WASHINGTON (AFP) -- A father shot dead three of his own children Monday before turning the gun on himself in a U.S. church, police said. A fifth person also died in the shooting in Sacramento, California, though it was not clear if that person was related to what police said was a domestic incident. All three children who died were under the age of 15, police said. Local reports said they were three girls aged 9, 10 and 13. The children had gone to The Church of Sacramento, in the Arden Arcade area of the city, for a supervised visit with their father. Local media reported that authorities thought the fifth victim, whose identity was still unknown, was the person overseeing the visit. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the murders “senseless” in a Twitter posting. “Another senseless act of gun violence in America –- this time in our backyard. In a church with kids inside,” he said. “Absolutely devastating. Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and their communities.” Mass killings involving firearms are a distressingly common occurrence in the United States. Lax gun laws and an insistence on the right to bear arms have repeatedly stymied attempts to clamp down on the number of weapons in circulation, despite greater controls being favored by the majority of Americans.

 

*** 

MEXICO CITY (Dispatches) -- Mexico will not impose any economic sanctions on Russia, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday while also criticizing what he called censorship of Russian state-sponsored media by social media companies. “We are not going to take any sort of economic reprisal because we want to have good relations with all the governments in the world,” Lopez Obrador said at a regular news conference. “I don’t agree with the fact that media from Russia or any country is censored,” Lopez Obrador said. Alphabet Inc’s Google barred Russia’s state-owned media outlet RT and other channels from receiving money for ads on their websites, apps and YouTube videos, similar to a move by Facebook after the invasion of Ukraine. Alphabet and its YouTube unit should ban users pushing war propaganda as part of measures to stop disinformation, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told the chief executives of the companies on Sunday. 

 

*** 

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Libya’s parliament on Tuesday approved a new government despite the incumbent administration vowing not to cede power, pushing a fragile peace process to the brink of collapse and raising the risk of new fighting or territorial division. The parliament’s declaration of Fathi Bashagha as prime minister after a televised vote aggravates a power struggle with the interim administration of Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who was installed through a UN-backed process last year.

Opposing armed groups have mobilized in the capital Tripoli over recent weeks and foreign forces that have backed rival warring factions remain embedded in the country. It is not clear if the political crisis might trigger any armed conflict, but it leaves Libya without a unified government, with the main political and military forces bitterly divided and with no clear path forward.

 

*** 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s criminal tribunal on Tuesday resoundingly rejected defense motions to dismiss a landmark financial fraud case and ruled the trial will go ahead with the questioning of a cardinal scheduled for later this month. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone read aloud his rejection of two-dozen defense arguments from the past seven months that sought to have the charges dropped against the 10 defendants. The case involves the Holy See’s bungled 350 million-euro (U.S.$390 million) investment in a London property, though it has grown to involve other unrelated financial charges. Pignatone set March 17 for the next hearing. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a former top Vatican official, is expected to be questioned about allegations he funneled Holy See money to a Sardinian charity run by his brother. He and the other defendants deny wrongdoing. Vatican prosecutors have accused the Holy See’s longtime money manager, Italian brokers and lawyers of fleecing the Vatican of tens of millions of euros in fees for the London deal and of then extorting 15 million euros from the Vatican to get full ownership of the property. 

 

*** 

WASHINGTON (Yahoo) -- A California woman claims she had a Rosa Parks experience on a recent Delta Airlines flight when she was asked to give up her seat and move to the back of the plane in order to accommodate two white women. As reported by Revolt, Camille Henderson was on her way back to the Bay Area from Atlanta on Feb. 3 when Delta flight attendants asked her to give her seat after the two white women sitting next to her in the same row complained about not having enough room. “They felt like they were ticketed first-class seats, but they couldn’t provide the tickets,” Henderson told ABC7 News. The two women reportedly complained to flight attendants for over an hour before Henderson was asked by airline staff to move to row 34, the plane’s last row. Henderson shared an audio recording with ABC7 News, in which someone is heard asking her, “Are you flying by yourself?” Henderson confirms that she is, and the person responds, “There’s a seat back there in aisle 34. It’s an aisle seat.”