SOUTH KOREA
Yoon’s office searched
Police yesterday searched the office of former president Yoon Suk-yeol and his security detail as part of a criminal probe into the impeached leader. Police said that they had “initiated the execution of a search-and-seizure warrant at the presidential office and the presidential residence complex.” Police seized encrypted phone servers and raided the office of Yoon’s presidential security detail, plus his chief of security’s house, in what they said was part of a probe into “alleged obstruction of an arrest warrant execution.” Yoon spent weeks in his compound in January, protected by members of the Presidential Security Service who had remained loyal to him. His guards had installed barbed wire and barricades at the residence, forcing hundreds of police officers and investigators to use ladders and scale perimeter walls to reach the main building.
Photo: AFP
PAKISTAN
Bomb attack claimed
The Islamic State group on Tuesday claimed a bomb explosion that killed three policemen and wounded more than a dozen. A bomb planted on a parked motorcycle targeted a passing bus carrying 40 policemen in Mastung city earlier in the day. The group’s regional branch, Islamic State Khorasan said that its “soldiers” targeted the “apostate” police.
SOUTH AFRICA
Abducted missionary freed
A US missionary abducted from his church last week has been rescued by police after a shoot-out in which three suspects were killed, police said yesterday. Josh Sullivan, 45, was taken at gunpoint on Thursday last week while he was delivering a sermon at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell outside the coastal city of Gqeberha. Police yesterday said in a statement that the previous day, officers acting on a tip-off had approached a house in the KwaMagxaki district of Gqeberha. The suspects tried to flee in a vehicle as they approached, opening fire on officers, the statement said. In the ensuing shoot-out, the three suspects were fatally wounded and Sullivan was rescued, “miraculously unharmed,” from the same vehicle, it said. Sullivan arrived in the nation with his family from Tennessee in November 2018, his personal Web site said.
PERU
Ex-president sentenced
A court on Tuesday sentenced former president Ollanta Humala and his wife to 15 years in prison for graft linked to a globe-spanning corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction group Odebrecht paying bribes to politicians. The court found the 62-year-old and his wife, Nadine Heredia, guilty of money laundering for receiving illegal contributions from Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government in two presidential campaigns. Humala was taken into custody in the courtroom right after the verdict was read out and later jailed at a police base. His lawyers said they would appeal his conviction. Judge Nayko Coronado also ordered the arrest of Heredia, who did not attend the sentencing hearing and sought asylum at the Brazilian embassy in Lima. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs later said that after talks with Brazil, she was granted safe passage to travel there with her son. Humala, who led the country from 2011 to 2016, in 2022 became the first ex-president from the nation to go on trial in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, which has also seen three other former presidents implicated. Alan Garcia committed suicide in 2019, Alejandro Toledo was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison and investigations continue into Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
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
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
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