CANADA
One killed in library attack
An attacker armed with a knife on Saturday stabbed and killed one woman and wounded five other people at a library in Vancouver, police said. Although the motive for the attack was not immediately clear, police said they had arrested a suspect who had a criminal record and was believed to have acted on his own. The suspect was expected to be questioned by detectives later in the evening. “We know — we believe we know — the who, the what, the where and the when. It is our job now to determine the why,” Sergeant Frank Jang of the Vancouver Police Department said. “We haven’t spoken with him yet, but our suspect has had police interactions in the past. He has a past criminal record,” Jang told reporters at the scene of the crime.
UNITED STATES
Police berate, threaten boy
A police department in Maryland has released body camera video that captured two of its officers berating a five-year-old boy who had walked away from his elementary school, calling him a “little beast” and threatening him with a beating. The video released on Friday by the Montgomery County Police Department shows one of the officers repeatedly screaming at the crying child, with her face inches from his. “Oh, my God, I’d beat him so bad,” the officer said in the child’s presence before telling him: “You do not embarrass me like this at school.” The boy’s mother has filed a lawsuit over the interaction in January last year.
EGYPT
Building collapse kills 18
The death toll from the collapse of a nine-story apartment building in Cairo has climbed to 18, state media reported. The building collapsed early on Saturday. State newspaper Al-Ahram said that search-and-rescue workers recovered the bodies over the course of the day. Excavators could be seen digging through the debris in the el-Salam neighborhood. Police cordoned off the area, keeping back the curious and people apparently looking for relatives in the building. “They took four people out in front of me, who looked like they were almost gone,” said Mohamamed Mostafa, a resident of the neighborhood.
BELARUS
More than 100 arrested
Police in the capital on Saturday arrested more than 100 people who assembled for a protest march to call for the resignation of the country’s president. The planned event in Minsk indicated that supporters of the political opposition seek to revive the wave of mass protests that gripped Belarus for months last year, but were dormant during the winter. During the first sizable anti-government protests of this year, more than 200 people were detained on Thursday. Five journalists were among those arrested. Four were later released.
UNITED STATES
Facebook ‘freezes’ Maduro
Facebook on Saturday said that it was “freezing” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s page for a month after repeated violations of the platform’s rules against COVID-19 misinformation. A spokesperson said Facebook had removed a video from Maduro’s page “for violating our policies against misinformation about COVID-19 that is likely to put people at risk for harm.” In the video, Maduro had promoted the use of the drug Carvativir — saying a few drops under the tongue would provide a “miracle” cure with no side effects — in the latest of a series of remedies he has advocated without medical evidence.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump