TURKEY
Fake lifejacket factory found
Police have uncovered a factory producing fake lifejackets, shining a light on a booming cottage industry that has emerged as a byproduct of the refugee crisis. Police allegedly seized 1,263 lifejackets filled with non-buoyant materials from an illegal workshop in Izmir that employed two Syrian children, according to Agence France-Presse and Dogan news agencies. The raid came in the same week that the bodies of more than 30 people washed up on local beaches, having drowned in their attempt to reach Greece. Some of the dead were pictured wearing lifejackets, leading to suspicions that they may have been fake.
GUATEMALA
War crimes arrests made
Security forces on Wednesday arrested 17 retired military personnel accused of massacres and other human rights abuses during the nation’s 1960-1996 civil war, prosecutors said. Of the suspects, 13 are accused of involvement in at least 88 massacres of indigenous people between 1981 and 1986, top prosecutor Thelma Aldana told a news conference. Four others are accused of the disappearance of a boy, Marco Antonio Molina Theissen, near the capital, Guatemala City, in October 1981. They were arrested in raids in the north and center of the country.
FRANCE
Comics fest to honor women
Organizers of the Angouleme comics festival promised on Wednesday to add women to their list of nominees for a lifetime achievement award after facing a barrage of criticism over their earlier all-male selection. The festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to Angouleme, is one of the world’s biggest comics events. The lack of women among the 30 nominees for the prestigious prize prompted female authors to call for a boycott and generated a social media effort to highlight the work of women comics creators. Several nominees had asked in an act of solidarity that their names be pulled from the list of nominees.
UNITED STATES
Marquez pleads not guilty
Enrique Marquez, the man accused of purchasing the two assault rifles used in the San Bernardino shooting that left 14 people dead, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to terror-related charges. Marquez, 24, was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in California of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, lying about the purchase of the two weapons used in the Dec. 2 shooting, marriage fraud and lying on the visa application for the woman he married. According to the charges against him, Marquez in November 2011 bought a Smith & Wesson assault rifle, and three months later, purchased another rifle. Both weapons were allegedly purchased on behalf of Sayed Farook.
ITALY
Jail surrogates: minister
Surrogate parents should be treated as sex offenders and sent to prison, Minister of the Interior Angelino Alfano said on Wednesday, escalating his opposition to plans to give gay and unmarried heterosexual couples legal recognition. Alfano, whose small New Centre-Right party (NCD) opposes any form of surrogacy, is particularly incensed by a proposal to let gay partners adopt their stepchildren, saying this subverts traditional family values. “Stepchild [adoption] really risks bringing the country closer to wombs-for-rent, toward the most vile, illegal trade that man has invented,” Alfano told the Avvenire newspaper, the country’s mainstream Roman Catholic newspaper.
LIBYA
Truck bomb kills dozens
At least 40 people were killed yesterday when a truck bomb hit a police training center in the town of Zliten, the town’s mayor, Miftah Lahmadi, said. He said the truck exploded as hundreds of recruits were gathering at the center. There are conflicting accounts of the numbers killed or injured, with some one report saying as many as 150 people were hurt. Meanwhile, three days of attacks by the Islamic State group on the nation’s biggest oil terminals have started fires that have spread to five massive oil storage tanks, Petroleum Facilities Guards spokesman Ali al-Hassi said on Wednesday. Hassi said guards had recovered bodies of 30 Islamic State fighters, and had captured two military tanks and other vehicles from the militants. Firefighters were trying to control four fires at Es Sider and one at Ras Lanuf. Two were triggered by Islamic State shelling, and three more had caught fire, Hassi said.
EGYPT
Gunmen fire on tourist bus
Gunmen on a motorcycle yesterday opened fire on tourists, including at least two Israelis, as they boarded a bus in Cairo, but there were no casualties, security sources said. The attack took place at a hotel on a road leading to the pyramids. One gunman was arrested at the scene and security forces surrounded the other attacker in another part of Cairo, the sources said. The attack came as Coptic Orthodox Christians in the nation yesterday celebrated Christmas amid tight security. Police on Wednesday night searched more than 300 churches in Cairo alone for explosive devices. Roadblocks were set up before churches nationwide and cars and motorcycles were temporarily banned from idling in front of them.
YEMEN
New front opens in war
Saudi-backed local forces landed by sea at the Red Sea port of Maydee near the border with Saudi Arabia late on Wednesday, residents said, opening up a new front in a nine-month-old civil war. The region is a stronghold of the Iranian-allied Houthi group, which has seized large parts of the nation from forces loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The president’s forces attempted to push from Maydee’s port, pounded for weeks by air strikes and naval shelling, into the surrounding city, but ran into heavy Houthi resistance and landmines, residents said by telephone.
ZIMBABWE
Fingerprinting for reporters
Journalists are going to have to take fingerprints and get police clearance to report from parliament, Parliamentary Speaker Jacob Mudenda said. However, a national journalists’ union said it is unfair to single out the media when the lawmakers themselves are not subjected to the same screening before entering the parliament buildings. The rule may be challenged in court, The rule may be challenged in court, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists secretary-general Forster Dongozi said on Wednesday.
NIGERIA
Boko Haram blamed
Boko Haram gunmen have mounted their first attacks since the government declared the militant Muslim group “technically” defeated, killing seven people in a raid and suicide bombing, residents said on Wednesday. The attacks happened on Tuesday in the northeastern state of Borno, near the group’s Sambisa Forest hideout, where the army is looking to flush out remnants of the rebel group.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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