Police: 10 people killed at Colorado supermarket/node/1830156/world
Police: 10 people killed at Colorado supermarket
Police officers stand outside the parking lot of the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on March 22, 2021 after reports of an active shooter. (AFP)
Video posted on YouTube showed one person on the floor inside the King Soopers store and two more outside on the ground
Updated 23 March 2021
AP
BOULDER, Colorado: A shooting at a Colorado supermarket killed 10 people Monday, including a police officer, and a suspect was in custody, authorities said.
Boulder police Chief Maris Herold announced the death toll at a news conference Monday night, fighting back tears.
The suspect was getting medical treatment and there was no further threat to the public, authorities said. Officers had escorted a shirtless man with blood running down his leg out of the store in handcuffs but authorities would not say if he was the suspect.
The officer who was killed was Eric Talley, 51, who had been with Boulder police since 2010, Herold said.
Victims’ families were still being notified so their names weren’t released, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.
“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County, and in response, we have cooperation and assistance from local, state and federal authorities,” Dougherty said.
Yamaguchi said police were still investigating and didn’t have details on a motive for the shooting at the King Soopers store in Boulder, which is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Denver and home to the University of Colorado.
Dean Schiller told The Associated Press that he had just left the supermarket when he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down, two in the parking lot and one near the doorway. He said he “couldn’t tell if they were breathing.”
Video posted on YouTube showed one person on the floor inside the store and two more outside on the ground. What sounds like two gunshots are also heard at the beginning of the video.
Law enforcement vehicles and officers massed outside the store, including SWAT teams, and at least three helicopters landed on the roof. Some windows at the front of the store were broken.
At one point, authorities said over a loudspeaker that the building was surrounded and that “you need to surrender.”
Sarah Moonshadow told the Denver Post that two shots rang out just after she and her son, Nicolas Edwards, finished buying strawberries. She said she told her son to get down and then “we just ran.”
Once they got outside, she said they saw a body in the parking lot. Edwards said police were speeding into the lot and pulled up next to the body.
“I knew we couldn’t do anything for the guy,” he said. “We had to go.”
James Bentz told the Post that he was in the meat section when he heard what he thought was a misfire, then a series of pops.
“I was then at the front of a stampede,” he said.
Bentz said he jumped off a loading dock out back to escape and that younger people were helping older people off of it.
One person was taken from the shooting scene to Foothills Hospital in Boulder, said Rich Sheehan, spokesman for Boulder Community Health, which operates the hospital.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis tweeted a statement that his “heart is breaking as we watch this unspeakable event unfold in our Boulder community.”
Police had told people to shelter in place amid a report of an “armed, dangerous individual” about 3 miles (5 kilometers) away from the grocery store but said at the news conference later that it wasn’t related to the shooting.
The FBI said it’s helping in the investigation at the request of police.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the shooting.
In a statement, the King Soopers chain offered “thoughts, prayers and support to our associates, customers, and the first responders who so bravely responded to this tragic situation. We will continue to cooperate with local law enforcement and our store will remain closed during the police investigation.”
Kevin Daly, owner of Under the Sun Eatery and Pizzeria Restaurant a block or so from the supermarket, said he was in his shop when he saw police cars arriving and shoppers running from the grocery store. He said he took in several people to keep them warm, and others boarded a bus provided by Boulder police and were taken away.
Photo released by Cuban News Agency of Cuban First Secretary of the Communist Party Raul Castro speaking during the opening session of the 8th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party at the Convention Palace in Havana, on April 16, 2021. (AFP)
Raul Castro resigns as Communist chief, ending era in Cuba
Castro’s retirement means that for the first time in more than six decades Cubans won’t have a Castro formally guiding their affairs, and it comes at a difficult time, with many on the island anxious about what lies ahead
Updated 17 April 2021
AP
HAVANA: Raul Castro said Friday he is resigning as head of Cuba’s Communist Party, ending an era of formal leadership that began with his brother Fidel and country’s 1959 revolution.
The 89-year-old Castro made the announcement in a speech at the opening of the eighth congress of the ruling party, the only one allowed on the island.
He said he was retiring with the sense of having “fulfilled his mission and confident in the future of the fatherland.”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing is forcing me to make this decision,” said Castro, part of whose speech to the closed Congress was aired on state television. “As long as I live I will be ready with my foot in the stirrup to defend the homeland, the revolution and socialism with more force than ever.”
Castro didn’t say who he would endorse as his successor as first secretary of the Communist Party. But he previously indicated he favors yielding control to 60-year-old Miguel Díaz-Canel, who succeeded him as president in 2018 and is the standard bearer of a younger generation of loyalists who have been pushing an economic opening without touching Cuba’s one-party system.
Photographs released by the official Cuban News Agency showed Castro, dressed in an olive green uniform, entering the congress with Díaz-Canel by his side.
Castro’s retirement means that for the first time in more than six decades Cubans won’t have a Castro formally guiding their affairs, and it comes at a difficult time, with many on the island anxious about what lies ahead.
The coronavirus pandemic, painful financial reforms and restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have battered the economy, which shrank 11% last year as a result of a collapse in tourism and remittances. Long food lines and shortages have brought back echoes of the “special period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Discontent has been fueled by the spread of the Internet and growing inequality.
Much of the debate inside Cuba is focused on the pace of reform, with many complaining that the so-called “historic generation” represented by Castro has been too slow to open the economy.
In January, Díaz-Canel finally pulled the trigger on a plan approved two congresses ago to unify the island’s dual currency system, giving rise to fears of inflation. He also threw the doors open to a broader range of private enterprise — a category long banned or tightly restricted — permitting Cubans to legally operate many sorts of self-run businesses from their homes.
This year’s congress is expected to focus on unfinished reforms to overhaul state-run enterprises, attract foreign investment and provide more legal protection to private business activities.
The Communist Party is made up of 700,000 activists and is tasked in Cuba’s constitution with directing the affairs of the nation and society.
Fidel Castro, who led the revolution that drove dictator Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, formally became head of the party in 1965, about four years after officially embracing socialism.
He quickly absorbed the old party under his control and was the country’s unquestioned leader until falling ill in 2006 and in 2008 handing over the presidency to his younger brother Raul, who had fought alongside him during the revolution.
Raul succeeded him as head of the party in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016
For most of his life, Raul played second-string to his brother Fidel — first as a guerrilla commander, later as a senior figure in their socialist government. But for the past decade, it’s Raul who has been the face of communist Cuba and its defiance of US efforts to oust its socialist system.
The fourth of seven children of a Spanish immigrant in eastern Cuba, Raul had joined his charismatic older brother in a nearly suicidal attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago in 1953 and survived the crackdown that followed from the forces of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
He led a major front in the ensuing guerrilla war led by Fidel that toppled Batista. And he served for the following generation or two as head of the armed forces and eventually as Fidel’s designated successor. For many years, he was considered a more orthodox communist than his brother.
But it was Raul who reached accords with US President Barack Obama in 2014 that created the most extensive US opening to Cuba since the early 1960s — creating a surge in contacts with the United States that was largely reversed under Obama’s successor, Donald Trump.
MITHI, Sindh: Last year, two cousins who wanted to marry each other in a town hemmed in the rolling dunes of Pakistan’s Thar desert took their own lives by hanging themselves from a tree because they did not have the money to arrange their wedding.
Just a few years earlier, the girl’s father had also killed himself due to financial troubles.
Earlier this month, at a bus stop near the multibillion-dollar Thar Coal Power Project, Amru Kohli, the couple’s 60-year-old grandmother waited in the scorching heat for the next bus to arrive, hoping to collect some charity — her only source of income in a region where poverty driven by climate change is increasingly pushing people to suicide.
“With no livelihood available and my family with debt of more than 100,000 (Pakistani) rupees ($654), I have no option but to beg,” Kohli told Arab News.
Six people in her village had committed suicide in the last two years. “The main reason was extreme poverty,” she said.
The UN Development Program’s Multidimensional Poverty Index for Pakistan reported that 87 percent of the population in Thar lived in poverty. And climate change was now pushing locals into more deprivation.
Between 2016 to 2020, the Sindh Mental Health Authority (SMHA), an arm of the provincial government, said 767 suicides were recorded in Sindh, out of which the highest number, 79 cases, occurred in Tharparkar district in the Thar desert and another 64 cases were reported in the desert’s Umerkot district.
With a total of 143 cases registered in Thar, one in every five suicides in Sindh occurs in the desert region, authority officials said.
The non-governmental organization, the Association for Water, Applied Education, and Renewable Energy (Aware), put total deaths by suicide in Thar at 348 between 2016 and 2020.
“With every passing day, suicide cases are rising in the desert,” Ali Akbar Rahimoo, Aware’s executive director, told Arab News.
“In the first three months of 2021, suicide cases in Tharparkar district reported in mainstream media were 20 cases, out of which 13 were women.”
While the SMHA report cites mental illness, domestic issues, and poverty as the main reasons for suicides throughout the province, researchers have linked the spike in suicide rates in the Thar region to droughts brought about by climate change.
“After the 1970s, the area has witnessed prolonged droughts and famine coming more frequently than in the past.
“Nowadays, even if there are rains, they are erratic and delayed, which reduces their effects on the area whose economic cycle and agriculture is solely dependent upon rainfall. Each drought takes locals five years back,” Rahimoo said.
Dr. Lakesh Khatri, a Mirpurkhas-based psychiatrist who has worked in Thar, said mental health issues linked to droughts and their effect on household incomes were contributing to rising suicide rates in the desert.
“Thar’s economy is dependent on rainfall as there is no comprehensive river water supply in the desert or any other major livelihood source.
“Prolonged droughts shrink available means of income. Hence, lack of livelihood opportunities and inaccessibility to resources triggers inhabitants toward depression, ultimately to taking their own lives,” he added.
Locals have also protested Chinese-funded schemes such as the Thar Coal Power Project, with its estimated 175 billion tons of coal, saying the program will pollute their water and threaten their ancestral lands. But construction has continued.
“Locals don’t see any trickle-down effect coming to them from the mega projects built on natural sources they are the owners of,” Rahimoo added.
Maryam Shabbir, a researcher at the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute, told Arab News that climate-change-driven poverty was a new addition to the impoverished region’s problems, with “extreme weather patterns” increasing people’s vulnerability.
“It could be handled through pre-policy making. If this is not addressed, it could turn into a political, social, and economic disaster of international scale,” she said.
The 16th-century Grand Mosque of Banten in Serang city, Banten province, in the westernmost part of Indonesia's island of Java on April, 2021. (AN photo by Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata)
Indonesian province remains true to Ramadan tradition with night-long Qur’an recitations
Old custom probably originated in port city of Serang, once seat of 16th-century Sultanate of Banten
Qur’an recited non-stop from end of evening Taraweeh prayers until pre-dawn sahoor
Updated 16 April 2021
ISMIRA LUTFIA TISNADIBRATA
SERANG, Indonesia: Muslims around the world observe Ramadan by reciting the Qur’an as often as possible.
But in the Indonesian province of Banten, worshippers take the custom to a different level by following an age-old tradition of reading the Qur’an non-stop from the end of evening Taraweeh prayers until sahoor, the pre-dawn meal after which fasting begins.
Known as miqran, the ritual is observed in many parts of the westernmost province of the island of Java.
It is believed to have originated in Serang, the provincial capital and a port city that used to be the seat of the Sultanate of Banten, founded in the 16th century by Sunan Gunungjati — one of the Muslim missionaries who introduced Islam to Java.
The word miqran, also spelled mikran, is believed to be Arabic and the first verse of the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad with the word iqra (meaning, to read).
“In old times, the sound of the Qur’an recital from the mosque was used by the community to measure the time left for sahoor. As long as there is a sound of miqran, that means there is still time to take the meal,” Tubagus Ahmad Faisal Abbas, a descendant of Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin, the second ruler of the Sultanate, told Arab News during a recent visit to the Grand Mosque of Banten.
Abbas and his extended family members are in charge of the two-hectare waqf land of the 16th-century mosque and the mosque’s management board auditions young men wishing to take part in the miqran recital.
It is unclear when the tradition started, but Abbas and his cousin Tubagus Ainnuddin, who runs the mosque’s daily operations, said that miqran had been observed for generations.
Mosques in the region would choose eight to 16 people to take turns reciting the Qur’an throughout the night and the ritual presents a chance for youth to show their skills and fluency in the rules of Qur’anic recitation.
Lukmanul Hakim, head of the Banten office of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, told Arab News that according to another version, during modern times when mosques began using microphones, locals had coined the word miqran from mic and Qur’an, since those reciting the holy scripture would use loudspeakers to make it heard in the neighborhood.
“As far as I know, the tradition has been there since I was little,” said Hakim, 47. “The tradition in a way encourages those who take part in miqran to finish reciting the Qur’an during the holy month, and some people would be able to complete their recital up to three or four times during Ramadan.
“It’s a good deed that any Muslim would want to be able to do during this blessed month,” he added.
In this photo illustration, a Twitter logo is displayed on a mobile phone with a President Trump's picture shown in the background on May 27, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia. (AFP/File Photo)
Why technology meant to bring humanity closer is driving it apart
Modern Arab writers ponder why digital tools are not making societies more tolerant, cosmopolitan and sociable
The same technology that accelerated globalization seems to have left many feeling more isolated and intolerant of others
Updated 17 April 2021
Jumana Al-Tamimi
DUBAI: If asked, most people would likely admit that they would have struggled to survive the mental toll of isolation brought about by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic without access to social media, online shopping, and video conferencing to make up for the loss of human contact.
And yet, these very same technologies, which have accelerated globalization and brought distant cultures together for the first time at the tap of a keypad, have in fact left many feeling more lonely, alienated, and inward-looking than ever before.
Far from making societies more tolerant, cosmopolitan, and sociable, the addiction to mobile devices, “likes” as a form of validation, and the instant gratification of streaming and home delivery has left many people aggressively intolerant, proudly parochial, and unhealthily introverted.
Activists of United Hindu Front (UHF) hold placards and a picture of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg during a demonstration in New Delhi on February 4, 2021. (AFP/File Photo)
“Globalization has brought us all together in one world forum, where we are all assembled,” said Amin Maalouf, one of the world’s foremost modern Arab writers and author of Adrift: How Our World Lost its Way among other books.
“But being assembled didn’t make us closer to each other. It made us look for what differentiates us from the person next to us.”
Participating in this year’s Dubai-hosted Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, the Paris-based Lebanese-born French author described the situation as “the great paradox” of our time.
Paris-based Lebanese-born French author Amin Maalouf, one of the world’s foremost modern Arab writers. (AFP/File Photo)
“We are more and more like each other, we have the same vision of the world, and the same instruments in our hands, and we know the same things. We have the same aspirations. Yet, at the same time, we want to think that we are very different,” he said.
Anyone who has ever shared an unpopular opinion on social media will tell you how tribal and dogmatic internet users can be from the safety of online anonymity. Political disagreements can take the form of personal, vitriolic attacks, while facts are often brushed aside in place of tropes and conspiracies.
These disagreements may not be such a big problem if they remained online. But as was demonstrated by the US Capitol riots on Jan. 6, unsubstantiated claims about election fraud were enough to incite real-world mob violence.
With so many sources of biased information and agenda-driven news on the world wide web, all of them competing for hits, clicks, and shares to shape the mainstream narrative, it is hard to know who or what to trust.
As a result, members of the public often fall back on familiar narratives and imagined communities in place of rigorous fact-checking and openness to differing viewpoints.
South Korea, after boasting for years advanced technology from high-speed Internet to Samsung smartphones, is now taking pains to try to pull its tech-crazed youth away from digital addiction. (AFP/File Photo)
“I think it is very normal, because we have been brought together very quickly by the acceleration of science and technology and we have not yet assimilated,” Maalouf added.
“But one can be confident in the long run. The main trend is a trend toward unifying the world, unifying humankind, which will eventually, one day, become a nation of very different people, but having a sense of common destiny.
“But, in the short run, the affirmation of specific identities is more and more aggressive, and it will take time to accept the reality created by new technology.”
The Middle East and North Africa are among the world’s top regions for internet penetration. According to Internet World Stats, which tracks global internet usage, social media engagement, and online market research, almost 67 percent of the region was plugged in by 2019 compared to the world average of 58.8 percent.
Saudi Arabia, similar to other Gulf states, scored especially high by this metric. The Kingdom’s internet penetration among its 35.3 million-strong population stood at more than 90 percent, exposing Arabs to a world of ideas and identities, but also its divisions.
The paradox explored by Maalouf was widely acknowledged by the literary community that participated in the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
Virtual platforms like Netflix and Zoom have emerged as lifelines for a pandemic-hit world forced indoors, but in sanctioned Syria where both websites are blocked, people feel increasingly disconnected. (AFP/File Photo)
Saudi novelist Badriah Al-Bishr, the first woman to win the Arab Press Award for best newspaper column in 2011, told Arab News that although the adoption of new technologies was a major achievement for humankind, it had led to an information overload.
“Information is not knowledge. We formulate knowledge from data, the same way we bake bread from flour. Technology is a positive for humanity — the issue is how it is used,” she said.
To sift through this ocean of data, tech firms have created sophisticated algorithms based on interactions to target users with relevant content. However, the algorithms used by social media giants, such as Facebook, can “lock” users into a narrow, blinkered worldview of “what it thinks they want to see. This is the danger of algorithms,” Ahlam Bolooki, director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, told Arab News.
In August, five months before the US Capitol riots, data scientists working for Facebook warned the company’s top executives that the platform was playing host to a worrying number of groups promoting hate speech.
Facebook usage has held steady in the US despite a string of controversies about the leading social network, even as younger users tap into rival platforms such as TikTok, a survey showed on April 7, 2021. (AFP/File Photo)
Internal documents seen by The Wall Street Journal in January said, “70 percent of the top 100 most active US civic groups are considered non-recommendable for issues such as hate, misinformation, bullying, and harassment.”
Executives were told one of the groups with the highest level of engagement “aggregates the most inflammatory news stories of the day and feeds them to a vile crowd that immediately and repeatedly calls for violence.”
The researchers added: “We need to do something to stop these conversations from happening and growing as quickly as they do.”
Facebook has since pledged to overhaul its algorithms.
Al-Bishr noted that the pace of change was also causing a generational rift.
A Twitter logo is displayed on a mobile phone with President Trump's Twitter page shown in the background, the account of whom was suspended following a string of unsubstantiated claims on the platform. (AFP/File Photo)
“The millennium generation, which was born during this period of technological advancement, believes this is what life is — they don’t know what they are missing. But we, the older generation, can see the gaps,” she added.
Naouel Chaoui, an Algerian-Italian who runs a popular book club that was forced online during the COVID-19 pandemic, pointed out that technology, despite its practicality, was no substitute for human contact.
“Because of technology, we are losing the need for contact, real contact, human contact; a tap on the shoulder, a hug. Body language is a huge part of our communication, which, when missing, loses its authentic expression,” she told Arab News.
“I feel that the new generations are missing this crucial part of getting together. They meet through games, over screens, or through their phones.”
Perhaps one solution, once the pandemic has passed, would be for people to unplug a little more often, challenge their preconceptions, and expand their horizons.
Elif Shafak, a prominent British-Turkish author, speaking during her session. (Supplied)
Elif Shafak, a prominent British-Turkish author, whose work has been translated into 54 languages, said experiencing a diversity of viewpoints was vital to the learning process.
“We humans don’t learn through repetition. We don’t learn as much from sameness as we learn from differences,” Shafak, the author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World and The Forty Rules of Love, told the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
“When people from different backgrounds with different stories come together, they challenge each other, and they help each other’s cognitive flexibility, shifting perspectives.
“I am a big believer in the importance of cosmopolitan encounters, in the importance of bringing people with different stories together and letting them talk to each other.”
Paphos summit: Israel will do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Iran on nuclear front
Ministers discuss economic and security issues, the coronavirus pandemic, and possible travel corridors
Updated 16 April 2021
Reuters
PAPHOS: Israel will do “whatever it takes” to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons, foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi said on Friday.
Speaking after a summit with his Greek and Cypriot counterparts and a senior representative from the UAE in Paphos, Cyprus, Ashkenazi said discussions centered around possibilities for building on prosperity and stability in the region.
“We also took time to discuss challenges that Iran and Hezbollah and other extremists pose to the stability of the Middle East and to the regional peace,” he said. “We will do whatever it takes to prevent this extremist ... success and definitely, to prevent this regime from having nuclear weapons.”
The Israeli, Emirati, Greek and Cypriot officials are holding meetings in Cyprus for two days from Friday.
Israel said the talks in Paphos on the island's west coast would be the first meeting of its kind involving the four nations, as part of efforts to advance regional strategic interests.
The ministers were also discussing economic and security issues, the coronavirus pandemic, and possible travel corridors to encourage tourism, Israel's foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Cyprus said the unprecedented four-way talks, lasting into Saturday, would “take advantage of the prospects opened” by "the recent normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”
The UAE and Israel formalized ties last year, one of four deals the US brokered between Israel and Arab countries.
The talks also follow tensions between Turkey and its neighbours over gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Cypriot ministry said the meetings would touch on the “pandemic and its effects, economic cooperation, energy (and) tourism,” among other issues, and aimed “to enhance peace, stability, and security in the wider region.”
