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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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