NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 U.S. soldier killed: A U.S. Special Operations soldier was killed and four others were wounded Friday in a southwestern Somalia gunbattle against fighters for the Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, three Defense Department officials said. The attack marked the first combat casualties that have been publicized in Africa since an ambush in Niger in October. The U.S. forces were alongside Somali troops at a small outpost near the town of Jamaame when they came under small arms and mortar fire, Defense Department officials said Friday.
2 War crimes overturned: In a blow to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and to victims of rape and murder in a conflict-ravaged African nation, appeals judges on Friday overturned the convictions of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed by his forces in Central African Republic. The reversal delivered a serious setback to ICC prosecutors by scrapping all the convictions in the The Hague court’s first trial to focus largely on sexual violence and on command responsibility — the legal principle that a commanding officer can be held responsible for crimes committed by his or her troops or for failing to prevent or punish the crimes. Bemba was the most senior suspect convicted by the global court and his 18-year sentence was the highest handed down in the court’s history.
3 Arrest order: Prosecutors in El Salvador say arrest warrants have been issued for former President Mauricio Funes and more than two dozen others from his inner circle on a host of corruption charges. Salvadoran Attorney General Douglas Menendez said the 31 arrest orders include Funes’ private secretary, his longtime partner Ada Mitchelle Guzman Siguenza, his ex-wife Regina Canas and two of Funes’ sons. Menendez said Friday in a news conference that Funes’ government diverted $351 million in public funds. Funes held office from 2009 to 2014, and has been living in exile in Nicaragua since 2016.
4 Plundered antiquities: A brush fire in central Greece has helped authorities discover a hoard of illegally excavated antiquities. The Greek culture ministry said Friday that firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze found about 200 artifacts, some as much as 2,800 years old, in plastic bags hidden under bushes. The discovery was made Thursday in the countryside between the villages of Livanates and Megaplatanos, some 93 miles northwest of Athens. A ministry statement said most of the pottery and metal objects were unharmed by the fire. Authorities are trying to establish who excavated and hid the artifacts. Under Greek law, all ancient artifacts found in the country are state property.
5 Gulag museum: A Moscow museum studying Soviet prison camps said Friday it has discovered a secret Russian order in 2014 instructing officials to destroy data on prisoners who had reached the age of 80 — which now would include almost all of them — a move it said “could have catastrophic consequences for studying the history of the camps.” Up to 17 million people were sent to the Gulag, the notorious Soviet prison camp system, in the 1930s and 1940s, and at least 5 million were convicted on false testimony. Case files of prisoners were often destroyed but their personal data was kept on registration cards, which are still held by police and intelligence officials.