From Washington, this is VOA news. I’m Ray Kouguell reporting. U.S. authorities vow justice after suspect caught in church shooting.
A man is in police custody and a city is in mourning following the shooting deaths of nine people at an African-American church in the southeastern U.S. city of Charleston, South Carolina.
Law enforcement officials caught 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof early Thursday while driving through the neighboring state of North Carolina, about 400 kilometers from where the shootings took place.
Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the gunman, a white male, sat with the prayer group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church late Wednesday for at least an hour before opening fire.
Two of the church’s pastors and an 87-year-old woman were among the dead. Several others were wounded.
President Obama expressed his deep sorrow and grief over the shootings, linking the incident to the politically sensitive issue of gun control.
“We don’t have all the facts but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”
Federal officials are investigating whether the killings were a hate crime.
Pope Francis called on the world Thursday to combat global warming that he says is leading the Earth to environmental ruin.
Pope Francis issued a landmark letter to Catholics called encyclical backing scientific evidence that climate change is mostly caused by human activity.
The pope called for an end to what he said is a “culturally perverse” economic system in which wealthy countries exploit the poor, leaving the Earth looking, in his words, “more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
Militants from the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram have killed at least 38 people in raids on two villages in Niger’s Diffa region. It is close to the border with Nigeria.
It is the latest attempt by Boko Haram to strike inside neighboring countries that have joined the Nigerian military.
Chad says its military carried out retaliatory airstrikes against Boko Haram militants in neighboring Nigeria after a pair of suicide bombings earlier this week in the Chadian capital that killed at least 33 people.
The military says the airstrikes targeted six militant camps and caused “considerable human and material losses.”
International creditors demanded Thursday that Greece propose economic reforms that could break the impasse in bailout talks.
Greece was unequivocally denied any possibility for delay or a grace period to repay the International Monetary Fund as finance ministers from the eurozone and the heads of the IMF and European Central Bank prepare for much-anticipated crisis meeting in Luxembourg.
Hong Kong’s legislature voted down a controversial plan for electoral reform after months of debate and mass protests over the city’s democratic future. Shannon Van Sant reports.
Legislators in Hong Kong vetoed the proposal for election reform, calling it “fake democracy” and “universal suffrage.”
Many legislators were not present for the afternoon vote, which happened earlier than expected.
Twenty-eight legislators voted against the plan, eight voted in support and one abstained. Moments before, a group of pro-government legislators forfeited their votes by staging a last-minute walkout.
Chin’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang expressed disappointment at the veto.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accusing the U.N. chief of “hypocrisy” for criticizing Israel for the deaths of Palestinian children during last year’s war in Gaza.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made no mention of Hamas during a Security Council debate Thursday on protecting children in war zones, but said he is “deeply alarmed at the suffering of so many children as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza last year.”
Mr. Netanyahu called it a “black day for the U.N.” and says there is no limit to the organization’s hypocrisy.
More than 2,000 troops from nine NATO nations are on the march in Poland, participating in the first exercise of NATO’s new rapid response force. Alliance leaders say the exercises are intended to reassure eastern European member countries rattled by Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis.
Reports published Thursday show the U.S. economic outlook, job market, and inflation rate improving, while the strong dollar is hurting American exports.
Researchers at the Conference Board say increasing construction was the key reason that the outlook for growth improved.
The U.S. $10 bill will feature the portrait of a notable U.S. woman by 2020.
The new image will replace that of Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, whose portrait has graced the $10 bill since the late 1920s. The redesigned currency will debut in time for the 100th anniversary of the formal ratification of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote.
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