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by Paola LÓPEZ Agence France-Presse QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) – A headless body discarded in the street. Two corpses dangling from a bridge. An intensifying drug war has shocked once-peaceful Ecuador with scenes of horrific violence. Experts say the two crimes committed within a single week last month evoked the savage methods of Mexican narco gangs which, according to the government in Quito, has infiltrated the South American country of 17.7 million people. “The cruelty is […]
AHMEDABAD, India (AFP) – An Indian court sentenced 38 people to death on Friday over a string of bomb blasts in 2008 that killed dozens in the western city of Ahmedabad. The court had on February 8 convicted 49 people over the coordinated attacks that killed 56, launching shrapnel through markets, buses and other public places in Gujarat state’s commercial hub. “Special judge A R Patel awarded death sentence to 38 out of the 49 […]
by Jennifer Gonzalez Covarrubias Agence France-Presse OCAMPO, Mexico (AFP) – In the fir forests of Mexico, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for environmentalists, the legacy of butterfly defender Homero Gomez lives on two years after his suspected murder. Despite the dangers of standing up to illegal loggers, fellow conservationists continue Gomez’s work guarding the El Rosario monarch butterfly sanctuary in Mexico’s central highlands. The agricultural engineer dedicated much of his life to protecting […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A US Navy engineer admitted in federal court on Monday that he tried to sell secrets about nuclear submarines to a foreign power, the Justice Department said. Jonathan Toebbe, 43, pleaded guilty before a federal judge, more than four months after being arrested with his wife Diana Toebbe. In exchange for his guilty plea, he is expected to be sentenced to between 12.5 to 17.5 years in prison. […]
BANDUNG, Indonesia (AFP) – An Indonesian court Tuesday sentenced a teacher to life in prison for the rape of 13 students, in a case that has drawn national attention to sexual abuse in the country’s religious boarding schools. Bandung district court in West Java found Herry Wirawan guilty of raping 13 female students, all minors, and impregnating at least eight of them. During the trial, it was revealed he had raped the children — many […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A Japanese man has been arrested for the attempted murder of a doctor he took hostage overnight, reports said Friday. The suspect also shot a nurse, who is severely injured, as he confined the doctor, who is feared dead after the attack, according to public broadcaster NHK. NHK said the 44-year-old doctor was in cardiorespiratory arrest — an expression often used in Japan before a death is confirmed — when he […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — A US appeals court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, rejecting his request for a new trial and keeping him in prison for life. Guzman was convicted in February 2019 of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs into the United States over the course of 25 years, as well as money laundering and racketeering. He was later sentenced to […]
by Sebastien ASH with Michelle FITZPATRICK in Frankfurt HEIDELBERG, Germany (AFP) — An 18-year-old student opened fire in a lecture hall at Heidelberg University in southwestern Germany on Monday, killing a young woman and injuring three others before fleeing the scene and turning the weapon on himself. The gunman fired shots “wildly” around the amphitheatre, a police spokesman told AFP. The shooting took place during an organic chemistry class for bioscience students, a course the […]
FRANKFURT, Germany (AFP) — A gunman injured several people in a shooting inside a lecture hall at Heidelberg University in southwestern Germany on Monday, police said, adding that the perpetrator was now dead. “A lone perpetrator injured several people in a lecture hall with a long gun. The perpetrator is dead,” Mannheim police said in a statement. A major police operation was under way at the university’s Neuenheimer Feld campus, they added on Twitter, urging […]
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — A Taiwanese woman faces the death penalty for allegedly starting the island’s deadliest fire in decades in an attempt to get back at a boyfriend she suspected was cheating on her. October’s inferno in the southern city of Kaohsiung raged through multiple floors of a dilapidated 13-storey apartment block for hours, killing 46 people. Authorities had said the blaze started when a resident, identified by her family name Huang, left […]
by Francois Picard All four people taken hostage in a more than 10-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue have been freed unharmed, police said late Saturday, and their suspected captor is dead. The hostage siege in the small Texas town of Colleyville — in which the suspect was apparently demanding the release of a convicted terrorist — had sparked an outpouring of concern from US Jewish organizations as well as from the Israeli government. Colleyville […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — A Chinese court has sentenced two people to death for attempting to smuggle 400 kilograms of methamphetamine by sea from Southeast Asia to Taiwan, state media reported. Ten other people with the same smuggling ring were handed between 10 years and life in prison over the “extraordinarily large” operation, China News Service said. Chinese and foreign trafficking gangs operating out of China’s southeastern coastal province of Fujian arranged for fishermen to […]
