mostly European countries as well as Australia, the United States and Canada.

Filipino diplomats in Geneva called it a “sweeping and politicized” statement, adding the country was willing to accept international help, but would not be lectured.

“Unfortunately, it still appears that some parties refuse to understand certain aspects of our human rights efforts,” Evan Garcia, head of the Philippine mission, in a statement issued by the foreign ministry on Friday.

“There is no culture of impunity in the Philippines.”

His deputy Maria Teresa Almojuela also weighed in by criticizing Western countries that allowed abortion, manufactured and sold arms and, she said, were a source of private militias for wars.

“It is ironic that many states joining the statement are the very same states that are the sources of arms, bombs, machines and mercenaries that maim, kill and massacre thousands of people all over the world, not only during their colonial past, but even up to today,” she said.

In Washington, Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said the Iceland-led statement was “based on biased and questionable information”.

“Instead of engaging us constructively, some western countries would rather criticize and impose conditions as if they can do a better job than the Philippine government in protecting the Filipino people,” he said.

Opinion polls show Filipinos are largely supportive of the war on drugs as an antidote to crime the government says is fueled by narcotics.

The latest survey by Social Weather Stations, however, suggests that Filipinos are not convinced of the validity of official police accounts of the killings, with about half of 1,200 people polled doubtful that victims were involved in drugs, or had violently resisted arrest as police maintain.

John Fisher, Human Rights Watch director in Geneva, said the UNHRC should do more to stop the Philippine killing, now that there was a “growing chorus of condemnation” of Duterte’s signature campaign.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty & Simon Cameron-Moore)

U.S. student held in North Korea died of oxygen starved brain: coroner

FILE PHOTO: U.S. student Otto Warmbier speaks at a news conference in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang February 29, 2016. REUTERS/KCNA/File Photo

By Suzannah Gonzales

(Reuters) – An American student who had been imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months died from lack of oxygen and blood to the brain, an Ohio coroner said on Wednesday.

Otto Warmbier’s death on June 19 was due to an unknown injury that occurred more than a year before his death, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco said at a news conference.

“We don’t know what happened to him and that’s the bottom line,” Sammarco said.

Warmbier’s parents could not be reached for comment on the coroner’s report.

The University of Virginia student was held by North Korea from January 2016 until his release on June 15. Warmbier, 22, was returned to the United States in a coma.

The coroner and a Sept. 11 report by her office cited complications of chronic deficiency of oxygen and blood supply to the brain in Warmbier’s death. Only an external examination of the body rather than a full autopsy was conducted at the request of Warmbier’s family.

North Korea had blamed botulism and the ingestion of a sleeping pill for Otto Warmbier’s problems and dismissed torture claims.

Warmbier died days after arriving back in the United States.

The native of Wyoming, Ohio, had been arrested at the airport in Pyongyang as he prepared to leave the reclusive communist country. He had been traveling with a tour group.

Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to take from his hotel an item bearing a propaganda slogan, North Korea’s state media reported.

Saying his son had been tortured, Fred Warmbier told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday, “As we looked at him and tried to comfort him, it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth.”

“Great interview on @foxandfriends with the parents of Otto Warmbier: 1994 – 2017. Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea,” President Donald Trump said on Twitter following the interview’s broadcast.

In response to a question at the news conference, the coroner said there was no evidence of trauma to Warmbier’s teeth nor was there evidence of broken bones.

The coroner’s report said that Warmbier’s body had multiple scars varying in size, including a large irregular one measuring 4.3 by 1.6 inches on the right foot.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Hope evaporating, a grim wait for relatives after Mexico quake

Hope evaporating, a grim wait for relatives after Mexico quake

By Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Relatives waiting on Wednesday outside an office block that collapsed last week in Mexico City’s earthquake have resigned themselves to the likelihood that their loved ones did not survive, as a stench of death seeped from the rubble.

Soldiers, firefighters and volunteers have worked day and night since the Sept. 19 quake to find those trapped. In the past few days the search has narrowed to a handful of buildings. The focus is on the office block in the chic Roma district, where over 30 people are still missing.

Authorities say 337 people have been confirmed dead so far in the 7.1 magnitude quake, Mexico’s most deadly in a generation.

“Sadly, we have to be realistic, what we want are our relatives’ bodies at the very least,” said Martin Estrada, 51, whose son is believed to buried under the building.

Like others waiting for news of their relatives, Estrada was critical of a lack of information from authorities. He said the rescue had been too slow to save his son.

One rescue worker at the site said a putrid smell pervading the air was evidence bodies were still in the building.

The earthquake, and one a few days earlier that killed around 100 people, have become political issues for the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, stretched to capacity by the disasters and coming under increasing criticism.

“We blame the government for their deaths,” Estrada said.

The earthquakes caused $2 billion in damage to schools, housing and heritage sites including churches, ministers said on Wednesday. Private estimates range from $2 billion to $8 billion.

Pena Nieto said funds set aside for disaster recovery “were not infinite” and warned financing would have to be reassigned in the 2018 budget, which is currently under discussion in Congress.

At least 190,000 buildings have been seriously damaged across Mexico by the quakes and storms in recent weeks, Pena Nieto said on Tuesday. A senior official said there was a collapse risk at 1,500 buildings in the capital.

Residents carry their belongings from their homes in the rubble of a collapsed building at Iztapalapa neighbourhood, after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

Residents carry their belongings from their homes in the rubble of a collapsed building at Iztapalapa neighbourhood, after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

SMOKING MOUNTAIN

Earlier in the day, smoke, ash and red-hot rocks belched from the Popocatepetl volcano near Mexico City, heightening anxiety for many locals, although officials said there was no imminent threat.

Popocatepetl, whose name means “Smoking Mountain” in the native Nahuatl language, showered a village at its base with ash, shook with the force of a 1.8 magnitude earthquake and spewed flaming rocks to distances of up to 1 km (0.62 mile), the National Disaster Prevention Center (Cenapred) said.

The earthquake had its epicenter just a few miles from the volcano and “probably pushed” the volcanic activity, Carlos Valdez, director of Cenapred, told Reuters.

However, eruptions at the volcano have become relatively common since it reactivated 23 years ago.

On a clear day, Popocatepetl looms on the horizon of Mexico City 44 miles (71 km) away, and volcanic ash occasionally blows into the city.

Winds blew the ash on Wednesday towards Ecatzingo, a village under the volcano that suffered damage to its church and dozens of houses in last week’s quake.

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez, Writing by Frank Jack Daniel, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Palestinian gunman kills three Israeli guards at West Bank settlement

Israeli emergency and security personnel work at the scene where a police spokeswoman said a Palestinian gunman killed three Israelis guards and wounded a fourth in an attack on a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank before himself being shot dead, September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

HAR ADAR, West Bank (Reuters) – A Palestinian man with security clearance to work at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank opened fire at a checkpoint on Tuesday, killing two Israeli security guards and a paramilitary policeman.

The assailant, who was armed with a pistol and also seriously wounded a fourth Israeli, was shot dead, police said.

The incident was unusual in that the 37-year-old man had been issued an Israeli work permit – a process that entails security vetting – unlike most of the Palestinians involved in a wave of street attacks that began two years ago.

A police spokeswoman said the gunman approached Har Adar among a group of Palestinians who work at the settlement, and aroused the suspicion of guards at the entrance checkpoint.

Challenged to halt, the Palestinian “opened his shirt, drew a pistol and fired at the security staff and troopers at close range,” the spokeswoman said.

Residents of the settlement told Israeli media the man worked as a cleaner. One of them, Moish Berdichev, said he had domestic problems – his wife had left him – and speculated he may have carried out the attack knowing he would not survive.

“He was a guy with a good head on his shoulders. It’s a shame. Very sad,” Berdichev told Army Radio.

The Shin Bet internal security service identified the man as Nimr Jamal and said he had “severe personal and family issues, including domestic violence”.

The man lived in the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Suriq, the police said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in public remarks to his cabinet that the man’s house would be demolished and any work permits issued to his relatives would be revoked.

(Writing by Dan Williams and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Most schools in Mexico City still closed after earthquake

A girl hugs a Mexican marine officer as she offers hugs to people near the site of a collapsed building after an earthquake, in Mexico City.

By Lizbeth Diaz and Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Most schools in Mexico City remained closed on Monday after last week’s deadly earthquake, but children outside the capital were set to return to their classrooms even though aftershocks are still jolting the country.

Search operations in Mexico City were narrowed to five buildings destroyed last Tuesday by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that killed at least 320 people, Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told local broadcaster Televisa on Monday.

“These are the places where rescue efforts continue,” said Mancera, ticking off locations in central and southern portions of the metropolis.

The quake rendered thousands of people homeless, with many of them living in tents in the streets or emergency shelters, but there were signs the 20 million people who live in Mexico City’s greater metropolitan area were gradually resuming their routines. (Graphics on ‘Earthquake strikes Mexico’ –

“Our neighborhood is in mourning,” said Deborah Levy, 44, from the trendy Condesa district that was among the worst hit by the quake. “Some neighbors and friends got together (Sunday). We went to eat to cheer ourselves up, looking for a little normality.”

Members of rescue teams search for survivors, in the rubble of a collapsed building, after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 25, 2017.

Members of rescue teams search for survivors, in the rubble of a collapsed building, after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Some of the most affected neighborhoods, those built on top of a soft ancient lake bed, still had entire blocks cordoned off.

More than 44,000 schools in six states were due to reopen on Monday, but only 103 in Mexico City, or barely 1 percent of its schools, were set to resume classes after they were certified as structurally safe.

Officials said they did not want to impede relief efforts, so more than 4,000 public schools and nearly as many private schools in the capital will remain closed for now.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, with 350,000 students at campuses in and around Mexico City, resumed classes on Monday.

Of 6,000 damaged buildings, some 1,500 have yet to be inspected, said Horacio Urbano, president of Centro Urbano, a think tank specializing in urban issues and real estate.

Ten percent of the damaged buildings were constructed after 1990, by which time strict building codes had been enacted in the wake of the 1985 earthquake that killed some 10,000 people.

 

SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS

Search operations, using advanced audio equipment to detect signs of life beneath tonnes of rubble, continued at a few buildings with help from teams from as far afield as Israel and Japan.

At a school in southern Mexico City where 19 children and six adults had previously been reported killed, officials recovered another body on Sunday, that of an adult women.

The search for survivors continued in a ruined office building in the Roma neighborhood and in a five-story apartment building in historic Tlalpan.

Authorities called off efforts in the upper-middle class Lindavista zone after pulling 10 bodies from the rubble over several days, and work at the Tlalpan building was briefly halted on Saturday by a magnitude 6.2 aftershock.

Another 5.7 aftershock struck on Sunday off Mexico’s west coast, jolting the southwestern part of the country, and seismologists predicted more tremors to come.

While aid and volunteer workers have flooded into the accessible districts of Mexico City, people in more remote neighborhoods and surrounding states have received less attention.

Mexican and international rescue teams remove a painting as they search for survivors in a collapsed building after an earthquake, at Roma neighborhood in Mexico City.

Mexican and international rescue teams remove a painting as they search for survivors in a collapsed building after an earthquake, at Roma neighborhood in Mexico City. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Miguel Angel Luna, a 40-year old architect, joined a caravan of civilians that headed out late last week to help isolated communities scattered around the base of the Popocatepetl volcano, located about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of the Mexican capital.

Around 40 percent of the adobe homes he saw in poor villages had been completely destroyed and some 80 percent were heavily damaged, Luna said.

“We’re talking about very poor communities,” Luna said. “They don’t have tools, they don’t have materials, they don’t have money to rebuild.”

 

(Additional reporting by Michael O’Boyle, Veronica Gomez and David Alire Garcia; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

 

Masked gunman kills woman, wounds several others at Nashville church

The scene where people were injured when gunfire erupted at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S., September 24, 2017. Metro Nashville Police Departmen

By Jonathan Allen and Frank McGurty

(Reuters) – A masked gunman killed a woman in the parking lot of a Tennessee church on Sunday morning and wounded six worshipers inside the building before shooting himself in a scuffle with an usher who rushed to stop the attack.

The shooter, identified as Emanuel Kidega Samson, 25, walked into Nashville’s Burnette Chapel Church of Christ wearing a ski mask and opened fire, Metropolitan Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters.

As the church usher grappled with the suspect, he was struck in the head with the gunman’s weapon before the suspect fired and wounded himself in the chest, police said.

Although injured, the usher, 22-year-old Robert Engle, then retrieved a gun from his vehicle, re-entered the sanctuary and held the suspect at bay until police arrived.

“This is an exceptionally brave individual,” Aaron said of the usher during a briefing outside the church in Antioch, about 10 miles (16 km) southeast of downtown Nashville.

About 50 people were worshipping at the church when the gunman entered. Samson was armed with two pistols and had another handgun and a rifle in his sport utility vehicle, according to a police statement.

Police had not determined the motive behind the shooting, but the spokesman said evidence was found that might establish why the man opened fire.

Church members told investigators Samson attended the church in the past, but not recently, Nashville police said in a statement.

Samson was charged with murder, and authorities planned to bring other charges against him, police said.

A churchgoer, Melanie Smith, 39, of Smyrna, Tennessee, was fatally shot in the parking lot, where she was found lying next to the suspect’s blue SUV.

All but one of the six people wounded by gunfire were 60 or older and were taken to nearby hospitals, said Nashville Fire Department spokesman Joseph Pleasant. At least some of the wounded were in critical condition, he said.

The church’s pastor, Joey Spann, was shot in the chest and was being treated at a hospital, WKRN television news channel reported, citing the pastor’s son. The Nashville Christian School, where Spann is a coach and Bible teacher, said Spann’s wife also was injured.

Samson was treated at a hospital and transferred to a jail. In a photo released by police, he was shown walking in blue hospital garb, as police officers led him along a walkway.

 

 

(Reporting by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Allen in New York, Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Mary Milliken and Simon Cameron-Moore)