MEXICO
Migrants breach US border
Central American migrants stuck at the border with the US on Monday breached a border fence, risking almost certain detention by US authorities, but hoping the illegal entry would allow them to apply for asylum. A number of migrants opted to attempt an illegal entry from Tijuana at a spot about 450m away from the Pacific Ocean. As darkness descended, more migrants climbed the 3m metal fence. Karen Mayeni, a 29-year-old Honduran, observed while clinging to her three children, aged six, 11 and 12. “We’re waiting to see what happens,” Mayeni said. Ninety minutes later, they were over the fence. Most of the migrants handed themselves in to waiting US Border Patrol officials.
MEXICO
Gunmen kill six policemen
Six policemen were killed on Monday when a gang of gunmen attacked them in an apparent bid to free a prisoner they were transporting, authorities said. The attack was the most serious by criminal gangs since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office on Saturday, pledging to quell violence in Mexico. The Jalisco Attorney General Marisela Gomez Cobo said that gunmen traveling in three vehicles attacked the state police patrol near a highway in the town of La Huerta. One of the attackers was wounded and captured, she said, adding that a police officer was also wounded.
UNITED STATES
Trumps pay respects to Bush
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday paid their respects to former president George H.W. Bush, whose remains lay in state in the US Capitol. The Trumps made a brief visit to the Capitol rotunda, where Bush’s flag-draped coffin was resting as part of tributes to honor the 41st president. With the first lady at his side, Donald Trump saluted and they stood at Bush’s casket for about a minute. Bush never warmed to Donald Trump, who had criticized Bush on the campaign trail. However, Donald Trump on Monday wrote members of Congress to hail Bush as a man who “led a life that exemplified what is truly great about America.”
UNITED STATES
Attorneys call for clemency
Attorneys for a death row inmate who was scheduled to die yesterday said that he should be spared, because he was not the one who killed a suburban Dallas police officer during a Christmas Eve robbery 18 years ago, it was other escaped inmates he was with. Joseph Garcia, 47, was scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6pm. He was among the “Texas 7” gang who escaped from a prison in December 2000 and then committed numerous robberies, including one in which they shot the officer 11 times, killing him. J. Stephen Cooper said prosecutors did not have any information showing that his client was one of the shooters. “He didn’t do anything violent or prepare or encourage anybody else to do anything violent,” Cooper said.
VENEZUELA
Maduro leaves to meet Putin
President Nicolas Maduro late on Monday set off to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the socialist leader announced. “I’m leaving for Moscow, for a work meeting ... with President Vladimir Putin,” he said in a brief speech in front of the presidential airplane. Maduro was setting out on the road after hosting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Caracas. The meeting with Putin would let Maduro “close the year 2018 with a flourish, in terms of strategic relations that said.
PAKISTAN
Gunmen kill journalist
Police say gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying a local TV journalist in northwestern Pakistan, killing him and wounding his cameraman. Journalist Noor-ul-Hassan was killed in an overnight attack in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan, district police chief Qazi Jamil-ur-Rehman said yesterday. No one has claimed responsibility and authorities say police are still trying to determine the motive for the attack. Hassan worked for a regional TV station and is not known to have any enemies.
BANGLADESH
Cafe attack trial begins
A special tribunal has begun the trial of eight suspected Islamic militants in an attack on a restaurant in Dhaka in which 22 people including 17 foreigners were killed. Twenty hostages, including 17 from Japan, Italy and India, were killed when five militants attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery in 2016. The militants were killed by commandos during a 12-hour standoff. Two security officials died later. The trial began on Monday with testimony by a police official about the attack and the response of the police and military. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but the government rejected the claim, saying a domestic group was responsible.
ISRAEL
Hezbollah tunnels to be shut
The army yesterday said it had detected Hezbollah tunnels infiltrating its territory from Lebanon and had launched an operation to cut them off. Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said the “attack tunnels” detected were not yet operational. He declined to say how many were detected or how they would be cut off. All operations would take place within Israeli territory, although they were likely to boost tensions with Hezbollah, Conricus said. “We have launched Operation Northern Shield to expose and thwart cross-border attack tunnels dug by Hezbollah terror organization from Lebanon into Israel,” Conricus told journalists.
IRAN
Head says US efforts useless
The US would not be able to stop Iran from exporting its oil and any move to prevent Iranian crude shipments passing through the Gulf would lead to all oil exports through the waterway being blocked, President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday. “America should know that we are selling our oil and will continue to sell our oil and they are not able to stop our oil exports,” Rouhani said in a televised speech during a trip to the city of Shahroud. “If one day they want to prevent the export of Iran’s oil, then no oil will be exported from the Persian Gulf,” he said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Soldiers charged with abuse
Eleven South African soldiers have been convicted of mistreating a teenage boy during a UN peacekeeping deployment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the military said in a statement on Monday. The men, who were convicted of common law assault, in January dragged the 17-year-old into their base in Kasai Province, the military said. Sixteen men were originally charged, but five were cleared of charges and the other 11 were not convicted of torture. “The chief of the South African National Defence Force [SANDF], General Solly Shoke, welcomed the speedy trial and the successful conviction of those guilty of assault and tarnishing the good name of the SANDF peacekeepers in the DR Congo,” the statement said.Venezuela is building with the world,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
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