FRANCE
Fifth Strasbourg victim dies
A fifth person wounded during an attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg died on Sunday, authorities and relatives said. The prosecutors’ office said that a Polish national had died after being injured by Cherif Chekatt in Tuesday’s rampage. “My brother Barto Pedro Orent-Niedzielski has just passed away. He thanks you for the love and strength you have given him,” the brother of the 36-year-old from the Polish city of Katowice wrote on Facebook. Chekatt, 29, attacked Christmas market shoppers armed with a gun and a knife, before being killed by police two days later. Orent-Niedzielski and his Italian friend Antonio Megalizzi had tried to stop Chekatt from entering a bar during Tuesday’s assault, a close friend told reporters. Megalizzi, 28, died from his injuries on Friday. Nicknamed “Bartek,” Orent-Niedzielski had lived in Strasbourg for 20 years, according to his friend. Eleven people were injured in the incident, with several still in a critical condition.
CROATIA
Migrant heave-ho denied
Authorities on Sunday denied a report by an international watchdog group that alleged police were illegally and sometimes violently pushing migrants back into neighboring Bosnia. The Ministry of the Interior issued the denial in response to a video published by the Border Violence Monitoring group that showed armed police officers shouting orders at a group of migrants and escorting them out of a forest. The monitoring group said it had more footage from cameras hidden along the border with Bosnia and provided to the group by people who “prefer to remain anonymous for security reasons.” The ministry said the video was filmed “right at the border” with Bosnia where there are no official crossing points. It said officers were not expelling migrants, but legally “deterring” them from illegally entering Croatia.
ISRAEL
Facebook blocks PM’s son
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s eldest child, Yair, on Sunday tweeted that Facebook blocked his page for 24 hours over what it called anti-Muslim posts. In a Facebook message posted on Thursday after deadly Palestinian attacks, Yair Netanyahu had called for “all Muslims [to] leave.” Israel. “Do you know where there are no attacks? In Iceland and in Japan where coincidentally there are no Muslims,” the prime minister’s son wrote. In another post he wrote that there were only two possible solutions for peace, either “all Jews leave or all Muslims leave.” He added: “I prefer the second option.” His comments came after two soldiers were shot dead on Thursday at a central West Bank bus station near a settlement. On the same day, a baby prematurely delivered after his mother was shot and wounded in a separate attack nearby on Dec. 9 also died. Facebook deleted Yair Netanyahu’s posts, prompting him to take to Twitter to criticize the social networking giant, calling it a “dictatorship of thought.”
IRAN
General killed cleaning gun
The Web site of the Revolutionary Guard on Sunday reported that a general who fought in Syria and Iraq accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun. General Ghodratollah Mansouri allegedly shot himself in the head by accident while cleaning his pistol, the report said. Mansouri was veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and a “defender of the shrine,” a reference to Iranians who fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, it said.
‘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