YEMEN
Soldier opens fire on Saudis
A soldier for exiled government opened fire on Saudi Arabian troops as they exercised in eastern Yemen, killing two of them and wounding another in a rare insider attack during the kingdom’s nearly decadelong war there, officials said on Saturday. The assault in eastern Hadramawt Province comes as a yearslong cease-fire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels largely has held despite the militants’ ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea corridor. While the Houthis did not claim the attack, at least one Houthi official praised it as being “the beginning and an indication of a harsh future awaiting the invaders.” Meanwhile, US warplanes carried out new strikes targeting Houthi positions that lasted into early yesterday morning, the US military said. The strikes come after the militants likely shot down yet another US reconnaissance drone over the country. The attack on the Saudi troops took place on Friday night in Seiyun, a city about 500km east of Sanaa. As troops worked out at a Saudi-led base there, the soldier opened fire, killing an officer and a noncommissioned officer, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said, citing a military statement. “The Joint Forces Command underscores that this ‘Lone Wolf’ cowardly attack does not represent the honorable members of the Yemeni Ministry of Defense,” the statement added.
MEXICO
Gunmen kill 10 people
Gunmen in a truck pulled up to a bar in central Mexico and opened fire, killing 10 people in an area that had been spared the worst of the country’s raging criminal violence, authorities said. The attack on Los Cantaritos bar in Queretaro’s downtown district left 10 people dead inside and at least seven injured, the city’s public security department chief Juan Luis Ferrusca said. “Emergency services arrived at the scene and confirmed that at least four people armed with long weapons had arrived on board a pickup truck,” Ferrusca said in a video on social media. One suspect was detained and the vehicle used in the attack was found abandoned and set on fire, he said, adding that there were no reports of similar incidents in the city. The victims included three women, the Queretaro state prosecutor’s office, which said forensic experts were examining the scene of the attack and the vehicle.
CUBA
Protesters arrested
The government on Saturday said it arrested an unspecified number of people who staged demonstrations when a hurricane left the island without power for the second time in weeks. Street protests are very rare in communist-run Cuba. The prosecutor’s office said those arrested in Havana and the central provinces of Mayabeque and Ciego de Avila were being charged with assault, public disorder and property damage. Hurricane Rafael knocked power out on Wednesday after hitting the west of the Caribbean island of 10 million people as a major Category 3 storm. The blackout lasted two days. It came just two weeks after Hurricane Oscar, which left eight dead in the east of the island during a national electricity blackout caused by the failure of the island’s biggest power plant and a shortage of fuel. The government said that half of the people of Havana now have electricity again, but much of the capital and the neighboring province of Artemisa do not. Those detained after protesting were being held “for acts of aggression against authorities and territorial inspectors, causing injuries and public disturbances,” the prosecutor’s office said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
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