Hurricane’s death toll in Puerto Rico put at nearly 3,000
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s governor raised the U.S. territory’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975 on Tuesday after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the desperate, sweltering aftermath had been severely undercounted.
The new estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated the island in September 2017 and knocked out the entire electrical grid was made by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
“We never anticipated a scenario of zero communication, zero energy, zero highway access,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters. “I think the lesson is to anticipate the worst. … Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, in hindsight, things could’ve been handled differently.”
UN experts: Possible war crimes by all parties in Yemen
GENEVA — U.N. human rights experts said Tuesday the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes since Yemen’s conflict intensified 3½ years ago, including rape, torture, arbitrary detention and use of child soldiers.
Their report — the first since being mandated to investigate by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council nearly a year ago — is increasing international pressure on the Saudis’ Western-backed coalition that already has been widely condemned for devastating airstrikes on civilians as well as combatants.
The U.N. panel also pointed to possible war crimes by the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have been fighting the coalition that gets support from the U.S., Britain and France.
In one of the first reactions to the report, a Saudi diplomat told The Associated Press that the findings were “not accurate.”
In 2015, Saudi Arabia announced it would lead a coalition of countries against the Houthi rebels who had ousted Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
In the years since then, the U.N. says the conflict has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people in desperate need in what is already the Arab world’s poorest country.
Texan says he’s selling 3D-printed gun plans after ruling
AUSTIN, Texas — The owner of a Texas company that makes untraceable 3D-printed guns said Tuesday that he has begun selling the blueprints through his website to anyone who wants to make one, after a federal court order barred him from posting the plans online.
Cody Wilson said at a news conference that he started selling the plans Tuesday morning and that he had already received nearly 400 orders. He said he’ll sell the plans for as little as a penny to anyone in the U.S. who wants them.
“Anyone who wants to get these files is going to get them,” Wilson said, noting he can only sell to U.S. customers. “They can name their own price.”
Wilson said that blueprints purchased through his company’s website could be downloaded on a thumb drive and shipped to buyers by standard mail, sent by email or sent by some other secure download transfer. Some of his first sales included purchases made with crypto currency, he said.
By wire sources
