News in Brief

Date: 17 August 2022 - 21:16

News ID: ۱۰۵۸۵۷

LONDON (AP) — A man who got into the grounds of Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow told police he wanted to “kill the queen,” prosecutors said during a court hearing Wednesday. Jaswant Singh Chail, 20, is charged under the Treason Act with intending to “injure the person of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, or to alarm her Majesty.” He has also been charged with threats to kill and possession of an offensive weapon. Chail was arrested at the royal residence west of London on Christmas Day 2021, when the queen was staying there. Prosecutors allege the former supermarket worker from Southampton in southern England was wearing a hood and a mask and carrying a loaded crossbow with the safety catch off. They say he told a police officer “I am here to kill the Queen,” before he was handcuffed and arrested.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican adversary in Congress, was defeated in a GOP primary Tuesday, falling to a rival backed by the former president in a contest that reinforced his grip on the party’s base. The third-term congresswoman and her allies entered the day downbeat about her prospects, aware that Trump’s backing gave Harriet Hageman considerable lift in the state where he won by the largest margin during the 2020 campaign. Cheney was already looking ahead to a political future beyond Capitol Hill that could include a 2024 presidential run, potentially putting her on another collision course with Trump. Cheney described her loss as the beginning of a new chapter in her political career as she addressed a small collection of supporters, including her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, on the edge of a vast field flanked by mountains and bales of hay.

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BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Wartime rivals Serbia and Kosovo are holding high-level crisis talks on Thursday which the European Union mediators hope will de-escalate growing tensions in the Balkans where Russia has been trying to further increase its influence amid the war in Ukraine. Hopes that the rare face-to-face meeting between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, to be held in Brussels, could produce a major breakthrough are slim. But Western officials overseeing the decades-old deadlock between the two neighbors hope that at least it could eliminate increasing warmongering rhetoric by both sides.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya’s president-elect William Ruto said on Wednesday there was no time to waste in tackling an economic crisis, as defeated rival Raila Odinga prepared a legal challenge to overturn his loss in Aug. 9’s election. Ruto was declared president-elect on Monday by Kenya’s election commission chairman after a closely fought race to lead East Africa’s richest country, but four of the seven election commissioners have challenged the results. Odinga has said he will contest the decision in court, calling it a “travesty”. Ruto nevertheless said he was forging ahead with creating an administration, promising that no Kenyan would be excluded, whatever their political or ethnic affiliation. “I really want us to know that the expectations of the people of Kenya are huge. We don’t have the luxury of wasting time,” Ruto, currently deputy president, said after meeting elected officials from his alliance at his official residence. The 55-year-old did not directly address Odinga’s plan to challenge his victory, but said: “If there will be court processes, we will engage because we adhere to the rule of law.” The election was seen as a test of stability for a close Western ally that hosts regional head

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TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia’s new constitution giving the president far greater powers is to come into effect after the official electoral commission announced final results for last month’s referendum. The 96% yes vote in the referendum, with 31% of the electorate taking part, was largely unchanged from the preliminary results announced last month. Opponents of President Kais Saied say the new constitution will unravel Tunisia’s democratic gains from the 2011 revolution by giving him nearly unchecked powers. They have criticized the process by which he wrote the constitution as illegal and unilateral and have raised concerns over the legitimacy of the referendum after he replaced the board of the electoral commission. Saied and his supporters have said the political system had to change to save Tunisia from years of stagnation and political paralysis and have defended the process by which he passed the constitution.