UK’s Johnson pays police fine, apologizes for lockdown parties
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday that he paid a fine from police for attending a lockdown-breaching birthday party in his official residence, making him the first British leader to be sanctioned for breaking the law while in office.
The fines for Johnson, his wife, Carrie, and Treasury chief Rishi Sunak brought a simmering crisis for the prime minister back to full boil, with opposition politicians calling for his resignation.
Johnson and his Conservative government have faced growing outrage since allegations surfaced late last year that he and his staff flouted Britain’s pandemic restrictions and held office parties in 2020 and 2021 when millions in the country were barred from meeting with friends and family — or even attending funerals for their loved ones.
“I have paid the fine and want to offer a full apology,” Johnson said. “I understand the anger many will feel that I myself fell short when it came to observing the very rules which the government I lead had introduced to protect the public. I accept in all sincerity that people had the right to expect better.”
Downing Street said Johnson was being sanctioned for attending a “gathering of two or more people indoors in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street” on June 19, 2020. The event was a surprise birthday party for the prime minister.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said it had issued at least 50 fines after investigating a dozen events held in 10 Downing St. and other government buildings.
Opponents, and some members of the governing Conservative Party, say Johnson should resign.
“Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have broken the law and repeatedly lied to the British public,” said Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party. “The Conservatives are totally unfit to govern. Britain deserves better.”
Hackers disrupted: Western law enforcement agencies have dismantled an online marketplace used to buy and sell hacked and stolen personal data belonging to millions of people, and have charged the platform’s founder and chief administrator, officials announced Tuesday.
Authorities say the RaidForums website trafficked in hundreds of databases of sensitive data, including credit card and Social Security numbers and bank account information, that had been hacked or stolen from victims.
In addition to seizing three domains that hosted the website, officials have arrested 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho of Portugal, who prosecutors say controlled and administered the platform between 2015 and this past January, when he was taken into custody in the United Kingdom.
The U.S. is seeking his extradition to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia ,on charges including conspiracy, access device fraud and aggravated identify.
New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin resigned Tuesday in the wake of his arrest in a federal corruption investigation, Gov. Kathy Hochul said, creating a political crisis for her seven months after she selected Benjamin as a partner to make a fresh start in an office already rocked by scandal.
Benjamin, a Democrat, was accused in an indictment of participating in a scheme to obtain campaign
New York resignation:
contributions from a real estate developer in exchange for Benjamin’s agreement to use his influence as a state senator to get a $50,000 grant of state funds for a nonprofit organization the developer controlled.
Facing charges including bribery, fraud, conspiracy and falsification of records, Benjamin pleaded not guilty Tuesday at an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court. He was released and bail was set at $250,000.
S. Dakota impeachment:
The South Dakota House on Tuesday impeached state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg over a 2020 car crash in which he killed a pedestrian but initially said he might have struck a deer or another large animal.
Ravnsborg, a Republican, is the first official to be impeached in South Dakota history. He will at least temporarily be removed from office pending the historic Senate trial, where it
takes a two-thirds majority to convict on impeachment charges.
Ravnsborg pleaded no contest last year to a pair of traffic misdemeanors in the crash, including making an illegal lane change. He has cast Joseph Boever’s death as a tragic accident.
Korean tensions: North Korea is destroying a South Korean-owned golf course at a scenic mountain resort in the second confirmed case of South Korean assets being eliminated in an area where the rivals once ran a joint tour program, officials said Tuesday in Seoul.
North Korea’s demolition of South Korean-built facilities at its Diamond Mountain resort comes as ties between the countries remain strained over the North’s recent series of high-profile missile tests.
Responding to queries by The Associated Press, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said it has confirmed North
Korea is demolishing the resort in addition to a South Korean-owned hotel there.
The ministry said it urges North Korea to stop destroying the South Korean facilities. It demanded North Korea return to talks to address the issue. The two Koreas jointly ran a tour project at the resort for about 10 years during an earlier era of inter-Korean detente.
Nigeria violence: An armed gang has killed more than 100 people in a remote part of northern Nigeria, survivors and local authorities said Tuesday.
The attackers targeted four villages in the Kanam area of Plateau State, the most recent in a series of attacks in Nigeria’s north.
Such attacks in Nigeria’s northern region have become frequent, especially between Fulani Muslims who are mostly cattle herders and Christian communities from the Hausa and
other ethnic groups who are mainly farmers.
The conflict over access to land and water has further worsened the sectarian division between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with its 206 million people deeply divided along religious lines.
Salmonella outbreak: European health officials investigating an outbreak of salmonella linked to chocolate Easter eggs that has sickened at least 150 children across the continent said Tuesday they suspect it is due to bad buttermilk in a Belgian factory.
In an assessment of the continuing outbreak, experts at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Food Safety Authority said they had matched the same salmonella strain currently infecting people to samples taken from a factory in Belgium last December.