Trump loses appeal, must testify in New York civil probe
NEW YORK >> Former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in the New York attorney general's civil investigation into his business practices, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, rejecting his argument that he be excused from testifying because his answers could be used in a parallel criminal probe.
A four-judge panel in the appellate division of the state's trial court upheld Judge Arthur Engoron's Feb. 17 ruling, which enforced subpoenas requiring that Trump and his two eldest children — Ivanka and Donald Jr. — give deposition testimony in Attorney General Letitia James' probe.
“The existence of a criminal investigation does not preclude civil discovery of related facts, at which a party may exercise the privilege against self-incrimination,” the appellate panel wrote, citing the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and other legal protections for witnesses.
Tribute: Nancy Lynch of Ipswich, Mass., walks with her granddaughter Sophie Haddad, 3, of Danvers, Mass., past American flags on Boston Common as another girl, left, runs by Thursday in Boston. Each flag represents a fallen member of the U.S. military from Massachusetts from the Revolutionary War to the present.
WHO: COVID-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas
LONDON >> The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths still is falling globally after peaking in January, the World Health Organization said.
In its latest weekly assessment of the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were more than 3.7 million new infections and 9,000 deaths in the past week, drops of 3% and 11%, respectively. COVID-19 cases rose in only two regions of the world: the Americas and the Western Pacific. Deaths increased by 30% in the Middle East but were stable or decreased everywhere else.
WHO said it is tracking all omicron subvariants as “variants of concern.” It noted that countries which had a significant wave of disease caused by the omicron subvariant BA.2 appeared to be less affected by other subvariants like BA.4 and BA.5, which were responsible for the latest surge of disease in South Africa.
11 newborns killed in hospital fire, Senegal's leader says
PARIS >> At least 11 newborns were killed after a fire tore through a neonatal unit of a regional hospital in the West African nation of Senegal, the country's president, Macky Sall, said Thursday on Twitter.
Sall, who was on a state visit to Angola, said the blaze had broken out at Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in the city of Tivaouanel.
Senegal's health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr, who was in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, posted on Twitter, “We learned with sorrow of the deadly fire in the neonatology department of the Mame A.A. Sy Dabakh hospital in Tivaouane.”
He said that he had dispatched a delegation to the site of the blaze and was cutting short his trip to immediately return to Dakar.
He later told the television station TFM that “according to a preliminary investigation, a short circuit triggered the fire.”
China's foreign minister starts Pacific tour in the Solomons
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND >> China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a 20-strong delegation arrived in the Solomon Islands Thursday at the start of an eight-nation tour that comes amid growing concerns about Beijing's military and financial ambitions in the South Pacific region.
China says the trip builds on a long history of friendly relations between Beijing and the island nations.
But Australia scrambled to counter the move by sending its own Foreign Minister Penny Wong to Fiji to shore up support in the Pacific. Wong had been on the job just five days following an Australian election and had just arrived back Wednesday night from a meeting in Tokyo.
In Fiji, Wong said it was up to each island nation to decide what partnerships they formed and what agreements they signed, but urged them to consider the benefits of sticking with Australia.
China and Russia veto new sanctions on North Korea
UNITED NATIONS >> China and Russia vetoed a U.N. resolution sponsored by the United States on Thursday that would have imposed tough new sanctions on North Korea for its spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches that can be used to deliver nuclear weapons.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-2 and marked a first serious division among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N.'s most powerful body on a North Korea sanctions resolution.
A united Security Council imposed sanctions after North Korea's first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and tightened them over the years in a total of 10 resolutions seeking — so far unsuccessfully — to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and cut off funding.
But China and Russia said after the vote that they oppose more sanctions, stressing that what's needed now is renewed dialogue between North Korea and the United States.