A suspect was shot and killed by police and four other people were injured when gunfire broke out Friday morning outside the Empire State Building. Details are sketchy, but the shooting started shortly after 9 a.m. on the crowded sidewalks outside the iconic skyscraper.
A man wanted by police was shot and killed, while four other people were wounded before the gunfire stopped. It was unclear if the victims were linked to the dead suspect or innocent bystanders.
Shooter kills his ex-boss, opens fire and injures seven others near Empire State building amid Midtown Manhattan morning rush
Disgruntled worker Jeffrey Johnson designed women's accessories, cops said. He wore a grey suit as he sprayed bullets along 34th St. and Fifth Ave. near the iconic Midtown skyscraper.
Former High Court chief justice Gerard Brennan says there is no room in Australia for sharia law to operate in parallel with the nation's legal system, and considers suggestions to the contrary "misconceived".
Delivering a lecture at the University of NSW Law School last night, Sir Gerard said such a move could undermine the cohesiveness of Australia's multicultural society. He said, "There have been some suggestions that, following the growth of Islam in Australia, there is room for a pluralistic legal system, a system in which at least some parts of Islamic sharia law might operate as part of Australian law and in parallel with the common law system . . . that suggestion seems to me to be misconceived.
"No court could apply and no government could administer two parallel systems of law, especially if they reflect, as they inevitably would reflect, different fundamental standards."
Sir Gerard said that in a democracy the culture of the majority determines a country's legal structure. He said minority practices that offend the fundamental moral standards of the majority must be abandoned.
He said, "A Muslim is free to adhere to the beliefs, customs and practices prescribed by sharia law insofar as they are consistent with the general law in force in this country. That freedom must be respected and protected, but that does not mean that Islamic sharia should have the force of law."
He said the United Arab Emirates Supreme Court had explicated that sharia regulated all aspects of daily life, and if judicial reasoning or customs contradicted sharia they were invalid or unacceptable.
Sir Gerard said Australia's common law leaves a gap between the law and the actions of individuals, based on their own moral standards.
A lone wolf chucking a bomb at a Austrian archduke German chancellor is not yet WoT related...
CHISINAU, Moldova: Police in Moldova have detained a 23-year-old man suspected of lobbing an incendiary device toward the motorcade of visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Interior Ministry said Thursday the object flew over the car of Prime Minister Vlad Filat, who was returning to Chisinau after a trip with Merkel to the countrys famous Cricova wine cellars. No one was injured in Wednesdays incident. Authorities have not specified what the device was, but said it did not explode despite being on fire.
Merkel was in a bullet-proof limousine and security was tight during the trip.
Merkel, the first German chancellor to visit the country of 4.1 million, expressed support for reforms there.
Moldovas government is increasingly aligning itself with the European Union, but Russia still retains influence in the ex-Soviet republic.
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08/24/2012 00:00 ||
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MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan: Flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 26 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in northern Pakistan, officials said yesterday.
Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of Pakistan-administered Kashmir said at least 17 people have been killed and nine others injured in six districts since Monday.
Some 685 houses and 125 shops have been damaged and roads washed away, Majeed said, adding that a request has been made to the federal government for financial help.
The majority of the deaths in Kashmir came when buildings collapsed due to the rains, and a further nine people died in flooding in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said.
Adnan Khan, an official from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said he feared the death toll there could rise. Dozens of families have suffered and their houses were destroyed, several people are still missing Khan told AFP.
Weather officials are predicting heavy rain in the next three days and rescue teams are closely monitoring the situation, Bhatti said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/24/2012 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.