CYPRUS MAIL Wednesday, January 9, 2012
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World
Gunshots and plea for help heard in 911 calls from US movie shooting By Keith Coffman A 13-YEAR-old girl caught in last summer’s shooting rampage at a Colorado movie theatre was heard frantically pleading for help in a tape of her emergency 911 call played in court yesterday. In it, the girl could be heard desperately telling an emergency dispatcher that her six-year-old cousin, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, and Veronica’s pregnant mother, Ashley Moser, had been struck by gunfire. Veronica was the youngest of the 12 people killed in the attack. “My two cousins have been shot,” she cries, as the dispatcher tries in vain to instruct the girl, whose name was not given, on how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The recording was one of two 911 calls played in court during the second day of a preliminary hearing for the accused gunman, James Holmes, in which prosecutors are seeking to convince a judge they have enough evidence to put him on trial. The onetime University of Colorado neuroscience doctoral student is charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts
of attempted murder stemming from the July 20 shooting rampage at a midnight screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, in Aurora, Colorado. In addition to the 12 dead, 58 others were wounded. Prosecutors charged Holmes with two counts for each shooting victim - one for commission of the crime “after deliberation” and another for “malice manifesting extreme indifference to human life.” Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty, though the charges make Holmes eligible for it. During testimony, police officers and investigators outlined in graphic detail the shooting and its immediate aftermath. Police say Holmes, who bought his movie ticket 12 days in advance, left the screening a few minutes after it started and re-entered Theater 9 at the Century 16 multiplex a short time later dressed in tactical body armour, a gas mask and helmet. Armed with a semi-automatic rifle, shotgun and pistol, police say, he then lobbed a tear gas cannister into the auditorium and sprayed the audience with bullets.
Teachers in Ohio, Texas flock to free gun training classes SCHOOL teachers in Texas and Ohio are flocking to free firearms classes in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school massacre, some vowing to protect their students with guns even at the risk of losing their jobs. In Ohio, more than 900 teachers, administrators and school employees asked to take part in the Buckeye Firearms Association’s newly created, three-day gun training programme, the association said. In Texas, an $85 Concealed Handgun License (CHL) course offered at no cost to teachers filled 400 spots immediately, forcing the school to offer another class, one instructor said. “Any teacher who is licenced and chooses to be armed should be able to be armed,” said Gerald Valentino, cofounder of the Buckeye Firearms Association. “It should be every teacher’s choice.” The December 14 tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, sparked a national debate about whether to arm teachers, prompting passionate arguments on both sides. The deaths of six and seven-year-old school children led President Barack Obama to promise “meaningful action” to curtail gun violence, while the National Rifle Association has advocated arming teachers and placing trained guards in each of the country’s 100,000 schools.
Smoke billowing as a bushfire burns near Green Point in New South Wales
(AFP)
Sweltering Oz battles hundreds of wildfires Hundreds of blazes as residents forced to evacuate homes By Rob Taylor AUSTRALIAN fire crews battled hundreds of wildfires, a searing heatwave and powerful, hot outback winds yesterday, but were hopeful they had dodged a potentially catastrophic fire day without loss of life or major damage. Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate homes as fires raged in southeast Australia, while some had no choice but to seek shelter in their homes as fires approached. Temperatures soared to more than 45 degrees Celsius. Fire fighters hope cooler weather sweeping up the Australian east coast late yesterday, which saw temperatures fall 20 degrees Celsius in a matter of hours in some coastal towns, would ease the incendiary conditions. “It’s very much a moveable feast with many fires still being identified,” said New South Wales (NSW) state
fire commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, warning a respite would not come for some hours and would last only days before searing heat driven by outback winds returned. The severe fire conditions replicated those of 2009, when “Black Saturday” wildfires in Victoria state killed 173 people and caused $4.4 billion worth of damage. After a week-long heatwave bushfires are ablaze in five of Australia’s six states, with more than 137 fires in the most populous state NSW, and in forests around the capital Canberra. Around 100 houses, the majority on the island state of Tasmania, have been destroyed by bushfires in recent days, and many people are still missing in fire-ravaged areas. Fire officials declared five areas of southern NSW as catastrophic, meaning if fires ignited they could not be controlled and advised people to evacuate. “We grabbed the photo
albums, suitcases, clothes and jewellery and ended up getting out while we could,” said Hallie Fernandez who runs a bed and breakfast motel at Brogo in NSW, where an out-of-control bushfire was burning. In Australia’s biggest city Sydney, where the temperature hit 41.8 degrees Celsius, thousands flocked to the city’s iconic beaches, while zookeepers hosed down animals to help them cope with temperatures that tested national records. The blistering heat also caused a blaze at a nuclear research facility in southern Sydney after cabling overheated in a nearby electricity substation, while thousands of homes in the city’s north experienced power outages due to soaring demand. In the outback city of Broken Hill, the mercury hit 45.1 Celsius, while the country’s biggest highway between Sydney and Melbourne was cut by fires that surrounded people in the township of
Tarcutta. “The heat has been so intense that tar on the road has been melting and sticking to my shoes,” retired Australian journalist Malcolm Brown said from central NSW. The record heatwave forced the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to extend its extreme temperature limit, adding new pink and purple colours to forecast maps to allow for temperatures of above 54 degrees Celsius. The bureau is forecasting 54 degrees Celsius in central Australia next Monday. The heatwave, which began in Western Australia on December 27 and lasted eight days, was the fiercest in more than 80 years in that state and has spread east across the nation, making it the widest-ranging heatwave in more than a decade. Strong wind gusts had created a “dome of heat” covering much of the island continent, said climate experts.
Cameroon acquits men jailed for ‘looking gay’ First images of giant squid filmed in deep ocean A CAMEROON appeal court on Monday overturned the convictions of two men found guilty of homosexuality and sentenced to five years in jail for cross-dressing and wearing make-up. Homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon but recent incidents have highlighted growing tension between a largely conservative society and a younger generation less concerned by the issue. The two men were convicted in November 2011 and had already spent over a year in prison. Their lawyer, Alice Nkom, who also campaigns
for gay rights, said the court’s decision had been expected. “Their conviction was against the law because they were not actually seen or caught doing anything at the time the police arrested them,” she said. “They were arrested because they were just seen wearing women’s clothes and because of the nature of their makeup, and only suspected to be homosexuals, which is against Cameroon law. That is why we appealed.” Three weeks ago, the same appeal court upheld the three-year jail term of
32-year-old Jean-Claude Roger Mbede, found guilty of homosexual conduct because he sent a text message to another man saying: “I’m very much in love with you.” Nkom, who also defended Mbede, said she hoped the supreme court would overturn that ruling. “A man cannot be found guilty of practising homosexuality simply because he sent a message to another man to say he loves him. At least two persons of same sex must be caught doing the act before they are arrested and convicted.”
By Ruairidh Villar A JAPANESE-led team of scientists has captured on film the world’s first live images of a giant squid, journeying to the depths of the ocean in search of the mysterious creature thought to have inspired the myth of the ‘kraken’, a tentacled monster. The images of the silvery, three-metre long cephalopod, looming out of the darkness nearly 1km below the surface, were taken last July near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km south of Tokyo. Though the beast was small by giant squid standards - the largest ever caught stretched 18 metres long, tentacles and all - filming it secretly in its natural habitat was a key step towards understanding the
animal, researchers said. “Many people have tried to capture an image of a giant squid alive in its natural habitat, whether researchers or film crews. But they all failed,” said Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science, who led the team. “These are the first ever images of a real live giant squid,” Kubodera said of the footage, shot by Japanese national broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel. The key to their success, said Kubodera, was a small submersible rigged with lights invisible to both human and cephalopod eyes. He, a cameraman and the submersible’s pilot drifted silently down to 630 metres and released a one-metre-long squid as bait. In all, they descended around 100 times.