Bodies removed from US massacre school

THE bodies of 20 young children and six adults massacred by a lone gunman in a quiet US town were finally removed from the blood-soaked school, police said.

The formal identification of the victims in one of America's worst mass shootings marked a new chapter for horrified residents of Newtown, Connecticut, where Friday morning a 20-year-old man walked in with at least two powerful pistols and shot everyone he could find in two rooms of the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"By early this morning, they were able to positively identify all of the victims and make formal identification to all of the families of the victims," said Connecticut State Police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance.

The removal of bodies, which were initially left for investigators, "has been accomplished," he said on CBS television. "That was done overnight."

The gunman shot dead 18 children inside the school and two more died of their wounds shortly afterwards. Six adults, including the school principal, perished before the gunman died - apparently in a suicide.

Authorities offered little clue as to the motive for the shootings in Newtown, a wooded and picturesque small town northeast of New York City.

Hours after the shooting, hundreds of people gathered for a vigil, the crowd filling the church to capacity and spilling outside its doors.

"This is a kind of community, when things like that happen, they really pull together," the priest, Robert Weiss, said during the Mass.

A letter from Pope Benedict XVI was also read during the service.

Pope Benedict XVI sent his condolences to the community, in a letter read aloud at a vigil in Newtown Friday evening.

The pope "has asked me to convey his heartfelt grief and the assurance of his closeness in prayer to the victims and their families, and to all affected by the shocking event," Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said in the letter.

"In the aftermath of this senseless tragedy he asks God our Father to console all those who mourn and to sustain the entire community," the letter said.

David Connors, whose triplets were at the school during the shooting but were unharmed, said he was still horrified.

"It's hard. I've never imagined a thing like that could happen here."

"Our faith is tested," state Governor Dan Malloy told the congregants.

"Not just necessarily our faith in God, but our faith in community, and who we are, and what we collectively are."

Earlier the governor had said "evil visited this community today."

US President Barack Obama, wiping away tears and struggling to maintain his composure, said he was aghast over the tragedy.

State police spokesman Vance said just one injured person survived, indicating that the gunman was unusually accurate or methodical in his fire.

The majority of killings, which began at around 9:30am local time, "took place in one section of the school, in two rooms," Vance added. The children were aged between five and 10, officials said.

The killer was identified as Adam Lanza, 20. Initially, police told media they thought the murderer was his brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, whose identity card had been found on the shooter's dead body.

The surviving brother was in custody and being questioned, according to US television reports.

Many news outlets said another victim found in a home in Newtown - the 28th body in the day's bloodshed - was the shooter's mother, who was a teacher at Sandy Hook and whom he had killed before driving to the school.

Mr Obama went on national television to express his "overwhelming grief." He ordered flags to be lowered to half mast.

And there were similar statements of grief and shock around the world.

The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, spoke of his "deep shock and horror," the Queen sent a message to Mr Obama in which she said she was "deeply shocked and saddened," and French President Francois Hollande expressed his condolences to Mr Obama, saying the news "horrified me."

Of all US campus shootings, the toll was second only to the 32 murders in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech university.

The latest number far exceeded the 15 killed in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which triggered a fierce but inconclusive debate about the United States' relaxed gun control laws.

However, the White House has scotched any suggestion that the politically explosive subject would be quickly reopened.

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Police to launch interactive crime map

Police computer boffins are developing software described as like a "Google Maps of crime" that will for the first time show offences street by street. Source: The Courier-Mail

QUEENSLANDERS will get a new perspective on crime in their neighbourhoods thanks to a ground-breaking police mapping project.

Police computer boffins are developing software described as like a "Google Maps of crime" that will for the first time show offences street by street.

But there are no plans to include crime-rate information that would allow comparisons of neighbourhoods.

From next year anyone will be able to enter a street address, postcode or police division into a special search engine and compare the number of reported offences. The system, which will be free to access, is likely to show crimes ranging from assault and burglary to car theft using user-friendly icons to represent each type of offence.

Users will be able to customise their own maps showing neighbourhood crime hot spots and to track offending over time, with up to 15 years' worth of information being made available.

Sensitive crimes such as sex offences and breaches of domestic violence orders are likely to be aggregated with other crime types, such as assault, so they can't be associated with a particular location.

The Queensland Police Service is using data that records the location of each offence, but is working on ways to show crimes by street only so as to avoid breaching people's privacy. QPS said it would consider including crime rates at a future date.

The data will be updated regularly, but there is likely to be a time lag while police verify the figures.

The project is the product of about 18 months' work, triggered by pressure from Queensland's Information Commissioner and the media.

A spokesman for Emergency Services Minister Jack Dempsey said the program would help homebuyers and businesspeople make informed decisions about different locations.

"We want to give everyone an opportunity to look at the crime stats," he said.

"There's no reason to keep it secret or to do it just once a year."

The aim was to have the project go live by February but the State's Privacy Commissioner would be consulted first, the spokesman said.

It will be the first time police have published "divisional" level crime stats, breaking the figures down by suburb.

Police have kept more detailed divisional numbers to themselves, with the QPS last year saying it could not release the divisional statistics because they had not been "verified" by their statistics unit.

A QPS spokeswoman said The Sunday Mail's and The Courier-Mail's use of Right To Information laws to obtain the neighbourhood statistics two years ago had been the initial trigger for the project.

It also comes as the Newman Government makes commitments to greater transparency.

Its moves so far include putting a selection of statistics, including 15-years' worth of Statewide crime numbers and rates, on a pilot website, http://data.qld.gov.au.

In NSW residents can access data by suburb that is collected by an independent body.

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Allison face-to-face with Gerard's mistress

FLASHPOINT: The Indooroopilly gym where Allison Baden-Clay came face-to-face with her husband's lover Toni McHugh, and Ms McHugh's witness statement detailing the meeting. Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)

FACE to face in a suburban gym, Allison Baden-Clay and her husband's mistress Toni McHugh stared mutely at each other.

The pair had rarely crossed paths before the chance encounter, which came just weeks after Mrs Baden-Clay found out about her husband's affair. Court documents, lodged as part of accused killer Gerard Baden-Clay's failed bail application on Friday, reveal how both women were lost for words.

"Nothing was said, we just looked at one another," Ms McHugh says in one of four signed police statements.

After the encounter, both women vented their anger on Baden-Clay in text messages.

"I may have used the term that Allison was a lady of leisure in the text message," Ms McHugh told police.

"Gerard never showed me or told me what she had said, just that she had sent him an abusive text message."

Three alleged affairs, including a relationship with a woman named for the first time as Jackie Crane, and their impact on his troubled marriage are also detailed.

Neighbour: Screams in night heard by MP Flegg

Allison's diary: Lonely mum, broken heart

Evidence: Police focus on husband's "blunt razor" cuts

Bail fail: Gerard Baden-Clay to spend Christmas behind bars

A packed court room has heard accused wife killer Gerard Baden-Clay's bid to be home for Christmas

As it happened: Baden-Clay's second bail application

Baden-Clay maintains his innocence on charges of murdering his wife.

Defence barrister Peter Davis SC claimed at the bail hearing the Crown case was weak and Mrs Baden-Clay may have taken her own life.

Mr Davis told the court a witness saw a woman walking in the Brookfield area at around 5.30am on the day she disappeared and an autopsy found high levels of her anti-depressant medication that could indicate suicide.

In her statements to police, Ms McHugh details how Baden-Clay continued to contact her after he reported his wife missing from their Brookfield home on April 20.

Baden-Clay had allegedly committed to leaving his wife for Ms McHugh, but their complicated relationship unravelled after the disappearance. In one frosty phone call with Baden-Clay on May 27, Ms McHugh confronted him about another affair.

"The conversation did not go well. When I answered the phone, Gerard said, 'It's me'. I think I went straight into, 'I know what you've been doing. How could you do that to me?'

"Gerard admitted that he had been in a relationship with Jackie Crane and another woman. I basically asked him why I should give him any time to explain. Gerard agreed that he shouldn't have any time to explain.

"Gerard then told me that he loved me. He again said that he did not know what went wrong there and that he believed the police would find the killer," she said.

He told her he would phone her at work the next day, but didn't make the call.

Ms McHugh, a 41-year-old mother of two, admitted to the affair in her first statement to police the day after Baden-Clay reported his wife missing.

She told police how she was in a long-term relationship when she first met Baden-Clay through the sale of her home around 2006. As Century 21 Westside principal, Baden-Clay was the agent selling her home and hired her as a property consultant in April 2007.

"When I first started working with Gerard, there was definitely chemistry for me. I admired him. I was attracted to him," she told police.

After the affair allegedly started in August 2008, Ms McHugh left her partner and would refer to Baden-Clay as "GM" for gorgeous man. He referred to her as "GG" for gorgeous girl.

They would secretly meet on a quiet dirt road at Pullenvale, in Baden-Clay's Century 21 office at Kenmore and at her home in the inner western suburbs.

On two occasions she went to Baden-Clay's Brookfield home while Allison and the children were away.

Neighbour: Screams in night heard by MP Flegg

Allison's diary: Lonely mum, broken heart

Evidence: Police focus on husband's "blunt razor" cuts

Bail fail: Gerard Baden-Clay to spend Christmas behind bars

As it happened: Baden-Clay's second bail application

Ms McHugh said in "a lot of ways Gerard did defend Allison", who he said had severe bouts of depression, but also did not express admiration or a depth of feeling towards his wife. He also raised fears his wife would take her life if he left her.

"Gerard told me that he did not love Allison and they had not slept together for many years. Gerard told me that he slept most nights on the couch in the living room," Ms McHugh told police.

The affair continued for more than three years until ending abruptly on October 14 last year after "someone at the school canteen" was told of the affair and informed Mrs Baden-Clay. They broke off the relationship but were allegedly seeing each other again within months, until Allison's disappearance.

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Farmers given all-clear to shoot bats

Environment Department Director Wildlife Rebecca Williams confirmed nine out of 17 applications for lethal Damage Mitigation Permits (DMP) had been approved. Source: The Courier-Mail

THE first shots against Queensland's flying fox population were fired this weekend with fed up farmers finally given the all clear to shoot to kill.

Queensland authorities have approved nine shoot-to-kill licences out of 17 applications for lethal damage mitigation permits to deter the night-time raids of flying foxes on fruit growers across the state.

From the apple orchards of Stanthorpe, to the citrus trees of Bundaberg, to the lychee plantations of the deep north, bat lovers claim a modern "yippee shoot" is the new battlefront in wildlife conservation.

Farmers retort: "Shooting is a last resort".

Mostly they use lights, noise, netting, electric shock, poison and hot chilli spray to ward off hungry hordes of bats - one colony of thousands of flying foxes can strip a $100,000 harvest bare in a few nights.

Successful applicants of lethal permits must use have previously used "prescribed methods" such as netting or sound to deter flying foxes.

Lethal permit holders said yesterday how they did not want to be photographed for this story because they felt it would make them a target for "green hysteria".

"We don't want to end up in the cross hairs," said fruit producer Derek Foley, of Electra near Bundaberg.

"It'll be us with the bullseye on our heads.

Frosty Mango Farm Manager Robert Mizzi sprays hot chilli on lychees and mango to deter bats, better then shooting them.

"But we do believe in our right to farm, to feed the nation, and shoot the odd flying fox to protect our crop."

Mr Foley has 14,000-odd trees of lychee, avocado, mango and lemon.

Full canopy netting covers the trees, gas guns make a sound barrier, and six 18m high towers with 24 metal halide 2000-watt lights light up the farm "like the Sydney Cricket Ground".

Shooting is the final option to "take out scout bats" he said.

Under the permit, producers are strictly capped per motnh to take down: 30 black flying foxes; 30 little red flying foxes; 20 grey-headed flying foxes; and 15 spectacled flying foxes.

Conservationists believe the permits will still put some species at risk.

"This is barbaric," said Bat Conservation and Rescue Queensland president Louise Saunders.

"These permits are a sick joke. It is near impossible to get a clean shot on a bat at night," said the Brisbane-based animal carer.

She believes wounded and winged creatures will be left to die an agonising death in the forests.

"Bats are not some ravenous, rabid, violent monster out there to eat you. They are beautiful, clever, loving mammals.

"This'll be one big yippee shoot."

The Newman Government overturned a four-year ban on killing flying foxes earlier this year, opening the permit system in September. In the 1920s, organised hunts killed thousands of bats a night.

Alf Poefinger, 73, a lychee and mango grower of Mutarnee, north of Townsville, prefers to use hot chilli spray over the messy and expensive practice of shooting.

"Bats bite or lick the hot chilli on the fruit, it does not kill them, but they don't like it," said Mr Poefinger.

"It is definitely cheaper than netting and not as vicious as shooting them."

Fellow Mutarnee grower Martin Joyce was the first producer in Queensland to be granted a lethal permit.

He said when the bats come in their thousands they are very hard to control.

"Now, if we do get a great influx, we have the permit."

Environment Department Director Wildlife Rebecca Williams confirmed nine out of 17 applications for lethal DMPs had been approved.

But they were always willing to consider applications on non-lethal methods of managing flying foxes, she said.

What do you think? Email yournews@thesundaymail.com.au or write to us at GPO Box 130, Brisbane, 4001.

peter.michael@news.com.au

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Russia breaks up anti-Putin rally

RUSSIAN police have detained dozens of people, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, after breaking up an anti-Vladimir Putin rally in Moscow.

Scores of Muscovites, many holding white roses, defied authorities by gathering at Lubyanka Square, despite temperatures of minus 14 Celsius.

Police pushed protesters from the precinct and shoved some into vans two hours into the Saturday rally following warnings it would be broken up.

"By the end it was rough," Nikolai Svanidze, a member of the Kremlin-linked human rights council told Dozhd television.

Police said around 40 people had been detained.

"The unsanctioned action has now been thwarted and serious provocations were prevented," police said in a statement.

Mr Navalny, possibly the most charismatic figure in the protest movement, was detained a day after investigators launched a new criminal probe against him for suspected fraud.

"It's raving mad. (They) simply snatched me from the crowd," Mr Navalny tweeted from inside a police van.

Police also arrested Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of leftist group the Left Front, and activists Ilya Yashin and Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin's late mentor Anatoly Sobchak.

"One of the policemen mentioned that we had criminal intentions," Mr Yashin told Echo of Moscow radio by telephone from detention.

The prominent figures arrested all noted that the police vans holding them had been equipped with webcams to keep close watch on their behaviour.

Police put the turnout at around 700 people, over 300 of them journalists and bloggers, but an AFP correspondent said the number of the protesters appeared to be significantly higher.

People laid white lilies, carnations and chrysanthemums at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of Stalin-era purges adorning the square, as a helicopter hovered overhead.

The opposition movement is hoping to maintain momentum despite internal divisions between liberals, leftists and nationalists and the authorities' tough crackdown on dissenters since Putin's return to the Kremlin in May.

Smaller rallies were held in several cities across Russia including Mr Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg, where about 1200 people gathered for a sanctioned march.

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School gunman 'forced' his way in: police

THE gunman who slaughtered 20 young children and six adults at a US school in Connecticut "forced" his way into the building, police say.

Lieutenant Paul Vance of Connecticut State Police said the man - identified widely in media reports as 20-year-old Adam Lanza - was not let into the Sandy Hook Elementary School "voluntarily".

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Family mourns after US school tragedy

PUERTO Rican relatives of one of the 20 children shot dead at a US primary school say the family of the 6-year-old girl moved to the mainland just two months earlier.

The parents of Ana Grace Marquez had moved from Canada to Connecticut and enrolled her at Sandy Hook Elementary School because of its good reputation, the child's grandmother, Elba Marquez, told The Associated Press.

"They looked for the best school for their daughter, the best," Marquez said, adding that she had flown there for Thanksgiving.

She said the family had moved to the area because Ana Grace's mother had been hired to teach at a local university.

"It was a beautiful place, just beautiful," Elba Marquez said.

"What happened does not match up with the place where they live."

Elba Marquez's brother, Jorge Marquez, who is mayor of a Puerto Rican town, said Ana Grace had a 9-year-old brother who was at the school during the shooting.

"He was in another classroom," he said.

The family flew from Puerto Rico to Connecticut overnight for the girl's funeral.

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