IRAQ
Sectarian bloodshed kills 52
A wave of violence on Friday killed 52 people, most of whom were kidnapped and shot dead with their corpses abandoned, in scenes harking back to the country’s sectarian war. The killings come amid a surge in violence that has left more than 600 people dead this month, including several who were snatched from their homes, only for their bodies to be found later. Violence on Friday struck in Baghdad and mostly Sunni Arab parts of the north and west, with shootings and bombings targeting civilians, local officials, security forces and even a brothel.
MALI
Rebels end ceasefire
Separatist Tuareg rebels said on Friday they were ending a five-month-old ceasefire with the government and taking up arms following violence in the northern city of Kidal. The declaration came a day after troops clashed with stone-throwing protesters who blocked a visit by the prime minister to the city, a northern rebel stronghold. Several demonstrators were wounded, but there were conflicting accounts of how the incident started.
SPAIN
Child rapist, killer freed
A court on Friday ordered the immediate release of a man who raped and killed three children, cutting his prison time by 10 years in line with a European human rights ruling. The killer, Miguel Ricart, was the latest convict to benefit from an Oct. 21 ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights. The Strasbourg court said the country had acted illegally by retroactively cutting short the years of remission that an ETA prisoner had earned from good behavior. Ricart raped and killed young girls Miriam, Toni and Desiree in 1992 in the eastern Valencia region, a crime that shocked the country. He was condemned to 170 years in jail in 1997, although he actually faced a maximum of 30 years.
ITALY
Erotic frescoes brought to life
Naked artists posing as cavorting nymphs and satyrs star in a new exhibition that opened this week that features adapted images of some of the eye-catching erotic frescoes from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Among images that leave little to the imagination are a man having sex with a goat, a transsexual posing and a naked woman straddling a supine Roman god. “Even today when we talk about erotic works, it is difficult to show them, but as a politically incorrect museum, we thought that it was really interesting,” said Antonio Manfredi, director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Casoria and himself a model in one work. Manfredi said the culture ministry had attempted to “censor” the exhibition by initially giving the artists permission to photograph the frescoes, but then withdrawing approval when their intent became clear.
UNITED KINGDOM
No Lawson drug use: Saatchi
Charles Saatchi says he has no knowledge of his ex-wife Nigella Lawson ever taking drugs — days after the release of an e-mail in which he referred to the celebrity chef as drug-addled. Saatchi testified on Friday at the fraud trial of two former personal assistants, who are accused of spending the former couple’s money on luxury goods. They deny wrongdoing. When asked if he believed allegations Lawson was so high she allowed the assistants to spend freely, Saatchi told the court “not for a second.” The art baron said it was a “terrible mistake” that an e-mail he had sent Lawson claiming she was on drugs was made public in court. Saatchi says he has “never, never seen any evidence of Nigella taking any drug whatsoever.”
CANADA
Toronto mayor to host show
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his brother say they will host an online show so they can take their message straight to “Ford Nation,” the term they use for the embattled mayor’s conservative suburban supporters. Doug Ford, a city councilor, told reporters on Friday that the show is meant to “get their message out and not have that message be twisted by the media.” After the mayor admitted to smoking crack in a “drunken stupor” and refused to resign, Toronto’s city council stripped him of most of his powers. The new online show follows last week’s airing of a single episode of a TV talk show hosted by the Fords that premiered on Sun News Network before it was cancelled. Network executives said Ford Nation was the highest-rated program ever on the two-year-old cable channel, but said it was too costly to make. Doug Ford said the new self-funded online series, also to be called Ford Nation, will be uploaded to YouTube before Christmas. “Numerous people have approached us around the world about doing a show and since technology has changed, you can get your message out easily to a larger audience on your own,” Doug Ford said.
UNITED STATES
Former KKK man charged
A former leader of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan was arrested and charged with burning a cross in a black neighborhood in 2009, officials said on Friday. Steven Dinkle, 28, who was an “exalted cyclops,” the name given to leaders of the KKK, was charged in a five-count indictment on Wednesday over the burning of the large cross in the city of Ozark in the southern state of Alabama and with obstruction of justice, according to a statement. His mother, Pamela Morris, 45, the former secretary of the KKK chapter, was arrested on Nov. 21 for committing perjury before the grand jury investigating the cross burning. The indictment alleges Dinkle “conspired with another person to burn a cross in an African-American neighborhood to threaten and intimidate residents of that neighborhood and thereby interfere with their federally protected housing rights.” He is accused of having constructed a 1.8m cross, which he wrapped in jeans and a towel, transporting it to the entrance of the neighborhood, pouring fuel on it, sticking it in the ground and lighting it on fire. Dinkle is accused of then lying to investigators by saying he had quit the KKK before the cross burning, providing a false alibi and denying he knew an individual who was his superior in the KKK. Dinkle is charged with conspiracy to violate housing rights, criminal interference with the right to fair housing, using fire to commit a federal felony and two counts of obstruction of justice. If convicted on all counts, Dinkle faces up to 55 years in prison and US$1 million in fines.
PERU
Man arrested for child porn
Police said they have arrested a 29-year-old man on child pornography charges for using the Internet to lure about 500 kids into online sex. Arturo Dodero Tello, who was sought in several countries, “used the Internet and an e-mail he set up in Argentina to pose as a minor to seek friendship with boy, girl and teen victims,” General Cesar Cortijo said. “We have put behind bars the Spanish-speaking world’s worst known offender of minors unable to defend themselves,” Cortijo said after the suspect’s arrest on Thursday in Lima. His victims were located in Argentina, Peru, Chile, Spain and Ukraine, authorities said.
The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump by a shooter at a rally in Pennsylvania has confirmed the worst fears of public figures warning that an escalation in incendiary political rhetoric on all sides could lead to bloodshed. US lawmakers and analysts have been voicing concern since the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot that increasingly bellicose campaign language was becoming a worrying contusion on the US body politic ahead of November’s presidential election. The danger was vividly illustrated in 2022, when then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer by a far-right conspiracy theorist
US ELECTIONS: US President Joe Biden mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Zelenskiy as Russian President Vladimir Putin at a NATO summit on Thursday US President Joe Biden vowed he would remain in this year presidential race, but two critical mistakes in the span of two hours deepened concerns about his mental acuity that threaten his campaign. Biden, 81, saw the culmination of this week’s NATO summit as a chance to reassure allies who for two weeks had fretted about his abilities following his first debate performance against former US president Donald Trump. Over a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a nearly hour-long news conference, he spoke confidently on a range of complex issues from the tax code and trade policy to
HIGH TENSIONS: Local media reported that police had fired into the air to try to disperse an angry crowd at the garbage dump, while investigators called for calm and cooperation A total of eight bodies, all female, have been recovered so far from a garbage dump near Nairobi, Kenya’s acting police chief said yesterday, after authorities a day earlier confirmed they had found more bags filled with dismembered female body parts, the latest macabre discovery that has horrified and angered the country. Detectives have been scouring the site in the Mukuru area of Nairobi since the mutilated corpses of at least six women were found on Friday in sacks floating in a sea of garbage. On Saturday, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said that five bags had been retrieved from
A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than 100 victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s black community, the mayor said on Friday. Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of C.L. Daniel from Georgia were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. The man was in his 20s when he was killed. “This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,”