Truck bomb explosion kills 20 in Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia— A huge explosion from a truck bomb killed 20 people in Somalia’s capital, police said Saturday, as shaken residents called it the most powerful blast they had heard in years.

The explosion appeared to target a hotel on a busy road in Hodan district and at least 15 people were injured, police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said. Security forces had been trailing the truck after it raised suspicions, he said.

Police said people were trapped in the rubble of the Safari Hotel, which was largely destroyed in the explosion.

The hotel is close to Somalia’s foreign ministry.

Cargo plane crashes

A French cargo plane with 10 people on board crashed near Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan on Saturday.

The Antonov aircraft carrying cargo for the French military crashed into the sea less than 500 meters from the airport, Ivory Coast’s Economic Infrastructure Minister Amede Kouakou said.

Four Moldovan nationals died, Issa Sakho, commanding officer of Ivory Coast firefighters, said.

The six survivors include four French and two Moldovan nationals, he said.

Ophelia threatens Ireland

Hurricane Ophelia strengthenedas it bears down on Ireland, threatening everythingfrom farms to a golf courseowned by the family of PresidentDonald Trump.

Ophelia turned into a “rare” category 3 hurricane, the sixth major hurricane of the 2017 season, 220 miles south of the Azores, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.

It is the most eastern category 3 Atlantic hurricane on record, according to the U.K.‘s Met Office.

The system is moving northeast at 25 miles per hour with top winds of 115 mph, according to the NHC.

Assange on shaky ground

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy since 2012, is embroiled in a spat with the South American country’s new president, Lenín Moreno, about Mr. Assange’s vocal support for Catalonian separatists.

Mr.Moreno, who assumed officein January, has asked Mr.Assange to stay out of the constitutional crisis in Spain, promptingthis riposte from Mr.Assange on Twitter:

“If President Moreno wants to gag my reporting of human rights abuses in Spain he should say so explicitly— together with the legal basis.”

But Mr. Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for alleged sex offenses and potentially in the United States for publishing state secrets, might want to think twice before antagonizing Mr. Moreno. The new president seems bent on charting a different course than his mentor and predecessor, Rafael Correa, who first gave refuge to the Australian activist.

IMF decries complacency

WASHINGTON— Global finance leaders on Saturday appealed to central bankers to stick as long as possible with low-interest rate policies that have made borrowing attractive and helped safeguard an improving but still fragile world economic recovery.

Declaring the “recovery is not complete” even eight years after the 2008 financial crisis, the 189-nation International Monetary Fund wrapped up its fall meetings with a communique warning “there is no room for complacency” as nations confront new challenges to global growth from a range of threats, including cyber-security attacks.