Foreign News
Six people shot, one fatally, on first day of school in Iowa
A student shot six people, one of them fatally, at a high school in the US state of Iowa before taking his own life on the first day back from holiday break, police said.
A “pretty rudimentary” improvised explosive device was found by investigators at Perry High School, police said, and rendered safe.
Five of those shot were students and one is a school administrator. The student that died was in sixth-grade, which is for 11 or 12-year-olds.
Reports of an active shooter came in at 07:37 local time (13:37 GMT) and the first officer reached the scene within minutes, police said. Speaking to reporters after the shooting, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Assistant Director Mitch Mortvedt said that officers responding to the scene quickly found what they determined to be the suspect with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The suspect was later identified as Dylan Butler, a 17-year-old student. He was armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small calibre-handgun, according to police. Mr Mortvedt also said that the suspect had “made a number of social media posts in and around the time of the shooting.” Of the injured, one was in a critical condition and four were stable, Mr Mortvedt added.
Earlier in the day, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante told reporters that owing to the early hour, “luckily, there was very few students and faculty in the building, which I think contributed to a good outcome in that sense.”
Lori Meinecke, a Perry High School teacher, told a local radio station that she heard about six to seven gunshots around that time. The middle school was cleared at about 08:25 local time and the high school was cleared at 08:27 local time. The two schools are on the same campus.
A local TV station spoke to Kevin Shelley, a parent of a 15-year-old, who said his son had been shot in the hallway, but would survive. Mr Shelley’s son told him he was hit in the back and had his arm grazed before running into a classroom to seek shelter with fellow students.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) responded. The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation was leading the investigation.
“It is horrendously awful,” said Linda Andorf, board president for the Perry Community School District, NBC reported. “This is just disgusting. It’s terrible.” “It’s impossible to understand why anything like this happens,” Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said at a news conference, adding that “every Iowan stands” with the victims and their families.
US President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting and was in touch with Governor Reynold’s office, according to the White House.
The town of Perry has less than 10,000 residents and is about 40 miles (64km) north-west of Iowa’s capital, Des Moines.
The shooting comes days before the Iowa caucuses begin on 15 January, kicking off the 2024 Republican primary process.
The shooting came as one of the candidates, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, was scheduled to campaign in Perry. The event was cancelled and replaced by a prayer and discussion between Mr Ramaswamy and local residents.
(BBC)
More than a thousand people have been left with respiratory problems after a sandstorm swept across Iraq’s central and southern parts of the country, health officials said.
One official in Muthanna province reported to the AFP news agency at least 700 cases of what they said was suffocation.
Footage shared online showed areas cloaked in a thick orange haze, with local media reporting power cuts and the suspension of flights in a number of regions.
Dust storms are common in Iraq, but some experts believe they are becoming more frequent due to climate change.
Pedestrians and police wore face masks to protect themselves from the dust and paramedics were on site to assist people with difficulty breathing, according to AFP.
Hospitals in Muthanna province in southern Iraq received at least “700 cases of suffocation”, a local health official said.
More than 250 people were taken to hospital in Najaf province, and at least 322 patients including children were sent to hospitals in Diwaniyah province.
A further 530 people reported breathing issues in Dhi Qar and Basra provinces.
The sandstorm blanketed Iraq’s southern provinces in an orange cloud that reduced visibility to less than one kilometre (0.62 mile).
The authorities were forced to shut down airports in the provinces of Najaf and Basra.
Conditions are expected to gradually improve by Tuesday morning, according to local weather services.
Iraq is listed by the UN as one of the five countries most vulnerable to climate change as it encounters regular sandstorms, sweltering heat and water scarcity.
A severe sandstorm in 2022 left one person dead and more than 5,000 needing treatment for respiratory illnesses.
Iraq will be experiencing more “dust days” in the future, according to its environment ministry.
[BBC]
Indian businessman Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium following India’s request for his extradition.
Choksi, who left India in 2018, was arrested on Saturday, his lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told the BBC on Monday.
The diamond merchant is wanted by India for allegedly defrauding one of the country’s largest banks of nearly $1.8bn (£1.3bn).
Choksi has not commented publicly on the case, but his lawyer said they would appeal against his detention and also oppose his extradition to India.
“These are the obvious grounds on which we will argue the case, that he is not a flight risk and secondly, that he is extremely sick. He is undergoing cancer treatment,” Mr Agarwal said. He added that they would “contest the extradition on grounds that there isn’t enough evidence against him and the extradition request is politically motivated and the trial in India may not be fair”.
The BBC has reached out to India’s foreign ministry and financial crimes agency – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) – for comment.
According to a Times of India report, Choksi was arrested on the basis of two non-bailable warrants issued by an Indian court in 2018 and 2021 – although it’s not clear why the action came now.
Mehul Choksi and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are wanted by Indian authorities in connection with a $1.8bn fraud case at Punjab National Bank (PNB).
Niray Modi, who’s also been living abroad since 2018, is lodged in a prison in London and is awaiting extradition to India.
Both were high-profile diamond traders. Modi’s jewellery was worn by several Hollywood celebrities such as Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet. One of the biggest Bollywood stars, Priyanka Chopra, was his company’s brand ambassador. Choksi, meanwhile, was the owner of Gitanjali Gems, an Indian jewellery retailer which once had about 4,000 stores across India.
The ED has accused Choksi and Modi of colluding with some employees of PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai city to get fraudulent advances for payments to overseas suppliers of jewels.
These funds were then allegedly diverted and laundered.
Choksi and Modi have denied the allegations against them.
After leaving India, Choksi reportedly travelled to the US and later to Antigua – where he has citizenship. In 2021, he was reportedly arrested in Dominica and deported back to Antigua.
Hariprasad SV, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur who had in 2016 alerted authorities about the alleged scam at PNB, said Choksi’s arrest was “great news”. “Apart from bringing him back, the most important thing is to get back all those billions of dollars he looted from India,” he told ANI news agency.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
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