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A giant statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, named The Birth of a New World, is unveiled in Puerto Rico on Tuesday. ‘New World’ is actually one of two Columbus statues: another one, named ‘The Birth of a New Man’, has been erected in Seville, Spain, to mark the point where Columbus started his journey to the Americas Giant Christopher Columbus statue unveiled in Puerto Rico

Puerto Ricans held somber vigils and prepared to bury many of their own after authorities said nearly half of those killed at a gay nightclub in Florida had ties to the U.S. territory. Officials said that while it's still unclear how many of the 23 Puerto Ricans killed were born on the U.S. mainland or had moved there from the island, they expect many of them to be laid to rest in Puerto Rico in the coming days. "We have a lot of family members who have lived in the United States for many years but they want their loved ones buried here," Roberto Padua, sub-secretary of Puerto Rico's State Department, which is helping organize the transfer of the bodies, said Tuesday. The shooting early Sunday at the Pace club in Orlando that killed 49 people has shaken Puerto Rico's gay community and shocked the U.S. territory as a whole. "It's devastating," said Pedro Julio Serrano, a prominent local gay rights activist, calling it the worst tragedy in the hist

More than half of the fatal victims from the shooting in Orlando were of Puerto Rican descent, Rolando Padua, deputy secretary of state for the Puerto Rican government, told Reuters on Monday. "What they have informed us so far is that 90 percent of the victims are Latinos and that more than half of the dead victims are of Puerto Rican origin," Padua said in a brief telephone interview. "We are awaiting an official list of the victims this afternoon." (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Chris Reese) More than half of Orlando shooting dead were Puerto Rican