SYRIA
Turkey bombs Kurdish forces
Turkish warplanes yesterday conducted a barrage of airstrikes on Kurdish positions in the northeast of the country, leaving several fighters dead, Kurdish forces and a monitor said. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said the strikes hit their positions near the border town of al-Malikiyah at 2am. “Turkish planes carried out a broad offensive on a YPG base that houses media and communication centers and some military installations,” the YPG statement said. “The treacherous attack killed and wounded fighters,” it added, without giving a toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkey carried out “dozens of simultaneous airstrikes” on YPG positions in Hasakeh Province overnight, confirming that a media center was hit.
SWITZERLAND
UN hosts Yemen conference
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and senior government officials from dozens of countries yesterday met to drum up funds for war-torn Yemen, considered the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Guterres and top diplomats from Switzerland and Sweden cohosted the conference in Geneva, aimed at helping raise US$2.1 billion in a UN relief appeal. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “an alarming 18.8 million people are in need of humanitarian or protection assistance” in Yemen. War in the country has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed the nation to the brink of famine.
KENYA
Bus, tanker crash killing 27
A crash on Monday between a passenger bus and a tanker ferrying cooking oil killed 27 people along the main highway connecting Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa, police said. The accident occurred in the Kibwezi area at about midnight as the bus driver was trying to overtake another vehicle, but collided with the oncoming truck, Kibwezi police chief Leonard Kimaiyo said. “Twenty adults and three children died on the spot, while one adult died later in hospital,” Kimaiyo said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Wiki to combat ‘fake’ news
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched a Web site aimed at countering the spread of fake news by bringing together professional journalists and a community of volunteers and supporters to produce news articles. The new platform, called Wikitribune, will be free to access and carry no advertising, Wales said. “The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the Web site’s homepage. Wales said that because people expected to get news for free on the Internet, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which created strong incentives to generate so-called “clickbait,” to attract viewers.
CHINA
West Bank work banned
Beijing is not allowing its construction crews to work in the West Bank because it opposes Israeli settlements in what it considers occupied Palestinian territory. Israel officials on Sunday said that they had signed a deal with the government to bring construction crews to Israel. They would not address reports that the work would be restricted to only some areas. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman on Monday confirmed the West Bank restrictions. Spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said the government values its relationship with Israel, but “opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestine’s occupied territory.”
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
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