COLOMBIA
Gunman kills eight in bar
A gunman opened fire in a bar on Friday night in Cali, killing eight people and wounding five in what police said appeared to have been a settling of scores between rival criminal gangs. Cali Police Commander Colonel Hoover Pinilla said those targeted were members of a criminal gang in the nation’s third-largest city who had clashed with a rival group several weeks ago. A local prosecution service employee who was in the bar at the time was among the dead, police said. A 20-year-old man carrying a pistol was arrested fleeing the scene, police said on Saturday.
UNITED STATES
Good deed haunts samaritan
A good deed has come back to haunt a formerly homeless man in New Jersey. James Brady found US$850 on a sidewalk in Hackensack last year and turned it in to police. Brady was awarded the money six months later after no one contacted police during the required waiting period. Now, the Record newspaper reports that Brady has been denied General Assistance and Medicaid benefits by the Hackensack Human Services Department through Dec. 31 because he failed to report the US$850 as income. The department’s director told the newspaper it is just following the rules. Brady was homeless when he found the money and was featured in media reports nationwide for turning it in.
FRANCE
Theater blasts kill director
A Paris theater’s technical director died of a heart attack on Friday after a malfunctioning power tool set off an explosion at the theater, investigators said on Saturday. Marcus Toledano, 41, died in hospital, police said, adding that his heart had stopped when rescue workers arrived on the scene. An initial investigation determined that a first blast near the stage shortly after 6pm was caused when the disc of a circular power saw broke away and ignited fireworks stored nearby for use in Toldeano’s musical about the French Revolution. He was among several people who rushed to the scene when a second explosion ensued, causing a wall to collapse. Several others were injured, five seriously, police said. The injured were mostly stage hands who were setting up for the 8:30pm showing of 1789, the Lovers of the Bastille at the Palais des Sports. Producer Albert Cohen said four employees who were hospitalized overnight were “out of danger” and would be discharged on Saturday.
SPAIN
Colombian gangster caught
Police arrested the fugitive leader of one of Colombia’s most violent gangs in Madrid, authorities said on Saturday. Drug enforcement officers seized Cipriam Manuel Palencia Gonzalez, 34 — alias “Visaje” — under an international arrest warrant for homicide, a police statement said. “Palencia Gonzalez is considered the main leader of Los Urabenos, a Colombian paramilitary organization, and responsible for ordering a plan to murder officers of the Colombian national police,” it said. He is accused of drug-smuggling, extortion and several killings, including ordering attacks that left one Colombian police officer dead and another seriously wounded. Los Urabenos are considered by Colombian authorities to be one of the most dangerous gangs in the country. Officers arrested Palencia Gonzalez in Madrid, where he was suspected to be organizing new drug-trafficking operations. He had escaped from jail in Colombia in 2009 and in September this year fled wounded from a police raid in which a policeman was killed and six members of the gang were arrested.
CHINA
Bo supporter starts party
A supporter of disgraced politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) says she has set up a new political party with about a dozen people and named the imprisoned former official its chairman. Wang Zheng (王錚), a Beijing lecturer, says the party was established on Wednesday. Wang refused to provide more details yesterday about the party’s membership. She says only that it had “more members than the number of people who attended the [Chinese] Communist Party’s [CCP] first congress after it was established.” Twelve deputies attended the CCP’s first congress in Shanghai in 1921. Bo, the former party boss in Chongqing, was convicted in September of embezzlement, bribery and abuse of power and sentenced to life in prison. His social policies earned him a limited popularity mostly among the region’s farmers and low-paid workers.
SAUDI ARABIA
Workers, police clash
The Saudi Press Agency says clashes between mainly foreign workers and police in Riyadh have killed a Saudi and an unidentified worker and left 68 others injured. The agency said police arrested 561 rioters who had barricaded themselves in the narrow streets of a poor area of the capital on Saturday evening, from where they threw stones, threatened people with knives and damaged more than 100 cars and many stores. It described the rioters as “anonymous,” without saying why they were rioting. However, it quoted Riyadh police spokesman Brigadier General Nasser al-Qahtani as saying the rioters were mostly foreign workers who did not have valid work permits and were facing deportation. On Wednesday, police killed an Ethiopian migrant allegedly trying to flee arrest amid a government crackdown on illegal labor.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the