France shooting: 3 dead, several wounded in Strasbourg
PARIS — A shooting in Strasbourg, France, killed three people and wounded 12 others Tuesday near a world-famous Christmas market, sparking a broad lockdown and a search for the suspected gunman, who remained at large as of press time Tuesday evening.
French prosecutors said a terrorism investigation was opened, though authorities did not announce a motive for the bloodshed. The city is home to the European Parliament, which was locked down after the shooting.
It was unclear if the market — which was the nucleus of an al-Qaida-linked plot in 2000 — was targeted. The prefect of the Strasbourg region said the suspect was previously flagged as a possible extremist.
The gunman was identified and has a criminal record, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.
Huawei CFO gets bail; China detains ex-Canadian diplomat
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A Canadian court granted bail on Tuesday to a top Chinese executive arrested at the United States’ request in a case that has set off a diplomatic furor among the three countries and complicated high-stakes U.S.-China trade talks.
Hours before the bail hearing in Vancouver, China detained a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing in apparent retaliation for the Dec. 1 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and daughter of the company’s founder.
After three days of hearings, a British Columbia justice granted bail of $10 million Canadian (US$7.5 million) to Meng, but required her to wear an ankle bracelet, surrender her passports, stay in Vancouver and its suburbs and confine herself to one of her two Vancouver homes from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The decision was met with applause in the packed courtroom, where members of Vancouver’s Chinese community had turned out to show support for Meng.
Amid rising tension between China and Canada, Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed Tuesday that a former Canadian diplomat had been detained in Beijing. The detention came after China warned Canada of consequences for Meng’s arrest.
Jury recommends life in prison for man who rammed crowd
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A jury Tuesday called for a sentence of life in prison plus 419 years for the Hitler admirer who killed a woman when he rammed his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville two summers ago.
The decision capped a trial laced with survivors’ anguished testimony and details of the driver’s long history of mental illness.
James Alex Fields Jr., 21, stood stoically with his hands folded in front of him as he heard the jury’s recommendation.
It will be up to Judge Richard Moore to decide on the punishment at Fields’ sentencing, set for March 29. Judges in Virginia often go along with the jury’s recommendation. Under state law, they can impose a shorter sentence but not a longer one.
The jury called for a life sentence for first-degree murder in the killing of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and activist, and also asked for hundreds more years on nine counts involving injuries Fields caused to others and for leaving the scene of the crash.
Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said she was satisfied with the decision.
“The bottom line is justice has him where he needs to be,” Bro said. “My daughter is still not here and the other survivors still have their wounds to deal with, so we’ve all been damaged permanently, but we do survive. We do move forward. We don’t stay in that dark place.”
The jury deliberated for about four hours over two days before agreeing on a punishment.
Official: California must mull home ban in fire-prone areas
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s increasingly deadly and destructive wildfires have become so unpredictable that government officials should consider banning home construction in vulnerable areas, the state’s top firefighter says.
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott will leave his job Friday after 30 years with the agency. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said government and citizens must act differently to protect lives and property from fires that now routinely threaten large populations.
That may mean rethinking subdivisions in thickly forested mountainous areas or homes along Southern California canyons lined with tinder-dry chaparral. Yet Los Angeles County supervisors stung by California’s housing shortage approved a massive rural housing development Tuesday despite the fire danger.
Developers said the 19,000-home community in rugged mountains 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of downtown Los Angeles would be built to minimize fire hazards with anti-ember construction and buffers around homes. It would include four new fire stations and roads wide enough to help people evacuate from an area the state has designated as a “high” and “very high” fire hazard zone.
Faced with such dangers, California residents should train themselves to respond more quickly to warnings and make preparations to shelter in place if they can’t outrun the flames, Pimlott said.
Gunman kills 4, then himself, after Mass at Brazil cathedral
RIO DE JANEIRO — A man opened fire in a cathedral in southern Brazil after Mass on Tuesday, killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs in a firefight with police and then shooting himself in the head, authorities said.
The shooting happened right after the midday service had ended at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas, a city about 60 miles north of Sao Paulo.
“It’s so sad,” said Wilson Cassante, a press officer with the archdiocese. “It’s hard to imagine the pain this has caused.”
Hours after paramedics were seen taking bodies and injured out of the church, authorities identified the shooter as 49-year-old Euler Fernando Grandolpho from Valinhos, a nearby city in the densely populated state of Sao Paulo.
Grandolpho, a systems analyst, was not a member of the church, authorities said. According to public records, he had held various jobs with government entities, including a stint as an assistant to the prosecutor in the public ministry in Sao Paulo.
Authorities said they had not determined a motive. A backpack found near the dead gunman had his identification but no note or other clues, police investigator Jose Henrique Ventura told reporters outside the church.