NEW YORK (AFP) — Washington police arrested a suspect on Tuesday over the shooting of five homeless men in the U.S. capital and in New York, officials said. Two men were killed and three wounded in the shootings that took place over the past 10 days, with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and her New York counterpart Eric Adams calling the perpetrator a “cold-blooded killer.” Police said the suspect in the shootings was being interviewed by law enforcement in a tweet early on Tuesday. Authorities have offered large cash rewards for information that leads to the killer’s arrest with police releasing images of a shaven-headed and bearded male suspect dressed all in black.

 

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ASHGABAT (Dispatches) -- The son of Turkmenistan’s autocrat leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has won a decisive victory in the presidential election, officials have said, paving the way for his succession. Serdar Berdymukhamedov, 40, won the ballot held last Saturday with 73% of the vote, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) said on its website. Nine candidates stood in the poll in the country of 6 million people, but few doubted that Berdymukhamedov Sr’s only son, who has pledged to pursue his father’s course, would take over the country’s top job. Berdymukhamedov Sr, who is Turkmenistan’s outgoing president, chair of the cabinet and senate chief, has been the government’s top decision-maker for the past 15 years. Known as the gas-rich country’s “protector”, he has dominated public life since the country’s founding president, Saparmurat Niyazov, died in 2006 and tolerates no dissent.

 

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- India is conducting a review of its standing operating procedures for operations, maintenance and inspection of weapons systems after accidentally launching a missile into Pakistan last week, its defense minister said on Tuesday. “We attach the highest priority to the safety and security of our weapon systems. If any shortcoming is found, it would be immediately rectified,” Rajnath Singh told parliament. India accidentally released a missile, which landed in Pakistan, around 7 p.m. last Wednesday during routine maintenance and inspection, he said. “While this incident is regretted, we are relieved that nobody was hurt due to the accident,” Singh said. 

 

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LIMA (Reuters) -- Peru’s Congress approved the start of impeachment proceedings against President Pedro Castillo over allegations of corruption after failing to gather enough votes in a previous attempt in December. The opposition-led Congress voted 76-41 to begin the political trial. To dismiss Castillo following the impeachment trial, lawmakers will eventually need 87 votes. Castillo or his lawyer must attend Congress on March 28 and present their defense before lawmakers debate and have a final vote on the impeachment. In a speech at a public event on Monday, Castillo said he would go to Congress on Tuesday to deliver a message about “what we are doing, and to say what we will do, for this nation”. Leftist Castillo has seen his popularity plunge to 26% since taking office in July, according to an Ipsos poll released over the weekend. Lawmakers are zeroing in on the testimony of a lobbyist who has alleged to prosecutors that Castillo engaged in irregular acts. 

 

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BENI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -- Suspected takfiri militants have killed more than 60 people over five days of attacks on villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local residents said on Tuesday. The assailants, believed to be rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), have targeted at least five villages, and the offensive was still ongoing, the residents told Reuters. Overwhelmed by violence in its eastern regions, Congo’s government appointed military officers to run North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province in May. Uganda sent more than 1,000 troops in December to wage joint operations against the ADF. But the attacks have continued unabated as ADF fighters have lashed out at local civilians in retaliation for the military campaigns. “The fighting continues even at this hour and victims’ bodies are being evacuated on motorbikes,” said Kinos Katuho, a civil society leader in the village of Mamove.

 

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TOKYO (REUTERS) -- The number of women who died by suicide in Japan rose for a second straight year in 2021, although the overall number of people who took their own lives in the country edged down, police said on Tuesday. Suicide has a long history in Japan as a way of avoiding shame or dishonor, and its suicide rate had long topped the Group of Seven (G-7) nations, but a concerted national effort brought numbers down by roughly 40 per cent over 15 years - although they rose in 2020 due to stresses brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the Health Ministry said. While the overall number of suicides edged down by 74 to 21,007 from the year before, the number of women who took their own lives rose by 42 to 7,068, the second straight year of increase, according to data from the National Police Agency.