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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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