California shooting suspect kills himself after Lunar New Year massacre

MONTEREY PARK, California — A gunman killed 10 people at a ballroom dance hall during a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration late on Saturday near Los Angeles before fleeing the scene and later killing himself when approached by police on Sunday, authorities said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a Sunday afternoon press conference the motive for the shooting was not known. He identified the suspect as Huu Can Tran, 72, who wielded a pistol with a high-capacity magazine.

“We want to know, we want to know how something this awful can happen,” Luna told reporters.

Luna said Tran turned a handgun on himself on Sunday morning as police approached a white van he was driving in Torrance, about 20 miles (34 km) from the site of the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park.

Five of the victims were male and five were female, Luna said. Their identities have not been made public. Another ten people were shot, and seven of them remain hospitalized, with at least one person in critical condition, authorities said.

The sheriff’s department released images of the suspect apparently taken from surveillance camera footage showing him wearing spectacles, dressed in a dark jacket and a dark beanie hat with white stripe.

Luna confirmed that Tran was involved in another incident at a dance venue in the neighboring city of Alhambra about 20 minutes after the Saturday night shooting in Monterey Park. At the second venue, witnesses said Tran walked in holding a gun that patrons were able to grab. No one was shot and Tran fled, Luna said.

When police arrived at the Monterey Park ballroom, people were “pouring out of the location screaming,” department captain Andrew Meyer told reporters at a news briefing.

The shooting took place after 10 p.m. PST (0600 GMT on Sunday) around the location of a two-day Chinese Lunar New Year celebration where many downtown streets are closed for festivities that draw thousands of people from across Southern California. Police said the celebrations planned for Sunday were canceled.

A close-knit community

Residents stood gazing at the many blocks sealed off with police tape on Sunday in Monterey Park. Chester Chong, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, described the city of about 60,000 people as a quiet, peaceful, beautiful place where everybody knows each other and helps each other.

About 7 miles (11 km) from downtown Los Angeles, the city has for decades been a destination for immigrants from China. Around 65% of its residents are Asian, according to U.S. Census data, and the city is known for its many Chinese restaurants and groceries.

“People were calling me last night, they were scared this was a hate crime,” Chong said at the scene.

The Star Ballroom Dance Studio opened in 1990, and its website features many photographs of past Lunar New Year celebrations showing patrons smiling and dancing in party clothes in its large, brightly lit ballroom.

Most of its patrons are middle-aged or elderly, though children also attend youth dance classes, according to a teacher at the studio who asked to not be named.

“Those are normal working people,” the teacher said. “Some are retired and just looking for an exercise or social interaction.”

A flyer posted on the website advertised Saturday night’s new year party, running from 7:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

The gunshots were mistaken by some for new year fireworks, according to Tiffany Chiu, 30, who was celebrating at her parents’ home near the ballroom.

“A lot of older people live here, it’s usually really quiet,” she said. “This is not something you expect here.”

Video taken by local news media showed injured people, many of them appearing to be middle aged, being loaded into ambulances on stretchers.

President Joe Biden condemned the killings in a written statement and said he had directed his Homeland Security adviser to mobilize federal support to local authorities.

Mass shootings are recurrent in the United States, and the attack in Monterey Park was the deadliest since May 2022, when a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas. The deadliest shooting in California history was in 1984 when a gunman killed 21 people at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, near San Diego.

-reuters

Asian markets gain as China closes down for Lunar New Year

BANGKOK — Shares were mostly higher in quiet trading on Friday in Asia as China began a week-long Lunar New Year festival that is being overshadowed by the outbreak of a new virus that has killed 25 people and sickened more than 800.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose less than 0.1% to 23,811.54 and in Hong Kong the Hang Seng gained 0.2% to 27,949.64.


Australia’s S&P ASX/200 picked up 0.2% to 7,100.30 and the Sensex in India also rose 0.2%, to 41,473.97.

Markets were closed in Shanghai and the rest of mainland China, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan.

As authorities confirmed more cases of the new virus first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, investors continued to monitor developments in the international effort to keep it from spreading further and potentially harming the global economy.

The World Health Organization decided Thursday against declaring the outbreak a global emergency for now.

Such a declaration could increase resources for battling the outbreak but also result in trade and travel restrictions and other economic damage.

Fears that the coronavirus could spread have weighed on global markets this week, driving up demand for U.S. government bonds and safe-play stocks.

Market “traders are weighing the anticipated China growth fallout against the backdrop of the current global growth recovery. While the calculus is not coming up roses, it’s far from a state of global market panic,” Stephen Innes of AxiCorp said in a commentary.

“Still, if risk aversion starts to spread beyond China’s borders and starts to affect more than the usual suspect’s luxury, travel, and tourism, then we will likely see a more significant dive in the broader global indices,” he said.

Major U.S. stock indexes closed mostly higher Thursday, as gains in technology and industrial companies offset declines elsewhere in the market.


The S&P 500 notched a small gain for the second straight day, climbing 0.1% to 3,325.54, while a modest pickup nudged the Nasdaq composite to an all-time high of 9,402.48, up 0.2%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% lower to 29,160.09, its third straight day of losses as the benchmark was weighed down by a steep drop in shares of Travelers Cos.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks rose less than 0.1%, to 1,685.01.

Traders also had their eye on a mixed batch of company earnings reports, including encouraging quarterly results from American Airlines and Citrix Systems, and disappointing report cards from Travelers and Raymond James Financial.

“Today was driven a bit by earnings, but also by the coronavirus fears,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief strategist with TD Ameritrade. “Asian markets had a really tough night and that was our lead-in, that put a bit of extra pressure on the market coming in.”
Excluding the Nasdaq, the major U.S. stock indexes are on track to end the week with a loss.

Bond prices rose, pulling the yield on the 10-year Treasury lower to 1.73% from 1.77% late Wednesday.

Benchmark crude oil gained 14 cents to $55.73 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell $1.15 to settle at $55.59 a barrel on Thursday. Brent crude oil, the international standard, picked up 18 cents to $62.22 per barrel. It dropped $1.17 to close at $62.04 a barrel overnight.

Gold fell back, losing $4.30 to $1,561.10. Silver shed 3 cents to $17.80 per ounce and copper fell 4 cents to $2.73 per pound.
The dollar rose to 109.52 Japanese yen from 109.49 yen on Thursday. The euro weakened to $1.1053 from $1.1056.

source: business.inquirer.net

American lobster: the new Chinese New Year delicacy

PORTLAND, Maine — Now on the menu in Beijing for Chinese New Year: lots and lots of American lobster.

Exports of U.S. lobster to China have rocketed in the past few years, largely to satisfy the appetites of the communist country’s growing middle class, to whom a steamed, whole crustacean — flown in live from the United States — is not just a festive delicacy and a good-luck symbol but also a mark of prosperity.

And that’s good news for Maine, far and away the No. 1 lobster state in the United States. The lobster boom has put more money in the pockets of lobstermen and kept shippers and processors busy during the usually slack midwinter months.

For Stephanie Nadeau, owner of The Lobster Co., a wholesaler in Arundel, Maine, the demand has meant 14-hour nights spent stuffing wriggling lobsters into crates so they can reach China in time for the Lunar New Year, which falls on Thursday. She said she sends 100,000 pounds a week to China this time of year.

“There’s lot of orders, lots of demand right now — it is a race to get them there for Chinese New Year,” Nadeau said.

On the other side of the world, every morning at 9, the Auspicious Garden restaurant in Beijing receives 800 lobsters that have just crossed the Pacific aboard a cargo plane. In the evening, hundreds of diners fill the two-story restaurant in the gigantic Pangu Seven Stars Hotel for a nearly $80 all-you-can-eat buffet with New England lobster as the main attraction.

Xu Daqiang, a 35-year-old businessman on a romantic date with his girlfriend, said food-safety concerns in China make him choose expensive high-class restaurants where he can find imported seafood.

Cao Lijun, a 24-year-old Shanghai resident celebrating her friend’s birthday, alluded to lobster’s reputed aphrodisiac properties with a laugh: “How to say it? It makes my husband healthier. Really, this is what we say, because it is high in proteins.”

Lobsters and other foods seen as luxuries are popular at Lunar New Year and other festive occasions. The bright red of a cooked lobster is considered lucky, as it resembles a dragon.

China also imports lobsters from Canada, Australia, South Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, but the market for the U.S. variety is exploding, with the demand strong year-round, not just at New Year’s.

American exports of live or processed lobster to China climbed from $2.1 million in 2009 to $90.5 million in 2014, federal statistics show. China took about 12 percent of U.S. lobster exports in 2014, up from 0.6 percent in 2009.

For the Chinese, the preferred way of enjoying lobster is to cook it in plain water and then dip the pieces in soy sauce and wasabi. Another popular way is to braise it with green bean vermicelli noodles in garlic sauce, said Lv Hui, the cook in charge of the daily buffet at the Auspicious Garden.


Wang Kang, a marketing manager at Zhangzidao Group, a seafood distributor and processor in Shanghai, attributed lobster’s popularity in China to rising incomes.

“That naturally means that people are buying more foreign luxury goods,” Wang said.

New England lobstermen have been recording epic catches in recent years. Maine, which accounts for more 80 percent of all U.S. lobster, hauled in more than 250 million pounds in 2012-13, the highest two-year total in the record books, which go back to the 1800s.

Chinese New Year is on the verge of becoming Maine’s second-biggest lobster shipping week of the year, behind Christmas week, according to industry officials.

Lobsterman Gerry Cushman of Port Clyde said the year-round demand from China has helped drive prices up, and he is using the extra money to build a new boat.

But so far, Cushman said, the surge has not driven large numbers of Maine fishermen to go out in the middle of winter, a punishingly cold and wet time of year in the Atlantic when lobsters head out into deeper, more dangerous waters.

Maine’s small number of winter lobstermen, Cushman said, consists of “stragglers who are stupid like me, or who have kids.”

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net