AFGHANISTAN
Nine killed in attack
Nine Afghan employees of a Czech aid organization were killed when militants attacked their guesthouse early yesterday, officials said. “Those killed in Zari district of Balkh Province include seven aid workers — six men and one woman — and two guards,” deputy provincial police chief Abdul Razaq Qaderi said, blaming the Taliban for the attack. The victims were employees of People in Need, a Czech organization which has been delivering humanitarian aid since 2001. “Unfortunately, last night unknown armed men attacked our guesthouse in Zari and martyred nine of our employees,” an official said, requesting anonymity. In the first four months of this year, civilian casualties jumped 16 percent from the same period last year, according to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan.
UNITED STATES
Obama to honor veterans
President Barack Obama is bestowing the nation’s highest military honor posthumously on two World War I army veterans who may have been denied the honor because of discrimination. Obama was holding a White House Medal of Honor ceremony yesterday for Sergeant William Shemin, who was Jewish, and Private Henry Johnson, from an all-black regiment. Both are being honored for their heroism in rescuing comrades on the battlefields of France in 1918. The award comes after Congress passed an exemption from Medal of Honor rules specifying that heroic actions have to have taken place within five years to be considered. Shemin raced across the battlefield repeatedly under gunfire to pull wounded comrades to safety and Johnson rescued a wounded comrade while fighting off a German attack.
UNITED STATES
TSA acting head reassigned
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday reassigned the acting director of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and ordered the agency to revise its security procedures after screeners at airport checkpoints failed to detect weapons and other prohibited items 95 percent of the time in a covert test. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that he took the findings of the investigation by the department’s inspector general “very seriously.” He called on the TSA to retrain airport security officers, retest screening equipment and increase its use of covert testing in airports. In the investigation, undercover agents were able to get prohibited items through security checkpoints in 67 of 70 instances, according to ABC News, which first reported the findings. Melvin Carraway, the acting administrator of the TSA, was replaced by the acting deputy, Mark Hatfield. In April, President Barack Obama nominated Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger of the Coast Guard to be the agency’s next administrator.
UNITED STATES
Shining Path assets frozen
The Shining Path rebels which terrorized Peru in the 1980s have evolved into a major drug trafficking group, the Department of the Treasury said on Monday. The Treasury officially designated the Maoist group, whose war with the government left 70,000 people dead over two decades, a “significant foreign narcotics trafficker” under the US Kingpin Act, which freezes assets tied to those designated. “Since its founding over three decades ago, the Shining Path has evolved from a militant terrorist group to a criminal narco-terrorist organization responsible for trafficking cocaine throughout South America,” Office of Foreign Assets Control Acting Director John Smith said.
TURKEY
No gold toilets: Erdogan
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited the nation’s main opposition leader to inspect the lavatories in his lavish palace, insisting that he would not find any gold-plated toilet seats. Erdogan invited Kemal Kilicdaroglu to the 1,150-room palace for the inspection on Monday after the Republican People’s Party leader accused the president of excessive spending of taxpayers’ money on luxuries, including gold-plated toilet seats. Kilicdaroglu has refused to set foot in Erdogan’s palace — which opposition parties and some non-governmental organizations say was constructed on protected land despite court rulings — and has boycotted events there since it was inaugurated last year. On Sunday, Erdogan told state-run TRT television in an interview that he would resign if Kilicdaroglu found a gold-plated toilet seat at the US$620 million palace. He also challenged Kilicdaroglu to resign if none is found.
FRANCE
Police clear Paris migrants
Dozens of law enforcement officers yesterday cleared several hundred African migrants from a camp under a subway bridge in northern Paris. More than 350 refugees, most of them from Sudan, but also from Eritrea, Somalia and Egypt, have been living in the makeshift camp below the metro tracks between the stations of La Chapelle and Barbes-Rochechouart. The camp sprang up last summer, but swelled in April as fair weather led thousands of migrants to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe. Authorities had put up signs over the weekend ordering the migrants to leave the camp within 48 hours. Early yesterday morning, police surrounded the site and blocked nearby traffic. The refugees, most of them men, but also including several families, waited to board buses to be taken to shelters in the Paris area.
UNITED KINGDOM
Woman jailed over loud sex
A woman who kept her neighbors awake by engaging in enthusiastic sex was sentenced to two weeks in jail on Monday after a neighbor complained about her “screaming and shouting.” The court ruling said that at about 5am on Jan. 28, “the defendant [Gemma Wale] was guilty of screaming and shouting whilst having sex at a level of noise which caused nuisance or annoyance.” The woman’s neighbor in a social housing complex in Birmingham, England, who was woken up by the sounds, added: “It lasted 10 minutes.” The woman’s boyfriend, Wayne, received no punishment. A former neighbor was quoted by the Birmingham Mail as saying: “There were men going in and out of her flat all the time. Then she would sleep all day. It was the worst two years of my life.” The ruling also found her guilty of “banging around the house,” “running around in the property,” having loud arguments with her boyfriend, playing loud music, swearing and slamming doors.
MALAYSIA
Flight 370 settlement for two
Two boys whose father was a passenger on the jetliner that vanished last year secured an out-of-court settlement in the incident’s first legal case against Malaysia Airlines and the government. Lawyer Arunan Selvaraj yesterday said their mother decided to accept compensation on their behalf so they can “move forward with their life.” Arunan declined to reveal the amount. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard when it disappeared on March 8 last year. Other relatives of passengers are waiting for the outcome of the first 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