Monday, December 16, 2013

Snow in Egypt for first time in a 100 years Video


The snow that has blanketed much of the Middle East turned Cairo white on Friday - with local news reports claiming it was Egypt's capital's first snowfall in 112 years.

The city averages less than an inch of rain each year, and hundreds stopped their walk to work or school to snap pictures of the falling flakes, tweeting their delights.

In Jerusalem, local media reported that schools and roads were closed, and transport suspended after four inches of snow - the most since 1953. 

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Arapahoe High School Shooter Fired Shotgun Point Blank At Victim


Arapahoe High School Shooter Fired Shotgun Point Blank At Victim

The victim in Friday's school shooting in Centennial, Colorado, "probably was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson told reporters Saturday.

Robinson said that to his knowledge the shooter and the victim, identified as 17-year-old Claire Esther Davis, did not know each other.

"His intent was evil, and his evil intent was to harm multiple individuals," Robinson said about Karl Pierson, whose entrance into Arapahoe High School just before 12:33 p.m. was documented on security cameras, as was the bulk of the one minute, 20 seconds that ensued prior to his suicide.

The high school senior and debate club member parked his car along the curb in the student lot, then -- wearing a bandolier of shotgun shells and carrying a pump-action shotgun, a machete and a backpack holding three Molotov cocktails -- entered a door adjacent to the library on the north side of the building, Robinson said.

"He took no effort to conceal the fact that he was armed," he said.
Once inside, Pierson "fired one random shot down a hallway," then entered the area where Davis was seated with a friend, "and shot the female victim point-blank" in the head. "There was no particular interaction," he said. "There was no time for the victim to run from the shooter."

Pierson then fired another round down the hallway, then entered the library, where he fired again and ignited one of the Molotov cocktails, according to Robinson.

That ignited at least three bookshelves and poured smoke into the library.

He then fired a fifth round and ran to the library's back corner, "and there took his own life."

By then, a faculty member, the librarian -- accompanied by a janitor -- had departed the school building, he said.

The janitor told CNN affiliate KMGH on Friday that the student was wearing tactical gear.

"It just looked weird," Fabian Llerenas said. "He went in and I heard two pops. That's when I knew. I said, 'They are shooting in the school.'"

Llerenas said he called security and then escorted the faculty member out of the school.

Pierson had fired at the man but missed, Llerenas told KUSA.

"He was so shooken up, he felt the wind out of the shotgun just blow his hair out, but it didn't hit him."

At the beginning of the rampage, a deputy sheriff working as a school resource officer learned of the threat and, accompanied by an unarmed school security officer and two administrators, ran from the cafeteria to the library, Robinson said. "It's a fairly long hallway, but the deputy sheriff got there very quickly."

The deputy was yelling for people to get down and identified himself as a county deputy sheriff, Robinson said. "We know for a fact that the shooter knew that the deputy was in the immediate area and, while the deputy was containing the shooter, the shooter took his own life."

He lauded the deputy's response as "a critical element to the shooter's decision" to kill himself, and praised his action after hearing gunshots. "He went to the thunder," he said.

Pierson's initial target appeared to have been the faculty member who had been involved in running the debate team and had disciplined Pierson in early September, Robinson said. "I don't believe the decision was inappropriate nor was it overly harsh," he added, without elaboration.

At that time, Pierson had threatened the faculty member, he said.

But there may have been other targets on Friday. "It is my very strong opinion that this individual would not have come to this school armed with a shotgun and multiple rounds had he not intended to shoot multiple people."

The shooter's weapons had been purchased legally on December 6 at a local outlet, Robinson said.

Robinson credited the faculty member on Friday for leaving the school. "In my opinion, that was the most important tactical decision that could have been made," Robinson said. The faculty member "left that school in an effort to try to encourage the shooter to also leave the school."

Robinson also read a statement from the victim's family in which they asked for prayers for her recovery.

Pierson's body remained inside the school until about 5 a.m. Saturday, when the Arapahoe County Coroner's Office removed it.