Homicides fell sharply in many leading US cities last year, plummeting by as much as 20 percent, official data showed on Wednesday.
The US’ biggest metropolises, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, which witnessed sky-high murder rates in the 1990s, saw a continuation of the downward trend of recent years.
NEW YORK
New York recorded 333 homicides through Sunday last week, according to city figures, 84 fewer than one year earlier.
There were also significantly fewer homicides in Los Angeles, the second-largest US city, with a 17 percent decline last year.
US President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago, the US’ third-biggest city in population, also had a notable drop in murders.
CHICAGO’S STRUGGLES
Chicago had been struggling to stem an epidemic of homicides, after gang violence pushed the murder toll there to 501 in 2012.
Crime reports through Dec. 27 showed 407 homicides, a nearly 20 percent drop.
However, Washington was an exception to the national trend with 17 percent more murders committed last year than in 2012.
STATISTICAL ANOMALY
Officials in the US capital explained that the rise was in part a statistical anomaly, since the previous year, 2012, registered an unusually low 88 killings.
They also pointed to the murderous rampage by a gunman at Washington’s Navy Yard who killed 12 people in September — a single act of violence which they said skewed the city’s annual homicide figures.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS