San Bernardino shooting: Policeman speaks of carnage at scene
One of the first police officers to respond to deadly shootings at a social service centre in California has spoken of scenes of “unspeakable” carnage.
Lt Mike Madden said he and officers who arrived later saw dead bodies and had to pass injured people as they tried to “engage the shooters” on Wednesday.
Officials say a husband and wife shot dead 14 people and wounded 21 in the city of San Bernardino.
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were killed in a shootout.
Bomb equipment, weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition were later found in the attackers’ home.
The authorities have still not found a motive for the attack.
Hundreds of people attended a candlelit vigil at the scene of the shooting, the Inland Regional Center social services agency.
“It was unspeakable, the carnage that we were seeing,” Lt Madden told a news conference.
Muslim Americans fear demonisation after mass shooting
Muslims across US respond with shock and outrage after San Bernardino massacre of 14
Muslim Americans fear their religion will be demonised and Islamophobia will spread after a young Muslim couple was accused of carrying out one of the bloodiest mass killings in the United States.
Across the country, Muslim Americans responded with shock and outrage after a shooting in which authorities said Syed Rizwan Farook (28), and Tashfeen Malik (27), stormed a holiday party attended by San Bernardino County employees in California on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding 21.
“I was at the gym yesterday while the shooting was taking place and all the TVs were showing that footage and all I could keep thinking to myself is ‘God, I hope they don’t have any Eastern descent, not just Middle Eastern, anything we’d associate with a Muslim’,” said Adam Hashem (32), in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with one of the country’s largest Muslim populations.
Malaysia approves security law amid warning it could lead to dictatorship
Critics say new National Security Council bill puts unprecendented powers in the hands of the prime minister
Malaysia’s Parliament has approved a security law that gives sweeping security powers to a council led by the prime minister, in a move slammed by rights groups and critics as a step toward a dictatorship.
The National Security Council bill was passed late Thursday by a majority vote after hours of heated debate, with opposition lawmakers voicing fears the prime minister now has power to declare a state of emergency without having to seek consent from Malaysia’s King.
The bill gives the National Security Council the authority to impose strict policing in an area deemed to face a security risk. Once a security area is declared, security forces would be allowed, among other things, to impose curfews and would have wide powers of arrest, search and seizure without a warrant.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch called the proposed law a “frightening” tool for repression, adding to other abusive laws already being used by Prime Minister Najib Razak and his embattled government against critics.
Islamic State adds smartphone app to its communications arsenal
An independent group monitoring the Islamic State online says it discovered the militant group is distributing its own mobile app, signaling a shift in how the jihadists communicate.
In addition to using Facebook, Twitter, and messaging apps such as Telegram, Islamic State is also distributing custom communications software to spread its message of radical Islam.
The militants have developed a smartphone app designed to run on Android phones that is available to download in private channels on Telegram, an encrypted smartphone chat program. According to security experts tracking the group, the app appears to be a new effort from Islamic State (IS) to bypass often less secure social media platforms that are easily targeted and attacked by governments and independent groups working to blunt the group’s digital presence.
“They want to create a broadcast capability that is more secure than just leveraging Twitter and Facebook,” says Michael Smith II, chief operating officer at Kronos Advisory, a defense consulting firm. “IS has always been looking for a way to provide easy access to all of the material.”
By Courtney Sherwood
Radiation from Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster has spread off North American shores and contamination is increasing at previously identified sites, although levels are still too low to threaten human or ocean life, scientists said on Thursday.
Tests of hundreds of samples of Pacific Ocean water confirmed that Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes more than four years after its meltdown, said Ken Buesseler, marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Trace amounts of cesium-134 have been detected within several hundred miles (km) of the Oregon, Washington and California coasts in recent months, as well as offshore from Canada’s Vancouver Island.
Protests erupt as Ecuador lifts presidential term limit
Assembly vote prompts violent street protests against what many demonstrators deem a power grab by President Correa.
| Politics, Ecuador, Bolivia, Latin America
Ecuador’s National Assembly passed a constitutional amendment to lift the country’s presidential term limits, sparking violent demonstrations between protesters and riot police.
The amendment, which was approved on Thursday, prompted street demonstrations in Quito, the capital, against what many deemed a power grab by President Rafael Correa.
Part of a package of amendments, the measure will permit the leftist Correa to run for office indefinitely beginning in 2021. His current term ends in 2017 and he has said he does not intend to run at that time.
Analysts have called Correa’s decision a shrewd political move considering Ecuador’s current economic woes.
Outside the cordoned-off assembly, protesters who had been blocking major intersections with burning tyres grew in number after the vote passed.