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Gun attack at tourist site shakes Mexico weeks ahead of World Cup

Kraig Pakulski 0 29 Article rating: No rating

By Michael Rios, CNN

(CNN) — Footage of a gunman shooting at panicked tourists lying atop Mexico’s historic Pyramid of the Moon has renewed concerns about security in the country as it prepares to co-host millions of soccer fans for the World Cup this summer.

At least one person, a Canadian woman, was killed in the Monday attack in Mexico’s Teotihuacán archeological zone, a major tourist hotspot 30 miles north of Mexico City. Five soccer matches are expected to be played in the capital city when the global tournament kicks off in July.

Seven other foreign nationals – including two Americans – were wounded by gunshots, and another six foreigners suffered varying injuries during the chaos.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has insisted her country is safe for tourists and said authorities will reinforce security to prevent another shooting of this kind.

But the attack may have dealt a blow to the Mexican government’s assertions that the country is a safe place to visit, coming months after widespread attacks by criminal groups in response to a drug lord’s killing.

Here’s what we know about the attack, the shooter and Mexico’s security response.

A premeditated attack

Authorities received the first report of the attack around 11:20 a.m. local time, indicating that an armed man was threatening civilians at the archeological site, according to Cristóbal Castañeda Camarillo, secretary of security for the State of Mexico.

Videos from the scene showed the gunman pacing atop the Pyramid of the Moon, where a crowd of tourists lay on the floor next to him.

After members of the National Guard arrived around 11:30 a.m., the attacker fired shots in their direction, Castañeda Camarillo said. The guardsmen returned fire, wounding the shooter in the leg before he took his life.

The shooter was identified as 27-year-old Mexican citizen Julio César Jasso Ramírez, who acted alone and had no ties to criminal groups or drug cartels, which are usually behind Mexico’s most violent attacks.

Officials said the attack appeared to be premediated, with the gunman visiting the archaeological zone several times, staying in nearby hotels before the deadly incident.

“Based on the investigative steps taken, it appears this act was not spontaneous. The attacker planned and carried out his action alone,” José Luis Cervantes Martínez, the attorney general of the State of Mexico, told a press conference.

Attacks of this kind are rare in Mexico, said Sheinbaum on Tuesday. “We have never witnessed anything like this in Mexico before; it is the first time such an event has occurred.”

She said the attacker showed signs of “psychological issues and was influenced by incidents that had taken place abroad.”

The incident also occurred on the 27th anniversary of the Columbine attack, in which two students at a Colorado high school carried out a mass shooting, killing 14 people.

While Sheinbaum didn’t specify if she was referring to the Columbine massacre, Cervantes Martínez noted that the attacker was carrying a backpack containing handwritten notes related to violent events that occurred in the United States in April 1999.

‘World Cup security is guaranteed’

Mexico has successfully hosted big events, including a recent Shakira concert in March attended by 400,000 people.

But those successes have been clouded by days of violence unleashed following the February killing of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the head of the Jalisco New Genera

$12.5 billion ‘down payment’ brings air traffic control out of 1990s. Now, more money is needed for new software and AI

Kraig Pakulski 0 30 Article rating: No rating
Paper flight strips are seen during a news briefing at the Department of Transportation on April 21.

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

Washington (CNN) — The Department of Transportation is eliminating antiquated paper strips, copper communications wiring and computer floppy discs, but it says more money is needed to keep upgrading the decades-old air traffic control system, and integrate new technologies like artificial intelligence and software to streamline US flights.

At a news conference at the DOT headquarters on Tuesday, the agency showed the progress it has made in almost a year since it announced plans to build a new air traffic control system.

Congress allocated $12.5 billion in President Donald Trump’s spending bill – which the administration calls a “down payment” – but there’s still more to be done, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

“We are going to need more money for the software side of this build,” Duffy told a room full of reporters and officials. “(Congress is) going to have to find a pathway to get us the rest of that money. It’s going to take us time to develop it, deploy it, debug it, train on it.”

The decades-old system has been under scrutiny by lawmakers, aviation officials and the public after a series of crashes and other high-profile incidents, spotlighting the stress controllers are under.

A fatal collision last month killed two pilots when their Air Canada regional jet hit a fire truck on a runway while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The cause of that crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Last year, 67 people were killed when a military helicopter collided with a plane landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The NTSB found in that accident the controllers had “degraded performance due to the high workload.”

What that $12.5 billion bought

Since the approval of Trump’s spending bill, almost 50% of all copper wires in the air traffic control system have been replaced, approximately 270 radio sites were converted and 17 towers started using electronic flight strips, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Over 4,500 FAA sites are also receiving new radars, digital voice switches and training simulators.

“We were given $12.5 billion, but the $12.5 billion, the Congress was very specific on how we had to use it,” Duffy said.

The company Peraton was awarded a contract to upgrade the system and is focusing on four areas: wires, communication, radars and electronic flight strips.

Copper wiring, which was used for communications for decades, is one of the first things being replaced.

In May, a new fiberoptic cable went online between Philadelphia and New York to improve telecommunications at the air traffic control facility that handles flights arriving and departing Newark Liberty International Airport, after a series of outages last year led to major delays.

“We fixed Newark, and we are fixing the rest of the country and replacing the old, outdated copper with high-speed fiber, wireless and satellites,” said Rebecca Guy, acting chief technology officer at the FAA. “Thi

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