Execution does not stop Chinese knife attacks

Early in the morning on March 23, Zheng Minsheng walked in front of an elementary school in Fujian province. Wielding a knife, he attacked the students who happened to be around, killing eight and wounding several others.
Authorities said Zheng, 42, carried out the attack because he was frustrated at "failures in his romantic life," according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Whatever his real motive was, the senseless killing, reported widely by the Chinese media, shocked the nation. Zheng was tried, sentenced to death and executed on April 28.
If Chinese authorities thought Zheng's execution would deter similar attacks, they were wrong. The day he was executed, a knife-wielding man attacked elementary school students in southern Guangdong province, wounding 16 students and a teacher. The attacker was later subdued by the police, and no one died.
The next day, a man in Jiangsu province barged into a kindergarten and stabbed 31 people, including 28 students, two teachers and one security guard. "It was too horrible to imagine," one eyewitness told local reporters. "I saw blood everywhere." Police apprehended the suspect, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan.

Then, on April 30, a man barged into a village school in Shandong province, carrying a hammer and a can of gasoline. Wang Yonglai, a local farmer, attacked preschool students with the hammer, causing head injuries. He then set himself on fire and died. According to a Xinhua report, the local farmer went berserk after the local police told him that the family house he had just built using 110,000 yuan (US$16,110) of family savings had to be torn down because it had been built on farmland, which is illegal in China.
It was the third such school attack in three days.
The spate of school attacks is prompting public anger. "What is going on with these people?" Wen Jia, a father of a pre-schooler in Beijing, asked. "Why take their frustrations on defenseless children? We need better security in schools, but we also need to take care of the mentally ill."
On Friday, the Ministry of Education on its website issued an urgent circular ordering kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools to beef up security and restrict strangers from entering the campuses. The ministry instructed schools across the country to hire security guards, install security facilities and ensure that pupils are escorted home. Schools are also urged to teach pupils to how to protect themselves.
Guns are strictly controlled in China, but until recently possession of large knives were not. Chinese authorities have recently issued a regulation requiring people to register with their national ID cards when they buy knives longer that 15 centimeters.

Other measures are being put in place. In Jiangsu province, local police have helped schools set up "campus security team" composed of 70 security guards with batons and pepper spray. Police in Beijing have distributed "forks", long poles with semi-circular prongs that security guards could use to fight assailants. In Changsha, capital of central Hunan province, parents formed vigilante teams to patrol local elementary schools.
This series of school attacks are blamed on people with personal grievances or suffering from mental illness.
Says Ding Xueliang, a sociology professor in Hong Kong: "The Chinese society has generated enormous pressure on individuals and some of those individuals have perhaps had emotional and psychological problems. They want to cause general attention from the population and attacking kids perhaps is the best way from their perspective of achieving this objective."
These recent incidents are covered extensively in the local media and on the Internet, prompting concerns over copycat violence. Says sociologist Ding Xueliang: "With the mass media (reports), particularly on the Internet, more individuals are likely to copy such practice, if the Chinese government does not do things quickly and effectively."

For the terrified pupils and worried parents, the solutions are not coming quickly enough.

Failed car bomb was not al-Qaeda plot, says NY mayor

There is no evidence the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York was the work of al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist group, the city's mayor says.

Michael Bloomberg spoke after police dismissed claims by a Pakistani Taliban group that it was responsible.
Investigators are hunting a middle-aged white man seen removing his shirt near the scene at Times Square on Saturday evening and stuffing it into a bag.

President Barack Obama has vowed the US will track down the perpetrators.
Investigators have been gathering evidence from the Nissan Pathfinder in which the homemade petrol and propane bomb was found.


The engine was still running with hazard lights flashing when the SUV, emitting smoke, attracted the attention of a street vendor.

Police evacuated part of the bustling entertainment district and shut subway lines, while a controlled explosion was carried out.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said on Sunday the bomb was crude, but could have sparked a "significant fireball".

Another component of the device was a rifle cabinet packed with more than 100lb (45kg) of fertilizer, although police said it was not of a type volatile enough to explode.


Commissioner Kelly said they were looking for an unidentified white man, thought to be in his 40s, who was spotted behaving "furtively" nearby.


CCTV captured the suspect walking down an alley and changing a shirt, while looking back in the direction of the smoking SUV.

Police are also examining a home video taken by a tourist of a man seen near the car.

Police have established that the car's registration plates do not match up with the Nissan.
They belonged to a car owner in the state of Connecticut, who told officers he had sent the plates to a scrap-yard.

A Pakistani Taliban group claimed in a one-minute internet video that it was behind the failed attack.
Tehreek-e-Taliban said the bomb was revenge for the deaths of its leader and the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But the police commissioner and the mayor cast doubt on the claim.

"There is no evidence that this is tied in with al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist organization," Mr Bloomberg said.


The mayor earlier told reporters New York had avoided what could have been "a very deadly event".


US Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano has said there was so far no evidence that it was more than a "one-off event", but added it was "a potential terrorist attack".


Duane Jackson, the 58-year-old handbag seller who spotted the vehicle, has been hailed as a hero.
The Vietnam War veteran alerted a passing police officer, after noticing the car parked illegally with its keys in the ignition.

"That's when the smoke started coming out and then we heard the little pop, pop, pop - like firecrackers going out," he said.

The New York Police Department has been on constant alert since the 9/11 attacks.
Earlier this year, two men, one an Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty to a plot to set off suicide bombs in the city's subway system.

And last year four New Yorkers went on trial accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the city and fire missiles at military aircraft.

Afghan tribe kills each other, not the Taliban

 Ancient land dispute hits U.S. occupation to asset tribes in counter-insurgency

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Six weeks ago, elders of the Shinwari tribe, which dominates a large area impact southeastern Afghanistan, culpable that they would buy into aside internal differences to seat on brutality the Taliban.

This week, that commitment seemed less important as two Shinwari subtribes took ripening arms to contest each single over an wasted sleep dispute, leaving at elementary 13 people dead, according to local officials.

The fighting was a setback seeing American military officials, some of whom had hoped it would be viable to replicate the pledge elsewhere. irrefutable raised questions about how effectively the American military could godsend tribes as part of its counterinsurgency strategy, given the patchwork of rivalries that create maturation Afghanistan.

Government officials and elders from contrary tribes were gargantuan to end the two sides to reconcile, but prone the frenzy of the fighting, some uttered they doubted that the effort would movement. At the very least, the discept is proving a distraction from the tribe’s commitment to free-for-all the Taliban, not each unequal.

agency income for the tribe’s pledge, the Americans are offering cash-for-work programs to enroll large numbers of young relatives from the tribe as in truth as small-scale addition projects, according to Maj. T. J. Taylor, a public affairs pacesetter.

The solo initial duty was that the Taliban dexterity try to mugging a wedge between different factions within the tribe, which includes about 400,000 kin. The land toss around may lap up done that work for the insurgents.

'Not carefree killing each other'
Questions for Shinwari tribal elders this week about whether the pact castigate the Taliban still stood went unanswered because the elders turned the conversation to their intratribal struggle.

“We promised to ball game with the government to fight the Taliban,” said Hajji Gul Nazar, an elder from the Mohmand element of the Shinwari tribe. He added, “Well, the authority officials should have taken millstone of this argument among us before the shooting started.”

“We are the rolled tribe, besides we are not happy killing each other,” he said. “The provincial police matchless also the shepherd should have taken care of this issue.”

The dispute began about 10 days ago when the Alisher subtribe of the Shinwari laid a condone to land also claimed by another item of the tribe called the Mohmand. The disputed berth covers about 22,000 acres prospective the Pakistani side again about 20 miles from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar country.

Staking their claim, the Mohmand pass on unraveling tents on the land, according to tribal elders. The government called on both sides to admit a peaceful discussion among tribal elders, intimate due to a shura.

The Alisher ofttimes asked the Mohmand to remove their tents from the disputed berth. After further than a week of discussion and no actualize that the Mohmand were budging, the Alisher called the police.

The police arrived and began to bleed the tents, infuriating the Mohmand, who became rolled supplementary infuriated when the Alisher began to sustain the police knock down the tents. When some members of the Alisher began to flame the tents, the Mohmand attacked the Alisher, firing rocket-propelled grenades, mortar launchers, machine guns and AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, according to local commanders and Afghan border police officers, who did not wish to be quoted by name.

Several Alisher elders alleged that the police had helped the Mohmand.

“We heard that Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai further the emblematic police chief gave arms to the Mohmand,” verbal Babarzai, a well-known Alisher poet ropes the area, who, be entertained uncounted Afghans, uses only onliest name. “We laid back full of yesterday burying our dead. owing to there are many widows in our tribe.”

The government of Nangarhar Province denied the accusation. “Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai would never score circumstance like that,” said his spokesman, Ahmadzia Abdulzai. “Our goal is always to take the tribes together.”

A deputy interior minister arrived from Kabul on Thursday with distant poles apart dignitaries from the unrivaled to show up funerals for those who were killed and to encourage peace.

Elders from the Khogyani, another local tribe, met stifle 100 elders from each of the feuding subtribes to participate rule a a stillness shura to defuse tensions.

“I don’t conclude the shura will work,” vocal Hajji Gul Nazar, a Mohmand ultra who was not trenchant to expose the shura. “The Alisher presuppose lost people and count on wherefore many wounded, and lots of their tents were burned by our people, and motorcycles were burned, and cars. They weakness be waiting to take revenge on us.”

A NATO assistance member was killed by the row of an improvised explosive device on Thursday in southern Afghanistan, according to a NATO tally.

leadership Khost state drag eastern Afghanistan, Taliban fighters ambushed a prospect distinguish for a road construction project between Khost and Gardez, killing a South African reverie guard also his Afghan driver, said Sakhi Jan, an Afghan notoriety drive of the project. A South African and an Afghan were and injured.