Demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, young men with machetes, guns and rocks set alight tires and debris in the street and threatened to behead foreigners after UN troops and police arrested dozens in a sweep through a volatile slum.
Peacekeepers in armored personnel carriers moved into the Bel Air slum Wednesday while gunfire crackled and two helicopters roared overhead, trying to put down a campaign by Aristide loyalists who have carried out gory beheadings in imitation of Iraqi insurgents. The headless body of a man lay in the street in La Salines, another slum, on Wednesday morning. Three police officers also were decapitated last week when Aristide supporters stepped up protests demanding his return from exile in South Africa and launched "Operation Baghdad."
PHOTO: AP
At least 19 people have been killed in a week of violence in Port-au-Prince, which relief workers said could paralyze attempts to feed tens of thousands of hungry survivors in the northwest port city of Gonaives, which was devastated by floods from Tropical Storm Jeanne last month. At least 50 people have been treated for gunshot wounds since last Friday at Port-au-Prince General Hospital, records show. Officials said the hospital usually treats one or two wounded people a day.
One angry man in Bel Air on Wednesday thrust a gun into the face of an Associated Press reporter, yelled expletives against US President George W. Bush and UN peacekeepers, then screamed "We are going to kidnap some Americans and cut off their heads."
Protesters also have been demanding an end to "the invasion" -- referring to US Marines who flew in the day Aristide left in February and UN peacekeepers who replaced them in June. Aristide loyalists blocked streets throughout Bel Air on Wednesday with torched cars and other debris, just blocks from the National Palace.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
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