World Nation Briefs May 13, 2013
Gunman opens fire during Mother's Day parade
NEW ORLEANS - Gunmen opened fire on dozens of people marching in a neighborhood Mother's Day parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 19 people, police said.
The FBI said that the shooting appeared to be "street violence" and wasn't linked to terrorism.
Many of the victims were grazed and most of the wounds weren't life-threatening, according to a police news release. No deaths were reported.
The victims included 10 men, seven women, a boy and a girl. The children, both 10 years old, were grazed and in good condition. Police said at least two people were in surgery Sunday night.
Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New Orleans, said federal investigators have no indication that the shooting was an act of terrorism.
Officers were interspersed with the marchers, which is routine for such events. As many as 400 people joined in the procession that stretched for about 3 blocks, though only half that many were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, said Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas.
Police saw three suspects running from the scene in the city's 7th Ward neighborhood. No arrests had been made as of late afternoon.
Second-line parades are loose processions in which people dance down the street, often following behind a brass band. They can be impromptu or planned and are sometimes described as moving block parties.
A social club called The Original Big 7 organized Sunday's event. The group was founded in 1996 at the Saint Bernard housing projects, according to its MySpace page.
Bodies found after New Jersey standoff; suspect killed
TRENTON, N.J. - Police stormed a New Jersey home early Sunday and fatally shot a registered sex offender who had held his girlfriend's three children hostage, ending their 37-hour ordeal and recovering the bodies of the captives' mother and another sibling, authorities said.
Officers initially went to the home in South Trenton on Friday afternoon after a relative of 44-year-old Carmelita Stevens said she hadn't spoken to her in weeks and was worried, authorities said at a news conference Sunday. Upon further investigation, authorities then discovered her children hadn't been to school in 12 days.
Police entered the home through a rear door and smelled an odor consistent with that of a decomposing body, Trenton Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr. said. The officers also noticed maggots throughout the residence.
They found 38-year-old Gerald "Skip" Tyrone Murphy in an upstairs bedroom and he told them he was armed with a gun and explosives and had three children with him, Mercer County Prosecutor Joseph L. Bocchini Jr. said. Officers noticed one of the dead victims before they retreated from the second floor and rescued Stevens' 19-year-old son from the basement, who said he hadn't seen her or his siblings since about April 24.
Resounding election victory for Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif
LAHORE, Pakistan - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif looked poised Sunday to return to office with a resounding election victory - a mandate that could make it easier to tackle the country's daunting problems, including growing power outages, weak economic growth and shaky government finances.
Questions remain, however, about Sharif's stance on another key issue: violent Islamic extremism. Critics have accused his party of being soft on radicals because it hasn't cracked down on militant groups in its stronghold of Punjab province.
That could be a concern for the United States, which has pushed Pakistan for years to take stronger action against a variety of Islamic militant groups, especially fighters staging cross-border attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
As unofficial returns rolled in Sunday, a day after the election, state TV estimates put Sharif close to the majority in the national assembly needed to govern outright for the next five years. Even if he falls short of that threshold, independent candidates almost certain to swing in Sharif's favor would give his Pakistan Muslim League-N party a ruling majority.
Veteran diplomat says Benghazi review was thorough
WASHINGTON - The seasoned diplomat who penned a highly critical report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his scathing assessment but absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We knew where the responsibility rested," Thomas Pickering said Sunday.
"They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made," Pickering, whose career spans four decades, said of Clinton's critics.
The Accountability Review Board, which Pickering headed with retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not question Clinton at length about the attacks but concluded last December that the decisions about the consulate were made well below the secretary's level.
Pickering and Mullen's blistering report found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant that security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."
- The Associated Press