Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, (D), facing multiple child sex-abuse allegations dating to the 1970s, will resign tomorrow, saying the damaging claims have become a distraction that threatens to undermine the city government's ability to serve it citizens. The announcement by Murray's spokesman, William Lemke, came just hours after the Seattle Times reported new allegations that Murray, 62, sexually abused a relative in the mid-'70s. That relative, a cousin, was the fifth man to publicly accuse the Mayor of sexual assault, the newspaper reported. Murray continues to deny the accusations, saying his progressive political record and gay-rights advocacy made him a target for those determined to drag him down.
A patient was shot to death inside an intensive care unit by her son, leading to a lockdown at New Hampshire's largest hospital, US authorities said. No one else was injured. Authorities said Travis Frank, 49, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was arrested and will be charged with murder. The victim was Frank's 70-year-old mother, Pamela Ferriere, of Groton, New Hampshire. No possible motive for the shooting was released.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her controversial refugee policy in a live television appearance, telling an audience member: "Open your heart for those who are much worse off than you". It was Merkel's most robust defence yet of her 2015 decision to open the country's borders to more than a million asylum seekers. "No one in Germany is any worse off because of the refugees," she said. The Chancellor was challenged during a live television question-and-answer session by an audience member who demanded to know what she planned to do about "infiltration" by asylum seekers. The Assad regime forces soldiers to kill their own countrymen, and Syrians have a right to asylum under the Geneva refugee convention, said Merkel. She said she had opened Germany to asylum seekers in 2015 because of a "humanitarian emergency". She added: "I do not know if you know any Syrians personally, but I know many, and they want to integrate, want to learn". Germany votes on September 24.
Here's my long-read on Angela Merkel, her governing style and her role in the world: https://t.co/oLQHmcfxQ1
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) September 7, 2017
A top American military commander has declassified 81 locations of unexploded bombs dropped by the US-led coalition in the battle to oust Isis (Islamic State) militants from the Iraqi city of Mosul. And officials are considering similar disclosures for other areas, in a rare step to help aid groups and contractors clear explosives from war-ravaged Iraqi cities. Lieutenant-General Stephen Townsend, in a newly released memo, said he was providing a list of geographic co-ordinates "for the sake of public safety". The list, he said, includes the type of munition and the latitude and longitude of the expected location, "so that duly authorised experts may more easily locate, render safe, and dispose of possible coalition unexploded ordnance".
