CARACAS (AFP) – Three people accused in a failed drone attack targeting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in 2018 were sentenced to 30-year jail terms, relatives say. Maria Delgado Tabosky, retired army major Juan Carlos Marrufo and retired colonel Juan Francisco Rodriguez were convicted on charges of “terrorism, treason and criminal conspiracy,” according to a family member of one of the accused, who asked to remain anonymous. The criminal hearing began Thursday night and lasted into the early hours of Friday, the family member said. Delgado Tabosky, 48, holds dual Venezuelan and Spanish citizenship and is sister of Osman Delgado Tabosky, who resides in the United States, He is accused by the Maduro government of financing the attack, in which two drones carrying explosives blew up near where Maduro was addressing an assembly of members of the National Guard on August 4, 2018, in Caracas.

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BERLIN (Reuters) – German police gave the all-clear after a hostage-taking that had prompted it to evacuate a shopping mall in the historic city center of Dresden and shut the famous Striezelmarkt Christmas market on Saturday. “All-clear! The hostage situation in #Dresden is over!” police said on Twitter, adding that two people who appeared to be unharmed were in its care. Earlier, police evacuated a shopping mall and surrounding areas in the eastern German city of Dresden on Saturday due to a suspected hostage taking, according to a police statement. “The Dresden Police Department is currently carrying out an operation in downtown Dresden. The background is the suspicion of a hostage situation,” the police said in a statement on its website. German daily Bild reported that an armed man had killed a woman, then stormed a local radio station and fired shots before fleeing into a shopping mall where he took several hostages. Radio Dresden said on its website earlier that an armed man had entered the Ammonhof office building, where the radio station is located, around 8.30 am local time (0730 GMT) and that shots had been fired.

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LONDON (AP) — An explosion and fire in an apartment building on the Channel Island of Jersey killed one person and left several missing Saturday, police said. Robin Smith, the chief officer of the States of Jersey Police, said during a news conference that “around a dozen” residents were missing following the blast in the town of St Helier. Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, is a self-governing dependency of the United Kingdom located off the coast of northern France in the English Channel. Smith said a three-story building had “completely collapsed” and there was also damage to a nearby building. He described the scene as “devastating” and warned there could be more fatalities. Smith said the fire service had been called to the area the night before after residents reported smelling gas. He said police would investigate “whether or not there was a safety issue” with natural gas lines. Police said in a statement that while the fire was extinguished, emergency service agencies were carrying out significant work” at the scene.

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NEW YORK (Al Jazeera) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Nigerian authorities to investigate allegations of systemic and coerced abortions reportedly perpetrated by its army, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric has said. The Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday that the Nigerian Army has run a secret, systematic and illegal abortion program in the country’s northeast since at least 2013. The program allegedly involved terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been kidnapped and raped by Boko Haram, according to dozens of witness accounts and documentation reviewed by Reuters. “The Secretary-General takes note with concern of the allegations of systemic and coerced abortions reportedly perpetrated by the Nigerian Army against women and girls who had already been victimized by Boko Haram,” Dujarric said in an email to Reuters. He called for a thorough investigation and “immediate remedial actions and accountability measures,” if such measures were necessary. “We call on the Nigerian authorities to fully investigate these allegations and make sure there’s accountability,” Dujarric told reporters later on Friday.

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LOS ANGELES (Xinhua) – More than 25,000 people were hospitalized due to flu in the United States in the week ending Dec. 3, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Seasonal influenza activity remains high across the country, said the CDC. There have been at least 13 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 7,300 deaths from flu so far this season in the United States, according to the CDC. Seven influenza-associated pediatric deaths were reported in the week, for a total of 21 pediatric flu deaths reported so far this season in the country.

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BEUNOS AIRES (Dispatches) – Argentina has blasted Britain’s military exercises in the disputed Malvinas Islands, summoning the UK’s ambassador to Buenos Aires in protest at the drills. Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero called in Kirsty Hayes to protest a series of military drills carried out near the Malvinas Islands, also known in the UK as the Falkland Islands, an archipelagic territory that Argentina considers its own. In a statement on Thursday, Cafiero expressed his “categorical rejection” of Britain executing military exercises in the Malvinas Islands and said the archipelago is “an integral part of the Argentine territory illegitimately occupied by the United Kingdom.” Cafiero also pointed to a protest note by Claudio Rozencwaig, the Argentine undersecretary for Foreign Policy, which indicated that the British actions are an “unjustified show of force.” Rozencwaig said the rejection note to the UK ambassador demonstrated that the military exercises represented an “unjustified show of force,” adding that the move goes against the United Nations’ request to find a peaceful resolution to the territorial sovereignty dispute.