UNITED STATES
Trump defends comments
President Donald Trump on Friday offered a partial denial in public, but privately defended his extraordinary remarks disparaging Haitians and African countries a day earlier. Trump said he was only expressing what many people think but would not say about immigrants from economically depressed countries, a person who spoke to the president said. African Union countries on Friday expressed outrage and demanded an apology after Trump reportedly called African nations “shithole” countries. “The African Union Mission condemns the comments in the strongest terms and demands a retraction of the comment as well as an apology to not only to the Africans, but to all people of African descent around the globe,” the African Union Mission in Washington said. Trump on Thursday evening made a flurry of calls to friends and outside advisers to judge their reaction to the tempest. A confidant said Trump was not apologetic about his inflammatory remarks and denied he was racist, instead blaming the media for distorting his meaning.
UNITED STATES
Former KKK leader dies
The Mississippi corrections department said Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader who was convicted in the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” slayings of three civil rights workers, has died in prison aged 92. The part-time preacher and lumber mill operator was 80 when a Neshoba County jury convicted him in 2005 of three counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. His conviction came 41 years to the day after Freedom Summer workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were ambushed and killed by Klansmen. Their bodies were found buried in a red-clay dam in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi. The slayings shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
UNITED STATES
Mudslides death toll hits 18
Authorities in southern California on Friday said they had discovered the body of an elderly man killed by mudslides that battered the region earlier this week, lifting the overall death toll to 18. The 87-year-old man was “located by a search and rescue team in his residence,” Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown said. Rescuers are continuing their search operations, with the missing now believed to number six, including a two-year-old girl. Heavy rain on Tuesday, which followed 10 months of drought, sent sticky mud and debris flowing from the hills into Montecito. In addition to the dead and injured, 65 houses have been destroyed while another 462 sustained damage.
UNITED STATES
Man sentenced over IS links
The brother of a San Diego man believed to be the first US citizen killed while fighting alongside the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria was on Friday sentenced to 10 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. Marchello Dsaun McCain was sentenced in federal court in San Diego for illegal possession of a cache of firearms and body armor and making false statements to federal agents about international terrorism. McCain is the brother of Douglas McCain who was killed in 2014 in Iraq while fighting alongside the Islamic State group in Syria. The US unsealed a two-count indictment charging Canadian national and former San Diego resident Abdullahi Ahmed Abdullahi with conspiring with Douglas McCain and others in the US and Canada to provide support to terrorists in Syria.
‘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