Rick Wiles discusses the modern war on Christianity and the true church with Pastor Jim and Lori Bakker. Day 2.
Tag Archives: Death
Tornado, hail storms kill at least 51 in east China: Xinhua
BEIJING (Reuters) – A tornado and hail storms killed at least 51 people on Thursday in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, state media said.
The storms brought down power lines and houses, Xinhua news agency said.
“Downpours, hail storms and a tornado battered parts of Yancheng city … causing many houses to topple,” it said.
Pictures posted by media online showed injured people lying amid overturned houses and cars, split tree trunks and broken power lines.
Severe floods in southern China killed at least 22 people and left 20 missing earlier this week.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Florida gator that killed boy likely removed: authorities
(Reuters) – The Florida alligator that killed a vacationing 2-year-old boy at Disney World Resort has likely been removed from the area of the attack, authorities said on Wednesday.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said it had suspended trapping activities near where the boy, Lane Graves, of Elkhorn, Nebraska, was attacked last week.
The commission “is confident that the alligator responsible for the attack has been removed,” it said in a statement. Trappers have taken six alligators from the area.
The alligator snatched the toddler on June 14 as he played at the edge of the Seven Seas Lagoon, a manmade lake at the Walt Disney Co resort.
Police divers found Lane’s body underwater the following afternoon, not far from where he was taken. An autopsy found that he died from drowning and traumatic injuries.
At the time, the resort had “No Swimming” signs that did not mention alligators. Disney has since installed signs by the lagoon warning guests of alligators and snakes.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Daniel Wallis and David Gregorio)
Louisiana officer shot and killed during pedestrian stop
(Reuters) – A Louisiana sheriff’s deputy died of gunshot wounds on Wednesday after being shot three times in the back by a pedestrian he had stopped in a high-crime suburb of New Orleans, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
Sheriff Newell Normand told reporters at a late night news conference that deputy David F. Michel, Jr., 50, got into a struggle with the suspect around noon local time, believing the man was following another individual.
Normand said the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Jerman Neveaux, pulled a revolver and fired a total of three shots into Michel’s back during the confrontation.
Michel, a detective who was assigned to a street crimes unit, died at a local hospital.
“David, I wish I had 1,000 of him,” an emotional Normand said, adding that the shooting was “a cold-blooded murder.”
Neveaux fled into the surrounding neighborhood and was later apprehended.
Bystander video published online by local broadcaster FOX8 showed two of several officers striking a prone Neveaux more than a dozen times as he is arrested, footage which Normand said his office would investigate.
Neveaux was treated for minor injuries at a hospital. Normand said Neveaux admitted to the shooting, saying he was on probation and did not want to go to jail for possessing a firearm.
Michel worked as a reserve deputy for the department starting in 2007 and became a full-time deputy in February of 2013, the office said.
(Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang and Sandra Maler)
Libyan forces take losses in battle for Sirte against Islamic State
By Aidan Lewis
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan forces fighting Islamic State in its stronghold of Sirte said on Wednesday that 36 of their men had been killed and nearly 150 wounded in the previous day’s clashes, one of the heaviest tolls in their month-long campaign.
Islamic State militants had been fighting hard to defend the shrinking territory they still control in the residential center of Sirte, said Abdalla Binrasali, a spokesman at the forces’ media center in Misrata.
“The resistance was fierce and they were firing with everything they’ve got, mortars, rockets and rifles,” he said. “They fear that if they lose more ground they will be defeated.”
Brigades largely composed of fighters from Misrata launched a campaign to retake Sirte from Islamic State last month. They rapidly recaptured ground west of Sirte at the end of May, but their advance slowed as they closed in on the center of the coastal city.
On Tuesday fighting escalated and the brigades said they had taken control of parts of the “700” neighborhood, the broadcasting and electricity company headquarters and a mosque.
The “700” neighborhood is strategically important because Islamic State snipers have been positioning themselves on the district’s taller buildings.
The brigades based in Misrata are aligned with a U.N.-backed unity government that arrived in Tripoli in March. It is seeking to replace two other rival governments that were set up in Tripoli and the east in 2014, and to unite Libya’s many political and armed factions.
Islamic State took advantage of Libya’s political turmoil to establish a presence in several of the country’s towns and cities from 2014.
It took full control of Sirte, the hometown of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, last year, creating its most significant base outside Syria and Iraq. However, the jihadist group has struggled to retain territory elsewhere in Libya.
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
At least six dead as rains batter quake-hit southwestern Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) – At least six people died and a university student was missing on Wednesday as record-breaking rains battered parts of southwestern Japan still reeling from earthquakes two months ago, setting off flooding and landslides.
Hundreds of thousands people were advised to evacuate a wide swathe of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, where 49 people died in earthquakes in April that weakened the ground and left it prone to landslides, NHK national news channel reported.
“I was in such a hurry to leave I don’t have anything more than what I’m wearing,” one elderly woman told NHK at an evacuation center.
Among those killed were a couple in their 80s whose house in Kumamoto was engulfed by mud after some places were hit by more than 100 mm (4 inches) of rain in an hour.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Kumamoto on Wednesday to kick off campaigning for an election next month for parliament’s upper house.
Authorities warned of further landslides in areas where the ground was weakened by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in April and several thousand people are still living in evacuation centers.
The area has been shaken by a steady series of aftershocks, including one on Wednesday morning.
(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Tearful Nepal relatives of Kabul attack victims receive bodies
By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Sobbing and weeping relatives of 12 Nepali nationals who were killed when a suicide bomber struck a minibus in Kabul received the bodies of their loved ones on Wednesday after they were flown from Afghanistan.
The victims were security guards working at the Canadian embassy in Kabul and came under attack on the way to work early on Monday. Two Indian nationals were also killed in the attack which left seven Nepalis wounded.
“This is the most difficult job for me to receive him dead,” said Sanjita Kumari, wife of Jitendra Singh Thapa, who came to the airport in Kathmandu with her 4-month-old son, to receive her husband’s body. “But there is no alternative and I must face it,” Kumari told Reuters, her baby pressed to the chest as tears streamed down her face.
Thapa, a former Indian army soldier, had served as a security guard in Iraq before going to war-torn Afghanistan in February this year with a promise to come back in November.
Relatives of the victims like Kumari heard of Monday’s attack in the media. She prayed for her husband until being told by the recruitment agency that he was dead.
“This came as a shock to me,” the 30-year-old said.
She said Thapa wanted their baby to serve in the British Army that has been recruiting Gurkha soldiers from the foothills of Nepal for 200 years.
Prime Minister K.P. Oli paid tributes to victims by placing marigold garlands on the wooden coffins which were then handed over to the relatives for funerals.
Monday’s attack in Kabul was the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government and its Western backers, as Washington considers whether to delay plans to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan.
At least 8,000 Nepali nationals are working in Afghanistan, according to the labor department, but actual numbers could be higher as many cross over to India, which shares an open border with Nepal, and then travel on to Afghanistan.
Nepal allows its citizens to work in Afghanistan as security guards at the UN, foreign embassies and their missions.
“The government will study the situation in which Nepalis were targeted after which we will decide whether to continue this,” Labor Minister Deepak Bohara told Reuters.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Douglas Busvine)
Colombia to agree bilateral ceasefire with rebels this week: president
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia will reach agreement on a bilateral ceasefire at peace talks with leftist FARC rebels this week, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Tuesday, in what he said would mark a key advance in the negotiations to end 50 years of war.
Santos said this week the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels will complete the more than three-year-old negotiations by July 20.
“If the negotiators make a final effort to finish the definitive point that is a ceasefire and the end to hostilities, we will have taken a fundamental step in attaining peace,” Santos said in a speech at an education event in Bogota.
“I appeal to God that he gives us the strength to finish these accords this very week, because we have almost completed them.”
Government sources said the agreement would likely not mean the ceasefire would begin right away, but rather that the announcement would lay out the details of a ceasefire set to begin when a final peace deal is signed.
A ceasefire accord will likely include details on how the rebels will demobilize, the sources said, and FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, may sign the accord with Santos on Thursday or Friday.
The two sides have reached agreements on more than half a dozen topics but have yet to agree terms for the ceasefire or on how exactly a referendum for Colombians to approve the peace deal will be organized.
The FARC called a unilateral ceasefire nearly a year ago and the government responded by halting air strikes on rebel camps.
Negotiators missed a self-imposed deadline for signing a deal in March, and Santos has come under fire over the past week for comments about the referendum he has promised will take place to approve a deal.
Timochenko took to Twitter earlier on Tuesday to say he was against announcing a date by which the talks would finish.
“Practice has demonstrated that setting dates hurts the process, even more when there isn’t an accord,” the rebel leader tweeted. “Although we are advancing, we aren’t there yet.”
Latin America’s longest war has killed some 220,000 people and displaced millions of others since 1964. Tens of thousands have gone missing.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb, additional reporting by Monica Garcia; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Suicide attacker kills six Jordanian troops at Syria border
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
AMMAN (Reuters) – Six Jordanian border guards were killed by a suicide bomber who drove a car at speed across the border from Syria and rammed it into a military post on Tuesday, security officials said.
The explosives-laden vehicle blew up a few hundred meters from a camp for Syrian refugees in a remote and desolate area where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet, a Jordanian army statement said.
The southeastern desert area is close to where Islamic State militants are known to operate, according to a security source who requested anonymity. The source said the attack appeared to be a well planned military operation. No group has claimed responsibility.
The army said a number of other vehicles used in the attack at around 5.30 a.m. (2230 EDT) were destroyed and that 14 other people were wounded. The suicide bomber drove out from behind a berm and dodged gunfire to reach the military post, it added.
It was the first such assault targeting Jordan from Syria since Syria’s descent into conflict in 2011 and followed an attack on June 6 on a security office near the Jordanian capital Amman in which five people, including three Jordanian intelligence officers, were killed.
The incidents have jolted the Arab kingdom, which has been relatively unscathed by the instability that has swept the Arab world since 2011, including the expansion of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
In a rare move, the chief of staff of the Jordanian army General Mishal al Zibn declared the northern and northeastern border strip with Syria a closed military zone, an order that went into effect immediately.
“Any vehicle and personnel movement within these areas that move without prior coordination will be treated as enemy targets and dealt with firmly and without leniency,” the army statement said.
International relief workers said the Jordanian authorities had also suspended all humanitarian aid to the area and that this could put the lives of refugees at risk. This was not immediately by the Jordanian authorities.
IRON FIST
Jordan’s King Abdullah said the perpetrators would not go unpunished and that his security forces would deal with “an iron fist” with any group that sought to harm the country’s security or borders, a palace statement said.
Jordan is a staunch ally of the United States and is taking part in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria, where the jihadist group still controls large areas of territory including much of the east.
Jordan has kept tight control of its frontier with Syria since the outbreak of the war in its neighbor.
Washington condemned the deadly attack as a “cowardly terrorist act” and said it would continue “unwavering support” for the Jordanian army, a statement from the U.S. embassy said.
Since the start of the Syria conflict, Washington has spent tens of millions of dollars to help Amman set up an elaborate surveillance system known as the Border Security Programme to stem infiltration by militants from Syria and Iraq.
The Rakban crossing targeted on Tuesday is a military zone far from any inhabited area, and includes a three-km (two-mile) stretch of berms built a decade ago to combat smuggling. The border is heavily guarded by patrols and drones.
U.S. Patriot missiles are stationed in the kingdom, however, and the U.S. army has hundreds of trainers in the country.
It is the only area where Jordan still receives Syrian refugees, some 50,000 of whom are stranded in Rakban refugee camp in a de facto no-man’s land some 330 km (200 miles) northeast of Amman.
REFUGEES STRAIN KINGDOM
The population of the camp has since last year grown from several thousand to over 50,000 people as the fighting in Syria intensified, relief workers say.
Jordan has been a big beneficiary of foreign aid because of its efforts to help refugees but has drawn criticism from Western allies and aid agencies over the humanitarian situation at Rakban, diplomats say.
Earlier waves of Syrian refugees had an easier time, with some walking just a few hundred meters to cross into Jordan. Jordan sealed those border crossings in 2013.
The United Nations refugee agency said late last year Jordan should accept the new wave of refugees — their numbers have risen, aid officials say, since Russia started air strikes last September — and move them to established camps closer to Amman.
Jordan, which has already accepted more than 600,000 U.N.-registered Syrian refugees, is resisting. It says Islamic State militants may have infiltrated their ranks as most of them come from Islamic State-held areas in central and eastern Syria, and has allowed only a trickle of refugees, mostly women and children, in recent months.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Tom Perry and Timothy Heritage)
Full Orlando 911 transcript released; gunman pledged allegiance to Islamic State
By Barbara Liston
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Monday released what they said was the complete transcript of the phone conversation between the Orlando, Florida, shooter and 911 police operators as he threatened to strap explosives to his hostages.
The release of the full transcript came a few hours after the FBI had issued an edited transcript of the calls.
In the full transcript, the gunman, Omar Mateen, is quoted pledging allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Mateen, 29, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida on June 12, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. He threatened to detonate a car rigged with bombs and to strap hostages into explosive vests, according to transcripts of the 911 calls he made while police tried to rescue people trapped in the club.
The FBI and Justice Department said they had released a redacted transcript of the conversations because of sensitivity to the interests of survivors and victims’ families, and the integrity of the investigation.
But the first transcript led U.S. House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan and other politicians to call for the release of a full transcript after a political battle over gun violence brewed in the U.S. Congress.
Mateen’s conversations with a dispatcher and crisis negotiators were made public as police sought to fend off criticism that they may have acted too slowly to end a three-hour standoff at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
“You people are gonna get it and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid,” Mateen said during one of the calls, according to the FBI transcript.
(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Frank McGurty in New York, and Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Fiona Ortiz and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Bill Trott)