CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in a “complex” and delicate condition after his latest surgery for cancer in Cuba, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday.
Looking grave-faced in an address to the nation, he urged Venezuelans to unite in prayer for their 58-year-old president, and to keep faith that Chavez would return soon.
(Reporting by Caracas newsroom; Editing by Will Dunham)
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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The gunman who killed two people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Oregon mall was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle from someone he knew, authorities said Wednesday.
Jacob Tyler Roberts had armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at a Portland mall on Tuesday, said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.
The sheriff said the rifle jammed during the 22-year-old's attack, but he managed to get it working again. He later shot himself. The sheriff said authorities don't yet have a motive.
A law enforcement official has told The Associated Press the shooter did not have a criminal record. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Two people — a 54-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man — were killed, and another, Kristina Shevchenko, whose age could not be confirmed, was wounded and in serious condition on Wednesday.
The shooter, who wore a mask, fired randomly, investigators said. People at the mall were heroic in helping get shoppers out of the building, including off-duty emergency room nurses who rendered aid, Roberts said.
In response to previous mass shootings elsewhere, the first arriving officers were trained to form teams and go inside instead of waiting for SWAT. Employees at the mall also received training to handle such a situation.
"This could have been much, much worse," Roberts said.
The first 911 call came at 3:29 p.m. Tuesday. The first officers arrived a minute later. By 3:51 p.m., all the victims and the gunman and rifle had been found. Four SWAT teams spent hours clearing the 1.4 million square-foot mall, leaving shoppers and workers to hide in fear.
The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, was waiting for the next child's Christmas wish when shots rang out, causing the mall to erupt into chaos.
About to invite a child to hop onto his lap, Wilson instead dove for the floor and kept his head down as he heard shots being fired upstairs in the mall.
"I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target," said Wilson, 68. Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson crept away for better cover.
Witnesses said the gunman fired several times near the mall food court until the rifle jammed and he dropped a magazine onto the floor, then ran into the Macy's store.
Witnesses heard the gunman saying, "I am the shooter," as he fired rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland.
Some were close enough to the shooter to feel the percussion of his gun.
Police rapid-response teams came into the mall with guns drawn, telling everyone to leave. Shoppers and mall employees who were hiding stayed in touch with loved ones with cellphones and texting.
Kayla Sprint, 18, was interviewing for a job at a clothing store when she heard shots.
"We heard people running back here screaming, yelling '911,'" she told The Associated Press.
Sprint barricaded herself in the store's back room until the coast was clear.
Jason DeCosta, a manager of a window-tinting company that has a display on the mall's ground floor, said when he arrived to relieve his co-worker, he heard shots ring out upstairs.
DeCosta ran up an escalator, past people who had dropped for cover and glass littering the floor.
"I figure if he's shooting a gun, he's gonna run out of bullets," DeCosta said, "and I'm gonna take him."
DeCosta said when he got to the food court, "I saw a gentleman face down, obviously shot in the head."
"A lot of blood," DeCosta said. "You could tell there was nothing you could do for him."
He said he also saw a woman on the floor who had been shot in the chest.
Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, said he saw a man in a white mask carrying a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. There was a series of rapid-fire shots in short succession as Christmas music played. Patty said he dove for the floor and then ran.
His Macy's co-worker, Pam Moore, told the AP the gunman was short, with dark hair.
Kira Rowland told KGW-TV that she was shopping at Macy's with her infant son when the shots started.
"All of a sudden you hear two shots, which sounded like balloons popping," Rowland told the station. "Everybody got on the ground. I grabbed the baby from the stroller and got on the ground."
Rowland said she heard people screaming and crying.
"I put the baby back in the stroller and ran," Rowland said.
Kaelynn Keelin was working two stores down from Macy's when the gunfire began. She watched windows of another store get shot out. She and her co-workers ran to get customers inside their own store to take shelter.
"If we would have run out, we would have run right into it," she said.
Shaun Wik, 20, was Christmas shopping with his girlfriend and opened a fortune cookie at the food court. Inside was written: "Live for today. Remember yesterday. Think of tomorrow."
As he read it, he heard three shots. He heard a man he believes was the gunman shout, "Get down!" but Wik and his girlfriend ran. He heard seven or eight more shots. He didn't turn around.
"If I had looked back, I might not be standing here," Wik said. "I might have been one of the ones who got hit."
Clackamas Town Center is one of the Portland area's biggest and busiest malls, with 185 stores and a 20-screen movie theater.
Holli Bautista, 28, was shopping at Macy's for a Christmas dress for her daughter when she heard pops that sounded like firecrackers. "I heard people running and screaming and saying 'Get out, there's somebody shooting,'" she told the AP.
She said hundreds of shoppers and mall employees started running, and she and dozens of other people were trying to escape through a department store exit.
Tiffany Turgetto and her husband were leaving Macy's through the first floor when they heard gunshots coming from the second floor of the mall. They were able to leave quickly through a Barnes & Noble bookstore before the police locked down the mall.
"I had left my phone at home. I was telling people to call 911. Surprisingly, people are around me, no one was calling 911. I think people were in shock," she said.
___
Associated Press writers Nigel Duara in Portland, Michelle Price in Phoenix, Pete Yost in Washington and Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed to this report.
A store employee at the Clackamas Town Center
mall used his knowledge of the shopping complex to hustle a customer
out of the building during Tuesday's shooting rampage and then twice
went back inside to guide other shoppers to exits and safety.
Allan Fonseca, who works at Lancome counter in Macy's and was waiting on
Jocelyn Lay when they heard shots fired about 3:30 p.m. Thinking
quickly, Fonseca got her behind the counter to hide.
"We both just looked at each other and knew that this was a serious
situation and it was a gunman and we both just dove down below the
Lancome counter there for a little protection," Lay told "Good Morning
America." "And the gunfire just kept going off."
PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting
Lay said that she began praying for the Lord to protect her and the
other shoppers in the mall. She said Fonseca, as a store employee, knew
exactly what to do, and she credits him as her hero.
"He said that we needed to evacuate, and he took me by the hand and took me down the escalator and out to safety," she said.
Once Fonseca was sure that she was safe, he then turned to her and said, "I'm going to go back and help other people."
Fonseca said that because he is familiar with the exits in the mall, he
felt that he would be able to help shoppers escape the gunfire.
"I felt that if I knew how to get out of the mall and out to safety then
I should share that knowledge with everyone else, like the shoppers
that don't come here regularly and don't know all of the exits," he
said. "So I decided to go back up because I wanted to see if there was
anybody in panic or didn't know where to do."
Fonseca returned to the mall and evacuated the lower level of the Macy's
store, and then went back up to the "shooting floor" to look for his
co-workers. Lay says she's not sure she would have done if he hadn't
been there to get her out of harm's way.
"I probably just would have stayed there and probably would have had a
little more fear because it's one of those situations where you've seen
in previous shootings, the gunman keep shooting and keep looking for
different people," she said. "I would have huddled there and hoped and
prayed."
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is trying to make its privacy controls easier to find and understand in an effort to turn the world’s largest social network into a more discreet place.
The fine-tuning announced Wednesday will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook Inc.‘s more than 1 billion users in the next few weeks.
The biggest change will be a new “privacy shortcuts” section that will appear as a tiny lock on the right-hand side at the top of people’s news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users will be able to get answers to common questions such as “Who can see my stuff?”
Other updates will include a tool that will enable individuals to review all the publicly available pictures identifying them on Facebook.
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CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.
Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.
The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.
“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.
“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”
(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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Well-known patent troll Wi-LAN has filed a new lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Wi-LAN, which describes itself as “a leading intellectual property licensing company,” claims RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,260,168, owned by Wi-LAN, which relates to Bluetooth implementation. The lawsuit covers multiple BlackBerry handsets including Bold, Torch, Pearl and Storm models, Reuters reports. Wi-LAN is reportedly seeking unspecified damages and is looking to ban sales of RIM’s infringing BlackBerry phones in the United States.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Film critics love “Lincoln.” The historical drama earned a record-breaking 13 nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.
The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the nominees for its 18th annual awards ceremony Tuesday in Los Angeles.
“Lincoln” beat the 12 nods earned by 2010′s “Black Swan” with bids for director Steven Spielberg, star Daniel Day-Lewis and supporting actors Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, as well as cinematography, adapted screenplay, costume design, makeup, editing, art direction, score and acting ensemble.
“Les Miserables” follows with 11 nominations and “Silver Linings Playbook” has 10. “Life of Pi” earned nine nods. “Argo,” ”Skyfall” and “The Master” each have seven.
Winners will be announced Jan. 10, 2013, at a ceremony set to be broadcast live on the CW network.
___
Online:
www.criticschoice.com
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The executive director of a troubled $ 3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas has submitted his resignation letter amid escalating scrutiny over the management of the nation’s second-biggest pot of cancer research dollars.
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas made Bill Gimson‘s resignation letter public on Tuesday. Gimson has led the state agency since it launched in 2009 but fell under mounting criticism over the recent disclosure that an $ 11 million award to a private company was never reviewed.
Gimson wrote that he had been “placed in a situation where I can no longer feel effective.”
The agency’s board must still approve his request to resign.
Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT.
Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - The Republican-majority Michigan legislature gave final approval on Tuesday to "right-to-work" restrictions on public sector unions in a state considered a stronghold of organized labor, as protesters chanted in the gallery and thousands rallied outside.
The House passed the measure making membership and payment of union dues voluntary for public sector employees such as teachers by a 58-51 vote. The Senate approved the same bill last week so it will now go to Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who has promised to sign it into law.
The public sector law was the first of two expected to be approved by the House on Tuesday. The other covers private sector workers, including the large auto industry in Michigan.
More than 12,000 workers from throughout Michigan and the U.S. Midwest protested as the legislature voted, most gathered in freezing temperatures and a light snow outside the building to show their displeasure.
Michigan State Police Inspector Gene Adamczyk said the Capitol was closed to visitors when it reached capacity of 2,200. An estimated 10,000 people demonstrated outside.
A few protesters were ejected from the Capitol after they chanted slogans from the gallery during the debate. Outside of the building, protesters tore down two tents set up for supporters of right-to-work as the crowd applauded but Adamczyk said there had been no arrests by late morning.
The show of force by unionized workers recalled huge rallies in Wisconsin two years ago when Republicans voted to curb public sector unions.
The right-to-work movement has been growing in the United States in recent years. Indiana earlier this year became the first state in the industrial Midwest to approve right-to-work and several other states are watching the Michigan action closely.
Michigan would become the 24th state to enact right-to-work provisions in a stunning blow to the power of organized labor in the United States, which has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years.
Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 passed laws severely restricting the power of public sector unions. While Wisconsin did not even attempt to pass right-to-work, the success of Republicans there in curbing powerful unions such as teachers and state workers emboldened politicians in other states to follow suit.
Michigan is home of the heavily unionized U.S. auto industry, with some 700 manufacturing plants in the state. It is also the birthplace of the United Auto Workers, the richest U.S. labor union. Michigan has the fifth highest percentage of unionized workers in the United States at 17.5 percent.
Detroit area is headquarters for General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler, which is majority owned by Fiat SpA.
(Additional reporting by Robert Carr; Editing by Greg McCune and Bill Trott)
LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - The Republican-majority Michigan legislature gave final approval on Tuesday to "right-to-work" restrictions on public sector unions in a state considered a stronghold of organized labor, as protesters chanted in the gallery and thousands rallied outside.
The House passed the measure making membership and payment of union dues voluntary for public sector employees such as teachers by a 58-51 vote. The Senate approved the same bill last week so it will now go to Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who has promised to sign it into law.
The public sector law was the first of two expected to be approved by the House on Tuesday. The other covers private sector workers, including the large auto industry in Michigan.
More than 12,000 workers from throughout Michigan and the U.S. Midwest protested as the legislature voted, most gathered in freezing temperatures and a light snow outside the building to show their displeasure.
Michigan State Police Inspector Gene Adamczyk said the Capitol was closed to visitors when it reached capacity of 2,200. An estimated 10,000 people demonstrated outside.
A few protesters were ejected from the Capitol after they chanted slogans from the gallery during the debate. Outside of the building, protesters tore down two tents set up for supporters of right-to-work as the crowd applauded but Adamczyk said there had been no arrests by late morning.
The show of force by unionized workers recalled huge rallies in Wisconsin two years ago when Republicans voted to curb public sector unions.
The right-to-work movement has been growing in the United States in recent years. Indiana earlier this year became the first state in the industrial Midwest to approve right-to-work and several other states are watching the Michigan action closely.
Michigan would become the 24th state to enact right-to-work provisions in a stunning blow to the power of organized labor in the United States, which has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years.
Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 passed laws severely restricting the power of public sector unions. While Wisconsin did not even attempt to pass right-to-work, the success of Republicans there in curbing powerful unions such as teachers and state workers emboldened politicians in other states to follow suit.
Michigan is home of the heavily unionized U.S. auto industry, with some 700 manufacturing plants in the state. It is also the birthplace of the United Auto Workers, the richest U.S. labor union. Michigan has the fifth highest percentage of unionized workers in the United States at 17.5 percent.
Detroit area is headquarters for General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler, which is majority owned by Fiat SpA.
(Additional reporting by Robert Carr; Editing by Greg McCune and Bill Trott)
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