MEXICO
Migrants breach US border
Central American migrants stuck at the border with the US on Monday breached a border fence, risking almost certain detention by US authorities, but hoping the illegal entry would allow them to apply for asylum. A number of migrants opted to attempt an illegal entry from Tijuana at a spot about 450m away from the Pacific Ocean. As darkness descended, more migrants climbed the 3m metal fence. Karen Mayeni, a 29-year-old Honduran, observed while clinging to her three children, aged six, 11 and 12. “We’re waiting to see what happens,” Mayeni said. Ninety minutes later, they were over the fence. Most of the migrants handed themselves in to waiting US Border Patrol officials.
MEXICO
Gunmen kill six policemen
Six policemen were killed on Monday when a gang of gunmen attacked them in an apparent bid to free a prisoner they were transporting, authorities said. The attack was the most serious by criminal gangs since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office on Saturday, pledging to quell violence in Mexico. The Jalisco Attorney General Marisela Gomez Cobo said that gunmen traveling in three vehicles attacked the state police patrol near a highway in the town of La Huerta. One of the attackers was wounded and captured, she said, adding that a police officer was also wounded.
UNITED STATES
Trumps pay respects to Bush
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday paid their respects to former president George H.W. Bush, whose remains lay in state in the US Capitol. The Trumps made a brief visit to the Capitol rotunda, where Bush’s flag-draped coffin was resting as part of tributes to honor the 41st president. With the first lady at his side, Donald Trump saluted and they stood at Bush’s casket for about a minute. Bush never warmed to Donald Trump, who had criticized Bush on the campaign trail. However, Donald Trump on Monday wrote members of Congress to hail Bush as a man who “led a life that exemplified what is truly great about America.”
UNITED STATES
Attorneys call for clemency
Attorneys for a death row inmate who was scheduled to die yesterday said that he should be spared, because he was not the one who killed a suburban Dallas police officer during a Christmas Eve robbery 18 years ago, it was other escaped inmates he was with. Joseph Garcia, 47, was scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6pm. He was among the “Texas 7” gang who escaped from a prison in December 2000 and then committed numerous robberies, including one in which they shot the officer 11 times, killing him. J. Stephen Cooper said prosecutors did not have any information showing that his client was one of the shooters. “He didn’t do anything violent or prepare or encourage anybody else to do anything violent,” Cooper said.
VENEZUELA
Maduro leaves to meet Putin
President Nicolas Maduro late on Monday set off to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the socialist leader announced. “I’m leaving for Moscow, for a work meeting ... with President Vladimir Putin,” he said in a brief speech in front of the presidential airplane. Maduro was setting out on the road after hosting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Caracas. The meeting with Putin would let Maduro “close the year 2018 with a flourish, in terms of strategic relations that said.
PAKISTAN
Gunmen kill journalist
Police say gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying a local TV journalist in northwestern Pakistan, killing him and wounding his cameraman. Journalist Noor-ul-Hassan was killed in an overnight attack in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan, district police chief Qazi Jamil-ur-Rehman said yesterday. No one has claimed responsibility and authorities say police are still trying to determine the motive for the attack. Hassan worked for a regional TV station and is not known to have any enemies.
BANGLADESH
Cafe attack trial begins
A special tribunal has begun the trial of eight suspected Islamic militants in an attack on a restaurant in Dhaka in which 22 people including 17 foreigners were killed. Twenty hostages, including 17 from Japan, Italy and India, were killed when five militants attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery in 2016. The militants were killed by commandos during a 12-hour standoff. Two security officials died later. The trial began on Monday with testimony by a police official about the attack and the response of the police and military. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but the government rejected the claim, saying a domestic group was responsible.
ISRAEL
Hezbollah tunnels to be shut
The army yesterday said it had detected Hezbollah tunnels infiltrating its territory from Lebanon and had launched an operation to cut them off. Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said the “attack tunnels” detected were not yet operational. He declined to say how many were detected or how they would be cut off. All operations would take place within Israeli territory, although they were likely to boost tensions with Hezbollah, Conricus said. “We have launched Operation Northern Shield to expose and thwart cross-border attack tunnels dug by Hezbollah terror organization from Lebanon into Israel,” Conricus told journalists.
IRAN
Head says US efforts useless
The US would not be able to stop Iran from exporting its oil and any move to prevent Iranian crude shipments passing through the Gulf would lead to all oil exports through the waterway being blocked, President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday. “America should know that we are selling our oil and will continue to sell our oil and they are not able to stop our oil exports,” Rouhani said in a televised speech during a trip to the city of Shahroud. “If one day they want to prevent the export of Iran’s oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf,” he said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Soldiers charged with abuse
Eleven South African soldiers have been convicted of mistreating a teenage boy during a UN peacekeeping deployment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the military said in a statement on Monday. The men, who were convicted of common law assault, in January dragged the 17-year-old into their base in Kasai Province, the military said. Sixteen men were originally charged, but five were cleared of charges and the other 11 were not convicted of torture. “The chief of the South African National Defence Force [SANDF], General Solly Shoke, welcomed the speedy trial and the successful conviction of those guilty of assault and tarnishing the good name of the SANDF peacekeepers in the DR Congo,” the statement said.Venezuela is building with the world,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema