Tougher gun laws could leave hundreds more dead in Texas shooting: Trump

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday rejected the need for a debate on tougher laws regarding possession of arms and said more restrictions might have left hundreds more dead in the Texas church shooting.

Trump - referring to a Sutherland Springs (Texas) resident who, with his own gun, confronted the attacker -- said if he didn't have the gun and had he not shot at the shooter, the number of victims could have been in the hundreds.

A total of 26 people were killed and some 20 wounded on Sunday during a service at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs after a man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle.

"If he didn't have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead, so that's the way I feel about it," the US President said here while replying to questions about gun control in the wake of the worst mass shooting in Texas history.

He said the city with the strongest gun laws was Chicago and that it was "a disaster", Efe news reported.

The US President, who is on a state visit to South Korea, held a joint press conference alongside his counterpart Moon Jae-in, where he again defended his stance over arms.

Trump had said a day earlier in Tokyo that the shooting occurred due to a mental health problem at the highest level and not because of arms.

The church suspect was identified as Devin Kelley, a 26-year-old former service member, who was expelled from the Air Force for misconduct and who committed suicide after being shot by a resident, Stephen Willeford.
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Body of Sherin Mathews released by US officials, no confirmation to whom

The body of 3-year-old Indian born Sherin Mathews who disappeared from her Indian-American foster parents home in Richardson has been released by the Dallas County medical examiner's office, though it declined to say to whom.

Sherin, who went missing on October 7 from her suburban Dallas home, was found dead in a culvert on October 22.

The missing child has become an international point of discussion and has raised several questions on the process of adoption.

Sherin was adopted last year by the Indian-American couple, Wesley Mathews and Sini Mathews.

Wesley Mathews was re-arrested after he changed his story about Sherin's disappearance from their home. He had earlier claimed that she went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 am as punishment for not drinking her milk.

On Monday, Wesley voluntarily told the police that Sherin choked on milk and died in the family's garage before he removed her body from the home.

Police are still investigating how Sherin died and how long her body had been in the drainage ditch located nearly 1 km from her home.
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She had no eating problems: Orphanage owner on Texas girl Sherin Mathews

The owner of a now-closed orphanage in India where a young girl was living before a Texas couple adopted her last year says the child had no difficulty eating despite her adoptive father's account to police when reporting her missing.

The body of 3-year-old Sherin Mathews was found on Sunday in suburban Dallas in a culvert under a road about a half-mile from her parents' home. Police and volunteers had been searching for the girl since Oct 7.

Investigators have said that her father, Wesley Mathews, initially told them he had sent the girl outside at 3 am on Oct 7 to stand near a tree across the alley from the family's fence because she refused to drink her milk. He said he went to check on her after about 15 minutes.

Mathews told police the girl had been malnourished when she was adopted and needed to eat whenever she was awake to help her gain weight. But orphanage owner Babitha Kumari told television station WFAA the girl had no problems and that Wesley and Sini Mathews appeared loving when they were going through the adoption process.

"The child had no problem at all when she was here, neither in drinking milk or eating," Kumari said.

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Puerto Rico's bankruptcy will make hurricane recovery brutal - here's why

The United States had already seen its share of disasters, from back-to-back hurricanes that devastated Texas, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands to roaring wildfires in the West.

Then, after battering the rest of the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria left the island of Puerto Rico facing a humanitarian crisis. About a dozen people died in the Sept. 21 storm and the island was plunged into darkness.

Now, some 3.4 million Puerto Ricans – which is to say, 3.4 million American citizens – are confronting life without electricity, gas, cellular service and, in many cases, a home.

After a decade of fiscal decline and a May 2017 bankruptcy, Puerto Rico has become exceptionally vulnerable to disasters like Maria. As both a policy analyst and the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, I’m concerned about how austerity-related reforms are now threatening the survival of not just my family there but everyone on the island.

Though food insecurity, poor health care and resource-starved public transit all predate the hurricane, the result of both damaging U.S. policy and deepening financial crisis, these three problems will dramatically complicate Puerto Rico’s recovery.
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