43 killed in Mexico shootout

A three-hour shootout between Mexican security forces and unidentified gunmen Friday left 42 of the gunmen dead, as well as one federal police officer, officials said.

Three gunmen were arrested.

The lengthy firefight erupted in the town of Tanhuato, Michoacan state, when a joint force of federal and state security forces encountered the gunmen in the course of an investigation, Mexican National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said at a news conference.

The gunmen belonged to a criminal organization operating in the neighboring state of Jalisco, Rubido said, though he didn't name the group.

The commissioner's description of the gunmen contradicts earlier reports that described them as "armed civilians." At least two news agencies, Reuters and AFP, reported that the confrontation was between security forces and civilians. They cited unnamed Mexican officials.

The governor or Michoacan, Salvador Jara, said in television interview that it is "very likely" that the shootout involved the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.

Rubido told reporters that the confrontation was the result of an investigation that began the previous day. The investigation began Thursday after a property located in Tanhuato was taken over by a group of armed men.

On Friday, Rubido said, as the joint security forces drove toward the property in question, they came across a vehicle with armed men who started firing when they saw the officers.

A chase ensued where the security forces followed the gunmen into the property that had allegedly been invaded the day before, Rubido said.

According to the commissioner, at the property -- which he described as a 275-acre stretch of land with a main residence, a warehouse, and agricultural buildings -- additional gunmen entered the fray with "intensity."

Backup to aid the security officers arrived, including a federal police helicopter, at which point the gunmen spread throughout the property, Rubido said.

The confrontation stretched for hours because of the size of the property, Rubido said. There were at least three standoffs in different parts of the property, he said.

This was a slightly different version than what the mayor of Tanhuato said in an earlier interview. According to the mayor, there were two different shootouts in different locations.

The death toll was 42 gunmen and one federal police officer, who was shot while providing aid to an injured colleague, Rubido said.

The three gunmen who were arrested have been turned over to state prosecutors, he said.

In addition, the security forces seized eight vehicles, six were inside the warehouse and were burned when the structure caught on fire, the commissioner said.

A photo of the burned-out vehicles had been shared earlier on Twitter by a group of citizens who monitor violence in Michoacan.

Authorities also seized 36 long arms, two small arms, one grenade launcher and an undetermined number of ammunition, Rubido said.

Mob burning teen alive in Guatemala spurs outrage

A large crowd stands by as a teenage girl -- beaten and bloodied -- writhes on the ground, her body engulfed in flames.

"Add gasoline," someone shouts.

The shocking scene from a Guatemalan village went viral online and has spurred a debate over what some describe as vigilante justice in the Central American country.

Citing witnesses in the village of Rio Bravo, local media reported that the girl was beaten and burned to death for her alleged involvement in the killing of a taxi driver there earlier this month.

Police told CNN they haven't verified the authenticity of the video. But they said they are investigating the circumstances leading up to the death of a 16-year-old girl who was set on fire in Rio Bravo, a small village two hours west of Guatemala's capital in the state of Suchitepequez.

Guatemalan authorities have pointed to vigilante justice as a persistent problem, particularly in rural areas.

After a wave of mob attacks last year, President Otto Perez Molina said it's a problem that results from a lack of enough police officers patrolling the population.

But some analysts have suggested it's a matter of how little people trust police and other authorities, not how many officers are on the streets.

So far this year, there have been more than 20 similar mob burnings in the country, according to Mario Polanco of Guatemala's Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo human rights organization.

"It is unfortunate these types of situations occur," Polanco said. "They are produced by the weakness of the state's institutions to guarantee safety and justice for the population, and so (people) take justice into their own hands."

Guatemala is one of the world's most violent countries, according to the United Nations, which created a commission in 2006 to investigate corruption and impunity there. Nearly every murder in Guatemala goes unsolved, and convictions are achieved in only about 6% of all criminal cases, the commission says on its website.

Witnesses: Mob stopped police from stepping in

The video purporting to show the teen's death in Rio Bravo, which was posted on YouTube and numerous Guatemalan media websites, begins with an image of the girl stumbling with blood streaming down her face.

A large crowd of people standing shoulder to shoulder watches as men and women slam her face into ground and kick her head. Then, someone sets her on fire and douses her with gasoline.

Some in the crowd record the incident on their cell phones. No one steps in to put out the blaze.

Residents who spoke with CNN affiliate Noti7 said the teenager in the video and two men robbed and shot dead a tax driver. The two men -- one of whom is believed to have fired the deadly shot -- escaped the crime scene, but a group of residents captured the girl and attacked her.

Police eventually arrived at the scene, witnesses told Noti7, but the mob quickly turned on officers and blocked any attempts at rescue.

Reactions mixed

The Catholic Church and government officials have condemned the incident, Noti7 reported.

And on social media and in the comments sections of local media reports about what happened, many people have blasted the town's residents.

"They are just as much murderers as the those who killed the taxi driver," one person posted in response to an article about the incident on the Guatevision website. "May God pardon them. She was almost a girl. It hurts me to see that there was not even one good soul who helped this girl. Remember that we will all be measured by the same bar."

But reactions have been mixed. Some have even applauded what they said was justice being served.

"Let's see if all of you who are speaking out here would have defended this girl if she'd killed your son, mother, father or grandfather," another post on the Guatevision article said.

Guatemala genocide trial hits hurdles

Anti-impunity commissioner thinks big

Boat capsizes in Utah windstorm; man, 3 children killed

A summery day on a Utah lake turned deadly for a family and friends when high waves and violent winds kicked up and capsized their boat, throwing all seven people into the cold water.

Four died, including three children, as rescuers struggled to find the boaters for at least two hours in continued bad weather. The other three eventually were pulled from the choppy waters and hospitalized.

It happened Monday at Bear Lake, which spans more than 112 square miles in Utah and Idaho.

Utah doctor Lance Capener, 46, took the ski boat out with his wife, Kathy, 42, their two daughters and three of the girls' friends, authorities said. It was 80 degrees.

The group was reported missing at about 6 p.m., around the same time temperatures dropped and the National Weather Service tracked wind gusts of up to 51 mph in nearby Garden City. The windstorm that rolled in over nearby mountains produced giant waves that also ripped to pieces a floating plastic dock at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

All seven people on the boat wore lifejackets, but the water was 53 degrees Fahrenheit, posing a serious hypothermia risk, authorities said.

The boaters were in the water for at least two hours amid waves that reached 10 feet and frothed in the wind as rescuers searched for them, said Mike Wahlberg, Garden City fire chief. He called the conditions some of the worst he's seen and "about as extreme as it gets."

Rescuers reached the group and pulled them from the water, but Lance Capener died at the lake, said Utah State Parks Lt. Eric Stucki.

His daughters Kelsey Capener, 13, and Kilee Capener, 7, and their friend Sierra Hadley, 13, were flown to a Salt Lake City hospital but died early Tuesday.

Surviving members of the Capener family remembered the sisters as sweet and bubbly in a statement Tuesday.

Kathy Capener was hospitalized in the northern Utah city of Logan, along with family friends Tiffany Stoker and Tylinn Tilley, both 14 years old. The teens were released from the hospital Tuesday, Stucki said.

A few other boats were on the water at the time, but no other injuries or accidents were reported, Stucki said.

Bear Lake is about 120 miles north of Salt Lake City.

Another boating accident was reported three hours south, at Utah Lake. Rescuers pulled two people from the water Monday night after high winds overturned their sailboat.

The two adults involved were uninjured and wearing life vests, Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said.

4 injured in UK roller coaster crash

A roller coaster car collided with an empty car Tuesday at a UK theme park, leaving four people with serious injuries, officials said.

The crash took place on "The Smiler" at Alton Towers Resort in Staffordshire.

Sixteen people were on the ride, according to a statement from the park. Everyone was evacuated, and the four with serious injuries were transported to hospitals.

A statement from the West Midlands Ambulance Service said two teenage girls and two teenage boys suffered serious leg injuries.

"This has been a terrible incident and a devastating day for everyone here. I would like to express my sincerest regret and apology to everyone who suffered injury and distress today and to their families," said Nick Varney, chief executive of Merlin Entertainments, which operates Alton Towers.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, and Varney said a full investigation was underway.

"The safety of our visitors is our primary concern. The park will remain closed until we understand better the cause of this dreadful incident," he said.

Pentagon may have received shipment of live anthrax

The Pentagon is now investigating whether live anthrax was brought into the Pentagon building itself, CNN has learned exclusively.

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency, the Pentagon's police force, is one of the agencies that received questionable U.S. Army shipments of anthrax. That shipment now must be tested to see if its live rather than dead pathogen.

The Pentagon police received a shipment of what was supposed to be dead anthrax agent from one of three original lots, all of which are now shown to contain live, rather than dead anthrax.

The Pentagon has not disclosed if any of that anthrax was ever brought into the Pentagon building or the areas directly outside the Pentagon. The anthrax was to be used to help calibrate sensors at the Pentagon used to detect chemical or biological agents, two defense officials told CNN.

The anthrax would first have gone to some Pentagon police force laboratories in Virginia, defense officials told CNN, but they must also determine if the anthrax was then ever brought to the Pentagon to calibrate sensors on the Pentagon site.

Days after the first disclosures were made that three batches of anthrax at Dugway Proving Ground had been shown to inadvertently contain live anthrax, the Pentagon still has yet to fully determine and announce to the public the full scope of the problem.

Officials say they do not known the full scope and are not going to announce details until they are fully certain.

While only one lab in Maryland has reported actually receiving live anthrax, the Pentagon and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are trying to determine if live anthrax shipments were made to facilities in as many as 12 states, as well as Canada, South Korea and Australia. More than 30 shipments already shipped to these locations must be tested.

CNN has been exclusively shown a document detailing the location of the anthrax shipments that came from three lots at Dugway dating back to 2007. At Dugway, in recent days, those three lots tested positive, but there may be as many as 100 lots there still to be tested, according to one defense official.

The Defense Department simply does not known the scope of the problem, the official said. If any of those 100 lots show live anthrax, then officials have to determine where every shipment from those lots may have gone in the world.

But at the same time, officials insist there is no threat to public health because all the anthrax shipments were shipped and handled under controlled circumstances. Those conditions, however, are less stringent than a live shipment would have been since they were presumed to be dead anthrax.

The shipments were made to both private labs and government.

According to the document CNN reviewed, facilities in Maryland, including private labs and government agencies, received ten shipments dating back to 2009.

It was one of those labs, which has not been identified, that originally notified the CDC last week its shipment was actually live anthrax. The Naval Medical Research Center in Maryland also is identified on the document as having received questionable anthrax.

Under the three lots already tested, Australia and Canada have been notified they may have received live anthrax. Last week, South Korea was notified a shipment that went to the U.S. airbase at Osan was destroyed after concerns it also came from a lot of live agent at Dugway.

A comprehensive investigation into the matter is ongoing.

CNN finds high surgical death rate for children at Florida hospital

She was only 7 weeks old, weighed a mere 10 pounds, and had just had delicate surgery to widen a narrowing in her aorta, the vessel that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body. If that wasn't enough, after the surgery, Layla McCarthy stopped moving her legs. The doctors couldn't explain why.

Terrified she might never walk, Layla's mother, Christine McCarthy, sought solace from family and friends. A stranger overhead them talking in an elevator at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.

"Do you know a child with a heart problem here?" asked the stranger.

"Yes. My daughter," McCarthy answered, and explained what had happened to Layla.

"You need to get her out of here," the stranger warned.

The woman, who was visiting a family member in the hospital, told them staff had whispered to her about problems at the hospital's pediatric heart surgery program, which at the time was not even a year old. There was talk that an unusually large number of babies were having complications and many weren't surviving.

Shaken, McCarthy called her husband, Matt. Together they decided to call Layla's cardiologist, Dr. Emmanouil Tsounias, and ask to have Layla transferred to another hospital.

"That's a really good idea," they remember the doctor saying. "I'll be right over."

He arrived in Layla's room with the transfer papers and closed the door.

"Make sure you're adamant about this," McCarthy remembers him saying. "Don't let anyone here talk you out of it."

The McCarthys were shocked. Why hadn't he said something earlier? Had he known all this time that St. Mary's was not the best place for their baby?

Grateful for the stranger's warning in the elevator, the McCarthys arranged to have Layla transferred out the next day to Miami Children's Hospital, 80 miles away. Two and a half years later, she's a paraplegic, but alive.

The McCarthys had no idea the hospital their baby was at was extremely inexperienced at doing such complicated heart surgeries on newborns. By the end of 2013, the mortality rate for babies having heart surgery there was three times the national average.

At least eight babies have died since the pediatric open heart surgery program at St. Mary's Medical Center began in December 2011, including Keyari Sanders, Alexander Gutierrez-Mercado, Amelia Campbell, Pa'rish Wright, Landen Summerford, Weston Thermitus, Milagros Flores, and another baby whose family wishes to remain anonymous. Many of their parents want to know why no one warned them that St. Mary's was relatively inexperienced at such tremendously difficult and risky operations.

'Babies as sacrificial lambs'

Nneka Campbell didn't start out hurting and angry - in fact, quite the opposite.

In the beginning, Campbell thanked God that her baby's surgery would be performed at St. Mary's by Dr. Michael Black, the newly arrived "superstar" surgeon from Stanford University Medical Center.

Black impressed Campbell from their very first meeting. He'd been the chief of cardiac surgery at Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. He said he had invented techniques for operating on tiny hearts. She says he told her he'd never lost a single patient during his time at St. Mary's.

"I felt like, wow, we've got this superstar that's come here," Campbell remembers. "He gave you the impression that he was working smarter and better than other doctors in the area, almost like the others were doing something that was a little antiquated."

So Campbell was shocked when her 8-month-old daughter, Amelia, came out of the operating room blue and needing to be intubated. Then she says Amelia's head swelled, her kidneys stopped working properly, and an infection developed in her leg.

Her parents asked for her to be transferred to Miami Children's Hospital. By then Amelia was so sick, her mother says, there was very little hope, and she died at Miami Children's.

Death certificates and interviews with parents show Amelia was the fourth baby to die after having heart surgery at St. Mary's with Black. She was not, as her mother says she was told, the first.

"There is no room for institutions that are lying to families to get them to offer up their babies as sacrificial lambs," Campbell says.

The shocking numbers

The hospital keeps its death rate secret. Calculating that rate required CNN to file a Freedom of Information request with the state of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration.

According to the documents CNN obtained from the state, from 2011 to 2013, St. Mary's Medical Center performed 48 open heart surgeries on children and babies. Independently, CNN determined that six infants died, and confirmed the deaths with parents of all six children. From those numbers, CNN was able to calculate the death rate for open heart surgeries as 12.5%, more than three times the national average of 3.3% cited by the Society for Thoracic Surgeons.

CNN reached Dr. Michael Black on his cell phone to ask about the babies who died after his surgeries.

"I hear you've been asking questions about me," he said. "You should come down here and we can talk."

He said a hospital spokeswoman, Shelly Weiss Friedberg, would be in touch to set a date for the meeting.

A few days later, Friedberg emailed to say Black wouldn't be doing an interview, and neither would hospital executives.

After St. Mary's repeatedly denied requests for interviews, CNN approached Davide Carbone, the CEO of St. Mary's, at his home. He shut the garage door without commenting.

A very reassuring grin

Angie Loudon's son, Landen Summerford, had open heart surgery at St. Mary's less than a year after Amelia's death.

When the procedure did not go well, Loudon says, Black recommended another operation.

"He had a very reassuring grin on his face. A comforting grin -- like, 'I got this,' " she says.

Landen died shortly after that second surgery. He was 2 months old.

She says Black told her he loved her and her baby and seemed shocked he wasn't able to save Landen.

"Dr. Black told me he would write this up for a medical journal, because it was such an extraordinary situation," she remembers.

Loudon asks CNN a question. "Dr. Black said he'd lost only one other patient before Landen. Is that true?"

When she hears that her baby was the sixth to die after surgery with Black at St. Mary's, she breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably. She says she, too, was lied to.

"I put all my faith in him. How do you know not to put all your faith in someone?" she asks.

'A total mess with newborn babies'

Some of the parents now torture themselves. They trusted the cardiologists who referred them to St. Mary's for surgery. Should they have asked more questions, searched online for the hospital's mortality rate?

They wouldn't have found anything. St. Mary's website heralded the arrival of "nationally renowned pediatric heart surgeon Dr. Michael Black" with glowing claims such as "smaller incisions -- improved self-esteem."

But there's no actual data. Unlike most other pediatric heart programs in Florida, St. Mary's does not publicly report its mortality rate.

That's why CNN had to file a Freedom of Information inquiry to obtain the patient caseload data necessary to calculate the 12.5% death rate for open heart surgeries.

St. Mary's, owned by Tenet Healthcare, says CNN is wrong about the program's death rate, but refuses to say what it considers to be the right death rate.

In a statement to CNN, Carbone, the hospital CEO, wrote that providing raw mortality data "does not give proper context for the complexity and severity of each case, which could potentially lead to providing misleading information to consumers."

"Our goal is to provide the best possible quality care to every patient we treat," Carbone wrote.

But multiple studies show hospitals like St. Mary's tend to give the worst-quality care to children with heart defects, because they get so little practice. The studies show hospitals with fewer surgeries tend to have higher death rates, especially when the surgeries are complex.

While the specific numbers vary slightly according to how they are reported, the numbers at St. Mary's are very low.

According to an independent review of St. Mary's program, the hospital did 23 heart operations in 2013.

To put that in perspective, consider that in the United States, 40% of pediatric heart surgery centers in the United States perform more than 250 cases a year, according to data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Eighty percent of centers do more than 100 cases a year. Anything less than 100 cases a year is considered "low volume" by the society.

The volume of open heart surgery cases at St. Mary's keeps getting lower: from 27 cases in 2012 to 18 in 2014, according to documents filed by the hospital with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

"Like anything else, if you use a skill only occasionally, it's hard to develop," says Dr. Roger Mee, the former chief of pediatric heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. "With something as complex and dangerous as children's heart surgery, you have to develop a whole team, and it's hard to develop a team around 27 cases."

"With 27 cases a year," he adds, "it would be easy to make a total mess with newborn babies."

Sepp Blatter stepping down, says FIFA needs 'profound overhaul'

FIFA President Sepp Blatter willstep down as head of world soccer's governing body but only after the organization's executive committee organizes a fresh vote "for the election of my successor," he said Tuesday.

Blatter did not say when the election would be held but said it should be before the next World Congress in May 2016. It cannot be held for at least four months, according to FIFA rules, said Domenico Scala, chairman of FIFA's audit and compliance committee.

"The expectation is that this could take place anytime from December of this year to March of next year," he said.

Speaking in Zurich, Blatter said the reforms he has tried to implement over the years have not been enough.

"I felt compelled to stand for re-election, as I believed that this was the best thing for the organization. That election is over, but FIFA's challenges are not. FIFA needs a profound overhaul," he said.

He continued, "While I have a mandate from the membership of FIFA, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football -- the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at FIFA."

Michel Platini, president of UEFA, European soccer's governing body, has criticized Blatter in the past and told reporters last week that he had asked Blatter to bow out of the elections. He was one of the first to react to the announcement: "It was a difficult decision, a brave decision, and the right decision."

David Gill, vice chairman of England's Football Association, which voiced its support for Blatter's opposition in last week's election, said he welcomed Blatter's resignation as "a major step forward for FIFA on the road to proper reform."

Gill, who resigned from FIFA's executive committee after Blatter was re-elected Friday, said he will consider returning to the post now that Blatter is no longer at FIFA's helm. He never formally confirmed his resignation, he said.

"I simply could not countenance serving on the FIFA executive committee alongside Mr Blatter. I respect his decision but am pleased he is standing aside and by the clear determination for real change within FIFA. This in turn allows me to reconsider my position."

Blatter won a fifth term Friday despite a week marred by arrests, investigations in the United States and Switzerland and questions about whether he was the man to rebuild FIFA's reputation.

Blatter failed to get the required 140 votes in the first round of voting to prevail. Another round of voting was called, and because Blatter would need only a simple majority to win the second, his rival, Jordan's Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, conceded.

The prince initially did not say whether he is planning to run for the seat Blatter will vacate and told CNN he was at the disposal of all of soccer's "national associations who want a change, including many of them who were afraid to do so before this day."

In a follow-up interview, he said, "I have to talk to our national associations and see how they feel about this. I think it's a bit early, but definitely, if they want me to do it, I will do it."

Asked his reaction to Blatter's annoucement, he replied, "It is the right move for Sepp Blatter, and I think we have to look to the future. ... We have to bring back FIFA to being a service organization, not a company, not anything else."

Former FIFA presidential candidate Luis Figo called Tuesday a "good day for FIFA and football."

"Change is finally coming," the former Portugal star player said. "Now we should, responsibly and calmly, find a consensual solution worldwide in order to start new era of dynamism, transparency and democracy in FIFA."

Figo didn't say whether he would run again.

Possible candidates

-- Jordan's Prince Ali bin al-Hussein: The 39-year-old son of the late King Hussein of Jordan has been a FIFA vice president since 2011, representing Asia. He is the president of the West Asia Football federation. In the first ballot in the recent FIFA presidential election, he only received 73 votes, and most of those likely came from European associations, after his candidacy was put forth by England.

-- Michel Platini: The former French great was once an ally of Blatter, but in recent years had opposed the president on many issues. Platini, who turns 60 this month, has been the head of UEFA since 2007 and is a FIFA vice president. He was one of the all-time best players, having three times won European player of the year. Just a few years ago he appeared to be Blatter's successor -- until the president announced he would run again.

-- Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad al-Sabah: The 51-year-old member of the Kuwaiti royal family is a member of the FIFA executive committee and a prominent figure in the Olympic movement. He is president of the Association of National Olympic Committees, which oversees the hundreds of national Olympic committees. Al-Sabah has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1992. He is a Blatter supporter, and if he ran, could draw votes from other backers of the outgoing president.

-- Michael van Praag: A key figure at UEFA and a member of the federation's executive committee. He runs the national association of the Netherlands and was a candidate earlier this year for FIFA president. He withdrew a week before the election and supported al-Hussein. Van Praag, 67, reportedly is a supporter of a two-term limit for the office.

-- Issa Hayatou: He has been on the FIFA executive committee for 25 years and is the organization's senior vice president. The former top official for Cameroonian soccer, he has been the president of Africa's confederation since 1988. The 68-year-old has twice been publicly accused of taking bribes in connection with soccer events, according to media reports. He denied the allegations and was never charged. He ran for FIFA president in 2002 but lost by a large margin.

-- Jerome Champagne: Another recent candidate for the office. He dropped out of the race in February when he couldn't get the support of the five national associations necessary to be on the ballot. The former diplomat was one of Blatter's chief advisers from 1999 to 2010 when he was director of international relations for FIFA. During his time there, Champagne worked closely with Blatter, tasked with overseeing improvements in relations with national associations and other international sporting bodies including the International Olympic Committee. He was let go for reasons never fully explained.

-- David Ginola: His prior candidacy was considered a publicity stunt -- one which lasted just weeks -- by much of the media and soccer public. The Frenchman's bid was backed by Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, who has a self-confessed penchant for mischief, and Ginola reportedly was being paid £250,000 ($375,000) for his involvement. Several outlets, including the BBC, reported Tuesday night he would run again in the special election. The former player, 48, was voted player of the year in his home country's league and in England's Premier League.

Officials: Investigation continues

Blatter will continue his duties until a new president is elected, he said.

Normally, the FIFA president is elected at the organization's World Congress, the next one being scheduled in Mexico City on May 13.

Waiting until then to elect new leadership "would create unnecessary delay and I will urge the executive committee to organize an extraordinary congress for the election of my successor at the earliest opportunity."

In the meantime, not being a candidate will allow him "to focus on driving far-reaching, fundamental reforms that transcend our previous efforts. For years, we have worked hard to put in place administrative reforms, but it is plain to me that while these must continue, they are not enough."

Among those reforms are "integrity checks" for all executive committee members, term limits for the president and executive committee members, and a requirement to elect executive committee members, Blatter said.

"I have fought for these changes before and, as everyone knows, my efforts have been blocked. This time, I will succeed," Blatter said.

FIFPro, the world union for soccer players, said it welcomed Blatter's resignation because it "creates an overdue and unique opportunity to fundamentally reform the governance of football." But it insisted that the game's players are "pivotal" to any overhaul and warned, "The reform effort will fail without the direct involvement of the players."

Swiss authorities are questioning executive committee members as part of their probe into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids. Blatter is not being investigated as part of that probe, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland said in a statement.

Meanwhile, an investigation in the United States resulted in the FBI arresting nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives. The American investigation has targeted what one high-ranking IRS official called "the World Cup of fraud."

Blatter is not one of those arrested or facing charges by U.S. authorities, but he was among those investigated.

Asked whether the U.S. investigation had cleared Blatter, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters, "I'm not able to comment further on Mr. Blatter's status." U.S. officials told CNN that the FBI corruption investigation into FIFA's president continues.