Waving US flags, thousands flooded to the White House in spontaneous celebrations early yesterday after the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as the surprise news was welcomed by Americans across the country.
Chanting “USA, USA” and punching the air, they began singing The Star-Spangled Banner national anthem even before bin Laden’s killing was confirmed by US President Barack Obama.
“We found him. He killed 3,000 people. It’s justice,” said 19-year-old student Jon Garcia, explaining he had come to the White House “to be a part of it. It’s very historic.”
Photo: EPA
“It’s a historic day for America, we have been looking for him for 10 years. It’s justice for families,” added Anna Howell, a 27-year-old teacher.
Online, Twitter users flooded the service hailing the news, with more than 4,000 Tweets per second recorded during Obama’s televised address confirming bin Laden’s death, the social networking site said.
US Muslim group the Council on American-Islamic Relations hailed the news.
“We join our fellow citizens in welcoming the announcement that Osama bin Laden has been -eliminated as a threat to our nation and the world,” the Washington-based group said in a statement.
In New York, where about 3,000 people died when al-Qaeda hijackers crashed two commercial airliners into the Twin Towers, tourists and New Yorkers descended on Times Square as well as at Ground Zero.
“Obama got Osama,” they chanted, in celebrations that started shortly before midnight and continued through into the early hours.
“It’s a miracle,” New Yorker Monica King said.
“The attacks changed New York and now 10 years later we had our last word,” she added, saying: “Now we want to celebrate.”
Even the New York Police Department, usually low key, parked a car in the middle of Times Square and started talking to people, laughing and posing for photographs.
New York City leaders were barely more diplomatic in their reaction to the demise of bin Laden.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called the death of bin Laden a “welcome milestone” for the families of the victims.
“New Yorkers have waited nearly 10 years for this news,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Streets around Ground Zero — quickly filled with thousands of people waving flags and singing the national anthem.
Some climbed up lamp posts and traffic signs in Church Street and others that had filled with toxic dust in 2001, trying to get a view over the barrier surrounding the massive construction site where the towers once stood.
Zeshan Hamdani, whose brother Mohammad died rescuing victims in the towers, also found relief in the death of bin Laden.
“I am happy but I feel like crying. It’s great to finally get this guy,” he said.
Across the country in Los Angeles, where the news was confirmed shortly before 9pm, a roar of applause could be heard from bars with TV screens on the Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.
“I’m really happy that this guy is dead because he killed so many people around the world. I’m glad that our nation is safe because of this,” said Cesar Guellory, 25, at the Cabo Cantina bar.
Carol Morrinson, 35, said she had voted for Obama.
“He’s showing us how strong he can be ... Today we can say that we are safe. I’m proud of the United States,” she said.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
RSS