Florida Pulse gay club attacked in Orlando - mass casualties

A shooting inside a gay nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando has caused mass casualties, police say.

Orlando Police also said in a tweet that the shooter inside the Pulse Club, located in the heart of the city, is now dead.

A bomb squad and hazardous material team were at the scene, and a controlled explosion was carried out.

Relatives have been gathering at local hospitals desperate for news.

Live updates

Image copyrightORLANDO POLICE

Image copyrightORLANDO POLICE

A man who had been inside the club described a situation of chaos outside as the number of casualties became apparent.

"There were just bodies everywhere," Christopher Hansen said. "In the parking lot, they were tagging them - red, yellow - so they knew who to help first and who not help first. Pants down, shirts cut off, they had to find the bullets. Just blood everywhere."

Footage from the scene showed dozens of emergency vehicles at the scene and people being treated on the pavements.

The injured were reportedly brought to hospital in police pick-ups as well as ambulances.

One woman said she had received a text message and phone call from her daughter inside the club, who said she had been shot in the arm.

One of the first people to tweet from the scene, local TV reporter Stewart Moore, said earlier the attacker was suspected to have had a bomb, and had taken people hostage. This has not been confirmed by the police.

Some witnesses said they heard as many as 40-50 gunshots as the incident unfolded.

Image copyrightEPA

Image copyrightORLANDO POLICE

More than 100 people were reported to have been enjoying a Latin-themed night in the club, which calls itself the hottest gay bar in the city, when the attack began.

Ricardo Negron Almodovar told BBC News that the shooter opened fire at around 02:00 local time (06:00 GMT), as the club night was coming to a close.

"We heard rapid fire go off. In the room I was in, people went down to the floor. I wasn't able to see the shooter or people get hurt.

"At some point, there was a brief pause, and a group of us got up and went to the exit that leads to the patio area outside. We found an exit and after that... I just ran."

Another man, Anthony Torres, said he heard people screaming that others in the nightclub were dead.

Image copyrightFACEBOOK

Image captionThe club posted this message as reports of a shooting were emerging

According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, there were 372 mass shootings - defined as a single incident that kills or injures four or more people - in the US in 2015. Some 475 people were killed and 1,8760 wounded.

The latest incident comes as Orlando is still reeling from the fatal shooting on Friday night of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie following a concert in the city.

She had been signing autographs when she was shot by 26-year-old Kevin James Loibl, who then killed himself. It is not clear what Loibl's motive was.

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Former Voice contestant Christina Grimmie shot dead in Orlando

Singer Christina Grimmie, who had competed on the US TV programme The Voice, has died of her wounds after being shot in Florida, police say.

They say a man opened fire on her when she was signing autographs after a concert in Orlando.

The assailant - who was tackled by Ms Grimmie's brother - then shot and killed himself. The 22-year-old singer died in a local hospital.

In 2014, Ms Grimmie finished third during season six of The Voice.

In a tweet, Orlando's police wrote: "With deep regret, we have confirmed Christina Grimmie, @TheRealGrimmie has died from her injuries."

Meanwhile, Ms Grimmie's publicist said: "It is with a heavy heart that we can confirm that Christina has passed and went home to be with the Lord."

Image copyrightTWITTER

Police say Ms Grimmie was shot about 22:45 local time on Friday (02:45 GMT Saturday) at The Plaza Live in Orlando.

The gunman opened fire as she was signing autographs for fans with Before You Exit band.

The attacker, whose name has not been released, had two guns.

Orlando Police Department spokeswoman Wanda Miglio said Grimmie's brother "immediately tackled the suspect".

"During the struggle, the suspect shot himself. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene," the spokeswoman said.

She described Ms Grimmie's brother as a "hero" for stopping the attacker "from not hurting anyone else".

A police investigation is now under way into how the suspect had managed to enter the venue with the firearms.

News of the attack spread quickly on social media, with many fans voicing their shock and anger.

Ms Grimmie first came to prominence as a teenager for her renditions of hit songs, amassing a huge following on YouTube.

In 2011, she released her debut musical recording Find Me. Her second EP - Side A - followed in February 2016.

In her last tweet on Friday, she wrote:

Image copyrightTWITTER

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Euro 2016: France kick off tournament amid security, strike and weather fears

Euro 2016
Host: France Dates: 10 June to 10 July
Coverage: Live commentary on BBC TV, BBC Radio, the BBC Sport website and app. Live text commentary on every game on BBC Sport website.

Euro 2016 kicks off on Friday when hosts France face Group A opponents Romania at the Stade de France amid an unprecedented security operation.

France remains under a state of emergency after last November's attacks on Paris, when 130 people were killed.

More than 90,000 police, soldiers and private guards will be deployed at the tournament, with seven million fans expected to visit the 10 host venues.

The US and British governments have both warned fans they could be at risk.

But organisers Uefa and French authorities insist they have done everything possible to keep the 2.5 million spectators expected at the 51 matches safe.

• Beleaguered France needs a successful Euros
• Euro 2016: All you need to know
• Predict the result of every match
• Fear, faith and football - can the beautiful game unite France?
• Groups and tournament schedule

Paris alone will have a security force of at least 13,000 to patrol two zones and two stadiums, with the country's state of emergency allowing police extra powers to conduct searches and put people under house arrest.

France coach Didier Deschamps, whose side were playing Germany in an international friendly when the Stade de France was targeted by suicide bombers, says November's attacks evoked "very strong emotions".

"We lived through some tragic moments," he said. "So it will remain with us, even if with time we can think about it a little less.

"Today to have zero risk doesn't exist, sadly, but we have to go forward and these Euros have to be a festival of football and the festival has to be as beautiful as possible."

Richard Walton, the Metropolitan Police's former head of counter-terrorism, said the threat to Euro 2016 is "more acute than for any other international sporting event in history".

With a reported 500,000 British fans among the seven million supporters in France, the British Foreign Office has warned that stadiums, fan zones and transport hubs are possible targets for attack.

Two English football fans were arrested after police used tear gas to disperse a brawl outside a pub in Marseille shortly before midnight on Thursday.

Police said one of the fans was arrested for assaulting a barman and the other for violent disorder, with one England supporter suffering a head injury after being hit across the face with a wooden chair.

England manager Roy Hodgson said: "My message to the fans is simple. We really appreciate your support. It has been fantastic during my time. We hope they will come and support us as they always do, enjoy the tournament, enjoy watching us and avoid any troubles that might be lurking around the corner."

England goalkeeper Joe Hart says players will adhere to the advice of security officials at the 24-team championship.

"We're a team of footballers, but we're a group," he said. "We work together with the security and press officers. Everyone's got their various jobs and I'm very confident on everyone completing them."

France's junior minister for sports, Thierry Braillard, said official fan zones are the only outdoor public spaces where screens will be installed, with bar and restaurant owners told not to host large outdoor TV broadcasts.

He added: "We can't accept unorganised gatherings because police forces don't have the means to secure them."

Paris is one of 10 host venues, with games also taking place in Bordeaux, Lens, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Saint-Denis, Saint-Etienne and Toulouse.

Jean-Christophe Bouvier, defence secretary for the Lille region, says 200 security staff will be inside the city's fan zone, with 3,400 police and military forces working each day and hundreds extra on call if needed.

President of the Lille region, Damien Castelain, said: "It's a very secure place in the fan zone.

"It's easier to secure one place like this one than have people going to several places where it would have been impossible to make people safe."

Mat Bastard, Lille's Euro 2016 ambassador, added: "If France win, it'll be so, so good, but my first victory is everything is well and everyone has fun."

The Euro 2016 draw
Group A	Group B	Group C
France	England	Germany
Romania	Russia	Ukraine
Albania	Wales	Poland
Switzerland	Slovakia	Northern Ireland
Group D	Group E	Group F
Spain	Belgium	Portugal
Czech Republic	Italy	Iceland
Turkey	Republic of Ireland	Austria
Croatia	Sweden	Hungary

Alongside the terror threat, French authorities have also been forced to deal with extreme weather conditions and protests over labour law reforms.

Strikes in Paris could cause problems for supporters heading to the 80,000-capacity national stadium on Friday.

The national SNCF rail company said that one of the two main overland train lines linking the Stade de France in the capital's northern suburbs to the city centre had two-thirds of its services wiped out because of strikes on Thursday, while six out of 10 were not running on the other.

The company is working on a fallback plan, while an underground Metro line to the stadium will have extra trains running.

President Francois Hollande said he would take "all necessary measures" to make sure transport strikes, due to roll into a 10th day on Friday, would not disrupt the tournament.

"Rest assured that public services will be provided and that the state will assume its full responsibilities," he said.

Strikes are planned from Saturday on the national air carrier, Air France, while piles of rubbish have also gone uncollected.

France captain Hugo Lloris said: "I hope it won't spoil the party because we have to show a great image of our country."

France's opener against Romania should avoid the bad weather that saw the River Seine burst its banks and rise to its highest level in more than 30 years.

England and Wales begin their campaigns further south on Saturday are also expected to avoid the worst of the thunderstorms.

Uefa says all 24 teams are in France, with Portugal - travelling in a plane bearing the name of legendary striker Eusebio - the last to arrive on Thursday.

Spain are hoping for a third successive title, but Germany are world champions and France were winners when they hosted the tournament in 1984.

Current national coach Deschamps captained Les Bleus to World Cup glory on home soil in 1998.

England are eyeing a first success at the ninth attempt, while Wales, Northern Ireland, Albania, Iceland and Slovakia all make their championship debut.

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Udta Punjab, Nihalani, Nehru and the case for less censorship in a democracy

What has escaped attention during the boiling outrage over Udta Punjab is the bizarre state of film censorship in India.

To take recent examples, Quentin Tarantino's mystery thriller The Hateful Eight (2015) which featured Samuel L Jackson and Kurt Russell, was randomly hacked by Pahlaj Nihalani-led CBFC ostensibly because of its "gory scenes and violence against women."

Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt at a publicity appearance for the film 'Udta Punjab'. Image by Sachin Gokhale/Firstpost

Curiously, while some cuss words like "bitch" and "whore" were beeped out, the character Daisy (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) getting punched in the face a dozen times was allowed to pass. Perhaps those weren't violent enough. 'Penis' made it through but allusions like 'pecker' and 'johnson' didn't. Details of the censor certificate are here.

If that isn't bizarre enough, consider that in the same day thatThe Hateful Eight was released, Oscar contender The Danish Girl came out with zero cuts or blurs even though it depicted a minute-long scene with full frontal nudity.

Tom Hooper's 2015 British-American romantic drama got Alicia Vikander an Oscar for 'best performance by an actress in a supporting role' and it featured copious scenes of nudity, transsexuality and kissing which were allowed to pass with just an 'A' certificate. Why? Apparently because Nihalani thought the filmmakers "didn't go overboard with nudity."

Remember, he is the same man who clipped James Bond's kiss by "20 seconds" in Spectre because, to quote him, it was akin to "doing sex in your house with door open. And show to people the way you are doing sex."

But it will be unfair to pick on Nihalani even though the CBFC chairman has shown a repeated penchant for making himself a butt of ridicule.

The issue, as multiple national award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal had pointed out in an interview to Firstpost: "the tragedy of censorship in our country is that often, personal biases and prejudices come in the way of evaluating films for the Indian audience… The gulf between the urban and non-urban, the metropolitan and non-metropolitan audience…the guidelines of the censor board are too rigid to be applied to this diverse audience."

Benegal, who heads the government-appointed revamp panel of CBFC, watched Abhishek Chaubey-directed Udta Punjab on Wednesday and found it to be a “laudable effort”.

“It’s a well-made film. It brings to attention a very serious problem, that of drug use among young people, which can, if we are not careful, become a rampant problem. It’s a laudable effort... But people are misreading the film,” he said. “They are under the impression that it is anti-Punjab. I don’t think the film is anti-Punjab at all,” he was quoted, as saying by news agency IANS.

This raises a bigger debate over the need, at all, for having censorship in films and Union Information and Broadcasting minister seemed to be hinting at a more liberalised norm and radical changes soon.

Speaking at the CNN News18 Indian of the Year Award show on Thursday, Arun Jaitley said: "You will probably have a system where you will have to have a certificate. The correct word is certification and not censorship. Certification norms will have to be liberal.

The Benegal committee, he said, has suggested some changes. "There is a well documented report by Shyam Benegal, the first part of which has come to me which is under consideration. Over the next few days, we are going to announce some very radical changes in that," he said.

The idea of censorship in film, books or works or art stems from an inherent hypocrisy in a democracy based on a Constitution that promises liberty of thought and expression.

The problem, of course, started with India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, whose government in its first 14 years amended the Constitution 17 times. The First Amendment — carried out within 18 months — added restrictions on freedom of expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a), to suppress extremist publications for public order.

A Time magazine report of 28 May 1951, reproduced by R Vaidyanathan in Firstpost here, said “Part of the Indian press, said (Nehru), is dirty, indulges in ‘vulgarity, indecency and falsehood.’ To teach it manners, Nehru proposed an amendment to India’s constitution that would impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech and expression."

Once that Rubicon was crossed, there was no stopping anyone from misusing the law or to use censorship as a political tool as it has been in Udta Punjab's case.

If it is spurious, the government can and should ban a packet of mustard oil, else consuming it may make us sick. But a movie isn't a packet of oil or a bar of soap. It is an idea. And it is decidedly stupid to ban ideas because they cannot be banned in the first place.

It is preposterous to think — as the CBFC has done repeatedly in the past — that by muting or beeping out expletives anyone can be prevented from being exposed to it. Apart from the fact that there is no empirical data to show a correlation between a violent movie and a murder or a sexually explicit movie and a rape, the fact is that Internet has made it absolutely impossible for any idea to be censored.

But there is a larger debate still. Why should we let anyone, including the government, decide what is good or bad for us? This is a personal choice, a guaranteed right (albeit qualified). Why should we let any agency usurp that right?

Apart from the fact that artistic freedom and creative expression are as precious as audience's right to make informed choices, censorship in a democracy impacts the very basis of a free society — the principle that each and every individual has the right to decide what art or entertainment he or she wants — or does not want — to receive or create.

When a government censors a movie or bans a book or work of art, it sends out a message that if the contents were to be exposed to public, that would either be morally corrupting or result in some grave physical damage. This is an exceedingly problematic position.

There is zero evidence to show that a movie or a work of art induces someone to carry out a murder, rape or other crimes. On morality, if we suppress material based on the actions of unstable people, no films, work of fiction, or art would be safe from censorship. Psychopaths, for instance, justify their acts of violence while citing the Bible.

Studies on the relationship between violence in media (used in its wider sense) and in real life have proved inconclusive. In fact, there is no statistical correlation between the two phenomena. Many human behaviouralists believe, for instance, that violence and sexually explicit art and entertainment have a useful and constructive societal role, serving as a vicarious outlet for individual aggression.

Also, where does one draw the line the sand? What one may find offensive may not be so to me. What gives one the right, then, to prevent me from consuming it? However, while I may not be stopped, one may very well choose not to consume it. So an absence of censorship actually makes for a freer society where we are guided by choice, not compulsion.

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Woman from Kolkata abducted in Kabul; officials trying to secure early release

Late on Thursday, a 40-year-old Indian woman, hailing from Kolkata, was abducted in Afghanistan's Kabul, reports said. According to a report by CNN-News 18, the woman was identified as Judith D'Souza and the report added that she was working as a senior technical advisor for an NGO Aga Khan Development Network.

"She was abducted around 10:40 pm on Thursday from the Taimani area of Kabul," CNN-News18 reported.

However, NewsX report said that the abduction took place close to Qala-e-Fatullah, an area of Kabul where many such incidents have taken place in the past. No group has come forward to claim responsibility for the abduction yet.

The Indian authorities are in touch with the Afghan government and are trying to secure an early release of the woman. The authorities also got in touch with the Judith's family. Government sources claimed that all efforts are being made to ensure safe and early release of the woman.

"Our Embassy is in touch with senior Afghan authorities and the government is in touch with her family in Kolkata too. All efforts are being made by Afghan authorities to secure her early release", Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials were reported saying.

Given the volatile situation and a spate in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, in May this year the Indian Embassy had alerted Indians living in the country to be careful. The notice was also issued for those travelling to Afghanistan.

"All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue. There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage taking throughout the Afghanistan,” the statement had said.

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