BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) –The Islamic State group on Monday claimed responsibility for the Orlando shooting that killed 50 people, saying in a radio bulletin that it was carried out by “one of the soldiers of the caliphate”. “Allah allowed Omar Mateen, one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America, to carry out an attack entering a crusader gathering in a night club… in Orlando in Florida, killing and wounding more than 100 of them,” a bulletin […]
International
China’s Xi sends ‘deep ‘condolences’ over US club massacre
BEIJING , China (AFP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping called his US counterpart Barack Obama on Monday to express “deep condolences” over the 50 people killed by a gunman in a Florida gay nightclub, officials said. Xi “expressed deep sympathy and sincere condolences to the American people” and “deep condolences” to the victims of the attack, the foreign ministry said on its website. He joined an international outpouring of sympathy over the worst mass shooting […]
Eiffel Tower to don US colours after Orlando killings
PARIS , France (AFP) — The Eiffel Tower will be lit up Monday night in the red, white and blue of the US flag in solidarity with the victims of the shootings in Orlando, Paris city hall announced. City hall will also raise the Stars and Stripes and the rainbow flag of the gay community, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said, expressing her “compassion, solidarity and affection” for the American people after the massacre. On Monday, […]
Trade disputes loom over Merkel’s China visit
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Tensions over trade and Chinese investment in a German robotics firm dominated Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Beijing Monday, with differences about steel and China’s future market status on display. China has been pressing the European Union to grant it “market economy” status this year, making it harder for the bloc to levy anti-dumping tariffs even as Beijing is accused of selling excess steel cheaply on world markets at the cost […]
Gunmen kill two, wound six at Mexico baseball game
PUEBLA, Mexico (AFP)–Two people were killed and at least six others seriously wounded in Mexico when armed men opened fire on players and spectators at an amateur baseball game, authorities said. The attorney general’s office in the state of Puebla said the attack occurred Sunday in the town of Acatzingo, 170 kilometers (105 miles) from Mexico City. “According to witnesses, three vehicles arrived, the occupants dismounted and opened fire. They opened fire equally against players and […]
Grief mixes with defiance as a shaken Orlando deals with attack
ORLANDO, United States (AFP) –The people of Orlando grieved and remembered the dead after a gunman murdered 50 people at a gay nightclub in the Florida city, but there was also defiance in the face of tragedy. On Sunday evening many relatives kept anxious vigils at the bedsides of wounded loved ones at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Angel Colon emerged from the hospital thankful to have found his son Angel Jr, 26, alive and in stable condition […]
Australia pledges $1 billion to help save the Great Barrier Reef
LIZARD ISLAND, Australia (Reuters) — Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday (June 13) pledged $1 billion in assistance for the ailing Great Barrier Reef if his government is re-elected next month. Speaking in Townsville in North Queensland, Turnbull said if his government is returned to power after the July 2 election he would instruct Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to redirect $1 billion of it $10 billion fund towards a loans scheme aimed […]
Top human rights activist rearrested in Bahrain: family
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) — Leading Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was rearrested on Monday by security forces in the Gulf island state, his family said on Twitter. Rajab, who was detained in 2014 for tweets deemed insulting to the authorities before his release on health grounds, was apprehended in a dawn raid on his home in the mainly Shiite village of Bani Jamra near Manama, according to his family. “Rajab was arrested […]
Orlando shooter homophobe and wife beater: reports
ORLANDO, United States (AFP) — People close to the gunman behind the attack on a gay nightclub in Florida that left 50 dead, paint a picture of a violent and prejudiced young man. The suspect, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, is a Muslim American of Afghan descent and law enforcement were investigating whether he had ties to or was inspired by Islamist extremism, after a source linked to the Islamic State group claimed the attack. The FBI […]
Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues
(REUTERS) The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, is a fringe political commentator who rails against Pakistan and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Seddique Mateen, who public records indicate is the father of Omar Mateen, had an occasional television show on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel for about three years, and has continued to post political commentaries […]
Gunman in worst U.S. massacre described as ‘quiet,’ with few friends
(REUTERS) The photo from Omar Mateen’s high-school yearbook is hardly remarkable – a toothy, dimpled smile with a peach fuzz mustache below a mop of black hair. But his transformation from high-school football player to perpetrator of America’s worst mass shooting raises questions over whether authorities, and the security company where he worked, missed red flags over the depth of his apparent sympathies with Muslim extremists and whether the United States has a clear […]
Obama calls Orlando nightclub shooting an attack on all Americans
(Reuters) President Barack Obama on Sunday described the worst mass shooting in U.S. history as “an act of terror” and “an act of hate,” saying the massacre of 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida was an attack on all Americans. “Today as Americans we grieve the brutal murder, a horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people,” he said in a statement at the White House. “Although it is still early […]
