Reuters, Rome
The United Nations is preparing to deploy up to 250 peacekeepers to Libya to guard its base in the capital as part of a plan to return its operations to the country, the head of the organization’s mission there said on Friday.
Backed by Western governments, the U.N. is trying to heal a rift between Libya’s two rival governments, to tackle growing militant violence and people smuggling from its northern coast.
Envoy Ghassan Salame told Italian newspaper La Stampa that “a little under 250” peacekeepers “can be deployed in the coming weeks”.
Mumbai building fire kills six
AFP, Mumbai
Six people died when a fire swept through a building in Mumbai, officials said Thursday, the latest housing tragedy to strike India’s bustling financial capital.
An exploding gas cylinder sparked the blaze at the unfinished building used by labourers and their families.
Eighteen people were hurt in the blast, local government official Tanaji Kamble said, twelve of them critically.
Netanyahu’s wife faces graft trial
AFP, Jerusalem
The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been formally told she faces a possible trial over alleged misuse of public funds, the justice ministry said Friday.
“The attorney general has informed the counsel of Mrs. Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister, that he is considering putting her on trial,” it said in a statement.
18 militants killed in Afghan clashes
Xinhua, Maimana
As many as 18 Taliban militants, including three local insurgents’ commanders, were killed in clashes in Afghanistan’s northern province of Faryab, police said Thursday.
The clashes occurred within the last 24 hours, when fighters loyal to the Taliban attacked security checkpoints in Pashtun Kot, Ghormach and Almar districts, but faced harsh military reaction from the area’s government security forces, Sayyed Sarwar Housaini, police spokesman of 707 Pamir Police Zone based in the region, told Xinhua.
Court rules against Trump’s travel ban guidelines
AP, Seattle
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s limited view of who is allowed into the United States under the president’s travel ban, saying grandparents, cousins and similarly close relations of people in the U.S. should not be prevented from coming to the country.
The unanimous ruling from three judges on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also cleared the way for refugees accepted by a resettlement agency to travel here. The decision upheld a ruling by a federal judge in Hawaii who found the administration’s view too strict.
