Seven killed in two shootings in Half Moon Bay, California

 Latest mass shooting comes less than 48 hours after 11 people killed at a Lunar New Year celebration near Los Angeles.

Seven people were killed and one person critically injured in two related shootings at agricultural facilities in a coastal community in northern California, and a suspect is in custody.

The latest bloodshed in the United States came less than 48 hours after an attacker killed 11 people at a Lunar New Year celebration near Los Angeles, California, on Saturday night. San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Dave Pine said on Monday that four people were killed at a mushroom farm and three at a trucking business on the outskirts of Half Moon Bay, a city about 48km (30 miles) south of San Francisco.

It was not immediately clear how the locations were connected, though Pine said the suspect worked for one of the businesses. He called the suspect a “disgruntled worker”.

Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said the victims included Chinese and Latino farmworkers.

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office tweeted just before 5pm (01:00 GMT) that a suspect was in custody.

“The Sheriff’s Office is responding to a shooting incident with multiple victims in the area of [Highway] 92 and the [Half Moon Bay] City limits,” the office tweeted.

“There is no ongoing threat to the community at this time,” the sheriff’s office said.

Television footage from the area showed officers taking a man into custody without incident. Aerial television images also showed police officers collecting evidence from a farm with dozens of greenhouses.

Christina Corpus, San Mateo County sheriff, said the reason behind the shootings was not yet known.

She identified the suspect as Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao, 67, who was “taken into custody without incident” after being located in his vehicle in the parking lot of the sheriff’s substation in Half Moon Bay, she said. A semi-automatic handgun was found in the suspect’s vehicle, she said.

A video of the arrest showed three officers approaching a parked car with drawn weapons. Zhao got out of the car, and the officers pulled him to the ground, put him in handcuffs, and led him away.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said one person critically injured in the shooting was being treated in hospital. According to Reynolds, a local councilwoman had described the victims as “ethnic Chinese” agricultural workers who were working at the mushroom farm and, apparently, also at the trucking company.

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office first received reports of a shooting just before 2:30pm (22:30 GMT) and found four people dead from gunshot wounds and a fifth injured person at the first scene. Shortly after, officers found three more people dead from gunshot wounds at a second location about 8km (5 miles) away, Captain Eamonn Allen said in a news release.

The shooting followed the killing of 11 people late on Saturday at a Lunar New Year event at a ballroom dance hall in Monterey Park in southern California.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been in Monterey Park where that mass shooting took place, took to Twitter moments after news broke of the latest killings.

“At the hospital meeting with victims of a mass shooting when I get pulled away to be briefed about another shooting. This time in Half Moon Bay. Tragedy upon tragedy.”

“We are sickened by today’s tragedy in Half Moon Bay,” Dave Pine added in a statement.

“We have not even had time to grieve for those lost in the terrible shooting in Monterey Park. Gun violence must stop,” he said.

“The status quo cannot be tolerated.”

Mental health services and counselling is being organised for the community, another supervisor, Ray Mueller, said in the statement.

The shooting in Monterey Park marked the fifth mass shooting in the US this month and the deadliest since 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to the AP/USA Today database on mass killings in the country.

The US suffered 647 shootings with four or more victims in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.

Also on Monday, two teenage students were killed and an adult employee was injured in a shooting at a school in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to helping at-risk youth.

Police said one man had been charged in the shooting, and two other people remained in custody. Preston Walls, 18, of Des Moines, was charged with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for the shooting at the Starts Right Here programme. He was also charged with criminal gang participation.

Authorities said the shooting was the result of an ongoing gang dispute. Police said Walls was on supervised release for a weapons charge and had removed his ankle monitor 16 minutes before the shooting.

“The incident was definitely targeted. It was not random. There was nothing random about this,” police sergeant Paul Parizek said.

Des Moines police investigate the shooting at Starts Right Here, a non-profit educational mentorship programme that helps at-risk Des Moines youth, in Des Moines, Iowa, US, on January 23, 2023 

William Holmes – a 49-year-old rapper who founded the programme and goes by the stage name Will Keeps – was injured and was in surgery on Monday evening.

Police said Walls and all three victims were at the school on Monday when Walls entered a common area with a 9mm handgun with an extended ammunition magazine in his possession, police said.

Holmes tried to escort Walls away from the area, but Walls pulled away, “pulled the handgun and began to shoot both teenage victims”, police said in a statement.

Holmes was standing nearby and was also shot, then Walls ran away, police said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Cameroon denies asking for help with Anglophone separatist crisis

Since 2017, secessionist militias in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have been battling government troops over perceived marginalisation.

Cameroon’s government says it has not asked any country to mediate its conflict with Anglophone separatists, apparently denying a statement from Canada that it had been assigned to work on a peace process.

The Cameroonian government “has not entrusted any foreign country or external entity with any role of mediator or facilitator to settle the crisis,” it said in a statement on Monday that did not directly mention Canada.

On January 21, Canada’s foreign ministry said it had accepted a mandate to facilitate a peace process between Cameroonian authorities and some separatist factions in English-speaking regions to resolve a conflict that has gone on since 2017.

A spokesperson for the Anglophone separatists, who are trying to form a breakaway state called Ambazonia in the country’s minority English-speaking regions, said they had taken note of the government’s latest statement but would not comment further.

They had previously said they were committed to a negotiated process mandated by Canada.

There was no immediate comment by Canada’s foreign ministry.

The United States embassy in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde said on Twitter on Monday that it welcomed Canada’s announcement of talks to resolve the crisis.

Cameroon’s separatist movement stems from the perceived marginalisation of the English-speaking community by the French-speaking majority since a 1961 plebiscite fused both parts of the country into one.

Since the conflict began, factions of secessionist militias have been battling government troops in the two Angophone regions, which has killed thousands and displaced nearly 800,000 people. Meanwhile, some 600,000 children do not have full access to education, according to the Canadian government, as many schools have been shut.

A 2019 national dialogue granted special status to the two Anglophone regions but failed to resolve the conflict.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Nigerian flights disrupted as ground staff go on strike

 Flight disruptions are common in Nigeria due to issues surrounding logistics, labour union strikes and fuel scarcity.

Airlines in Nigeria said on Monday that flights were being disrupted after ground staff began an indefinite strike to demand higher pay.

Air Peace, which has the biggest fleet in Nigeria, and smaller domestic carrier Dana Air said the strike by the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) was delaying flights and they hoped the issue would be quickly resolved.

“The strike has affected all operations of all airlines being handled by the company [NAHCO],” Air Peace said in a statement.

British Airways and Qatar Airways, among the foreign airlines frequently flying to Nigeria, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The National Union of Transport Employees and Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria issued a notice last week that its members would go on strike from Monday to press NAHCO for better pay.

Flight disruptions are common in Nigeria due to issues surrounding logistics, labour union strikes and fuel scarcity.

In May 2022, the Airline Operators of Nigeria, an umbrella organisation of domestic airlines, suspended flights for days saying the price of jet fuel had jumped from 190 to 700 Nigerian naira per litre (from $0.45 to almost $1.70). The rise was primarily caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Chris Hipkins confirmed as New Zealand’s next prime minister

Ruling party chooses the former COVID minister to replace Jacinda Ardern as its new leader and become New Zealand’s next prime minister.

New Zealand’s former minister for COVID-19, Chris Hipkins, has been confirmed as the country’s next prime minister.

Hipkins got the unanimous support of legislators from the ruling Labour Party on Sunday after he was the only candidate to replace the charismatic Jacinda Ardern, who shocked the nation last week when she announced she was resigning after more than five years as prime minister.

Hipkins, 44, will be officially sworn in to his new role on Wednesday. He will have less than nine months before contesting a tough general election, with opinion polls indicating his party is trailing its conservative opposition.

“This is the biggest privilege and biggest responsibility of my life,” Hipkins said at a news conference announcing his appointment. “I am energised and excited by the challenge that lies ahead.”

Hipkins immediately acknowledged Ardern’s leadership, who he called one of New Zealand’s greatest prime ministers and an inspiration to women and girls everywhere. “She gave voice to those often overlooked in times of challenge and purposefully went about doing politics differently,” he said.

But some of the hate Ardern faced during her term is a reminder that “we’ve got a way to go to ensure women in leadership receive the same respect as their male counterparts”, he added.

Known as “Chippy”, Hipkins built a reputation for competence in tackling COVID and was a troubleshooter for Ardern when other cabinet ministers were struggling.

First elected to parliament in 2008, he became a household name fronting the government’s response to the pandemic. He was appointed health minister in July 2020 before becoming the COVID response minister at the end of the year.

Hipkins named Carmel Sepuloni as deputy prime minister, New Zealand’s first deputy prime minister of Pacific origin.

Sepuloni, 46, is of Samoan, Tongan and New Zealand European descent and lives in Auckland. She holds a number of portfolios, including social development and employment as well as arts, culture and heritage.

She said it was “very hard to fathom that a working-class girl” from a small New Zealand town could end up as deputy prime minister.

“I want to acknowledge the significance of this for our Pacific community,” Sepuloni said. “I am proudly Samoan, Tongan, and New Zealand European, and represent generations of New Zealanders with mixed heritage.”

Sepuloni said she’d already been receiving lots of humbling messages about another glass ceiling being smashed. Hipkins said the rest of his team would be announced later.

The new leader said he has seen the media focus on Ardern’s personal life, and wants to keep his two young children and his family out of the limelight.

He said a year ago he and his wife decided to live separately.

“She’s still my best friend but we have made that decision in the best interest of our family,” he said.

Local polls have shown Hipkins was the most popular potential candidate among voters. While Ardern was popular early in her five-and-a-half-year tenure, her ratings slid on a backlash against strict COVID curbs, rising living costs and mortgage rates, and concerns about crime.

Hipkins has a tough road ahead, with Labour trailing the opposition in opinion polls and the country expected to fall into recession next quarter before a general election on October 14.

Hipkins acknowledged that he was taking on the job at a challenging time, and said his government will focus on “bread-and-butter issues”.

“Over the coming week, the cabinet will be making decisions on reining in some programmes and projects that aren’t essential right now. We will be focused on middle and low income New Zealanders and the small businesses that are [finding] it tough to get by,” he said.

Opposition leader Christopher Luxon told reporters he had congratulated Hipkins by text.

But Luxon said Hipkins and Sepuloni had been part of a government that had “failed spectacularly” to get things done and that after the leadership change, it would be more of the same.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Employability plan generates 116,000 jobs

 Luanda - The Action Plan for Promotion of Employability (PAPE) has already generated 116,000 jobs and exceeded the forecast of 83,500 jobs, after almost three years.

The plan led by the Ministry of Public Administration, Employment and Social Security (MAPTSS), which began in 2018, is expected to conclude in the first quarter of this year, according to the secretary of State, Pedro Filipe.

 

The figures that recently have also been presented to the deputies of the 5th Committee of Economy and Finance of the National Assembly, by the secretary of State of MAPTSS, point to the generation of employment in the 18 provinces of the country, with emphasis on the provinces of Luanda, Huila and Moxico.

 

“We had very encouraging results, although they fall short of the employment needs of young people in Angola”, the official admitted before the members of parliament.

 

The opportunities were open to young graduates, unemployed people and also to entrepreneurs who needed support to make their businesses viable and young people who wanted to start up their business activities.

 

The programme had a target of 60,000 short and medium term courses, reaching 53,366 trained citizens, which represents 86% execution.

 

This number is added to others that took place under the normal grid, which in the last few years were over 280,000 courses delivered, according to secretary of State Pedro Filipe.

With the PAPE, according to MAPTSS, more than 31,000 professional kits were distributed nationwide, in specialties such as plumbing, carpentry, electricity, painting, tiling, welding, civil construction, metalwork, hairdressing, cutting and sewing, agriculture, among others.

 

In the period 2018 to 2022, the Programme reached the goal of 10,000 micro-credits, of which 6,995 have already been granted, corresponding to 69.95%.

 

Regarding professional internships, more than six were registered in various fields.

 

Restructuring of PAPE

 

According to ANGOP´s source, some of PAPE´s support programmes will be restructured and incorporated in the priority programmes for the implementation of the national employment policy and strategy for 2023-2027.

 

The strategy 2023-2027 foresees contributing to the increase of employability, in the scope of the national policy and strategy for employment.

 

These are programmes such as professional internships, fostering self-employment and entrepreneurship and coordination.

 

It is estimated that by the first quarter of 2022, about 459,775 formal jobs were recorded, an average of 108,855 jobs per year, with 2019 recording the highest number of jobs, approximately 15,3034 positions.

 

The jobs were created as part of a wide variety of employability initiatives implemented by MAPTSS.

Minister of State discusses fundamental rights with Ombudswoman

 Luanda – Minister of State for the Social Affairs Dalva Ringote Monday discussed issues related to the attributions and competences of the Ombudsman's Office, its mission to defend citizens' rights, freedoms and fundamental guarantees.

The matters were analysed in an audience she granted to the Angolan Ombudswoman, Florbela Araújo.

Concerns related to the matters such as the cases of violation of the rights of children, women and the elderly, illegal occupation of land, were raised during the meeting.

Speaking to the press at the end of the meeting, Florbela Araújo announced the institutional support for the mission of defending the rights, freedoms and fundamental guarantees of the citizens.

Florbela Araújo also spoke of the Government’s availability to help Ombudsman’s Office in interacting with other institutions, so that the approved programmes and policies are implemented.

The official urges the public administration bodies to stick to the good administration and greater cooperation.

Angola to host IPU meeting

 Luanda - Angola is to host the General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in October, an event that brings together over 1,000 parliamentarians from across the world.

The information was disclosed to the press on Monday by the president of this international organism, the Portuguese Duarte Pacheco, following a meeting with Angola National Assembly Speaker, Carolina Cerqueira.

 

 

"At the moment there are only logistical issues to resolve, the political will of the authorities has been demonstrated and the decision of the IPU has been taken. All that remains to be done is to arrange the opening ceremony, which is always attended by the Head of State of the organising country", Pacheco said.

 

Duarte Pacheco informed that the IPU meeting can have, as a rule, 160 delegations from all over the world, involving more than a thousand parliamentarians with many of these delegations led by the respective parliament’s speakers.

 

The Portuguese politician added that he was pleased to hold one of the IPU Assemblies (they take place twice a year) in a Portuguese-speaking country. The last time this happened was more than 50 years ago.

 

The IPU is an international organization of parliaments of sovereign states, whose purpose is to mediate multilateral contacts of parliamentarians.

 

King Philip VI of Spain may visit Angola

 

King Philip VI of Spain may visit Angola in February of this year, said on Monday the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of that European country to Angola, Manuel Lajarreta Lobo.

 

The Spanish diplomat was speaking to the press at the end of a meeting with the National Assembly Speaker, Carolina Cerqueira, adding that the state visit of King Philip VI of Spain, the first to a sub-Saharan African country, will boost relations at the highest level.

 

Cooperation relations between Angola and the Kingdom of Spain are based on the General Cooperation Agreement signed May 20, 1987, and the Additional Agreement to the General Agreement signed in November 1987.

 

Cooperation between the two countries has intensified in the business sector. Spain has over 60 companies operating in Angola in various sectors, such as energy, banking, construction and agriculture. 

Over 50, 000 children vaccinated against polio, measles in Belas

 Ramiros – Some 57,850 children under five were vaccinated against poliomyelitis and measles in the municipality of Belas, Luanda, during the integrated vaccination campaign that took place in November and December 2022 in Luanda.

The information was provided on Monday by the municipal health director of Belas, Afonso Mbongo, adding that during the campaign, vitamin A was also administered.

He added that the activity reached 109% of vaccination coverage, as it was planned to cover  55,840 children.