China executes teacher who molested 26 students

A former Chinese elementary school teacher has been executed for molesting or raping 26 students, some as young as 4, in a case underscoring the vulnerability of rural children left behind by parents seeking jobs in cities. The People’s Court in the impoverished province of Gansu said it carried out the sentence against Li Jishun on Thursday. Li committed his assaults in the classroom, dormitories and surrounding forest areas in 2011-2012.

The US on Friday announced it was removing Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, taking another, and crucial, step towards normalisation of ties. “The rescission (revocation, cancellation) of Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission,” the US state department said in a statement.

“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.”

The US snapped diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, the year before the 1962 missile crisis, and declared it a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982. President Barrack Obama announced a series of steps in 2014 intended to normalise relations, making it a legacy foreign policy issue, with the Iraq initiative.

Obama met his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro on the sidelines of an international summit in Panama in April, and the US shortly after announced it will take Cuba off the terror list.

It did on Friday, at the end of a process that required the state department to certify Cuba was indeed worthy of going off the list.

Congress was informed and given time to object, 45 days of prenotification period, which expired. And Cuba is off the list, which now has only Iran, Syria and Sudan.