Petty officer hurt at Colo. gay club sought to save family ‘I found’
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A member of the U.S. Navy who was injured while helping prevent further harm during a shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado last weekend said Sunday that he “simply wanted to save the family that I found.”
Petty Officer 2nd Class Thomas James made his first public comments on the shooting in a statement issued through Centura Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, where James is recovering from undisclosed injuries suffered during the attack.
Colorado Springs police Chief Adrian Vasquez said that James was one of two men who helped to stop the shooter who walked into Club Q late on Nov. 19 with multiple firearms, including a semiautomatic rifle, and killed five people. At least 17 others were injured when a drag queen’s birthday celebration turned into a massacre.
James reportedly pushed a rifle out of the shooter’s reach while Army veteran Rich Fierro repeatedly struck the shooter with a handgun the shooter brought into the bar, officials have said.
“If I had my way, I would shield everyone I could from the nonsensical acts of hate in the world, but I am only one person,” James said in a statement. “Thankfully, we are a family, and family looks after one another.”
Patrons of Club Q have said the bar offered them a community where they felt celebrated, but that the shooting shook their sense of safety.
The shooting suspect — Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22 — was visibly injured during his initial court appearance
Wednesday. He was ordered held without bail. Formal charges have not been filed, and Aldrich has not spoken about the shooting.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay man elected governor in the United States, appeared on two Sunday morning TV shows saying he would support increasing licensing requirements for semiautomatic weapons, improving mental health services and better use of red flag laws that allow courts to remove weapons from people having mental health crises and who may be a danger to themselves and others. He also urged the toning down of anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric.
“We know that when people are saying incendiary things, somebody who’s not well-balanced can hear those things, and think that what they’re doing is heroic when it’s actually a horrific crime that kills innocent people,” Polis said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
Bird flu: Nebraska agriculture officials say another 1.8 million chickens must be killed after bird flu was found on a farm in the latest sign that the outbreak that has already prompted the slaughter of more than 50 million birds nationwide continues to spread.
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture said Saturday that the state’s 13th case of bird flu was found on an egg-laying farm in northeast Nebraska’s Dixon County, about 120 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska.
Just like on other farms where bird flu has been found this year, all the chickens on the Nebraska farm will be killed to limit the spread of the disease.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says more than 52.3 million birds in 46 states — mostly chickens and turkeys on commercial farms — have been slaughtered as part of this year’s outbreak.
Nebraska is second only to Iowa’s 15.5 million birds killed with 6.8 million birds now affected at 13 farms.
In most past bird flu outbreaks the virus largely died off during the summer, but this year’s version found a way to linger and started to make a resurgence this fall with more than 6 million birds killed in September.
Iraq corruption: Iraq’s government said Sunday that it will recover part of nearly $2.5 billion in funds embezzled from the country’s tax authority in a massive scheme involving a network of businesses and officials.
About 182 billion Iraqi dinars, or $125 million, of the stolen sum will be recovered through the seizure of properties and assets belonging to a well-connected businessman
complicit in the corruption scheme, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s office said in a statement.
The amount retrieved was disbursed to Noor Zuhair Jassim, a businessman who was arrested in connection to the scheme along with officials from the government tax authority for withdrawing funds from a tax deposit account between September 2021 to August 2022.
Al-Sudani stressed the ongoing investigation would not spare anyone involved in the scheme, and the government is working to recover the full amount stolen.
Jassim confessed to holding the embezzled sum, the statement added. Al-Sudani also said the investigation was ongoing and had identified other individuals involved.
Somali attack: Somali security forces were attempting to flush out armed assailants from a hotel in the Somali capital, a police spokesman said Sunday, after the
extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack. There has been no word of any casualties.
Al-Shabab said in a broadcast on its own radio frequency Sunday that its fighters attacked the hotel Villa Rose, which has a restaurant popular with government and security officials.
Scores of people were rescued from the hotel, and security forces have launched an operation to remove the assailants, police spokesman Sadik Dodishe told state media.
Abdi Hassan, a government worker who lives near the hotel, told The Associated Press that he believes several government officials were inside the hotel when the attack started. Some were seen jumping the perimeter wall to safety while others were rescued, he said.
The hotel isn’t far from the presidential palace in central Mogadishu, where a blast was heard, followed by gunfire.
Railway strike: Railway workers in Austria are set to hold a one-day strike Monday after a failed round of talks in pay negotiations.
The Austria Press Agency reported Sunday that both sides said the fifth round of talks on pay for some 50,000 employees of about 65 railway operators, including the main national operator OeBB, had failed.
That means that there will be no regional, long-distance or night trains Monday, and only buses and other public transport run by municipal authorities will run.
Labor union Vida has called for an extra $416 per month for railway employees, which it says is equivalent to an average 12% increase.
Employers have said that would amount to a 13.3% raise and is too much. OeBB said employers were offering an 8.44% increase and criticized the strike.
Like many other countries, Austria has seen inflation surge this year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.