RTC Director

Official mourning declared for victims in Nepal

Nepal has declared three days of mourning for the victims of Saturday's earthquake in which more than 5,000 people are now known to have died.

Prime Minister Sushil Koirala says the government is doing all it can but is overwhelmed by the scale of the catastrophe.

Rescuers are still struggling to bring aid to remote Himalayan areas.

Heavy rain is worsening the plight of hundreds of thousands of people camped out in the open.

The UN estimates that eight million people in 39 districts have been affected by the 7.8-magnitude quake - more than a quarter of the population.

More than 10,000 people have been injured.

Among the dead are 18 climbers who were at Mount Everest base camp when it was hit by an avalanche triggered by the quake.

In a televised address, Mr Koirala said: "In memory of the Nepali and foreign brothers and sisters and elders and children who have lost their lives in this devastating earthquake, we have decided to observe three days of national mourning from today."

Earlier, he said a lack of equipment and expert personnel meant the "appeals for rescues coming in from everywhere" in many cases could not be met.

Landslips and aftershocks in remote mountainous areas around the epicentre of the quake are hampering rescue and relief teams.

A government spokesman told the BBC that helicopters had been dropping tents, dry food and medicine to remote villages but they were yet to reach many isolated communities.

When helicopters have managed to land, they are often mobbed by villagers pleading for food and water, or to be evacuated.

Military aircraft from several countries including the US, China and Israel have joined the rescue effort.

A British RAF plane carrying aid supplies and troops is also on its way to Nepal.

Source-BBC

by RTC Director

President Obama says, 'No Excuse' for Riots in Baltimore

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday said there's “no excuse” for Monday night's violence in the eastern U.S. city of Baltimore and called for those who looted and burned buildings "to be treated as criminals."

Riots erupted in the city after the funeral for 25-year-old Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died in police custody earlier this month.

Obama said what happened Monday in Baltimore "distracted" from the multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on what he described as "entirely legitimate concerns" over Gray's death.

"There's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday," Obama said, making his first public statement about the Baltimore case. "It is counterproductive."

He added, "It's a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes."

The president's comments came after Maryland Governor Larry Hogan vowed Baltimore will not have "another repeat" of Monday night.

"It's not going to happen tonight," the governor told reporters Tuesday.

"We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track," said Hogan, stressing that the main goal is to make sure the city is brought back to peace.

Monday's violence began as hundreds of high school students marched toward a local mall after classes were dismissed for the day, then spread out across several neighborhoods, overwhelming the police department's ability to respond as the protests turned violent.

However, Obama acknowledged a "slow-rolling crisis" in community policing, saying there have been too many troubling police interactions with criminal suspects of color.

"We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals - primarily African-American, often poor - in ways that raise troubling questions," the president said at a White House press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

"I think there are police departments that have to do some soul-searching. I think there's some communities that have to do some soul-searching. I think we as a country have to do some soul-searching," he added.

"This is not new. It's been going on for decades," Obama added, referring to tensions in U.S. communities over police actions.

Obama described problems many communities struggle with - equal opportunity, poverty, education, single parenting, lack of male figures in the household, and drugs. Too many people expect to "send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems," he said.

Obama gave a six-point response to a pointed question about Baltimore, starting with extending sympathy to Gray's family, as well as police officers injured in Monday's violence. He then renounced the rioting as counterproductive and said its perpetrators were criminals and thugs.

He said if the country wanted to solve the problem, it needed not only to INVEST in police training, but also in early education and criminal justice reform.

Earlier Tuesday, National Guard troops deployed across Baltimore as authorities attempted to restore order after Monday's riots.

Source-VOA

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency, and said Tuesday he is temporarily moving his office from the state capital, Annapolis, to Baltimore.

“We're not going to have another repeat of what happened last night,” Hogan vowed Tuesday after a visit to a West Baltimore neighborhood where cars were burned and windows smashed. “We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track.”

He said there are “a couple of thousand” National Guardsmen and police officers in Baltimore, with more on the way.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who called the rioting "one of the darkest days the city has ever faced," has declared a weeklong nighttime curfew.

Public schools in the city of 620,000 people were closed Tuesday, as the city began to clean up after looters ransacked stores, pharmacies and a shopping mall and clashed with police.

Volunteers swept up charred debris in front of a CVS pharmacy as dozens of police officers in riot gear stood by and firefighters worked to damp down the embers.

by RTC Director

US Official Confirms Iran Intercepted Cargo Ship

A senior U.S. official says Iranian naval ships and patrol craft fired shots at a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz before escorting it into Iranian territorial waters.

The official said the container ship, the MV Maersk Tigris, was tansiting the strait into the Arabian Gulf "on an internationally recognized maritime route" at the time of the incident. 

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren says the container ship was in Iranian waters when it was approached.

"The ship master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters," Warren said. "He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris. The master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters in the vicinity of Larak Island."

Pentagon officials say a U.S. guided missile destroyer, the USS Farragut, is en route to the area.  U.S. Naval Forces Central Command has also  "directed aircraft to observe the interaction between the Maersk vessel and the IRGCN [Iranian] craft."

U.S. officials have been in touch with representatives of the shipping company, who say Iranian forces have boarded the vessel.

A senior administration official says the container ship did issue a distress call but that the call came after shots had been fired.

The MV Maersk Tigris is a Marshall Island-flagged vessel. U.S. officials say no Americans were on board.

According to Iran's Farsnews agency, "The Iranian Navy has confiscated the American trade vessel with all its 34 crew for trespassing on Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf."

Iran has in the past sometimes threatened to block the strait to advance its opposition to sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.

The channel is a narrow strip of water separating Oman and Iran. It connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

At its narrowest point, the strait is 33 km (21 miles) across and consists of 2-mile wide navigable channels for inbound and outbound shipping and a 2-mile-wide buffer zone.

by RTC Director