RIO DE JANEIRO, June 22 (Reuters) – Construction on a mansion belonging to Brazilian soccer player Neymar Jr was halted on Thursday due to environmental violations, officials said on Thursday, adding that the high-profile athlete could face a fine of at least $1 million.
The residence is located in the coastal town of Mangaratiba on the south coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
The luxury project violated rules regarding use and movement of fresh water sources, rock and sand, the local government said in a statement.
If the violations are proved, Neymar Jr could be forced to pay at least 5 million reais ($1.05 million) in fines, according to the statement.
Officials said that during their visit to the property to stop construction, the athlete’s father, Neymar da Silva Santos, insulted them. He was subsequently threatened with arrest but was ultimately not detained.
A Neymar family spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.
($1 = 4.7729 reais)
Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Writing by Peter Frontini and Carolina Pulice
Editing by Shri Navaratnam
June 13 (Reuters) – Former 100 metres world champion Tori Bowie died from complications during childbirth, U.S. media reported.
The American, who won gold, silver and bronze medals at the Rio Games in 2016 and was crowned world champion a year later, died on May 3 at the age of 32.
An autopsy report from the Orange County (Florida) Medical Examiner’s Office obtained by USA TODAY Sports said Bowie was approximately eight months pregnant and experiencing labour when she died.
Possible complications included respiratory distress and eclampsia, a rare condition which can cause seizures.
The medical examiner ruled Bowie’s death was natural.
Bowie’s agent Kimberly Holland told CBS News the news would end the “hurtful” speculation about the cause of death.
“Unfortunately so many people, including the media, are making speculations that she did something to herself, which is very hurtful,” she said.
“So hopefully, now knowing the truth, there will be many apologies.”
KATHMANDU, May 14 (Reuters) – A Nepali sherpa guide climbed Mount Everest for the 26th time on Sunday, hiking officials said, becoming the world’s second person to achieve the feat.
Pasang Dawa Sherpa, 46, stood atop the 8,849-m (29,032-ft) peak, sharing the record number of summits with Kami Rita Sherpa, said Bigyan Koirala, a government tourism official.
Kami Rita, who is also climbing on Everest now, could set another record if he makes it to the top.
Pasang Dawa reached the top with a Hungarian client, said an official of his employer Imagine Nepal Treks, a hiking company.
“They are descending from the top now and are in good shape,” the official, Dawa Futi Sherpa, told Reuters.
Sherpas, who mostly use their first names, are known for their climbing skills and make a living mainly by guiding foreign clients in the mountains.
Dawa Futi said a Pakistani woman, Naila Kiani, who also climbed the peak on Sunday, was the first foreign climber to summit Everest in this year’s climbing season, which runs from March to May.
This could not be independently confirmed as many foreign climbers are now headed for the peak, a day after the ropes to the top were fixed.
Kiani, a 37-year-old banker based in Dubai, had climbed four of the world’s 14 highest mountains before Everest, the Himalayan Times newspaper said.
Nepal has issued a record of 467 permits this year for foreign climbers seeking to reach the summit of Everest.
Each climber is usually accompanied by at least one sherpa guide, fuelling fears that a narrow section below the summit, known as the Hillary Step, could get crowded.
Everest has been climbed more than 11,000 times since it was first scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, with about 320 people dying in the effort, according to a Himalayan database and Nepali officials.
Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
ATLANTA, May 3 (Reuters) – Police have arrested a former U.S. Coast Guardsman suspected of killing one person and wounding four, all of them women, in a shooting on Wednesday at a medical building in Atlanta, then carjacking a vehicle to flee the scene, authorities said.
The suspected gunman, identified as Deion Patterson, 24, was taken into custody without incident after an undercover officer spotted him north of the city in suburban Cobb County several hours after the 12:30 p.m. shooting at the Northside Medical facility, police said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an emailed statement that the woman killed was one of its employees, but did not identify her. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper identified the slain woman as Amy St. Pierre, citing her husband Julian St. Pierre.
The motive for the shooting, and whether the suspect knew or targeted any of his victims, had yet to be determined, police said.
“We know that he had an appointment at the facility, but why he did what he did, all of that is under investigation,” Atlanta’s deputy police chief of criminal investigations, Charles Hampton, said at a news briefing after the arrest.
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told an earlier press conference that it was too early in the investigation to determine if the five women who were shot were patients or employees.
The woman who died was 39. The four wounded women ranged in age from 25 to 71, media reported. Three of them were in critical condition and underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, officials said. The fourth was treated at the hospital’s emergency room.
Schierbaum described them as “fighting for their lives.”
[1/5] Deion Patterson, who Atlanta Police describe as the suspect in a lunchtime mass shooting at a medical building, poses in an undated photograph. Atlanta Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
Hampton said the gunman opened fire with a pistol and was only inside the medical center for about two minutes, then fled on foot and headed to a nearby gasoline station, where he commandeered a pickup truck that had been left running unattended and drove away.
At one point during the hunt, police searched a building under construction that the suspect had entered near Battery Atlanta, a commercial complex being developed adjacent to Truist Park stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Cobb County Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer told reporters. But that search came up empty-handed, he said.
The suspect’s apparent proximity to the Battery “was a concern to us because many people would be at that location,” the chief said.
Police analyzed a barrage of surveillance camera images and telephone tips from the public on sightings to ultimately narrow down the suspect’s location, VanHoozer said.
The gunman arrived at the medical center with his mother, Schierbaum said, but she was not injured. Police said she and other family members were cooperating with investigators.
Little was immediately known about the suspect’s background.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Patterson joined the force in July 2018 and was discharged from active duty in January, after having last served as an electrician’s mate second class. No reason for his discharge was given.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens decried the shooting as the latest act of carnage in what has become “a national epidemic of gun violence” turning schools, workplaces, churches and doctors’ offices into potential killing zones.
He said active-shooter drills have become so common that a business in the area of Cobb County where Patterson was arrested happened to be conducting such an exercise as police closed in on the suspect nearby.
Reporting by Rich McKay and Tyler Clifford; Editing by Doina Chiacu
COPENHAGEN, March 24 (Reuters) – Air force commanders from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark said on Friday they have signed a letter of intent to create a unified Nordic air defence aimed at countering the rising threat from Russia.
The intention is to be able to operate jointly based on already known ways of operating under NATO, according to statements by the four countries’ armed forces.
The move to integrate the air forces was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, commander of the Danish air force, Major General Jan Dam, told Reuters.
“Our combined fleet can be compared to a large European country,” Dam said.
Norway has 57 F-16 fighter jets and 37 F-35 fighter jets with 15 more of the latter on order. Finland has 62 F/A-18 Hornet jets and 64 F-35s on order, while Denmark has 58 F-16s and 27 F-35s on order. Sweden has more than 90 Gripens jets.
It was unclear how many of those planes were operational.
The signing at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany last week was attended by NATO Air Command chief General James Hecker, who also oversees the U.S. Air Force in the region.
Sweden and Finland applied to join the trans-Atlantic military alliance last year. But the process has been held up by Turkey, which along with Hungary has yet to ratify the memberships.
The Nordic air force commanders first discussed the closer cooperation at a meeting in November in Sweden.
“We would like to see if we can integrate our airspace surveillance more, so we can use radar data from each other’s surveillance systems and use them collectively,” Dam said. “We are not doing that today.”
Reporting by Johannes Birkebaek and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; additional reporting by Terje Solsvik, Niklas Pollard and Anne Kauranen; Editing by Nick Macfie
LAKE SILS, Switzerland, March 14 (Reuters) – David Vencl emerged from the depths of Switzerland’s Lake Sils on Tuesday after a record dive beneath the ice to a depth of more than 50 meters without a wetsuit.
The 40-year-old Czech diver’s record vertical plunge to 52.1 meters in a single breath follows his entry into the Guinness World Records book for swimming the length of a frozen Czech lake in 2021.
Vencl dived through a hole in the ice then retrieved a sticker from a depth of 50 meters to prove his feat before re-emerging through the same hole. He spat some blood, sat down for a minute and then opened a bottle of champagne. A later visit to the hospital confirmed there was nothing serious.
[1/3] Czech freediver David Vencl dives to 52 metres under the ice of Lake Sils in one breath and wearing only a swimsuit in this picture taken from a video in Sils near St. Moritz, Switzerland March 14, 2023. David Vencl Organisation/Handout via REUTERS
The Swiss plunge in temperatures of between 1 and 4 degrees Celsius took him 1 minute 54 seconds, his promoter Pavel Kalous said, which was a bit slower than expected.
“He kind of enjoyed it but he admits he was a little more nervous than usual and he had some problems with breathing,” he told Reuters.
“There is nothing difficult for him to be in cold water… Lack of oxygen is something normal for him. But this was completely different because it’s really difficult to work with the pressure in your ears in cold water,” he added.
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“If you combine all these three things: cold water, lack of oxygen and the problem with working with pressure, it’s something very unique,” he added.
Reporting by Denis Balibouse in Lake Sils, Switzerland
Writing by Emma Farge
Editing by Matthew Lewis
BUCHAREST, Feb 2 (Reuters) – The woman from Moldova thought it was love. Internet celebrity Andrew Tate had offered her a new life. They’d even discussed marriage. He asked for only one thing: absolute loyalty.
“You must understand that once you are mine, you will be mine forever,” Tate told her on Feb. 4 last year in one of dozens of WhatsApp messages cited by Romanian prosecutors who allege he trafficked and sexually exploited several women.
Tate, an influencer with millions of online followers, urged the Moldovan woman to join him in Romania. “Nothing bad will happen,” he reassured her on Feb. 9. “But you have to be on my side.”
The following month, Romanian prosecutors say, Tate raped the woman twice in the country while seeking to enlist her in a human-trafficking operation focused on making pornography for the online platform OnlyFans, a site that allows people to sell explicit videos of themselves.
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The allegations and messages are included in a previously unpublished court document, dated Dec. 30 and reviewed by Reuters, which paints the most detailed picture yet of the illicit business allegedly run by Tate, a former kickboxing world champion, and his brother Tristan.
They came to light following the arrest of the brothers on Dec. 29 on charges of forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
British-American Andrew Tate, 36, who’s been based mainly in Romania since 2017, and his 34-year-old brother have denied all the allegations against them. Reuters was unable to reach them in police detention for comment.
In response to questions, their attorney Eugen Vidineac said he couldn’t publicly confirm or deny information about the case while the investigation was ongoing. Romania’s anti-organized crime unit also said its prosecutors couldn’t comment on the probe.
Reuters translated the WhatsApp exchanges with the Moldovan women – which appear in Romanian in the court document – back into English, their original language. While accurate, the translation of the Romanian version provided by prosecutors may not be identical to the initial wording.
The brothers used deception and intimidation to bring six women under their control and “transform them into slaves”, prosecutors said in the document. The 61-page file, produced by Bucharest court officials, comprises minutes of a hearing when a judge extended the Tates’ detention plus evidence submitted by the prosecution.
Attorney Vidineac said the brothers’ alleged victims weren’t mistreated, but “lived off the backs of the famous Tates”, according to the court document. “They were joyful and nobody was forcing them to do these things,” he added.
Vidineac acknowledged in the document that Andrew Tate and the Moldovan woman had sex but he said it was consensual and accused her of fabricating the rape claims.
Reuters couldn’t independently corroborate the version of events provided by prosecutors or the defence lawyer, and was unable to reach the six women named in the document for comment. The news organization does not typically identify alleged victims of sexual crimes unless they have chosen to release their names.
Two of the women told Romanian TV station Antena3 on Jan. 11 that they’re not victims and the Tates are innocent. The station identified them only by first names, Beatrice and Iasmina.
“You cannot list me as a victim if I say I am not one,” Beatrice told the station. The four other women, including the Moldovan woman, haven’t publicly commented.
ONLYFANS: WE’VE MONITORED TATE
The allegations facing Tate have put intense focus on a self-described misogynist who has built an online fanbase, particularly among young men, by promoting a lavish, hyper-macho image of driving fast cars and dating beautiful women.
In 2022, he was the world’s eighth-most Googled person, outranked only by figures such as Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Vladimir Putin, according to Google’s analysis.
Prosecutors say the Tates controlled the victims’ OnlyFans’ accounts and earnings amounting to tens of thousands of euros, underlining concerns among some human rights groups about the potential for the exploitation of women on such platforms.
Reuters couldn’t verify the existence of the alleged victims’ OnlyFans accounts.
UK-based OnlyFans has 150 million users who pay “creators” monthly fees of varying amounts for their content, much of it erotic or pornographic, but also in areas such as fitness training and music.
The company, whose 1.5 million creators can earn anything from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands a month, says on its website it’s “the safest digital media platform”. It was founded in 2016 and grew rapidly during COVID-19 lockdowns.
An OnlyFans spokesperson told Reuters that Andrew Tate “has never had” a creator account or received payments. They said OnlyFans had been monitoring him since early 2022 and taken “proactive measures” to stop him posting or monetizing content, without elaborating on the reasons for the scrutiny or the steps taken.
The spokesperson added that creators as a whole underwent extensive identification checks and that all content was reviewed by the platform, which worked closely with law enforcement. Vidineac declined to comment about the measures taken by OnlyFans against Tate.
HOW I GET WOMEN TO LOVE ME
Andrew Tate’s image has been stoked by a series of contentious comments. He’s compared women to dogs and said they bear some responsibility for being raped. His remarks got him banned from Facebook, Instagram and other leading social media platforms last year.
A spokesperson for Meta said Tate was banned in August 2022 from its Facebook and Instagram platforms for violating its policies, which forbid “gender-based hate, any threats of sexual violence, or threats to share non-consensual intimate imagery”.
Tate said on a podcast in 2021 that he had started a webcam business in Britain that had peaked with 75 women working for him earning $600,000 a month – a sum Reuters was unable to independently verify. He didn’t elaborate in the podcast on what the women did.
Up until last month, his website offered a course costing more than $400 that promised to teach “every step to building a girl who is submissive, loyal and in love with you”.
“THAT IS MY SKILL. To extremely efficiently get women in love with me,” he said on the website. The pages about the course, reviewed by Reuters, were removed in January.
In a separate YouTube video aimed at men who want to make money by putting women on OnlyFans, Tate called the platform “the greatest hustle in the world”. The original date of the video, which was uploaded multiple times, is unclear.
In the court document, lawyer Vidineac said Tate’s online persona was a “virtual character” constructed to gain followers and make money, and had “nothing to do with the real man”.
Tate’s Twitter account, reinstated in November, one month after billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform, protests his innocence to his 4.8 million followers. “They have arrested me to ‘look’ for evidence … which they will not find because it doesn’t exist,” said a Jan. 15 post.
AMERICAN WOMAN ‘VERY AFRAID’
Tate first met the Moldovan woman virtually on Instagram in January 2022 before they met in person in London the following month, and by March she was in Romania, prosecutors said in the court document, which includes WhatsApp exchanges between Feb. 4 and Apr. 8.
Authorities moved on the brothers on Apr. 11, when police raided one of their properties in Bucharest on suspicion that an American woman was being held there against her will.
According to prosecutors, the American woman – another of the alleged six victims – met Tristan Tate online in November 2021, then in person in Miami the following month. They said he lured her to Romania by expressing “false feelings” for her and promising a serious relationship, paid for her plane ticket and said he could help her earn “100K a month” on OnlyFans.
Tristan Tate picked her up at Bucharest airport in a Rolls-Royce on April 5 2022, and took her back to his house, which had two armed guards, the court document said.
He told her she wasn’t a prisoner but said the guards wouldn’t let her outside without his permission, it added. He said it was dangerous for her to leave “because he had enemies”.
There were cameras all over the house, which Tristan Tate monitored remotely, prosecutors said in the document. He once messaged the American to say he could see where she was and what she was doing, they said.
When she moved to another house with four of Andrew Tate’s “girlfriends” she was allowed outside but only if accompanied by other women, said the prosecutors, adding that she was “very afraid” of the brothers.
In the document, Tate’s lawyer said the American woman had a mobile phone, internet access and the freedom to leave the house as she pleased.
The woman has not spoken publicly about the Tates or the prosecutors’ allegations.
Romanian prosecutors said on Jan. 15 that as part of their probe into the suspects they had seized assets worth almost $4 million, including a fleet of luxury cars from Andrew Tate’s compound on the outskirts of Bucharest.
‘SEXUALLY EXPLOITATIVE CONTENT’
The detention of the Tates, along with two Romanian women accused of working for them, has been extended to Feb. 27. Their appeal against that detention was rejected by a court on Wednesday. A judge can order their detention for up to 180 days while the investigation is ongoing, which means it could stretch into late June.
The suspected accomplices, Georgiana Naghel and Luana Radu, controlled the six victims’ OnlyFans and TikTok accounts on behalf of the Tates, skimming off half the revenue and fining women for being late or sniffling on camera, said prosecutors.
The pair threatened to beat the women up if they did not do their job, according to the court document.
Naghel and Radu have denied all the allegations against them. Vidineac, who also represents Naghel, and Radu’s lawyer said they couldn’t comment on the case.
The Tates’ operation put women on TikTok to drive traffic to OnlyFans because of its lucrative subscriptions, prosecutors said. Reuters couldn’t independently verify the existence of the TikTok accounts in question.
TikTok said in a statement that Andrew Tate was banned from its platform, and that it had been taking action against videos and accounts related to him that violated its prohibition against “sexually exploitative content”.
The company declined to comment further, citing Romania’s ongoing investigation.
Reporting by Luiza Ilie, Octav Ganea and Andrew R.C. Marshall. Editing by Jason Szep and Pravin Char
MAKIIVKA, Ukraine, Jan 3 (Reuters) – A Ukrainian missile strike on Jan. 1 against a vocational school in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine housing mobilised Russian troops has become one of the bloodiest incidents of Russia’s nearly year-long war in Ukraine.
What do we know, and what do we not know, about what happened?
WHAT HAPPENED
The strike on Professional Technical School No. 19 in Makiivka, a twin city to the regional capital of Donetsk which has been controlled by Russian proxy forces since 2014, occurred at 0001 on New Year’s Day, Daniil Bezsonov, a Russian-installed Donetsk official, said.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine struck with six U.S.-made HIMARS rockets.
The governor of Russia’s Samara region said that many of the dead soldiers were locals.
Unconfirmed footage circulated on social media purportedly shows residents watching Russian President Vladimir Putin’s midnight address before running for cover as missiles strike the ground nearby.
Reuters photographs from the scene show the ruined remains of the school.
LOSSES
Reports of casualties vary. Reuters was unable to independently verify how many people were killed.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday that 63 soldiers had been killed in the strike, an assessment echoed by a source close to Donetsk’s Russia-installed separatist leadership, who told Reuters that dozens had died.
The ministry acknowledged the attack only in the final paragraph of a 528-word daily roundup, more than 36 hours after the attack took place.
Russia has consistently underplayed its casualty figures, including claiming that only one man died during the sinking of the battleship Moskva in April.
Ukraine has claimed a far higher casualty figure, saying that around 400 died. A number of Russian military bloggers, who have gained large followings through mixing pro-Kremlin advocacy with unvarnished information on the state of the front, have also given casualty figures closer to the Ukrainian number.
In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Igor Girkin, a former FSB officer instrumental in starting the initial 2014 war in the Donbas, said that there were “many hundreds” of killed and injured.
Girkin said that ammunition and military equipment had been stored in the buildings, contributing to the strength of the blast. He blamed Russia’s “untrainable” generals for the losses.
Grey Zone, a Telegram channel linked to the Wagner mercenary outfit, said that around 500 men were billeted in the complex.
In footage circulated on social media and geolocated by Reuters, the vocational school, a large complex of Soviet-era buildings, appears virtually razed as emergency service workers sift through rubble.
OUTCRY
Coming at the climax of the new year’s celebrations, the most important holiday of the year in Russia, the attack has resonated within Russia.
A report by state-owned news agency TASS, citing Donetsk officials, saying that Ukrainian forces were able to identify the target from soldiers using their Russian mobile phones has provoked anger among Russia’s military blogger community.
“As expected, the blame for what happened in Makiivka began to be blamed on the mobilised soldiers themselves. You see, they turned on their phones and got spotted,” wrote Grey Zone, a Telegram channel linked to the Wagner Group mercenary outfit.
Grey Zone went on to blame commanders for lodging large numbers of soldiers in a building vulnerable to artillery fire.
In a post on Telegram, Sergei Mironov, leader of a Kremlin-loyal party in Russia’s parliament, said that an investigation was necessary to determine whether “treachery or criminal negligence” was behind the strike. He said that officials responsible should be prosecuted.
Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Macfie
This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine
MOSCOW, Jan 3 (Reuters) – A little known patriotic group which supports the widows of Russian soldiers has called on President Vladimir Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine.
Putin, Russia’s 70-year-old paramount leader, is under intense pressure to deliver victory in Ukraine more than 10 months since he sent troops as part of an operation he says was intended to defend Russians in eastern Ukraine.
“We ask our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to allow the Russian Army to carry out a large-scale mobilisation,” the Soldiers’ Widows of Russia group said in a post on Telegram.
“We ask our President, our Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to prohibit the departure of men of military age from Russia. And we have a full moral right to do this: our husbands died protecting these men, but who will protect us if they run away?”
After ordering what he cast as a “partial mobilisation” on Sept. 21, Russia’s first since World War Two, around 300,000 additional men were drafted, though several hundred thousand more Russian men fled abroad to avoid being called up.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appeal from the widows’ group. Putin said last month that there was no need for an additional mobilisation.
A representative of the widows’ group told Reuters that all fit Russian men should be mobilised to defend the Motherland.
“The coming war will require completely different resources: human, psychological, economic,” she told Reuters. “Protecting the Motherland is a duty.”
GEOPOLITICAL SHOWDOWN
Putin has for months been casting the war as part of a much wider historical struggle between Russia and the West which the Kremlin chief says wants to carve up and destroy Russia.
Western powers deny they aim to destroy Russia.
In a grim New Year’s Eve message, Putin said that defending the Motherland was the sacred duty of all Russians and promised victory in Ukraine.
Ukraine and the West say Putin has no justification for what they cast as an imperial-style war of occupation.
The widows group began work about two months ago to assist the wives of soldiers killed in Ukraine and has contacts with the Kremlin administration, its representative said.
“We are in constant contact with the presidential administration, and if necessary, we transmit requests to it in order to receive this or that support,” the representative said.
Invoking Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the group said that now was the time for tough measures to defend against the evil forces coalescing around Russia’s borders.
“Today, all the world’s evil has united against Russia – the entire Western world has turned against us,” the group said. “It’s either us or them, there is no other choice.”
Stalin in 1942 issued Order No. 227 which became known as the “Not a step back” order. It was an attempt to establish discipline within the Red Army though thousands of Soviet troops were shot by their own side for alleged cowardice.
Stalin “did not think about ratings or dissatisfaction among dissidents: he thought only of victory,” the group said. “Now is not the time to be cowardly.”
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge;
Editing by Andrew Cawthorne
RABAT, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Morocco’s national airline said it was cancelling all flights it had scheduled for Wednesday to carry fans to Doha for the World Cup semi-final, citing what it said was a decision by Qatari authorities.
“Following the latest restrictions imposed by the Qatari authorities, Royal Air Maroc regrets to inform customers of the cancellation of their flights operated by Qatar Airways,” the airline said in an emailed statement.
The Qatari government’s international media office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Royal Air Maroc had previously said it would lay on 30 additional flights to help fans get to Qatar for Wednesday night’s semi-final game against France but on Tuesday a source at a RAM travel agency said only 14 flights had been scheduled.
The cancellation of Wednesday’s seven scheduled flights means RAM was only able to fly the seven flights on Tuesday, leaving fans who had already booked match tickets or hotel rooms unable to travel.
RAM said it would reimburse air tickets and apologised to customers.
The RAM spokesperson did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment. Qatar Airways did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi; Additional reporting by Andrew Mills; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Andrew Heavens
Nov 14 (Reuters) – A suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three members of the University of Virginia football team dead was in custody on Monday, hours after he allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.
University police said during a news conference that the suspect, student Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, was arrested hours after the shooting that unfolded at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday (0330 GMT on Monday) at the school in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended by 25,000 students.
Minutes after the shooting, school officials issued alerts on social media telling students and staff to shelter in place with one tweet saying to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.” The sprawling campus remained on alert throughout the night and morning as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.
University President Jim Ryan identified the slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.
Chandler and Perry died on the scene, while Davis died of his wounds at a hospital. Two other students were wounded and taken to UVA Medical Center, where one is in good condition and another in critical condition, University Police Chief Tim Longo said.
The shooting unfolded on a bus full of students after it pulled into a parking garage on campus, Ryan said. The students had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C.
Jones was armed with a handgun, Longo said.
Jones, who was apprehended off campus, was held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said. It was unclear how he was taken into custody.
[1/6] A handout picture shows college football player Lavel Davis Jr. who was killed in a shooting attack at the University of Virginia, in this undated handout. University of Virginia/Handout via REUTERS
‘HEARTBROKEN’
Jones, who was listed as a player on the school’s football team in 2018, came to the attention of the University of Virginia’s threat assessment team in the fall of 2022, according to Longo. In September 2022, the Office of Student Affairs reported to the team that it received information Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person that was unaffiliated with the university, though no threat was made.
During an investigation, the person said they never saw the gun, and Jones’ roommate reported that he never saw the presence of a weapon.
The investigation was later closed because the witnesses would not participate with the process, he said.
Ryan said in a letter posted on social media hours after the shooting that he was “heartbroken,” and added that classes were canceled for the day.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” he wrote.
The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses. The bloodshed has fueled debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.
A 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Charlottesville, left 33 people dead, including the shooter, and 23 injured in one of the deadliest college mass shootings in U.S. history.
(This story has been corrected to add Davis’ name in fifth paragraph)
Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis
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