News in Brief
LONDON (Reuters) -- British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Sunday that Russia has been stockpiling the deadly nerve agent used to poison a Russian former double agent in England and has been investigating how such weapons can be used in assassinations.
Britain has said Russia used the Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok to attack Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two. Russia has denied any involvement.
"We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok," Johnson told the BBC.
Britain and Russia have each expelled 23 diplomats over the attack as relations between the two countries crash to a post-Cold War low.
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BERLIN (Reuters) -- German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier Sunday warned the United States against trying to drive a wedge between Germany and the rest of Europe with import tariffs, and said a global trade war would harm both producers and consumers.
Altmaier, who will travel to Washington later on Sunday, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that he prepared for his meetings with U.S. officials in close coordination with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.
"We are a customs union and act jointly. It cannot be in the interest of the U.S. government to divide Europe, and it also would not succeed," he told the paper.
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HARARE (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe’s first presidential and parliamentary elections since the end of former strongman Robert Mugabe’s long rule will take place in July, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday.
The polls will be the first major test of the new leader, who took power in November after a de facto military coup forced the 94-year-old Mugabe to resign.
They will also be the first without Mugabe’s name on the ballot since independence from Britain in 1980.
Mnangagwa, 75, said the elections would be free of the violence that gripped previous polls and which was one of the reasons for strained relations between Zimbabwe and the West.
"I have already invited all political parties in Zimbabwe to a roundtable where we all commit ourselves to non-violence,” he added.
Mnanaggwa will have to announce a date in an official notice. He has said he would invite Western observers, who had been banned under Mugabe’s rule.
The state-owned weekly Sunday Mail said a European Union pre-election team was expected in Harare on Monday.
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LONDON (AP) -- British police say a man who had been kicked out of a nightclub rammed his car into revelers on a dance floor, injuring at least 13 people.
The Kent Police force says the 21-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder over Saturday's crash in Gravesend, 48 kilometers southeast of London. Police say they are not treating the incident as terrorism.
Footage posted on social media showed a large car on a dance floor inside a marquee tent at Blake's nightclub. On Facebook, the club thanked "the heroic actions of our door team and guests to apprehend the individual before further harm was caused."
Police said Sunday that at least 13 people suffered injuries including broken bones but none of the injuries is life-threatening.
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DHAKA (Dispatches) -- Seven militants were sentenced to death Sunday in Bangladesh for the murder of a Sufi shrine caretaker in 2015, at the height of a wave of attacks which swept the South Asian country.
The defendants were convicted by a special court in the northern city of Rangpur where the killing took place, according to prosecutor Ratish Chandra Bhowmik.
"All seven are members of JMB (Jamayetul Mujahideeen Bangladesh)," Bhowmik told AFP, referring to a homegrown Islamist group. "Six of the convicts were in the court. Another convict was sentenced in absentia," he said, adding the defendant remained at large.
Two further suspects had been killed in a shootout with security forces since the murder, Bhowmik added.
He said the men confessed to slaughtering the caretaker in November 2015 because they considered him a heretic.
The JMB has been blamed for a wave of extremist attacks on religious minorities, atheist bloggers and converts from Islam in the past five years after they regrouped following the executions of its founder and senior leaders in 2007.
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ABUJA (AFP) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will not attend the African Union summit in Rwanda this week, an official statement said Sunday, in a blow to plans to launch a major free trade treaty across 54 countries.
The meeting in Kigali is intended to formally launch the African Continental Free Trade Area Treaty, which Nigeria's cabinet endorsed last Wednesday.
Buhari was scheduled to leave Abuja on Monday ahead of Wednesday's launch but pulled out to allow for more consultations.
"Mr President will no longer be travelling to Kigali for the event because certain key stakeholders in Nigeria indicated that they had not been consulted, for which reasons they had some concerns on the provisions of the treaty," the statement said.
"Consequently, Mr President's decision is to allow time for broader consultations on the issue."
The organized labor union, the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC), urged Buhari not to sign the deal.
Britain has said Russia used the Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok to attack Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two. Russia has denied any involvement.
"We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok," Johnson told the BBC.
Britain and Russia have each expelled 23 diplomats over the attack as relations between the two countries crash to a post-Cold War low.
***
BERLIN (Reuters) -- German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier Sunday warned the United States against trying to drive a wedge between Germany and the rest of Europe with import tariffs, and said a global trade war would harm both producers and consumers.
Altmaier, who will travel to Washington later on Sunday, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that he prepared for his meetings with U.S. officials in close coordination with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.
"We are a customs union and act jointly. It cannot be in the interest of the U.S. government to divide Europe, and it also would not succeed," he told the paper.
***
HARARE (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe’s first presidential and parliamentary elections since the end of former strongman Robert Mugabe’s long rule will take place in July, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday.
The polls will be the first major test of the new leader, who took power in November after a de facto military coup forced the 94-year-old Mugabe to resign.
They will also be the first without Mugabe’s name on the ballot since independence from Britain in 1980.
Mnangagwa, 75, said the elections would be free of the violence that gripped previous polls and which was one of the reasons for strained relations between Zimbabwe and the West.
"I have already invited all political parties in Zimbabwe to a roundtable where we all commit ourselves to non-violence,” he added.
Mnanaggwa will have to announce a date in an official notice. He has said he would invite Western observers, who had been banned under Mugabe’s rule.
The state-owned weekly Sunday Mail said a European Union pre-election team was expected in Harare on Monday.
***
LONDON (AP) -- British police say a man who had been kicked out of a nightclub rammed his car into revelers on a dance floor, injuring at least 13 people.
The Kent Police force says the 21-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder over Saturday's crash in Gravesend, 48 kilometers southeast of London. Police say they are not treating the incident as terrorism.
Footage posted on social media showed a large car on a dance floor inside a marquee tent at Blake's nightclub. On Facebook, the club thanked "the heroic actions of our door team and guests to apprehend the individual before further harm was caused."
Police said Sunday that at least 13 people suffered injuries including broken bones but none of the injuries is life-threatening.
***
DHAKA (Dispatches) -- Seven militants were sentenced to death Sunday in Bangladesh for the murder of a Sufi shrine caretaker in 2015, at the height of a wave of attacks which swept the South Asian country.
The defendants were convicted by a special court in the northern city of Rangpur where the killing took place, according to prosecutor Ratish Chandra Bhowmik.
"All seven are members of JMB (Jamayetul Mujahideeen Bangladesh)," Bhowmik told AFP, referring to a homegrown Islamist group. "Six of the convicts were in the court. Another convict was sentenced in absentia," he said, adding the defendant remained at large.
Two further suspects had been killed in a shootout with security forces since the murder, Bhowmik added.
He said the men confessed to slaughtering the caretaker in November 2015 because they considered him a heretic.
The JMB has been blamed for a wave of extremist attacks on religious minorities, atheist bloggers and converts from Islam in the past five years after they regrouped following the executions of its founder and senior leaders in 2007.
***
ABUJA (AFP) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will not attend the African Union summit in Rwanda this week, an official statement said Sunday, in a blow to plans to launch a major free trade treaty across 54 countries.
The meeting in Kigali is intended to formally launch the African Continental Free Trade Area Treaty, which Nigeria's cabinet endorsed last Wednesday.
Buhari was scheduled to leave Abuja on Monday ahead of Wednesday's launch but pulled out to allow for more consultations.
"Mr President will no longer be travelling to Kigali for the event because certain key stakeholders in Nigeria indicated that they had not been consulted, for which reasons they had some concerns on the provisions of the treaty," the statement said.
"Consequently, Mr President's decision is to allow time for broader consultations on the issue."
The organized labor union, the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC), urged Buhari not to sign the deal.