WASHINGTON (AFP) -- A former Republican candidate for New Mexico’s state legislature has been arrested and charged with paying gunmen to shoot up the homes of four Democratic politicians, police said on Monday. Solomon Pena, who lost the race for a House seat in the U.S. state, “is accused of conspiring with, and paying four other men to shoot at the homes” of four Democratic politicians, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina tweeted. Pena was in police custody after a brief standoff with a SWAT team at his home in the southwestern part of the city, CBS News reported. Pena is accused of organizing the shootings, which took place over several weeks and targeted the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators. In the January 3 shooting, shots rang out at the home of a Democratic state representative, Linda Lopez, and three bullets pierced her 10-year-old daughter’s bedroom window while she was sleeping. A police spokesperson, Gilbert Gallegos, said Pena believed he lost last November’s election to an incumbent due to fraud.

 

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 BERLIN (Reuters) -- Social Democrat (SPD) interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony Boris Pistorius is to serve as Germany’s next defense minister, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday, at a time when Berlin is under pressure to boost military support for Ukraine. Christine Lambrecht resigned as defense minister on Monday as allies increase calls to send Ukraine heavy tanks, at the start of what is likely to be a pivotal week for Western plans to further arm Kyiv. The appointment, if confirmed, could result in a wider reshuffling of the German cabinet as Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised to staff his cabinet with equal numbers of men and women. Pistorius has been interior minister in Lower Saxony since 2013 and has long been seen as a candidate to assume a national position. He ran for the leadership of the Social Democrat party in 2019.

 

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KYIV (Reuters) -- Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych tendered his resignation on Tuesday after a public outcry over comments he made suggesting a Russian missile that killed at least 41 people in the city of Dnipro had been shot down by Ukraine. Arestovych announced his resignation on Facebook after publicly apologizing and rowing back on his comments in a post on the Telegram messaging app. The Ukrainian Air Force says the apartment complex was hit by a Russian Kh-22 missile, which Kyiv does not have the equipment to shoot down. “I offer my sincere apologies to the victims and their relatives, the residents of Dnipro and everyone who was deeply hurt by my prematurely erroneous version of the reason for the Russian missile striking a residential building,” he wrote.

 

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MOSCOW (AFP) -- The trial in absentia of Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya opened in Minsk on Tuesday, state news agency Belta reported. Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory in 2020 presidential elections, faces a litany of charges including high treason, “conspiracy to seize power” and creating and leading an extremist organization, Belta said. Tikhanovskaya’s political allies Maria Moroz, Pavel Latushko, Olga Kovalkova and Sergei Dylevsky are also being tried in absentia. Ahead of the start of Tikhanovskaya’s trial, investigators announced new charges against her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, who in 2021 was found guilty of organizing riots and inciting social hatred. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

   

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -- Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has offered his Indian counterpart talks over all outstanding issues, including disputed Kashmir, which he believes could be facilitated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). “My message to the Indian leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is let’s sit down at the table and have serious and sincere talks to resolve our burning issues, like Kashmir,” Sharif said in an interview with Al Arabiya news channel, telecast by Pakistan’s state run TV on Tuesday. The two arch-rival nuclear powers have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947. Two of the wars were over Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region, which both the nations claim. Each controls half of it. The two neighbors got closer to a full scale war in 2019 when India launched an airstrike inside Pakistan to target what New Delhi said was a militant training facility. Tensions rose high when India unilaterally revoked the autonomous status of its part of Kashmir later in 2019, which Sharif said resulted in “flagrant” human rights violations.

 

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) -- Takfiri fighters from Al-Shabaab on Tuesday stormed a military base in a part of central Somalia they were forced from last year, killing at least 11 soldiers, including the base commander, an officer said. Assailants from the Al-Qaeda affiliate rammed the base in the village of Hawadley with a suicide car bomb and then opened fire, Captain Aden Nur, a military officer in a nearby town, told Reuters. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying it had killed “many apostate soldiers and their commander”. The group has been fighting since 2007 to topple Somalia’s central government and impose its strict takfiri law. The insurgency has contributed to an acute food crisis in Somalia. More than 200,000 Somalis are suffering catastrophic food shortages, with some parts of central Somalia on the brink of famine.