week 9-Shanghai new year stampede

Thirty-six killed in Shanghai stampede

Fri, Jan 02, 2015

People unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into Shanghai’s hospitals yesterday, anxious for information after a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in the city’s historic waterfront area killed 36 people in the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years.

The Shanghai government said 47 others received hospital treatment, including 13 who were seriously injured, after the chaos about a half an hour before midnight. Seven of the injured people had left hospitals by yesterday afternoon.

The Shanghai government information office said one Taiwanese was among the dead, and two Taiwanese and one Malaysian were among the injured.

The three Taiwanese work for the same accounting firm and were visiting China, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation said.

One sustained minor injuries, while the other was still hospitalized for further observation, foundation spokesperson Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said.

The foundation contacted China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Shanghai City Government’s Taiwan Affairs Office yesterday morning when it learned of the incident, Maa said.

Taiwan hopes the Shanghai government will look into the situation and offer aid as soon as possible if it receives any more reports of Taiwanese being injured, Maa said.

The deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai’s popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when the city was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with people during major events.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought out photos of unidentified dead victims, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at the photos broke into tears when they recognized someone.

A saleswoman in her 20s who declined to give her name said she had been celebrating with three friends.

“I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted: ‘Don’t rush,”’ she said. “There were so many people and I couldn’t stand properly.”

Xinhua news agency quoted a woman with the surname Yin who was caught with her 12-year-old son in the middle of crowds of people pushing to go up and down steps leading from the square.

“Then people started to fall down, row by row,” Yin said.

Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital vice president Xia Shujie told reporters that some of the victims had suffocated.

Relatives desperately seeking information earlier tried to push past hospital guards, who used a bench to hold them back. Police later allowed family members into the hospital.

CCTV America, the US version of state broadcaster China Central Television, posted a video of Shanghai streets after the stampede showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.

Yesterday morning, dozens of police officers were in the area and tourists continued to wander by the square, a small patch of grass dominated by a statue of Chen Yi, the city’s first communist mayor.

Steps lead down from the square to a road across from several buildings.

“We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs,” an injured man told Shanghai TV.

“All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs,” the man said.

Xinhua quoted witness Wu Tao as saying some people had scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills bearing the name of a bar that were being thrown out of a third-floor window. It said the cause of the stampede was still under investigation.

Structure of the Lead：

Who - 36 Shanghai’s people

Where -  Shanghai

When - 31th, Dec, 2014

What - 36 people were killed

Why - Not given

How - Not given

Keywords：
stampede 踩踏
waterfront area  濱水區
jammed 卡住

week 8-Sydney cafe hostage

Inquest describes Sydney hostage crisis

Fri, Jan 30, 2015

Ricochets from police gunfire killed one of the two hostages who died in a 16-hour siege at a central Sydney cafe last month, an inquest into the deadly standoff heard yesterday.

Barrister and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson, 38, died along with cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34, and Iranian-born gunman Man Haron Monis, 50, when police stormed the financial district cafe in the early hours of Dec. 16 last year.

“Ms Dawson was struck by six fragments of a police bullet or bullets which ricocheted from hard surfaces into her body,” counsel assisting the coroner’s inquest Jeremy Gormly said.

“I will not detail the damage done to Ms Dawson other than to say that one fragment struck a major blood vessel,” he said. “She lost consciousness quickly and died shortly afterwards.”

Seventeen hostages were holed up in the Lindt Chocolate cafe, with the New South Wales Coroners’ Court likely to call on those who survived to give evidence during the inquest, Gormly said.

“Difficult as it may be for them, it seems unavoidable that they will be asked to give evidence,” he said. “They are our eyes and ears and memory of what happened during those hours inside the Lindt cafe.”

The inquest is set to outline what happened, hear about the hostages’ experiences, investigate how New South Wales Police managed the siege, and delve into Monis’ background and motivations.

A separate investigation commissioned by the Australian and New South Wales governments is set to submit a report in the next few days. The inquest will review the report’s findings.

The standoff shocked Australians, with thousands laying bouquets at a large makeshift memorial near the cafe.

Gormly said Johnson was shot in the back of the head by Monis with a sawn-off shotgun just moments after several hostages escaped.

“Johnson was made by Mr Monis to kneel on the floor of the cafe. After a short lapse of time, Mr Monis simply shot him — without further notice or warning — in the back of the head,” he said.

“The end of the barrel was about 75cm from Mr Johnson’s head at the moment of discharge.”

Outside the court, one of the hostages who escaped in the first few hours, 82-year-old John O’Brien, told news.com.au it was “upsetting” to hear about Johnson’s final minutes.

Gormly said the killing was witnessed by a police marksman, which led to the order for police “tactical operatives” to storm the cafe.

About 22 shots were fired by the officers after 11 flash bangs were thrown into the room, while Monis fired two shots, the hearing was told.

“Bullets and fragments of bullets hit Mr Monis, who was, it seems, killed instantly,” Gormly said. “At least two bullets — police bullets or bullet fragments — hit Mr Monis in the head and 11 other bullets — police bullets or fragments — hit him in the body.”

During the standoff, Monis fired a total of five rounds from his shotgun, which he took into the cafe on Dec. 15 last year at 8:33am.

None of the rounds struck anyone apart from Johnson, “although he appears to have been trying to do so,” Gormly added.

The inquest is to look into Monis’ claims that his actions were an attack on Australia by the Islamic State group — formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — and whether he had any terrorist associations.

However, Gormly said that “at present it seems he had not established any contact” with the militant organization.Australia raised its threat level to high in September last year and carried out a series of counterterrorism raids following a flow of its nationals to Iraq and Syria to fight with the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

Structure of the Lead：

Who - one of the two hostages who died in a 16-hour siege at a central Sydney cafe last month

Where -  Not given

When - last month

What -  one of the two hostages who died

Why - Ms Dawson was struck by six fragments of a police bullet or bullets which ricocheted from hard surfaces into her body

How - Not given

Keywords：
inquest 審訊
stormed 衝
standoff 對峙
witness 目擊
terrorist associations 恐怖組織
militant 激進
extremist 極端

week 7-Mexico.missing students dead

Mexico ‘certain’ missing students dead: minister

Authorities in Mexico can now say with “legal certainty” that 43 students who went missing in September last year were murdered by hitmen working for a drug gang, Mexican Minister of Justice Jesus Murillo Karam said on Tuesday.

However, parents of the students in a case that convulsed the nation and countries abroad insisted the case not be closed.

The disappearance of the men — all aspiring teachers attending classes at a training college in Guerrero State — sparked nationwide protests and a crisis for the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Officials said the students vanished after gang-linked police attacked their buses in the city of Iguala, allegedly under orders from the mayor and his wife in a night of terror that left six other people dead.

The police then delivered the young men to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, who told investigators they took them in two trucks to a landfill, killed them, burned their bodies and dumped them in a river.

The investigation “gives us the legal certainty that the student teachers were killed in the circumstances that have been described,” Murillo Karam said at a press conference.

Witness and expert testimony “have allowed us to ... come to the conclusion beyond a doubt that the students were abducted and killed, before being incinerated and thrown into the San Juan River, in that order,” he said.

“It is the historic truth,” he said.

He played a video with testimony from detainees and footage from the investigation.

Until now, authorities had still officially considered the students to be missing.

Relatives of the victims, who marched on Monday with several thousand people in Mexico City to mark the four-month mark since their disappearance, have refused to accept the official explanation of events.

For now, only one of the students has been positively identified from charred remains, which leaves little hope of finding the 42 others.

“We the parents repudiate the way in which today the attorney general has sought to close the investigation,” said Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the relatives.

“We are not going to allow them to conclude or close the investigation,” he added, surrounded by activists and desperate parents.

The latter are clinging to the belief that the students remain alive and are in the custody of Mexican security forces.

De la Cruz said his people do not want the probe to be closed because so far only one set of remains corresponds to those of the missing students.

The investigation has determined that a man named Felipe Rodriguez, arrested on Jan. 15, gave key testimony to the effect that the students were identified as members of Los Rojos, rivals of the Guerreros Unidos.

Detainees in the crime said there were at least three from Los Rojos infiltrated among the students. However, prosecutors have no proof of this.

Prosecutors say Rodriquez was the head of the Guerreros Unidos hitmen squad and gave the order to kill the students. He and other suspects will be charged with murder.

The detained former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, accused of giving the initial order to attack the students, is allegedly one of the leaders of the Guerreros Unidos.

Structure of the Lead：

Who - 43 students

Where - Mexico

When - In September last

What - 43 students who went missing in September last year were murdered by hitmen working for a drug gang

Why - Not given

How - Not given

Keywords：
convulse 震撼
aspiring 有抱負
terror 恐怖
incinerate 焚燒
testimony  證詞
charred 燒焦的