Media captionFirefighters tackle fatal shopping centre fire
At least 37 people are confirmed to have died in a fire that tore through a shopping centre in the Siberian coal-mining city of Kemerovo.
At least 64 people are missing, including 41 children, and parts of the building are in danger of collapse.
The blaze started on an upper floor of the Winter Cherry complex while many of the victims were in cinema halls.
Video posted on social media showed people jumping from windows to escape the flames on Sunday.
As many as 660 emergency personnel have been deployed in the rescue effort.
The cause of the blaze is not yet known but authorities have launched an investigation.
Kemerovo, a key coal-producing area, lies about 3,600km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has offered his condolences to the families and friends of the victims, as did Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs.
The fire is believed to have started at around 17:00 (10:00 GMT) in a part of the building that contains the entertainment complex, local media report.
“According to preliminary information, the roof collapsed in two cinemas,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
Smoke billowed from the building
Yevgeny Dedyukhin, deputy head of the Kemerovo region emergency department, said the area of the fire was about 1,500 sq m.
“The shopping centre is a very complex construction,” he said. “There are a lot of combustible materials.”
What do we know of the victims?
The 37 bodies found are difficult to identify, said Mr Dedyukhin, but nine of them are of children.
Andrei Mamchenkov, deputy head of Russia’s National Crisis Management Centre, said a search was under way for 41 children.
Emergency services had been unable to reach one of the cinema halls on the third floor because of smoke and the danger of the building collapsing, an unnamed source told Russian news agency Interfax.
Another source told the agency there was practically no chance of finding survivors.
That lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is a conservative commentator who made his name on religious freedom cases. Mr. Sekulow is in talks with other lawyers about joining the team, although it is not clear how far those discussions have progressed.
Hours before the announcement of Mr. diGenova’s departure, which Mr. Sekulow said was related to a conflict of interest, the president took to Twitter to reject any suggestion that lawyers do not want to work for him.
“Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case … don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,” he wrote. “Fame fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted.”
Adding new lawyers, he said, would be costly because they would take months “to get up to speed (if for no other reason than they can bill more).”
“I am very happy with my existing team,” he added.
This month, the president met with the veteran lawyer Emmet Flood about the possibility of joining the legal team. But Mr. Trump was put off by the fact that Mr. Flood, a Republican, had represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment process, and Mr. Flood has made clear that he will not represent the president if Marc E. Kasowitz, his brash longtime personal lawyer, has any role in the effort.
Mr. Trump also tried to recruit Theodore B. Olson, a well-known Republican lawyer, but Mr. Olson has said he would not be representing the president.
The first phase of legal work for Mr. Trump in the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was led by a White House lawyer, Ty Cobb. That work, which in part involved the production of documents and the arrangement of interviews with White House officials, has been largely completed.
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The second phase, which is now focused on the question of a presidential interview with Mr. Mueller, had been led by Mr. Dowd. One reason Mr. Dowd quit was that, against his advice, Mr. Trump was insistent that he wanted to answer questions under oath from Mr. Mueller, believing that it would help clear him.
Mr. Dowd had concluded that there was no upside and that the president, who often does not tell the truth, could increase his legal exposure if his answers were not accurate.
Roger Cossack, a seasoned legal analyst, said the key to successfully defending a high-profile client under immense scrutiny was to have a cohesive legal team with a consistent strategy.
PhotoJohn Dowd quit as the head of the president’s personal legal team last week after determining that Mr. Trump was not listening to his advice. Credit
Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters
“In these types of cases, you need highly competent lawyers and a client who will listen and follow their advice,” Mr. Cossack said. “If you don’t have both, you have what we’re seeing here: chaos and disaster.”
“You have a client who clearly thinks he has a better idea of how things should work than the lawyers who, from time to time, have told him things he doesn’t want to hear,” he added. “He is looking for the guy who can say, ‘I know how to handle Mueller, I know you think he is bad, and we’ll take care of it.’ Problem is you can’t find that lawyer because no one will be able to do that.”
People close to the president say the upheaval in the legal team was inevitable. When Mr. Kasowitz took the lead after Mr. Mueller was appointed in May, he wanted to follow a model used by Mr. Clinton, with a separate team of lawyers and communications professionals handling issues related to the inquiry, so that the White House staff could keep its distance.
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But Mr. Trump, who trusts few people and considers himself his best lawyer, spokesman and strategist, never wanted that type of system. As a result, his legal and public relations strategies have been out of sync, with the president at times publicly contradicting his lawyers, and the White House often finding itself flat-footed in the face of new disclosures about the Russia investigation.
The president’s decision has also exposed many of his aides, leaving them deeply enmeshed in an inquiry that is likely to cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
But while Mr. Trump has struggled to find lawyers, his family and his close associates are being represented by some of the country’s top legal talent.
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His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has hired Abbe Lowell, a longtime Washington lawyer who recently got the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, after a lengthy court fight.
Three prominent current and former White House officials — the former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon; the former chief of staff, Reince Priebus; and the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn — are being represented by William A. Burck, who turned down the chance to represent the president. Mr. Burck, a former federal prosecutor, represented FIFA in its legal problems in the United States and has worked for high-profile witnesses in federal investigations, including Maureen McDonnell, the wife of a former Virginia governor.
The turmoil in Mr. Trump’s legal team started within weeks of the appointment of Mr. Mueller. Mr. Kasowitz pushed for an adversarial approach to the special counsel, which the president was poised to follow. But Mr. Kasowitz clashed with Mr. Kushner, and he was soon pushed aside after a series of missteps and embarrassing incidents.
The president then hired Mr. Cobb, a veteran Washington lawyer, to lead efforts within the White House, as well as Mr. Dowd, who was put in charge of his personal legal team. They advocated a strategy of cooperation, telling the president that the sooner he gave Mr. Mueller’s office what it wanted, the sooner his name would be cleared.
While Mr. Cobb had told the president that the investigation would be over by now, it seems to be accelerating. Mr. Mueller is still looking into a wide range of matters related to Mr. Trump’s corporate activities, his 2016 campaign, his associates and his time in office.
Mr. Trump, hoping to bolster his team, met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing in recent days but, according to two people told of details about the meeting, did not believe he had personal chemistry with them.
There were also significant conflict-of-interest issues, but Mr. Trump could have waived them if he wanted. Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team in 2017 before they parted ways. Mr. Corallo has told investigators that he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign.
Ms. Hicks’s lawyer has strongly denied that suggestion, and White House aides said Mr. Corallo’s assertion had come up in discussions with the president as he weighed whether to go ahead with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing.
Mr. diGenova had been expected to serve as an outspoken voice for the president as Mr. Trump has increased his attacks on Mr. Mueller. Mr. diGenova has endorsed the notion that a secretive group of F.B.I. agents concocted the Russia investigation as a way to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president, a theory with little supporting evidence.
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“There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he had told Fox News in January.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday that students who have rallied for gun control should instead learn CPR or find their own way to prevent a school shooting.
“How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that,” the Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The 2012 and 2016 presidential candidate said students could work to stop bullying in their communities or respond themselves to a shooter instead of asking lawmakers to approve legislation to protect them.
Santorum’s comments prompted outrage on social media a day after hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied across the U.S. to push for tougher laws to fight gun violence.
The demonstrations Saturday were led by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed last month.
Santorum said that if the rallies are about more than politics, then the country needs to have a broader discussion that doesn’t revolve around “phony gun laws” that don’t work.
“They took action to ask someone to pass a law,” he said of the demonstrators. “They didn’t take action to say, ‘How do I, as an individual, deal with this problem?
You know what tech startups hate? Complicated legal compliance. The problem is, Facebook isn’t a startup any more, but its competitors are.
There have been plenty of calls from congress and critics to regulate Facebook following the election interference scandal and now the Cambridge Analytica debacle. The government could require extensive ads transparency reporting or data privacy protections. That could cost Facebook a lot of money, slow down its operations, or inhibit its ability to build new products.
But the danger is that those same requirements could be much more onerous for a tiny upstart company to uphold. Without much cash or enough employees, and with product-market fit still to nail down, young startups might be anchored by the weight of regulation. It could prevent them from ever rising to become a true alternative to Facebook. Venture capitalists choosing whether to fund the next Facebook killer might look at the regulations as too high of a price of entry.
STANFORD, CA – JUNE 24: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (R) hugs U.S. President Barack Obama during the 2016 Global Entrepeneurship Summit at Stanford University on June 24, 2016 in Stanford, California. President Obama joined Silicon Valley leaders on the final day of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The lack of viable alternatives has made the #DeleteFacebook movement toothless. Where are people going to go? Instagram? WhatsApp? The government already missed its chances to stop Facebook from acquiring these companies that are massive social networks in their own right.
The only social networks to carve out communities since Facebook’s rise did so largely by being completely different, like the ephemeral Snapchat that purposefully doesn’t serve as a web identity platform, and the mostly-public Twitter that caters to thought leaders and celebrities more than normal people sharing their personal lives. Blockchain-based decentralized social networks sound nice but may be impossible to spin up.
That’s left few places for Facebook haters to migrate. This might explain why despite having so many more users, #DeleteFacebook peaked last week at substantially fewer Twitter mentions than the big #DeleteUber campaign from last January, according to financial data dashboard Sentieo. Lyft’s existence makes #DeleteUber a tenable stance, because you don’t have to change your behavior pattern, just your brand of choice.
If the government actually wants to protect the public against Facebook abusing its power, it would need to go harder than the Honest Ads Act that would put political advertising on Internet platforms under the same scrutiny regarding disclosure of buyers as the rules for TV and radio advertising. That’s basically just extra paperwork for Facebook. We’ve seen regulatory expenses deter competition amongst broadband internet service providers and in other industries. Real change would necessitate regulation that either creates alternatives to Facebook or at least doesn’t inhibit their creation.
That could mean only requiring certain transparency and privacy protections from apps over a certain size, like 200 million daily users. This would put the cap a bit above Twitter and Snapchat’s size today, giving them time to prepare for compliance, while immediately regulating Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Google’s social problem child YouTube.
Still, with Facebook earning billions in profit per quarter and a massive war chest built up, Mark Zuckerberg could effectively pay his way out of the problem. That’s why it makes perfect sense for him to have told CNN “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated” and that “There are things like ad transparency regulation that I would love to see.” Particular regulatory hurdles amount to just tiny speed bumps for Facebook. Courting this level of regulation could bat down the question of whether it should be broken up or its News Feed algorithm needs to change.
Meanwhile, if the government instituted new rules for tech platforms collecting persona information going forward, it could effectively lock in Facebook’s lead in the data race. If it becomes more cumbersome to gather this kind of data, no competitor might ever amass an index of psychographic profiles and social graphs able to rival Facebook’s.
A much more consequential approach would be to break up Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook is trying to preempt these drastic measures with Zuckerberg’s recent apology tour and its purchase of full-page ads in nine newspapers today claiming it understands its responsibility.
Establishing them as truly independent companies that compete would create meaningful alternatives to Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp would have to concern themselves with actually becoming sustainable businesses. They’d all lose some economies of data scale, forfeiting the ability to share engineering, anti-spam, localization, ad sales, and other resources that a source close to Instagram told me it gained by being acquired in 2012, and that Facebook later applied to WhatsApp too.
Both permanent photo sharing and messaging would become two-horse races again. That could lead to the consumer-benefiting competition and innovation the government hopes for from regulation.
Yet with strong regulation like dismantling Facebook seeming beyond the resolve of congress, and weak regulation potentially protecting Facebook, perhaps it’s losing the moral high ground that will be Facebook’s real punishment.
Facebook chief legal officer Colin Stretch testifies before congress regarding Russian election interference
We’ve already seen that first-time download rates aren’t plummeting for Facebook, its App Store ranking has actually increased since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, and blue chip advertisers aren’t bailing, according to BuzzFeed. But Facebook relies on the perception of its benevolent mission to recruit top talent in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Techies take the job because they wake up each day believing that they’re having a massive positive influence by connecting the world. These people could have founded or worked at a new startup where they’d have discernible input on the direction of the product, and a chance to earn huge return multiples on their stock. Many have historically worked at Facebook because its ads say it’s the “Best place to build and make an impact”.
But if workers start to see that impact as negative, they might not enlist. This is what could achieve that which surface-level regulation can’t. It’s perhaps the most important repercussion of all the backlash about fake news, election interference, well-being, and data privacy: that losing talent could lead to a slow-down of innovation at Facebook that might leave the door open for a new challenger.
For more on Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, read our feature pieces:
Ms. Clifford’s interview — which made for the most anticipated episode of “60 Minutes” in recent memory — was something of a national event, one marked by viewing parties and “Dark and Stormy” cocktail specials at bars, a nod to her professional name, Stormy Daniels.
And it was a quintessential moment of the Trump presidency — a tabloid-ready scandal and must-see television — that carried potential legal implications for Mr. Trump and his longtime lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen. Until Sunday’s broadcast, Ms. Clifford had kept her public appearances to the strip club circuit — what she called her “Make America Horny Again” tour. But, in speaking with Mr. Cooper, she chose businesslike attire that was in keeping with the seriousness of the legal case she is making, that she had been silenced in a cover-up effort to protect the presidential prospects of Mr. Trump.
Ms. Clifford is one of two women who have recently filed suit seeking to get out of agreements they said they entered during the last stretch of the 2016 campaign to give up the rights to their stories about what they have said were affairs with Mr. Trump. The other woman, a former Playmate named Karen McDougal, sold her rights to the company that owns The National Enquirer — which never published it — and spoke to Mr. Cooper on CNN on Thursday. Representatives for Mr. Trump have denied that he had an affair with either woman.
Ms. Clifford’s appearance on “60 Minutes” showed that the effort to keep her story from public view had failed spectacularly — just as statements from Mr. Cohen that he would seek millions of dollars in damages from her for violating a hush agreement had not kept her from appearing on what is often the highest-rated program in television news.
Asked by Mr. Cooper why she was taking the legally risky route of sitting for a nationally televised interview, she said, “I was perfectly fine saying nothing at all, but I’m not O.K. with being made out to be a liar.”
Ms. Clifford had first threatened to speak out in February, after, she said, Mr. Cohen broke his part of the previously secret 2016 agreement by telling The New York Times that he had paid the $130,000 from his own pocket. He has denied Mr. Trump had an affair with Ms. Clifford.
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The White House was quiet ahead of the airing of Ms. Clifford’s interview, though an ally of Mr. Trump’s, the Newsmax founder and editor in chief, Christopher Ruddy, told ABC News earlier on Sunday that Mr. Trump considered her story “a political hoax.” Mr. Trump spent the evening before the interview dining at his club in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, with Mr. Cohen.
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Ms. Clifford said during the interview that while she had seen Mr. Trump more than once, she had had sex with him a single time, unprotected. That happened shortly after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. (Ms. McDougal has also said that she, too, was intimate with Mr. Trump during that event.) Mr. Trump was 60 at the time; Ms. Clifford was 27.
Ms. Clifford said that Mr. Trump had invited her to his hotel suite for dinner, and that their banter began with him showing her a magazine cover featuring his photograph. “I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it,”’ she said. “So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little — you know, had underwear on and stuff, and I just gave him a couple swats.”
It was done in a joking manner she said, and the flirtation — which included Mr. Trump comparing Ms. Clifford to his daughter — led to intercourse, though, she said, she had not been particularly attracted to Mr. Trump and had not wanted to have sex with him. (She said she nonetheless went along of her own accord.)
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“He said that it was great,” she said, and told her he had had “a great evening, and it was nothing like he expected, that I really surprised him, that a lot of people must underestimate me — that he hoped that I would be willing to see him again, and that we would discuss the things we had talked about earlier in the evening.”
Mr. Trump, she said, had raised the possibility that he get her onto his reality show, “Celebrity Apprentice” but it would not come to be.
She said that he had invited her to his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow in 2007 to fill her in on that promise. The entertainment for the night, she said, was a “Shark Week” documentary. Mr. Trump, she said, wanted to have sex but this time she did not go along with it, and when he did not have an answer for her about being on the show, she left. She said he told her over the phone a month later that he would not be able to get her onto the program and that was effectively the end of it.
But when her story threatened to surface again in 2016, Ms. Clifford said, her lawyer, Keith Davidson, called her. “I think I have the best deal for you,” she said Mr. Davidson told her, presenting Mr. Cohen’s offer. (Mr. Davidson had also represented Ms. McDougal.)
When Mr. Cooper said some viewers would be skeptical that Ms. Clifford had made her decision because of a threat made years earlier, she said she “didn’t even negotiate” and “just quickly said ‘yes,’ to this very, you know, strict contract, and what most people will agree with me, extremely low number.” Ms. Clifford also said that she had “turned down a large payday multiple times.”
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Ms. Clifford said that she can remember the man’s face to this day and would recognize him immediately. Her new lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said earlier this month that she had been threatened, although he did not provide any details. At the time, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, “Obviously we take the safety and security of any person seriously, certainly would condemn anyone threatening any individual.”
When the story about the payoff first broke earlier this year, Ms. Clifford had signed a statement emphatically denying that an affair had taken place. She told Mr. Cooper that she had been told that if she failed to sign it, “they can make your life hell in many different ways.” That sentiment, she indicated, was based on the terms of the agreement, not on any new threat of physical violence, though, she said, she felt both “intimidated” and “bullied.”
Lawyers for Mr. Cohen have said that Ms. Clifford faces $20 million in penalties for violating an agreement to remain quiet and that the agreement was still binding.
Ms. Clifford’s suit hinges on Mr. Avenatti’s argument that the agreement is invalid because Mr. Trump had not signed it. Mr. Cohen signed the agreement, representing the Delaware shell company Essential Consultants, through which he paid Ms. Clifford.
Mr. Cohen has denied any involvement by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign. But Mr. Avenatti, through his various media appearances, has been trying to build a case that Mr. Cohen was acting in his capacity as a lawyer at the Trump Organization when he worked on the agreement. He presented new evidence on “60 Minutes”: a FedEx envelope showing that Mr. Davidson had sent the contract to Mr. Cohen at his office at the Trump Organization, and addressed a cover letter to him in his official Trump Organization capacity.
Mr. Cooper pressed Ms. Clifford on whether she was not coming forward to cash in on her affair now that Mr. Trump had become president. She did not apologize for the extra money she says she is already making as a dancer because of the surrounding publicity, but noted that she was also opening herself up to real financial risk.
Asked what she would tell the president if he was watching, she said, “He knows I’m telling the truth.”
It’s the blue bloods and a new blood in Sunday’s Elite Eight games, in a nice little mix that makes the NCAA tournament so compelling. Basketball-rich Villanova, Duke and Kansas are here with a combined 34 Final Four appearances and 10 national titles. But so is upstart Texas Tech, making school history with its first-ever Elite Eight game.
No. 3 Texas Tech vs. No. 1 Villanova 2:20 p.m., CBS, East Region
Villanova is playing like the best team in the nation, with a do-it-all offense and shutdown defense fueling its run to the Elite Eight. What makes the Wildcats so good is not only that balance, but their dynamic starting five. Every single player is a threat to take over a game. Add in Donte DiVincenzo and Villanova has a top six that’s awfully tough to beat. Texas Tech will provide another tough defensive test for Villanova. The Red Raiders have gotten this far on the strength of their stellar defense. Nobody has scored more than 66 points on them in three NCAA tournament games.
If Texas Tech wins it will be because: Its aforementioned defense comes through again. In three tournament games, teams are shooting 41 percent and averaging 63.7 points per game — right around the average that ranked the Red Raiders in the top 15 in the nation in scoring defense. Their 3-point defense is going to have to be particularly on point, considering how well Villanova has been shooting from long range. And Keenan Evans needs to be lights out.
If Texas Tech loses it will be because: The Red Raiders can’t keep up with Villanova on the scoreboard. Villanova found a way to break through against West Virginia’s defense in the Sweet 16, going on a 22-6 run midway through the second half to blow the game open. Chances are, Villanova will make a big run against Texas Tech at some point in the game. The question is whether Texas Tech has enough to score at the same clip.
No. 2 Duke vs. No. 1 Kansas 5:05 p.m., CBS, Midwest Region
Given the way Kansas and Duke have played in the tournament, it feels as if this should be a Final Four matchup. The story lines leading up to it are enough to fill an entire notebook: It’s Coach K vs. Bill Self among the nation’s best coaches, Devonte’ Graham vs. Marvin Bagley III among the nation’s best players, the more veteran Jayhawks vs. the freshmen-laden Blue Devils. You couldn’t ask for a better matchup to set the stage for San Antonio.
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If Duke wins it will be because: Its future NBA stars set the tone. It is safe to say the Blue Devils have been on a roller coaster ride this season because they are so young, struggling through growing pains early while switching up their defense to a zone to better suit their talent level. But now they are rolling, playing with confidence and determination. Bagley is just the sixth freshmen to score at least 20 points in each of his first three NCAA tournament games, and he’s been a force inside with 11 dunks. Wendell Carter Jr., Gary Trent Jr. and Trevon Duval can’t be overlooked, either.
If Duke loses it will be because: Its defense falters against a varied Kansas offense. Kansas is the best offensive team Duke has faced to this point in the tournament, and that’s going to provide a challenge for the Blue Devils, most especially at the guard position. But center Udoka Azubuike has had a huge inside presence as well, and the matchup between him, Bagley and Carter will be one to watch.
If Kansas wins it will be because: Graham and Malik Newman take over the game. There’s a reason Graham is a player of the year front-runner. Not only does he score, he is excellent at distributing the ball to teammates, and he’s not careless with the basketball. Plus, he’s a veteran player, and that experience can be a huge advantage in a game as big as this. Newman has been terrific in March, leading the Jayhawks in scoring in both the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.
If Kansas loses it will be because: The Jayhawks have been somewhat spotty on defense, allowing a 25-point scorer in consecutive games, and nearly blowing a 20-point lead against Clemson in the Sweet 16. Kansas can’t afford to have lapses like that against a team as talented as Duke. Because if it does, the Jayhawks will be in serious trouble.
The state attorney general’s office in the state of Quintana Roo said investigators were still trying to determine what kind of gas was involved.
The office said in a statement that members of the Sharp family — identified by authorities in their home state of Iowa as Kevin Sharp, 41, Amy Sharp, 38, and their children, 12-year-old Sterling and 7-year-old Adrianna — appeared to have been dead for 36 to 48 hours when their bodies were found Friday during a welfare check at the resort condominium they rented.
Officials said examinations of the bodies indicated the cause of death was hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, and that investigators thus ruled out suicide or violence.
“The bodies … showed no evidence or traces of violence, nor evidence of anything being disturbed inside the room, so violence from a possible theft was discarded,” according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.
Mexican investigators are now looking into the condo’s gas system to determine how the family was exposed to the toxic gas.
An Iowa family of four that went missing while on vacation in a popular Mexican tourist area died from asphyxiation caused by inhalation of toxic gases, authorities said Saturday.
CBS News reports that the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s office said that forensic doctors determined the Sharp family was dead for approximately 36-48 hours before they were found. The type of gas or where it came from was not specified. The Attorney’s General office said that firefighters carried out an inspection of the “gas installation of the room.”
There was no sign of violence where the family was found.
The Sharp family was reported missing by relatives in their hometown of Creston early Friday, about a week after the family left for vacation.
Creston police said they contacted the U.S. Department of State, and the bodies were found during a welfare check at the condo in Akumal near Tulum.
Union County authorities said the family members were identified as 41-year-old Kevin Sharp; his wife, 38-year-old Amy Sharp; and their children, 12-year-old Sterling and 7-year-old Adrianna.
The State Department’s website, which was updated last month, advises Americans in Mexico to “exercise increased caution due to crime.”
Homicides in the region where the resort is located, Quintana Roo, have increased compared with the same period in 2016, according to Mexican government statistics, and most of the deaths appeared to be targeted, criminal organization assassinations.
The turf battles between the criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens, the website said.
Martin Luther King Jr’s granddaughter Yolanda Renee King(L) speaks next to student Jaclyn Corin during the March for Our Lives Rally in Washington, DC on March 24, 2018. Galvanized by a massacre at a Florida high school, hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to take to the streets in cities across the United States on Saturday in the biggest protest for gun control in a generation. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Saturday’s massive rallies for gun control around the world—more than 800 of them—were centered on the largest of them all in Washington D.C., at the focus of the cause, the capital building. While the size of the crowd was impressive, the events on the stage were even more so. Speaker after speaker delivered powerful orations. Most of the speakers were students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, survivors of the Valentine’s Day shooting that took 17 souls.
Having witnessed the bloodshed first hand and having suffered the loss of close friends, their voices were filled with emotion. Having been the driving force behind the rally, their words were crafted with touching memories, meaningful facts, declarative sentences, and clear calls to action. And having spent the last month promoting the march in many media appearances (Time Magazine featured five of the students on this week’s cover: Jaclyn Coryn, Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, and Emma Gonzalez) they delivered their words with forceful confidence.
Ms. Gonzalez—whose electrifying speech three days after the massacre in Parkland has made her a viral star with 1.2 million Twitters followers—electrified the Washington crowd again, this time with silence. She paused in the middle of her speech and stood stock still, staring straight ahead, tears streaming down her face for six minutes and twenty seconds. When she resumed, she told the audience that that was how long the Parkland shooting lasted.
However, all those eloquent teenage orators were outshone by a nine-year-old. Yvonne Renee King, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s granddaughter, walked onstage with only a hand microphone—no lectern, no notes, as all the high schoolers used—and in one minute and fifty seconds roused the crowd to a higher level than any other speaker.
My grandfather had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough and that this should be a gun free world. Period.
Then evoking her grandfather’s clerical technique of call and response, she said:
