Grief grips Asian Americans

MONTEREY PARK, Jan 25 (AFP): Asian Americans were reeling Tuesday after two mass shootings in California targeting members of their community left 18 people dead -- with the alleged gunmen in both cases being older men of Asian descent.

The killings came in a span of just 48 hours -- so close together that California Governor Gavin Newsom was at a hospital meeting with victims of the first attack when he was pulled away to be briefed about the second.

"It is said all the time: only in America," a clearly exasperated Newsom told reporters Tuesday in Half Moon Bay. "Only in America. Number one in gun ownership. Number one in gun deaths. It's not even complicated," he said.