FRANCE
Kidnapped priest back home
A priest kidnapped by Islamic radicals in Cameroon and held for seven weeks has arrived back in the country. A smiling Father Georges Vandenbeusch descended from the plane at a military airport near Paris yesterday and shook hands with President Francois Hollande, who was waiting on the tarmac. There was never a claim of responsibility for the Nov. 13 kidnapping near the Nigerian border, but suspicion fell on the radical Islamic sect Boko Haram or one of its splinter groups. Each time hostages from the country are freed, there is speculation about whether — or how much — ransom was paid. The government insists, this time included, that it does not pay ransom. Instead, Hollande credited the “relentless” work of authorities in Cameroon and Nigeria, but provided no details on the release.
NETHERLANDS
Young revelers arrested
Police on Tuesday said they had arrested 100 youths who pelted firefighters with bottles and fireworks in a central town notorious for its unruly New Year celebrations. The violence broke out after a group of revelers in Veen doused a car wreck in fuel and set fire to it in the street — a New Year’s tradition in the town. “We have arrested about 100 young people, men and women, mainly between the ages of 18 and 25 after they pelted firefighters trying to put out a burning car wreck,” police spokesman Jeroen Steenmeyer said. “When the fire department came to put out the fire, they were pelted with bottles and heavy fireworks and that’s when the police took action.” The revelers ran into a cafe, where they were arrested before being taken to a police station, a police statement added. In 2003, Veen’s youths set 17 cars on fire, resulting in hundreds of thousands of euros in damage. A year later, when the town’s mayor tried to halt the festivities, his own car went up in flames.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man charged over ferry fire
A man was charged on Monday with causing a fire onboard a ferry carrying more than 1,000 people from Newcastle to Amsterdam, police said. Boden George Hughes, 26, was charged with “arson reckless to endangering life” and affray after the fire late on Saturday in a cabin of the DFDS ferry MS King Seaways in the North Sea. Two Royal Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters and two lifeboats were scrambled and seven people had to be airlifted to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. The ferry was about 50km off the coast of northeast England at the time, and aborted its journey, returning to Newcastle early on Sunday morning.
ITALY
Letter bomb injures woman
An employee at Naples’ prefecture was lightly wounded on Tuesday after a letter addressed to the prefect exploded in her hands, local media reported. Prefect Francesco Antonio Musolino’s secretary, unnamed by the media, suffered minor burns to her hands and eyebrows and was taken to hospital, the reports said. Musolino told reporters following the blast that the A4-sized white envelope had not contained toxins or radioactive material and police were examining a piece of paper found inside. Letter bomb attacks are not infrequent in the nation. Far-left anarchist group FAI in particular has committed a string of attacks on European institutions and foreign embassies in Rome since 2000. The group has widened its reach in recent years, with campaigns against tax inspectors, bankers, diplomats and a nuclear engineer.
UNITED STATES
Woman crushed by bridge
A woman walking across a Boston drawbridge was crushed to death on Tuesday after an operator raising the bridge for a boat to pass heard her screams and lowered it, accidentally trapping her between the two plates, investigators said. The woman was crossing the bridge around noon when a bridge operator, not aware that she was on the bridge, began raising it for the boat in the Chelsea River. The woman grabbed hold of one of the sides of the bridge and the operator immediately lowered it when he heard her scream, but she became trapped in between the plates and suffered massive trauma, police said. The woman, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
UNITED STATES
Apology for Romney grandson
MSNBC television host Melissa Harris-Perry apologized on Tuesday for a recent segment on her show that joked about former US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s adopted African-American grandson. Harris-Perry said that the segment on Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry show was meant to celebrate diversity and not disparage it. “Whatever the intent, the segment proceeded in an unexpected way that was offensive,” Harris-Perry said in a statement. “Without reservation or qualification, I apologize to the Romney family and to all families built on loving transracial adoptions.” The segment asked a panel to humorously caption a photograph from the past year. One of the photographs was of Romney holding his adopted African-American grandson alongside his wife, Ann, and other grandchildren. Actress Pia Glenn sang One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others), and comedian Dean Obeidallah joked that the photograph “really sums up the diversity of the Republican party.”
ARGENTINA
Pedophile priest loses appeal
A priest serving 15 years in prison for sexually abusing a boy has lost another appeal. Father Julio Cesar Grassi lived freely across the street from the orphanage where the crimes took place even as courts repeatedly found him guilty. He began serving the sentence in September last year after the provincial Supreme Court in Buenos Aires upheld the verdict. The ruling said the appeals court turned down his lawyer’s request to free him pending a final appeal to the national Supreme Court. Grassi was a celebrity priest who channeled big money donations to his Happy Children Foundation until he was accused of sex abuse in 1996. He was first convicted in 2009.
UNITED STATES
‘Terror’ lawyer released
A former civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case has been released from federal prison after prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Prisons made the recommendation to a judge in New York. Seventy-four-year-old Lynne Stewart was released from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday evening. She said she was grateful to be free. US District Judge John Koeltl signed the release order earlier on Tuesday after government lawyers filed a letter in Manhattan federal court saying Stewart qualified for early release. She is suffering from breast cancer that has metastasized to her lungs and bones. Stewart was convicted of helping an Egyptian sheik communicate with followers while he was serving a life sentence in a plot to blow up five New York landmarks and assassinate then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. She had been imprisoned since 2009 and was not due for release until August 2018.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
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