AFGHANISTAN
Gunmen kill tourists
Police say militants have killed a German tourist and an Afghan civilian in a relatively stable area in the center of the country. Deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rashid Bashir said the German man was riding in a vehicle with three Afghans when they were ambushed late on Saturday afternoon by two armed gunmen on a motorbike in Dawlat Yar District of Ghor Province. After a small argument, the gunmen fatally shot the German and an Afghan man. The two other civilians were wounded in the attack. Bashir says the group had traveled from Herat Province in the west and was heading to Bamiyan Province.
CHINA
Land sales probe promised
Officials promised an investigation into land sales to defuse days of large, sometimes violent protests by villagers in the south who say they are being pushed off farmland for property development, state media and villagers said yesterday. Government officials struck a compromise with leaders from Wukan village on Saturday, promising a full investigation of all land sales if locals would halt the protests, according to a report in the official Southern Daily posted late on Saturday on the Web site of Shanwei city, which oversees Wukan. The strategy appeared to work. While villagers gathered to protest for a fourth day on Saturday as negotiations took place, no one congregated to do so as of midday yesterday, villagers contacted by telephone said. However, locals said they remain angry and expect the government investigation to expose what they say is an unfair transfer of farmland to build factories. “We want our land returned to us,” said a woman who took part in the protests and would only give her surname, Yang.
UNITED STATES
Head of gang chapter killed
Police say the head of a California chapter of the Hells Angels was killed in a gun battle between two rival motorcycle gangs at a Nevada hotel-casino. Sparks deputy police chief Brian Allen said Jeffrey Pettigrew died late on Friday in the shootout with members of the Vagos club at John Ascuaga’s Nugget. Two Vagos members were hospitalized and were in a stable condition. Pettigrew was in charge of the Hells Angels’ chapter in San Jose. The town of Sparks is on edge amid fears of retaliation. Sparks Mayor Geno Martini says a drive-by shooting just hours after the fatal gunfight was apparently such an attack. Martini has declared a state of emergency to help speed up state assistance if backup law enforcement is needed.
CUBA
‘Ladies in White’ heckled
About 300 activists backing the nation’s communist government shouted down 35 relatives of political prisoners, some of whom were roughed up, a journalist witnessed on Saturday. A crowd of university students and members of the Union of Communist Youth massed outside the Havana home of “Ladies in White” leader Laura Pollan and blocked group members from marching to attend mass nearby. The Ladies in White, mainly the wives and mothers of political prisoners, won the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize in 2005. The women were targeted for more than three hours with shouts and insults. “These are the same people as ever,” Pollan told reporters. “They are not the ‘enraged Cuban people’ [as the government calls the pro-regime activists] — they are not spontaneous. They are brought in here.”
MEXICO
Journalist found decapitated
The decapitated body of a female journalist was found on Saturday in the northeast of the country near the US border, along with a message attributed to an organized crime gang, state prosecutors said. The victim found in the city of Nuevo Laredo was identified as Maria Elizabeth Macias, the 39-year-old chief editor of the newspaper Primera Hora, prosecutors in Tamaulipas state said in a statement. Next to the body was a note “attributed to a criminal group,” the statement said, without offering further details. Two weeks ago, the half-naked bloodstained bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, along with messages threatening those who report drug violence on social networks.
EGYPT
Banned journalist deported
The country deported a French journalist on Saturday who had been placed on a banned list for allegedly insulting the country, security sources said. They identified the journalist as Marie Edmee Josette Duboc and said she was held at Cairo’s airport terminal after flying in from Paris on Friday evening when officials found her name on a list of people banned from entering the country. “The journalist had deliberately tried to discredit Egypt,” one security source said without giving any further details. “Thus, she had been put on the list of those banned from entry.”
PERU
Rifle assembly plant opens
The army has opened a plant to assemble Galil assault rifles for export, particularly in Latin America, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday. “The weapons and munitions factory will be able to assemble 2,000 Galil ACE [assault rifles] a month for the international defense market,” a statement said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.