U.S. troops in Niger killed in ambush?
Three Army Special Forces soldiers were reportedly killed in Niger in northwestern Africa after their joint patrol with Nigerien forces was ambushed, according to reports.
“We can confirm reports that a joint U.S. and Nigerien patrol came under hostile fire in southwest Niger,” Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for the United States Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said in an email.
The deaths would mark the first hostile fire casualties in Niger. Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the commandos were likely attacked by alQaida in the Islamic Maghreb militants.
Tropical storm approaches
MIAMI — A tropical depression formed in the southern Caribbean Wednesday, with another Florida hurricane possible by the weekend. It’s possible sustained winds could reach 80 mph by Saturday, marking it a weak Category 1 storm as it approaches the U.S. coast. A hurricane hunter plane was scheduled to investigate the storm later Wednesday.
Nobel for chemistry
NEWYORK — Three researchers won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for developing a microscope technique that lets scientists see exquisite details of the molecules that drive life — basically providing a front-row seat to study these tiny performers in their biological dance.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said molecules can be captured down to the level of their atoms, and snapshots can catch them in mid-movement. That can help reveal how they interact.
The chemistry prize was awarded to Switzerland’s Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, German-born U.S. citizen Joachim Frank at New York’s Columbia University, and Briton Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
Attacker was in U.S.
OTTAWA,Ontario — A Somali man suspected of carrying out what was called a terrorist attack in Alberta last weekend came to Canada and was declared a refugee after being ordered expelled from the United States several years ago, officials said Wednesday.
The man, Abdulahi Sharif, 30, is accused of striking a police officer with a car and stabbing him outside a football stadium in Edmonton, Alberta, on Sunday and later using a rental truck to hit four people in the city.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement service said that it detained Mr. Sharif in July 2011 in California after he was found without documentation, and that a judge ordered him returned to Somalia. He was released from a detention center two months later. When U.S. officials went to find Mr. Sharif in January 2012 after he failed to check in with the immigration authorities, he had vanished.
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Theleader of Catalonia saidWednesday night that he wanteda negotiated settlement to the region’s conflict withthe Spanish government,but he did not offer to shelve his secessionist plan.