May 24, 2017

On Monday night, May 22, a terrorist detonated a bomb near Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, killing himself and 22 other people. The bombing, which also injured 64 people, occurred at the close of an Ariana Grande concert as many young people and families were exiting the arena. Ariana Grande is a United States pop singer currently on a concert tour of Europe. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mother-and-daughter survivors of a terrorist bombing comfort each other outside Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, early on May 23, 2017. Credit: © Lindsey Parnaby, Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The terrorist detonated the bomb at about 10:30 p.m. local time in a connecting area between Manchester Arena and Victoria Station, one of the city’s main transportation hubs. Aside from the attack’s immediate casualties—which included many children—the bombing caused chaos and panic among the thousands of people leaving the arena, resulting in additional injuries.

British Prime Minister Theresa May commented on the terrorist act from her Downing Street office in London: “All acts of terrorism are cowardly. But this attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”

Manchester police identified the suicide bomber as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, a Manchester native born of Libyan parents. Police also announced several arrests in connection with the attack. British politicians, preparing for June parliamentary elections, suspended campaigning after the attack. The Manchester attack was the deadliest in the United Kingdom since 52 people died in suicide attacks on London’s transport system in July 2005.

January 25, 2017

On Sunday, January 15, Mexican farmer and indigenous activist Isidro Baldenegro López was gunned down at his uncle’s home in Coloradas de la Virgen, a town in southern Chihuahua state. For years, Baldenegro had run a nonviolent campaign to protect the pine and oak forests of the western range of the Sierra Madre. In 2005, his efforts earned him the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. Unfortunately, his efforts also led to death threats and his eventual murder. Baldenegro was 51 years old.

Goldman Environmental Prize winner Isidro Baldenegro López (left) stands with Tarahumara elders in Coloradas de la Virgen, Chihuahua. Baldenegro was murdered on Jan.15, 2017. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

Baldenegro was the second Goldman prizewinner murdered in the past year. In March 2016, gunmen killed 2015 Goldman winner Berta Cáceres, an environmental activist who led her Lenca people of Honduras against a proposed dam. Baldenegro, a leader of the Tarahumara people, defended the old growth forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental against drug traffickers and loggers. The Tarahumara are one of the largest indigenous groups in North America.

Baldenegro’s environmental actvism was passed down from his father, Julio Baldenegro, who, in 1986, was also murdered for opposing logging in the mountain forests. Isidro formed his first advocacy group in 1993 and began organizing efforts to stop logging—efforts that have met with little success. Violence erupted in his region of Chihuahua in 2006 as the government stepped up its campaign against drug cartels. Already fighting against loggers, Baldenegro and others then faced armed gangs who cleared trees to plant marijuana on the mountainsides.

Death threats had forced Baldenegro to maintain a low profile for several years, and he had moved away from his home in the Guadalupe y Calvo Municipality at the southern tip of Chihuahua. He had only recently returned to visit the home of an uncle—where he was killed. Four other activists were also killed in Guadalupe y Calvo over the past year. The deaths of Cáceres, Baldenegro, and others highlight the dangers activists face in Latin America, where big business and criminal interests often conflict with local communities.

The Sierra Madre Occidental range hosts diverse ecosystems with snow-covered peaks and four separate canyons, each deeper than Arizona’s Grand Canyon. The forests and rivers are home to numerous species of amphibians, fish, reptiles, and migratory birds, as well as many threatened or endangered species of goshawks, macaws, owls, and parrots.

July 15, 2016

Yesterday, July 14_, a terrorist drove a truck into a large crowd in Nice, France, killing 84 people and injuring dozens of others. The brutal attack took place on the resort city’s famed Promenade des Anglais seafront as it was packed with people celebrating Bastille Day, France’s great national holiday. A fireworks show was just finishing, around 11 p.m. local time, when the large commercial truck began ramming pedestrians at high speed along the promenade. Terrified people scrambled to get out of the way, but there was little time and little room for escape. The driver continued his rampage—some witnesses claimed he shot a handgun from the cab as he drove—for some 1¼ miles (2 kilometers). The battered truck finally came to a halt, and the terrorist fired his weapon from behind the wheel. Police killed him in a quick shootout. The driver was then identified as a Tunisian-French Nice resident known only for petty crimes.

Nice is located on the southeast coast of France.
Credit: WORLD BOOK map

French President François Hollande, who was elsewhere in the south of France for Bastille Day, rushed back to a national crisis center in Paris. “France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy,” Hollande said. “There’s no denying the terrorist nature of this attack.” There has yet to be any claim of responsibility for the attack, but it bears the markings of the Islamic State terrorist group (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or DAESH). Even if the group takes credit for the heinous act, the killer could very well have been acting on his own.

Nice is a popular resort city on the French Riviera and a Mediterranean port. It lies at the foot of the Alps near Italy. The Promenade des Anglais (English Walkway)—often called La Prom by locals—stretches along the sea with luxury hotels, shops, and villas on one side and lovely beaches on the other. It is the city’s most famous landmark. An estimated 30,000 people were along the walkway at the time of the attack.

June 29, 2016

Passengers console one another outside Turkey’s Istanbul Atatürk Airport in the hours after a terror attack killed 41 people there on June 28, 2016.
Credit: © Emrah Gurel, AP Photo

Yesterday, June 28, a terrorist attack killed 43 people and injured more than 230 others at Istanbul Atatürk Airport in Turkey. The attack, blamed on Islamic State terrorists, occurred around 10 p.m. local time at the international terminal of the airport, which is Turkey’s busiest and one of the world’s major travel hubs. The attack began as three armed terrorists fired at airport guards and passengers near the terminal entrance. Guards returned fire, and the terrorists then detonated body explosives in succession—one—two—three. The explosions killed and wounded dozens of people in the ground floor arrivals area, the first floor departures area, and the nearby parking area. Quickly, security personnel swarmed to help as survivors gaped in shock at the carnage, the scattered luggage, and the shattered glass and gutted walls and ceilings of the terminal. The entire event took about two minutes.

As survivors grappled with the reality of the situation, the airport shut down and heavily armed security prowled the terminals. Would-be travelers were evacuated to safety, and incoming flights were diverted to other airports. The injured were taken to hospitals, and the dead were slowly identified. Hours later, flights resumed at the airport.

Tuesday’s airport attack was the most recent in a flurry of terror attacks in Istanbul and the rest of Turkey. Some of the blame has fallen on Kurdish separatists who have been fighting Turkey’s government forces on-and-off for years. A more recent, random, and deadly foe has been the Islamic State (also called ISIS, ISIL, or DAESH), the terrorist band based in neighboring Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s participation in an international military coalition against the Islamic State has brought repercussions from the ruthless terror group. Since July 2015, Islamic State attacks have now killed some 200 people within Turkey’s borders.

June 22, 2016

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party supporters demonstrate outside the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Some hold portraits of slain civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Credit: Library of Congress

On June 20, after an investigation that continued for more than half a century, federal and Mississippi authorities officially closed the books on one of the most heinous, racially motivated criminal cases in the history of the United States civil rights movement. Known as the “Freedom Summer” murder case or the “Mississippi Burning” murder case, it was notable as the first successful federal prosecution of a civil rights case in Mississippi. Outrage over the case helped gain passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In June 1964, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white civil rights volunteers from New York City, and James Chaney, a black volunteer from Meridian, Mississippi, were working together in Meridian as part of the “Freedom Summer” campaign to help African Americans register to vote. The campaign was organized primarily by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights organization. At that time, many Southern States had used various methods to deprive blacks of their voting rights. On June 21, the three men were on their way to investigate the burning of an African American church in Neshoba County when they were taken into custody for speeding by a sheriff deputy. After the men were released from county jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a Ku Klux Klan mob followed their car, forced it off the road, and shot the men to death. The volunteers’ station wagon was found three days later. Initially classified as a missing persons case, the men’s disappearance sparked national outrage and an investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI found the bodies of the three men 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam.

In 1967, 18 men were tried on federal civil rights charges in the case. An all-white jury convicted seven of them of violating the civil rights of the Freedom Summer volunteers. At the time, no federal murder statutes existed, and the state never brought charges. None of the convicted men served more than six years in prison. The plot leader, Edgar Ray Killen, a Baptist minister, avoided a trial due to a hung jury. Killen was finally convicted in a 2005 trial based on new evidence unveiled in 2000. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison, where he remains today at age 91.

In 2010, federal authorities reopened the investigation in search of evidence to allow them to convict the remaining suspects. However, that investigation came to a halt 18 months ago after a witness backed out at the last minute after pledging to sign a sworn statement that would have implicated a suspect, according to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood.

Monday’s decision means that no other suspects in the case will be prosecuted. “It has been a thorough and complete investigation,” Hood said. “I am convinced that during the last 52 years, investigators have done everything possible under the law to find those responsible and hold them accountable; however, we have determined that there is no likelihood of any additional convictions… Our state and our entire nation are a much better place because of the work of those three young men and others in 1964 who only wanted to ensure that the rights and freedoms promised in our Constitution were afforded to every single one of us in Mississippi.” In 2014, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Presidential Medals of Freedom.

Other World Book articles

• Evers, Medgar
• Freedom riders
• Meredith, James

June 13, 2016

Police officers stand guard near the scene of a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016. Credit: © Phelan M. Ebenhack, AP Photo

Early Sunday morning, June 12, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a gunman entered carrying an assault rifle and a handgun and started shooting. The gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, shot several people before retreating deeper into the club and taking hostages. Orlando police, paramedics, and firefighters were quickly on the scene, but, unsure of what they were dealing with, they awaited the arrival of heavily armed Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) officers. About 5:00 a.m., SWAT officers broke through a wall of the nightclub. In a brief gunfight, Mateen was killed and one officer was wounded. Thirty hostages were freed, wounded bar patrons were treated and evacuated, and a suspected explosive device was destroyed. Forty-nine people died in the attack—plus the shooter—and 53 others were injured, making it the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. Some 350 patrons were in Pulse for a Latin music event at the time of the attack.

Mateen, a U.S. Muslim born to Afghan parents in New York City, apparently targeted the nightclub because it caters predominantly to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. While hiding in a restroom with hostages, Mateen called 9-1-1 and pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State, but there is no evidence that he had ties to the terrorist group. Mateen had, however, been questioned previously for suspected terrorism links. Mateen’s ex-wife described him as “emotionally and mentally disturbed,” and others noted a history of anger and violent behavior.

Numerous sympathies and tributes poured in to Orlando from around the world as people absorbed the shocking reality of the attack. President Barack Obama described the attack as an “act of terror and an act of hate.” Pope Francis condemned the “senseless hatred” of the massacre. This most recent mass shooting reignited calls for stricter gun control in the United States.

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, arriving for a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on January 6, 2016. Credit: © Rick Bowmer, AP Photo

February 12, 2016

Yesterday, February 11, the last four militants occupying a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon surrendered to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. The surrender ended a 40-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 

On Jan. 2, 2016, two brothers from Nevada, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, led a group of armed militants in the takeover of the empty Malheur Refuge headquarters. The Bundys are sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who refuses to pay the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rents he owes for grazing his cattle on government-owned land. This refusal is part of a larger movement in the western United States, where some Americans feel the U.S. government should not be allowed to own land. The Malheur takeover was an antigovernment protest in support of two Oregon ranchers jailed for lighting fires on federal lands.

During the entire occupation, the FBI was patient and non-confrontational with the occupiers. The agency wanted to avoid escalating the situation. The occupiers were free to enter and leave the refuge until January 26. On that day, Ammon and Ryan Bundy and several supporters were driving from the refuge to a small town for a community meeting. The FBI stopped the militants. Five were arrested and one was killed when he refused to surrender.

A total of eight occupiers are under arrest awaiting trial in Oregon. The rest of the occupiers at the refuge had dwindled to four, and those holdouts occupied Malheur for two weeks before giving themselves up yesterday. Local people in Oregon had felt that the FBI was perhaps too patient with the occupiers. The end result, however, was peaceful and satisfactory.

Also on February 11, Cliven Bundy was arrested for actions taken by him in 2014 when BLM agents came to his ranch to remove Bundy’s cows from government lands. Armed men on the ranch refused to stand down to let the bureau do their job. To avoid bloodshed, the BLM pulled back from the Bundy ranch and law enforcement waited two years for a safe time to make the arrest.

The finals of the Australian Open tennis championships are played in the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. This year, some news sources have reported that players guilty of match fixing are playing in the tournament. © Bob Martin, Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

January 20, 2016

Charges have been raised of widespread match fixing in men’s professional tennis. A report issued this week by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and an American Internet media company called BuzzFeed News claims that not only have matches been fixed, but that tennis authorities knew of the problem but ignored it.

The report did not name players, but it stated that the fixing involves a group of 16 players who have been ranked in the top 50, including a US Open champion. Eight of the players were participating in the 2016 Australian Open in Melbourne, which runs from January 18 to January 31. The matches were fixed to affect betting odds.

Tennis authorities were quick to reject the report. The chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which oversees men’s professional tennis, said tennis authorities “absolutely reject any suggestion that evidence of match fixing has been suppressed for any reason or isn’t being thoroughly investigated…. While the BBC and BuzzFeed reports refer to events from about 10 years ago, we will investigate any new information.”

The media reports stated that a 2007 ATP inquiry found betting syndicates in Russia, Italy, and Sicily made hundreds of thousands of dollars betting on matches that investigators believed were fixed. A 2008 confidential report for tennis authorities claimed that 28 players involved in the Wimbledon tournament should be investigated, but the accusations were never addressed.

A number of leading players said they are unaware of any match fixing today. Men’s champion Novak Djokovic said rumors existed of match fixing in the past and that they were dealt with, but that he hasn’t heard anything in the past 6 or 7 years. He did say that in 2007 someone tried to offer him about $200,000 to lose a first-round match in Russia. He said the offer was immediately rejected. Women’s champion Serena Williams said she had heard nothing about match fixing, and Roger Federer said he wanted to hear names. “It’s nonsense,” he said, “to answer something that is pure speculation.”

December 7, 2015

Oscar Pistorius is a South African athlete who gained international fame as the first amputee track athlete to qualify for the Summer Olympic Games. But for more than two years, Pistorius has been better known as the center of a murder story, a story that took another dramatic turn on December 3.

South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius starts in the men’s 400-meter semifinal during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Credit: © Anja Niedringhaus, AP Photo

In February 2013, Pistorius killed his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkamp, in his house. Pistorius shot Steenkamp four times through a locked bathroom door, saying he mistook her for an intruder. In September 2014, a judge convicted Pistorius of “culpable homicide,” a charge in South African law that means unintentionally but unlawfully killing a person. Pistorius was sentenced to five years in prison. State prosecutors appealed the verdict, seeking a conviction on more severe charges.

On December 3, a South African judge overturned the earlier ruling and found Pistorius guilty of murder. The judge said that the original court judgment had been “fundamentally flawed.” The judge also called the circumstances surrounding Steenkamp’s death “a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.” Pistorius’s jail term has not been decided, but he faces up to 15 years in prison. Pistorius can appeal the verdict by taking the case to South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

Additional World Book articles:

• Disability (2007)  (a Back in time report)
• Disability (2012)  (a Back in time report)
• South Africa (2013)  (a Back in time report)
• Crime (2014) (a Back in time report)

December 3, 2015

On Thursday, authorities were attempting to sort out the details of a deadly mass shooting that had taken place in San Bernardino, California, the day before. Two heavily armed shooters killed 14 people and wounded nearly two dozen others during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for people with disabilities. The suspects were themselves killed in a gun battle with police hours after the rampage. The motives for the shooting have not yet been determined. However, authorities indicated that one of the shooters may have had previous contact with international terrorism suspects and may also have had work-related grievances.

The San Bernardino killings were the second mass shooting to take place in the United States on Wednesday and the sixth in a week, according to Mass Shooting Tracker. The group defines a “mass shooting” as the shooting of four or more people. Early Wednesday morning, a gunman shot four people, one fatally, in Savannah, Georgia. Wednesday’s massacre in San Bernardino was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting nearly three years ago. On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman killed 20 students—all 6 or 7 years old—and 6 adults at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut.

Thus far in 2015, by Mass Shooting Trackers’ definition, 355 mass shootings have occurred in the United States. According to the University of Alabama Department of Criminal Justice, the population of the United States comprises about 5 percent of the global population. Yet, from 1966 to 2012, 31 percent of all the mass shootings in the world occurred in the United States. Researchers at the university attributed the high percentage of mass shootings in the United States to the high number of civilian gun owners in the country.

Additional World Book articles:

• Columbine High School shooting
• Tucson shooting of 2011
• Aurora movie theater shooting of 2012
• Paris terrorist attacks of 2015
• “Routine” (a Behind the Headlines article)
• Charleston Church Shooting Called a Hate Crime (a Behind the Headlines article)