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PARIS, France (AFP) — The Galileo satellite navigation system, Europe’s rival to the United States’ GPS, has nearly 100 million users after its first year of operation, the French space agency CNES said Thursday. The system, seen as strategically important to Europe, went live in December 2016, having taken 17 years at more than triple the original budget to get there. Initial services offered only a weak signal, and some of the atomic timekeepers on […]
by Béatrice Debut Agence France Presse THEUNISSEN, South Africa (AFP) — About 950 gold miners were stuck underground in South Africa on Thursday after a power cut, the mine’s owner said, though the workers were not reported to be in immediate danger. The Sibanye-Stillwater mining company said a massive power outage caused by a storm had prevented lifts from bringing the night shift to the surface at the Beatrix gold mine, in the small town […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Tensions between Colombia’s government and a hold-out rebel group, the ELN, rose Thursday when officials said three of the guerrillas were killed in the bombing of a camp in the northwest of the country. The offensive, part of wider crackdown ordered by President Juan Manuel Santos following a string of deadly attacks on police stations blamed on the ELN, was another blow to peace efforts with the group that have been […]
by Frankie Taggart Agence France-Presse LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Two 15-year-old students in Los Angeles were shot and wounded in class Thursday, in the latest school shooting to hit the United States, reigniting the long-running debate over gun control. A boy was shot in the head, while a girl was hit in the wrist, emergency services personnel said, confirming that a 12-year-old girl was arrested over the incident. Paramedics sent to Salvador Castro […]
UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — Myanmar’s government has told the Security Council that this month was “not the right time” for a visit by the top UN body to see first-hand the Rohingya refugee crisis, the council president said Thursday. Kuwait’s Ambassador Mansour al-Otaibi said Myanmar authorities were not opposed to such a visit, which could take place in March or April. “They just think that this is not the right time for a visit,” Otaibi, […]
CAIRO, Egypt (AFP) — Arab foreign ministers on Thursday called for the creation of a UN-backed “multilateral mechanism” to help revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The appeal was issued at the end of a two-day meeting to discuss US President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital which has sparked Arab anger. Trump’s decision also to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv triggered deadly clashes in Palestinian […]
by Anna Maria Jakubek Agence France-Presse WARSAW, Poland (AFP) — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday defended a controversial Holocaust bill intended to safeguard his country’s image abroad but which has instead drawn dismay from Israel, the US, the EU and Ukraine. The head of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party government spoke after the senate approved the legislation, which sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone who refers to Nazi German […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump is set to approve the release of an explosive memo alleging abuse of power in the FBI’s probe of his election campaign, a White House official said Thursday. Rejecting entreaties from the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation to block the document on the grounds it could expose top secret counterintelligence data, the official told AFP the president’s green light would likely come on Friday. “The president is […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — The aerial search for survivors from a ferry that sank in the remote Pacific was suspended Friday with more than 80 people still missing, many of them children, officials said. “The Kiribati government has suspended aerial searches for survivors of the ferry MV Butiraoi,” Rescue Coordination Center New Zealand said in a statement. The Butiraoi set off January 18 on a two-day voyage with 88 people aboard, including 23 children and teenagers. […]
HONG KONG, China (AFP) – A wartime bomb was defused in Hong Kong on Thursday after forcing a busy commercial district into lock-down, with roads closed and thousands evacuated from surrounding shops, hotels and offices. It was the second time within a week that an American bomb dropped during WWII had been discovered at a harborfront construction site in Wan Chai. Police sealed off parts of the district after a worker found the device on Wednesday morning, […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) – India’s government promised hundreds of billions of dollars to develop poor rural areas and help struggling farmers in its annual budget Thursday, looking to win over voters ahead of the next general election. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government would spend $220 billion on rural infrastructure, including building new roads and toilets and bringing electricity to millions of rural households. Jaitley also announced a national healthcare scheme that will enable half […]
by Mehdi Cherifia and Clare Byrne Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – In the Brussels neighborhood where he lived until his capture, Salah Abdeslam was known as a pot-smoking petty criminal whose former lawyer described him as having “the intelligence of an empty ashtray.” But the sole survivor of the jihadist team that wrought carnage in Paris in November 2015 — who goes on trial in Belgium on Monday over the shootout — remains something of an […]
