World News
Deadly attack in Brazil: a young man breaks into two schools and kills at least three people
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Steph Deschamps / November 26, 2022
A 16-year-old man wearing a Nazi symbol shot up two schools Friday in the southeastern Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, killing at least three people and injuring 11 others.
The shooting occurred in Aracruz, a city of 100,000 people, about 600 kilometers northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Three teachers and a student of unspecified age are in serious condition, authorities said.
With his face covered and a swastika on his camouflage clothing, the attacker broke into the Primo Bitti School, a public elementary and high school he had left in June, investigators said. After passing through the gate at the back of the school, he went into the teachers’ lounge and opened fire on several teachers, killing two people and wounding nine others, authorities said.
Video surveillance footage released by the media shows the young man entering the school with a gun in his hand, while several people flee in his wake. He can be seen firing a few shots without stopping.
He then went, not far away, to the Praia de Coqueiral Education Center, a private school, where he killed a teenager and wounded two people, before being arrested by the police.
“He did not have a specific target” when he opened fire, said Civil Police Commissioner Joao Francisco Filho at a press conference, but he had been planning the attack for “two years”, he said.
The two weapons he used belonged to his father, a police officer, and one was his service weapon, authorities said. They are investigating whether the young man, who was undergoing “psychiatric treatment,” had links to any extremist groups.
He was arrested at his home a few hours after the incident and, with the cooperation of his parents, surrendered without offering any resistance.
The mayor of Aracruz, Luis Carlos Coutinho, initially told CBN radio that there were two assailants.
The governor of the state of Espirito Santo, Renato Casagrande, declared three days of mourning.
President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the killing an “absurd tragedy” on Twitter. “I express my solidarity with the relatives of the victims and support the governor for an investigation,” said the leftist leader, who will take office on Jan. 1.
Lula has campaigned against the dramatic explosion of permits to own and carry firearms under outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro since January 2019.
“The gun policy must be reviewed,” tweeted Senator Wellington Dias, a Lula ally, for his part.
These last four years are the ones where we have seen the most attacks in schools, at least since the early 2000s,” Bruno Langeani, project manager at the Instituto Sou da Paz, told AFP. “We are convinced that the greater access to weapons in recent years under the Bolsonaro government has facilitated these types of attacks,” he added.
According to the NGO Brazilian Public Security Forum, there are about 4.4 million privately owned weapons in the country of 215 million people.
School shootings, however, remain relatively rare in Brazil, a huge yet violent country.
The deadliest occurred on April 7, 2011, when a 24-year-old man opened fire at his former school in the western suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, killing 12 students, before killing himself.
More recently, on March 13, 2019, two former students shot and killed eight people and wounded 11 others before killing themselves at a middle school in Suzano, in the Sao Paulo region.
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Sylvie Claire / July 21, 2024
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Friday, with the former US president claiming to have promised the Ukrainian president to “end the war” between Ukraine and Russia should he return to the White House. “As your next president of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Donald Trump frequently claims that he would be able to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine very quickly on his return to power, but never provides details of how he would achieve this. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the phone call, during which he congratulated the billionaire on his official nomination the previous day as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his criticism of other Nato countries, is causing concern among Ukraine’s Western allies. In February, he threatened that, if he returned to the White House, he would no longer guarantee the protection of Atlantic Alliance countries against Russia if they did not pay their share, even claiming that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack them. The former American president also used his power over the Republicans to block a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev for months in Congress, which was finally adopted at the end of April.
In his posting on X on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said he had “agreed with President Trump to discuss, in a face-to-face meeting, the steps to be taken towards a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
World News
Former Ukrainian far-right MP murdered in Lviv: “All leads are being investigated, including Russia”
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Steph Deschamps / July 21, 2024
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she had succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” lamented Lviv mayor Andriï Sadovy, denouncing a ‘heinous murder’ and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, the attack took place on Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, when an unidentified individual fired at Irina Farion, seriously wounding her in the head. “All surveillance cameras are being checked, witnesses are being interviewed and several districts (of Lviv) are being examined. All leads are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia”, reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Saturday.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the suspected killer could have been lurking around Irina Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but are not ruling out a “commissioned assassination” either.
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
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Sylvie Claire / July 18, 2024
At least six people died in a shopping mall fire on Wednesday in Zigong, southwest China, and thirty others were rescued, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. “Rescue teams are continuing their search,” the media outlet added.
Images broadcast by the channel and others shared on social networks show thick black smoke rising from a building overlooking a shopping street in this city 1,600 kilometers from the capital Beijing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The fire broke out in the early evening in a shopping mall at the foot of a 14-storey building, CCTV reported.
“At 8:20 pm, the fire was extinguished and 17 people were rescued. Others are still trapped, and rescue operations are continuing”, said the station in an initial report on the situation.
Fires and other fatal accidents are frequent in China, due to the sometimes lax application of safety standards. In January, at least 39 people perished in a store fire in central China. According to the authorities, the fire started in the basement of a store when workers “broke the rules” during construction work. At the time, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to prevent further tragedies. The same month, a fire in a residential building claimed at least 15 lives.
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