US girl, 14, guns down rival in Facebook dispute over boy

May 1, 2014

Girl_guns_downChicago, May 1: In a horrific incident in the US, a 14-year-old girl shot and killed another girl of the same age in broad daylight to settle a Facebook feud over a boy.

The Facebook dispute between the two girls over the boy ended when one gunned down the other on a Southside Chicago porch, police said.

Endia Martin was fatally shot in the after-school confrontation outside her home in the Back of the Yards neighbourhood, the Chicago Tribune reported.

An honours student charged in Endia's murder appeared in juvenile court yesterday.

"Bout to beat some a--" the girl tweeted about two hours before the fatal confrontation on Monday.

Police also charged a second person, a 17-year-old boy, with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and other charges for allegedly trying to discard the murder weapon, a .38-caliber handgun.

Endia was with friends on the front porch when the suspect and her group approached, Cook County prosecutors said.

The suspect took out the gun and pulled the trigger, but the gun "malfunctioned", said Assistant State's Attorney Kathleen Kain.

The girl handed the gun to others in her group who quickly fixed it. The girl raised the gun again and opened fire, killing Endia and striking a 16-year-old girl in the upper left arm who was later released from a hospital.

Several witnesses identified the suspect as the shooter, Kain said, and she gave a videotaped confession.

After Kain called the suspect "a danger to the public and herself," Juvenile Court Judge Stuart Paul Katz ordered her held in custody.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy hinted that a 24-year-old uncle of the suspect's also was being questioned for giving the gun to the girl, knowing "there was going to be a fight", he said.

McCarthy said the gun used to kill Endia had been stolen from a car on April 14.

"What would have been, under any other circumstance, probably a fistfight between 14-year-old girls because they were fighting over a boy turned into a murder," McCarthy told reporters.

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News Network
July 4,2020

Geneva, Jul 4: The World Health Organization has updated its account of the early stages of the COVID crisis to say it was alerted by its own office in China, and not by China itself, to the first pneumonia cases in Wuhan.

The UN health body has been accused by US President Donald Trump of failing to provide the information needed to stem the pandemic and of being complacent towards Beijing, charges it denies.

On April 9, WHO published an initial timeline of its communications, partly in response to criticism of its early response to the outbreak that has now claimed more than 521,000 lives worldwide.

In that chronology, WHO had said only that the Wuhan municipal health commission in the province of Hubei had on December 31 reported cases of pneumonia. The UN health agency did not however specify who had notified it.

WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference on April 20 the first report had come from China, without specifying whether the report had been sent by Chinese authorities or another source.

But a new chronology, published this week by the Geneva-based institution, offers a more detailed version of events.

It indicates that it was the WHO office in China that on December 31 notified its regional point of contact of a case of "viral pneumonia" after having found a declaration for the media on a Wuhan health commission website on the issue.

The same day, WHO's epidemic information service picked up another news report transmitted by the international epidemiological surveillance network ProMed -- based in the United States -- about the same group of cases of pneumonia from unknown causes in Wuhan.

After which, WHO asked the Chinese authorities on two occasions, on January 1 and January 2, for information about these cases, which they provided on January 3.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference on Friday that countries have 24-48 hours to officially verify an event and provide the agency with additional information about the nature or cause of an event.

Ryan added that the Chinese authorities immediately contacted WHO's as soon as the agency asked to verify the report.

US President Donald Trump has announced that his country, the main financial contributor to WHO, will cut its bridges with the institution, which he accuses of being too close to China and of having poorly managed the pandemic.

The WHO denies any complacency toward China.

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Agencies
May 17,2020

Washington, May 17: The overall number of global coronavirus cases has increased to over 4.6 million, while the death toll has surpassed 311,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As of Sunday morning, the total number of cases stood at 4,634,068, while the death toll increased to 311,781, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US currently accounts for the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 1,467,796 and 88,754, respectively.

In terms of cases, Russia has the second highest number of infections at 272,043, followed by the UK (241,461), Brazil (233,142), Spain (230,698), Italy (224,760), France (179,630), Germany (175,752), Turkey (148,067) and Iran (118,392), the CSSE figures showed.

Meanwhile, the UK accounted for the second highest COVID-19 deaths worldwide at 34,546.

The other countries with over 10,000 deaths are Italy (31,763), Spain (27,563), France (27,532), and Brazil (15,662).

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News Network
March 31,2020

Washington, Mar 31: The United States has performed over one million coronavirus tests so far, said President Donald Trump on Monday.

"Today, we reached a historic milestone in our war against coronavirus. Over 1 million Americans have now been tested, more than any other country by far, not even close," Trump said during a press briefing.

US Health Secretary Alex Azar said that approximately 100,000 samples are tested for coronavirus daily.

The number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases within the United States surpassed 150,000 and the death toll has reached 2828, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

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