VENEZUELA
Alleged killer caught
Authorities say the purported leader of a Colombian paramilitary group who they allege masterminded the slaying last month of socialist lawmaker Robert Serra has been captured. Interior Minister Carmen Melendez said on Friday that suspect Leiva Padilla Mendoza was arrested in Cartagena, Colombia. Melendez says the countries are working together to extradite him. Serra was elected to congress in 2010 after gaining prominence organizing government supporters against a wave of destabilizing student protests in 2007. President Nicolas Maduro alleged on national television last month that Serra’s killing was politically motivated and said it had been directed by a Colombian paramilitary group. Maduro also accused former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe of participating in the plot.
UNITED STATES
Fifth teenager dies
Another of the teenagers wounded in a Washington State high-school shooting has died, raising to five the number of fatalities after a student opened fire in the cafeteria two weeks ago. Officials at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle said 15-year-old Andrew Fryberg died on Friday evening. Zoe Galasso, 14, was killed during the shooting on Oct. 24 by a popular freshman at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. Gia Soriano, also 14, died on Oct. 26 at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett and 14-year-old Shaylee Chuckulnaskit died on Oct. 31 at the Everett hospital. The shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, died of a self-inflicted wound. On Thursday, 14-year-old Nate Hatch was released from Harborview and returned home. He had been shot in the jaw. The school north of Seattle reopened on Monday after being closed for a week.
ARGENTINA
Plant explosion injures 65
An explosion at a chemical plant left 65 people injured and caused extensive damage to nearby buildings, officials said on Friday. The blast occurred overnight on Thursday in the city of Cordoba, about 700km north of Buenos Aires. Officials said the injured were neighbors of the plant, which was closed at the time of the explosion. The province’s health ministry said 65 people were injured, many of them from debris and glass. Two people were hospitalized, including a 70-year-old woman with a heart condition and a youth with head trauma. Cordoba’s civil defense chief said there were reports of shattered windows up to 3km from the blast site. “I was lying in bed asleep, when I heard a tremendous blast. I thought a plane had crashed in front of my house,” resident Claudio Utrera told daily newspaper La Voz del Interior. Cordoba Province Governor Jose Manuel de la Sota told reporters the blast created a huge crater and caused a gas leak.
UNITED STATES
Man faces terror charges
A Russian man charged with leading a Taliban attack against US forces in Afghanistan has pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges. Irek Hamidullin was arraigned on 12 counts in the District Court in Virginia on Friday. A judge ordered him detained until his April 13 trial. Hamidullin is the first military detainee Afghanistan to be brought to the US for trial. It is the latest attempt by President Barack Obama’s administration to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects. According to an indictment unsealed this week, Hamidullin is a Russian veteran of the war in Afghanistan who stayed in the country and joined the Taliban. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and US soldiers.
PAKISTAN
Seventeen insurgents killed
A government administrator says soldiers have found 17 bodies dumped in the country’s tribal region, saying the dead were all insurgents killed in overnight fighting. The administrator, Khalid Khan, says troops spotted the bodies during a search yesterday morning in the Khyber tribal region bordering Afghanistan. He said the dead, all men, attacked security forces at about midnight and that the ensuing firefight last for several hours. Journalists are not allowed to report from the tribal regions. Khan says the bodies of the militants were found in three places in the Khyber tribal region, where the army last month launched an operation to eliminate local militants targeting security forces.
INDIA
Australian found killed
Police say a 75-year-old Australian woman missing for two months in the south has been killed and three men are facing charges. Toni Anne Ludgate was a devotee of the Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba and a regular visitor to his headquarters in Andhra Pradesh State. Police Inspector B. Venugopal says her body was exhumed yesterday and handed over to her family. He says Ludgate was killed by a guard of the apartment building where she was living. The guard and two of his friends have been arrested. Ludgate had lived in the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont and came to the country in July. She had been missing since August.
INDIA
Naval ship sinks
A ship collecting torpedoes from practice firings sank on Thursday off the coast of the southern port of Visakhapatnam, killing at least one crew member and leaving four missing, the navy said. “It was an absolutely routine operation, but unfortunately she developed some sort of leak,” D.K. Sharma, a spokesman for the navy, said of the 110-tonne vessel. The leak flooded the main engine room of the ship, Sharma said, and became “uncontrolled.” By 8pm on Thursday, “we had lost the ship,” he said. Twenty-four crew members were rescued on Thursday night.
INDIA
Teens killed ‘by mistake’
The army on Friday took responsibility for the killing of two teenagers in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir this week, calling it a case of mistaken identity. The two youths were killed and two others were wounded when soldiers fired on a car at a checkpoint on Monday. Speaking at a news conference in Srinagar, Kashmir, on Friday, the chief of the army’s northern command, Lieutenant General D.S. Hooda, said: “There was some information about a white car with terrorists. Obviously, the identity was mistaken in this case.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in