NEWS OF THE DAY
1 War on drugs: Nearly 50 people suspected of using and selling drugs were killed by officers in the past two months, the Philippine National Police said Friday, contradicting earlier pronouncements that the government’s war on drugs would become less deadly. The figure was the first released since President Rodrigo Duterte reactivated the police in December as the country’s lead agency in carrying out a crackdown on illegal narcotics. Duterte temporarily placed the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in charge of the drug war last year after police officers were found to have killed three teenagers and then lied about how the boys died. News of their deaths prompted protests and a Senate investigation. The number of people killed since Duterte’s drug war took effect in 2017 is unknown. The government says fewer than 4,000 suspects, but Human Rights Watch last week estimated the figure at more than 12,000.
2 London attack: A man who drove a van into worshipers near a London mosque, killing one man and injuring a dozen others, was sentenced Friday to at least 43 years in prison for what a judge called a crime driven by “malevolent hatred.” Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Darren Osborne’s mind was “poisoned” by far-right ideas before the June 2017 attack targeting Muslims and that he had shown no signs of remorse. Makram Ali, 51, was killed and 12 people were injured when Osborne drove a rented van into people leaving evening prayers during Ramadan.
3 Maldives unrest: The exiled former president of the Maldives said Friday he will run again for office, hours after a surprise Supreme Court decision to free a group of political prisoners led to overnight clashes in Male, the capital of the Indian Ocean archipelago. President Yameen Abdul Gayoom had been set to run for re-election virtually unopposed, with all of his opponents either jailed or exiled. But ex-President Mohammed Nasheed, who is among the prisoners ordered freed, said he would challenge Yameen, who has rolled back many democratic reforms since coming to power five years ago. Nasheed was jailed in 2016 after being convicted of terrorism charges in a trial widely condemned by international rights groups. But he received asylum in Britain later that year after traveling there on medical leave from prison. Nasheed has lived in exile ever since.
4 Off the air: Kenya’s three leading TV stations were off the air for a fourth day Friday as police prevented the delivery of a court order to restore their transmissions after they tried to broadcast opposition leader Raila Odinga swearing himself in as “the people’s president.” The government of President Uhuru Kenyatta has called the ceremony an act of treason. Odinga claims Kenyatta’s electoral victory last year was rigged and that electoral reforms have not been made.
5 Mayan ruins: Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping technique have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, defense works and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala’s Peten region, suggesting that millions more people lived there than previously thought. The study estimates that roughly 10 million people may have lived within the Maya Lowlands. Researchers used a mapping technique called LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging). It bounces pulsed laser light off the ground, revealing contours hidden by dense foliage. The mapping detected about 60,000 structures, including four major ceremonial centers with plazas and pyramids.