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Showing posts with label second. Show all posts
Showing posts with label second. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Second student dies as gunman is identified

A second victim of the teenage student who allegedly opened fire at Chardon High School in Ohio has died.

Russell King, Jr., 17, was pronounced brain dead at 12:42 a.m. at Ohio's MetroHealth Medical Center, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office.

The alleged shooter who killed two and wounding three others has been identified as T.J. Lane, according to a fellow student who witnessed the incident and ABC News' Cleveland affiliate WEWS.

The attack left "friends laying all over the place" in puddles of blood, one student told ABC News.

Nate Mueller, a junior at the school, was having breakfast with three friends when he heard a loud pop like a firecracker about 7:45 a.m., he told ABC News.

A friend yelled, "Duck" and Mueller told ABC News he turned to see fellow student Lane standing by his table. Mueller said Lane took a second shot and saw a friend get hit.

"He was over the table in a pool of blood," Mueller said, and another pal "was on the floor in a puddle of blood next to him."

A third friend "had not been hit yet as I jumped over him," Mueller said.

Mueller got on the floor and was trying to crawl away when a shot rang out and he felt a bullet graze his ear. He was not badly injured, he said, with just a small red mark left on his ear.

"It was terror. Everything had just gone tunnel vision, like, I need to get out of here," Mueller said. "You see glances of your friends laying all over the place. There's blood, there's people screaming, everybody's just running in different directions and you're just trying to get out. That's all you can do, get out of the school and not look back even though your friends are back there."

Two students were taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Hospital and three were taken by helicopter to MetroHealth Hospital, according to WEWS.

A student identified by MetroHealth Hospital as Daniel Parmertor died from the wounds Monday. His family released the following statement through the hospital:

"We are shocked by this senseless tragedy. Danny was a bright young boy who had a bright future ahead of him. The family is torn by this loss. We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time."

Another students at MetroHealth Hospital is in critical condition, according to police.

Police have not officially identified Lane as the gunman, saying only that the shooter has not yet been charged and that he is a juvenile.

Mueller described Lane as "a quiet kid. Freshman year he got into a 'goth' phase and didn't talk to that many people anymore. He never egged anybody on. He just went about his business."

But Lane's family life had been disrupted by divorce and violence, WEWS reported. His parents divorced in 2002, and his father later served time in jail on assault and other charges, according to the station.

Classmates described Lane as a outcast who'd been bullied. In late December he posted a poem on his Facebook page that read: "He longed for only one thing, the world to bow at his feet," and ended ominously: "Die, all of you."

Lane allegedly opened fire with a handgun just before 8 a.m. in the school cafeteria where students were eating breakfast, authorities and witnesses said.

The shooter was chased out of the building by a teacher and later turned himself in to a passerby, authorities said.

The suspect is in custody at Geauga County Safety Center, according to WEWS.

"Our prayers go out to the five victims and their families," a choked up School Superintendent Joseph Bergant said at news conference. "It's a horrible tragedy."

In the wake of the shooting, perhaps in a sign of solidarity, many of Lane's classmates -- including many in the "friends" column on Lane's Facebook page -- had the Chardon High School "Hilltoppers" logo as their Facebook profile pictures.

Geauga County Sheriff Daniel McClelland praised the reaction to the shooting.

"A prompt entry was made into the school. They went into the school and located the victims. It became readily apparent that the shooter had fled already," McClelland said. "The individual was apprehended some distance from the school and had fled on foot."

The officer said police created a security perimeter to make sure the gunman could not return and a search, including a K-9 unit, was launched for the suspect.

Parent Teresa Hunt told WEWS that she was texting with her daughter during the lockdown and her daughter said she heard five shots fired in the cafeteria about 7:30 a.m. Her daughter texted that students were scared and that four people had been shot.

Chardon student Evan Erasmus told WEWS that a student had tweeted that he was going to bring a gun to school, but that no one took him seriously.

The Chardon Fire Department was called to the school at about 7:45 a.m. in response to a report of "several people shot," according to Inspector William Crowley of the Chardon Fire Department.

Multiple law enforcement agencies, including a SWAT team, rushed to the school.

The superintendent immediately canceled classes at all schools in the district. Students who were still on school buses were being dropped back off at their homes and parents were called to pick up their children that were already at school.

The Chardon School District sent a voicemail to parents that schools are closed and high school students are being moved to the middle school, according to WEWS.

Parents received the following message:

"As of 9:00 AM the alleged sole CHS gunman is in custody and Chardon High School students are being moved by safety forces to Maple Elementary. Parents or legal guardians can pick up their students up any time. Chardon Middle School students are also being released to parents."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich tweeted around 9:30 a.m., "Pls pray for wounded Chardon HS students, their families, and their community; appears things under control now."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has eight agents on their way to the scene and they are expected to trace the firearm.

Chardon is a village in Geauga County, about 35 miles east of Cleveland.

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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Euro zone seals second Greek bailout

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers sealed on Tuesday a second bailout for debt-laden Greece that will resolve its immediate financing needs but seems unlikely to revive the nation's shattered economy.

After a marathon 13 hours of talks, euro zone officials said ministers had nailed measures to cut Greece's debt to around 121 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, close to their original target of 120, after negotiators for private bondholders offered to accept a bigger loss to help plug the funding gap.

Agreement on a 130-billion-euro rescue package with strict conditions attached will help draw a line under months of uncertainty that has shaken the currency bloc, and avert an imminent Greek bankruptcy.

"The financial volume (of the Greek package) is 130 billion euros and debt-to-GDP (will be) 121 percent. Now it's down to work on the statement," one official involved in the negotiations told Reuters. Another confirmed the two figures.

The euro jumped almost half a cent, reversing earlier losses, after Reuters reported a deal had been struck.

A report prepared for ministers by EU, European Central Bank and IMF experts, obtained exclusively by Reuters, said Greece would need extra relief to cut its debts near to the official debt target 2020 given the ever-worsening state of its economy.

If Athens did not follow through on economic reforms and savings, its debt could hit 160 percent by that date.

"Given the risks, the Greek program may thus remain accident-prone, with questions about sustainability hanging over it," the 9-page confidential report said, highlighting the fact that Greece's problems are far from over.

The accord will enable Athens to launch a bond swap with private investors to help reduce and restructure its vast debts, put it on a more stable financial footing and keep it inside the 17-country euro zone.

Around 100 billion euros of debt will be written off as banks and insurers swap bonds they hold for longer-dated securities that pay a lower coupon.

Private sector holders of Greek debt are expected to take losses of 53.5 percent or more on the nominal value of their bonds. Previously they had agreed to a 50 percent nominal writedown, which equated to around a 70 percent loss on the net present value of the bonds.

The debt sustainability report delivered to ministers last week showed that without further measures Greek debt would only fall to 129 percent by 2020.

The IMF had said if the ratio was not cut to near 120 percent, it may not have been able to help finance the bailout, putting the whole scheme in jeopardy.

To help fill the financing gap, one senior euro zone source said the ECB would pass up profits it has made from buying Greek bonds over the past two years under its emergency bond-buying program.

The ECB has spent about 38 billion euros on Greek government debt that is now worth about 50 billion euros. By forgoing that profit and redistributing it to national euro zone central banks, the ECB can indirectly provide debt relief to Athens.

Whatever its constituent parts, economists say the deal may only delay a deeper default by a few months. A turnaround could take as much as a decade, a prospect that brought thousands of Greeks onto the streets to protest against austerity measures on Sunday.

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Euro zone crisis in graphics http://r.reuters.com/hyb65p

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DOUBTS OVER COMMITMENT

Skeptics question whether a new Greek government will stick to the deeply unpopular program after elections due in April, and believe Athens could again fall behind in implementation, prompting exasperated lenders to pull the plug once the euro zone has stronger financial firewalls in place.

While there are doubts in Germany and other countries that Greece will be able to meet its commitments, including implementing 3.3 billion euros of spending cuts and tax increases, the threat of contagion from a chaotic Greek default always made a deal more likely than not, no matter how tortuous the negotiations.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and ECB President Mario Draghi all attended the Brussels talks in a sign they were likely to be decisive.

The private creditor bond exchange is expected to launch on March 8 and complete three days later, Athens said on Saturday. That means a 14.5-billion-euro bond repayment due on March 20 would be restructured, allowing Greece to avoid default.

The vast majority of the funds in the 130-billion-euro program will be used to finance the bond swap and ensure Greece's banking system remains stable: 30 billion euros will go to "sweeteners" to get the private sector to sign up to the swap, 23 billion will go to recapitalize Greek banks.

A further 35 billion will allow Greece to finance the buying back of the bonds, and 5.7 billion will go to paying off the interest accrued on the bonds being traded in. Next to nothing will go directly to help the Greek economy.

Those numbers could change in the final analysis given the scramble to meet the overall objective of reducing Greece's debts from 160 percent of GDP to around 120 by 2020.

The deal will provide immediate relief to Athens and financial markets but no one is pretending it will end Greece's problems. Figures last week showed its economy shrank 7 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of 2011, much more than expected, with further cuts likely to make matters worse.

The troika of European Commission, ECB and IMF, responsible for monitoring Greece's reform progress, carries out quarterly reviews and could decide Athens is not meeting its commitments at any one of them.

(Additional reporting by Luke Baker, Julien Toyer, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Daniel Flynn in Paris, Terri Kinnunen in Helsinki. Writing by Mike Peacock and Paul Taylor.)


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Monday, February 20, 2012

Decision day for second Greek bailout despite financing gaps

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers are expected to approve a second bailout for Greece on Monday to try to draw a line under months of uncertainty that has shaken the currency bloc, although there is work to be done to make the figures add up.

Diplomats and economists say they do not expect the package to resolve Greece's economic problems. That could take a decade or more, a bleak prospect that brought thousands of Greeks onto the streets to protest austerity measures again on Sunday.

The ministers need to agree new measures to square the numbers, given the ever-worsening state of the Greek economy. But they say an agreement on Monday will help restructure the country's vast debts, put it on a more stable financial footing and keep it inside the 17-country single currency zone.

Senior officials from euro zone finance ministries and the European Central Bank held a conference call on Sunday to go over the final details of the 130-billion-euro ($171-billion)program, including a debt sustainability analysis critical to the International Monetary Fund.

While there is skepticism in Germany and other countries that Greece will be able to live up to its commitments - including implementing 3.3 billion euros of spending cuts and tax increases - officials said momentum was building for approval of the deal.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said all the elements were in place to reach an agreement.

"It cannot wait any longer ... Greece has debt payments in March and could find itself in bankruptcy, something which France has been trying to avoid for the last 18 months," he told Europe 1 radio on Monday.

Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen said Greece had done all that had been asked of it.

"There are many open details ... A big issue is that we have to get Greece's debt on a level that is sustainable and enables Greece to survive," she told reporters in Helsinki.

A euro zone official in contact with junior ministers involved in the Sunday conference call said the financing gaps were not so large that they risked derailing the whole process.

"I don't see anybody wanting to be responsible for pulling the plug on the deal at this late stage," he said.

"The gut feeling is that this is going to go through - everyone feels the pressure this time to deliver," he said, indicating that the Netherlands, Finland and Germany, which have been the most critical of Athens' ability to commit, looked likely to come on board if the financing gaps could be closed.

GREEK ANGER UNABATED

Several thousand Greeks demonstrated on Sunday against the austerity measures to reduce the country's debt, although the numbers were much lower than earlier protests.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos flew to Brussels for last-minute preparations as about 3,000 demonstrators massed on the capital's central Syntagma square.

Riot police shielded the national assembly to prevent a repeat of riots a week ago when masked youths torched buildings and looted shops across Athens.

Under one crucial element of the deal, Greece will have around 100 billion euros of debt written off via a restructuring involving private-sector holders of Greek government bonds.

Banks and insurers will swap bonds they hold for longer-dated securities that pay a lower coupon, resulting in a real 70 percent reduction in the value of the assets.

The bond exchange is expected to launch on March 8 and complete three days later, Athens said on Saturday. That means a 14.5-billion-euro bond repayment due on March 20 would be restructured, allowing Greece to avoid default.

The vast majority of the funds in the 130-billion-euro program will be used to finance the bond swap and to ensure that Greece's banking system remains stable: 30 billion euros will go to "sweeteners" to get the private sector to sign up to the swap, 23 billion will go to recapitalize Greek banks.

A further 35 billion will allow Greece to finance the buying back of the bonds, and 5.7 billion will go to paying off the interest accrued on the bonds being traded in.

The overall objective is to reduce Greece's debts from 160 percent of GDP to around 120 percent by 2020 - the figure and timeframe that the IMF, ECB and the European Commission, together known as the troika, have established as sustainable.

MEETING THE TARGET

The focus of Monday's finance ministers' meeting will be what "around 120 percent" means in practice.

A debt sustainability report delivered to euro zone finance ministers last week showed that under the main scenario, Greek debt will only fall to 129 percent by 2020.

The IMF has said if the ratio cannot be cut to around 120 percent, it may not be able to help finance the Greek program.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner urged the International Monetary Fund to support the program.

"This is a very strong and very difficult package of reforms, deserving of support of the international community and the IMF," Geithner said in a statement on Sunday.

As well as working to get the number down, there are moves to convince members of the troika that a debt level of 123-125 percent in 2020 would be sustainable.

"If we can get it down to 123 or 124 percent, I think everyone's going to be okay with that," the euro zone official said after the Sunday conference call. "Everyone will find a way to tweak the numbers."

A number of measures, including restructuring the accrued interest portion or reducing the "sweeteners," are being considered to move the figure closer to 120, a euro zone official familiar with the negotiations said.

There are also discussions about marginally lowering the interest rate on 110 billion euros of bilateral loans already made to Greece in May 2010 - the first package of support - to lighten the financing burden on Athens.

Central banks could help too.

The ECB is weighing up whether to allow Greek bonds held in euro zone central banks' investment portfolios to be subject to the same writedowns private investors are set to take, central bank sources told Reuters on Friday.

The central banks hold around 20 billion euros of Greek bonds in their traditional investment portfolios and the ECB holds about double that amount from its emergency bond-buying program. It has also signaled it could forego the profits made on the latter at some point.

If the finance ministers do succeed in reaching an agreement, it will provide immediate relief to Athens and financial markets, which have been kept guessing since the bailout package was announced last October.

But no one is pretending it will end Greece's problems. Figures last week showed its economy shrank 7 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of 2011, much more than expected, with further cuts likely to make matters worse.

The troika, responsible for monitoring Greece's reform progress, carries out quarterly reviews, while the European Commission will soon have dozens more monitors on the ground.

Already there is concern that at any one of those reviews of the new program - if it is approved on Monday - Greece will be found to be behind, especially if GDP continues to slump.

That will again raise the threat the country will have to default if it cannot meet its obligations, and invite questions about its ability to remain in the euro zone.

($1 = 0.7597 euros)

(Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn in Paris, Terri Kinnunen in Helsinki and George Georgiopoulos in Athens; writing by Mike Peacock; editing by Elizabeth Piper)


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