CHARLOTTE, N.C.: A man armed with a pistol opened fire on students at a North Carolina university during the last day of classes Tuesday, killing two people and wounding four, police said. Officers who had gathered ahead of a campus concert raced over and disarmed the suspect.
The shooting prompted a lockdown at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and caused widespread panic across campus as students scrambled to take shelter.
“Just loud bangs. A couple loud bangs and then we just saw everyone run out of the building, like nervous, like a scared run like they were looking behind,” said Antonio Rodriguez, 24, who was visiting campus for his friend’s art show.
Campus Police Chief Jeff Baker said authorities received a call in the late afternoon that a suspect armed with a pistol had shot several students. He said officers assembling nearby for a concert rushed to the classroom building and arrested the gunman in the room where the shooting took place.
“Our officers’ actions definitely saved lives,” Baker said at a news conference.
He said two people were killed, and three remained in critical condition late Tuesday. He said a fourth person’s injuries were less serious. Students were among the victims, but officials would not say how many.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department identified the suspect as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22. They said he’s in custody with charges pending.
Monifa Drayton, an adjunct professor, was walking onto campus when she heard the shots. She said she directed students fleeing the scene to take cover inside a parking deck.
“I heard one final gunshot and I saw all the children running toward me,” she said. “We started to get all the children pulled into the second floor of the parking deck and the rationale was if we’re in the parking deck and there’s a shooter and we don’t know where he is, he won’t have a clear shot.”
She added: “My thought was, I’ve lived my life, I’ve had a really good life, so, these students deserve the same. And so, whatever I could do to help any child to safety, that’s what I was going to do.”
The suspect’s grandfather Paul Rold of Arlington, Texas, said that Terrell and his father moved to Charlotte from the Dallas area about two years ago after his mother died. Terrell taught himself French and Portuguese with the help of a language learning program his grandfather bought him and was attending UNC-Charlotte, Rold said. But Terrell never showed any interest in guns or other weapons and the news he may have been involved in a mass shooting was stunning, said Rold, who had not heard about the Charlotte attack before being contacted by an Associated Press reporter.
“You’re describing someone foreign to me,” Rold said in a telephone interview Tuesday night. “This is not in his DNA.”
Shortly after UNC Charlotte issued a campus lockdown, aerial shots from local television news outlets showed police officers running toward a building, while another view showed students running on a campus sidewalk.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department later said that the campus had been secured and that officers were going through buildings to let people who were hiding know that it was safe to come out.
The university has more than 26,500 students and 3,000 faculty and staff. The campus is northeast of the city center and is surrounded by residential areas.
Spenser Gray, a junior, said she was watching another student’s presentation in a nearby campus building when the alert about the shooting popped up on everyone’s computer screens.
She said she panicked: “We had no idea where he was ... so we were just expecting them at any moment coming into the classroom.”
Susan Harden, an UNCC professor and Mecklenburg County Commissioner, was at home when she heard of the shooting. She went to a staging area, she said, to provide support.
Harden said she has taught inside the Kennedy building, where the shootings occurred.
“It breaks my heart. We’re torn up about what’s happened,” Harden said. “Students should be able to learn in peace and in safety and professors ought to be able to do their jobs in safety.”
Gov. Roy Cooper said at a briefing late Tuesday that a “hard look” was needed into how the shooting happened and how to keep guns off campus and out of schools.
“A student should not have to fear for his or her life when they are on our campuses,” the Democrat said. “Parents should not have to worry about their students when they send them off to school. And I know that this violence has to stop. ... In the coming days we will take a hard look at all of this to see what we need to do going forward.”
2 dead, 4 injured in North Carolina campus shooting
2 dead, 4 injured in North Carolina campus shooting
- According to government figures, 40,000 people were killed by firearms in the United States in 2017
Pope Francis stumbles while walking into Jubilee audience at the Vatican as his walking stick snaps
- Pope Francis often has to use a wheelchair or a cane because of bad knees
- The pontiff has long battled health problems including long bouts of bronchitis
The 88-year-old pope often has to use a wheelchair or a cane because of bad knees and has fallen twice in the past two months.
After Saturday’s slight stumble, two aides helped him to his chair on the stage and the audience proceeded without incident. After he recovered someone in the audience shouted “Viva il Papa” and the audience applauded.
Earlier in January, Francis fell and hurt his right arm. It wasn’t broken, but a sling was put on as a precaution.
On Dec. 7, the pope whacked his chin on his nightstand in an apparent fall that resulted in a bad bruise.
The pontiff has long battled health problems including long bouts of bronchitis. He uses a walker or cane when moving around his apartment in the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel.
Speculation about Francis’ health is a constant in Vatican circles, especially after Pope Benedict XVI broke 600 years of tradition and resigned from the papacy in 2013. Benedict’s aides have attributed the decision to a nighttime fall that he suffered during a 2012 trip to Mexico, after which he determined he couldn’t keep up with the globe-trotting demands of the papacy.
Francis has said that he has no plans to resign anytime soon, even if Benedict “opened the door” to the possibility. In his autobiography “Hope” released this month, Francis said that he hadn’t considered resigning even when he had major intestinal surgery.
Los Angeles fires fully contained after burning for 3 weeks: state agency
- Palisades and Eaton fires burned more than 150 square kilometers and over 10,000 homes
- Estimated damage and economic loss at between $250 billion and $275 billion
LOS ANGELES, United States: Two devastating wildfires in Los Angeles were declared fully contained by firefighters on Friday after burning for more than three weeks, killing about 30 people and displacing thousands more.
The Palisades and Eaton fires in Southern California’s Los Angeles County were the most destructive in the history of the second-largest US city, burning more than 150 square kilometers and over 10,000 homes, causing damage estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, updated the figures on its website on Friday to show 100 percent containment of both fires, meaning their perimeters were completely under control.
Evacuation orders were lifted earlier, with the fires not posing a serious threat for days.
Both blazes started on January 7 and their exact cause remains under investigation.
But human-driven climate change set the stage for the infernos by reducing rainfall, parching vegetation, and extending the dangerous overlap between flammable drought conditions and powerful Santa Ana winds, according to an analysis published this week.
The study, conducted by dozens of researchers, concluded that the conditions fueling the blazes were approximately 35 percent more likely due to global warming caused by burning fossil fuels.
The two fires destroyed thousands of structures over more than three weeks in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and Malibu, and in the Altadena community in Los Angeles County, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.
“Our recovery effort is based around getting people back home to rebuild as quickly and safely as possible,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement Friday. “We are making sure that the Palisades will be safe as residents access their properties.”
City police chief Jim McDonnell said the presence of law enforcement officers in the area would be “more than 10 times” what it was before the start of the fires.
Private meteorological firm AccuWeather has estimated the damage and economic loss at between $250 billion and $275 billion.
African health agency says DRC fighting has spawned ‘health emergency’
- The head of Africa’s health agency said the situation in the DRC city of Goma was a “full-scale public health emergency,” warning that the fighting there could fuel major pandemics
ADDIS ABABA: The head of Africa’s health agency said the situation in the DRC city of Goma was a “full-scale public health emergency,” warning that the fighting there could fuel major pandemics.
The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has been advancing across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s volatile east, which has been the scene of numerous infectious disease outbreaks.
Earlier this week, M23 seized control of most of North Kivu’s capital Goma, a densely populated city of three million people, one million of whom are displaced.
Jean Kaseya, head of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said it was these “extreme conditions, combined with insecurity and mass displacement have fueled the mutation of the mpox virus.”
The clade 1b variant of mpox, which has been recorded in many countries across the world in recent months, first emerged in the neighboring South Kivu province in 2023.
“Goma has become the epicenter, spreading mpox across 21 African countries,” he said in a letter sent on Friday to African leaders.
“This is not only a security issue — it is a full-scale public health emergency,” Kaseya said.
“This war must end. If decisive action is not taken, it will not be bullets alone that claim lives — it will be the unchecked spread of major outbreaks and potential pandemics that will come from this fragile region... devastating economies and societies across our continent,” he said.
The conditions had also led to “widespread measles, cholera and other outbreaks, claiming thousands more lives.”
The conflict in the eastern DRC is a dramatic escalation in a region that has seen decades of conflict involving multiple armed groups, which over the past three decades have claimed an estimated six million lives.
International observers have sounded the alarm on the humanitarian impact of the escalating conflict.
Colombia offers to pay for repatriations from US
BOGOTA: Colombia has offered to pay for the “dignified” deportation of its citizens from the United States, the foreign ministry said Friday, a week after a public spat between presidents Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump over the removal of migrants.
The two leaders had issued threats and counter threats of major trade tariffs of up to 50 percent, and Washington’s embassy in Bogota stopped issuing visas from Monday to Friday in retaliation for Petro’s refusal to allow US military planes to return Colombian migrants to their country.
Petro had accused the United States of treating the migrants like criminals, placing them in shackles and handcuffs.
Colombia’s foreign ministry said Friday it had proposed to Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s special envoy for Latin America, that Bogota would “immediately assume the transfer of all citizens deported by the United States,” covering transportation costs for its nationals, according to a statement.
Petro has said his government would not allow expelled migrants to travel in handcuffs.
The Trump administration had announced this week a series of sanctions against Colombia, before backtracking, with the White House saying Bogota had accepted its conditions and reversed course.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Colombian military and civilian aircraft repatriated the first groups of migrants to Bogota.
According to Petro, hundreds of Colombians, including several children, were returned to their country in “dignified” conditions. None of them were “confirmed criminals,” he added.
Colombia is expecting the return of around 27,000 migrants whose deportation orders have been signed in the last six months by the Trump administration or that of his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, a Colombian presidential source told AFP.
Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history, vowing to expel millions of undocumented immigrants, many from Latin American nations.
The United States is Colombia’s largest trade partner and it has provided millions of dollars in aid over decades to fight drug trafficking and terrorism.
Rubio to make debut in Panama as Trump threatens to take canal
- Marco Rubio’s travel comes the same day that Trump’s promised tariffs on the three largest US trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – are set to come into effect
- Rubio will travel later to four other small Latin American countries for an agenda focused on migration, a highly unusual first trip for the top US diplomat
WASHINGTON: Marco Rubio heads Saturday to Panama on his debut trip abroad as US secretary of state as he looks for how to follow up on President Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to seize the Panama Canal.
Rubio’s travel comes the same day that Trump’s promised tariffs on the three largest US trading partners – Canada, Mexico and China – are set to come into effect, another step showing a far more aggressive US foreign policy.
Rubio will travel later to four other small Latin American countries for an agenda focused on migration, a highly unusual first trip for the top US diplomat, whose predecessors were more likely to start the job with language of cooperation with major allies.
Trump has refused to rule out military force to seize the Panama Canal, which the United States handed over at the end of 1999, saying that China has exerted too much control through its investment in surrounding ports.
In his inaugural address, Trump said that the United States will be “taking it back” – and he refused to back down Friday.
“They’ve already offered to do many things,” Trump said of Panama, “but we think it’s appropriate that we take it back.”
He alleged that Panama was taking down Chinese-language signs to cover up how “they’ve totally violated the agreement” on the canal.
“Marco Rubio is going over this talk to the gentleman that’s in charge,” Trump told reporters.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino, generally considered an ally of the United States, has ruled out opening negotiations after complaining to the United Nations about Trump’s threat.
“I cannot negotiate, much less open a process of negotiations on the canal,” Mulino said Thursday.
The issue “is sealed. The canal is Panama’s,” Mulino said.
Mulino’s government, however, has ordered an audit of CK Hutchison Holdings, the Hong Kong company that operates ports on both sides of the canal.
It remains to be seen if or how Rubio carries out the threat. Some experts believe that Trump was simply applying pressure and could declare a win by the United States ramping up investment in the canal – an outcome that most Panamanians would welcome.
Rubio has played down the military option but also not contradicted his boss.
“I think the president’s been pretty clear he wants to administer the canal again. Obviously, the Panamanians are not big fans of that idea,” Rubio told SiriusXM radio in an interview before the trip.
He acknowledged that Panama’s government “generally is pro-American” but said that the Panama Canal is a “core national interest for us.”
“We cannot allow any foreign power – particularly China – to hold that kind of potential control over it that they do. That just can’t continue,” Rubio said.
The canal remains the crucial link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and coasts, with 40 percent of US container traffic going through it.
Trump administration officials said they were blaming not Mulino but previous Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela who in 2017 – during Trump’s first term as president – moved to sever ties with Taiwan in favor of China.
“It wasn’t just a diplomatic recognition. He literally opened the floodgates and gave strategic assets throughout the Canal Zone to China,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the US special envoy on Latin America.
He charged that Panama unfairly raised costs for US ships while also seeking assistance from the United States for canal upkeep. Panama attributes rising costs to the effects of a drought, exacerbated by climate change.
Trump has quickly made clear he will exercise swift pressure to bend other countries to his will, especially on his signature issue of deporting undocumented immigrants.
On Sunday, he threatened major tariffs against Colombia to force its president to back down after he insisted that repatriated migrants be treated in a more dignified way.
