News in Brief
LA PAZ (Reuters) -- The government of Bolivian President Evo Morales denounced what it called a coup by violent groups on Saturday, as some police forces carried out acts of "mutiny” in support of opposition protests amid a weeks-long standoff over a disputed election.
Morales, Latin America’s longest-standing leader, won the election on Oct. 20 but the vote count had been inexplicably halted for nearly a day, sparking allegations of fraud and leading to protests, strikes and road blocks.
"Sisters and brothers, our democracy is at risk due to the coup d’etat that violent groups have launched that undermine the constitutional order,” Morales tweeted in the early hours of Saturday. "We denounce this attempt against the rule of law before the international community.”
The foreign ministry also said in a statement on Saturday that a coup was "in process” by radical civic groups, adding some police officers had "abandoned their constitutional role of ensuring the security of society and state institutions”.
***
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - A mine worker shot during an ambush on a mining convoy in Burkina Faso said he was one of only three survivors from a bus with up to 80 people aboard, suggesting the death toll may be much higher than officially reported.
Abel Kabore, 35, described the attackers, some speaking a foreign language - raking three buses with bullets after a security vehicle escorting the convoy hit a landmine.
The first two buses were able to escape, he said. "The three buses which were shot ... there were so many dead. It was over 100. We were on the ground. We saw everything,” he said quietly at a hospital in the capital Ouagadougou. Of the people on his bus, "only 3 of us survived.”
***
KARTARPUR, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Contacts between India and Pakistan are "zero”, Pakistan’s foreign minister said, even as a border crossing opened on Saturday for Indian pilgrims to visit a Sikh temple in one of the most significant acts of cooperation in decades by the old rivals.
The border crossing pact between the neighbors allows visa-free access from India to the Pakistani town of Kartarpur, home to a temple marking the site where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, died.
Hundreds of Indians including members of the opposition Congress Party crossed the border for opening ceremony, though there was no representation from India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held his own ceremony over the border in India.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a statement the border crossing pact was a "testimony of our commitment towards peace of the region”.
***
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facebook says it is deleting the name of the person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who triggered a congressional impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions.
The company said that mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates Facebook’s "coordinating harm policy,” which prohibits material that could identify a "witness, informant, or activist.”
Facebook says it is removing mentions of the alleged whistleblower’s name and will revisit this decision if the name is widely published in the media or used by public figures in debate. The policy is not new. Facebook says it has been applying it to the whistleblower case and removing the person’s name for a few days.
On Twitter, though, the alleged whistleblower’s name was circulating widely on Friday. The company does not have a policy against identifying whistleblowers by name and is not removing the posts.
***
BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — A notorious South Korean facility that kidnapped, abused and enslaved children and the disabled for a generation was also shipping children overseas for adoption, part of a massive profit-seeking enterprise that thrived by exploiting those trapped within its walls, The Associated Press has found.
The AP, which previously exposed a government cover-up at Brothers Home and a far greater level of abuse than earlier known, has now found that the facility was part of an orphanage pipeline feeding the demand of private adoption agencies.
Relying on government documents obtained from officials, lawmakers or from freedom of information requests, the AP uncovered direct evidence that 19 children were adopted out of Brothers and sent abroad, as well as indirect evidence showing at least 51 more such adoptions. The adoptions AP found took place between 1979 and 1986.
***
PARIS (AP) — A French woman in her early 60s claims she was violently raped at age 18 by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a fugitive from the U.S. for more than four decades since pleading guilty to a sex offense with a minor, a French newspaper reported Friday.
Le Parisien said the woman, Valentine Monnier, alleges she was raped in 1975 at Polanski’s chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, when she was 18.
The paper quoted Polanski’s lawyer, Herve Temime, as saying that the 86-year-old Polanski "firmly contests” the allegation. The attorney could not be immediately reached by The Associated Press.
Temime "deplored” in his response to the newspaper that the claim is being made public shortly before Polanski’s latest film, "J’Accuse” (An Officer and a Spy) is being released in France. Monnier told Le Parisien that it was the film that triggered her decision to go public, saying that "rape is a time bomb.”
Morales, Latin America’s longest-standing leader, won the election on Oct. 20 but the vote count had been inexplicably halted for nearly a day, sparking allegations of fraud and leading to protests, strikes and road blocks.
"Sisters and brothers, our democracy is at risk due to the coup d’etat that violent groups have launched that undermine the constitutional order,” Morales tweeted in the early hours of Saturday. "We denounce this attempt against the rule of law before the international community.”
The foreign ministry also said in a statement on Saturday that a coup was "in process” by radical civic groups, adding some police officers had "abandoned their constitutional role of ensuring the security of society and state institutions”.
***
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - A mine worker shot during an ambush on a mining convoy in Burkina Faso said he was one of only three survivors from a bus with up to 80 people aboard, suggesting the death toll may be much higher than officially reported.
Abel Kabore, 35, described the attackers, some speaking a foreign language - raking three buses with bullets after a security vehicle escorting the convoy hit a landmine.
The first two buses were able to escape, he said. "The three buses which were shot ... there were so many dead. It was over 100. We were on the ground. We saw everything,” he said quietly at a hospital in the capital Ouagadougou. Of the people on his bus, "only 3 of us survived.”
***
KARTARPUR, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Contacts between India and Pakistan are "zero”, Pakistan’s foreign minister said, even as a border crossing opened on Saturday for Indian pilgrims to visit a Sikh temple in one of the most significant acts of cooperation in decades by the old rivals.
The border crossing pact between the neighbors allows visa-free access from India to the Pakistani town of Kartarpur, home to a temple marking the site where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, died.
Hundreds of Indians including members of the opposition Congress Party crossed the border for opening ceremony, though there was no representation from India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held his own ceremony over the border in India.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a statement the border crossing pact was a "testimony of our commitment towards peace of the region”.
***
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facebook says it is deleting the name of the person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who triggered a congressional impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions.
The company said that mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates Facebook’s "coordinating harm policy,” which prohibits material that could identify a "witness, informant, or activist.”
Facebook says it is removing mentions of the alleged whistleblower’s name and will revisit this decision if the name is widely published in the media or used by public figures in debate. The policy is not new. Facebook says it has been applying it to the whistleblower case and removing the person’s name for a few days.
On Twitter, though, the alleged whistleblower’s name was circulating widely on Friday. The company does not have a policy against identifying whistleblowers by name and is not removing the posts.
***
BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — A notorious South Korean facility that kidnapped, abused and enslaved children and the disabled for a generation was also shipping children overseas for adoption, part of a massive profit-seeking enterprise that thrived by exploiting those trapped within its walls, The Associated Press has found.
The AP, which previously exposed a government cover-up at Brothers Home and a far greater level of abuse than earlier known, has now found that the facility was part of an orphanage pipeline feeding the demand of private adoption agencies.
Relying on government documents obtained from officials, lawmakers or from freedom of information requests, the AP uncovered direct evidence that 19 children were adopted out of Brothers and sent abroad, as well as indirect evidence showing at least 51 more such adoptions. The adoptions AP found took place between 1979 and 1986.
***
PARIS (AP) — A French woman in her early 60s claims she was violently raped at age 18 by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a fugitive from the U.S. for more than four decades since pleading guilty to a sex offense with a minor, a French newspaper reported Friday.
Le Parisien said the woman, Valentine Monnier, alleges she was raped in 1975 at Polanski’s chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, when she was 18.
The paper quoted Polanski’s lawyer, Herve Temime, as saying that the 86-year-old Polanski "firmly contests” the allegation. The attorney could not be immediately reached by The Associated Press.
Temime "deplored” in his response to the newspaper that the claim is being made public shortly before Polanski’s latest film, "J’Accuse” (An Officer and a Spy) is being released in France. Monnier told Le Parisien that it was the film that triggered her decision to go public, saying that "rape is a time bomb.”