At least 19 killed, about 20 injured in knifing near Tokyo
At least 19 killed, about 20 injured in knifing near Tokyo
TOKYO (AP) — At least 19 people were killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack Tuesday at a facility for the handicapped in a city just outside Tokyo in the worst mass killing in generations in Japan.
Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo.
A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police in Sagamihara said. He left the knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing.
Police said there were several casualties but did not provide any numbers.
The Sagamihara City fire department says that 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said doctors at the scene confirmed the deaths.
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After disputes, Dem stars turn their convention positive
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Hillary Clinton’s campaign sought to squelch a political firestorm over hacked emails that deepened dissent among Bernie Sanders’ loyal supporters, turning to some of the party’s biggest stars Monday to heal divisions on the Democratic convention’s opening night.
First lady Michelle Obama was making her first appearance of the presidential campaign. Sanders was taking the stage in a highly anticipated address, as was Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals and one of the party’s toughest critics of Republican Donald Trump.
“Trump thinks he can win votes by fanning the flames of fear and hatred,” Warren said in excerpts released ahead of her speech. “By turning neighbor against neighbor. By persuading you that the real problem in America is your fellow Americans — people who don’t look like you, or don’t talk like you, or don’t worship like you.”
Clinton’s campaign hoped the nighttime line-up would overshadow a tumultuous start to the four-day convention. The release of hacked party emails revealed the Democratic National Committee had favored Clinton over Sanders in the primary, despite vows of neutrality. The uproar led to the forced resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
While her ouster was a major victory for Sanders, it wasn’t enough to ease the frustration of his supporters. Chants of “Bernie” echoed through the arena as the convention opened, and boos could be heard at times when Clinton’s name was raised.
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More than 50 pro-Sanders demonstrators cited by police
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police briefly detained more than 50 people after they tried to storm the barricades outside the Democratic convention Monday evening in a show of anger over Bernie Sanders’ treatment by party leaders, even as he urged his supporters to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton.
Several hundred Sanders supporters and other demonstrators converged in the sweltering heat on Broad Street and made their way 4 miles to the convention site as the gathering was being gaveled to order, chanting “Nominate Sanders or lose in November!” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the DNC has got to go!” They carried signs reading, “Never Hillary,” ”Just Go to Jail Hillary” and “You Lost Me at Hillary.”
As tensions mounted outside the Wells Fargo Center, police moved metal fences into place and closed the nearest subway station to arriving trains. Fifty-five people were issued citations for disorderly conduct when protesters tried to climb over police barricades at the edge of the security zone surrounding the convention, police said.
The anger reflected the widening rift inside the Democratic Party and the convention hall itself between Sanders’ supporters and Clinton’s. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic Party chairwoman Sunday over leaked emails suggesting the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee played favorites during the primaries by siding with Clinton and bad-mouthing Sanders.
Speaking to delegates Monday morning, Sanders implored them to vote for Clinton, generating a chorus of boos.
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Democratic emails: All about the hack, the leak, the discord
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — First came the hack, then the leak. Now, the Clinton and Trump campaigns are fighting over Russia’s role in the release of thousands of internal Democratic National Committee emails.
At least one thing is clear: The email uproar is an unwelcome distraction at the launch of the Democratic National Convention, inflaming the rift between supporters of Hillary Clinton and primary rival Bernie Sanders just when the party was hoping to close it.
As the Philadelphia convention got underway Monday, developments in the email story rolled out in rapid sequence:
Clinton’s campaign, citing a cybersecurity firm hired to investigate the leak, blamed Russia for hacking the party’s computers and suggested the goal was to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign.
Trump dismissed that idea as laughable, tweeting: “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails.”
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IS attacker: Germans “won’t be able to sleep peacefully”
ANSBACH, Germany (AP) — A Syrian man who tried unsuccessfully to claim asylum in Germany pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and vowed the nation’s people “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore” in a cell phone video before blowing himself up outside a wine bar, wounding 15 people, authorities said Monday.
The assailant set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to a crowded music festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn’t have a ticket.
It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week, and the second claimed by the Islamic State group. Three of the attacks were carried out by recent immigrants, rekindling concerns about Germany’s ability to cope with the estimated 1 million migrants registered entering the country last year, an influx that has since dwindled as the flow of newcomers slowed.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said a laptop with extremist videos was found at the apartment of the suspect, a 27-year-old Syrian identified only as Mohammad D in line with German privacy laws. A video on his cellphone showed him declaring loyalty to the Islamic State group and announcing a “revenge act against Germans because they are standing in the way of Islam.”
The suspect also declared Germans “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore,” Herrmann said. “I think after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terror attack with an Islamist motivation.”
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Flight 370: With search suspended, a cold-case file awaits
BANGKOK (AP) — For two years and more, it has been a lost ship, a metal container carrying 239 souls that simply disappeared one late Asian night never to be seen again. And now, the search for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely will become a thing of memory, too.
With Friday’s announcement that the meticulous ocean search for the missing jetliner will be suspended — in effect, called off — one of this decade’s most tantalizing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case.
“I am not surprised it’s coming to an end without any answers,” Tony Wong, a businessman in Kuala Lumpur, said Monday.
“People are slowly forgetting the incident,” he said. “No one will ever know the truth.”
The truth may be out there. The problem is, you have to know where to look. And that’s been precisely the problem all along.
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Pfizer: Arkansas execution would ‘misuse’ drug
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An execution drug obtained by the Arkansas prison system this month appears to have been made by a subsidiary of Pfizer, even though the pharmaceutical giant has said it doesn’t want its drugs to be used in executions.
The sale of the vecuronium bromide by an unknown third party may show how difficult it could be for manufacturers to prevent such sales in states such as Arkansas that have execution secrecy laws.
The Associated Press on Monday obtained redacted photos of the vecuronium bromide label from the Arkansas Department of Correction. It matches labels submitted to the National Institutes of Health by Hospira, Inc., which Pfizer bought last year. The AP also obtained the purchase orders for the drug, but the name of the third party that sold the drug to the department was redacted, in compliance with the state’s execution secrecy law.
Pfizer announced in May it had put in place sweeping controls to make sure its distributors would not sell its drugs for use in executions. In an email Monday, company spokeswoman Rachel Hooper reiterated that position.
“We have implemented a comprehensive strategy and enhanced restricted distribution protocols for a select group of products to help combat their unauthorized use for capital punishment. Pfizer is currently communicating with states to remind them of our policy,” Hooper wrote. She didn’t address whether the company was aware of the sale of its subsidiary’s drug to the Arkansas Department of Correction.
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Fox News ousts 2 more executives
NEW YORK (AP) — Four days after the ouster of Roger Ailes as Fox News chief, two more executives at the network have been axed.
But the firing of Michael Clemente and his top deputy, Peter Boyer, were not related to the sexual harassment allegations that forced Ailes out at the network that he started two decades ago, two Fox executives said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss personnel issues.
Clemente was executive vice president of news at Fox until April, when he was demoted and put in charge of a new division for specials and long form programming. He worked at ABC News before coming to Fox.
Fox says it is reevaluating that division as it concentrates on the election over the next few months.
Ailes resigned Thursday after being sued by a former Fox anchor who alleged she was punished for resisting his sexual advances and complaining about an atmosphere of harassment at Fox. Other women have come forward, and published stories last weekend quoted a woman who said she was victimized by another Fox executive who had since left the network.
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Historic solar flight marks first round-the-world journey
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The world’s first round-the-world flight to be powered solely by the sun’s energy made history Tuesday as it landed in Abu Dhabi, where it first took off on an epic 25,000-mile (40,000-kilometer) journey that began more than a year ago.
Since its March 2015 take off, the Swiss-engineered Solar Impulse 2 has made 16 stops across the world without using a drop of fuel to demonstrate that using the plane’s clean technologies on the ground can halve the world’s energy consumption, save natural resources and improve quality of life.
After landing the plane, pilot Bertrand Piccard was greeted outside the cockpit by his Solar Impulse partner and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg. They hugged and pumped their fists in the air.
“The future is clean. The future is you. The future is now. Let’s take it further,” Piccard said, speaking through a microphone to applause and cheers from a crowd that included Prince Albert of Monaco.
The aircraft is uniquely powered by 17,248 solar cells that transfer energy to four electrical motors that power the plane’s propellers. It runs on four lithium polymer batteries at night. The plane’s wingspan stretches 236 feet (72 meters) to catch the sun’s energy.
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Mom of slain Florida teen warned son of nightclub shootings
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — With the Orlando massacre still fresh on everyone’s mind, the mother of a young man who was slain at a nightclub early Monday had warned her son about what to do if there were a shooting: “hit the floor, find a table.”
But when gunfire erupted at the Club Blu parking lot, 18-year-old Stef’an Strawder didn’t have anywhere to hide. He was killed along with a 14-year-old boy, and 17 other people ranging in age from 12 to 27 were wounded during a swimsuit-themed party for teens.
“I told him to look for all the exits if any kind of shooting would go off, to hit the floor, find a table and get out of the way … because I thought about the people in Orlando. That was a big thing,” Strawder’s mother, Stephanie White, told The Associated Press.
Since the shooting happened in the parking lot, “He didn’t have that chance,” she said.
Florida is again reeling from a mass shooting at a nightclub, but instead of being committed by a terrorist spouting Islamist ideology, this rampage may have started with an argument over a rap performance. Police have not yet released a motive.