Militants in Yemen release 2 Americans, remains of a third
WASHINGTON — Two Americans and the remains of a third held captive by Iranian-backed militants in Yemen were released Wednesday in exchange for the return of about 250 of the Houthi rebels from Oman, according to the White House and sources in the region.
Oman’s state news said the American captives were flown out of Yemen on an Omani plane. It said 250 “Yemeni brothers” who received treatment in Oman have been returned to Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on two flights as part of the exchange.
“The United States welcomes the release today of U.S. citizens Sandra Loli and Mikael Gidada from Houthi custody in Yemen,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a statement. “We send our condolences to the family of Bilal Fateen, whose remains will be repatriated aswell.”
O’Brien did not mention the exchange, but thanked the leaders of Oman and Saudi Arabia for their help in securing the release of the Americans.
Kieran Ramsey, director of the administration’s hostage recovery cell, said Loli and Gidada would soon be on their way back to the United States.
“Tragically, one of these Americans died during his unlawful captivity,” Ramsey said.
Kash Patel, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump who worked on the deal, told The Wall Street Journal that Loli had been held by the Houthis for about three years and Gidada was held captive for about a year.
Yemen plunged into chaos and civil war when the Houthi rebels took over Sanaa in 2014 from the internationally recognized government. A Saudi-led coalition allied with the government has been fighting the Houthis since March 2015.
The war in Yemen has spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical shortages. It has killed more than 112,000 people, including fighters and civilians, according to a database project that tracks violence.
Vatican sex abuse trial: For the first time, a clergy sex abuse trial opened Wednesday in the Vatican’s criminal tribunal, with one priest accused of molesting an altar boy in the Vatican’s youth seminary and another priest accused of covering it up.
The case concerns the closed world of the St. Pius X youth seminary, a palazzo inside the Vatican walls across the street from where Pope Francis lives and the criminal tribunal itself. The seminary, which is run by a Como, Italybased association of priests, serves as a residence for boys ages 12 to 18, who serve as altar boys at papal Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.
According to the indictment read aloud Wednesday, the Rev. Gabriele Martinelli, 28, is accused of abusing his authority as a more senior seminarian to force a younger seminarian into “carnal acts” using violence and threats from 2007 to 2012.
The former seminary rector, the Rev. Enrico Radice, is charged with having helped Martinelli avoid investigators by telling the Como bishop that the victim’s allegations were baseless and telling Vatican prosecutors that he knew of no sexual misconduct in the seminary.
Holocaust survivors aid: Germany has agreed to provide more than a half billion euros to aid Holocaust survivors struggling under the burdens of the coronavirus pandemic, the organization that negotiates compensation with the German government said Wednesday.
The payments will be going to approximately 240,000 survivors around the world, primarily in Israel, North America, the former Soviet Union and Western Europe, over the next two years, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.
With the end of World War II now 75 years in the past, Holocaust survivors are all elderly, and because many were deprived of proper nutrition when they were young, today they suffer from numerous medical issues. In addition, many live isolated lives, having lost their entire families and also have psychological issues because of their persecution under the Nazis.
2nd false report charge: Amy Cooper, the white woman charged with filing a false police report for calling 911 during a dispute with a Black man in New York’s Central Park in May, made a second, previously unreported call in which she falsely claimed theman had “tried to assault her,” a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon described the second call as Cooper was being arraigned by video in a case that had garnered worldwide attention butwas put on hold for months because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the first 911 call, which was captured on a widely seen video of the confrontation, Cooper told a dispatcher only that the man, a birdwatcher named Christian Cooper, was threatening her. The second call was not recorded on video, but a 911 dispatcher provided prosecutors with a sworn affidavit regarding the calls, Illuzzi-Orbon said.
“Using a police in a way that is was both racially offensive and designed to intimidate is something that can’t be ignored. Therefore we charged her,” she said.
California wildfires: Fire crews from across the state were being deployed to Northern California, where hot, windy conditions Wednesday renewed fire threats in the region where massive blazes already have destroyed hundreds of homes and killed or injured dozens of people this year.
Most of the huge fires that erupted over the past eight weeks are fully or significantly contained, and skies once stained orange by heavy smoke are blue again. Containment means that firefighters have lines holding in a fire, though it doesn’t mean a fire has stopped burning.
But the gains made by thousands of firefighters assigned to the blazes that have scorched more than 4.1 million acres this year could be hampered if new fires ignite, said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire.
Quick space trip: A trio of space travelers blasted off to the International Space Station on Wednesday, using for the first time a fast-track maneuver that allowed them to reach the orbiting outpost in just a little over three hours.
NASA’s Kate Rubins along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled Wednesday morning from the Russia leased Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan for a six-month stint on the station.
For the first time, they tried a two-orbit approach and docked with the space station in just a little over three hours after lift-off. Previously it took twice as long for crews to reach the station.