Three people were shot Tuesday at the Silicon Valley headquarters of YouTube when a woman opened fire before turning the gun on herself. The violence broke out just after noon in a courtyard outside YouTube’s main building in the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno. Police have identified the shooter as 39 year old Nasim Najafi Aghdam.
Aghdam was a frequent uploader to YouTube who’d had videos banned from the streaming service for “multiple or severe violations” of its policy. Beginning in 2010, she posted more than 500 videos, a total of 17 hours about fitness, veganism and animal rights. About a year ago she started expressing her anger with YouTube’s censorship. “My new videos hardly get views … so this is because I’m being filtered,” Aghdam said in one video.
In one online video, Aghdam accused YouTube of censoring her and depriving her of income from advertising. The woman’s grievances against YouTube appear to focus on censorship and revenue. “There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!” one post reads. “Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” Another post accuses “close-minded” YouTube employees of putting an age restriction on videos, saying it’s aimed at reducing views and discouraging the woman from making new videos.
On April 2, 2018, Aghdam was reported missing by her family. On April 3rd at 1:40 AM, police officers found her sleeping in her car in a Walmart parking lot in Mountain View, 25 miles south of YouTube’s headquarters. After speaking with her for 20 minutes they did not identify her as a threat or have any reason to detain her. They notified her family that she had been found.
Later that morning Aghdam practiced shooting her legally purchased 9 MM Smith & Wesson at a gun range in San Bruno. She then parked near YouTube headquarters and entered the campus on foot. After walking through a parking garage into a courtyard she opened fire with a handgun, wounding three people before killing herself. Police say she had no connection to her victims her motive was apparently a grievance with YouTube’s practices and policies. Two of her victims have been released from the hospital and one was listed in serious condition.
More than 1,100 people work at the YouTube campus in San Bruno, south of San Francisco. Employees there include engineers for the site and sales teams that work with advertisers and content creators. The company said Wednesday it will increase security at its headquarters and offices around the world.
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During the trial of Noor Salman, widow of the Pulse Nightclub shooter, testimony has revealed that the father of shooter Omar Mateen had worked as an FBI informant. Seddique Mateen, Omar’s father, was a confidential FBI informant from 2005 to 2016. He is now under investigation for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan.
FBI Special Agent Juvenal Martin, who was on the stand in the terrorism trial of Noor Salman, said Omar’s father, Seddique, was upset and had called him while his son was being investigated for the extremist comments in 2006. Martin testified that, during the call which took place a decade before the Pulse attack, Seddique told him something like “if he had done those things he was being stupid.” Martin said the FBI interviewed Omar two other times as part of that investigation, but eventually determined he wasn’t a security threat. The bureau even considered turning Omar into a confidential informant himself, according to Martin’s testimony.
The trial produced several revelations about the shooting. Prosecutors said Mateen originally intended to attack Disney World, using a gun concealed in a baby stroller, but changed his mind after seeing police at the entertainment complex. Government witnesses, using data from Mateen’s cell phone, said he looked up information about Orlando nightclubs and went back and forth between two of them before setting on Pulse as his target.
Omar Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman, was found not guilty of all charges against her in the only trial to stem from the deadly June 2016 shooting rampage. She was accused of helping her husband plan his terror assault on the Orlando, Florida, nightclub and of falsely denying her role afterward. The government equated Mateen’s actions with supporting terrorism, because he repeatedly pledged allegiance to ISIS before and during the attack, which left 49 people dead and 53 injured.
Salman was charged with aiding him in providing material support to a terror group. She was also charged with obstruction of justice, accused of misleading police and FBI agents by making contradictory statements about whether she knew what he was planning. In opening statements, defense attorney Linda Moreno said Salman was a person with a low IQ who did not know “she would wake up a widow, and Omar Mateen a martyr for a cause that she didn’t support.”
In a November 2016 interview with The New York Times, Salman apologized for her husband’s act and claimed she was unaware of his plan. “I don’t condone what he has done,” she told the newspaper. “I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.” FBI agents arrested Salman in January 2017 inside the California home she shares with her young son and she had been in custody since then.
Outside the courtroom, a spokesman for Salman’s family said “The family really wants to first say that we’re very sorry for the family members and friends of the 49 victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and also the survivors of that horrible attack.” “Noor can go home now to her son, Zack, resume her life and try to pick up the pieces.”
The June 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre was the deadliest single gunman mass shooting in United States history until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It is the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history and the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since the September 11 attacks of 2001.
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Investigators searching for a potential motive for Austin Bomber Mark Anthony Conditt’s actions are no closer to answering the question of why he carried out a nearly three-week-long bombing spree that left two people dead. Conditt blew himself up inside his SUV early Wednesday, shortly after a SWAT team performed a tactical maneuver to force him to stop the SUV.
Conditt went to a FedEx store south of Austin on Sunday and made the mistake of parking within view of a surveillance camera that captured the vehicle’s license plates on his red SUV. Surveillance photos from the mail delivery office showed Conditt wearing a baseball cap, blond wig and pink gloves as he brought two packages to the store. Investigators used cellphone technology to track him down on Wednesday and to confirm that he had been to all of the bombing locations.
The early morning confrontation started after his SUV was located in a parking lot of a hotel in Round Rock. As plainclothes officers and unmarked vehicles descended on the area while a ballistics and SWAT team were enroute. The officers then followed Conditt as he pulled out of the parking lot and onto Interstate 35 where he ultimately detonated a bomb as officers approached his vehicle.
Investigators say they are no closer to understanding a motive and are relying on Mark Anthony Conditt’s own words from a 25-minute recording he made hours before he was confronted by the SWAT team. In the cellphone recording, Conditt, 23, refers to himself as a “psychopath” and showed no remorse for carrying out the deadly bombings and spreading fear across the city. Federal agents searched Conditt’s home in Pflugerville for almost two days, removing explosive materials and looking for clues that could point to a reason for the bombings. Two of Conditt’s roommates were detained and questioned by police. One of them was released hours after Conditt’s death and the other was released the next afternoon, police said. Neither was arrested or publicly identified.
Investigators found components for making similar bombs to the ones that exploded in the past few weeks, but no finished bombs were found, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A law enforcement source said the devices that exploded in Austin and near San Antonio were pipe bombs with batteries and smokeless powder and were constructed with materials found in a hardware or sporting goods store. The bombs had distinctive shrapnel inside with some using “mousetrap” switches and others using “clothespin” switches. Chief Brian Manley of the Austin Police Department said that Mr. Conditt had made a 25-minute recording in which he discussed the bombs and how he had made them. The recording, Chief Manley said, was “the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point.”
According to friends and neighbors, Conditt was an intense, socially awkward loner, who was the oldest child in a tight-knit, devout Christian family that held Bible study groups in their home. Conditt was unemployed and had no criminal history. He had worked for a local manufacturer, Crux Manufacturing, for about four years until he was fired this past August after he failed to meet job expectations, according to a statement from the company.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said the city’s “collective fear and anxiety” was growing as the bomber carried out the string of attacks. “There was feeling that there was not much that we could do. There was a collective helplessness, our community was beginning to fray,” Adler said at a City Council meeting. He added that it appeared that Mr. Conditt had acted alone, but authorities had not definitively ruled out whether he had any accomplices.
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French police officer Arnaud Beltrame has died from his injuries after he offered to exchange himself for one of the female hostages being held inside the Super U supermarket in Trèbes. The violence unfolded Friday morning when the attacker, identified as Radouane Lakdim, stole a car, killing the passenger and gravely wounding the driver. Lakdim then drove towards military and police barracks where he shot at four National Police officers who were jogging before trying to run them down. One of the officers was wounded.
The gunman proceeded to the Super U market armed with a gun, knife and explosives. He began shooting as he walked inside shouting that he was a soldier from Isis. Two people were killed and several others wounded. Christian Medves, 50, a butcher in charge of the meat counter was shot first and Hervé Sosna, 65, a shopper was then killed while 16 others were wounded.
Around 50 terrified shoppers and staff managed to escape but several were taken as hostages. Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room. Police found the car, and SWAT teams surrounded the market, at around 11am, beginning the three hour standoff. “They managed to get some of the people out,” said Interior Minister Collomb, but the attacker kept one woman hostage to use as a human shield. Officer Arnaud Beltrame, offered to take the place of the woman. The lieutenant colonel had his phone on so police could hear his interactions with the gunman. Collomb said that at one point the National Police lieutenant colonel shot the gunman. After hearing shots, police stormed the supermarket where Lakdim had been left holding only Beltrame. Lakdim was killed and Officer Beltrame, who had been shot and stabbed, later died from his injuries.
Lakdim, 25, a small-time drug-dealer who had French nationality and was born in Morocco, left a handwritten letter at his home pledging allegiance to Isis. He was known to authorities for petty crimes, but had been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who is leading the investigation. One neighbour told a news reporter that the suspect was a pleasant young man who was “calm, friendly, and always had a nice word to say.” He reportedly lived in an apartment block with his parents and sisters, and would take the youngest child to school every day.
Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said that he believed Lakdim had acted alone and that the gunman also brought homemade explosives into the supermarket. Police continue to question a 17-year-old and Lakdim’s 18-year-old girlfriend. Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam – the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium, concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015. Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, went on trial in Belgium last month.
President Macron hailed the fallen officer as a hero saying of the officer. “He saved lives and honoured his colleagues and his country,”
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A gunman killed three women in a standoff at a Northern California military veterans home. The three victims—Jennifer Gonzales, 32; Christine Loeber, 48 and Jennifer Golick, 42; worked for a counseling program at the Pathway Home nonprofit, which helps military veterans overcome PTSD and transition back into civilian life. The shooter, 36-year-old Albert Wong of Sacramento, was a military veteran and former patient at the center who was kicked out of the program just days before the shooting spree, after he threatened its employees- including one of the women killed.
Records show Wong was in the Army reserves from October 1998 until December 2002 and served in active duty from May 2010 to August 2013. He was deployed to Afghanistan April 2011 to March 2012. He received several awards and medals, including an Army Commendation Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with two campaign stars, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and Expert Marksmanship Badge with Rifle before being honorably discharged.
According to law enforcement sources, Wong was armed with a rifle and a shotgun when he entered the room where a going-away party for some departing Pathway employees was taking place. According to sources, Wong entered the building and exchanged fire with a deputy. Witnesses say he calmly entered the room brandishing a rifle and let at least 4 employees leave-firing shots into the rest of the room as they left.
Napa County Sheriff John Robertson said dozens of law enforcement officers responded about 10:20 a.m. local time to a report of shots fired. Reports indicate that as many as 15 to 30 shots were fired before Wong took the hostages at the Veterans Home, on the second floor of The Pathway Home. Everyone at the Veterans Home was told to shelter in place and lock their doors, and the entire facility was placed on lockdown for hours.
Authorities say the gunman shot at police as they surrounded the building. SWAT, FBI, and ATF all responded to the incident, but no one was able to reach him during the standoff. The gunman and the three hostages were found deceased after a nearly seven-hour standoff. It’s not yet known what his motives were or if the victims were chosen at random. Jen Golick’s father-in-law, told news outlets that she had ordered Wong’s removal from the Pathway program two weeks prior to the shooting. She called her husband, Mark Golick, around 10:30 a.m. Pacific to let him know that she had been taken hostage. He never heard from her again.
The Veterans Home is one of the largest in the United States, housing at least 1,100 men and women. The Pathway Home, located on the Veterans Home grounds, operates an independent 35,000-square-foot center within the Yountville veterans’ home, has treated more than 400 veterans since 2008. Male veterans enrolled in the live-in program are mostly soldiers returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who have difficulty transitioning into civilian life. Many returning veterans have graduated from the program, including Adam Schumann, the subject of the book and film “Thank You For Your Service”.
In 2016, the program began transitioning from a group that focused primarily on housing and treating veterans with PTSD into a program with a wider mission, including helping vets with academic and career development. Loeber was the executive director of the Pathway Home and Golick was a staff psychologist and clinical director there. Gonzales was a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System. Yountville Mayor John Dunbar said he was not sure when or if the facility will reopen. Six people currently enrolled in the program will continue to receive care, he said.
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Authorities say six people have died after a 960-ton span of a pedestrian bridge collapsed on Thursday, onto a busy street below, killing six motorists under an avalanche of concrete and metal. At least nine others were injured in the collapse of the nearly 200-foot-long bridge, which was under construction near the campus of Florida International University. The bridge, which was still being installed at the time of the collapse, was built to connect Florida International University with downtown Sweetwater, where many students live. The bridge was not scheduled to open until 2019.
Senator Marco Rubio said suspension cables on the bridge “were being tightened when it collapsed.” Police are enlisting the help of engineers as they investigate the cause of the collapse. The National Transportation Safety Board, Miami-Dade homicide detectives and prosecutors are focusing on the government agencies and two contractors — Munilla Construction Management, which was building the structure, and FIGG Bridge Group, which engineered and designed the span.
A lead engineer with the private contractor FIGG Bridge Engineers -who constructed the bridge, left a voice mail for a state transportation official warning of “some cracking observed on the north end of the span” two days before the structure collapsed. In the message, which was not retrieved until Friday, the engineer said he did not consider the crack a safety issue. The Florida Department of Transportation official to whom the voice mail was directed was out of the office on assignment. Footage of the collapse, taken from a vehicle dashcam, suggests the concrete came apart on the north end — the same area that the bridge’s design engineer spoke about in the message.
On Thursday, shortly before the bridge collapsed, a meeting was held regarding the crack that appeared on the structure. The university said that the meeting was convened by FIGG and Munilla Construction Management (MCM), which built the bridge. “The FIGG engineer of record delivered a technical presentation regarding the crack and concluded that there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” the university said in a statement, adding that representatives of the school and the state Department of Transportation attended the session, which lasted two hours.
News outlets speculating over the cause of the collapse have focused on the cracks reported but experts say other factors, including the tensioning work going on at the bridge’s north end are of more concern. They say cracking in new concrete is not uncommon and not necessarily a sign of failure. Tightening of steel cables, or tendons, that run through concrete structural elements is a delicate operation, and over-tightening can cause concrete pieces to twist and break apart, experts say.
Rescue workers dug through the rubble nonstop for two days, pulling out crushed vehicles in search of victims. All six victims were identified by Saturday morning as Florida International University student Alexa Duran, 18; Brandon Brownfield, a tower crane technician, husband and father of three; Rolando Fraga Hernandez, 60, was a systems technician at ITG
Communications; Osvaldo González, 57 and Alberto Arias, 54. Navarro Brown, 37, an employee with Structural Technologies VSL, died at a hospital shortly after the accident. Two other employees of the company were hospitalized at Kendall Regional Medical Center in Miami in stable condition.
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The serial bomber, now identified as Mark Anthony Conditt, 23, killed himself with an explosive device as police were closing in on him. After a fifth explosion happened early Tuesday at a FedEx sorting facility near San Antonio, investigators used video surveillance images of a man dropping off two packages Sunday at a FedEx store south of Austin to identify Conditt. Another unexploded package bomb was discovered at another FedEx facility near Austin.
Officials say they tracked him to a hotel in Round Rock, about 20 miles north of Austin, after reportedly identifying him using receipts, internet searches, witness sketches and the surveillance video. Authorities were outside the hotel Wednesday morning when Conditt left the hotel. They followed him until he was forced into a ditch on the side of Interstate 35 where he detonated a bomb inside his vehicle, killing himself and injuring a SWAT officer. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said Conditt sensed that authorities were closing in on him on Tuesday night and recorded a 25-minute video confessing to building the explosive devices — but didn’t explain why he targeted his victims or a motive for his actions.
After the fourth explosion occurred over the weekend, authorities in Austin, Texas, warned the public that the series of package explosions are connected. None of the packages were mailed, instead they were placed near the individuals’ homes. They warned civilians to not open suspicious packages and to call the police. Over 500 agents from the FBI and ATF were assisting the Austin Police Department in the investigation.
The explosions started on March 2, 2018, when 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House was killed while opening an apparent package bomb at his home. On March 12th, two more explosions occurred within hours of one another at two separate residences. The first killed 17-year-old bassist Draylen Mason and injured his mother. The second explosion that day, severely injured a 75 year old woman. Authorities say those two bombs were triggered upon being picked up.
A third explosion on March 18th injured two men in a residential neighborhood. The two men, a 22 year old and 23 year old, suffered serious although not life-threatening injuries from an apparently tripwire-activated parcel bomb left on the side of the road. After the last explosion, authorities warned the public of a “serial bomber” possessing “a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill” than initially thought. Frederick Milanowski, special agent in charge for the ATF said that the bomb was anchored to a metal sign near a hiking trail and triggered by a wire as thin as fishing line that would’ve been incredibly difficult to see.
Authorities first offered a reward of $65,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the bomber or bombers but later raised the reward to $115,000. Police were looking at surveillance video in the neighborhoods in hopes of being able to identify a suspect. At a news conference, interim police Chief Brian Manley said the pair were walking on either the sidewalk or the median when the device was triggered by a trip wire. “That changes things,” he said, “Our safety message to this point has been involving the handling of packages, and telling this community, ‘Do not handle packages, do not pick up packages, do not disturb packages.” “We now need to have an extra level of vigilance and pay attention to any suspicious device, whether it be a package, a bag, a backpack — anything that looks out of place — and please do not approach it.”
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New tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were signed amid claims that the tariffs will hurt the manufacturing industry and U.S. competitiveness. The tariffs, which have sparked tensions with U.S. allies, will temporarily exclude Mexico and Canada. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the administration will initially exclude Mexico and Canada as long as the two countries sign a new version of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Officials from Canada and Mexico have said they will not be bullied into accepting a NAFTA deal that could disadvantage their countries.
The administration has stood by the controversial tariffs amid claims from other countries vowing to respond with levies of their own. The United States issued the tariffs under a little-used provision of trade law, which allows the president to take broad action to defend American national security. The Commerce Department previously determined that imports of metals posed a threat to national security. The US is the largest steel importer in the world, buying about 35 million tons in 2017.
The order could hit South Korea, China, Japan, Germany, Turkey and Brazil the hardest. The tariff orders were tailored to give the administration the authority to raise or lower levies on a country-by-country basis and add or take countries off the list as deemed appropriate. The White House has said any nation with a security relationship with the United States was welcome to discuss “alternative ways to address the threatened impairment of the national security caused by imports from that country.” Those talks could result in the tariff being lifted, the order said.
Trade experts say the new tariffs buck years of America’s embrace of free and open trade and believe the approach would ultimately compromise the United States’ ability to temper China’s unfair trading practices. “The tariff action coupled with the mishandled renegotiations of existing trade deals have alienated the very countries we need as allies to help confront the challenges posed by China,” said Daniel M. Price, a White House adviser.
Trade experts are worried about the consequences of the new tariffs. If the World Trade Organization rules against the United States, the administration will have to decide whether to reverse its decision or go up against the organization. If the United States ignores or withdraws from the group, it could precipitate a breakdown in global trading rules and a new era of global protectionism.
In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed steel tariffs of up to 30 percent. But facing an adverse ruling by the World Trade Organization and retaliation by trading partners, the tariffs were lifted 15 months before the end of the planned three-year duration. Studies found that more jobs were lost than saved and Congressional leaders vowed not to repeat the experiment.
Many fear that if customers refuse the price hikes as a result of the tariffs, major job losses in the US will follow. Many large steel customers ranging from automakers General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Campbell Soup Co. and brewer Molson Coors Brewing Co. are expected to lose, as tariffs will allow domestic steel producers to raise prices.
The U.S. steel industry employed about 147,000 people in 2015, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic analysis. Manufacturers that need steel employ about 6.5 million people each year and the construction industry employs about 6.3 million people.
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An investigation into internal New York City Police Department files show that hundreds of officers have been allowed to keep their jobs and pensions despite having committed an array of offenses. According to hundreds of pages of internal police files, offenses committed from 2011 to 2015 by over 300 NYPD officers include excessive force against civilians, driving under the influence of alcohol, selling drugs, sexually harassing fellow officers, assault, threatening and stealing.
At least fifty officers lied on official reports, under oath, or during an internal affairs investigation. Thirty-eight were found guilty by a police tribunal of excessive force, getting into a fight, or firing their gun unnecessarily. Fifty-seven were guilty of driving under the influence. Seventy-one were guilty of ticket-fixing. One officer threatened to kill someone while some were guilty of lesser offenses, like mouthing off to a supervisor.
In every instance, the police commissioner, who has final authority in disciplinary decisions, assigned these officers to “dismissal probation” which is a penalty with few consequences. The officer continues to do their job at their usual salary but they may get less overtime and won’t be promoted during that period, which usually lasts a year. They continue to patrol the streets, arrest people and testify in criminal prosecutions. When the year is over, their probation period ends.
The probation files covered in the investigation do not include all officers who received dismissal probation during the 2011 to 2015 period. According to the NYPD, of the more than 50,000 people who work for the department, at least 777 officers and an untold number of other employees received the dismissal probation penalty during the five years in question. During that same period, 463 additional officers were forced to leave or resigned while a disciplinary charge was pending. Sources have said that dismissal probation is also used to punish some officers for reporting misconduct or just for getting on their supervisors’ bad sides. Still, many officers continue to patrol the streets making over $100,000 a year while the city has paid millions of dollars in civil settlements for offenses committed between 2011 and 2015, such as excessive force or unlawful arrest. These settlements are reached without the department or officer admitting any wrongdoing.
New York is one of three states, along with Delaware and California that has a law specifically shielding police misconduct records from the public. As police departments around the country face growing pressure to be more transparent about police misconduct, NYPD has doubled down on its stringent legal interpretation of those laws. Civil Rights Law Section 50-a is the law that hides New York police officers’ misconduct from public view and it’s one of the strictest in the nation.
The Department Advocate’s Office determines which officers to charge and prosecute at the NYPD’s internal disciplinary trials. Kevin Richardson, the deputy commissioner said the law prevented him from commenting on specific officers’ cases but that dismissal probation serves a valuable purpose. “The department is not interested in terminating officers that don’t need to be terminated. We’re interested in keeping employees and making our employees obey the rules and do the right thing, but where there are failings that we realize this person should be separated from the department, this police commissioner and the prior police commissioner have shown a willingness to do that.”
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President Xi Jinping of China is set to rule the country indefinitely after Chinese lawmakers passed changes to the country’s constitution abolishing presidential term limits. The National People’s Congress voted 2,958 in favor of the amendment, two opposed and three abstained. Xi assumed leadership of China’s Communist Party in 2012 and has consolidated power to levels not seen since the era of Mao Zedong. The change in presidency now aligns with other posts Xi holds, as head of the Communist Party and head of the military, neither of which have term limits.
After becoming president in 2013, Mr Xi fought corruption, punishing more than a million party members. Critics say he has used the anti-corruption purge to sideline political rivals. At the same time, China has clamped down on many emerging freedoms, increasing its state surveillance and censorship programs which critics attain was a move to silence opposition.
The constitutional change officially allows him to remain in office after the end of his second term in 2023. Many believe that now that the constitution has been altered- that Xi Jinping intends to rule for the rest of his life unchallenged. There has been no national debate as to whether a leader should be allowed to stay on for as long as they choose.
The two-consecutive-term limit to China’s presidency was put in place by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1982 in order to avoid the kind of chaos and tumult that can sometimes happen when you have a single authoritarian leader, as China had with Mao Zedong. Among many campaigns launched by Zedong were “The Great Leap Forward” in 1957 that aimed to rapidly transform China’s economy from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. This campaign led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of more than 45 million Chinese people between 1958 and 1962. Zedong also initiated the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a program to remove “counter-revolutionary” elements of Chinese society that lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle and widespread destruction of cultural artifacts. It has officially been regarded as a “severe setback” for the Peoples Republic of China.
The National People’s Congress is also likely to confirm China’s new government line-up for the next five years, kicking off Xi Jinping’s second term as president, ratify a law to set up a new powerful anti-corruption agency and ratify the inclusion of the president’s political philosophy in the constitution. His philosophy is officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era”. Schoolchildren, college students and staff at state factories will have to study the political ideology, which the Communist Party is trying to portray as a new chapter for modern China.
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