Month: April 2023

(Reuters) -A man shot dead five neighbors including an 8-year-old boy after some of them had asked him to stop shooting a semiautomatic rifle in his front yard in Cleveland, Texas, because it was keeping their baby awake, police said on Saturday.

Police were still looking for the suspect, who used an AR-15-style rifle in the shooting late inside the neighbors’ home on Friday, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said.

Sheriffs deputies were joined by FBI agents as they continued searching for the suspect, Francisco Oropeza, 38, in a nearby wooded area 18 hours after the attack, Capers said.

“We are tracking him with dogs and men on horseback and drones in the air,” Capers said. Law enforcement had found an abandoned cellphone and some discarded clothing in the search area, Capers said.

He was quoted as saying by other news outlets that all the victims were shot in the head “almost execution-style.”

Police said all five victims were from Honduras.

Officials from Capers’ office received a call from Cleveland, which is located about 45 miles north of Houston, about harassment at around 11:31 p.m. When they reached the scene they found several victims who had been shot, Capers said.

There were a total of 10 people in the house when the attack took place, Capers said, five of whom survived.

The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8. They were all believed to be living in the house, but were not members of a single family, according to the FBI.

Enrique Reina, the foreign minister of Honduras, said the Honduran consulate was in contact with the authorities in Texas.

“We demand that the full weight of the law be applied against the person responsible for this crime,” he wrote on Twitter.

The suspect stepped out of his house on Friday night and started shooting off rounds in his yard, which is when some of the victims stepped out to confront him, Capers said.

“The man walked over to the fence, said ‘Hey, we’re trying to keep the baby asleep in here,'” Capers said.

Both parties then went back to their houses. Oropeza “topped off his magazine, and walked down his driveway” onto the street then “into the people’s house and started shooting, Capers said.

Police had been called to Oropeza’s house on a couple of previous occasions over complaints about noise he was making shooting his gun in his yard, Capers said.

(C) Reuters. Security guards stand in front of the gate of the school belonging to the Russian embassy in Warsaw, Poland, April 29, 2023. REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia on Saturday promised it would respond harshly to what it said was Poland’s illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw, an act it called a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

Polish state-run news channel TVP Info had earlier reported that police had showed up outside the Russian embassy school on Kielecka street in Warsaw on Saturday morning.

When asked about the incident, a Polish foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters the building housing the embassy school belonged to the Polish state.

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Polish authorities had burst onto the embassy school’s grounds with the aim of seizing it.

“We regard this latest hostile act by the Polish authorities as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and as an encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland,” the ministry said.

“Such an insolent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilised inter-state relations, will not remain without a harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Polish interests in Russia,” it said.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said late on Saturday on the Telegram messaging app that it will give “a legal assessment” of the “seizure,” but it did not provide any further details.

Lukasz Jasina, a Polish foreign ministry spokesman, told Reuters that it was Russia’s right to protest but that Poland was acting within the law.

“Our opinion, which has been confirmed by the courts, is that this property belongs to the Polish state and was taken by Russia illegally,” he said.

Sergei Andreyev, Moscow’s ambassador to Poland, had earlier told Russian state news agencies that the building housing the embassy school was a diplomatic one which Polish authorities had no right to seize.

The two countries’ already fraught relations have soured further over the war in Ukraine with Warsaw positioning itself as one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies, playing a leading role in persuading allies to provide it with heavy weaponry.

Andreyev, the Russian ambassador, said earlier this week that Polish prosecutors had seized significant amounts of money from the frozen bank accounts of the Russian embassy and trade mission.

In March 2022, Poland said it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats suspected of working for Moscow’s intelligence services.

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(C) Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, U.S., April 29, 2023. REUTERS/Al Drago
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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday, in a possible preview of a 2024 presidential campaign theme, attacked news outlets he said used “lies told for profit and power” to stir up hatred, as he coupled his remarks with pointed jokes about Fox News.

Speaking at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Biden referred to “truth buried by lies,” in an apparent reference to false conspiracy theories that his 2020 election win was the result of a massive voter fraud.

“Lies told for profit and power. Lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again designed to generate a cycle of anger and hate and even violence,” Biden said.

That cycle, Biden added, has emboldened local jurisdictions to ban books, and “the rule of law and our rights and freedoms to be stripped away.”

Zeroing in on what he characterized as “an extreme press,” Biden at the same time joked that if he called Fox News “honest, fair and truthful then I can be sued for defamation.”

Earlier this month, Fox Corp settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million in a case that centered around Fox’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been manipulated in favor of Biden.

And in a jab at former President Donald Trump, Biden quipped that comedian Roy Wood Jr, who also was a featured speaker at the dinner, had offered him $10 to keep his speech short.

“That’s a switch – a president being offered hush money,” Biden said to laughter.

On April 4, Trump was charged with 34 felony counts in a case involving an alleged $130,000 hush payment to an adult film star during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

PRESS FREEDOM

This annual dinner is attended by scores of reporters who cover the White House, along with many government officials. It also has become a showcase for entertainment industry stars to hobnob with Washington’s power elite.

Presidents – although not Trump – normally attend the dinner and use their speeches as nods to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press.

But the deep partisanship that has washed across American politics in recent years has at times turned the light-hearted dinner, known in Washington as “the nerd prom,” into a tense affair.

In 2011, then-President Barack Obama used part of his speech to skewer Trump, who was sitting in the audience. At the time Trump had been spreading the falsehood that Obama was not born in the United States.

More than a decade later, Trump was still hovering over this spring rite.

Biden said he and his administration were “here to send a message to the country and quite frankly to the world. A free press is a pillar….of a free society, not the enemy.”

Trump used the term “enemy of the people” to refer to some journalists as a way of criticizing unflattering news coverage of his 2016 presidential campaign and his term in the White House.

Before the dinner began, Biden held a private meeting with the family of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested on March 30 in Russia and subsequently charged with espionage. The U.S. government has said he is being wrongfully detained.

“Journalism is not a crime,” Biden said as he spoke of efforts underway to free reporters all over the world who are being held in detention.

The president and First Lady Jill Biden also met with Brittney Griner, a professional basketball player released last December by Moscow after being imprisoned on charges of drug smuggling.

After discussing the arduous efforts required to free Americans being held in foreign jails, Biden pivoted to a lighter portion of his speech, even turning his humor on himself.

“I believe in the First Amendment,” the 80-year-old president quipped, adding: “Not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”

James Madison was the fourth U.S. president, serving from 1809-1817.

(C) Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A worker wearing a face mask works on a production line manufacturing bicycle steel rim at a factory, as the country is hit by the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China March 2, 2020. China Daily via REUTERS

By Ellen Zhang and Ryan Woo

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s manufacturing activity unexpectedly shrank in April, official data showed on Sunday, raising pressure on policymakers seeking to boost an economy struggling for a post-COVID lift-off amid subdued global demand and persistent property weakness.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) declined to 49.2 from 51.9 in March, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, below the 50-point mark that separates expansion and contraction in activity on a monthly basis.

That missed expectations of 51.4 tipped by economists in a Reuters poll and marked the first contraction since December, when the official manufacturing PMI was at 47.0.

The world’s second-biggest economy grew faster than expected in the first quarter thanks to robust services consumption, but factory output has lagged amid weak global growth. Slowing prices and surging bank savings are raising doubts about demand.

The Politburo, a top decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party, on Friday stressed that restoring and expanding demand is the key to a durable recovery and cautioned the current improvement is mainly restorative “with weak momentum and insufficient demand”.

“A lack of market demand and the high-base effect from the quick manufacturing recovery in the first quarter” were among factors that led to the contraction in April, said senior NBS statistician Zhao Qinghe.

New export orders edged down to 47.6 from 50.4 in March, the PMI showed.

The manufacturing sector, which employs about 18% of China’s workforce, remains under pressure due to slack global demand. Some exporters told Reuters at the country’s biggest trade fair they have frozen investments and some have cut labour costs in response.

To boost trade and employment, the cabinet last week unveiled plans, including supporting auto exports, facilitating visas for overseas businesspeople and providing subsidies to firms that hire college graduates.

Confidence in the property sector, for years a pillar of China’s growth, remains fragile. Multiple crises since mid-2020 have included developers’ debt defaults and stalled construction of pre-sold housing projects.

While policy support measures have helped improve conditions in the industry, pockets of weakness remain and a full recovery appears some way off.

Despite the recent strength in consumption, the non-manufacturing PMI edged down to 56.4 versus 58.2 in March.

Data this month showed retail sales growth quickening in March to near two-year highs, but that was off a low base and economists are cautious on the sustainability of such strength.

The composite PMI, which includes manufacturing and non-manufacturing activity, dropped to 54.4 from 57.0.

The PMI readings, along with other mixed economic signals, including robust holiday travel and muted property market activities, “will likely keep the pressure on the government to continue its supportive fiscal and monetary policies in Q2”, said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.