A gunman has shot and killed nine people and wounded 16 others at an arts and entertainment district in downtown Dayton, Ohio.

The shooting happened early Sunday morning, authorities said, noting the suspect was killed by police.

Just after 3 am, police asked residents to avoid the area known as the Oregon District, which is home to a number of nightclubs, art galleries and restaurants.

Later, it tweeted that “the shooter is deceased. There are 9 others also deceased.”

The shooting comes just 12 hours after another one in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman fatally shot 20 people and injured 26 others at a Walmart store.

The gunman armed with a powerful assault-style rifle opened fire at the Cielo Vista Walmart store in the majority-Hispanic border city.

The 21-year-old from Allen, a suburb of Dallas, then surrendered to police outside the store and was taken into custody, Texas authorities said.

He was identified as Patrick Crusius, who, according to US media, is white and linked to a “manifesto” posted online that described an attack in response to a “Hispanic invasion.”

Federal prosecutors raided the home of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein earlier this month, after charging him with sex trafficking. There, they say they discovered lewd photographs of girls as young as 14. Epstein is a convicted felon who was sentenced in 2008 for sex crimes involving a minor.

The spike in interest around Epstein’s allegations could create an opportunity for discussing just how prevalent child sexual abuse is. Estimates vary, but not widely – somewhere between 8% and 12% of children in the US have experienced sexual abuse.

Part of the difficulty of reaching a reliable estimate is that various surveys define child sexual abuse differently. In 2013, Catherine Townsend sifted through dozens of studies for Darkness to Light, a US not-for-profit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse. Townsend used several criteria for inclusion such as:

·         Child sexual abuse includes any sexual act between an adult and a young child, regardless of whether force or coercion is used.

·         Child sexual abuse includes both contact and non-contact sexual acts.

·         Child sexual abuse includes forced or coerced sexual acts between two children when there is an age or power differential. This can include unwanted or forcible peer abuse.

The overview of all the research looked at six different surveys published between 2000 and 2011 and found that the rate was significantly different between genders: about one in seven girls and one in 25 boys are sexually abused before they turn 18.

Overall, the research suggests that around one in 10 children are sexually abused.

Source: The Guardian

The United Nations has warned that a new wave of terror attacks may occur before the end of this year, as tens of thousands of foreigners, who had traveled abroad to join the Daesh or other terrorist groups, are said to be still alive.

Specialist monitors at the UN Security Council said in a report that despite recent decrease in attacks across the globe, terrorism continues to pose a significant threat to the world as up to 30,000 foreigners who traveled to the Iraq or Syria for joining the Daesh might still be alive.

Extremists from across Europe joined Daesh in droves in 2014, when the Takfiri terror group launched its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and Syria.

European countries estimated that as many as 6,000 people traveled to the two Arab countries back then. About a third were killed, while another third remain detained in the region or have moved elsewhere.

“Their future prospects will be of international concern for the foreseeable future,” the report said. “Some may join al-Qaeda or other terrorist brands that may emerge.”

Europe has so far been unwilling to take back citizens who traveled to join Daesh, saying they pose a security threat to the European Union member states.

This has prompted US President Donald Trump to threaten the EU on Thursday that he may release over 10,000 European Daesh members, captured in Syria and Iraq, to return to the place where they came from.

Trump for several times asked European leaders to act more decisively and take back their nationals. Back in February, he posted a tweet calling on Europe to take them back or Washington would be “forced to release them.”

The US said it has arrested around 850 foreigners on terror charges in the last few years.

Back in January, France said it was considering the repatriation of 130 men and women to be tried, but a month later no progress appeared to have been made. French officials also said last year that they were working on plans to return children born to foreign fighters.

Earlier this year, Germany said that a third of its estimated 1,000 nationals who are believed to have joined Daesh in Iraq and Syria since 2013, have returned to their homeland. Many of those have since been prosecuted or placed into rehabilitation programs, Berlin said.

Source: Presstv

A fresh round of sanctions were imposed on Moscow Saturday by the United States over the 2018 poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.

Russian agents have been blamed for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March last year using the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.

Washington said Saturday it will oppose “the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance to Russia” by international financial institutions and put limits on US banks from financing Russian sovereign debt, US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

The US will also limit the export of goods and technology to Russia, Ortagus added.

Chemical weapons

The Salisbury attack, the first offensive use of chemical weapons in Europe since World War II, caused an international outcry and prompted a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations.

Moscow denies involvement in the poisoning and has offered numerous and varied alternative explanations and counter-accusations.

Skripal, a former officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was found guilty in 2006 of “high treason” before being traded in a spy exchange between Moscow, London and Washington.

In January the European Union imposed chemical weapons sanctions on nine Russian and Syrian officials, including the chief of the powerful GRU.

(AFP)

Libya’s Red Crescent said Friday its rescue workers had recovered the bodies of 62 migrants a day after one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year in the Mediterranean.

“Our Red Crescent teams have pulled 62 migrants” from the water since Thursday evening, the head of the unit Abdelmoneim Abu Sbeih said.

Aid agencies on Thursday said more than 100 migrants were missing after an overloaded boat sank off the Libyan coast east of the capital near the port city of Khoms.

About 145 migrants were rescued by the Libyan coastguard, and fishermen said the waters were full of floating bodies.

“The bodies are still floating onto the shore continuously, it’s not possible to give a total number,” Abu Sbeih added.

Local authorities were gathering and storing the bodies until burial places could be found, a municipal source in Khoms said.

The migrants had apparently been headed out to sea on three boats lashed together, according to the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Survivors had reported a total of almost 400 people on board, MSF mission chief Julien Raickman told AFP.

The head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi called the wreck “the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year”.

The capsize came only a few weeks after some 68 migrants died when an Italy-bound boat sank off Tunisia.

Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe.

(Source: AFP)

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Thursday he has decided to stop implementing all agreements with Israel. The declaration came a day after the US blocked a UN attempt to rebuke Israel over Palestinian home demolitions.

“We announce the leadership’s decision to stop implementing the agreements signed with the Israeli side,” Abbas said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas had previously not spoken so clearly and definitively of a break in cooperation, although Palestinian officials have in the past made threats to stop implementing all accords with Israel.

He said the Palestinians would immediately form a committee to study how to carry out the decision.

The two governments work together on matters ranging from water to security, and withdrawing from agreements could impact security in the occupied West Bank.

Abbas, 84, has made similar threats before and not implemented them.

US blocks UN attempt to rebuke Palestinian home demolitions

The Palestinian leader’s announcement came a day after the US blocked a move by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to get the UN Security Council to condemn Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Jerusalem

Earlier this week, Israel began demolishing a number of Palestinian homes south of Jerusalem.

The residential structures were located close to Israel’s separation barrier which cuts off the occupied West Bank. Israel says they were built too close to the wall, which the Jewish state considers vital for its security.

The initial draft Security Council statement described the construction of the wall by Israel as contrary to international law

UN officials, who had called on Israel to halt the demolition plans, said 17 Palestinians faced displacement.

Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa circulated a five-paragraph draft statement, according to diplomats, to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday that expressed grave concern and warned that the demolition “undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for just and lasting peace”.

Such statements have to be agreed by consensus and on Wednesday the US told its council counterparts it could not support the text, diplomats said.

A revised three paragraph draft statement was then circulated, but the US again said it did not agree with the text, diplomats said.

Washington has long accused the UN of anti-Israel bias and shields its ally from council action.

US envoy says international law, UN resolutions ‘unclear’

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt and Trump’s son-in-law-cum-adviser Jared Kushner have spent two years developing a peace plan they hope will provide a framework for renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Greenblatt told the Security Council on Tuesday a peace plan cannot rely on global consensus, inconclusive international law and “unclear” UN resolutions, sparking pushback from several countries. He said a decision on the release of the political component of the US plan would be made “soon”.

But relations between Abbas’s government, based in the West Bank, and its Israeli counterpart have worsened in recent months.

Israel cuts tax revenues to Palestinians

In February, the Jewish state decided to deduct around $10 million a month from tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, corresponding to the amount it said the Palestinian Authority pays to families of prisoners or directly to inmates in Israeli jails.

Israel sees such payments as encouraging attacks while Palestinians see them as support for families who have often lost their main breadwinner.

The Palestinians have in response refused to take any of the roughly $180 million in monthly tax revenues until the full amount is transferred, leaving Abbas’s PA in financial crisis.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Sixteen US Marines were arrested on Thursday for their alleged involvement in illegal activities including human smuggling and drug-related offenses, the US military said.

In a press release, the Marine Corps said that the Marines were arrested at Camp Pendleton in California based on information gained from a previous human smuggling investigation.

The statement added that in addition to the Marines arrested, eight others were questioned for unrelated alleged drug offenses.

The Marine Corps said none of those arrested or detained were serving in support of the military’s mission along the border with Mexico.

The arrest comes a day after the military said a Navy SEAL team was sent back from Iraq because of discipline issues. An official said it was because, in part, they had been drinking alcohol, something that is prohibited.

(Source: Reuters)

Romanian diplomat Cornel Feruta will head the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until member states agree on who will permanently succeed deceased Director General Yukiya Amano.

The IAEA announced on Monday that chief Yukiya Amano had died, leaving the agency with a leadership vacuum at a time of tensions between Iran and the West following Washington’s decision last year to quit a 2015 international deal that curbed Tehran’s nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions.

“The Board of Governors has decided to designate Mr. Cornel Feruta as acting Director General, until a Director General assumes office,” the United Nations nuclear agency said on Thursday.

Last week, the agency said that Amano’s health problems had forced him to plan an early end to his term, which was originally set to expire in December 2021.

The Japanese diplomat held the position of IAEA director general since 2009 when he took over from Mohamed ElBaradei and began steering the international body through a period of intense diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program.

Amano, on several occasions, reaffirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear-related commitments under the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). US President Donald Trump, however, pulled his country out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and re-imposed harsh sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticisms.

Sources: (news agencies)

Tunisia’s 92-year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, who helped guide the North African country’s transition to democracy after a 2011 revolution, has died.

A leading figure in the country’s fortunes since 2011, Essebsi was hospitalized late last month and spent a week in hospital after suffering what authorities described as a severe health crisis.

“On Thursday morning, the President of the Republic died at the military hospital in Tunis … The burial ceremony will be announced later,” the presidency said in a statement.

According to the constitution, the speaker of parliament will temporarily serve as president.

Essebsi has been a prominent politician in Tunisia since the overthrow of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, which was followed by uprisings against Arab monarchies across the Middle East, including in nearby Libya and Egypt.

Drafted in as prime minister in 2011 after Ben Ali was toppled, Essebsi was elected president three years later, becoming the country’s first directly elected head of state after its uprising.

Parliamentary elections are expected to be held on October 6 with a presidential vote following on November 17. They will be the third set of polls in which Tunisians have been able to vote freely following the 2011 revolution.

The presidency further called on Tunisians to unite and safeguard their country’s present and future.

“After the revolution, the president led the people to avoid confrontation and led the democratic transition and was keen to build and complete the constitutional institutions,” said the presidency.

The North African country has been hailed for its relatively smooth democratic transition with a new constitution, free elections and a coalition government, but it is still experiencing economic and political turbulence.

Source: (Reuters)

Former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies to Congress Wednesday at a pair of televised hearings that carry high stakes for President Donald Trump and Democrats who are split between impeaching him or concentrating on the 2020 election.

Mueller, whose inquiry detailed extensive contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia at a time when Moscow was interfering in the 2016 election with hacking and propaganda, is set to appear beginning at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) in separate hearings before the House of Representatives Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Democrats, who control the House, hope his testimony will rally public support behind their own ongoing investigations of the Republican president and his administration, even as they struggle with whether to launch the impeachment process set out in the U.S. Constitution for removing a president from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Mueller is not expected to deliver any new bombshells, according to Democratic aides, but rather stick to the contents of his 448-page investigation report about the 22-month-long probe of Russian election meddling. Mueller plans to deliver an opening statement before taking questions.

Democrats hope the 74-year-old former FBI director will give the American public a compelling account of Russia’s sweeping interference, the Trump campaign’s readiness to accept help from Moscow and Trump’s efforts to impede the Russia probe that Mueller investigated as potential obstruction of justice.

Trump, running for re-election in 2020, is hoping to move past the entire Russia issue.

“Seeing is believing in America. That report was voluminous. But most Americans didn’t read it. So they’ll see Mueller lay out the case,” said Representative Eric Swalwell, who sits on both the Judiciary and Intelligence panels.

Mueller’s appearance could also be a turning point for Democrats on the question of impeachment.

Many liberal Democrats are pushing for an impeachment inquiry against Trump, whose recent incendiary rhetoric about four congresswomen from racial minorities also has ignited a political firestorm. Eighty-nine House Democrats, about 38 percent of them, now want an impeachment inquiry against Trump, according to a Reuters survey.

That is well short of the 218 votes needed to adopt articles of impeachment in the House, which would trigger a trial in the Senate on whether to remove Trump. But the number backing impeachment could swell if Mueller’s testimony proves to be compelling.

“We hope Mueller’s testimony will be a watershed,” said Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Judiciary panel member.

The impeachment question has divided Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing such a move as politically risky for moderate Democrats on whose future the House Democratic majority depends. Some Democrats prefer to remove Trump from office the ordinary way: defeating him in next year’s election.

Mueller, who had expressed reluctance to testify, agreed only after being subpoenaed. Mueller, a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Marine Corps officer, is also known for favoring one-word answers at hearings and could prove too taciturn to satisfy Democrats’ hopes of a forceful narrative.

“Let us listen, let us see where the facts will take us,” Pelosi said of the hearings. “We’ll see what happens after that.”

‘Going to be disappointed’

Republicans in Congress are predicting chagrin for the Democrats.

“I think they’re going to be disappointed, just as they were when the Mueller report came out,” said Republican Representative Tom Cole.

Mueller’s report said the investigation found insufficient evidence to prove that Trump and his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia. The report also did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice but pointedly did not exonerate him. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared the president of obstruction of justice.

“It is so important for him to say that the investigation did not exonerate the president,” said Representative Val Demings, another Democrat who sits on both panels.

Republicans are expected to raise questions with Mueller about the integrity of the origins of the Russia probe in the FBI during Democrat Barack Obama’s administration and the political leanings of the special counsel’s staff members. Trump has sought to portray the probe as an attempted coup.

The Justice Department on Monday sent a letter telling Mueller to limit his testimony to merely discussing the public report, a directive that the Judiciary Committee chairman rejected as out of line.

But even if Mueller’s testimony proves disappointing enough to deflate impeachment chances, Democrats expect their continuing investigations to produce revelations that could damage Trump’s re-election prospects.

The heart of the Democratic strategy is to focus Mueller’s testimony on several examples of potential obstruction by Trump, including his repeated efforts to get former White House Counsel Don McGahn to remove Mueller and then deny that he had been directed to do so.

Lawmakers will also emphasize attempts by Trump to his fired former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to redirect the Russia probe away from his 2016 campaign, and possible witness tampering in public statements seen to discourage his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen from cooperating with federal investigations.

Democrats have said the report includes shocking evidence of misconduct that would result in criminal charges against any other American. The Justice Department has a longstanding policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president.

(REUTERS)