UNITED STATES
Troops ordered to Cameroon
President Barack Obama on Wednesday said he had ordered 300 troops to Cameroon to work with west African soldiers seeking to counter the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram. In a letter to Congress, Obama said that the troops would provide “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” in the region. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that the troops would be armed for their protection, but that they would not engage in combat. Obama said that an advance force of about 90 military personnel on Monday had begun deploying to Cameroon, which borders Nigeria.
ECUADOR
UK refuses Assange passage
Britain has refused Quito’s request to give Julian Assange safe passage for a medical checkup after he had a sharp pain in his right shoulder, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ricardo Patino said on Wednesday. The WikiLeaks frontman has been holed up in the nation’s embassy in London since 2012, seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden. Swedish prosecutors want to question him about a rape claim, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations that expires in 2020. Assange faces arrest if he leaves the embassy.
UNITED STATES
Court rehears gold case
A federal appeals court is again weighing the fate of 10 rare gold coins possibly worth US$80 million or more that the government says were illegally taken from a Philadelphia mint and wound up in a jeweler’s hands. A lawyer for jeweler Israel Switt’s heirs on Wednesday told the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that authorities gave up any right to the coins when they failed to respond to the family’s seized-property claim within 90 days. The Department of the Treasury insists the US$20 Double Eagles were stolen from the US Mint in Philadelphia before the 1933 series was melted down when the nation went off the gold standard.
MEXICO
Boy arrested for murder
A 14-year-old boy was arrested for killing a man after he was allegedly contacted on Facebook and offered 31,000 pesos (US$1,900) to commit the crime, authorities said. Prosecutors said the minor was caught on Saturday last week as he tried to flee the scene of the crime in Tijuana. “The child said that he was contacted by a person via Facebook,” Miguel Angel Guerrero, a special investigations coordinator in the Baja California state prosecutor’s office, told reporters late on Tuesday. The person offered the boy money to kill someone, Guerrero said. The child told investigators that he agreed to meet the person at one of the city’s main roads. A taxi took him to a neighborhood known for its bars and drug dealing where “they gave him a weapon and they pointed to the person he had to kill,” Guerrero said.
UNITED STATES
Texas executes cop killer
Texas on Wednesday executed a man who killed a police officer outside a nightclub in 2001, the 12th person put to death in the state this year. Licho Escamilla, 33, died by lethal injection at a Huntsville prison at 6:31pm, Texas Department of Criminal Justice official Jason Clark said. Escamilla, who was 19 at the time of the crime, was already wanted for another murder when he became involved in a brawl in a nightclub parking lot. Off-duty police officer Kevin James, who was working as security, was shot dead as he and other off-duty officers tried to break up the fight.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS