News in Brief
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A health worker in Somalia’s capital says at least five soldiers were killed and more than a dozen people, mostly civilians, were wounded in violence related to protests over the country’s delayed election. Abdi Bafo, a doctor at the Medina hospital, spoke on Saturday, the day after Somali security forces fired on hundreds of people peacefully demonstrating in Mogadishu over the delayed vote. Opposition leaders on Saturday vowed to hold more protests. The capital was calm, and streets were open again after being blocked on Friday. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed is under pressure as the Feb. 8 election date came and went without resolution of issues related to how the vote is conducted in the Horn of Africa nation. Some Somalis are demanding that he step down. Friday’s confrontation followed gunfire overnight near the presidential palace. Somalia’s government blamed it on "armed militia” but former Somali president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed asserted that the government had raided the hotel.
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BERLIN (Reuters) -- The negotiations on the next steps in the development of a Franco-German fighter jet are still going on, the government in Berlin said, while security sources described the talks on Europe’s biggest defense project as stuck. The battle over the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) with an estimated cost of more than 100 billion euros ($120.4 billion) has intensified since Spain officially joined the project late last year. The three countries still disagree over intellectual property rights and workshares, with French company Dassault demanding 50% of the workload, security sources told Reuters on Friday. The disagreements run so deep, there are considerations by now to build three demonstrators instead of one, further driving up the cost of the project, they said.
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BANGKOK (Reuters) -- Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Thailand’s parliament after Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and nine ministers survived a parliamentary no-confidence motion on Saturday after a four-day censure debate. "It was a disappointment, but expected,” protest leader Attapon Buapat said. Over 1,000 protesters rallied outside the parliament gates. Organizers gave assurances the protest would not turn violent. Earlier, lawmakers voted in favor of Prayuth and other ministers, which had been widely expected. Opposition lawmakers have taken aim at what they say is a slow government roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine and at its economic policies, vowing to continue investigating. Prayuth, a former chief of the armed forces, overthrew an elected prime minister in 2014 and stayed in office after a 2019 election that his rivals said was badly flawed.
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MOSCOW (Dispatches) — A Moscow court on Saturday rejected Alexei Navalny’s appeal against his prison sentence, even as the country faced a top European rights court’s order to free the Western-backed blogger. A lower court sentenced Navalny earlier this month to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany from an alleged nerve agent poisoning. Navalny, 44, appealed the prison sentence and asked to be released. The Moscow City Court’s judge on Saturday only slightly reduced his sentence to just over 2 1/2 years in prison, ruling that a month-and-half Navalny spent under house arrest in early 2015 will be deducted from his sentence. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest.
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TAIPEI (Reuters) -- Taiwan’s air force scrambled for a second straight day on Saturday after a dozen Chinese fighter aircraft and bombers carried out drills close to Taiwan-controlled islands in the disputed South China Sea, the defense ministry in Taipei said. Beijing, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, has carried out repeated air missions in the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in recent months, mostly near the Pratas Islands. After nine Chinese air force aircraft flew near the Pratas Islands on Friday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said it tracked 11 aircraft on Saturday - eight fighter jets, two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, also near the islands. China has not commented on the last two days of activities. It previously said such maneuvers were a response to "collusion” between Taipei and Washington, Taiwan’s main international backer and weapons supplier, and to safeguard Chinese sovereignty.
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PARIS (Reuters) -- A Sudanese asylum seeker who fatally stabbed an employee at a migrant reception centre in the southern French city of Pau on Friday had no terrorist motives, the Pau prosecutor said on Saturday. Prosecutor Cecile Gensac said that the assailant was not on a national list of terrorism suspects. Following Friday’s attack he was detained by staff at the asylum centre. "Two employees of the centre intervened, with a lot of courage. They held him by the arms and locked him in an office. He put up no resistance,” she told a news conference. She said the 38-year-old assailant had arrived in France in 2015 and had spent some time at the immigration centre. Following two convictions and jail time for acts of violence in 2017-2019, he had lost the right to apply for asylum and was set to be deported to his home country, but he had not responded to a request to report to immigration authorities, she said.
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BERLIN (Reuters) -- The negotiations on the next steps in the development of a Franco-German fighter jet are still going on, the government in Berlin said, while security sources described the talks on Europe’s biggest defense project as stuck. The battle over the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) with an estimated cost of more than 100 billion euros ($120.4 billion) has intensified since Spain officially joined the project late last year. The three countries still disagree over intellectual property rights and workshares, with French company Dassault demanding 50% of the workload, security sources told Reuters on Friday. The disagreements run so deep, there are considerations by now to build three demonstrators instead of one, further driving up the cost of the project, they said.
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BANGKOK (Reuters) -- Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Thailand’s parliament after Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and nine ministers survived a parliamentary no-confidence motion on Saturday after a four-day censure debate. "It was a disappointment, but expected,” protest leader Attapon Buapat said. Over 1,000 protesters rallied outside the parliament gates. Organizers gave assurances the protest would not turn violent. Earlier, lawmakers voted in favor of Prayuth and other ministers, which had been widely expected. Opposition lawmakers have taken aim at what they say is a slow government roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine and at its economic policies, vowing to continue investigating. Prayuth, a former chief of the armed forces, overthrew an elected prime minister in 2014 and stayed in office after a 2019 election that his rivals said was badly flawed.
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MOSCOW (Dispatches) — A Moscow court on Saturday rejected Alexei Navalny’s appeal against his prison sentence, even as the country faced a top European rights court’s order to free the Western-backed blogger. A lower court sentenced Navalny earlier this month to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany from an alleged nerve agent poisoning. Navalny, 44, appealed the prison sentence and asked to be released. The Moscow City Court’s judge on Saturday only slightly reduced his sentence to just over 2 1/2 years in prison, ruling that a month-and-half Navalny spent under house arrest in early 2015 will be deducted from his sentence. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Russia has rejected Western criticism of Navalny’s arrest.
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TAIPEI (Reuters) -- Taiwan’s air force scrambled for a second straight day on Saturday after a dozen Chinese fighter aircraft and bombers carried out drills close to Taiwan-controlled islands in the disputed South China Sea, the defense ministry in Taipei said. Beijing, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, has carried out repeated air missions in the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in recent months, mostly near the Pratas Islands. After nine Chinese air force aircraft flew near the Pratas Islands on Friday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said it tracked 11 aircraft on Saturday - eight fighter jets, two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft, also near the islands. China has not commented on the last two days of activities. It previously said such maneuvers were a response to "collusion” between Taipei and Washington, Taiwan’s main international backer and weapons supplier, and to safeguard Chinese sovereignty.
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PARIS (Reuters) -- A Sudanese asylum seeker who fatally stabbed an employee at a migrant reception centre in the southern French city of Pau on Friday had no terrorist motives, the Pau prosecutor said on Saturday. Prosecutor Cecile Gensac said that the assailant was not on a national list of terrorism suspects. Following Friday’s attack he was detained by staff at the asylum centre. "Two employees of the centre intervened, with a lot of courage. They held him by the arms and locked him in an office. He put up no resistance,” she told a news conference. She said the 38-year-old assailant had arrived in France in 2015 and had spent some time at the immigration centre. Following two convictions and jail time for acts of violence in 2017-2019, he had lost the right to apply for asylum and was set to be deported to his home country, but he had not responded to a request to report to immigration authorities, she said.