IRAQ
Rockets strike air base
Four rockets on Saturday hit the Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, the military said, as security sources said that a local contractor for a US company managing Iraq’s F-16s was wounded. The attack came hours after Iraqi security forces raided an Islamic State hideout in the plains of Tarmiyah, with clashes leaving five militants and two pro-government fighters dead, the military said. F-16s at the base were backing the ongoing Tarmiyah operation against Islamic States sleeper cells at the time of the rocket attack, two security sources said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. A local army source said that Katyusha-style rockets were fired at the base. One of the rockets hit a part of the base hosting employees of Sallyport, the US contractor charged with maintaining the F-16 aircraft purchased from the US in the past few years, the security sources said. “An Iraqi contractor sustained moderate injuries,” one of the sources said.
UNITED STATES
Nazi guard sent to Germany
A Tennessee man has been sent back to Germany for his role in acts of persecution while serving as an armed guard at a Nazi concentration camp in the final months of World War II. Friedrich Karl Berger, 95, was found removable to Germany after a two-day trial in February last year. His service as an armed guard at an outpost of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Meppen in western Germany constituted assistance in Nazi-sponsored persecution, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Berger is the 70th Nazi persecutor removed from the US, the department said. In Germany, a criminal investigation against Berger was closed in December last year and he does not face arrest, the Bild newspaper reported.
UNITED STATES
Three killed in gun store
A person on Saturday entered a gun store and shooting range in a New Orleans suburb and fatally shot two people, prompting customers and staff to open fire on the shooter, a sheriff said. The shooter also died. The shooting happened at about 2:50pm at the Jefferson Gun Outlet in the suburb of Metairie, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a release. Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said that the shooter initially struck two people inside, and then several other people — whether employees or store customers — opened fire on the shooter, both inside and outside of the building. Lopinto said two other people were also hit by gunfire and were in hospital in a stable condition. “We’re trying to put it all together,” the sheriff said during a short briefing with journalists. None of the dead or wounded were immediately identified.
UNITED STATES
Trump to speak at CPAC
Former president Donald Trump is on Sunday to give a speech in Orlando, Florida, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the country’s largest annual gatherings of political conservatives, a source familiar with the plans said on Saturday. It would be his first extended public address since leaving the White House on Jan. 20. Trump would be “talking about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement,” the source said. He is also expected to challenge the “disastrous amnesty and border policies” of his successor, President Joe Biden, the source added. Three-quarters of Republicans want Trump to play a prominent role in the party, a poll released this week by Quinnipiac University said.
Some say that the third time’s a charm. Not so for SpaceX, whose unmanned rocket on Wednesday exploded on the ground after carrying out what had seemed to be a successful flight and landing — fresh on the heels of two fiery crashes. It was yet another flub involving a prototype of the Starship rocket, which SpaceX hopes one day to send to Mars. “A beautiful soft landing,” a SpaceX commentator said on a live broadcast of the test flight, although flames were coming out at the bottom and crews were trying to put them out. The rocket exploded a few minutes later,
LEGAL ORDEAL: The heavy caseload involving 47 defendants and the vagaries of a Beijing-imposed security law made it difficult for the court to rule on bail requests Dozens of Hong Kong democracy advocates charged with subversion yesterday returned to court to complete a marathon bail hearing that was adjourned overnight when four defendants were rushed to hospital after hours of legal wrangling. Police on Sunday arrested 47 of the territory’s best-known dissidents for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the broadest use yet of a sweeping National Security Law that Beijing imposed on the territory last year. The defendants represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former pro-democracy lawmakers to academics, lawyers, social workers and youth advocates. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside a courthouse on Monday for the
The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago’s airport in late January and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera was beaming. “Today is a day of joy, emotion and hope,” he said. The source of that hope: China — a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged about 500 million doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press (AP). With just four of China’s many
Sarong-like cloths strung out on lines might seem innocuous, but long-held superstitions around women’s clothes appear to have stopped security forces in their tracks as they move to quell an uprising against a coup by the junta in Myanmar. The country has been in an uproar since the military ousted the civilian government and seized power on Feb. 1, triggering mass protests that the junta has sought to quash with increasingly lethal force. They have used tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and sometimes live rounds against protesters, who are responding with imaginative tactics of their own. The latest involves hanging women’s undergarments
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