FLORIDA: No mention of fire arms or gun control, President Donald Trump's statement Thursday skirted the big issues and demanded to know how a “disturbed” former student with an obsession with firearms slipped through the net to sow carnage at a Florida high school, killing at least 17 people in the latest gun massacre to rock the nation.
The 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over Wednesday’s deadly rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, America’s worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre left 20 children and six teachers dead in 2012.
After a night of questioning in police custody, the young man was reportedly transferred to a local Florida jail early yesterday.
Trump ordered flags to fly at half-staff and was to deliver a televised address later Thursday, to a nation stunned by the mounting toll of school shootings which US authorities have so far appeared powerless to stop.
Wednesday’s harrowing shooting spree saw terrified students hiding in closets and under desks as they texted for help, while the gunman stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Fifteen people were killed at the school itself, and two later died in hospital. One of those killed was a football coach in Parkland, a city of about 30,000 people, located 50 miles north of Miami.
The president weighed in on the tragedy on Twitter by pointing to indications the shooter — who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons — was “mentally disturbed.”
“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump wrote.
“Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!“
Cruz was reportedly known to have firearms at home and had talked about using them.
A teacher at the school said Cruz had been identified previously as a potential threat to his classmates.
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” math teacher Jim Gard said in a Miami Herald interview.
“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
According to a BuzzFeed report, the FBI had been informed Cruz could carry out a school shooting last year, after the teen commented on a video: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
The creator of the video tipped off both the FBI and YouTube, BuzzFeed said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Thursday called Cruz a “deeply disturbed person,” and questioned how the teenager “escaped detection, was able to acquire this weapon, and then go on and kill 17 people and injure many more.”
“This was someone that people knew was a danger,” Rubio said.
The United States has been hit by almost 20 school shootings since the start of the year, a terrifying phenomenon that is part of a broader epidemic of gun violence in a country that loses 33,000 people to gun-related deaths each year.
While the latest mass shooting has inevitably reignited questions about America’s permissive gun laws, Trump — who is the first president to have addressed the NRA gun lobby — is staunchly opposed to any additional gun control.
Opponents of gun control have consistently sought to steer public debate away from the issue, and onto the behavior and motives of people using the weapons.
When questioned at a press conference late Wednesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott — who described the massacre as “just pure evil” — declined to make a statement on gun control.
“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement, how through mental illness funding that we make sure people are safe, and we’ll continue to do that,” said Scott, a Republican.
Cruz had mixed in with students fleeing the school before being caught, officials said.
“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things... are very, very disturbing,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
“If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific event by going to a school and shooting people ... there’s not anybody or not a lot law enforcement can do about it.”
“This is a terrible day for Parkland,” Israel said.
The FBI said it was assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.
Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky said a police officer was always stationed at the school and there was a “single point of entry.”
Since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country — an average of about one a week, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit group that advocates for gun control.
“It is pretty clear that we’re failing our kids here,” said Melissa Falkowski, a teacher who squeezed 19 students into a closet to shield them from harm.
Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Pakistan says progress on resettling Afghans in Western countries remains ‘painfully slow’
- Thousands of Afghans who helped American troops and diplomats during Afghan war await resettlement in US
- Pakistan says would have been “more appropriate” if world did not abandon the Afghan people after the war
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office has said that progress on the cases of thousands of Afghans seeking resettlement in Western countries remains “painfully slow,” insisting that it was only repatriating Afghan nationals who were residing illegally in Pakistan.
Thousands of Afghan locals put themselves in danger to serve alongside US troops, diplomats, and contractors during the war in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. These individuals provided linguistic, cultural and geographic knowledge to the United States at great personal risk to themselves and their families.
Since 2006, the American Congress has established several Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs that allow eligible applicants to resettle to safety in the US. After the fall of Kabul in August 2021, thousands of Afghans who had filed such refugee resettlement applications entered neighboring Pakistan, but remain trapped in legal limbo, while facing persistent threats for their collaboration with the US.
In 2023, Islamabad began a drive to expel what it said were all undocumented foreigners, a campaign that has disproportionately hit Afghans, with reportedly 800,000 repatriated so far. Afghan rights activists and applicants of SIVs have said the deportation drive has also forcibly repatriated scores of Afghans awaiting resettlement in the United States, which Islamabad denies.
Pakistan has consistently called on Western countries to expedite the approval and visa issuance of Afghan nationals that are currently in Pakistan but awaiting to be resettled in the West.
“Progress on the cases of thousands of Afghan nationals who were promised resettlement in Western countries remains painfully slow,” Pakistan’s foreign office wrote on social media platform X on Sunday.
It was responding to Jan England, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who had highlighted the plight of Afghan refugees being repatriated from Pakistan and Iran.
The foreign office pointed out that Pakistan had hosted over four million Afghan refugees that had escaped their war-torn country for the past 40 years, adding that those being sent back were those that were “residing illegally without any documentation or proof of residence.”
“It would have been more appropriate had the world not abandoned the Afghan people after the war and if conducive socioeconomic conditions had been created inside the country for the Afghan people to prosper,” the foreign office said. It said that the United Nations’ humanitarian aid to Afghanistan remains “critically underfunded” with only 37.5 percent of the required funds secured last year.
“Pakistan has been and will continue to support all efforts aimed at addressing the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as well as for lasting peace and stability in the country,” the foreign office concluded.
PAKISTAN’S DEPORTATION DRIVE
Pakistan launched the deportation drive in October 2023 after a spike in suicide bombings which the Pakistan government, without providing evidence, said were carried out by Afghan nationals. Islamabad has also blamed them for smuggling, militant violence and other crimes.
A cash-strapped Pakistan navigating record inflation, alongside a tough International Monetary Fund bailout program in 2023, had also said undocumented migrants had drained its resources for decades.
Until the government initiated the expulsion drive, Pakistan was home to over four million Afghan migrants and refugees out of which around 1.7 million were undocumented, as per government figures.
Afghans make up the largest portion of migrants, many of whom came after the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021, but a large number have been present since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Islamabad insists the deportation drive is not aimed specifically at Afghans but at all those living illegally in Pakistan.
Anti-poverty group says billionaires’ wealth soared in 2024 as the elites prepare for another Davos
- Oxfam International also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade
- OxFam’s research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people”
DAVOS, Switzerland: Billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, a top anti-poverty group reported on Monday as some of the world’s political and financial elite prepared for an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
Oxfam International, in its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting, also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade. A year ago, the group forecast that only one trillionaire would appear during that time.
OxFam’s research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people.” The group’s sharp-edged report, titled “Takers Not Makers,” also says the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.
The World Economic Forum expects to host some 3,000 attendees, including business executives, academics, government officials, and civic group leaders at its annual meeting in the Alpine village of Davos.
What’s the worry about? ... The ‘new aristocracy’
President-elect Donald Trump, who visited Davos twice during his first term and was set to take the oath of office on Monday, is expected to take part in the forum’s event by video on Thursday. He has long championed wealth accumulation — including his own — and counts multibillionaire Elon Musk as a top adviser.
“What you’re seeing at the moment is a billionaire president taking oaths today, backed by the richest man. So this is pretty much the jewel in the crown of the global oligarchies,” Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said in an interview, referring to Trump and Musk.
“It’s not about one specific individual. It’s the economic system that we have created where the billionaires are now pretty much being able to shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit,” he added.
Like Biden’s call for making billionaires “begin to pay their fair share” through the US tax code, Oxfam — a global advocacy group — called on governments to tax the richest to reduce inequality and extreme wealth, and to “dismantle the new aristocracy.”
The group called for steps like the break-up of monopolies, capping CEO pay, and regulation of corporations to ensure they pay “living wages” to workers.
How are the poorest faring?
Many investors racked up strong gains in 2024, with strong performances for top tech companies and stock-market indexes like the S&P 500, as well as the price of gold and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Oxfam said billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion last year, or roughly $5.7 billion a day, three-times faster than in 2023. The number of billionaires rose by 204 to 2,769, and the 10 richest men saw their wealth rise nearly $100 million a day on average, it said.
Citing World Bank data, the group pointed to lingering poverty, saying the number of people living on less than $6.85 per day has “barely changed” since 1990. Oxfam used Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List” as of end-November for data on the ultra-rich.
By contrast, at least four new billionaires were “minted” every week in 2024, and three-fifths of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, monopoly power or “crony connections,” it said.
On average, Oxfam said, low- and middle-income countries are spending nearly half their national budgets on debt repayments. It also noted that life expectancy in Africa is just under 64 years of age, compared to over 79 years in Europe.
Will it be business as usual at Davos again this year?
Despite the growing gap between the über rich and the poor, the annual Davos confab, which formally begins on Tuesday, will likely focus this year again on making money and doing deals, with strongman leaders on the rise in some Western countries and progressive causes like diversity and climate change waning in the business world.
The continued rise of artificial intelligence as a tool for business to reap greater efficiencies will also again be a central theme in Davos, despite worries in many sectors that AI could upend many white-collar jobs and displace workers in an array of industries.
Trump’s return for a second term will likely be on many lips in Davos, as will lingering conflicts, including wars in Ukraine and Sudan, along with hopes for a continuation of a ceasefire that began on Sunday between Hamas and Israel, pausing their devastating 15-month war in Gaza.
Forum organizers last week issued a survey conducted among 900 experts for “Global Risks Report,” which found that conflicts between countries was the top concern, followed by extreme weather, economic confrontation, misinformation and disinformation, and “societal polarization” — a nod to the gap between rich and poor.
As in past years, protesters calling for more economic equality, taxing the rich and pressing other demands took to the streets. Some blocked roads to Davos, snarling traffic in places and delaying trips for some attendees to the event, which runs through Friday.
Palestinians trek across rubble to return to their homes as Gaza ceasefire takes hold
- Israel’s offensive has killed over 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children
- People celebrate despite vast scale of destruction and uncertain prospects for rebuilding, says one Gazan
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Even before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was fully in place Sunday, Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza Strip began to return to the remains of the homes they had evacuated during the 15-month war.
Majida Abu Jarad made quick work of packing the contents of her family’s tent in the sprawling tent city of Muwasi, just north of the strip’s southern border with Egypt.
At the start of the war, they were forced to flee their house in Gaza’s northern town of Beit Hanoun, where they used to gather around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine.
The house from those fond memories is gone, and for the past year, Abu Jarad, her husband and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, following one evacuation order after another by the Israeli military.
Seven times they fled, she said, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them as they crowded with strangers to sleep in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.
Now the family is preparing to begin the trek home — or to whatever remains of it — and to reunite with relatives who remained in the north.
“As soon as they said that the truce would start on Sunday, we started packing our bags and deciding what we would take, not caring that we would still be living in tents,” Abu Jarad said.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Over 110,000 Palestinians have been wounded, it said. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The Israeli military’s bombardment has flattened large swaths of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million of its 2.3 million residents.
Even before the ceasefire officially took effect — and as tank shelling continued overnight and into the morning — many Palestinians began trekking through the wreckage to reach their homes, some on foot and others hauling their belongings on donkey carts.
“They’re returning to retrieve their loved ones under the rubble,” said Mohamed Mahdi, a displaced Palestinian and father of two. He was forced to leave his three-story home in Gaza City’s southeastern Zaytoun neighborhood a few months ago,
Mahdi managed to reach his home Sunday morning, walking amid the rubble from western Gaza. On the road he said he saw the Hamas-run police force being deployed to the streets in Gaza City, helping people returning to their homes.
Despite the vast scale of the destruction and uncertain prospects for rebuilding, “people were celebrating,” he said. “They are happy. They started clearing the streets and removing the rubble of their homes. It’s a moment they’ve waited for 15 months.”
Um Saber, a 48-year-old widow and mother of six children, returned to her hometown of Beit Lahiya. She asked to be identified only by her honorific, meaning “mother of Saber,” out of safety concerns.
Speaking by phone, she said her family had found bodies in the street as they trekked home, some of whom appeared to have been lying in the open for weeks.
When they reached Beit Lahiya, they found their home and much of the surrounding area reduced to rubble, she said. Some families immediately began digging through the debris in search of missing loved ones. Others began trying to clear areas where they could set up tents.
Um Saber said she also found the area’s Kamal Adwan hospital “completely destroyed.”
“It’s no longer a hospital at all,” she said. “They destroyed everything.”
The hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli forces waging an offensive in largely isolated northern Gaza against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped.
The military has claimed that Hamas militants operate inside Kamal Adwan, which hospital officials have denied.
In Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, residents returned to find massive destruction across the city that was once a hub for displaced families fleeing Israel’s bombardment elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave. Some found human remains amid the rubble of houses and the streets.
“It’s an indescribable scene. It’s like you see a Hollywood horror movie,” said Mohamed Abu Taha, a Rafah resident, speaking to The Associated Press as he and his brother were inspecting his family home in the city’s Salam neighborhood. “Flattened houses, human remains, skulls and other body parts, in the street and in the rubble.”
He shared footage of piles of rubble he said had been his family’s house. “I want to know how they destroyed our home.”
The returns come amid looming uncertainty regarding whether the ceasefire deal will bring more than a temporary halt to the fighting, who will govern the enclave and how it will be rebuilt.
Not all families will be able to return home immediately. Under the terms of the deal, returning displaced people will only be able to cross the Netzarim corridor from south to north beginning seven days into the ceasefire.
And those who do return may face a long wait to rebuild their houses.
The United Nations has said that reconstruction could take more than 350 years if Gaza remains under an Israeli blockade. Using satellite data, the United Nations estimated last month that 69 percent of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including over 245,000 homes. With over 100 trucks working full-time, it would take more than 15 years just to clear the rubble away,
But for many families, the immediate relief overrode fears about the future.
“We will remain in a tent, but the difference is that the bleeding will stop, the fear will stop, and we will sleep reassured,” Abu Jarad said.
Pakistan’s new Gwadar airport set to begin operations today
- The opening of Chinese-funded airport was delayed because of security review due to militant attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan in August
- The airport will begin operations with the arrival of an inaugural Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi, airports authority says
KARACHI: Pakistan’s new Gwadar International Airport is set to begin operations today, Monday, with a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight due to arrive from the southern port city of Karachi, a Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) spokesperson said, following a months-long delay in the opening of the airport.
A security review, prompted by deadly attacks by separatist militants in Balochistan in August last year, had delayed the airport’s opening to the end of 2024. The airport was due to begin operation on Jan. 10, but it was once again postponed.
The $200-million Chinese-funded airport, which will handle both domestic and international flights, is expected to become one of Pakistan’s largest, according to the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA).
A ceremony will be held to mark the airport’s opening on Monday, which would be attended by senior federal and provincial government officials, according to PAA spokesperson Saif Ullah.
“The first flight will be given a traditional water salute by Rescue and Fire Fighting Service (RFFS) water bowsers after landing,” the PAA spokesperson said in a statement.
China has pledged over $65 billion in infrastructure, energy and other projects in Pakistan under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, the program in Pakistan is also developing a deep-water port close to the new Gwadar airport, a joint venture between Pakistan, Oman and China that is close to completion.
Last month, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said the Gwadar airport would be able to handle A-380 aircraft and capable of accommodating 4 million passengers annually.
The airport will feature various facilities, including cold storage, cargo sheds, hotels and shopping malls, with banking services arranged through the State Bank of Pakistan, according to the PM’s office. PIA also planned to increase
flights between Karachi and Gwadar to three times a week, while discussions were ongoing with private airlines and carriers from China, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to launch both domestic and international services.
Sharif had highlighted that the Gwadar International Airport symbolized the strong China-Pakistan friendship, expressing gratitude to Beijing for constructing an airport with international standards and modern facilities.
Although no Chinese projects were targeted in militant attacks in August, they have been frequently attacked in the past by separatists who view China as a foreign invader trying to gain control of impoverished but mineral-rich Balochistan, the site of a decades-long insurgency.
Recent attacks, including the one in October 2024 in which two Chinese workers were killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi, forced Beijing to publicly criticize Pakistan over security lapses and there had been widespread media reports that China wanted its own security forces on the ground to protect its nationals and projects, a demand Islamabad has long resisted.
Who are the Israelis released on the first day of the ceasefire?
- Around 100 hostages still remain in Gaza, after the rest were released, rescued, or their bodies were recovered
JERUSALEM: Three hostages held by Hamas were released Sunday after 471 days in captivity as part of a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. A gradual release of dozens of captives over the next several weeks has been agreed on.
The truce and release of hostages sparked hope and trepidation among Israelis. Many fear that the three-phase deal could collapse before all the hostages return, or that they will arrive in poor health. Others worry that the number of captives who have died is more than predicted.
Some 250 people were kidnapped during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered 15 months of war. Around 100 hostages still remain in Gaza, after the rest were released, rescued, or their bodies were recovered.
Hours before Sunday’s ceasefire, which many hope is the first step to end the war, Israel announced that it had retrieved the body of Oron Shaul, a soldier who was killed in the 2014 Israel-Hamas war and whose remains have been held by the militants since then.
Here’s a look at the three hostages released on Sunday:
Romi Gonen, 24
Romi Gonen was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That morning, Gonen’s mother, Merav, and her eldest daughter spent nearly five hours speaking to Gonen as militants marauded through the festival grounds. Gonen told her family that roads clogged with abandoned cars made escape impossible and that she would seek shelter in some bushes.
Then she said words that continue to echo in her mother’s head every day. “Mommy I was shot, the car was shot, everybody was shot. ... I am wounded and bleeding. Mommy, I think I’m going to die,” she recounted Romi as saying, in a press conference a few weeks after the abduction.
At a loss for what to do, Merav Gonen tried to convince her daughter that she wasn’t going to die, to start breathing and treat her wounded friends. According to Merav, Romi’s last word during the call was a shriek of “Mommy!” as approaching gunfire and the men’s shouts drowned out everything.
Then the phone shut off. Israeli authorities identified her phone’s location in Gaza.
Over the past 15 months, Merav Gonen has been one of the most outspoken voices advocating for the return of the hostages, appearing nearly daily on Israeli news programs and traveling abroad on missions.
“We are doing everything we can so the world will not forget,” she told The Associated Press on the six-month anniversary of Hamas’ attack. “Every day we wake up and take a big breath, deep breath, and continue walking, continue doing the things that will bring her back.”
Emily Damari, 28
Emily Damari is a British-Israeli citizen kidnapped from her apartment on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a communal farming village hit hard by Hamas’ assault. She lived in a small apartment in a neighborhood for young adults, the closest part of the kibbutz to Gaza. Militants broke through the border fence of the kibbutz and ransacked the neighborhood.
Damari’s mother, Mandy, said she loves music, traveling, soccer, good food, karaoke and hats. Kibbutz Kfar Aza said that Damari was often the “glue that held her close-knit friend group together” and she was always organizing gatherings of friends around the best barbecue corner in the entire kibbutz.
On Sunday, Mandy released a statement of thanks for supporters “who never stopped saying her name.”
“After 471 days Emily is finally home,” she said.
Doron Steinbrecher, 31
Doron Steinbrecher is a veterinary nurse who loves animals, and a neighbor to Damari in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Steinbrecher holds both Israeli and Romanian citizenship.
At 10:20 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Steinbrecher called her mother. “Mom, I’m scared. I’m hiding under the bed and I hear them trying to enter my apartment,” her brother, Dor, recalled. She was able to send a voice message to her friends. “They’ve got me! They’ve got me! They’ve got me!” in the moments of her abduction.
That message was key in helping her family understand that Doron had been kidnapped.
Steinbrecher was featured in a video released by Hamas on Jan. 26, 2024, along with two female Israeli soldiers. Her brother said the video gave them hope that she was alive but sparked concern because she looked tired, weak, and gaunt.
In total, militants killed 64 people and 22 soldiers, and kidnapped 19 people from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7. With the return of Steinbrecher and Damari, there are still three members of the kibbutz held in Gaza: American-Israeli Keith Siegel, 65, and twins Gali and Ziv Berman, 27.
Remains of Oron Shaul, 20
Oron Shaul was a soldier killed on July 20, 2014, during fighting between Israel and Hamas. His body and that of another soldier, Hadar Goldin, had been held by militants since then despite a public campaign to return them by their families.
The Hostages Families Forum, which represents relatives of the captives, called the Shaul family an “inseparable part” of the group.
Militants still hold the bodies of Goldin as well as two Israelis who crossed into Gaza in 2014 and 2015 on their own.
