Tag Archives: Death

Anti-India protests erupt in Nepal over shooting death on border

Nepalese students affiliated with the All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU), a student wing of the Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), protest near the Indian Embassy against the incident in which one Nepali man was killed at the India-Nepal border, in Kathmandu, Nepal March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Indian border guards killed a Nepali citizen over a local dispute in a rare shooting at the border, Nepal’s government said, prompting anti-India protests in the area and in the national capital on Friday.

India and Nepal share a 1,751-km (1,094 miles) long and open border and thousands of people cross over each day to work and trade, but Nepali politicians have often accused India of meddling in its affairs.

Dozens of people were protesting over a damaged culvert in Nepal’s Anandabazaar near the border with India on Thursday when Indian border guards opened fire, killing a 25-year-old man, a government statement said.

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said India’s border guards had opened an inquiry and had asked Nepal to provide a forensic and post mortem report on the victim.

It said officials from the two countries had met and agreed to take steps to maintain calm.

But on Friday, fresh protests erupted in Anandabazaar, which is 477 km (298 miles) southwest of Kathmandu, with an even bigger group of Nepalis attacking a local government office, Home Ministry spokesman Bal Krishna Panthi said.

“The area is tense,” a police official in the region said.

Another group of demonstrators tried to march on the Indian embassy in Kathmandu in protest over the shooting, but were stopped by police, leading to scuffles, police official Chhabi Lal said.

Nepal’s ties with India were strained towards the end of 2015 and into last year after it blamed India for tacitly supporting a months-long blockade on fuel and goods by Indian-origin plainspeople who are opposed to Nepal’s constitution.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

South Korean court throws president out of office, two die in protest

Protesters supporting South Korean President Park Geun-hye clash with riot policemen near the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea. Kyodo/via REUTERS

By Joyce Lee and Cynthia Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s Constitutional Court removed President Park Geun-hye from office on Friday over a graft scandal involving the country’s conglomerates at a time of rising tensions with North Korea and China.

The ruling sparked protests from hundreds of her supporters, two of whom were killed in clashes with police outside the court, and a festive rally by those who had demanded her ouster who celebrated justice being served.

“We did it. We the citizens, the sovereign of this country, opened a new chapter in history,” Lee Tae-ho, who leads a movement to oust Park that has held mostly peaceful rallies in downtown involving millions, told a large gathering in Seoul.

Park becomes South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office, capping months of paralysis and turmoil over the corruption scandal that also landed the head of the Samsung conglomerate in detention and on trial.

A snap presidential election will be held within 60 days.

She did not appear in court and a spokesman said she would not be making any comment. Nor would she leave the presidential Blue House residence on Friday.

“Park is not leaving the Blue House today,” Blue House spokesman Kim Dong Jo told Reuters.

Park was stripped of her powers after parliament voted to impeach her but has remained in the president’s official compound.

The court’s acting chief judge, Lee Jung-mi, said Park had violated the constitution and law “throughout her term”, and despite the objections of parliament and the media, she had concealed the truth and cracked down on critics.

Park has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

The ruling to uphold parliament’s Dec. 9 vote to impeach her marks a dramatic fall from grace of South Korea’s first woman president and daughter of Cold War military dictator Park Chung-hee. Both her parents were assassinated.

Park, 65, no longer has immunity and could now face criminal charges over bribery, extortion and abuse of power in connection with allegations of conspiring with her friend, Choi Soon-sil.

Graphic: Who’s Who in Korea scandal http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS/010030H812T/SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS.jpg

MARKETS RISE

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn was appointed acting president and will remain in that post until the election. He called on Park’s supporters and opponents to put their differences aside to prevent deeper division.

“It is time to accept, and close the conflict and confrontation we have suffered,” Hwang said in a televised speech.

A liberal presidential candidate, Moon Jae-in, is leading in opinion polls to succeed Park, with 32 percent in one released on Friday. Hwang, who has not said whether he will seek the presidency, leads among conservatives, none of whom has more than single-digit poll ratings.

“Given Park’s spectacular demise and disarray among conservatives, the presidential contest in May is the liberals’ to lose,” said Yonsei University professor John Delury.

Relations with China and the United States could dominate the coming presidential campaign, after South Korea this month deployed the U.S. THAAD missile defense system in response to North Korea’s stepped up missile and nuclear tests.

Beijing has vigorously protested against the deployment, fearing its radar could see into its missile deployments. China has curbed travel to South Korea and targeted Korean companies operating in the mainland, prompting retaliatory measures from Seoul.

The Seoul market’s benchmark KOSPI index <.KS11> and the won currency <KRW=> rose after the ruling.

The prospect of a new president in the first half of this year instead of prolonged uncertainty would buoy domestic demand as well as the markets, said Trinh Nguyen, senior economist at Natixis in Hong Kong.

“The hope is that this will allow the country to have a new leader that can address long-standing challenges such as labor market reforms and escalated geopolitical tensions,” he said.

Park was accused of colluding with her friend, Choi, and a former presidential aide, both of whom have been on trial, to pressure big businesses to donate to two foundations set up to back her policy initiatives.

The court said Park had “completely hidden the fact of (Choi’s) interference with state affairs”.

Park was also accused of soliciting bribes from the head of the Samsung Group for government favors, including backing a merger of two Samsung affiliates in 2015 that was seen as supporting family succession and control over the country’s largest “chaebol” or conglomerate.

Samsung Group leader Jay Y. Lee has been accused of bribery and embezzlement in connection with the scandal and is in detention. His trial began on Thursday.

He and Samsung have denied wrongdoing.

Graphic: South Korea’s impeachment – http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS/010030NC1EQ/SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS.jpg

‘COMMON CRIMINAL’

The scandal and verdict have exposed fault lines in a country long divided by Cold War politics.

While Park’s conservative supporters clashed with police outside the court, elsewhere most people welcomed her ouster. A recent poll showed more than 70 percent supported her impeachment.

Hundreds of thousands of people have for months been gathering at peaceful rallies in Seoul every weekend to call for her to step down.

On Friday, hundreds of Park’s supporters, many of them elderly, tried to break through police barricades at the courthouse. Police said one 72-year-old man was taken to hospital with a head injury and died. The circumstances of the second death were being investigated.

Six people were injured, protest organizers said.

Police blocked the main thoroughfare running through downtown Seoul in anticipation of bigger protests.

Park will be making a tragic and untimely departure from the Blue House for the second time in her life.

In 1979, having served as acting first lady after her mother was killed by a bullet meant for her father, she and her two siblings left the presidential compound after their father was killed.

This time, she could end up in jail.

Prosecutors have named Park as an accomplice in two court cases linked to the scandal, suggesting she is likely to be investigated.

North Korean state media wasted little time labeling Park a criminal.

“She had one more year left as ‘president’ but, now she’s been ousted, she will be investigated as a common criminal,” the North’s state KCNA news agency said shortly after the court decision.

Graphic: Falls from grace around the world – http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS-IMPEACH/0100404008D/SOUTHKOREA-PARK-IMPEACHMENT.jpg

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park, James Pearson, Heekyong Yang, Jeong Eun Lee, Suyeong Lee and Dahee Kim in SEOUL, Yeganeh Torbati in WASHINGTON; Writing by Robert Birsel and Jack Kim; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Nick Macfie)

U.S. says January raid in Yemen killed 4 to 12 civilians

Blood stains are seen at the site of a Saudi-led air strike which struck a house where mourners had gathered for a funeral north of Yemen's capital Sanaa, February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As many as 12 civilians died in a raid against al Qaeda in Yemen in late January, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command said on Thursday.

“We have made a determination based on our best information available that we did cause … between four and 12 casualties,” U.S. Army General Joseph Votel told a Senate hearing, adding he accepted responsibility for shortcomings in the operation.

Critics have questioned the value of the raid against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, authorized by President Donald Trump, in which U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens also died.

The Pentagon said it is carrying out an investigation into the details surrounding Owens’ death and another review into the destruction of a U.S. military helicopter in the operation.

Votel said a separate, “exhaustive after-action review” had not found incompetence, poor decision-making or bad judgment.

“As a result, I made the determination that there was no need for an additional investigation into this particular operation,” Votel said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Wildfire threat remains after killing six, destroying numerous structures

(Reuters) – The threat of wildfires is expected to remain high on Wednesday in the U.S. Plains, where prairie fires have claimed six lives, prompted thousands of evacuations and destroyed numerous structures.

Fire weather advisories remained in effect in parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas where firefighters continued to battle wildfires stoked by high winds and tinder-dry vegetation over the last several days.

Low humidity along with 15 to 25 mph (25 to 40 kph) winds and ongoing drought conditions will continue to create elevated fire dangers throughout the region, the National Weather Service said in its advisories that also included Missouri and Nebraska.

Cooler temperatures, diminishing winds and a chance of rain were in the forecast for parts of the region over the weekend, but the weather service warned that the threat of wildfires remained in effect.

“Winds will be considerably lighter through the middle to latter part of the week. This will result in less threatening fire weather conditions. However, a limited to elevated risk will continue, given the dry conditions,” the service said.

The fires killed four people, including three ranch hands racing to herd livestock to safety, in the Texas Panhandle. One motorist died in Kansas on Monday from smoke inhalation, authorities said.

A woman in Oklahoma suffered a heart attack while trying to move cattle from harm’s way and died, NBC News reported. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin declared an emergency in 22 counties hit by wildfires.

The Perryton fire blackened more than 300,000 acres (121,000 hectares) and destroyed two homes in the Texas Panhandle and was 50 percent contained, authorities said.

Wildfires in northwestern Oklahoma prompted evacuations of multiple towns, according to state officials, who said more than 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) have burned.

At least 10,000 residents in central Kansas were asked to evacuate their homes due to a wildfire in Reno County, where about 230 responders were on the scene, the county’s emergency management agency said.

More than 650,000 acres (263,000 hectares) also have burned in Kansas, according to the state’s emergency management agency.

Firefighters battling a 30,000-acre (12,000-hectare) grassland fire in northeastern Colorado extended containment lines to 80 percent of the blaze’s perimeter on Tuesday. Five homes were lost in the flames, a spokeswoman for Phillips County official said.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Cris Putnam, Morningside remembers…

Cris Putnam June 15th, 1965 - March 1, 2017

by Kami Klein

Morningside was saddened to hear of the loss of Cris David Putnam.  Cris and Tom Horn have graced the stage of Morningside and The Jim Bakker Show several times. Cris passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday evening March 1, 2017 at the age of 51.   

As a multiple times bestselling Christian author, he was often times featured in major media and was an accomplished apologist and theologian.  We all can agree that his works will continue to inform and inspire others to seek answers to the supernatural events of this world until Christ’s return.

 

Tom Horn and Cris Putnam at our July 4th celebration!

Tom Horn and Cris Putnam at our July 4th celebration!

Our prayers are with his wife, Michelle, his friends and loving family as they mourn the loss of someone so dear to them.  
SkyWatch TV will be broadcasting a tribute to Cris in the days ahead.  

Tens of thousands flood into Sudan from famine-hit South Sudan

A woman waits to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – More than 31,000 South Sudanese refugees – mostly women and children – have crossed the border into Sudan this year, fleeing famine and conflict, the United Nations refugee agency said on Monday.

The United Nations declared famine last week in parts of South Sudan’s Unity State, with about 5.5 million people expected to have no reliable source of food by July.

“Initial expectations were that 60,000 refugees may arrive through 2017, but in the first two months alone, over 31,000 refugees arrived,” a statement from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Khartoum said.

More than a million people have fled South Sudan since a civil war erupted in 2013 after President Salva Kiir’ fired Vice President Riek Machar. Fighting between government forces and Machar-led rebels has caused the largest mass exodus of any conflict in central Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan,

Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Some 328,339 South Sudanese refugees have sought refuge in Sudan, including about 131,000 in 2016, many exhausted, malnourished and ill, having walked for days. More than 80 percent of the latest arrivals were women and children.

The fighting has uprooted more than 3 million people and the U.N. says continuing displacement presented “heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018”. In the fighting, food warehouses have been looted and aid workers killed.

South Sudan is rich in oil resources. But, six years after independence from neighbouring Sudan, there are only 200 km (120 miles) of paved roads in a nation with an area of 619,745 square km (239,285 square miles).

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Louise Ireland)

One dead after man drives into crowd in Germany, no sign of terrorism: authorities

By Andreas Burger

HEIDELBERG, Germany (Reuters) – A man died and two other people were injured after a 35-year-old German man drove into a crowd standing near a bakery in the southwestern town of Heidelberg on Saturday, but the authorities said there were no indications that it was a terrorist attack.

The 73-year-old man who died in hospital from his injuries was also German. The two other people injured, a 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also received hospital treatment but were then discharged, police and prosecutors said in a statement.

“Based on investigations so far, there are no signs of a terrorist motive,” they said.

According to the statement, the suspect was seen getting out of the car with a knife and was later tracked down to an old swimming pool. He was taken to a hospital in Heidelberg having been shot by police while being arrested, leaving him seriously injured.

He has since been operated on but nothing further is known about the current state of his health, the police and prosecutors said.

Regional newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung said the suspect was not fit to be questioned.

Police spokesman Heiko Kranz said experts were gathering evidence such as DNA traces and fingerprints and examining the contents of the car, adding that the suspect would be interviewed if he was fit to be questioned.

Investigations by the public prosecutors’ office in Heidelberg and the town’s criminal police were continuing, police said.

The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung newspaper said the suspect had stopped at a red traffic light and when it turned green put his foot down before hitting the group of people at high speed and smashing into a pillar.

The German authorities are on high alert after a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Andreas Kenner and Andreas Burger; Writing by Michelle Martin; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

California faces more rain, snow as deadly storm moves south

People with umbrellas walk along street in Los Angeles

(Reuters) – California was bracing on Saturday for another wave of torrential rain as well as heavy snow as a massive storm triggered flooding, mudslides and power outages and killed two people, officials said.

The National Weather Service warned that rain totals could reach 10 inches (25 cm) in parts of southern California and 2 feet (60 cm) of snow in higher areas to the east as the storm continues to roll through the region.

The severe storm has brought California its heaviest rainfall in six years and comes after months of wet weather that has dramatically eased a years-long drought in the key agricultural state.

The rain and melting snowpack also are threatening to undermine a spillway at one of the largest dams in the country. Some 188,000 residents were evacuated from the area earlier this week.

Utility crews were working to restore electricity to more than 78,000 customers affected by power outages throughout the Los Angeles area.

Early on Saturday, an evacuation order remained in effect for 180 homes in Duarte, a city about 20 miles (32 km) east of Los Angeles, because of fears of mudslides.

One man died after he was electrocuted by a downed wire, the Los Angeles Fire Department said, adding that it had responded to 150 reports of downed wires on Friday. Another person was found dead in a submerged vehicle in Victorville, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, fire officials said on Twitter.

A woman was injured when the car she was in fell into a 20-foot sinkhole in Studio City on Friday night. A second car fell into the sinkhole after the woman was rescued, an ABC affiliate reported.

Local television news also showed video footage of a San Bernardino County fire truck tumbling over the side of a freeway as the road gave out.

“All firefighters confirmed safe. The lane under the fire engine has failed, and the engine has gone over the side,” the San Bernardino County Fire Department said on Twitter.

Amtrak railroad service was suspended for trains between the cities of Oxnard and San Luis Obispo in the central and southern areas of the state due to extreme weather conditions, according to the transportation service’s website.

In higher areas of eastern California and western Nevada, snowfall and wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) were in the forecast until Saturday night, the National Weather Service said.

“This will make travel hazardous or impossible,” the service said in an advisory.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee Editing by Ed Osmond and Paul Simao)

Baghdad car bomb kills 51 as Islamic State escalates insurgency

People and Iraq forces gather around car bombing sight

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car packed with explosives blew up on Thursday in southern Baghdad, killing at least 51 people and wounding 55, security and medical sources said, in the deadliest such attack in Iraq this year.

Islamic State, which is on the defensive after losing control of eastern Mosul to a U.S.-backed Iraqi military offensive, claimed responsibility for the bombing in an online statement.

As it cedes territory captured in a 2014 offensive across northern and western Iraq, the ultra-hardline group has stepped up insurgent strikes on government areas, particularly in the capital Baghdad.

Security sources said the vehicle which blew up on Thursday was parked in a crowded street full of garages and used car dealers, in Hayy al-Shurta, a Shi’ite district in the southwest of the city.

The death toll could climb further as many of the wounded are in critical condition, a doctor said.

The bombing is the second to hit car markets this week, suggesting the group has found it easier to leave vehicles laden with explosives in places where hundreds of other vehicles are parked.

A suicide bomber detonated a pick-up truck on Wednesday in Sadr City, a poor Shi’ite suburb in the east of the capital, killing at least 15 people. That explosion took place in a street full of used car dealers.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have dislodged Islamic State from most of the cities it captured in 2014 and 2015. The militants also control parts of Syria.

Iraqi government forces last month captured eastern Mosul and are now preparing an offensive on the western side that remains under the militants’ control. The city is divided in two halves by the Tigris river.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans and Alison Williams)

Chicago police push for community assistance after deaths of three children

Chicago Police Department coordinator trying to bring community together

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Glen Brooks, a Chicago Police Department area coordinator, stood in front of a sometimes hostile crowd for the third time this week, calling on the community to help curb the city’s gun violence.

“There is an evil out here, if we do not organize and become powerful it will continue to spread,” he said Thursday night, speaking in the parking lot of an auto parts store on the city’s West Side.

“It will continue to take our young men and turn them into something no parent could ever imagine.”

In the wake of three fatal shootings of young children — aged 2, 11 and 12 — in recent days, the department held a series of interventions aimed at convincing those in violent neighborhoods to become more involved.

The police also want to overcome years of mistrust that has led to hostility with the city’s minority communities, which see the police as having used excessive force against its members for years.

Discriminatory policing practices in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods have “eroded CPD’s ability to effectively prevent crime,” a January report from the Department of Justice said. The rate of solved murders in Chicago regularly lags the national average.

Neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides, where the three children were shot this week, are impoverished and plagued by unemployment.

Last year, Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, had a surge in violence that sent murders to 762, the highest since 1996.

The children who died this week were three of the 74 people murdered so far this year, a decrease from 82 in the same period last year, according to police. The number of shootings has ticked up to 330 from 324 in the same period last year.

Police, and community activists, point to the arrest of Antwan Jones, 19, who turned himself in and was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Takiya Holmes, 11, as an example of how quickly cases can be closed if people are willing to work with law enforcement.

“We need the community to help us,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said after Jones’ arrest. “In this case, they stepped up.”

Police were assisted by community activist Andrew Holmes, who worked with other groups and spoke to Jones’ mother in an effort to convince him to turn himself in.

“They are not our enemy,” Holmes said of the police in an interview with Reuters.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Dan Grebler)