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.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
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