NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Canada sanctions Saudis: Canada is imposing sanctions on 17 Saudi Arabian nationals suspected of being linked to the slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The list does not include Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday from the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires that the sanctions freeze the assets of those individuals in Canada and make them inadmissible to Canada. Canada made no mention of the Saudi crown prince, who is also attending the G-20 summit. “This case is not closed as far as Canada is concerned,” Freeland said. “Those responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s death must be held to account and face justice.” Khashoggi, who lived in the U.S. and wrote for the Washington Post, was publicly critical of the Saudi crown prince. He was killed in what U.S. officials have described as an elaborate plot at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which he had visited for marriage paperwork.
_2 Ebola epidemic: Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak is now the second largest in history, behind the devastating West Africa outbreak that killed thousands a few years ago, the World Health Organization said Thursday. WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Peter Salama, called it a “sad toll” as Congo’s health ministry announced the number of cases has reached 426. That includes 379 confirmed cases and 47 probable ones. So far this outbreak, declared on Aug. 1, has 198 confirmed deaths, with 47 probable ones, Congo’s health ministry said. Attacks by rebel groups and open hostility by some wary locals have posed serious challenges to health workers that Ebola experts say they’ve never been seen before. Salama this month predicted that the outbreak in northeastern Congo will last at least another six months before it can be contained. West Africa’s Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people from 2014 to 2016.
_3 Rebels deploy drones: Islamic extremists in Nigeria have begun using drones, President Muhammadu Buhari said Thursday, opening a worrying new front in the region’s nearly decade-long fight against Boko Haram and an offshoot linked to the Islamic State. Buhari announced the development during a meeting of countries contributing troops to a multinational force combatting the extremists. This appears to be the first confirmed use of drones by an extremist group in Africa, according to the World of Drones project run by the Washington-based New America think tank.
_4 Syria conflict: Syria’s air defenses confronted an aerial “aggression” over the country’s south late Thursday, shooting down several targets and preventing them from carrying out their mission in the first such attack since Syria received a Russian air defense system last month, state TV said. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack but Israel has carried out dozens of air strikes on Syria over the past years.
_5 Rio governor arrested: Luiz Fernando Pezao, governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro was arrested on Thursday for allegedly taking about $10 million in bribes since 2007, the latest in a string of corruption arrests of senior political figures. The arrest of Pezao gives the state of Rio, one of the most important in Latin America’s largest nation, a dubious distinction: All elected governors since 1998 have been jailed at different points for corruption. Numerous other state politicians have also been accused of graft.
Chronicle News Services