World Glance
Luggage screening intensified after Australia airplane plot
CANBERRA, Australia — Security remained heightened in airports around Australia with more intense screening of luggage after law enforcement officials thwarted what a police chief described on Monday as a “credible attempt to attack an aircraft.”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton declined to comment on newspaper reports that Islamist extremists planned to kill the occupants of a plane with poison gas and that a homemade bomb was to be disguised as a kitchen mincer.
“Police will allege they had the intent and were developing the capability,” Turnbull told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Turnbull announced on Sunday that “a terrorist plot to bring down an airplane” had been disrupted, but revealed few details.
Four men arrested in raids in Sydney late Saturday — two LebaneseAustralian fathers and their sons — had yet to be charged.
Israeli court upholds sentencing of soldier’s fatal shooting
JERUSALEM — An Israeli military court on Sunday upheld the 18-month sentence of a soldier convicted of fatally shooting a Palestinian attacker who lay on the ground wounded after stabbing and wounding another soldier, in a case that divided the country where military service is mandatory.
Sgt. Elor Azaria, an army combat medic, was recorded on a cellphone video as he fatally shot a badly wounded Palestinian who had previously attacked a soldier with a knife, wounding him. The Palestinian, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, was lying on the ground unarmed when Azaria shot him in the head.
The 2016 incident occurred in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron at a time of frequent Palestinian attacks.
Israel’s top generals pushed for the prosecution of the soldier they say violated the military’s code of ethics they hold dear.
Large segments of the public sided with Azaria. Some called him a hero who was being wrongly persecuted.
In Israel, military service is compulsory for most Jewish men, and soldiers enjoy widespread sympathy and support as they operate in complex scenarios.
Israeli media at the court reported judges called Azaria’s actions “forbidden and immoral.” He will enter prison Aug. 9, unless there is another appeal.
Philippine mayor linked to drugs, 14 others killed in raids
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines — Police in the southern Philippines said they fatally shot 15 people Sunday, including a city mayor who was among the politicians President Rodrigo Duterte publicly linked to illegal drugs, in the bloodiest assault so far in Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown.
Officers were to serve warrants to Ozamiz Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr. to search his houses for the suspected presence of unlicensed firearms when gunmen opened fire on the police, sparking clashes that killed the mayor and at least 14 other people, Ozamiz police chief Jovie Espenido said.
“He’s a high-value target on illegal drugs,” Espenido, who oversaw the simultaneous, post-midnight raids on the mayor’s residence and three other houses, said at a news conference.
“We enforce the law to protect the people who want peace in this country,” he said. “How can we enforce the law if ... we’re scared of the drug lords? That cannot be, they should be afraid of people who do good for all.”