UNITED STATES
Student to return to Cairo
An Egyptian student in California has agreed to return to Cairo after he wrote a threatening comment on Facebook about Donald Trump that drew the attention of the Secret Service and led to the cancelation of his student visa, law enforcement officials and his lawyer said. The student, Emadeldin Elsayed, 23, posted an article on Facebook last month about Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the US. “I literally don’t mind taking a lifetime sentence in jail for killing this guy, I would actually be doing the whole world a favor,” Elsayed wrote, according to his lawyer, Hani Bushra. After the Secret Service investigated his comments, Elsayed was expelled from flight school, which made him ineligible to continue studying on a visa, even though prosecutors decided not to charge him. Rights advocates say they are alarmed by his case and see it as another sign of the government using the immigration system as a punitive tool against people, particularly Muslims, who are perceived as threats.
TUNISIA
Militant assault repelled
The security forces repelled a militant assault on Monday on a town near the Libyan border, killing 36 assailants in what authorities said was a thwarted effort to establish an Islamic emirate. Eleven members of the security forces and seven civilians were also killed in Ben Guerdane in what President Beji Caid Essebsi condemned as an “unprecedented” jihadist attack. It prompted authorities to close the frontier and order a nighttime curfew. Prime Minister Habib Essid, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group, said the operation’s aim had been to create a “Daesh emirate” in Ben Guerdane, but the army and internal security forces had thwarted the attackers. Essebsi, in an earlier statement broadcast on state television, said the assault was “maybe aimed at controlling” the border region with Libya and vowed to “exterminate these rats.”
SYRIA
Airstrike kills at least 19
An airstrike was reported to have killed at least 19 people and possibly many more at a market in the northwest on Monday, straining a cessation of hostilities agreement meant to pave the way for peace talks. In a further upsurge in violence, the Nusra Front and other Islamist insurgents not included in the US-Russian agreement attacked government forces in a neighboring province, taking over a village and at least two hilltops in their first advance for some time in the area, a monitoring group said. The agreement, accepted by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and most of his enemies, has reduced violence in Syria since it took effect on Feb. 27, the first truce of its kind in a five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused the world’s worst refugee crisis.
SPAIN
Teacher confesses to abuse
A third teacher at a school run by a Roman Catholic order in Barcelona has confessed to having sexually abused students in a video released on Monday, deepening one of the nation’s biggest pedophile scandals. The man, who is in his 70s and was identified only by his initials A.F., can be heard in the video recorded with a hidden camera apologizing to one of the victims he abused in the 1980s. “I don’t know why I did it... it was like a child’s game,” he says in the video posted on the Web site of daily newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya. The victim said he was sexually abused by the former teacher dozens of times when he was eight to 14 years old.
CHINA
Beijing eyes more bases
The government yesterday hinted that it was planning more global bases following the establishment of its first overseas logistics center in Djibouti, which the Horn of Africa country’s government calls a military facility. Beijing plans to use it to support its anti-piracy operations in the waters off the strife-torn nations of Somalia and Yemen. Officials have been keen not to call it a military base, but state media increasingly uses this language to refer to it. The Ministry of National Defense last month said building had begun on the base, with authorities describing it as naval “support facilities” in Djibouti, which has fewer than 1 million people, but is striving to become an international shipping hub.
AUSTRALIA
AC/DC singer halts tour
Rock elders AC/DC on Monday postponed remaining dates on their US tour after singer Brian Johnson was warned he risked total deafness. The 68-year-old Johnson “has been advised by doctors to stop touring immediately or risk total hearing loss,” the band said in a statement. AC/DC, famous for playing at painfully high decibels, said it would play the 10 remaining US shows at later dates, but “likely with a guest vocalist.” Johnson, known for his trademark cap and a voice that strains the vocal cords, joined the band in 1980 after singer Bon Scott died following a night of heavy drinking. Johnson’s hearing problems are just the latest of the band’s woes. AC/DC’s latest album Rock or Bust, released in 2014 after a six-year gap, is the first without founding member and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, who has retired due to dementia. The band has also parted ways with drummer Phil Rudd, who was convicted in New Zealand of threatening to kill an employee.
BANGLADESH
Death sentence upheld
The nation’s highest court yesterday upheld a death sentence for a senior member of the country’s largest Islamist party who was convicted of committing crimes against humanity during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan. The decision is expected to aggravate the divide between moderates and extremists in the country, which has seen a wave of deadly assaults in the past year targeting members of the Shiite community, foreigners and secular writers. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the war crimes trials, carried out by special tribunals, represent a long-overdue effort to obtain justice more than four decades after Bangladesh split from Pakistan. A five-judge Supreme Court panel led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha yesterday upheld the 2014 conviction and sentence for Mir Quasem Ali on eight war crimes charges, including the abduction and murder of a young man in a torture cell.
INDIA
Teen raped, set alight: police
Police said a 15-year-old girl is fighting for her life in a New Delhi hospital after being raped and set on fire on the rooftop terrace of her family’s home in a village outside the city. Police constable Yadram Singh yesterday said that a 20-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly raping and attempting to burn the girl to death in Tigri village, near the New Delhi suburb of Noida. His report on the case describes how the girl’s parents found her with severe burns, after hearing her screaming from the rooftop terrace before dawn on Monday. The incident is just one of several recently reported cases of rape against women or children.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
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