MULBERRY, Ark. (WP) — Three Arkansas law enforcement officers were suspended Sunday following social media outrage over a video that shows a suspect being held down on the ground and beaten. Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante issued a statement Sunday evening, stating two county deputies will be suspended during the course of the Arkansas state police’s investigation into the incident and the sheriff’s office’s internal investigation. A Mulberry police officer also was suspended. According to police, a report indicated that a man was making threats to a convenience store employee in Mulberry on Sunday morning. Mulberry is located about 137 miles (220.48 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock. Three law enforcement officers are seen in the video. One can be seen punching the shoeless suspect with a clenched fist, while another can be seen kneeing him, and a third is holding him down. The unidentified man was arrested and taken to a local hospital. He faces charges of terroristic threatening, resisting arrest and other assault charges, police said. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday night on Twitter that the “incident in Crawford County will be investigated pursuant to the video evidence and the request of the prosecuting attorney.”

 

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NAIROBI (Reuters) -- Kenya’s veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga filed a challenge to the results of this month’s presidential election in the Supreme Court on Monday, his legal team said, sharpening a political clash that has gripped East Africa’s powerhouse. Last week the election commissioner declared Deputy President William Ruto had won the election by a slim margin, but four out of seven election commissioners dissented, saying the tallying of results had not been transparent. Last week Odinga said the results were a “travesty” but said he would settle the dispute in court and urged supporters to remain peaceful. This is Odinga’s fifth stab at the presidency; he blamed several previous losses on rigging. Those disputes triggered violence that claimed more than 100 lives in 2017 and more than 1,200 lives in 2007. In 2017, the Supreme Court overturned the election result and ordered a re-run, which Odinga boycotted, saying he had no faith in the election commission.  

 

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MOGADISHU (AFP) -- Somalia’s prime minister said the government would be held accountable over the deadly Mogadishu hotel siege by Al-Shabaab takfiris that he branded “children of hell”. Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre also called on Somalis to unite in the fight against the Al-Qaeda-linked group which has been waging a bloody insurgency in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation for more than 15 years. He was speaking after visiting a hospital treating wounded victims of the bomb and gun attack on the Hayat Hotel that the health ministry says claimed the lives of 21 people. The 30-hour siege was the deadliest attack in Somalia since the new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected in May after a protracted political crisis.

 

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LAGOS (AFP) -- Gunmen have abducted four Catholic nuns in southeast Nigeria’s Imo state, police said Monday, in the latest violence in a region where separatist tensions are on the rise. Kidnappings by criminal gangs are frequent in Africa’s most populous country, but in recent weeks members of Christian churches have increasingly been targeted.  Most hostages are released after a ransom payment, but some have been killed. Abattam could not immediately say what the motive was for the abduction as no group has claimed responsibility. Southeast Nigeria has seen a surge in violence blamed on the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group or its armed wing ESN. IPOB which seeks a separate state for ethnic Igbo people has repeatedly denied responsibility for violence in the region.

 

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BAMAKO (Reuters) -- Mali has appointed an interim prime minister to act in place of leader Choguel Maiga, who is resting amid media reports he had been hospitalized.  Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, currently government spokesman and minister of territorial administration, is the new acting prime minister, a government statement said.  Earlier this month, Paris-based Jeune Afrique magazine reported that Choguel Maiga had suffered a stroke, citing sources close to him. Mali is governed by a military junta that came to power in a 2020 coup and has promised to organize democratic elections in 2024.

 

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MANILA (AFP) -- Millions of children in the Philippines returned to school as the academic year started on Monday, with many taking their seats in classrooms for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The Philippines is one of the last countries in the world to resume full-time, in-person lessons -- sparking warnings that the prolonged closure of classrooms had worsened an education crisis in the country. Children in masks and uniforms lined up for a temperature check and squirt of hand sanitizer at Pedro Guevara Elementary School in Manila, which had shut classrooms since March 2020. The school has adopted a hybrid system of in-person and remote learning as it transitions its nearly 6,000 students back to face-to-face classes by November -- a deadline set by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr soon after he took office two months ago.