Man kills 6, including ex-wife, in latest US gun violence

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Law enforcers investigate the scene of multiple shootings on Arkabutla Dam Road in Arkabutla, Mississippi on Feb. 17, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 18 February 2023
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Man kills 6, including ex-wife, in latest US gun violence

  • 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum was armed with a shotgun and two handguns, says sheriff
  • Deputies caught up with Crum outside his own home and arrested him after the shootings

ARKABUTLA, Mississippi: A lone gunman killed six people including his ex-wife and stepfather Friday at multiple locations in a tiny rural community in northern Mississippi, the sheriff said, leaving investigators searching for clues to what motivated the shocking rampage.
Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum opened fire at about 11 a.m. and killed a man in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck parked outside a convenience store in Arkabutla, near the Tennessee state line, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance said.
Deputies were working the crime scene when a second 911 call alerted authorities to another shooting a few miles away. After arriving at a home, they found a woman, whom the sheriff identified as Crum’s ex-wife, shot dead and her current husband wounded.
Lance said deputies caught up with Crum outside his own home and arrested him. Behind the residence they found two handymen slain by gunfire — one in the road, another in an SUV. Inside a neighboring home, they discovered the bodies of Crum’s stepfather and his stepfather’s sister.
“Everybody has crime, and from time to time we have violent crime, but certainly nothing of this magnitude,” Lance said in an interview. He added: “Without being able to say what triggered this, that’s the scary part.”




Mugshot of Richard Dale Crum, the suspect in a shooting that killed six people in Mississippi. (Tate County Sheriff's Office handout via AFP)

Crum, 52, was jailed without bond on a single charge of capital murder, and Lance said investigators were working to bring additional charges. It was not immediately known if Crum had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
That initial murder charge was for the killing of Chris Eugene Boyce, 59, the man who was shot outside the store. Boyce’s brother was in the truck with him at the time and fled, according to the sheriff. Lance added that Crum chased the brother through a wooded area before he escaped unharmed.
Deputy Tate County Coroner Ernie Lentz identified the others killed as Debra Crum, 60; Charles Manuel, 76; John Rorie, 59; George McCain, 78; and Lynda McCain, 78. Lentz also said Boyce was from Lakeland, Florida.
Ethan Cash, who lives near the store, told WREG-TV he heard a gunshot from inside his house.
“I had just woken up and I look back here, and I see dude walking back here with a shotgun,” he said.
Cash added that he went to the scene and found one person who had been shot. He checked for a pulse, but found none.
In the lobby of the Sheriff’s Office, Norma Washington told The Associated Press that Boyce was her nephew. She said he and the brother, Doug, who lives in Alaska, had been in town cleaning up a property they inherited from their deceased uncle.
“I lost my brother, and now this one,” Washington said. “This has been something else.”
It was unclear whether Crum knew either of the brothers.
The killings stunned residents of Arkabutla, home to 285 people and located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Memphis, Tennessee. It’s the hometown of famed actor James Earl Jones, and nearby Arkabutla Lake is a popular fishing and recreational destination.
An elementary school and a high school in nearby Coldwater both went on lockdown while the suspect was being sought, according to the Coldwater Elementary School Facebook page. A short time later, a second post on the page said the lockdown had been lifted and “all students and staff are safe.”
April Wade, who lives in Arkabutla and grew up in Coldwater, said both are small communities where most people know each other, “but if you don’t, you know somebody who knows somebody.”
Speaking from a local tire store in the afternoon, Wade said she and her husband were aware of the shootings but had not yet heard the names of the suspect or victims.
“I think it’s crazy,” Wade said. “You do not expect something like that to happen so close to home.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said its agents were providing assistance to the sheriff’s department and state investigators. Lance said one of their top priorities was to determine a motive.
The sheriff, who has lived in the area his entire life and served in law enforcement for 25 years, said he could recall no prior problems with Crum.
The shootings are the first mass killing in the US since Jan. 23, which saw the last of six in a three-week period, according to an Associated Press/USA Today database. It defines a mass killing as four or more people dead, not including the perpetrator.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were mourning the six victims and praying for the survivors. He urged Congress to act now on gun law reforms to address what he called “an epidemic” of gun violence.
 


Cambodia’s Hun Sen accuses Thai PM of ‘insulting king’

Updated 2 sec ago
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Cambodia’s Hun Sen accuses Thai PM of ‘insulting king’

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s influential ex-premier Hun Sen on Friday accused Thailand’s prime minister of insulting the Thai king, as tensions between the neighboring countries intensified.
He said Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s comments about her military commander — who she labelled an “opponent” — in a leaked phone call with the veteran leader over a border dispute were “an insult to the king.”
“An insult to a regional commander is an insult to the Thai king because it is only the king who issued a royal decree to appoint him,” Hun Sen said in a livestream on his official Facebook page.
The daughter of controversial ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra — who goes on trial for lese-majeste next week — faces being sacked as prime minister as the phone call scandal has triggered calls for her to step down and her government to teeter.
Hun Sen — father of Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Manet and former close ally to Thaksin — last week posted the full 17-minute recording of the private conversation on his official Facebook page.
“I just let Thailand know how the prime minister committed a dirty act to their nation,” he said on Friday.
In the recording posted online, the two leaders discussed restrictions imposed on border crossings after a military clash last month killed a Cambodian soldier.
Thailand has strict lese majeste laws, which bans criticism of King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his close family and carries sentences of up to 15 years in jail per offense.

Seoul asks Temu, AliExpress to pull children’s products over safety concerns

Updated 18 min 43 sec ago
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Seoul asks Temu, AliExpress to pull children’s products over safety concerns

  • The Seoul city government said Friday it recently inspected 35 children’s products sold on Temu and AliExpress and found that 11 failed to meet South Korea’s safety standards or contained hazardous substances above local limits

SEOUL: The Seoul city government has asked online retail giants Temu and AliExpress to suspend sales of certain children’s products over safety concerns, saying Friday that some goods far exceeded local limits for hazardous substances.
Chinese e-commerce titans like Shein, Temu and AliExpress have seen a surge in global popularity in recent years, drawing in consumers with a wide range of trendy, ultra-low-cost fashion and accessories — positioning them as major rivals to US giant Amazon.
Their rapid rise has triggered growing scrutiny over business practices and product safety, including in South Korea.
The Seoul city government said Friday it recently inspected 35 children’s products sold on Temu and AliExpress — including umbrellas, raincoats and rain boots — and found that 11 failed to meet South Korea’s safety standards or contained hazardous substances above local limits.
In six of the umbrellas, phthalate-based plasticizers — chemicals used to make plastics more flexible — were found at levels far exceeding safety standards, the city said in a statement.
Some of those products exceeded the domestic safety limit by up to 443.5 times for the chemical, while two items were found to contain lead at levels up to 27.7 times higher than the locally acceptable level.
Based on the inspection results, the Seoul government said it “has requested that online platforms suspend sales of the non-compliant products.”
It also noted that “prolonged exposure to harmful substances can affect children’s growth and health,” and highlighted the need to carefully review product information before making purchases.
The Seoul government told AFP the retailers have no legal obligations to comply with their request.
But Temu said it “immediately initiated an internal review” after receiving notice from the city government, and that it was “in the process of removing the said items.”
“We are continuously improving on our quality control system to prevent, detect, and remove non-compliant products,” a Temu spokesperson told AFP.
AliExpress did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Phthalate-based plasticizers can cause endocrine disorders, while lead exposure above safety limits can impair reproductive functions and increase the risk of cancer, according to Seoul authorities.
Last year, the city government said women’s accessories sold by Shein, AliExpress and Temu contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels.
The European Union last year added Shein to its list of digital firms that are big enough to come under stricter safety rules — including measures to protect customers from unsafe products, especially those that could be harmful to minors.


Vatican unveils last of restored Raphael Rooms after 10-year cleaning that yielded new discoveries

Updated 38 min 44 sec ago
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Vatican unveils last of restored Raphael Rooms after 10-year cleaning that yielded new discoveries

  • “With this restoration, we rewrite a part of the history of art,” Vatican Museums director Barbara Jatta said

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican Museums on Thursday unveiled the last and most important of the restored Raphael Rooms, the spectacularly frescoed reception rooms of the Apostolic Palace that in some ways rival the Sistine Chapel as the peak of high Renaissance artistry.
A decadelong project to clean and restore the largest of the four Raphael Rooms uncovered a novel mural painting technique that the superstar Renaissance painter and architect began but never completed. Raphael used oil paint directly on the wall, and arranged a grid of nails embedded in the walls to hold in place the resin surface onto which he painted.
Vatican Museums officials recounted the discoveries in inaugurating the hall, known as the Room of Constantine, after the last scaffolding came down. The reception room, which was painted by Raphael and his students starting in the first quarter-century of the 1500s, is dedicated to the fourth-century Roman emperor Constantine, whose embrace of Christianity helped spread the faith throughout the Roman Empire.
“With this restoration, we rewrite a part of the history of art,” Vatican Museums director Barbara Jatta said.
Pope Julius II summoned the young Raphael Sanzio from Florence to Rome in 1508 to decorate a new private apartment for himself in the Apostolic Palace, giving the then-25-year-old a major commission at the height of his artistic output.
Even at the time, there were reports that Raphael had wanted to decorate the rooms not with frescoes but with oil paint directly on the wall, to give the images greater brilliance. The 10-year restoration of the Room of Constantine proved those reports correct, said Fabio Piacentini, one of the chief restorers.
Vatican technicians discovered that two female figures on opposite corners of the hall, Justice and Courtesy, were actually oil-on-wall paintings, not frescoes in which paint is applied to wet plaster. They were therefore clearly the work of Raphael himself, he said.
But Raphael died on April 6, 1520, at the age of 37, and before the hall could be completed. The rest of the paintings in the room were frescoes completed by his students who couldn’t master the oil technique Raphael had used, Jatta said.
During the cleaning, restorers discovered that Raphael had clearly intended to do more with oil paints: Under the plaster frescoes, they found a series of metal nails they believed had been drilled into the wall to hold in place the natural resin surface that Raphael had intended to paint on, Piacentini said.
“From a historical and critical point of view, and also technical, it was truly a discovery,” he said. “The technique used and planned by Raphael was truly experimental for the time, and has never been found in any other mural made with oil paint.”
The final part of the restoration of the room was the ceiling, painted by Tommaso Laureti and featuring a remarkable example of Renaissance perspective with his fresco of a fake tapestry “Triumph of Christianity over Paganism.”
The Raphael Rooms were never fully closed off to the public during their long restoration, but they are now free of scaffolding for the many visitors flocking to the Vatican Museums for the 2025 Jubilee.


South Korea arrests Americans trying to send Bibles to North

Updated 16 min 34 sec ago
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South Korea arrests Americans trying to send Bibles to North

  • Local police said the six were trying to send thousands of plastic bottles, filled with rice, one-dollar bills and Bibles, into the sea off Ganghwa Island on Friday when they were caught

SEOUL: South Korean police on Friday arrested six US nationals attempting to send plastic bottles packed with rice and Bibles to North Korea, the head of the investigation team said.

Local police said the six were trying to send thousands of plastic bottles, filled with rice, one-dollar bills and Bibles, into the sea off Ganghwa Island at 1:03 am on Friday when they were caught.

“We have arrested and are questioning six American nationals in their 20s to 50s on suspicion of violating the Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety,” the head of the investigation team at Ganghwa Police Station in Incheon told AFP.

The Americans could not speak Korean, so “an interpreter was provided for them and we have since started the questioning,” he added.

Located northwest of Seoul, Ganghwa Island is one of the closest South Korean territories to North Korea, with some parts of the surrounding sea lying just 10 kilometers (six miles) from the maritime border between the two countries.

The island has long been a popular site for non-profit organizations and anti-North Korean groups to launch plastic bottles filled with rice, as well as USB sticks containing K-pop and South Korean dramas.

The area was designated a danger zone last November, along with other border regions where activists launch balloons carrying leaflets.

At the time, the government said such activities could be perceived by the North as provocative.

Last year, the two Koreas were in a tit-for-tat propaganda war, as the North sent thousands of trash-filled balloons southwards, saying they were retaliation for propaganda balloons launched by South Korean activists.

In response, Seoul turned on border loudspeaker broadcasts — including K-pop tunes and international news — and North Korea started transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the frontier that had been a major nuisance for South Korean residents in the area.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, who took office this month, has vowed a more dovish approach toward Pyongyang and has halted the loudspeaker broadcasts, which North Korea, in return, stopped the following day.


India accused of illegal deportations targeting Muslims

Updated 39 min 29 sec ago
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India accused of illegal deportations targeting Muslims

  • Deportations spark fear among India’s estimated 200 million Muslims
  • Many of those targeted in the campaign are low-wage laborers in states governed by Bharatiya Janata Party

NEW DELHI: India has deported without trial to Bangladesh hundreds of people, officials from both sides said, drawing condemnation from activists and lawyers who call the recent expulsions illegal and based on ethnic profiling.

New Delhi says the people deported are undocumented migrants.

The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hard-line stance on immigration – particularly those from neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh – with top officials referring to them as “termites” and “infiltrators.”

It has also sparked fear among India’s estimated 200 million Muslims, especially among speakers of Bengali, a widely spoken language in both eastern India and Bangladesh.

“Muslims, particularly from the eastern part of the country, are terrified,” said veteran Indian rights activist Harsh Mander.

“You have thrown millions into this existential fear.”

Bangladesh, largely encircled by land by India, has seen relations with New Delhi turn icy since a mass uprising in 2024 toppled Dhaka’s government, a former friend of India.

But India also ramped up operations against migrants after a wider security crackdown in the wake of an attack in the west – the April 22 killing of 26 people, mainly Hindu tourists, in Indian-administered Kashmir.

New Delhi blamed that attack on Pakistan, claims Islamabad rejected, with arguments culminating in a four-day conflict that left more than 70 dead.

Indian authorities launched an unprecedented countrywide security drive that has seen many thousands detained – and many of them eventually pushed across the border to Bangladesh at gunpoint.

Rahima Begum, from India’s eastern Assam state, said police detained her for several days in late May before taking her to the Bangladesh frontier.

She said she and her family had spent their life in India.

“I have lived all my life here – my parents, my grandparents, they are all from here,” she said. “I don’t know why they would do this to me.”

Indian police took Begum, along with five other people, all Muslims, and forced them into swampland in the dark.

“They showed us a village in the distance and told us to crawl there,” she said.

“They said: ‘Do not dare to stand and walk, or we will shoot you.’”

Bangladeshi locals who found the group then handed them to border police who “thrashed” them and ordered they return to India, Begum said.

“As we approached the border, there was firing from the other side,” said the 50-year-old.

“We thought: ‘This is the end. We are all going to die.’”

She survived, and, a week after she was first picked up, she was dropped back home in Assam with a warning to keep quiet.

Rights activists and lawyers criticized India’s drive as “lawless.”

“You cannot deport people unless there is a country to accept them,” said New Delhi-based civil rights lawyer Sanjay Hegde.

Indian law does not allow for people to be deported without due process, he added.

Bangladesh has said India has pushed more than 1,600 people across its border since May.

Indian media suggests the number could be as high as 2,500.

The Bangladesh Border Guards said it has sent back 100 of those pushed across – because they were Indian citizens.

India has been accused of forcibly deporting Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, with navy ships dropping them off the coast of the war-torn nation.

Many of those targeted in the campaign are low-wage laborers in states governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to rights activists.

Indian authorities did not respond to questions about the number of people detained and deported.

But Assam state’s chief minister has said that more than 300 people have been deported to Bangladesh.

Separately, Gujarat’s police chief said more than 6,500 people have been rounded up in the western state, home to both Modi and interior minister Amit Shah.

Many of those were reported to be Bengali-speaking Indians and later released.

“People of Muslim identity who happen to be Bengali speaking are being targeted as part of an ideological hate campaign,” said Mander, the activist.

Nazimuddin Mondal, a 35-year-old mason, said he was picked up by police in the financial hub of Mumbai, flown on a military aircraft to the border state of Tripura and pushed into Bangladesh.

He managed to cross back, and is now back in India’s West Bengal state, where he said he was born.

“The Indian security forces beat us with batons when we insisted we were Indians,” said Mondal, adding he is now scared to even go out to seek work.

“I showed them my government-issued ID, but they just would not listen.”