NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
Quake victims: The last body known to be trapped in rubble following Mexico’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake has been recovered, officials said Wednesday, and they raised the overall death toll from the quake to 369. The body was recovered from a collapsed office building in central Mexico City where a steadily dwindling number of families kept vigil for two weeks as an international assortment of rescuers worked a massive rubble heap. It was the last known active recovery site. Roberto Campa, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary for human rights, said via Twitter that 49 bodies were recovered from the site. They were of 19 women and 30 men.
Life sentences: A court in southwestern Turkey sentenced 40 suspects to life in prison Wednesday, convicting them of charges that include attempting to kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during last year’s failed coup, Turkish state television TRT reported. A total of 46 suspects — 37 of them former military personnel — have been on trial since February in the city of Mugla accused of attempted assassination, violation of the constitution and other crimes against the state during the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. The defendants were accused of using helicopters to attack the hotel in the resort of Marmaris where Erdogan and his family members were staying, killing two policemen. Erdogan had left the hotel shortly before it was attacked.
Espionage charges: A member of Iran’s team of nuclear negotiators that struck the 2015 deal with world powers has been sentenced to five years in prison on espionage charges, a semiofficial news agency reported on Wednesday. Though unnamed in the report, the only negotiator known to be facing criminal charges is dual Iranian-Canadian national Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani. His detention, if confirmed, would make him the latest dual national to be arrested in Iran, part of what a U.N. panel of experts has called an “emerging pattern” since the atomic accord. Canadian officials did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did Iran’s mission at the United Nations.
U.S. soldiers killed: Three U.S. Army Special Forces were killed and two were wounded in an ambush in Niger on Wednesday while on a routine patrol with troops they were training from the West African nation, U.S. military officials said. A U.S. military official said three Army Green Berets were killed 120 miles north of Niamey, the capital of Niger, near the border of Mali, where militants with al Qaeda in the Islamic North Africa, an affiliate of al Qaeda, have conducted crossborder raids. The deaths mark the first American casualties in a mission in which U.S. Special Forces have provided training and security assistance to Niger’s armed forces, including support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Temporary asylum: A 106-year-old Afghan woman who made a perilous journey to Europe in 2015 that involved her son and grandson carrying her through mountains, deserts and forests has finally been granted temporary shelter in the Scandinavian country. The Migration Court of Appeal said Wednesday it has reversed a decision by Swedish Migration Agency to deport Bibihal Uzbeki, who is severely disabled and can barely speak. The court said she was in “a very bad state of health (which) may deteriorate drastically,” adding that an expulsion “could be considered inhuman and degrading treatment.”