tuesday, december 22, 2015
guyanatimesgy.com
15
Around the world
Six US troops killed by suicide Inquiry ordered after devastating mudslide in China bomber in Afghanistan
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ix American troops were killed in Afghanistan on Monday when a suicide bomber on a motorbike struck their patrol near Bagram air base, a US official said, in the latest highprofile attack claimed by Taliban insurgents. Just days ago, the Pentagon warned of deteriorating security in Afghanistan in the second half of 2015 and a rise in the number of effective strikes by Taliban insurgents. NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Kabul said that the attack killed six Resolute Support troops and wounded three others, but declined to provide the nationalities of casualties. A US official said all six killed were Americans. More than 2300 US troops have
A rocket barrage hits Kabul after the motorcycle-riding bomber kills six US troops near Bagram airbase [Al Jazeera]
died in the Afghan war since the 2001 invasion. The Police Chief of Parwan Province said three Afghan Police had been wounded in the bombing, which was carried out just days after other suicide attacks on Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan and on a Spanish Embassy
guesthouse in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Bagram, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the north of Kabul, is one of the main bases for the 9800 US troops left in Afghanistan after international troops ended combat operations last year. (Excerpt from Reuters)
t least 85 people were missing after a huge mound of mud and construction waste collapsed at a business park in southern China and buried 33 buildings in the country’s latest industrial disaster. Premier Li Keqiang ordered an official investigation into Sunday’s landslide in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, which happened four months after huge chemical blasts at the northern port
of Tianjin killed more than 160 people. The mud and waste smashed into multi-storey buildings at the Hengtaiyu industrial park in the city’s north-western Guangming New District, toppling them in collisions that sent rivers of earth skyward. “The area affected equals 14 soccer pitches – so that gives you an idea of how big this thing was,” Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown reported. “Most of [the missing] are migrant workers,” he
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Wak on the Somali border. The Somali based alShabab group says it carried out the attack. The group often carries out attacks in Kenya’s north-east. The bus was travelling from the capital Nairobi to the town of Mandera. When al-Shabab killed 148 people in an attack on Garissa University College in April, the militants reportedly singled out Christians and shot them, while freeing
many Muslims. Last year, a bus was attacked near Mandera by alShabab militants, who killed 28 non-Muslims travelling to Nairobi for the Christmas holidays. “The locals showed a sense of patriotism and belonging to each other,” Mandera Governor Ali Roba told Kenya’s private Daily Nation newspaper. The militants decided to leave after the passengers’ show of unity, he added.
(Excerpt from BBC News)
Jazeera)
Miss Universe host apologises after Miss Colombia mistakenly crowned
Kenyan Muslims shield Christians in Mandera bus attack group of Kenyan Muslims travelling on a bus ambushed by Islamist gunmen protected Christian passengers by refusing to be split into groups, according to eyewitnesses. They told the militants “to kill them together or leave them alone”, a local governor told Kenyan media. At least two people were killed in the attack, near the north-eastern village of El
said, adding that it is usually migrant workers who are most badly affected by such disasters in China. Speaking to the official Xinhua news agency, a local worker said: “I saw red earth and mud running towards the company building.” One woman told the Shenzhen Evening News newspaper on Sunday that she saw her father buried by earth in his truck. (Excerpt from Al
Miss Philippines was then crowned Miss Universe 2015
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he host of the Miss Universe has apologised after mistakenly naming the wrong woman as winner, leaving Miss Colombia empty-handed. After the error, Ariadna Gutierrez was instead declared runner-up and surrendered her crown to Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach. #MissUniverse2015 be-
came Twitter’s biggest trend of the night as social media users expressed their disbelief. Wurtzbach has since told reporters that she wishes Gutierrez well. “I’m very sorry, I did not take the crown away from her and I wish her well in whatever she wants to pursue after this pageant,” she said.
Gutierrez also addressed fans in a backstage video that has been shared on the pageant’s official page. She said: “Everything happens for a reason so I’m happy for all that I did.” At the end of the night in Las Vegas, Ms Gutierrez was named first runner-up followed by Olivia Jordan from the United States. The host Steve Harvey responded, saying it was “his mistake” and he would take responsibility for not reading the winning card correctly. “I’d like to apologise wholeheartedly to Miss Colombia & Miss Philippines for my huge mistake. I feel terrible,” he tweeted. The message was re-tweeted more than 70,000 times. “I don’t want to take away from this amazing night and pageant. As well as the wonderful contestants – they were all amazing.” (Excerpt from BBC News)
Ousted Barbados Opposition MP challenging expulsion in court Venezuela-Argentina spat
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lawsuit filed by expelled parliamentarian Dr Maria Agard is set to be heard before the court on Wednesday, a month after she was ousted from the Barbados Labour Party (BLP). Dr Agard was kicked out of the BLP by the Party’s National Council on November 22, over what the Party says was inappropriate conduct and her failure to be a team player. It followed a four-year battle with the executive of her own branch that recently played out in the traditional and social media. Opposition Leader and Party Chairman Mia Mottley and BLP General Secretary Dr Jerome Walcott have been named as defendants in the suits in which Agard’s Attorneys, Hal Gollop QC and Lynette Eastmond, are asking the court to rule on what she claims are the Party’s flagrant breaches of the rules of natural justice. They are arguing that
over human rights comments
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Expelled Opposition MP Dr Maria Agard (right) and one of her Attorneys, Hal Gollop QC, on the night of her expulsion (Barbados
Today photo)
there were no procedural rules for instituting disciplinary hearings in the Party’s constitution. Agard’s lawyers had given the BLP seven days to reverse the expulsion, but got no response and therefore proceeded with the legal ac-
tion. After the National Council made its ruling, Mottley had said the decision to expel Agard was not an easy one but it had to be taken as a matter of principle. (Excerpt from Caribbean360)
enezuela has accused the new Argentine President Mauricio Macri of meddling in its internal affairs after he criticised its human rights record. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delci Rodriguez hit back after Macri made his remarks at a meeting of regional leaders in Paraguay. The two countries had previously been allies for more than a decade. The United Nations, the European Union and the United States have also put pressure on Venezuela to release jailed Opposition Leaders. Speaking at the summit of the regional Mercosur bloc, Macri called on all South American leaders to push for the release of Venezuelan political leaders. “There can be no place for ideological persecution in Mercosur member states,”
President Macri’s comments are the first clash between him and the socialist Venezuelan Government of Nicolas Maduro
Macri said. The Venezuelan Government has denied holding political prisoners, but the jailing of several high-profile Opposition Leaders like former Mayors Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma has drawn condemnation from human rights groups, the UN, the EU and the US. Leopoldo Lopez was sentenced to nearly 14 years in
jail in September on charges of inciting violence during anti-Government protests last year in which 43 people died. In response to Argentina, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Delci Rodriguez, accused Argentina of not bringing to justice those who had committed human rights abuses during the military Government of the 70s and 80s in Argentina. (Excerpt from BBC News)